#like the stays from the regency period

[theawkwardone6]

They should bring back short stays in place of bras

[blossom-hwa]

a very fine line, indeed [4] | c.bg

pairing: Beomgyu x fem!reader genre:  fluff, angst, enemies to lovers, regency era!au, nobility!au warnings: cursing, period typical misogyny word count: 8.7k notes:  — updates every M/W/F at 8pm EST until the series finishes — inspiration taken from an amalgamation of different bridgerton stories - let me know what easter eggs you find! — story takes place in the same universe as my duke!yeonjun and earl!taehyun fics - check out the link to the series below for some more easter eggs :) In a society where it only takes a year for a young woman in search of a husband to be considered out of season, it is no wonder that by your third year out, you are desperate to marry. Known as one of the beauties of the ton, such a task should not be difficult for you—but with an absent father, no dowry, and a reputation centered around your inability to keep your mouth shut around one certain Beomgyu Choi, your prospects are more limited than you’d like. While you cannot recover your family or your wealth, however, the one thing you can try to control is your reputation. So when the third season rolls around, you resolve to keep your distance from Beomgyu Choi, your childhood enemy, and the man you hate most in the world. Enter Beomgyu Choi, second son of the Kensington Viscountcy, one of the most eligible bachelors in the ton. His older brother, cousin, and good friend have all recently married, leaving the mamas to salivate at his doorstep for the chance of marrying one of their daughters to him. When Beomgyu walks in on a particularly traumatizing moment between you and one of the most unsavory men in the ton and learns of your desperation to marry, despite your history of enmity, he proposes you a devious deal—to pretend to court you. It seems like a winning situation for both of you—more gentlemen will take notice of you, enhancing your prospects, and he will have the ton’s mamas off his back—and so, despite your misgivings, you agree. With you hell bent on marriage and Beomgyu completely indifferent to the concept, even independent of your hatred for each other, it seems unlikely that any sort of true affection will bloom. But as you begrudgingly put aside your differences to spend more and more time in one another’s company, and as you grow to know each other beyond your ill-conceived preconceptions from childhood, you begin to realize that perhaps you two have more in common than you had once thought. And as your faked acquaintanceship becomes more truth than fiction, a friendship beginning to bloom most unexpectedly— Perhaps you no longer need to convince the ton of the veracity of your courtship, because anyone with eyes can see that it is true.  Part 3 >> Part 4 >> Part 5

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When you wake up the morning after the ball, you look so drained and exhausted that even your stepmother seems to balk a moment before she starts asking questions about what happened the night before—who you danced with, who spoke to you, how long you kept Lord Cho’s attentions for, and why you disappeared just a few hours in. 

You give her the most noncommittal responses you can, and fortunately she seems to buy your excuse that you got cut by the glass from your fall and decided to leave early. She is particularly interested in the fact that Mr. Choi sent you home in his carriage. 

You’ve been trying to sort through that, yourself. 

It isn’t that you believe Mr. Choi harbors any real affection for you, which your stepmother seems to be praying for. It’s other things. The carriage. The handkerchief. His insistence on staying to help despite how rudely you acted towards him. 

The fact that you told him about your situation at home, when that has been your most closely guarded secret for years. 

Why did you tell him? 

Try as you might, even hours later as you’re on your hands and knees, scrubbing at the hallway floor, you can’t quite understand. Even though it was clear he wanted to know what was going on, he didn’t pressure you in any way. He even stated directly that he would not ask unless you wanted to tell, and you certainly didn’t want to then. 

Or did you?

You pause in your scrubbing. Lift up your hand, see the thin cotton strip wrapped around the palm where the bleeding was worst, take in the other small cracks that have appeared on your skin as the weather grows colder and you continue with your chores. These are not the hands of a noblewoman. There wouldn’t be any shame in that if it weren’t for the matter of your birth to a father with something of a title. 

But Mr. Choi didn’t shame you. Not for one moment. He didn’t even show you the pity you had feared seeing in other’s eyes if they discovered your secret. 

No. He simply treated you as a person. An injured person, but nothing more or less than that. Even after hearing your story. 

Maybe that’s why you told him. Because despite your fear, you were desperate for someone to know both sides of you—half noble, half servant—and you knew, somehow, that Mr. Choi would not shame nor judge you for it. He has already seen the worst pieces of yourself. Even before he learned of this, he perhaps knew more about you than anyone else in the ton, simply because you never had to hide your ugly parts around him. 

The thought almost makes you laugh. Mr. Choi of all people, knowing you better than even your best of friends. But though it seems ludicrous…you think it might be true. 

You don’t really know what to do about that. 

So instead of thinking about it further, you push the thought to the back of your mind, where all your other uncomfortable little revelations about Mr. Choi have been living for the best part of the last few weeks. When he called and Delia was there, and he spoke to her kindly and with warmth. The garden party, where you realized you were likely more yourself around him than almost anyone else in the ton. These discombobulated thoughts try to peek into the rest of your brain every once in a while, but you are quite good at compartmentalizing so they stay in their little locked boxes where they belong. Mostly. 

Until certain events occur that shatter those boxes entirely. 

It has been two days since the ball, and while your hands haven’t fully healed, you did manage to get the blood and lemonade stains out of your gloves. This comes in handy for calling hour, where you seem to be the most popular you’ve ever been—two gentlemen arrive in just the first thirty minutes, one after another, each bearing small gifts. The flowers are quite nice and you have Soyoung arrange them about the drawing room. With the sky so gray outside, they brighten the space a little.

Truth be told, you aren’t expecting anyone else to come. It’s a rather dreary day with rain pouring intermittently and inconveniently, and you imagine most people would like to stay inside on a day like this. But just as the conversation with your second caller is drawing to a close, Brighton comes in with another calling card in hand. “Mr. Choi has come to call, Miss L/N.”

You blink. You hadn’t expected him—he usually comes on Thursdays if he is able to call that week, and it is only Tuesday. “Please send him in,” you say, glancing apologetically at your current suitor. He takes the news with grace, and you bid him a polite goodbye. 

Shortly after he leaves, you hear footsteps in the hall. Mr. Choi appears in the doorway just as you stand, curtsying slightly. “Mr. Choi,” you greet. “I did not expect to see you today.”

“I cannot stay for long,” he admits, “but I had something I wanted to give you.” He extends you a long, slim box tied with a lovely blue ribbon. “Apologies for not sending flowers, but I thought you might appreciate this gift better.”

It seems he means for you to open the gift in his presence, so you untie the ribbon and take the lid off, all the while wondering what this could be. The box itself is rather light but very elegant, a pretty pale pink, almost white, that looks beautiful against the blue ribbon. White tissue paper covers whatever is inside and you carefully peel back the crinkly layers to reveal two pairs of gloves. 

Your breath hitches. One pair looks to be made of silk, the other of a serviceable but very soft cotton. The cotton pair seems devoid of decoration, but the silk pair has some delicate stitching done in pale gold around the top areas. Both are a lovely cream color that would look well with any gown. One touch is all it takes for you to suspect that these are very well made, and must have been very expensive.

Your eye catches on a small monogram on the outside of the box—MGD written in a delicate script. You have to swallow a gasp. Everyone in the ton knows the monogram of Madame Genevieve Delacroix, only the most sought-after modiste in the town. Time and time again you have envied the dresses in her windows, the girls who come in and out of her shop laughing and chatting. You never dreamed of owning anything from her store. 

Gloves, given to you by Mr. Choi, who knows your secret. Who saw your hands and did not shame you for them, but called you strong instead. Gloves given to you in place of flowers, because he knew that you needed them, and knew what they would mean to you. 

“Mr. Choi.” To your utter embarrassment, you realize you are near tears. “Mr. Choi, these—” You swallow hard around the lump in your throat. “I can’t accept them. They are too fine.”

“Yes, you can.” He looks at you softly, steadily, and for a moment you hate him—hate him so viscerally that it almost takes your breath away. How dare he be so kind, so sweet, when you’re supposed to loathe him—how dare he scramble your feelings even further, how dare he make you feel like an ass for hating him when he deserves it—

Only you aren’t so sure he deserves it anymore. In the face of this gift, your childhood grudge suddenly seems so puny and insignificant. These gloves, a symbol of your secret, and his honor in keeping it—a symbol of what he saw, and his reassurance that you mean nothing less for it—you don’t know what to do with them. To keep them means to acknowledge you have been wrong about Mr. Choi all these years. To reject them means to cause harm to a man you know doesn’t deserve it. 

Mr. Choi steps forward, presses the box more firmly into your arms. In your weak state you can’t resist. “Beneath the paper, there is a small pot of salve for your hands,” he murmurs, quiet enough that no one should hear but you. “Please use it. It will help.”

Now you’re really in danger of crying, but you force the tears back and nod slightly to show that you heard. You have never been more grateful that your stepmother is out making her own calls, leaving only Brighton to chaperone the two of you. You would never want her to witness you in this state, weak before a man you used to call your mortal enemy. 

God, you hate him. You hate him so much for not letting you hate him in peace. 

You look down at the gloves again. Never in all your life did you think you could ever own anything like these. “You are too kind,” you mumble, and if Mr. Choi hears the tremble in your voice, he says nothing of it.

“Well, I chose them with you in mind,” he says, smiling softly. Then that smile turns a little mischievous. “We can both agree that I have brilliant taste, hm?”

Your first instinct is to roll your eyes. Instead, though, a burst of laughter startles out of your chest, surprising you. “I might not say brilliant,” you retort, eyes wet, “but you certainly choose your gloves well.” Your smile isn’t even forced. Far from it. In fact, in this moment, you almost feel like you jest with a good friend. 

Good God, what has your world come to?

Brighton chooses that moment to clear his throat. You and Mr. Choi both nearly jump. “Another caller, my lady,” he says, looking slightly apologetic. “Lord Cho.”

For all the fun you had speaking with Lord Cho at the last ball, and for all your scrambled feelings in this moment about Mr. Choi, you can’t help but feel a little put out that this moment must end so soon. Mr. Choi deserves more thanks than you can give and you need more time to process all of your thoughts—you aren’t sure you can easily shove them back into their neat little boxes anymore. You look at Mr. Choi, who seems somewhat resigned. “I must go now too, unfortunately,” he says, and there seems to be true regret in his voice when he tells you this. “I have some appointments in town, even in this weather, but I shall see you soon, Miss L/N.”

“And I, you,” you say, curtsying to his short bow. “I wish you well. And…” You swallow, the lump returning to your throat. “Thank you,” you manage to whisper. “Thank you so much.”

His eyes soften. “Of course, Miss L/N,” he replies. “Always.”

. . . . .

Beomgyu has known Lord Cho for all of maybe an hour, but he has already concluded that he does not like him. 

Which is infuriating, because there is nothing wrong with him. Not outwardly, at least. Almost everyone at the party seems to have been charmed by his good looks and bright personality, and he has quite lit up the entire room with his presence. Together with Wooyoung Jung, he seems to have captivated the entire party. 

Except for Beomgyu. 

Beomgyu doesn’t wish to think ill of people before he has gotten to know them. But something about Lord Cho really rubs him the wrong way, and try as he might, he can’t pinpoint exactly what it is. This might just drive him insane even before the dinner party starts. 

“Well, you look like you just bit into a sour orange.” Lady Choi steps up to him with a smile, handing him a glass. He takes it gratefully. “Is something wrong with tonight?”

“No, nothing at all,” he reassures quickly. This is her party, after all, and besides inviting Lord Cho, she has done an admirable job of it. “The party is wonderful,” he adds. “You’ve rather outdone yourself, sister.”

She laughs, raising her glass in a slight toast. “I thank you for that. But you do not look yourself tonight.” She raises an eyebrow. “You can’t lie to me, Beomgyu. Is something wrong?”

If it were anyone else Beomgyu would lie and brush it off. But this is his sister in law, who he’s known for over ten years. She may have been his brother’s best childhood friend, but she was always like a sister to him. She knows him, and she won’t shame or judge him for being vaguely suspicious of Lord Cho. “Nothing is really wrong,” he says quietly. “I just feel uneasy around Lord Cho, for some reason. I am honestly not quite sure why.”

Lady Choi glances at the lord, who seems to be having a good time speaking with you, actually. He realizes that he’s grinding his teeth and forces himself to stop. “He does seem oddly perfect,” she admits. “And it is a bit strange that he would come so far from the continent simply to join the London season.”

“There’s nothing outwardly wrong with him,” Beomgyu mumbles. “I just…don’t know.”

Lady Choi looks at him sidelong. “Are you sure it isn’t just that he’s speaking with the lady you are actively courting?”

Beomgyu nearly spits out his drink. “What?” he sputters. “I—we—” We’re not even courting is what he would have said, but he catches himself just in time. “No, I’m fairly certain that’s not it,” he manages to stutter out in the end, much to Lady Choi’s amusement. 

Against his will, he remembers you dancing with Lord Cho at that last ball, and your bright, genuine smile when you spoke to him afterwards. He remembers running into Lord Cho in the hallway of your home as he was leaving after calling on you, and the easy grin the lord flashed at him before entering your drawing room. He remembers the ugly feeling rearing in his chest then that felt strangely like jealousy, but…

What a load of bull. Beomgyu sighs. Perhaps some sort of strange envy is clouding his judgment somewhat, but this isn’t just plain dislike. Beomgyu would like to think that he can separate his own stupid emotions from genuine uneasiness well enough. “I’m serious,” he snaps when Lady Choi won’t stop smiling. “I know what you’re thinking, and that isn’t it.”

To her credit, she does stop smiling so widely, though Beomgyu can tell she isn’t fully convinced. “I don’t mean to offend, Beomgyu,” she says quietly, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder. “I will keep an eye on the lord as well. But I also encourage you to look at your own feelings a little more deeply.” She raises an eyebrow, smiling wryly. “You might just discover something new there.”

Needless to say, this does not put Beomgyu in the best of moods. It takes an effort for him to paste a neutral expression on his face as everyone files into the dining room for the meal, made even harder by his sister in law’s placement of those around the table. Normally Beomgyu would be sat next to Lady Choi as the second in line to the viscountcy, but today’s party is officially to celebrate Yeonjun and his wife for their new baby, so Yeonjun sits next to Beomgyu’s sister in law, while the duchess sits next to Soobin. And apparently his sister in law had some very interesting ideas about where to place him at the table, because he finds himself sat next to you, with Lord Cho on your other side. 

You sit down next to him, and Beomgyu realizes it’s the first time he’s seen you up close the whole evening. In the few hours before dinner, different groups kept engaging you in conversation to the point that Beomgyu didn’t even realize you had arrived until he saw you across the room. He looks down almost reflexively and sees that you are wearing one of the pairs of gloves he gave you as a gift. A little bit of his foul mood dissipates at the sight.

Truth be told, he wasn’t sure of his gift. Not because he has no sense of fashion or style—he thinks he chose quite well—but because he wasn’t certain if it would be too forward of him to give you something so fine. If you were truly courting, it would be more acceptable, but you both know well that this courtship doesn’t actually mean anything. But the cotton pair of gloves had been so simple and nice, a wonderful complement to your beauty, and then his eye had caught on the silk pair and he hadn’t thought much after that until he stood outside of the modiste carrying the box of gloves, wondering how you would receive his gift. Maybe you would refuse it entirely. 

But you did accept them, and to his surprise, you almost seemed near tears as you did. He said nothing, of course—you probably wouldn’t have appreciated it if he did, as you are a prideful sort of creature—but he hadn’t expected you to be quite so grateful for the gift. Nonetheless, he was very pleased that you accepted the gloves, and it brings him quite a sense of pride to see you wearing them tonight.

“Miss L/N,” he says, catching your attention before Lord Cho can. “I hope you have been having a good time tonight.”

“I have been.” Your smile doesn’t seem to be as bright as it once was, but there’s a softness to it that somehow touches Beomgyu to the core. “Your sister in law organized this wonderfully—I am very glad to have been invited.” You fiddle with your fingers a little, looking a bit awkward. For some reason, he finds the act rather endearing. “I must thank you for these yet again,” you mumble, clearly indicating the gloves. “For the gloves, and for…everything else.”

Beomgyu’s smile doesn’t feel quite as forced as it was before. “You are very welcome,” he says quietly. “I hope the salve has been doing you some good.”

“It has been working wonders.” You glance around, then look at him with a slight, strange smile. “My hands haven’t been so soft in years.”

If your stepmother were here, Beomgyu would have been able to stop himself from glaring daggers at her. Fortunately for her and unfortunately for him, she isn’t, so he makes do with taking some small comfort from your words that he was able to help. “I am glad to hear that.”

Dinner is fine. The food puts Beomgyu in a slightly better mood, and though Lord Cho is near, he’s on your other side, not Beomgyu’s, so he doesn’t need to look at Lord Cho more than he has to. Lady Mary Kim is on his other side, but though Beomgyu wouldn’t really count her as the best company, she spends most of the meal speaking to Mr. Winslow on her left, which leaves Beomgyu able to enjoy his food in peace while monopolizing your attention as he wishes. 

You indulge him more than you usually do. When you started this pretend courtship, for all your incredible acting skills in public, there was still an undercurrent of distrust and hostility whenever you two spoke. Granted, he had already noticed some small decline in the number of subtly rolled eyes and sighs of annoyance that accompanied your conversations, and maybe there were some moments where Beomgyu felt like he was speaking to a friend more than a forced acquaintance, but he notices it clearly this time. You listen to him. You laugh with him. You treat him with a measure of true politeness that doesn’t seem like it is just for show. When you do roll your eyes and snipe back at his teasing, it doesn’t seem nearly as hostile as before. 

It's different, but even though the change throws him off slightly, he welcomes it. He had often found arguing with you over everything quite fun, but this sort of banter sans hostility is even better. More entertaining. 

Especially when he can see Lord Cho on your other side casting glances at you every so often, probably wondering when your conversation with him will end.

“You’re showing me quite a bit of kindness, Miss L/N,” he says when the dessert has been served. “You’ve only rolled your eyes twice at me this evening. Could it be that you are finally warming up to me?”

You scoff, but Beomgyu detects a hint of a smile on your lips as you dip into your pudding. “Counting now, are we?” you deflect easily, raising an eyebrow. 

“I think your record might be two hundred and sixty five,” Beomgyu replies seriously. “Two is quite low in comparison.”

“I hadn’t realized you could count that high,” you retort. 

“How you wound me, Miss L/N.” He pouts, and you snicker.

“For the record, it couldn’t have been two hundred and sixty five, because I would have tired of your voice by ninety six at most,” you say superciliously, vaguely pointing at him with your spoon. “As for warming up to you, don’t get too excited.” One side of your mouth curls in a smirk that Beomgyu, curse him, finds attractive. More attractive than your placid society smiles, anyway. “Just because I have decided you aren’t the scum of the earth doesn’t mean I appreciate your presence in more than small doses.”

It pleases him more than it should, to hear that you no longer think him the equivalent of the dirt at the bottom of your shoe. Or the cake that ruined your shoes at your fifth birthday celebration. 

When did he grow to care about your opinion so much? 

“We have met at least once a week for the past month and a half,” Beomgyu points out, rather than dwell on his last thought. “Is that what you consider a small dose?”

You shrug easily. “It is still less than what it could be.”

“So you could stand to see me more?”

For a moment, Beomgyu thinks he’s caught you. Pride bursts in his chest at your blank expression, a clear indication that’s he’s won. He takes his last mouthful of pudding in triumph. 

“Are you trying to imply, Mr. Choi, that you would like to see me more?”

He nearly spits everything out of his mouth. 

You smile serenely at him, wiping your mouth primly with your napkin. All around him, the ladies are rising from the table to head somewhere else—likely the sitting room, where they will talk amongst themselves separately while the men continue their conversations elsewhere. Beomgyu tries to recover himself but a chunk of pudding will not go down his damn throat, so he’s forced to watch as you stand, a serenely pleased expression on your face. “I await your answer in due time, Mr. Choi,” you say just before you step away.

Of course it’s then that he manages to swallow all of the pudding. Right when you have actually left. Though perhaps the timing is just as well, because as much as it pains him to admit, he had nothing to retort. 

It also pains him to admit he found that extremely attractive. 

No matter. The men in the room are also beginning to stand, to make their way into the next room. Beomgyu follows the crowd, pleasantly surprised to find himself in much higher spirits than before. 

At least until a hand appears in front of him with a drink, and it turns out that the hand belongs to Lord Cho. 

Beomgyu’s smile freezes on his face but he takes the glass. “Thank you,” he says as neutrally as he can. “Lord Cho, is it?”

“Correct. Mr. Choi?” Lord Cho raises an eyebrow. 

“Indeed.” Beomgyu briefly entertains the thought that the drink might be poisoned, but there is really no reason for him to suspect Lord Cho of such a thing so he just takes a sip. Normal whiskey. It’s unfortunately quite good. 

“I wanted to speak to you at the last ball, but you seemed busy all night after Miss L/N left.” Beomgyu bristles at the mention of your name but Lord Cho continues, apparently oblivious, which just makes him more annoyed. “Wooyoung says you are a particular friend of his and I had hoped to be introduced.”

Unfortunately, Beomgyu does count Wooyoung as one of his good friends, so what Wooyoung apparently said is entirely possible. Plausible, even. “He is closer to my cousin than I,” Beomgyu says slowly, “but we have been friends for quite a long time.”

“I see.” Lord Cho takes a sip of his own drink slowly. “He mentioned you and Miss L/N were courting.”

Beomgyu narrows his eyes slightly but otherwise does not respond, even though it seems like Lord Cho expects one. 

“She’s a delightful young lady,” Lord Cho finally says. “One only wonders how she has gone three seasons without anyone asking for her hand already.”

Actually, two people proposed, but she turned them both down. 

“She is delightful,” Beomgyu replies, and to his surprise, he’s barely lying.

Lord Cho continues as though he hadn’t heard. “Might I ask why you have only decided to court her now, after two entire seasons?” 

Beomgyu laughs, perhaps a bit unkindly, but Lord Cho is really rubbing him the wrong way and he doesn’t much care if he offends the foreign lord a little bit. “Have you read Whistledown, Lord Cho? If not, you should ask Wooyoung if he has any old copies. I will save you some of the perusal, though.” He sips his drink. “Miss L/N and I have not been on very good terms since we were children. It was only at the end of the last season that we decided our childhood grudges were far too immature to continue, so we decided to put them past us.” He pauses. “Over the past few months I have been reminded time and time again that she is an honorable woman, kind, delightful, and intelligent. I am ashamed I did not see it sooner, but I believe that realizing later is at least better than realizing never.”

There is a brief silence. Enough silence that Beomgyu is able to realize that nothing he said in the last two sentences was even remotely untrue. Kind—your interactions with the duchess’s baby. Delightful—the conversation you just shared during dessert. Intelligent—your clever retorts every time you two speak, even when the discussion is amiable. 

Honorable—your clear devotion to the children of your family, despite being forced to serve as a maid in your own household, all the while presenting a pleasing façade to the rest of the ton. 

Lord Cho nods slowly, bringing Beomgyu back to earth. “I have come from the continent to find someone, you know,” he says quietly. 

Beomgyu does not reply. 

“I have known Miss L/N only a fraction of the time you have, I suppose, but I, too, wish to have her.” His smile widens, though it now seems to hold a cold sort of menace rather than his previous flirty charm. “She is beautiful. I should be lucky to have her at my side.”

“As should I,” Beomgyu says steadily. “As should anyone.”

“Touché.” Lord Cho laughs a little. “I suppose I wanted to meet the man who would be my prime competitor for her attentions. You have quite exceeded my expectations, Mr. Choi.” He raises his glass in toast almost mockingly. “May the best man win.”

“I might correct you on that,” Beomgyu says, deliberately not raising his own glass. “There will be no winners or losers.” He leans forward slightly, letting his own voice grow cold. “Because Miss L/N is not an object to be won.”

The ghost of a smirk flickers across Lord Cho’s face. “I stand corrected,” he says. “Have a good night, Mr. Choi.”

Beomgyu doesn’t even bother to smile. “And you, Lord Cho.”

. . . . .

It is hardly the afternoon and already you want to go back to bed. 

Between Henry throwing a tantrum, Delia wanting attention, and several callers showing up while you were in the middle of beating the dust out of the window curtains, you honestly think you might collapse before the day is out. You have never felt so frazzled in your life, not even when Mr. Winslow showed up to call in the middle of drying the linens. You owe it all to Brighton and Soyoung for stalling and getting you ready in an appropriate amount of time to meet the first caller. You hadn’t been expecting anyone, and the only event you were prepared for was your promenade with Mr. Choi later in the afternoon, which had been decided on a few weeks ago.

Ready, however, does not necessarily mean the best that you could ever be. Which is unfortunate because as two o’clock comes around, Brighton announces Lord Cho. 

You do not feel mentally or physically equipped to handle Lord Cho. 

He is just so—nice. So charming and put together, if a little overly flirty. He always has this sweet smile on his face that makes your heart beat a little more easily in your chest, and since you met, you have never once had trouble conversing with him. In fact, you like conversing with him. He seems genuinely interested in you and not just your face, and while you certainly can’t tell him everything about yourself, you feel considerably more comfortable opening up to him than with most of the other suitors who have come to court you.

All of which is to say you are more than a little concerned about your appearance when he enters the room. As you curtsy, you swear you can feel dust under your dress tickling uncomfortably at your skin, but he doesn’t seem to notice, just gives you the customary bow and flashes his handsome smile. “Miss L/N,” he greets, and you force yourself to ignore the possibly imaginary, possibly real dust prickling the back of your neck. “It is lovely to see you today.”

“And you.” You take the flowers he hands you, trying hard to tamp down your smile. You’d told him once that you loved tulips and both times he’s called on you, those are the blooms that he brought. Soyoung arranges them in a vase on a nearby table as the two of you sit. You start talking about Lady Choi’s recent dinner party, which you both agree was quite a success. You can hardly believe it was only your friend’s second time hosting such an event—she handled it so well. 

“Only her second time?” Lord Cho’s eyebrows rise far into his head, looking duly impressed. “I’m surprised she had the attendance that she did, then. Were the Duke of Hastings and his wife not in attendance?”

“They are cousins by marriage,” you say. “Lady Choi’s husband is the duke’s cousin.”

“Ah, I see.” He smiles. “Forgive me. I am still trying to learn who is who in this ton—there are so many of you.”

“It only seems that way if you are new,” you laugh. “Once you have been around for some months, I am sure you will know anything and everything about anyone.”

“I’m sure I will, but only with the help of that gossip column.” He thinks for a moment, apparently oblivious to your growing sense of dread. “Whistledown?”

“Right. Yes. Whistledown.” You look down at your hands and try not to curse the heavens. “She is…”

“Quite an interesting writer,” Lord Cho finishes, saving you from having to come up with something untruthful. “She is uncommonly witty.”

He’s right, unfortunately. “I do agree with that,” you admit. “Though I must confess I am not her greatest supporter.”

He looks at you, a mischievous twinkle in his eye. You look back at him warily. “I can understand that,” he says, “given what she has written of you in the past.”

You actually bury your face in your hands. “You read so far back?” you groan. 

Lord Cho’s laugh echoes about the room and you crack a smile. It seems impossible not to be joyful when he is around. “Wooyoung thought it would entertain me,” he says. “Though be rest assured that I do not hold any of her words against you. I rather think it actually adds to your charm.” Heat crawls up your cheeks, but he isn’t finished. “In fact, I must admit I am somewhat bewildered that Mr. Choi has decided to court you this season. I assume the two of you have made up, but given the severity of your…discussions, that Whistledown reported…”

Mr. Choi. The name seems to splash cold water over your head. 

Your smile freezes slightly. You hadn’t thought much about Mr. Choi today beyond reminders of your promenade this afternoon, at least not since Lord Cho came in and swept all of your attentions away. And while you haven’t perceived him in such a negative light recently—your recent interactions haven’t given you much excuse to do so—for some reason, the mention of his name makes you feel a little uneasy. You’re not quite sure why but you don’t have time to probe it, as Lord Cho is now looking at you expectantly, like he wants you to say something. 

In society’s eyes, Mr. Choi is one of your most committed suitors. Whistledown has commented on it. Many people have asked you about it. And while it may have been unbelievable at first, many seem to have come to accept it as not so surprising anymore. You can’t deny it all right in front of Lord Cho, but you also don’t want to put him off by making it sound like Mr. Choi is considering proposing marriage, or something. 

You blink. Mr. Choi and marriage. That is something you haven’t really thought of at all. Probably because it will never happen. The mere idea has no business flustering you this much because you don’t care about Mr. Choi in that manner and again, it will never happen.

You look down to compose yourself and the first thing that hits your eyes are your gloves. The gloves Mr. Choi chose for you and brought to you on a day he hadn’t even originally intended to visit. For some stupid reason you imagine those gloves on someone’s hands as they hold a bouquet of flowers in front of an altar and there it is again. Marriage and Mr. Choi. 

God and heavens above, this is not the damn time. You swallow hard. Mr. Choi would never propose to you but Lord Cho doesn’t know that and he is still waiting for an answer. 

“We decided to put our past behind us,” you get out. “Once we had our previous…misunderstandings cleared, I discovered he was a much better man than I had allowed myself to believe, so I did not refuse his attentions when he began to court me.” There. That sounded natural enough. You hope.

He looks at you closely. “He quite monopolized your attentions during dinner last week.”

You really don’t like this line of questioning. “He is a suitor,” you say primly. “I have made no decisions, and I do not believe I will for some time.”

Lord Cho is still smiling, but something seems to have changed in the air. You shift in your seat, glancing uncomfortably around the room. You have the sudden thought that the bright tulips standing on the table nearby look more like a threat than a gift. 

Taking a breath, you realize you’re fiddling with your gloves. You force yourself to stop and instead hold yourself as still as you can, the silk crumpling softly against your hands.

“Well,” he finally says, “then I will just have to take that time to convince you of my suit.” His smile brightens and a little of the tension disappears. You almost sag with relief when he changes the topic to the upcoming events of the season, and which ones you plan to attend.

Still, though, you feel oddly exhausted and off-kilter when Lord Cho leaves about half an hour later. You sag into the couch for a moment after he’s gone. “Soyoung,” you say, glancing at her in a corner of the room. “Was it just me, or was there something strange about Lord Cho today?”

She pauses. “I wasn’t going to say it, Miss L/N, but…” Her eyes shift, and that tells you everything. “It did feel rather strange, somewhere towards the middle.”

So it wasn’t just you. You swallow. But there isn’t enough time to dwell on it, because you have meet Mr. Choi soon. “Brighton, please ready the carriage,” you say with a sigh. “I must head to see Mr. Choi soon.”

. . .

By the time you make it to the park, you’ve just about reasoned away the afternoon’s strange encounter with Lord Cho. Anyone might be uncomfortable if they were trying to court someone who was being seriously pursued by another. Perhaps Lord Cho only wanted to see your side of the story, and gauge how interested you were in Mr. Choi. Which is understandable. No one would want to court someone obviously besotted with another. 

You aren’t besotted with Mr. Choi, though. So you only hope that Lord Cho doesn’t get the wrong idea, and stops pursuing you because of a courtship that isn’t even real. By far he is the best real suitor that you have so far and you cannot ruin this opportunity. You need to be married, and soon.

“You don’t look too well,” is the first thing out of Mr. Choi’s mouth when you meet him at the park. 

You roll your eyes. “Good afternoon to you too, Mr. Choi,” you snip. “Have we grown so close already that we may dispense with the pleasantries?”

“I don’t know if we are close, but we certainly didn’t deal in pleasantries in the past.” He raises an eyebrow, smirking. It doesn’t infuriate you nearly as much as it once did, though. In fact, you feel some relief in this interaction—your world has been dragged in so many different directions over the past few weeks that this return to normalcy, however vexing, honestly makes you feel a little better. “What is it today? Too many suitors?” He offers his arm and you take it. “How many did you have at last count, actually? Five? Six?”

“Hardly.” You snort. “Three at most. Or four, if I count Lord Cho.”

Mr. Choi stops suddenly. “Lord Cho?”

If it weren’t for your grip on his arm, you would have fallen forward. “Yes, Lord Cho,” you say testily after regaining your balance. “Why? Is there something wrong with him?”

“No, there is nothing wrong with him,” Mr. Choi responds after a beat, but that moment of silence has already told you everything you need to know. The brief levity you felt before vanishes and you feel your previous headache returning. 

“Don’t lie to me,” you say lowly. “You don’t like him, do you? Why?” If he doesn’t, it would explain quite a bit why Lord Cho was so insistent on questioning you about him, too. 

“I don’t not like him,” Mr. Choi shoots back. 

The air turns tense. It reminds you of the hostility that always brewed between you two in the years past. The hand that isn’t clutching Mr. Choi’s arm balls into a fist, and you have to force yourself to release it. You hadn’t realized how stifling the air could get when you argued. When exactly did that hostility even disappear?

You used to thrive on arguing with Mr. Choi. Now, though, you feel like you’re choking. “I only ask,” you get out, “because he seemed somewhat intent on questioning me about you when he called today.”

“He called on you? Today?”

The sharpness of Mr. Choi’s tone takes you aback. “People are liable to call on me as they please,” you say, anger building in your chest. “You have done the same. Why are you so surprised?”

“I’m not surprised,” he snaps. “I’m just—” 

Glaring at him, a truly ridiculous notion pops to the forefront of your mind. You hardly have the time to process it before your mind is already entertaining it. 

What if he’s jealous?

Ridiculous. Absolutely damn ridiculous. You want to bash your brains out for even thinking it, the thought is so embarrassing. There is no way Mr. Choi is jealous. This entire courtship is a sham. You may have been on better terms this season than before, but that doesn’t change the fact that Mr. Choi would never consider marrying you. It would be laughable even to entertain the notion. 

But would you consider marrying him?

The thought almost makes you laugh. No. Never. Except…

Earlier, when Lord Cho called, you looked down at your gloves and imagined someone’s fingers clothed in white, holding a bouquet of flowers at an altar. But they weren’t just someone’s fingers, you realize. They were quite obviously yours. 

Just like earlier, you almost groan. This is not the damn time. You might think about marriage and Mr. Choi together as a product of circumstance but you don’t actually want to marry him. To spend the rest of your life bound to him by law would send you to an early grave. It doesn’t matter that you get along better. Even now you are still hardly friends, more acquaintances than anything else. He would never propose. 

Though, the traitorous part of your brain wonders, if he proposed, would you accept?

You almost scream out loud. Good God, if you had known that faking a courtship with Mr. Choi would force so many inane threads of thought into your brain, maybe you wouldn’t have agreed to it in the first place. This is not something you will think about. Not now. And hopefully not ever. 

You swallow, trying to summon your anger from before. At least you had been able to talk, then, instead of focusing on such ridiculous ideas. A tiny ember flares and you look up at Mr. Choi. “You just what?” you ask, voice low, rough. 

For a long moment, you glare at each other. The air turns stifling again. You truly hadn’t realized how much tension filled the air before until it disappeared. Against your will you wish you could go back to ten minutes ago, when everything felt…well, normal. 

Funny how normal used to be you arguing with Mr. Choi until the entire ton could hear you and the argument was printed nearly word for word in Whistledown’s gossip column. Now it’s something completely different. 

It almost makes you want to laugh.

Mr. Choi turns away so that you can’t see his face. You resist the urge to pull him so that he faces you once more. After several long seconds, he turns back, and his expression suddenly looks far wearier than before, almost like he’s been plagued with thoughts as inane as yours. 

“I do not like Lord Cho,” he says slowly. “I did not want to tell you, because I do not know why. I don’t like to dislike people without reason,” he continues after a pause. “You may laugh at me for this, but I am typically a good judge of character. From when we first spoke, I found I did not like him very well. At all.”

You mull Mr. Choi’s words around your head. But why? is the first question you want to ask. But he already told you that he doesn’t know, so you settle on the next best question. “Was there anything he did that…made you uneasy?”

He looks at you sharply. You almost wince. Maybe you made it a little too obvious that you had a moment’s unease around the foreign lord, too. He doesn’t push it though, just shakes his head. “Not specifically,” he admits. “He spent some time interrogating me about my intentions toward you, which I did not appreciate, but…”

You sigh with relief. So that’s all it is. “He did that with me too,” you say. “Not exactly, but he seemed to want to know more about whatever relationship we had. I suppose it is understandable, as he is a suitor, and he does not know that our courtship isn’t real.” 

“He is a serious suitor, then,” Mr. Choi says. His expression doesn’t change. 

“I believe so,” you reply. 

“Do you want him to be?”

You blink, suddenly as off-kilter as before. Of course you want Lord Cho to be serious. You need to marry. You need to get out of here. Mr. Choi knows this—knows it better than anyone in the ton, perhaps. Why would he even ask that?

“Of course I do,” you say. “I need to be married, and he is perhaps the best suitor I have met thus far.”

“Do you like him?”

“Yes, I do.” Annoyance prickles through your voice. “He is charming, and he is kind. I have seen little reason to dislike him.”

Mr. Choi narrows his eyes. “But he made you uneasy earlier.”

You blink. “How did you—”

“It was written all over your face,” he says. 

This conversation is turning your head in circles and you don’t like it at all. “He may have made me uncomfortable with the intensity of his questions,” you say slowly, “but as I said, is that not simply the mark of a suitor trying to ascertain his competition?” The old anger is coming back and you can’t stop it fast enough. “But then, how would you know? You aren’t even actually courting me.”

Mr. Choi looks around sharply. Too late, you realize you are still in public where others could hear you. Your anger cools into a lump of rock behind your chest, but you can’t dislodge it enough to apologize. 

“You’re right,” Mr. Choi says abruptly. “I don’t know anything, because I am not courting you and have never seriously courted anyone else in my life.” He looks at you and you have the sudden feeling he is about to say something that will turn the course of this afternoon yet again. “But if he is so serious a suitor, and if my dislike of him will only hinder your possible courtship, perhaps it would be better if we saw each other less.”

Each of his words hits you like a stone. You can almost feel the impact against your chest, thudding one by one against the growing bruise. Perhaps it would be better if we saw each other less. “You mean we should no longer see each other at all,” you say dully. 

“Not in quite so many words,” he replies. He won’t look at you. “It would arouse far too much suspicion if we stopped seeing one another so suddenly. But we can slowly begin to end things, and then it will not surprise so many people if I am no longer pursuing you.”

You’re not sure why you feel so hollow at his words. This courtship was contrived from the start. It was always meant to end sooner or later, when both of your goals had been achieved. And based on what you’ve seen, they have been—Mr. Choi no longer suffers a thousand mamas running at him to introduce their daughters, and you now have several serious suitors who have a good chance of seeking your hand. You no longer need each other as much as before. This ending was to be expected from the beginning. 

You hear yourself say, “I suppose you are right.” Your words sound muffled, like you’re listening from underwater. “We are halfway through the season, anyway.”

A long silence falls. You can’t seem to find any words to fill it, so you just let it sit until Mr. Choi clears his throat. “I will continue to call on you for three more weeks,” he says, still looking away. “We will still attend the events we had planned to attend together during that time, but after that, I see no more reason to inform one another of what we plan to go to.” 

“Fine.” It’s all you can get out. “That’s fine.”

You’re back at the front of the park, having made one full revolution around. Usually you’d stay for longer, but you need to get out of here. “I am feeling somewhat lightheaded,” you say, and it’s only half a lie. “I apologize for cutting our promenade short, but I think I will head home now.”

“Of course.” Mr. Choi bows to your curtsy, and kisses your hand. To your vicious pleasure, he looks about as well as you feel. “I will see you in a few days’ time, then. The Rosenburys’ performance.”

“I look forward to it.” You turn around towards your carriage, letting the footman take your hand, but then Mr. Choi calls your name again. You look back. “What is it?”

He steps toward you, closing the distance. “You may have no reason to heed me,” he says, looking more serious than he’s ever been, “but please, Miss L/N. Be careful of Lord Cho.” 

You nearly roll your eyes. “You yourself said you had no idea why you dislike him so.”

“I did,” he says, undeterred. “But that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that he made you uneasy.” He leans closer, his voice dropping. “Your feelings matter more than anything in a courtship. If a man makes you uncomfortable, then there is a reason, and you should look for it, and listen to it.”

His words thud against the bruises already present on your chest, dull aches of pain rippling across your heart. “Feelings are a luxury for me,” you say lowly, “and you know it.”

“I do.” Mr. Choi doesn’t flinch. “But for all our past relationship, Miss L/N, I have no desire to see you miserable for the rest of your life.”

You swallow hard. The intensity of his gaze is too much so you look down, and immediately you see the gloves still on your hands. The ones he gave to you. The gifts with so much meaning. Remembering this, the anger suddenly drains from your body, leaving you nothing much but a tired husk of a person. “How do you know he will make me miserable?” you ask, exhaustion dripping from your tone.

“I don’t,” he says. “I only meant that if you see any signs that he might, you should take care before it is too late.”

You laugh a little. It’s not a sound that brings anyone any joy. “You really dislike him, don’t you.”

“Maybe I do, but I do not ask you to share that dislike. I only ask you to be careful.” He looks at you steadily. “He is not your only option.”

He is not your only option. Somehow, those words feel like they hold far more meaning than either of you would like.

Too exhausted to search for deeper meanings, you look down at your shoes, remembering the childhood argument that spawned your vicious relationship. Then you look at the gloves that he gave you last week with so much care. Beneath the fabric your hands feel soothed and soft, far from the cracked rawness that you had grown so used to. All because of him. All because of Mr. Choi. 

“Why do you care?” you ask. 

The question seems to take him aback. He recovers quickly, but you catch him cast a glance down at your gloves as though asking himself the same thing. “Because, Miss L/N,” he finally says, “for all that I once said about you, I know now that you are a good person.” He looks at you, and his stare does not waver. “And I have no wish to see you hurt.”

Reblogs and comments are deeply appreciated! Hope you enjoyed this, and have a lovely day :)

[galvanizedfriend]

Klaroline Fanfiction Masterlist

It's been a minute since I last updated my masterlist so I decided to go ahead and start a new one. Yokan // ▪ Multi-chapters

. The Wolf Series [I, II, III and Outtakes - Incomplete] When Caroline wakes up shackled, powerless and very far away from Mystic Falls, she knows she's in serious trouble. But when a woman named Sophie Deveraux reveals the reason why she's been kidnapped and taken to New Orleans, she realizes things are far worse than she could've ever imagined.

[The Originals rewriting where Caroline is a witch and gets pregnant with Klaus' child. Seasons 1, 2 and 3 complete, season 4 coming.]

. Vice and Virtue [6/6 - Complete] As the second son of a Duke, Klaus Mikaelson has the means and all the time in the world to indulge in every manner of wild activity with very little respect for the regiment of polite society. That is until his brother decides he's had enough of his vulgar ways and gives him an ultimatum. Caroline Forbes is a young debutante in search of true love and adventure. Except her aunt wishes for her to marry a somber Viscount who's already buried three wives. When their paths cross, they realize they might yet strike a deal that could satisfy their relatives and benefit them both.

[AH Regency!AU inspired by Bridgerton and a dozen other period novels I have been reading lately.]

. Pedulum [2/2 - Complete] This is what Klaus Mikaelson knows: death isn't the end for him. From the moment he is brought into the world to his final shuddering breath, Klaus' life is pretty much the same as everyone else's. The difference lies in what happens after he dies: he goes right back to the beginning, a child in London with the memory of dozens of lives lived before. Nothing ever really changes, including the fact that no matter how hard he tries, he can never save Caroline Forbes' life for too long.

[AH/soulmates!AU with a slight magical twist. Technically a one-shot, chapter 2 is just an alternate ending.]

. We'll Always Have New Orleans [3/15 - Incomplete] Caroline wakes up in a world where everything looks exactly the same, only nothing really is. For starters, she's no longer a vampire, and no one else in Mystic Falls has ever heard of witches, vampires or werewolves - no one except for Klaus, who woke up just as human and twice as angry about it. Their search for answers and a way out takes them all the way to New Orleans, and Caroline could never anticipate how much this crazy fake world was about to alter her reality forever.

[Canon-divergence!AU. Set right after TVD 4x18.]

. Speed Dating [3/4 - Incomplete] Klaus is having a bad month, so Caroline decides it's a great idea to drag him along to a round of Speed Dating. Other men in the room do not approve.

AH/AU fluff that was inspired by an episode of House (yes, it is fluff, I promise).

. Gasoline [2/2 - Complete] "He doesn't apologize, of course he doesn't. He doesn't care. He calls everyone love. It's not meant to mean anything. Except it did, once, and it makes Caroline's stomach churn away inside, as she feels Klaus crawling underneath her skin like he never left at all. I've still got you."

AH/Band!AU. Two years after Klaus walked out on his band - on her -, Caroline finds herself in her least favorite place on earth - New Orleans. She really did try to stay away from him, escaping an event just to keep off his radar. He finds her anyway.

. Like It's Christmas Again [2/2 - Complete] As Christmas approaches, Caroline Forbes, a New York-based event planner, is sent to a quaint small town in Virginia to organize their holiday festival. But her plans are momentarily hindered by the presence of Klaus Mikaelson, the Mayor's brother and a grumpy billionaire lacking in any holiday spirit, who's in town to close the sale of his family's manor - the charming estate she was hoping to use as a venue.

[AKA that time when I committed Christmas fic. AU/AH inspired by a Hallmark movie, I kid you not.]

. Spin [5/5 - Complete] Since she was seven years old, Caroline Forbes has been preparing herself to become President of the United States. But before she gets to the Oval Office, she needs to win the election for senior student president at the prestigious Saint Sebastian High - which would be in the bag if only goddamn Klaus Mikaelson hadn't decided to run against her.

[AH/AU lovers-to rivals-to-lovers The Politician!AU where everyone takes school elections way more seriously than they should.]

. How Far I'd Go [2/2 - Complete for now] Set in TVD S6/TO S2. Unable to control Caroline after she turns her humanity off, Stefan reaches out to the only person he can think of for help.

[Slices of moments of Klaus in Mystic Falls while Caroline has her humanity off.] ▪ One-shots

. The Sound of Settling Klaus hates his job at Mikaelson & Sons. He hates wearing a suit. He also hates his brothers constantly butting into his life. Everything will be better once he gets his much desired transfer to the New York branch. Caroline Forbes is the owner of Mystic Café, and when Klaus accidentally wanders into her coffee shop, his whole perspective changes. [AH/Coffee Shop!AU where Klaus is a lawyer. Fluffity Fluff. Lots of Mikaelsons and some Carenzo friendship.] . The Witch Queen Caroline always knew she was different. She was keyed into her own otherness very early on. Strange things happened around the Forbes women. Her mother never really had to spell it out to her, give it a name. Caroline could always sort of feel it, and then at some point the feeling blossomed into comprehension, and comprehension hardened into fact. And with that came an altogether different kind of certainty: this was not a secret she'd be able to keep forever. One day, no matter how hard she tried to hide it, everyone would find out. And when they did, they would come for her.

. Worst Things Have Happened Klaus Mikaelson is a prince with a very dark secret that threatens to destroy his family's legacy. Caroline Forbes is a sorceress whose job is to make sure his secret remains buried. But would it hurt him to put some clothes on? [Royal!AU, with a magical twist.] . The Unexpected Grace of Falling Apart The whole incident was bound to go down as a funny anecdote to be shared among friends, a Oh, you think you've had the worst hook-up ever? Hold my beer kind of story. Provided, of course, that she never had to see him ever and could just wipe him out of her life and memory for good. Given that they live in different time zones, it shouldn't be too much of a hassle.

That is precisely why Caroline is livid when she emerges from the arrivals area at Richmond airport to find Douchebag, in the flesh - sunglasses indoors and all, like the proper jerk that he is - holding up a sign that readsClarisse.

[AH/AU. It's Tyler's wedding weekend and Caroline is back in Mystic Falls for the first time after the most traumatic and depressing year of her life. And it's about to get even worse as she's made to share breathing space with Klaus, The Worst Guy Ever. Except they might have to join forces to save the wedding, and to the discovery that things might not be what the seem. As Caroline teeters on the edge of a breakdown she'd been trying very hard to conceal, an unexpected savior appears to help her through the haze.]

. love, the monster's got me now [Canon compliant. Set in TVD S03E09 Homecoming.]

"Don't run," he says calmly, sounding almost bored, but with a clear warning. "I'm in the mood for a chase. Little spoiler: you can't outrun me." His eyebrows twitch up when he finally turns around to face her, lips curling into an amused grin. "Tyler's girl," he states, gesturing towards the now empty yard. "You missed out on the celebrations, I’m afraid."

[Or: the missing Klaroline scene between "There's your pretty little girlfriend, Caroline" and "There's a whole world out there waiting for you." Klaus and Caroline meet after Homecoming.]

. When It's Gone Suddenly, Caroline hates how nice the bed feels. How soft the pillows are. How smooth and cool and expensive those goddamn sheets are against her skin. She hates the giddiness in her belly, like she's a stupid schoolgirl when she's not allowed to be one anymore. She hates how right the space between Klaus' arms felt, how easily she molded against him. His lips were as full and as soft as they looked, but his hands were gentler and more reverent than they had any right to be, and Caroline hates it. Hates it, hates it, hates it. She hates that it suits her, hates that she wants it, hates that none of it is hers to keep.

[Set after TVD S04E19 Pictures of You. Caroline hears about Klaus' impending departure after a mysterious letter and decides to have some words.] . Wishing Each Sigh Might Be the Last The first time she sees him, Caroline thinks he's an angel.

[Set in 1800s New Orleans. As Caroline lies dying, she prays for God to send help or end her torment and save her soul. She thinks an angel has come for her. But he's no angel at all.] . Feel the Madness Closing In Set in TO S3. Caroline is in New Orleans when Lucien and the Ancestors make a move against the Mikaelson family - and they know exactly who to target in order to get to Klaus. Paranoia sets in, sending him to a very dark place, and Caroline finally learns the price of being loved so profoundly by a monster. . Issues When Klaus' Hollywood career takes a down turn after a nasty divorce and a viral mug shot, his manager decides his life is not yet miserable enough, bringing in a PR company famous for its high-profile damage control cases.

[AH!AU where Klaus is a problematic movie star and Caroline is a PR agent with no time for his BS.] . Urban Legend "I hate myself for saying this, but I have to agree with Little Miss Sunshine," Caroline cuts in. "This is Whitmore. Nothing ever happens here. Least of all a possession that leads to a massacre of slasher movie proportions."

"Thank you, love," Klaus returns brightly. "Very flattering to be validated by you."

"Bite me, Klaus."

"Find me later, after my shift, and we can see to it," comes the shameless rejoinder.

[Or: Caroline tries to navigate life in college having the worst roommate ever, a douchebag who cannot take a hint and a nosy journalist whom she's definitely not attracted to. Never in a million years.]

[tellius-to-fodlan]

Fódlan dress theories:

Underwear

They must wear underwear, but the silhouettes and exposed skin show that it's not the underwear of an equivalent period of earth history, but I doubt they have the materials for modern underwear, with its rubber elastic and foam. So, what would they wear?

We can see on Raphael that the closest garment to the skin for men (at least in the officers academy) is a shirt fastened with buttons:

Shirts of an equivalent time in Europe wouldn't open in the front, but that's not really relevant. I imagine the shirt is made of linen for easy laundering.

As for the bottom, I assume that men and women alike wear linen braies. They can probably be omitted by people wearing long skirts and not riding horses in favor of bare pussy for ease of toilet access when wearing an outfit that makes taking off underpants difficult/time consuming. They're probably short and close fitting, making tight pants easier to wear without obvious panty lines. My evidence besides history:

Look at those little shorts.

As for the apparent leggings some of the girls wear

I bet those are woolen hose, which fasten to the braies.

What about bust support, though? Well, the lifted silhouette is more like a modern push-up bra than anything else, but since I'm assuming they don't have the elastic and foam those are made of, my next guess is regency style short stays

They give considerable lift to the bust without giving a particularly distinctive silhouette like a longer support garment would.

Now, we get one mention of underwear in the game, and that's Dorothea's lost piece of cloth, which was unrecognizable as clothing to Caspar, so I'm assuming it's an unshaped rectangle. My hypothesis on the purpose of this cloth, which I have no historical evidence for, is that it wraps around the torso under the stays to serve at a buffer between the tough, but difficult to launder stays, and the sweaty, sensitive skin. We see no evidence of a chemise or shirt over Dorothea's ample bust, while a wrapped rectangle could be positioned directly at the stay line for total concealment, held on solely by the stays, would have a plenty of wiggle room for weight gain, and only requires hemming, making it a solid skin layer option for a lady on a tight budget who wants to show off her assets. Although given the lack of obvious voluminous chemises on any of the ladies, this could be a common choice across social classes.

Then..... There are the people who don't seem to have underwear on their torsos at all.

I'd guess that Judith is relying on clever tailoring for support, Dorothea's armored girdle does the job for her, and Manuela actually has something really interesting going on, with her bodice being laced close under the bust, and then the breast cups suspended from her neckband for lift. I want to try making that dress.

However, the pre-automatic washing machine laundress in me is screaming at the good fabric right next to the skin. I want to believe that these garments have removable linen linings where they touch skin. Maybe that's what's tied across the back of Dorothea's shoulders.

[sunfortune]

i am still contemplating to check bridgerton for kanthony or not but from what i've seen i got an impression that a lot of kate's brainworms came from her step mother NOT treating her as real daughter. kate can't see it but as viewer it's obvious. we can joke about how annoying mrs bennet was but let's be real at that period among nobility lady mother not bothering to help her daughter to find a husband and being okay for her to be a spinster is a form of parental neglect. it was rather convenient for step mother to take kate's devotion for granted and ignore how kate neglected her own needs in process for her bio daughter. wish show actually was aware of this.

not even getting into any of the implications of the regency setting. it’s the fact that mary was gonna stay with edwina after she got married instead of kate LIKE ?! even working under the good faith interpretation that kate didn’t wanna get married and mary didn’t wanna force her. and it wasn’t straight up neglect. mary was gonna go stay with the daughter who would be MARRIED and TAKEN CARE OF with her OWN FAMILY and OWN HOME and not the daughter who would literally have NOTHING ? ? and has nothing BECAUSE of how she always prioritized you over herself?

litchrally the scene when anthonys like “so you’ll abandon her (about edwina)” and kate explicitly say “she’ll be married she won’t need me anymore” but the plot never delves into the flip side despite her being the MAIN character. how kate WOULDNT be married according to that plan and mary would ACTUALLY be abandoning her ?!

it was so lazy the way they just didn’t go into the dysfunction of the sharma family dynamic like they did for anthony and violet. even JUST an acknowledgment from mary that she didn’t always treat kate fairly instead of the gaslighting they were doing to kate AND the audience like. gorgeous scene, beautiful scene! when mary tells kate she always loved her. but IN CONTEXT? it was like…i just watched 8 straight eps of kate getting neglected in 4k. and 5 minutes ago your plan was to abandon her at the first opportunity that presented itself. im gonna actually need you to do a little better than this

[unbizzarre]

Barrayaran Uniforms

My laptop’s still broken so it’s been a messing-around-with-gouache-paint weekend! I always draw too small so doing the deatails on this one was rough! 😫

Modern imperial dress greens on the left, and an attempt at vorkosigan house livery on the right (I don’t love how the vorkosigan house one turned out so I’m probably gonna rework it some more before adding anything to the ol’ headcannon)

NOTES ON IMPERIAL DRESS GREENS

-book mentions stiff high uncomfortable collars, forest green color, riding boots and side piping. There should also be two ceremonial swords but I got lazy

- I wanted to put an emphasis on embroidery and hand details in barrayaran fashion in general so I picked side piping a little more intricate and ornate than just a simple stripe

- originally I was put piping across the front like in the reference, but it got too busy and I wanted the chest to be a little simpler that way medals and other stuff would stand out better against the fabric. Plus having fewer fiddly bits helps it feel more sleek and less out of place in space.

Reference photos:

UNIFORM OVER TIME

- Barrayar as a setting has had to basically speedrun 600 years of fashion history as they make the leap from midieval to space-age in a single generation. In order to show the shift in eras I made a little timeline(ish) of the general changes in the uniform silhouette.

- biggest change in the general silhouette is the gradual shortening of the coat/shirt element from calf lengths tabards to thigh length coats to to waist height jackets

- armor and chainmail fall by the wayside, and guns are picked up. Early occupation uniforms eclectic and a hodgepodge of old midieval weaponry + stolen cetegandan ordenance. They are not uniform at all as the barrayaran military is mostly small gorilla outfits with each fighting force cobbled together from the resources at hand. New Uniformity would come with the return of central government and the implementation of infrastructure for mass production. The uniform would probably stay relatively consistant during the conquest of komarr through the pretendership. Another major shift in in uniform style would probably occur during the regency or Gregor��s coronation in reflection of the successful regime change and the continued push towards a more modern barrayar

Here’s some rough outlines:

Reference Collages from photocopies of a fashion history book I picked up from the library a while back. Don’t remember the title. Will edit post when I do Left is Russia (not sure which century). Right is references for occupation fighters pulled from various pages, time periods, and nationalities (Russia, Mongolia, Crete and turkey maybe? Idk) I wrote all the page numbers down on the collage but I returned the book so now they’re useless.

Thanks for reading!

[lemonhemlock]

tried watching the new queen charlotte series but was immediately put off by the ridiculous anti-corset propaganda, so get ready for another rant.

first of all, this is the georgian era so what she's wearing are called /stays/ - corsets are a victorian invention. why do we still not know this in 2023 when period productions have remained consistently popular throughout the years? the concept of tighlacing (the goal being a reduction of the waist) is also victorian and was not the norm at all and v much an extreme practice. this understanding of history is so superficial, it's as if an alien were to open up People magazine and conclude that all human women resort to butt injections and lip fillers to stay with the fashion of the times. also, no, you cannot tighlace in stays to obtain a waist reduction because they are shaped like a funnel (picture 1 = long stays, 2 = short regency stays, 3 = corset)

charlotte goes on to complain about how dangerous whalebone is and that it might kill her if she makes the wrong move. what the actual fuck? whalebone was actually the very best material to use for this because it was sturdy yet flexible and allowed the /stays/ to completely and comfortably mold around a woman's unique body shape. one of the reasons why today it is v difficult to replicate the same effect in corsetry is because we do not have access to whalebone (killing whales is not cool for obvious reasons) so corset-makers have to resort to other materials like plastic or metal, which CAN break. whereas whalebone doesn't really break as easily. furthermore, stays/corsets were NEVER worn on bare skin, but with a chemise/shift underneath.

why did women in the past resort to this type of undergarment, you ask? well, apart from the fact that women need bust support, the stays also serve the purpose of allowing all the many skirts and petticoats to be placed comfortably onto the waist. you try piling on that much fabric around your bare waist and see how you like it and if you can even carry it all around without it cutting into your stomach.

clothes throughout human history did cater to the popular fashions of the time, yes, but they also reflected the technological limitations and there was thus a practical aspect to it. this is a time before elastic bands, before industrialization and fast fashion, clothes are v difficult to make, everything is done by hand, so a lot of care is put into preserving them, because they are /expensive/ and labour intensive. you don't want your fancy outergarments to get ruined so you wear a lot of undergarments to absorb your bodily fluids since those are easier to make and don't have to look "pretty", can be stained and patchy etc. again, why do you need so many layers in the first place? because this is a time before comfortable heating, with poorly isolated and drafty houses, and it's bloody cold otherwise.

the third reason why that monologue was so dumb is because CHARLOTTE is the reason regency court dress was so preposterous. long story short, in a few decades, the fashionable silhouette changes wildly from the late 1700s to the 1810s.

the regency waistline was much higher and the gowns were much more flowy and unstructured than the late georgian ones (what's commonly known as the empire waistline). the long stays of the late 1700s were now replaced with short stays that really were similar to modern bras. the scene in the first season of bridgerton where they squeeze penelope's sister into what looks like a pair of long stays (?) is bonkers bc no one would wear a waist-constricting boned undergarment under a regency dress. why would they? the natural waist is not even emphasized in any way. this is just another reason to peddle the women-were-oppressed-by-their-lingerie agenda. so if charlotte really hated long stays that much, regency would really have been her time to shine, right? wrong. the woman loved the fashions of her youth so much she forced everyone who came to court to still comply to them, which is why we get the absolutely atrocious regency court dresses - essentially a combination of the georgian style with side panniers, but with an empire waistline.

yeah, this is how daphne SHOULD have looked like when she was presented at court in front of charlotte. i can understand why the showrunners decided to just leave her in a regency silhouette because this is ugly af. but, anyway, queen charlotte is the last person on earth to be complaining about how uncomfortable stays are.

creative licence aside, the reason this pisses me off is because it is SUCH lazy storytelling. the show wants us to know charlotte is a spunky pseudo-feminist character so the easiest way to do that is to have her complain about the evil 'corset' trying to kill her. it is so profoundly ahistorical and does nothing to contribute to the conversation about women's true problems and true limitations during that time. instead of genuinely exploring social history and women's actual lived experiences, we are STILL, in the year of our lord 2023, diverting the discourse towards fabricated issues that never existed in the first place.

the reasons actresses complain about boned underwear in interviews are manifold. costume designers are very overworked, they have to produce clothes for hundreds of people in a very short time, so they simply do not have the time or resources to construct corsets/stays that fit the actresses like they are supposed to. in the past, these garments were made individually for every person and completely to their own requirements. they also make these actresses wear the boning on BARE skin to look extra sexy to the audience or to emphasize their oppression - that never happened, a shift was always worn underneath (hello dakota fanning scene in the alienist??).

moreover, they lace them up until they constrict their ribcages - these women are already super thin and their bodies cannot support more reduction - instead of relying on the historical practices of padding and illusion. nowadays, body parts are what's fashionable - that's why so many resort to fat transfers or breast implants or starving themselves to achieve a flat stomach. in the past, anyone of any size could have accomplished the fashionable silhouette because they had a wide array of accouterments to plop underneath their garments - panniers, bustles, hoop skirts, padding of any sort. it didn't matter how big your waist was, you just padded other areas until you achieved the desired shape. fat women wore corsets/stays, too. working women, who did a lot of physical labour, did the same. how were they able to perform all of their tasks if they were incapable of moving or breathing? even today, people wear medical corsets all the time.

TLDR the media's obsession with portraying modern women as so liberated because they wear bras instead of "patriarchal" underwear is so tedious.

EDIT: Some very basic chronological tadpoles to make this easier to place within historical context. "Georgian" is used to denote the 18th+ century when Great Britain was ruled by several kings named George, so roughly 1714-1830. Within this interval, we refer to the Regency period as encompassing the regency of Prince George, future King George IV, when his father George III was incapacitated by mental illness. The official political regency took place during 1811-1820, but culturally speaking, this was extended to roughly the end of the 18th century up to maybe 1830 or 1837. This is the time period of Napoleonic wars and Jane Austen novels, so all her heroines should normally wear Regency styles. Think "empire waistline" as in Imperial France and Napoleon. The Victorian era (and its corsets) follows throughout the rest of the 19th century. Queen Charlotte was a contemporary of Marie Antoinette's, so they should be dressed in similar fashions (robe à la française vs robe à la anglais).

[parmahamlarrie]

This week's theme is historical fics! Included here are fics from the 90s even though their place as "historical" feels... questionable. Still, before the time of the boys, and we'll count that as historical! You can find more recs in the directory of fic recs on my blog! If you would like a specific theme or trope, let me know! As always, these are all fics I have read and loved, not all the fics out there. You can find more Historical fics here! **This post will be updated as I have more fics in this theme to recommend!**

Just for Tonight (I can be yours) || @sadaveniren || 42.4k Omegaverse, Royalty AU, Historical, Prince Harry, Coming of Age, Arranged Marriage

now I think that I could love you back || @maroonmoonlouis || 42.2k Omegaverse, Princes AU, Royalty AU, Regency AU, Courting, Mating Rituals

Blush || @dip-lou-in-honey || 33.4k Historical AU, Omegaverse, Period Typical Sexism

Just Like A Woman || superglass || 16.6k Historical, 1970s, Writer Louis, Artist Harry, Homophobia, France

Only You (Blue Always Stays True) || @justanotherghostblr || 11k Omegaverse, Alpha Louis, Omega Harry, Girl Direction, Historical, Regency, Friends to Lovers, Presenting, Age Difference (Slight), Unrequited Love, Letters

Sigh for Sigh || Anonymous || 10.8k Omegaverse, Arranged Marriage, Regency, Historical, Angst with a Happy Ending

In the Air Tonight || Bluemeetsgreen || 9.9k 90s AU, Strangers to Lovers, Drug Use, Surfer Louis, Summer

I might just unravel like my lace finery if you don’t hold me so tenderly || @bottomhaztoplou || 8.9k Omegaverse, Alpha Louis, Omega Harry, Wedding Night, Regency, Past Abuse

kisses like snowflakes || @stylesthebrave || 7.5k 90s AU, Christmas/Winter Fic, Fluff

A Silver Lining In A Storm (You Were Lightning, I Was Born) || @fallinglikethis || 6.9k Omegaverse, Royalty, Arranged Marriage, Strangers to Lovers, Angst, Hurt/Comfort

my lap is the best place for you to be || @bottomhaztoplou || 2.9k Omegaverse, Historical, Intersex Omegas, Pregnant Harry, Established Relationship

and it was love at first blush || @bottomhaztoplou || 2.4k Omegaverse, Historical AU, Ballroom Dancing, Courtship, Courting Rituals

to suffer || honey_beeing || 1.7k  Historical, Victorian, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Hidden Relationship

I taste your sugar, you swallow my salt || @bottomhaztoplou || 1.4k Omegaverse, Alpha Louis, Omega Harry, Intersex Omegas, Heat/Rut, Historical, Wanker's Day

[fruitcoops]

Needy

Day 6: Peanut, go back to the ren faire (or don't, you're not exactly suffering). Characters belong to @lumosinlove and header is from @noots-fic-fests!

Day 5 Halloween movie: Scream (1996). Cunty California FinnLo, you have my whole heart.

Rated M for suggestive content; TW for heavily seasoned dreams

CRACK.

“Mr. Knut. Austenian values exhibited in Pride and Prejudice.”

Leo just…stared. He could do nothing else. “Uh.”

Disappointment radiated off a single arched brow. “What period did Jane Austen live in?”

“The. Um.” Oh, his brain was gone gone. “Regency.”

“Did the people of the Regency era condone outward expressions of sexual behavior?”

I most definitely do. “No,” Leo managed to stutter out. “Probably not.”

“Thought I’d lost you for a second there. So.” The yard stick, still poised where it had come down on his desk, gave a creak as Finn leaned close and braced his free hand on the edge. His bare forearm flexed below his rolled cuff. Tortoiseshell frames made the cut of his hazel eyes even sharper. “What values are presented in Pride and Prejudice?”

“I…” The collar of Finn’s shirt looked starched to perfection. The front fit across his chest and shoulders like a glove; Leo could see the faint shadow of a cotton undershirt. His mouth watered. Finn smelled like old books and leather and his spicy going-out cologne. Books. He was supposed to be thinking about books. “I have no idea.”

Finn pinned him with a look. “Distractions aren’t permissible in my class, Mr. Knut.”

That shirt would be straining across Logan’s back. The fine silver chain of his necklace would—

Christ alive, Finn was wearing the necklace.

“Are you listening?” Finn asked with wry patience. He moved to lean back against the wide mahogany desk at the front of the classroom, ankles crossed. The yard stick moved in hypnotic circles between his fingers. “You’re a star student, Mr. Knut. These aren’t difficult questions for you.”

Leo swallowed hard. “Sorry.”

“I don’t tolerate lackluster effort when I know you can do better.”

“Sorry.”

Finn nudged his glasses up the bridge of his nose with one knuckle. Leo’s throat went dry as bone. “Mr. Knut,” he began, rocking easily into a step. “I don’t know what is taking up so much of your attention recently, but if it’s affecting your performance in my class, I think we need to have a talk.”

Oh god yes please. “We do?”

“It’s becoming a concern.” Finn rounded the far edge of the desk. His thumb tapped a pattern on the flat grain. The yard stick was abandoned, and Finn’s full attention fell on Leo like a floursack filled to bursting.

“I’m s—”

“Apologies aren’t necessary,” Finn said with a shake of his head. Twin lenses flashed in the glowing light of old-fashioned lamps, refracting honey and whiskey when he came to a stop once more in front of Leo’s desk. “I just want to know what’s going on.”

The soft sympathy would be unbearable. Shiny buttons shone in Leo’s direct line of sight, but the abs weren’t safe either—below them sat the polished buckle of Finn’s leather belt. His trousers were pressed and tailored to each round of his thighs. Leo dragged his gaze back to Finn’s face, guilty and so turned on his hand was starting to hurt where he gripped the side of his chair. “I don’t know,” he lied.

Finn looked at him over the frame of his glasses. “Really?” He smiled as if Leo was amusing, somehow, all pearly teeth and pointed canines this close. “I’m not gonna bite you. Give it a shot.”

“I have no idea.” If Leo threw himself forward, he could take that belt buckle between his teeth and beg.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Maybe you should.”

“Back-talking is rude.” Finn’s voice took on a firm undertone. His fingertips steepled on the edge of Leo’s desk, neat nailbeds going white from the light pressure. Leo wanted to look straight down the loose neck of Finn’s shirt and shove those graphite-smudged fingers in his mouth all at once. Instead, he stayed frozen. “Mr. Knut, I think I’ll take that apology now.”

Leo opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

“I let you get away with a lot in here.” The timbre of Finn’s voice raised goosebumps down his back. Leo forced himself to look up again. He could smell the cologne. Could taste the way Finn tasted when that freckle on his lip was properly worshipped. Could feel the drag of thick red hair under his palms. “Are you listening?”

“Hmm.”

“I can’t let you get away with everything,” Finn sighed. “And it’s hard, but rudeness has to be punish—”

--

Leo shot awake and upright like he had been blasted out of a cannon.

“Glasses,” he blurted, slapping at Logan’s arm with blind clumsiness. “Glasses, Lo, the shirt.”

Logan grumbled and mumbled and pushed himself up, one elbow tucked tight to his side. His necklace dangled down toward the sheets. Every blink looked painful. “Quoi?”

Leo grabbed his chin with one hand. That seemed to wake Logan further—enough to get both eyes open, at least, though a look of sleepy alarm was defused by the smush of his cheeks. Leo’s heart hammered. He could feel his pulse everywhere. His head spun and his dick twitched. “You need to hide Finn’s glasses,” he ordered, out of breath. “We need to put them away.”

Logan squinted at him. “He needs them. To see.”

Leo groaned and released him, flopping back down with an arm across his eyes. Even his pajamas felt like too much. “I need them gone.” He pulled both hands down his face in a long drag. “To live.”

Finn made a low noise next to him. Leo’s pulse slammed—he chanced a peek. “Penguins,” Finn muttered. His eyes were shut. Copper lashes fluttered and went still. He shifted and pushed an arm under his pillow, burrowed into it, and fell quiet. The curve of his shoulder caught the moonlight. Leo needed to bite him so bad.

He made a soft, aching sound and looked back at Logan. He would understand the combination of desperation and sudden self-awareness brought on by unfortunate Finn-related dreams. “I need to him to spank me with a yard stick.”

Logan stared at him for a long moment, then bent to kiss Leo’s forehead. “I’ll hide the glasses.”

[trishmishtree]

Finally finished my 18th century ensemble!

(Excuse the lack of sleeve ruffles. I haven't made them yet and need a break from 18th century for the time being..)

Pattern is self-drafted, based on the historybounding strawberry dress I made last summer. Construction is about 90% HA, and by that I mean it's built to be worn without stays because I didn't trust my stays pattern (still working out tweaks to it before I commit to making a proper pair of stays) and decided to build the structure directly into the bodice lining instead. Also, the center front closes with hooks and eyes instead of being pinned shut the way they typically did it back then because I don't change sizes much. I also attached the skirt to a twill tape and then whipped that to the bodice lining, instead of sewing the bodice and skirt directly together, so the bottom corner of the bodice is flipping upwards weirdly because I haven't tacked it down to the skirt yet.

Fabric is a cotton quilting from Joann that just happened to be the perfect red-on-ivory floral print. Skirt is hiked up with hooks and eyes but can also be worn like a normal open robe.

Entire ensemble is worn over otherwise period-correct structural layers, sans stays. I'm wearing my regency shift because it pulls double duty for my regency and 18th century costuming. Over that, I would wears stays if I had any. Then over my (lack of) stays, I'm wearing the American Duchess split rump (not photographed), over which I put on a new linen petticoat (also not photographed yet - it's just your standard apron/side-closing 18th century petticoat). Finally over all that, I have on a striped petticoat in a matching color scheme to the gown, and then the gown itself. (Definitely wishing I had the confidence to make a pair of stays with a self-drafted pattern, because this amount of tapes and strings around my waist is...not the worst thing ever but definitely not comfortable.)

Fichu is hand-embroidered and made from a leftover cotton batiste I used to make my Edwardian princess slip. It's disproportionately small because I didn't have enough fabric to make it bigger. Tempted to put a couple extra inches of ruffled lace on the two straight edges to make them a little wider, but that would require sourcing a convincing-looking lace that can also be used for sleeve ruffles.

[fushitoru]

sorry but some of these virgin gojo asks are starting to sound a lot like a desi mother in law obsessing over her bahu’s virginity 💀💀 imo virginity is a social construct and shouldn’t be obsessed over like this icb we’re even having this conversation in 2024. like these people need to touch grass DESPERATELY it seems like they have created a parasocial relationship with bridgerton gojo 😭 and logically speaking no man in the regency era stayed a virgin until marriage anyway ijbol lets be fr now

NOT DESI MOTHER IN LAW AND THEY BAHUSS??? clock it 😭 i honestly think it comes from a place of insecurity and getting angry over the fact bridgerton!gojo was involved with someone other than reader. idk why that's suprising bro, this period had super misogynistic men lol.

sometimes im just confused how the hell yall are 18+ and grown adults angry someone had relationships with other people before you...like he's a fictional character....

at least they said i wrote good plot ig 😙

[f1-stuff]

Hi 🩵 Can we know more about the Regency AU? 👀 (I love your work 🩷)

Hiii! ❤️ Big fan of you, as well! 😆

S0 my idea for that AU is that the Leclerc family comes to stay with the Sainz's for the social season, hoping that one or more of the boys will find a match with Carlos' sisters. But insteeaaddd...😅 I have a distinct image of Charles, with his eclectic regency fashion sense that sets him apart from his brothers, boldly wooing Carlos, despite period-typical attitudes. And the two of them spending the society balls flirting and joking with each other instead of mingling with the eligible ladies...

Anyway, this snippet is from the very beginning of the fic, and it's actually a carlando (friendship) scene, which I never thought I'd write asfhgfjs. But I felt like it was a cute idea, Lando being a recurring guest of the Sainz's every year. In this scene, Carlos is complaining about the Leclercs' impending arrival...

If Carlos has to listen to one more recounting of the handsome, dignified, witty, admired, magnificent Leclercs, he might be forced to hurl himself into the sea.

“Particular favorites of the Prince of Monaco, and distinct in both societal standing and countenance, the whole lot of them. You’d be hard pressed to determine which of the three is most agreeable to the eye or to the ear,” Carlos performs a rather poor imitation of his aunt’s voice, who had prattled on for hours and hours to his mother these past days.

Lando snickers, idly snapping a twig in his hand into small bits and pieces that he tosses to the side as they walk along the banks of the creek. “They sound insufferable.”

“Doubtless,” Carlos mutters, kicking rocks out of their path. “I’d wager they won’t even know Spanish.”

Not that Lando does either. The comment has the added benefit of being both a criticism of the Leclercs and a method to tease his friend. Carlos knocks their shoulders together.

It’s a perfect spring day, the sun shining and the breeze swirling bits of pollen through the air, carrying the scent of new growth. The perfect day for a walk, which he’d muscled Lando into agreeing to, despite the younger man’s confusing attachment to the indoors. 

They stop for a moment to appreciate the view of the far off mountains, the sea just visible on the horizon, glittering against the sun. Carlos can feel his sour mood lifting already, such is the magic of his family’s estate.

“One wonders why these Leclerc men are still unwed, and why they need someone to sing their praises so exhaustingly prior to their arriving. Unless their real company leaves much to be desired,” he continues, although his heart isn’t in the complaining anymore. He’d much rather find a spot to lay in the grass and feel the sun soak into his skin. So he does just that.

Lando follows suit, curling his legs underneath him as Carlos reclines onto the grass, rolling up his sleeves and shutting his eyes against the sun.

“But why are the Leclercs coming here for the social season? Why not France or Monaco, if they are indeed favorites of the prince? Or England?”

“Not everyone wishes to go to England,” Carlos teases, just to hear Lando’s scoff. Truthfully, he has half a desire to go to London himself. But he mostly says it as Lando always acts affronted when insults are piled atop his country’s name. “Isn’t it obvious?” Lando arches a brow. “Marriage, mi amigo. It’s the reason for everything. Well, most everything.”

“Oh, that.”

“Yes, that,” Carlos chuckles, pinching Lando’s arm.

“Ow.”

“Oh, shut up. Anyway. Just because you are still a slight, wide-eyed fawn-”

“I am nineteen!” Lando exclaims, but joins Carlos in his laughter soon enough. Nineteen or not, his boyish curls, along with the spots still dusting his skin, make him look every bit as young as he is. “If I am a fawn, then you are a buck. Surely, you ought to be wedded soon, before you are old and bitter. Well, older and more bitter.”

“Ha ha,” Carlos says, deadpan. “We should have been forewarned of your wit.”

But Lando isn’t entirely wrong. Carlos had just celebrated his twenty-fourth birthday this past September, and he’s getting to the age where his parents might not be so patient anymore in entertaining his hypercritical standards, eager as they are for him to sire an heir.

It isn’t that he hasn’t become acquainted with plenty of eligible women at various balls and dinner parties during the social season over the years - he has. But no matter how lovely they seem, he always finds himself stalling when it comes to the actual proposal, something stopping him from making that final commitment. Until, eventually, another suitor steps up and whisks her out from under Carlos’ nose. And, every time, it doesn’t escape him that the prevailing emotion is relief.

When it comes to the woman he will marry, the woman he will spend his life with, he wants someone pretty, kind, and smart. Someone charming and witty and clever and interesting. And he isn’t keen to settle for less. At least, that’s what he tells himself. 

Sometimes, he even blames himself. I’m too loud for her. I’m not artistic enough for her. I’m too independent for her. Et cetera, et cetera... But, mostly, boiling down to: I’m just too picky.

Still, no matter that he will eventually need to wed, he is set to inherit his father’s lands and estate, so there isn’t much of a rush to send him to the altar. His sisters, however - particularly his eldest sister, Blanca, who is almost as picky as himself. She doesn’t seem overly concerned with the wealth and status of a partner, despite the high ranking men their parents are always parading her in front of. But she does expect an honorable sort of man, and, above all, kind, which Carlos cannot fault her for. She deserves the very best this world can offer her, and he fears no man will be enough in his eyes to deserve her.

With the youngest of the Sainz siblings, Ana, her lack of husband as of yet is more a case of her preferring her independence than ‘pickiness’. She often elects to read a good book or ride her horse or go for a swim, rather than practice dancing or attend a ball. It hadn’t been much cause for concern until she had debuted into society a few seasons ago and had refused any offers she’d received since. 

During their childhood, he would always include Ana (and Blanca, until she had started her schooling) in his games and competitions with his friends, pulling her away from time with their sister and mother. He doesn’t regret the fun adventures it had led to growing up, or their particular bond. But it occurs to him from time-to-time that he could be, in some way, to blame for Ana’s convictions.

If it were up to him, he’d have both his sisters stay with him at the estate forever. But it isn’t how things are done. And he doubts they’d be completely happy here either, longing for something more beyond this country life that Carlos so adores.

“Anyway,” he continues. “I hardly need concern myself with such frivolous matters as marriage.”

“What - you have less frivolous matters that require your attention?” Lando asks.

“No - more. Like bathing in the sun and exchanging gossip with my dear friend.” He winks, and Lando just shakes his head with a smile. “If I had a wife, we’d have no time for our walks, or our little competitions, during your visits each year. And that would be a real shame.”

“Says the man who always wins those games.”

Carlos snickers. “Well, if either of my sisters really do marry one of these Leclerc chaps, I might have to let him win. Once, at least, as a gesture of goodwill.”

“You really think they would? Marry, I mean.”

“If they seem a good match...” He shrugs. It is, after all, the whole intention behind the arranged visit.

His aunt and uncle had met the Leclercs on a recent trip to Monaco, where they had expressed interest in visiting Spain and exploring the social scene there. His aunt and uncle had invited them to their home in Madrid, but when Carlos’ parents had heard about it, they’d insisted the Leclercs come to stay with them for at least a few weeks this summer. Carlos doubts the Leclercs had a country estate in mind for their visit to Spain, but perhaps the humble parties they host out here will charm them.

“Well, I don’t know why you sound so reluctant,” Lando continues. “You make friends with practically every person you meet. And for all you know, maybe these Leclercs will live up to the talk.”

“Maybe...” 

But Carlos has his doubts. How interesting could they really be?

He drops the topic for now, preferring instead to tug at the soft blades of grass beneath his fingertips and muse over what will be served for lunch.

----

WIP ask game

[blossom-hwa]

a very fine line, indeed [6] | c.bg

pairing: Beomgyu x fem!reader genre:  fluff, angst, enemies to lovers, regency era!au, nobility!au warnings: cursing, period typical misogyny word count: 11k notes:  — updates every M/W/F at 8pm EST until the series finishes — inspiration taken from an amalgamation of different bridgerton stories - let me know what easter eggs you find! — story takes place in the same universe as my duke!yeonjun and earl!taehyun fics - check out the link to the series below for some more easter eggs :) In a society where it only takes a year for a young woman in search of a husband to be considered out of season, it is no wonder that by your third year out, you are desperate to marry. Known as one of the beauties of the ton, such a task should not be difficult for you—but with an absent father, no dowry, and a reputation centered around your inability to keep your mouth shut around one certain Beomgyu Choi, your prospects are more limited than you’d like. While you cannot recover your family or your wealth, however, the one thing you can try to control is your reputation. So when the third season rolls around, you resolve to keep your distance from Beomgyu Choi, your childhood enemy, and the man you hate most in the world. Enter Beomgyu Choi, second son of the Kensington Viscountcy, one of the most eligible bachelors in the ton. His older brother, cousin, and good friend have all recently married, leaving the mamas to salivate at his doorstep for the chance of marrying one of their daughters to him. When Beomgyu walks in on a particularly traumatizing moment between you and one of the most unsavory men in the ton and learns of your desperation to marry, despite your history of enmity, he proposes you a devious deal—to pretend to court you. It seems like a winning situation for both of you—more gentlemen will take notice of you, enhancing your prospects, and he will have the ton’s mamas off his back—and so, despite your misgivings, you agree. With you hell bent on marriage and Beomgyu completely indifferent to the concept, even independent of your hatred for each other, it seems unlikely that any sort of true affection will bloom. But as you begrudgingly put aside your differences to spend more and more time in one another’s company, and as you grow to know each other beyond your ill-conceived preconceptions from childhood, you begin to realize that perhaps you two have more in common than you had once thought. And as your faked acquaintanceship becomes more truth than fiction, a friendship beginning to bloom most unexpectedly— Perhaps you no longer need to convince the ton of the veracity of your courtship, because anyone with eyes can see that it is true.  Part 5 >> Part 6 >> Part 7

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When Beomgyu wakes up in the morning, he decides he is never going to sleep again. 

Not truly, of course. Even in school he was never able to stay up all night to study, something Taehyun did often with ease. But if his sleep is going to be as restless as it has been for the past two weeks, then he’d almost rather not sleep at all so that the dreams can’t find him. 

The dreams are what really are going to kill him. 

How many times will Beomgyu have to relive that kiss—the moments before, the awkwardness after? How many times must he feel your lips against his, hear your little moans into his mouth, see your eyes fluttered shut as he holds you to him closely, so closely? Not to mention when his dreams go a little further than reality did and he ends up even closer to you than he ever could have imagined before…

God, he thinks about you too much. Dreams about you too much. Through his dreams alone Beomgyu almost thinks he could trace the planes of your face, your neck, your torso, onto paper, or shape it from a lump of clay. He sees you nearly every day, if not in person, then through visions at night. 

It’s torture. 

Beomgyu groans, rolling over in his bed. He’s never thought of a single person this way—never wanted anyone like this—and it’s screwing up his whole life. He doesn’t know how he survived the Bridgerton ball without you noticing anything. The entire time you were dancing, he could hardly stop thinking about kissing you right then and there. 

He was so grateful, too, when you spoke to him of being friends. Of truly leaving your grudges in the past, and continuing to see each other not for the sake of the deal but just for being friendly with one another. He certainly didn’t have the courage to say anything about it which just makes you even more admirable in his estimation, not to mention that you did all that while apparently being terrified that he would view you with derision if you tried. 

Did you enjoy his company that much? Did you truly like him so? 

Even the idea that the answer to those questions might yes makes him want to smile like a child in a candy shop, and that terrifies him. 

All of this terrifies him. It’s hardly an exaggeration. He’s come to so many realizations about you over the past few months that just thinking about all of it gives him a headache. You are not the person he once believed you were, just as he said at the Bridgerton ball. You are vivacious, you are kind, and you have a wicked sense of wit that keeps him easily entertained. You are intelligent, honorable, and lovely not only on the outside, but in your heart as well. You are far more than the arguments you used to have in years past. 

Beyond that, though, you like him. You wanted to be friends. And you were brave enough to admit it, even with years of hostility and distrust behind you, which means you cared for him on a level deeper than perhaps either of you ever believed possible. Beomgyu should feel over the moon because of this. 

Instead, he just finds himself wanting more. 

It’s the stupid kiss’s fault. He resists the urge to throw his pillow across the room. He shouldn’t have offered, shouldn’t have played along, shouldn’t have gone with you until it was too late, but—it wasn’t supposed to mean anything. You were going to stop seeing each other in less than a month. It shouldn’t have mattered to him or to you. 

Yet here he is, dreaming about the kiss, and wanting something more than friendship. 

Wanting. Beomgyu isn’t accustomed to want, as shameful as it is to say. He’s always been provided for, has always been given access to his basic needs and far more. He had a loving father and still has a loving mother. He has a wonderful brother, though he’ll never admit it, and his sister in law has only ever brought good things to his life. He has a good cousin. He has very good friends. He has never wanted anything more than what he currently has. 

But now…he wants you in a way that friendship won’t fulfill. And he doesn’t know what to do about it. 

He still doesn’t know what to do about it later that night when the family carriage pulls up in front of Lady Park’s home for a dinner party, the lights in her windows bright and warm and in stark contrast to the anxiety that’s been building in his blood throughout the entire day. You’re supposed to be here tonight and if Beomgyu knows anything about Lady Park, she’ll seat you two together for her own entertainment. Half of him rejoices. The other half of him wants to keel over and die.

“You look constipated,” Soobin says as the carriage rolls to a stop. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing.” Beomgyu scowls, which probably makes him look even more constipated. He can’t tell Soobin that he’s nervous, because then he’d have to explain exactly why he’s nervous, and he isn’t ready to go into that with anyone. Not even himself. “I’m not constipated.”

“Good for you.” His brother’s wife smiles at him serenely and Beomgyu wonders exactly why he wanted them to get together so badly. They’re both menaces to him and to society and combined, they have some synergistic effect on him that’s more than awful. He almost wishes they would go back to pining for each other in secret. At least then they didn’t have time to tease him nearly as much. “Settle your expression so it doesn’t look like it, though, or Lady Park is going to have a field day with you.”

Beomgyu does manage to relax his face, but his mood improves very little as they enter the hall. In fact, it takes a downturn as he looks around and can’t find you among the small crowd of people milling about the entryway. On one hand this is a good thing—he doesn’t have to deal with your eyes staring back at him, your terribly kissable lips curving into smiles and frowns and every other micro-expression you have in your arsenal— but on the other hand, seeing you is half of the reason he’s here. 

“Mr. Choi!”

Ah. And there’s the other half of the reason. 

Beomgyu pastes a smile on his face that isn’t entirely faked as Lady Arina Park comes walking up, her cane thumping ominously on the ground. “Lady Park,” he says politely, bowing in greeting. Soobin and his wife have somehow managed to vanish and he curses them with every ounce of his being for leaving him to deal with her alone. “Thank you for inviting my family and I tonight.”

“Of course I invited you.” Her eyes glint, and Beomgyu is reminded why he finds this old woman so terrifying. She must be in her seventies or even her eighties, but even in her old age with her stooped walk and her cane, she remains as sharp as ever. Beomgyu shudders to wonder what a force she was in society when she was younger. “You, Mr. Choi, are one of the only people in this ton with an ounce of wit in their head. You were one of the first people I put on the invite list, along with that girl of yours…Miss L/N.” She clicks her tongue while Beomgyu just blinks. “What are the chances of you two bringing down the house tonight, Mr. Choi? Can I expect some marvelous entertainment from the two of you?”

“…We’re courting, Lady Park,” Beomgyu gets out. He’s almost certain she knew this already. 

“Oh, I already knew that.” She waves her hand dismissively and Beomgyu just feels stupid. “I wanted to hear it from your own tongue. I could hardly believe it when I found out, you know. Your, ah, discussions, had been my greatest entertainment in years.” She sighs, as though remembering some good old days, then leans in to Beomgyu almost conspiratorially. “Though I suppose it makes sense. The line between hatred and love is always finer than anyone believes it to be.”

“Love?” Beomgyu splutters. The wit that Lady Park mentioned before seems to have abandoned him entirely as he tries to remember how to breathe. “Lady Park, that is hardly—”

“Ah, is that your lady?” Lady Park’s eyes narrow on something behind him. Beomgyu turns to see you entering the hall, looking vaguely uncertain until you meet his eyes. Your expression breaks into a smile that only grows wider when you see the woman standing next to him. 

“She’s hardly my lady,” Beomgyu says, though he can’t hide his own smile at seeing you. 

“Delusion doesn’t suit you, Mr. Choi.” And as he’s reeling from that statement, she thumps her cane against the floor and grabs his arm with surprising strength. “I believe I will accompany you to her. I should like to speak to the girl myself.” 

Beomgyu tries to convey his apology through his eyes as the two of you draw near, but you don’t seem to be the slightest bit terrified or even hesitant to see Lady Park hanging off his arm. “Lady Park. Mr. Choi.” You curtsy, the smile on your face unwavering. “Lovely to see you both.”

“And lovely to see you too, my dear.” Lady Park reaches out to give you a fond sort of pat on the cheek and Beomgyu just gapes. He’s never seen her outwardly display such affection before. “I was just telling Mr. Choi that I should like to see some entertainment from the two of you tonight.”

You blink. “Um, Lady Park. We are courting.”

“I know that,” she huffs. “Why is it that both of you seem to think I am daft?” Before either of you can apologize, though, she’s plowing on with her next comment. “Watching you interact is already marvelous enough. I never thought I would see the day that you two could stand in the same room civilly, let alone be courting. And I have been in society with you two for over twenty years!” 

Beomgyu has no idea what to say to that. Judging by your expression, you don’t seem to either. 

“I could shed a tear.” Lady Park lets go of Beomgyu’s arm—damn, he didn’t realize how tight her grip was until it was gone—to wipe something away from the corner of her eye. Beomgyu would bet five quid that it was fake. “That two of the people in this ton with a reasonable amount of wit should court and potentially raise families that will be surely be the ton’s sole source of intelligence from now and forever on…oh, if I were capable of crying in my old age, I would already be doing it by now.”

You open your mouth, then close it. Beomgyu would try to help, but he is still trying to process the fact that Lady Park expects you two to raise a family. 

“With all due respect, Lady Park,” you finally say, a carefully blank smile affixed to your expression, “I think you might be getting somewhat ahead of yourself here.”

“I am never ahead of myself, Miss L/N.” She sniffs. “I say what I see how I see it.”

For some reason, Beomgyu almost laughs. “That was never in doubt, my lady.”

“Take care to keep it that way.” She gives him a threatening little smile that, despite her age, makes Beomgyu want to take a step back. “Well, Mr. Choi, Miss L/N, I should love to stay in your company for the rest of the night—” Beomgyu hardly bites back a shudder—“but alas, my duties as a hostess precede me. Mr. Choi.” She turns to him sharply. “Do take care not to offend Miss L/N. I do not believe I need to be the one to tell you that letting her go would be the biggest mistake of your short life.” With a parting whack of her cane to his calves, she disappears into the crowd, leaving Beomgyu to stumble forward with the force of her smack almost right into you. 

“Careful,” you say, steadying him with a hand. Your eyes twinkle. “How hard did she hit you?”

“Hard enough,” he mutters, trying not to fall over again at the touch of your skin against his. God, between Lady Park saying he’d be remiss to lose you and her speculations about a possible family, he’s losing his mind. “Apologies for letting her accost you. She insisted on accompanying me the moment she saw you.”

“No apologies needed. I quite like her.” You grin. “Do you not?”

“I certainly don’t dislike her,” Beomgyu replies. He shudders a little. “But you can’t deny that she’s terrifying.”

“In the best of ways,” you agree. “She’s hilariously witty. I want to be like her when I’m older.”

Beomgyu glances at you sidelong. “I don’t think you’ll have much trouble with that.”

“…I’ll take that as a compliment.” You take his proffered arm. Beomgyu tries very, very hard not to notice the way your lips curve when you smile anyway. “I like her.”

“She also seems to like you.” He raises an eyebrow. “If her saying that I would be an idiot to lose you is anything to go by.”

“And that might be the greatest compliment of all.” You turn a little towards the crowd and Beomgyu’s heart does a little skip of panic when you tug his arm and it feels as though you might pull away. Good Lord, he needs to get a hold of himself—he’s gone two weeks without you suspecting anything strange on his part and he doesn’t intend to break that streak anytime soon, at least not before he’s figured out his own thoughts first. You don’t let go anyway so he feels stupid for panicking in the first place. “It looks like everyone is going inside,” you say, apparently oblivious to his internal turmoil. “Shall we follow them to dinner?”

Beomgyu survives the meal. He survives sitting next to you for the best part of two hours, watching you eat and talk all the while with that lovely smile on your face. He survives having to talk to you for the entire two hours and doesn’t spit out any food every time he remembers that Lady Park expects you two to have a family, to have children. 

What he very nearly does not survive, however, is when he is talking to you in the drawing room when the men have rejoined the women after they’ve drunk their port, and Lord Cho comes up to steal you away from the conversation. 

Beomgyu notices him eyeing you first from across the room. “Lord Cho incoming,” he says, and he only manages a half smile to indicate that this is a joke. Or at least that it was meant to be, because he doesn’t feel much like smiling. 

You glance at him. “I don’t understand why you don’t like him,” you say frankly. “He’s very nice. At least he seems genuinely interested when he speaks to me, unlike many others I could name.”

Beomgyu shrugs. He wishes he knew why too, but he can’t exactly explain why Lord Cho gives him that slightly slimy feeling that puts him off so. Outwardly there was nothing amiss with their conversation the first and only time they spoke, but everything about it still felt all wrong. “He seems nice,” he agrees. “But just because he’s nice doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take precaution as you do with all the other men who might seek your hand.”

“As I should have done with you?” you ask, raising an eyebrow. A teasing smile plays on your lips and in a moment of weakness, Beomgyu imagines kissing it off. 

He pinches himself hard. Maybe he needs to get a brain replacement. “Well, I think you have already seen many of the worst parts of me,” he says superciliously. You laugh and he preens a little for having been the cause of it. “So I don’t know how much more precaution you must take around me. You have already proven yourself quite capable of fighting back.”

“Might I take that as a compliment?” 

Despite himself, Beomgyu smiles. “Yes, you may.”

“Then I’ll thank you for that.” You take the last sip of water from your glass and place it on a nearby empty tray. “And I’ll take your advice, Beomgyu. I appreciate it, though I don’t know how warranted it is.”

Beomgyu tamps down the stupid thrill that rushes up his spine when he hears his name from your voice. It’s not that hard to hide this time, not with Lord Cho’s approach dimming his mood already. “Just be careful, is all,” he says quietly, just before Lord Cho makes the last step into conversational range. 

“Miss L/N. Mr. Choi.” Lord Cho makes a polite bow. Against his will, Beomgyu moves slightly to include him in your small group. “I haven’t had the chance to speak to either of you tonight.”

“A pity that Lady Park had us seated on opposite ends of the table,” Beomgyu says, not really meaning it. 

You shoot him a sidelong glance which tells him you heard all of the indifference in his tone, but he doesn’t really care. You look more amused than annoyed with him, anyway. “A pity indeed,” you echo, giving a short curtsy. “How are you, Lord Cho? You look rather well.”

“Better now that you’ve been so kind to me.” Lord Cho smiles, and Beomgyu fights the urge to roll his eyes. Maybe this is why he doesn’t like Lord Cho—he’s never been one to stomach flirting, at least not as outright as this. “It seems Mr. Choi has quite kept your attentions this evening. Would it be remiss if I stole some of your time?”

“Of course not.” You smile prettily before taking his arm. “Mr. Choi, I shall see you later tonight or sometime soon, I am sure.”

“And I, you,” he says, smiling directly at you. He doesn’t bother looking at Lord Cho and the other man doesn’t seem to care as he turns you to another corner of the room. Beomgyu watches you leave on his arm, then decides he doesn’t care much for the scene and goes to get another glass of whiskey. He suddenly very much feels like he needs it. 

Soobin sidles up to him as he picks up a glass from a servant’s passing tray. “Well, you look like you have a mouthful of sour grapes,” he says, and Beomgyu nearly spills his drink all over both of them. “Hey, watch out!”

“You watch out,” Beomgyu hisses, cradling the glass to his chest. “You’re the one who startled me.”

“Well, if you weren’t so busy glaring holes into Lord Cho’s back, you might have noticed me approaching.” Soobin sniffs. “What did he do to you this time?”

Beomgyu groans. “Of course she told you.”

“What, my wife? She tells me everything.” Soobin smirks. “Including that you might have felt a pinch of jealousy towards the man who’s talking to the woman you’ve decided to court this season.” 

Annoying as Soobin is, his words throw a splash of cold water over Beomgyu’s thoughts. He isn’t courting you. Not really. Even though you decided to continue seeing each other, it isn’t because you wanted him to pursue you for real. It was because you wanted to be friends. He has no business feeling like this, wanting to kiss you, feeling annoyed when someone else steals you away. He can’t even put it down to just blatant uneasiness about Lord Cho anymore because even if that unease might still exist, to say that there is no jealousy whatsoever would just be a lie. “I regret the two of you ever realizing your feelings for each other,” is all he manages to say around the sick feeling growing in his stomach. 

“You’re the one who complained about suffering in silence amidst all the pining,” Soobin points out. “Though if I may—”

“You may not.”

“—I’d say I understand your frustration, now.” Soobin glances across the room where you’re chatting animatedly with Lord Cho and a few others, then back at Beomgyu. “This tension is unbearable.”

“There is no tension,” Beomgyu snaps. 

“Beomgyu, I may not have your gift for discerning personalities at a glance, but I’m not daft.” Soobin fixes him with a deadpan stare. “You clearly feel something for the girl. Whether that feeling is a simple interest or something more, I will not presume—I would like to believe you know yourself better than I—but there is something there. I only wonder why you have done nothing about it yet.”

Oh, if only he knew. Beomgyu barely suppresses a scoff. “And you are so knowledgeable about love?” he snaps. He’s lashing out because he’s angry and frustrated, he knows, but in this moment, God he doesn’t care. “It took you years to realize that you were in love with your wife!”

Surprisingly, Soobin looks more amused by Beomgyu’s outburst than angry at his tone. “First of all, I never said anything about love.” He waits a moment for Beomgyu’s spluttering to stop, then continues. “Second of all, though it may have taken me a long time, at least I did realize it in the end.”

Beomgyu raises a sardonic eyebrow. “And how, exactly, did you realize it?”

“I realized that every moment I was away, I wanted to be with her,” Soobin says seriously, either not hearing or completely ignoring Beomgyu’s sarcastic tone. Beomgyu is inclined to believe the latter option. “When I did not have her attention, I wanted it. When I was with her, I was happier than I believed I ever could be.”

Involuntarily, Beomgyu’s gaze flashes towards where you are speaking with Lord Cho right now, that pretty little smile on your face. His heart spasms and he finds himself with the passing thought that he’d much rather that smile be directed at him. That he dislikes that it’s being directed at someone else. Specifically Lord Cho. 

“I do not claim to know your heart or your thoughts with any certainty,” Soobin says. From the way he’s looking at him, Beomgyu gathers that he noticed the glance. “But I would implore you to make any decisions you need to make before it is too late. And, Beomgyu.” He smiles teasingly, which Beomgyu does not appreciate for even a second. “It would do you well to remember that the line between hatred and love can be a very fine line, indeed.”

. . . . .

After the fifth time you stab yourself with a needle, Soyoung removes the embroidery from your hands. You barely put up a struggle. It’s late, it’s dark, and all you can really do is stare at the small bead of blood welling up from the pad of your finger, deep red in the flickering candlelight. 

“What’s wrong with you?” Soyoung asks. You’ve always liked working with her in the dark of night—she becomes more casual, lets her words and laughter flow more easily as though the darkness erases some of the social barriers between you two. But right now, you wish you were alone. Your thoughts are hard enough to unravel as it is. You don’t know how to explain any of it to yourself, much less to someone else. 

“Nothing.” You shake yourself out of your daze and reach for your embroidery. Another dress, hopefully one of the last you’ll have to remake for the season—you’re not sure you have it in you to put together much more before the season is out. Each one already takes up so much time. “Soyoung, please give it back.”

She narrows her eyes at you. You’d smile if you weren’t so tired. “Not until you tell me what is bothering you so, Miss L/N,” she finally says, though she slides you a small towel to wipe off your finger. “You’re usually never this careless, especially not with your own clothing.”

Suddenly you’re tired. So tired. Between the whirlwind of society events and doing the household chores and keeping up your ruse with Mr. Choi—Beomgyu—you’ve barely had a moment’s time to truly relax. To breathe. You barely have time to sleep. Makeup can only hide your dark circles so many times and you’re already running out of your concealing powder. You’ve counted the remnants of your pin money and you hate the amount you’re going to have to set aside for more powder but there’s no choice but to do it. And what little time you do have to yourself after the days are all done and over now has to be spent on refurbishing your old gowns because you have no money to buy new ones. 

All of this, and you still have to contend with emotions. Feelings. Desires and wants that you have no right to have and that you really don’t want to have, but that you do anyway. It is an incredibly annoying situation and you are tired of having to deal with said emotions, because they are really getting in the way of things that are very important. Like marriage.

You try to put your face in your hands and very nearly poke your eye out with the needle you’re still holding. You can’t even muster the energy to glare at it, not in light of yesterday’s events. When you accepted Lord Cho’s invitation to promenade that afternoon, you had thought little of it. He’s a suitor. A nice one at that. This is normal. To be expected. 

You did not expect him to hint at a proposal. 

Everything logical tells you that you should be happy about this. After two seasons of despairing you will ever be married, you finally have a hint that you will really receive a proposal from a very eligible gentleman who will be certain to take you far from this place. You want to be happy. You really do. But you aren’t, at least not nearly as much as you should be, and you don’t know why. 

Actually, that’s a lie. You know exactly why. You wanted someone else to propose. 

You wanted Beomgyu to propose. 

Which is—insanity. Your courtship isn’t even real. It doesn’t matter if you are friends now—none of the presents, none of the dances, none of that meant anything. Not even the kiss. You knew you had felt something after the kiss but you put it down to it quite literally being the first time you kissed someone. Of course anyone would feel butterflies in their stomach for days after that. Right? Right. 

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to matter if that’s true. What does matter is that the kiss wasn’t apparently just a kiss for you. 

Candlelight flickers in the dark, throwing strange shadows on Soyoung’s face. “Miss L/N?” she asks softly. 

You feel close to tears. It’s too late and it’s too dark and you’re feeling far too many things right now for you to process. You should be happy to marry Lord Cho, so happy. But now all you can feel is dread for the next time you will see him, because while you know the answer you will give him must be in the affirmative, you know that you won’t be happy with it. 

When did you start feeling this way about Beomgyu? When did you start liking him beyond just the basic acquaintanceship, then the tentative friendship? When did you start wondering, however subconsciously, whether you could live a life with him that wouldn’t just be filled with screaming and arguments? It wasn’t just the kiss. That may have been the final straw. But you know yourself, and you must be honest with yourself right now, and you know that that wasn’t when it all started. 

Maybe it will begin to make sense if you try to speak of it.

You choose your words very carefully. “I may receive a proposal in a short time.”

Soyoung’s entire face lights up. “Oh, truly? That is wonderful!” Her voice feels brighter than the candle and it makes you head hurt a little. “I was honestly expecting it since you’d been spending so much time with him, but now that Mr. Choi has all but confirmed it—”

Mr. Choi?

“Soyoung.” You interrupt her excited exclamation, a very strange feeling in your stomach. “Soyoung, why do you think it was Mr. Choi?”

She stops midway through a word, her mouth still open like she plans to finish it. You watch her open and close it several times in the ensuing silence, her expression morphing into confusion. “Is it not?” she finally asks. Her voice is much smaller.

“No.” You shake your head. “It was Lord Cho.”

“…Oh.” She doesn’t sound so enthused about him, and that reaction just intensifies the strange, sick feeling still roiling in your stomach. 

You two sit in silence for a moment. Soyoung’s hand has gone slack, but you can’t find it in you to take your embroidery back. You probably wouldn’t even be able to do anything with it even if you had it—at least nothing beyond stabbing yourself another five times on accident. “Do you not like Lord Cho?” you eventually ask, though you’re not sure you want to hear the answer. 

“It’s not that I don’t like him!” Soyoung frantically shakes her head. “He seems to be a nice man. But that one time he asked about Mr. Choi…”

You remember that moment and how uncomfortable it was. How cornered you felt, how the intensity in Lord Cho’s voice and eyes made you tense up in…not fear, not exactly, but wariness at the least. You didn’t enjoy that conversation even after the tension was cut. Soyoung was there and confirmed then and now that whatever that was, it wasn’t normal. 

But it only happened once. Lord Cho has never given you any reason to be wary of him since, and if it weren’t for Beomgyu’s insistence that you remain on your guard you’d probably have relaxed around him entirely by now. He wouldn’t hurt you, you’re sure. At least not in the way that Mr. Thompson would. And anyway, it is entirely understandable that one suitor might be wary or want to know more about another. While you may not have appreciated the way Lord Cho went about to get that information, you think you can understand why he did it. 

So why does Soyoung still have so many apprehensions?

“It was only one time,” you say, uneasy. “You’ve been with me and him before. He hasn’t done anything strange since.”

“Yes, but…” Soyoung looks down, fiddling with her needle and a little bit of thread. “I don’t know. You do seem happy around him. He seems to be a good man. You would likely be very happy if you married him.”

For all the certainty of Soyoung’s words, her voice only thinly hides a current of wariness just beneath the surface. You debate for a moment whether or not to press her on the topic—have her explain why she dislikes Lord Cho so. But you decide not to. She doesn’t seem to know herself. 

It reminds you of Beomgyu, when he was trying to explain the same thing to you. 

You return to your original question. “Why did you think it was Mr. Choi?”

“Well, you just…you just always seemed so happy around him. Not always in the beginning, but even then, you were always…yourself.” She glances around the room like she’s afraid someone else will hear. “Even when you were arguing. You didn’t try to hide that part of yourself like you would have around others. And when you were just talking with him, your smiles were genuine. You didn’t try to be pretty around him the way you do with Lord Cho. Especially recently, whenever you look at him…I don’t know. You look at him like he’s the only one in the room."

The sick feeling in your stomach intensifies. You feel like you might throw up. 

“And he looks at you the same way,” Soyoung continues, apparently oblivious to your growing sense of dread. “He didn’t do it before but now he’s always smiling, even when you two argue. It seems like he’s not arguing with you to hurt you anymore. It’s more like…he just wants to keep talking to you. No matter what.” She pauses, and then her voice lowers. “He gave you gloves.”

Stricken, you can barely even nod to confirm her statement. 

“I don’t know who would perform such a gesture for anyone they didn’t love,” Soyoung says, almost as though she’s in awe. “When I saw that, I just…I thought there was no way he didn’t love you then.”

You seriously might throw up. You—you tricked her. You tricked Soyoung. You tricked the whole ton—you knew you would, that was the entire plan, but somehow, hearing it from Soyoung, one of your closest friends, that she really thought you were in love…

Suddenly you can’t stand it. 

“It wasn’t real.” You force the words out one by one, horrible relief coating your voice as Soyoung’s eyes widen. “None of it was real, Soyoung.” In as few sentences as you can, you tell her about the deal, about how you two conspired to trick the ton for the sake of winning you more suitors and discouraging his small army of followers, about how it succeeded. You don’t say anything about the kiss. You don’t say anything about being friends. 

You don’t say anything about the sick feeling in your stomach that rose to your chest when she said there was no way he didn’t love you. 

After you finish, silence descends upon the table. The candle burns low but you can’t move yourself to replace it, just watch the wax melt slowly, slowly, until the moon provides more light than the flame. Soyoung switches between staring at the candle and staring at you. She doesn’t say anything. 

“You can’t tell anyone,” you finally say, the warning rough in your throat. “I’m serious, Soyoung.”

She blinks. Shakes her head slightly, like shaking off a daze. “Of course I won’t,” she replies, and you immediately feel bad about doubting her. “I’m sorry. I just—it seemed so real.” She shakes her head again and you can’t tell if the disappointment in that movement is directed towards you or the situation at hand. Maybe both. “If I didn’t know that you would never lie to me, I wouldn’t have believed you.”

The room is too stifling. Too hot. Never mind that there’s only one candle barely burning and you’re wrapped in a blanket. You rise from your seat on stiff legs to open the window. The sudden burst of cold air hits you like a hammer and forces you to think. 

Soyoung’s words made you feel sick because they were true—at least on your end. You can say nothing about Beomgyu and how he feels. But it is true that you haven’t really felt that you had to hide anything around him. It’s just as he said before, as yourself have thought before—you’ve seen the worst of him and he’s seen the worst of you. There isn’t much left to hide if anything at all. You think less about your words, care less about your appearance—you certainly feel freer around him, more able to express yourself than around anyone else. 

You swallow. Soyoung said you never tried to be “pretty” around him, like you did with Lord Cho. You unfortunately do have an idea of what she means. To nearly everyone in the ton, you are just a pretty face with no dowry to accompany it, which means you’ve had to rely on that pretty face to get you where you need to be. It’s not extremely effective, which tells you exactly what you need to know about how much money is valued in this society, but that’s not the point. The point is that you’ve never been able to let that pretty little façade drop around anyone, because that is your main selling feature. Your beauty. 

Only you don’t have to hold that façade up around Beomgyu. 

Against your will, the kiss comes back to mind. Cool air rushes over your face but even then, your cheeks start to warm with the memory. God. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t been idiotic enough to go down that train of thought with a man with whom you were about to separate in just a few short weeks. Instead, you got caught up in the moment, had your first kiss, dreamed about it for days (and unfortunately you are still dreaming of it), and then begged him to be your friend so you at least wouldn’t have to stop seeing him ever again. What kind of idiot does that?

An idiot in love. 

You grip the blanket tighter around your shoulders. Maybe you really are in love with him. 

The heavens really must be having a good laugh at you right now. 

“Miss L/N?” Soyoung’s voice brings you back to earth, the call of your name soft and uncertain. “Are you all right? It’s quite cold.”

You look down and realize that for all you felt stifled before, you’re now shivering under the blanket. You let Soyoung help you close the window and light a new candle. The flame dances cheerfully in the dark, a stark contrast to the emotions sitting in a solid, tangled lump behind your chest. 

“Don’t tell anyone,” you say again, voice far more ragged than before. “I wasn’t supposed to say anything.”

“I won’t,” Soyoung promises. “On my honor, I won’t.”

That reminds you of another oath taken on someone else’s honor. An oath of silence when that person found out your deepest secret, the cracked and swollen secret hidden behind a thin layer of cotton fabric. 

You love him. You don’t love him. You might love him. The three statements bounce off the corners of your skull. Two of them are lies and only one of them you know for certain. 

“If Lord Cho proposes,” you mumble, “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

Soyoung looks at you sympathetically. “Miss L/N, I’m sure that when the time comes, you will do what is best for you.” The certainty in her voice only makes you feel a little better. 

Silence falls save for the clicking of needles and rustling of cloth. Soyoung doesn’t say anything more, and you stab yourself another five times before you finally give up and go to sleep.

. . . . .

Beomgyu shouldn’t have come tonight. 

Objectively, there is nothing wrong. The Haynesworths always host good parties, if not particularly interesting ones, and Beomgyu sees nothing to complain about this ball right now. Anyway, even if he did, it’s only their second year holding a ball for the ton. Flubs would be understandable and Beomgyu won’t insult them for it. But there are no flubs. The music is pleasant. The food is good. The decorations are nice.

What is wrong, however, is the fact that you have been attached to Lord Cho’s side the entire night. 

He arrived late, which wasn’t his fault—dinner with Kai, who just returned to London, took longer than expected. By the time he stepped into the ballroom, Kai at his side, you were already busily conversing with Lord Cho. The sight annoyed him slightly, but Kai was there and he didn’t want to ruin his friend’s night so he tried not to react. It didn’t matter—he would just find some other time to talk with you, and maybe dance. 

It's been just over three hours and Beomgyu has still not been able to speak to you once. 

He really thought it was just coincidence and bad timing during the first hour or so. Fine. Normal. Beomgyu came late and you kept getting whisked onto the dance floor by one person or another in between very long conversations with Lord Cho, so Beomgyu tucked himself away with Taehyun and Kai and caught up with his friend’s inheritance issues some more. He took to the dance floor a few times and enjoyed himself well enough. 

By the second hour, however, he was starting to suspect Lord Cho was keeping you sequestered away on purpose. 

It can’t just be coincidence that every time Beomgyu leaves the dance floor, you and Lord Cho are deep in conversation on the entire other side of the ballroom. It can’t just be bad timing that every time Beomgyu tries to make eye contact with you, Lord Cho hands you another glass of lemonade or guides you to another area of the room. As the second hour passes and the third hour rolls around, Beomgyu is grinding his teeth visibly and Kai is starting to look slightly concerned. 

“What’s wrong with him?” Beomgyu hears Kai whisper. 

“I don’t know.” Taehyun shrugs. “What’s wrong with you, Beomgyu?”

Beomgyu does not answer. You just laughed at something Lord Cho said, and he feels vaguely sick. 

“Ah.” Taehyun has apparently come to a conclusion even without Beomgyu saying anything. “He’s jealous.”

Kai frowns. “Jealous?” he asks, at the same time Beomgyu snaps, “I’m not jealous.” 

Taehyun ignores him, which he’s had ample practice with since they went to school together for almost ten years. It does not make Beomgyu feel any better. “Beomgyu here used to have a mortal enemy,” he says sagely, as though Kai isn’t completely aware of the previous animosity between the two of you. “That used to be Miss L/N over there.”

“…I’m aware.” Kai looks even more confused. “Why is he jealous of her?”

“I’m not—”

“They started courting this season,” Taehyun says, evil delight coating his every word as an irritatingly pleasant expression remains on his face. “Apparently they’ve put their past behind them, or something. They’ve become quite attached at the hip especially recently, but because Miss L/N is quite beautiful, of course she has other suitors trying to win her hand.” He gestures slightly at you. “Voila, Beomgyu is very jealous of Lord Cho.”

“…Just how much did you omit from your letters when I was abroad?”

“Quite a bit. Sometimes, telling stories via letter just isn’t as impactful as telling them in person.” Taehyun is still wearing that easy smile and Beomgyu is feeling the growing urge to punch it off his face. “Beomgyu, if you keep glaring at Lord Cho like that, you’re going to bore a hole in his head. Not to mention Whistledown will be scribbling terrible notes with her feathered pen to round out the gossip papers in a few days.”

With effort, Beomgyu looks away from Lord Cho. He still feels vaguely sick—his throat feels tight for some reason—so he takes a sip from his glass. “I’m not glaring at him,” he snaps. 

“You’re not now,” Taehyun agrees. “But you were.”

Beomgyu nearly screams. 

“Is there something wrong with Lord Cho?” Kai asks timidly. “You seem to hate him a lot more than you would if he was just a suitor.”

God, Beomgyu doesn’t want to go into this again. “I don’t like him,” he snaps with finality. “It isn’t just because he’s trying to court Miss L/N. He feels strange to me, and I don’t trust him. I wish I could tell you why.”

Kai looks at him strangely. “If I didn’t know you better,” he says slowly, “I’d say you were in love with the girl.”

Buzzing fills Beomgyu’s ears. The orchestra fades into white noise, the lights of the room suddenly too bright and loud against his eyes. Love, Kai had said. He didn’t hear wrong. He said the word love. And he said that Beomgyu was in love with you. 

Beomgyu blinks rapidly. Some of the spots clear out of his eyes but everything still seems too bright. “I beg your pardon.”

Taehyun steps forward, the previous humor drained from his expression. “Beomgyu,” he says quietly. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. Of course.” The room is too bright and his head vaguely feels like it’s spinning and his stomach just dropped to his feet, but he’s fine. Completely fine. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Some of the sardonicism returns to Taehyun’s face. “I don’t know, maybe because when Kai said you might be in love with Miss L/N your entire face turned pale and you looked like you were about to keel over right then and there.”

Lies. Slander. There’s no way Beomgyu looked like that. “I’m not in love with Miss L/N,” he says emphatically, but even though that’s supposed to be true, every single word sounded wrong. 

“Then why do you care so much about her?” Taehyun presses. “Let us assume Lord Cho does not have the lady’s best interests at heart. I will grant it is normal to be concerned. But to stare at them for nearly three hours wearing that expression on your face?” He waves a hand at Beomgyu. “That is hardly expected of anyone.”

“Well, she’s not a monster,” Beomgyu snaps. “Of course I should care.”

“You used to talk about her like she was one,” Kai says, raising an eyebrow. “And Taehyun’s point wasn’t that you shouldn’t care. It’s that you care so much more for her than would be normal for an acquaintance or a friend who was simply concerned.”

Beomgyu flounders for a response. Taehyun takes the opportunity to go in for the kill. “So are you going to give us another reason why you are so jealous of Lord Cho you can’t even see straight?” he asks. “Or are we going to have to go with the very logical conclusion that you are in love with the girl, and resent him for keeping her away from you this entire evening?”

Almost involuntarily, Beomgyu glances across the room at you and Lord Cho. Several others have joined your group but you seem only to have eyes for him, standing close by with that bright, pretty smile on your face. Not once since an hour ago have you looked at Beomgyu. Not even once. 

Maybe…

Maybe it is jealousy. But if it’s jealousy, then where did it come from?

Against his will he recalls Soobin’s words from Lady Park’s gathering. 

“I realized that every moment I was away, I wanted to be with her. When I did not have her attention, I wanted it. When I was with her, I was happier than I believed I ever could be.”

“It would do you well to remember that the line between hatred and love can be a very fine line, indeed.”

Kai thinks he’s in love with you. Taehyun thinks the same. Soobin certainly seemed to be hinting at it. Beomgyu clutches his glass, feeling suddenly like the floor is tipping beneath his feet. Is he in love with you? Is he truly?

He blanches. The fact that he’s even considering their words says far more about him than he’d like to admit. 

“I need to go.” Beomgyu swallows hard and puts his half full glass on some empty tray. “To the washroom.” He doesn’t wait for a response before he starts pushing through the crowd. 

The washroom is quiet, empty. Beomgyu stands in front of the small basin and splashes water onto his face until he feels a little more alert. There’s a small mirror hung up above the basin and he looks into it, not really seeing his reflection, but contemplating it. 

These are the facts. Beomgyu likes you. He enjoys being your friend. At some point he disliked you very much, but most if not all of those feelings have disappeared. You are a good person. He is happy to know you. He is even happier that you have overturned your previous opinions about him, and that you like to be around him. He was upset at himself when he mentioned ending your courtship. He was overjoyed when you said you didn’t want the friendship to end. 

And yet he still felt like something was missing, even with all that hope and joy fluttering in his chest. 

Beomgyu swallows. There are still more facts to sort out. He kissed you. He wanted to kiss you. It was the only kiss that had ever made him feel something more, the only kiss that had ever made him want more. He dreamed and still dreams about the kiss and he doesn’t know why. 

Or does he?

He takes a deep breath and lets it out quickly. Slowly, slowly, he forces himself to consider the fact that he may be in love with you.

It unfortunately explains a lot of things. 

The jealousy. The dislike of Lord Cho beyond the fact that he seemed only to view you as chattel to win in marriage. The fantasies about the kiss, the constant dreams where the kiss morphs into something more. The desire to be with you, to be the reason you smile and laugh. 

Beomgyu splashes more water on his face. He can’t do this right now—maybe can’t do it ever. He can’t face the facts or even try to make sense of them. He needs to get out of here or else he’ll go insane. 

He wipes his hand on the roller towel and leaves the washroom. Kai and Taehyun are nowhere to be seen, which is annoying because he really should tell him he’s planning to leave. Beomgyu wades into the fray again, searching the crowd for his friends, but then his eye catches someone else’s. 

Lord Cho’s. 

It seems as though he’s frozen in time. Lord Cho regards him with an impassive gaze, Beomgyu still rooted to his spot halfway across the ballroom. For a moment neither of them reacts. 

Then Lord Cho smirks. 

All at once there is nothing in Beomgyu’s mind except the desire to punch this man into the floor. Unfortunately, an ounce of sense remains—just enough for him to know that that would be a terrible idea, one that would land him in Wooyoung’s bad books forever and possibly even the town jail for a night or two. 

Besides, there’s another way he might wipe the smile off Lord Cho’s face for an hour or two. 

He pushes through the crowd with singular ease, beelining right for where you stand next to Lord Cho, listening to something a nearby gentleman is saying. The man’s words falter as he sees Beomgyu walking towards them, and when he does, you turn to see who he’s looking at and meet Beomgyu’s eyes. 

Beomgyu would dearly love to give Lord Cho the cut, but years of politeness in society force him to give the man at least a small nod in greeting before turning directly to you. “Miss L/N, we haven’t spoken all night.” He doesn’t wait for a response, only extends his hand. “May I have the next dance?”

. . . . .

The next dance is a waltz.

Which—normally wouldn’t be a problem. You have to get permission to take to the floor for this dance—with all of the touching and close holds, it is still considered extremely scandalous even several years after it was introduced to the ton. To dance it with anyone who isn’t a close relative or betrothed could be social suicide. You’ve never had an issue with this, though, because you’ve never been given permission to dance the waltz, and you’ve never bothered to ask. 

Though today, you do have permission. Your mother is friends with Mrs. Haynesworth. She extended that permission as a token of friendship with the invitation to tonight’s ball, and while it might have been nice to think about it, you never planned to use it. No one has proposed to you, even if Lord Cho seems close to it. You have no close male relatives with whom it would be acceptable to dance. It doesn’t matter—you’ve always sat out the waltz and you planned to do the same tonight. 

But now Beomgyu stands before you, his hand extended, his mouth smiling but his eyes sharp, burning with a fire you have never seen before. You have no idea if he knows what the next dance is. You have no idea why he’s looking at you as though no one else in the room exists. 

Some of Soyoung’s words come back to you, from several nights ago. “You look at him like he’s the only one in the room,” she had said. “And he looks at you the same way.”

Beomgyu asked you for a dance. Not just any dance, but the waltz. You don’t believe Beomgyu is an idiot. You don’t believe he would have asked for the next dance if it didn’t mean anything to him. Nothing he does in society is without reason. So if he is asking you to waltz…

A stupid, burgeoning hope starts to burn in your chest. Might Soyoung’s words be true? Might he be in love with you, the same way you might be in love with him?

It’s like you watch yourself place your hand in Beomgyu’s, watch from above as he smiles as you with the force of ten thousand suns as he leads you onto the ballroom floor. People are watching, whispering, but you seem to hear none of them as he bows and you curtsy. You feel light, almost like you’re floating on air—you don’t seem to have any weight as Beomgyu effortlessly spins you through the opening bars of the dance. 

Watching the waltz before, you had never quite understood why it is considered as scandalous as the old-fashioned mamas of the ton make it out to be. Sure, it involved some more close contact than usual, but other than that you couldn’t see much of a difference from the other dances. 

Dancing it now, though, you see exactly why the waltz could lead to social ruin. 

Beomgyu’s hand rests lower on your back, just beneath your shoulder blade. Your bodies are almost flush together. Your hand, gingerly placed before on his shoulder, has since slid down his arm, and when you turn to face him, his eyes are barely a few inches from yours.

Your breath catches. From the looks of it, Beomgyu realizes, and a little smirk begins to curl his lips. 

You hate how attractive you find it. 

He spins you out and catches your other hand before you manage to fly away. Even though several feet now separate you two instead of mere handsbreadths his fingers curl around yours, so strong and steady as he pulls you back into his dancing embrace. His eyes still hold a hint of that fire from before and in your burgeoning hope, you allow yourself to wonder if he was perhaps…jealous. Envious, maybe, that another man had your attentions for so long. While you don’t love jealousy, it does make your heart flutter to think that he might care about you enough to care about that. 

Truth be told, you had been trying to get away from Lord Cho for some time. The first hour was nice, and you hadn’t seen Beomgyu at all during that time so you weren’t bothered. But while you like Lord Cho, and his friends are fine, the moment you saw Beomgyu, you wanted to go to him. You tried to make excuses time and time again to leave but someone always struck up another vein of conversation with you or asked you to dance, or Lord Cho easily sidestepped your request and led you to another area of the room to speak to someone else. 

It wasn’t unpleasant. But even then, at some point, you wished you were elsewhere. Though you couldn’t have dreamed that you would end up here in Beomgyu’s arms, waltzing the night away. 

Beomgyu catches you in the crook of his arm and lowers you into a slight dip that has you staring directly into his eyes. Your arm wraps around his shoulder, half as part of the dance and half to steady yourself on your jelly-like legs, and you can’t help it when your heart races even faster. Beomgyu’s breath whispers over your lips and suddenly it reminds you of the kiss. You almost trip over his foot when he pulls you back up. 

Judging from the way Beomgyu’s eyes flutter down to your lips, you’d say you weren’t the only one feeling the same way. 

As the waltz begins to wind to a close, you feel your face getting hotter as Beomgyu spins you once, twice, three times. You feel like you’re flying—your toes barely skimming the floor, your skirts whirling around your legs—your feet follow the one-two-three rhythm of the waltz with ease, your slippers tapping merrily against the floor. The song ends but you still have that rhythm in your blood and Beomgyu seems to realize that because he spins you out as the orchestra finishes, letting the momentum carry you into your deep curtsy. 

When you stand up, you’re smiling like no tomorrow, and nothing, you think, could ever induce that smile to fall. 

A smattering of polite applause comes from the outskirts of the ballroom. The sound reminds you that you and Beomgyu are not, in fact, the only people here and you almost jump. Were it not for Beomgyu’s hand in yours, you might have. As it stands, though, your heart begins to pound as you look out at the sea of faces whose expressions range from astonished to horrified and everything in between. 

It hits you what you’ve just done, then—danced a waltz, the most scandalous dance in polite society, with a man who wasn’t a close relative or even your betrothed fiancé. You knew that when you accepted Beomgyu’s invitation, but somehow, now that it’s over, it all feels so much more real. 

But you trusted him. You trusted Beomgyu to know what the dance was, and to know what it would mean both to you and to the ton. And when you look up at him now, precious hope cradled close to your chest, you wonder if he will do what you have wanted him to since…well, almost since Lord Cho hinted at a question he might ask the next time you were in more private company. 

You wonder if Beomgyu will ask you to marry him. 

It is a small hope. Maybe even a futile one. But though you thought it impossible over the past week, when you first realized you desired it so, now you think that maybe it wasn’t so impossible after all. Not with the way he looked at you when he asked you to dance. Not with how he treated you as he spun you across the floor. Not with the way he looks at you now…

Right?

You look at Beomgyu. He does not look back at you. With his head turned just so, you can’t tell what expression is on his face. For the first time since the end of the dance, true unease prickles your chest. You trusted Beomgyu so completely to be right, to do right, but why won’t he now look at you? Now, when it is most important? 

“Beomgyu?” 

At the sound of his name, he starts. And then he does look at you. But where you expected to see love, trust, that same fire that burnt in his eyes throughout the entire dance, now he just looks…

Blank. 

You swallow hard as dread begins to creep up your spine. “Beomgyu,” you say quietly, hoping your words will jerk him out of whatever daze he’s in. “That was…that was a waltz.”

Some of the clouds clear from his glassy eyes but not in the way you expect. He still looks mostly blank, and a little shaken—panicky, even. He takes a deep breath that rattles around his chest in a way that you’re not sure you like. “So it was,” he says, and the subtle tremble in his words only unsettles you more. 

You dare to glance at the gathered crowd. Even more people are staring now, eyes glued on your figure as mouths whisper behind pastel fans. Your heart beats even faster but not with excitement—instead, you feel like you might throw up. “You’re lucky I had permission to waltz,” you say, forcing a certain lightness into your voice. “What would you have done if I didn’t?”

Apparently this was the wrong thing to say, because Beomgyu looks down at your still-linked hands and immediately lets go. 

A chill travels up your spine. Your hand suddenly feels incredibly cold, even though you felt so warm just minutes ago—the heat of Beomgyu’s palm against yours suddenly ripped away, only the cooling silk of your gloves left to caress your skin. Your fingers curl into each other, nails pinching through silk to bite into your palms as you try to rein in your trembling. 

You expected a witty answer. After all, that’s what Beomgyu is—wit and intellect rolled into one annoyingly handsome person. But the longer you look at him, the longer he says nothing, and the more you begin to realize that you’re waiting for a response he isn’t going to give. 

“Beomgyu?” you ask, voice a little more pleading this time. His face looks pale now, his skin a little clammy, and his eyes, while trained on you, don’t seem to see anything at all. “Beomgyu, is something—” You reach out, touching his hand with the tips of your fingers, and he flinches. 

You drop your arm immediately. “…Is something wrong?” you finish quietly.

Buzzing fills your ears in the silence that follows. The entire room is too bright and your heart has crept into your throat. Beomgyu’s face is becoming blurry in your vision and you really, really hope that doesn’t mean tears are coming. “Beomgyu?” you try one last time. 

He doesn’t answer. Instead, he turns tail and pushes his way out of the room before you can react, almost running in his haste to get away. 

To get away from you. 

You stand there on the ballroom floor, alone, staring at the path he carved through the crowd when he left. He knocked one or two people over but you can hardly hear their grunts of pain over the buzzing in your ears. You’re starting to feel incredibly lightheaded and when you bring a hand up to touch your temple, one finger brushes against your eye and you feel the telltale wetness of tears. 

Damn. You’ve never cried in front of another person before, not to mention the entire ton. 

You look up to find every single person in the room staring right at you, and in that moment, two things hit you very suddenly. 

One. You are in love with Beomgyu Choi. 

Two. He just as good as left you at the altar. 

You suppress a hysterical laugh. As it stands, a strangled noise still manages to leave your lips as you contemplate the irony of it all. This is actually even worse than if he left you at the altar. At least then you would have been betrothed, and the blow to your reputation might have been softened by pity. Right now, though, you’re as good as ruined. A dirt poor, barely titled harlot who seduced an unmarried, unbetrothed gentleman into a waltz, only the most scandalous dance of the decade, and had the nerve to smile after it. 

Well, you certainly aren’t smiling now. 

The humiliation hits you hard and fast and the tears start flowing in earnest despite your attempts to blink them back. You were an idiot to believe Beomgyu could love you, an idiot to think he would ever want you beyond what any other man has ever wanted you for—your face, your beauty. You were an idiot to think anyone could ever want you for more than that. You were a fool, a bloody stupid fool, for thinking you might have been worth sacrificing his reputation for. 

You really trusted him. Trusted him, and his honor, because even when you hated him before you had never seen him act less than gentlemanly around anyone else. He kept your secret. He gave you gloves. You thought you could trust him and you fell in love, even, because of that trust. But now…

Embarrassment burns hot in your throat as you remember asking, practically begging him to be your friend. All because you couldn’t get a single stupid kiss out of your head. All because you held on to a stupid hope. All because you dared to want something more than you ever deserved to have—attachment. Care. Love. 

What an absolute fool you are. Just as your stepmother always said, you will never be worth such things. It was all you could do to try and secure a husband and look at where that got you. 

Desperation is a cruel mistress, and you are just another groveling subject at her feet. 

A choked noise rises from your throat and you clap a hand over your mouth to rein it in. Eyes burning with tears, you cut through the crowd just as Beomgyu did seconds or minutes or hours ago, fleeing into the night. No one follows. 

You find yourself in the Haynesworths’ rose garden. A small stone bench sits in a small clearing. The moon glows brightly overhead. It reminds you far too much of the night you struck a deal with the man who just left you on the ballroom floor. 

You sink to your knees in the grass and cry. 

Reblogs and comments are deeply appreciated! Hope you enjoyed this, and have a lovely day :)

[dresshistorynerd]

I think we can all agree that this is dumb, right? Though the title is highly misleading and the quote marks around "ban" do a lot of work here. These companies just no longer requires actresses to wear structural garments. Still a dumb and bad solution to the problem of badly made costumes.

Couple of my issues with the article:

The purpose of the corset or any other similar structural garment wasn't to reduce waist, but to provide support and shape the silhouette. In the article someone from Netflix commented that they shouldn't promote that women should make their waists smaller, apparently it's "bad optics". And from Neflix the main series where corsets are no longer required is Bridgerton, because one of the main actors had bad time with her stays. But if you take just one quick look at the Regency silhouette you will see the waist is far from reduced. Literally there is no waist. Completely covered. They have been doing something terribly wrong if they have made Regency stays that pinch down the waist. Some actors also seem to think the waist is supposed to be reduced all the time. I remember that one actor in HBO's The Gilded Age complained about the corset, but then in the same breath admitted that she had asked the costumers to make it purposefully a little too small so she could be tight-laced all the time (a practice some fashionable rich Victorian women did for high society events, and definitely not all the time). But beyond the inaccuracies in the article, there is an issue here. Structural garments supported the bust yes, but also in many periods they supported the weight of the dress. In 17th and 18th centuries and Victorian Era the skirts of rich women especially had a lot of heavy fabric which would be hard to deal with and move around with, if all the weight is only on the waist. But with a structural garment it distributes the weight to the whole torso, especially on the hips.

A structural garment needs to be fitted well and worn with with a shift underneath. It absolutely can be uncomfortable, create bruising and restrict breathing, if it's not well fitted. If you have ever used too small jeans that contain no spandex at all, you know how nasty the effects can be on the skin. Especially TV sets often have very little time for creating costumes and they might have just one fitting or at tops two or in worst case scenario none at all, which very easily leads to ill fitting costumes. That is a huge issue with structural garments. I've been making transitional short stays for myself and I have never made a garment like that so I'm still struggling fit it well (it's unfinished), and I can say it's not comfortable when it doesn't fit well. I haven't watched Bridgerton but I have seen couple of screencaps of different scenes with characters wearing stays and no shift to be seen anywhere. I really do hope they actually are wearing shifts when they have the full outfits on and just didn't wear them in these scenes for aesthetics or something. Because, yes, that will absolutely give you bruising, if you wear any type of fitted and structured garment against your skin without any fabric between it and the skin, against which the structural garment can slide against. It would be irresponsible to put your actors in such garments without shifts. I don't blame the actors for complaining about the "corsets", since I can believe they are uncomfortable if they are not well fitted or god forbid if they aren't wearing shifts.

I don't know how many times this needs to be said: corsets are not torture devices. While I don't blame the actors for complaining, reading comments like this kills one brain cell every time: "Women existed in that for such a long time, which does give you a lot of sympathy for that time period and what they were going through. For the first month, I couldn’t breathe." I'm sorry, but women literally did physical labour in corsets. They climbed mountains in corsets. (I have a whole post related to this.) Do these people really think so little of women in the past that, if corsets really were torture devices, they would have just endured them quietly for centuries? Of course the most fashionable clothing in a lot of the periods were uncomfortable and hard to move in, even restrictive, but those were the court gowns and ball gowns the young fashionable elite wore for the special evening occasions to show off to the high society. But does that really differ from today? If you look at the MET galas and stuff, do these actors really claim the outfits are comfortable? The everyday clothing and the clothing of the working class was fairly comfortable, and yes, they all wore corsets.

Yes, you can make properly fitted, comfortable supportive garments for costumes in any production. The proof is in opera. Opera singers wear corsets in a lot of productions. I have read many accounts by opera singers who talk about how their corsets are well fitted and actually makes singing easier, because you can "lean" on the corset (I don't know anything about singing, but that's what I have seen them say). Also they tend to wear those large and heavy period dresses and as alluded earlier moving on them on stage without corset would be very hard. Singing also would be harder as the singers could easily become breathless from moving the heavy dress without using the muscles on the whole body. Operas have much smaller budget than these big tv and movie productions, so there's really zero excuses for making badly fitting corsets.

So yes, it's dumb, it's inaccurate and kinda infuriating. But it's also actually pretty sinister. The issue isn't actors wearing corsets for many hours, that's what people have done for ages and still do in re-enactments, opera etc. The issue is that there's too little time for fitting and sewing the corsets in modern tv and movie production. And this is part of a much broader issue. Costume designers and makes are unionized in Hollywood and for a while now Hollywood studios have tried to cut the amount of unionized behind the scenes labour they employ.

Making profit from a movie or a tv show is not good enough anymore. Now productions that don't "perform as expected" are seen as flops. The production companies make predictions of profit and green light projects they have calculated to make most profit, and if they don't make that high profit, it's a flop and it won't get the planned sequel or the next season. To achieve those high profits they also do everything they can to lower the production costs, and one way is by employing as little unionized labour, to whom you have to pay fair wages, as possible. So costume departments are then very often understaffed and they have way too little time to produce the costumes in proper quality. This can be seen very blatantly in the clear drop in quality of movie costuming during the past couple of decades. So the reducing of structural garments in costumes seems like yet another attempt to reduce unionized labour disguised as feminism.

Obviously the good and smart solution to the problem of uncomfortable structural garments is to hire enough costumers for long enough time so they can have multiple fittings and make them better.

[bethanydelleman]

sorry if this is a stupid question, but I was starting to write a story taking place in the regency era, and wanted to do a sort of cliche governess marries the widowed father of her charge. But I wasn't sure how old I should make the girl. My understanding was that a governess would only be needed until the girl debuted which could be as early as 15. as of now, I made the girl 14, as, due to her father being over protective he wouldn't allow her to debut until she was older anyways, but I wasn't sure how common it was to get a governess that would only be there for a few years. the governess is sort of desperate for a job, so even if its a bad deal, its okay. I also wasn't sure if the girls hadn't debuted if they could go to parties, or if she didn't debut she would still be considered a child and not allowed (including smaller family/friends get togethers). For this last one I'm trying to remember how the youngest sister is treated in sense and sensibility, but cannot recall.

Thirdly, I was curious how odd it would be for a governess to teach horseback riding. From what I was able to understand, it wasn't improper for ladies to learn sidesaddle, but I wasn't sure who would teach them, or how common it was.

sorry to use you as like, a focused google search, but I was having a heck of a time finding anything about the specifics of governesses. Usually it was all vague terms like "Until the daughters came of age"

Happy to help! Keep in mind that most of my help comes from novels from the time period.

If this is set in the Regency, not all girls "came out" at 15, it depended on a number of factors including if they had elder sisters. Jane Austen's heroines are never out before 17, Catherine Morland and Marianne Dashwood being the two youngest. It also depended on a girl's maturity, as everyone thinks the immature Lydia Bennet should not be out (she is 15). I believe Maria and Julia Bertram (Mansfield Park) aren't out until they are 20 and 19 respectively, and Maria says she'll learn from her governess until 17.

As for how long you would employ a governess, in Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë, Agnes is hired by a family with pretty old girls, the eldest being 16 and very near to coming out and the younger 14, but the family both wants and keeps a governess. This was similar to what happened in Anne's real life, by the way. Agnes is not dismissed from that position even after the elder sister marries, she leaves because her father is dying.

Also, if the father is widowed, he might keep the governess for longer if he could afford it. Miss Taylor, Emma's governess in Emma stayed until Emma was 21 and only left because she married. As Emma was the only daughter at home, Miss Taylor transitioned into being her companion and would probably have served as a sort of chaperone despite being unmarried. Men and women did a lot of activities separately, so having a paid "friend" around for your daughter wouldn't be unusual.

As for gatherings, it's likely that daughters are attending small gatherings once they are mature enough to be quiet. Margaret Dashwood is invited to dine at the park, she is 13, in Sense & Sensibility, but she is not invited to London, which would involve large parties. Fanny Price dines at the parsonage in Mansfield Park, which would count as a close friend, but Mary Crawford remains unsure if she is "out". Even the young Middleton children come out after dessert to greet the guests in Sense & Sensibility, though some of the company dislikes this suggesting it's either not common or the children were expected to behave better (they are 8 and under).

I know nothing about who taught horse riding to women. The only lessons in Jane Austen are an uncle for his niece (Fanny Price) and a guy teaching the girl he's attracted to (Edmund Bertram/Mary Crawford). Fanny muses that Mary's brother could have taught her.

Last consideration, I would consider the skills of your governess. If one is being hired for an older girl, she would need more advanced accomplishments. Can she play, draw, and do fancy work? Does she have good references? Is she old enough that it isn't crazy for her to be in charge of a teenager? (Like is she at least 20?)

Here is what Agnes's employer wants:

For the girls she seemed anxious only to render them as superficially attractive and showily accomplished as they could possibly be made, without present trouble or discomfort to themselves; and I was to act accordingly—to study and strive to amuse and oblige, instruct, refine, and polish, with the least possible exertion on their part, and no exercise of authority on mine. With regard to the two boys, it was much the same; only instead of accomplishments, I was to get the greatest possible quantity of Latin grammar and Valpy’s Delectus into their heads, in order to fit them for school—the greatest possible quantity at least without trouble to themselves. John might be a “little high-spirited,” and Charles might be a little “nervous and tedious—”

Agnes Grey, Ch 7

[vanessalocke]

we agree that France lives for the idea of love but what is England's view of it? I'm not talking about feeling undeserving but overall you know?

You mean “Ideal of love”? So i will summarize this post in one quote from a French celebrity:

I don’t know if you mean Arthur’s feelings towards love or Arthur’s feelings towards Francis’ ideal of love. So I’ll answer both.

Arthur, as I said in a few posts before, has a rather pessimistic view of life and doesn’t believe in love, nor does he know how to express his love. For Arthur, marriage or a love relationship is a business, in which he is the boss and he treats his partner as his subordinate. That’s why even though he has many ex-lovers, his previous relationships usually end badly. Most of his ex-lovers initially fall in love with his elegance and toughness but end up being afraid of him. He gives them all the best assets and material things while demanding their absolute obedience and they can never give their personal opinions to Arthur. The only relationship he had that was balanced in power was with Francis, and Francis changed him a lot.

Let me reiterate a little about Francis's ideal of love: as I have written here, the land of love does not mean promiscuity. There is no love in lust - which people often associate with Francis. The "love" that Francis aims for is more universal than love for a certain person. As Albert Camus said in his Nobel Prize speech for literature that the task of a writer is to understand people, not to judge them. As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said that those who suffer are no less noble than soldiers, that they are saints. As Victor Hugo concluded in Les Misérables, "love one another". That is Francis' ideal of love. Sleeping with 14 people in a week is not love, and there is no love in that act.

To Arthur, Francis's ideals were absurd and laughable. "You can't carry the whole world," Arthur told Francis. But it was because of Francis's dream that Arthur was drawn to and respected him. Arthur had always felt that if he were not by Francis' side, Francis would die. That Francis would not die of old age, not of illness due to his irresponsible lifestyle, but would burn in the flames of a revolution, drown saving someone from drowning, die from being shot in a riot, die in prison for insisting that he should be treated like the other prisoners, die of starvation for giving his last piece of bread to a stranger. These visions drove Arthur to despair, and made him feel that it was his responsibility to stay by Francis' side to keep Francis from going too far, so that Francis could die of old age beside him.

In the nationverse, Francis was beheaded during the revolution for refusing to abandon his men and flee to England. That was what haunted Arthur, making Arthur hate this world, because the person he loved the most loved this world and was taken away from him by this world. He did not want this to happen again in the future.

Ps: I recently learned that in the Regency period of England, women sometimes tied red ribbons around their necks to express their condolences for those beheaded during the French Revolution