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jenonctcity · 5 years ago

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Shadows In The Snow

Lee Jeno – Smut/Fluff/Angst

Prince!Au, Royalty!Au

Warnings: Mentions of Anxiety/Panic Attacks, Explicit Sex, Mild Violence, Mentions of Character Death, Mentions of Illness.

Word Count: 20k

(This is NOT part of the Charia Kingdom Series. This is a completely different story and is not related to that series at all.)

An arranged marriage between the Prince of the Northern Kingdom and the Princess of the Southern Kingdom came as a surprise to both of them. Neither of them had wanted the forced marriage, but being under the thumbs of their parents, they both had no choice. The Princess is sent to the Northern Kingdom to live alongside her future husband but is met by a reluctant and cold Prince. Not wanting to know his bride, he’s distant and mean, not caring if she gets offended or upset by his actions. How does he react after a severe turn of events happen? Love or Hatred? Prince Jeno questions everything in his head and comes to a final conclusion about his future.

You could remember the first time you stepped foot into the castle of the Northern Kingdom. The air was warm despite the cold bite of the weather outside, the rooms lit up brightly making the place feel welcoming, and the entrance hall so pristine it was almost glowing. Of course, the palace you grew up in was just as lavish as the palace the Lee family lived in, but it felt like you were stepping into a whole new world. Whereas your home was filled with warm colours to match the humidity and setting of your Southern Kingdom, the interior of the palace in the Northern Kingdom matched the snow that fell from the sky and laid thick on the ground. The only warm colour was that of the candles lit inside lanterns that lined the walls, and the gold that mixed in amongst the white. Not much natural light came through the windows from the flurry of snow that fell from the sky blocking the sun. That was five years ago, and it still felt exactly the same to you, apart from this time you had a gut wrenching feeling of anxiety from the lack of comfort you felt. Before you had been surrounded by royals you didn’t even know the name of, lords and ladies, and people who had a stupid amount of money. This time you only had Mark, a royal servant, as your company. From what you could gather, he was a kind man, and you could only assume he was Prince Jeno’s personal assistant. He was dressed in typical servant attire, his black suit being quite the contrast to the white interior of the halls he walked you down. Before you had been in the palace for a ball. One that would mix the future heirs of the Kingdoms together in hopes of possible alliances and marriages. Now you were walking down the halls of the Kingdom to meet your future husband.

When your father had graced the news upon you that you, the Princess of the South, would be marrying Jeno, the Prince of the North, you’d actually been rather excited. You’d met the Prince once before at a ball his family held in their castle. He’d asked you to dance and before you knew it, he was whisking you around the dance floor at the age of fifteen with his hand in your own. He was very sweet from what you could remember. His boyishly handsome face and adorable eye smile being imprinted in your memory as a crush on him bloomed in your stomach. After the dance, he’d bowed to you and pressed a kiss to the back of your gloved hand. You hadn’t seen him since that night, and now you were nervous for your reunion with the blond Prince. The people of the Northern Kingdom were known to have black hair that stood out amongst the bright snow, however, the royal family all had light coloured hair, it running in the family for generations. You knew this from all the portraits on the walls that had golden plaques highlighting the names of each royal family member. You were brought out of your thoughts by the muffled sound of shouting coming from behind a closed door. Your eyebrows furrowed in curiosity as Mark stopped in front of the door. This led you to believe the aggressive voice behind the oak door was that belonging to Prince Jeno. Mark hesitated, the voice as clear as day, and he didn’t know whether to take you away or to follow the strict instructions he had of taking you to meet the Prince. Your palms started to sweat as you listened to the deep voice.

“I won’t do it. You can’t force me to marry some random girl I’ve never even met!” His voice echoed around the room and into the hall where you stood. You felt a hot flush run through you, and you doubted it was from the warmer clothes you’d been stuffed into upon arriving in the cold kingdom.

“I can and I am.” A softer voice retorted, not sounding at all phased by the argument at hand. “You have met her.”

“Well obviously she isn’t that special since I can’t remember her.” The voice growled before a thud of wood hitting the marble floor sounded.

“Stop acting like a child and take on the responsibilities of a Prince. You’re an adult now Jeno and you better start acting like it.” You looked down at your feet, refusing to look up at Mark as you felt embarrassed from hearing all of this. Sadness flooded your body; all the excitement having been drained from you upon hearing the argument between the Prince and what you could only assume was the King.

“Fuck. You.” The deep voice growled before the sound of skin slapping skin echoed through the room, a dead silence followed that. Mark was frozen on the spot, not wanting to interrupt but feeling guilty for listening in. You felt bad for the young servant. He was clearly stuck between a rock and a hard place.

“Don’t you dare speak to your father like that ever again Jeno.” A soft but stern voice of a woman piped up.

“I’m sorry Princess, I didn’t mean for you to hear that.” Mark whispered and when no one spoke from behind the door, Mark used this as an opportunity to knock on the door. You bowed your head to him and tried your best to plaster on a fake smile despite the heartache you were feeling beneath.

“Come in.” The woman’s voice spoke, and Mark opened the door.

“Your majesties,” He bowed to the King and Queen, then turned to Prince Jeno. “Your highness,” He bowed to him and then cleared his throat. “Princess (Y/N) of the Southern Kingdom has arrived.” He stepped out of the way to reveal your nervous figure. You bowed to them and continued to keep your fake smile on your face. You glanced over at Prince Jeno timidly. The first thing you noticed was the bright red mark on his cheek from where he’d been struck by the Queen. Then you noticed the hard look on his face. He looked at you like he wanted you to tumble to your death off of a cliff, like you meant absolutely nothing to him. You also noticed how handsome he’d grown to be. He had deep eyes that you wanted to get lost in but stopped yourself from doing, his strong jaw making his cold expression look even more severe and his pink lips forming a hard line. He was wearing his white and gold uniform, you thought he probably had to be forced into it due to his reluctance to fulfil his Princely duty of marrying you. He had also grown a lot since the last time you saw him, his now tall frame looking daunting to you as his broad shoulders were clearly tensed up. His blond hair was parted off of his forehead and he had a crown perched on top of his head. Your smile faltered and you averted your gaze quickly, then noticing the chair that was upturned on the floor. That must have been the wooden noise you’d heard clattering from behind the door.

“Welcome my dear!” The Queen smiled a wide smile quickly, approaching you with her arms out. When she got to you, she cupped your cheeks and looked into your eyes. She didn’t say anything, but she could tell by the wateriness of them that you’d heard everything that had just been said. “Did you have a safe journey?” She tried to distract you and lift your spirits, her stomach fluttering in guilt at her son’s behaviour. She looked at your long-sleeved dress that went down to your feet. The thick, red material being a symbol of your Kingdom’s red flag. “Are you warm enough? I know how much different it must be from the heat of your Kingdom.”

“Yes, your majesty.” You spoke quietly and gave her a weak smile. She let go of your cheeks and instead took your hand into one of her own.

“Let me introduce you to my family.” You’d never met the King and Queen before, but you’d seen them from afar those many years ago when you’d attended the ball they held at their palace. They both hadn’t aged a day from what you could remember, their faces looking youthful with slight age marks around their eyes. The Queen was probably one of the most beautiful women you’d ever laid eyes on. You felt like dirt compared to her and tried to push back the self-conscious feeling you felt. She had long blonde hair that was dead straight and stopped at her waist, two braids met in the middle of her head to keep her hair out of her face and the golden crown she had on top of her head gave her an ethereal look. You knew that she was too in your position once, but you doubted it went down the same way as it was in that moment. You wondered if she was chosen to marry the King because of her blonde hair, assuming the Royal family wanted to keep up the gene of them all being light haired. Gazing at the Queen made you long for your own mother, the Queen of the Southern Kingdom. You gulped back the lump in your throat and looked at the King as she introduced him.

“This is my husband, the King of the Northern Kingdom.” He bowed his head to you and gave you a genuine smile that reached his eyes. You couldn’t help but notice how much his son looked like him, they had the same face shape and nose, but the Prince had his mother’s lips and eyes. Together the two had made the most beautiful offspring.

“It’s a pleasure to have you in our home, I hope you feel welcome here and I’m happy to welcome you into the family.” His words felt sincere, but you didn’t feel welcome at all, at least not from the Prince. The King and Queen were doing a good job at making you feel comfortable though and it made you wonder how to lovely people such as themselves produced such a cold son.

“And this is our son, Prince Jeno.” She smiled, giving him a wide-eyed look that told him he was going to regret acting up in front of you. He let out a long sigh and bowed to you even though he looked reluctant to do so. “I wish you both good health and fortune in your upcoming marriage.” They both bowed once more before leaving you alone with the Prince in the sitting room you’d been brought to. Jeno let out a sigh and looked at Mark.

“Take the Princess to her chambers.” When Mark hesitated for a moment, clearly having been instructed by someone else to do something different, Jeno raised his voice. “Now!”

“Right this way your highness.” Mark exited the room quickly. You gave Jeno one last look, your heart pounding in disappointment as you looked at him. He turned his back to you and his shoulders stayed rigid until he heard the door shut behind him. You trailed after Mark through the daunting halls of the unfamiliar palace, feeling nauseous for your next meeting with the hostile Prince.

---

You tried to think of many ways to get out of going to dinner with your fiancé. However, as you sat on your larger than needed bed, you couldn’t think of any good excuses that would excuse you from meeting with the Prince. A maid had knocked on your door, waiting for your response before letting herself in. She told you it was time for you to get ready for your dinner, and she’d presented you with a baby blue and gold dress. The baby blue material was made from the finest of silk, with gold coloured lace adorning the top portion of the long-sleeved garment. The skirt came down to your ankles, and you’d been given a pair of matching blue heels to wear. The maid had then brushed out your long hair and plaited it, so the thick plait fell over your right shoulder. When you looked into the gold framed body length mirror, you couldn’t help but think about how innocent you looked. Your eyes were no longer red from the sobbing you’d done after Mark had left you alone in your new bedroom, but they still felt heavy and itchy.

“The Prince will be so shocked when he sees how beautiful you look your highness.” The sweet maid smiled at you from where she stood behind you. You caught her eye in the mirror and gave her a weak smile.

“What’s your name?” You asked in a quiet voice, feeling the comfort of her voice seep into you.

“My name is Nayeon, Princess (Y/N).” She kept up formalities as she bowed her head to you, the grandfather clock in the corner of your room chimed, signifying the turn of the hour. “Oh, it’s time to head down to dinner. You’ll be dining with Prince Jeno in his private dining area.”

“Will it just be the two of us?” You asked meekly, your hands clasped together as you played with your fingers in nervousness.

“Yes, your highness, now if you’d like to follow me.” You hesitated for a second before you followed her. She took you down the wide hall and you noticed that the temperature had dropped since the sun had gone down, making a light chill cascade up your spine, with the only light available coming from the lit lanterns flickering on the wall. She guided you around a corner and down one more hall before stopping in front of an open door. “Just through there, your dinner will be served soon.” She smiled and motioned for you to enter the room with your hand. You timidly took a step into the room, it looking like a typical dining room for a royal with a dark oak table in the centre, two chairs opposite each other on either side. A lit candle was on the middle of the table, in between two beautifully decorated plates. You then noticed Prince Jeno stood beside the table, he stood up straighter as you entered the room and bowed to you. You returned the bow, opening your mouth to speak but not really knowing what to say to him.

“Sit.” He pulled out one of the chairs and motioned with his head for you to sit. You hurried to take a seat, not wanting him to get mad at you like he had previously shown earlier on in the day.

“Thank you.” You spoke quietly, placing your hands in your lap and keeping your posture straight as you watched him sit in the chair opposite you. You let out a gentle sigh, averting your eyes and glancing around the room at the décor. He made no effort to start up a conversation with you, and you had no idea what you could possibly say to the Prince that would make him want to talk to you. Dinner was served and Jeno barely even looked at you. The silence made you feel sick and you hardly touched your food. He noticed, but he didn’t care. If you wanted to starve yourself then that was your problem, not his.

You left the dining room feeling dejected and sad. Nayeon took you back to your room and pretended as if she didn’t know that the Prince had hardly spoken with you, keeping a gentle smile on her face. She helped you get ready for bed, and then left you on your own with nothing but the light of the moon shining through the gap in the curtains. You sat on your bed, looking up at the ceiling as tears flooded your vision. You let out a long sigh, trying to contain your emotions as a wave of homesickness came over you. It was no use, because tears streamed from your eyes the second you thought about your parents. In a way you knew you should feel resentful of them for sending you away to a kingdom you didn’t really know to marry someone you’d only met once, but you knew they only did it because they had to. Your kingdom had been met by a financial crisis, and the first thing the royal advisors told your parents to do was to marry you off to a Prince from a financially stable kingdom. Obviously, your parents went to the richest kingdom out of the four kingdoms in your country. The Northern kingdom was best known for cold weather and its army, it had a reputation of being the saviour when it comes to wars with other countries across the sea. During wars, all four kingdoms banded together, and it was always after the army from the North got to the battle that it would end up being won. The Eastern kingdom was known for its rainy weather and the luscious fruit and vegetables that it produced. Food from the Eastern kingdom could be found in any of the four kingdoms as it was a highly traded good. The Western kingdom best known for its fishing and fashion; those being traded amongst the kingdoms for such a low price that the demand for the products kept the economy running. And your kingdom, the Southern kingdom, was known for its high population and poverty. It’s not something you were proud of, but the people in control were trying their hardest to get rid of the people living on the streets and give them a roof over their heads. Especially as your country had blistering heat almost all year round. You didn’t even want to think of the people who died from the exposure to the sun. But due to the financial crisis, this wasn’t achievable, so when your parents came to you about the arranged marriage, you didn’t kick up a fuss about it and instead decided to think of the positives, which led to you actually being excited about the marriage. Now though, you just wanted to go home.

---

A whole week of being ignored by the Prince had done nothing to lift your spirits. Well he hadn’t ignored you, but you wouldn’t class irritated looks of disgust over dinner every night to be polite. It really seemed to you like he hated you, and it felt like a knife being twisted in your stomach every time Nayeon would come to your room to collect you for a meal with your future spouse. The only time you could remember smiling and feeling genuinely happy was when the Queen had summoned you for lunch one afternoon. She’d made you feel welcome and tried her hardest not to talk about her son, instead asking you about your life and recommending things for you to do in the palace in your free time. Apart from that, you just counted down the days until your marriage whilst you strolled around the palace absentmindedly.

On Friday, you’d been dressed up in a pale pink gown. You’d gotten used to the long sleeves and heavy materials over the past week, nearly all of your new clothes being suited for the cold weather outside. You were glad though, because you still found yourself getting cold even under all the cloth you had draped over your body. Your hair had been pinned in a half up, half down style, the section that was up having been plaited into a bun. You felt pretty, which gave you a small burning of positivity in your gut. At midday, you’d been taken to the main dining hall. It was much larger than the intimate one you’d been eating with the Prince in, and you’d much prefer to have dinner with him in there from now on. Your eyes laid on a young man. He had a wide smile and black hair, his navy blue and white uniform telling you that he was of royal blood. You recognised the crest on his badge to be that of the Western kingdom. Sat at the table and not moving was Prince Jeno, he watched as the other handsome man approached you.

“Princess (Y/N), it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Prince Jaemin of the Western kingdom.” He bowed to you, holding his hand out for you to place yours in kiss. When you did, he brought your hand up and placed a soft kiss to the back of it. Your heart fluttered and a small smile rose on your lips. You’d known Prince Jaemin for a total of 30 seconds and he’d already shown you more affection and kindness than your own fiancé. You glanced at Jeno to see if he’d reacted to seeing another man kiss his fiancées hand, but he just watched you both with a blank look on his face. You bowed back and he didn’t let go of your hand, gently pulling you over to the table. He pulled your chair out for you and you sat down, sitting directly opposite to Jeno. Jaemin sat beside you and cleared his throat. “So, are you enjoying the North (Y/N)?” He asked, looking at you with a cute smile on his face. Where Jeno looked intimidatingly handsome, Jaemin looked the kind of handsome that had all the girls cooing over him, his smile being his killer feature.

“Oh, yes I am.” You lied with a fake smile on your face. “I can’t say that I love the weather, but everyone has made me feel so welcome.” You put emphasis on the word ‘everyone’, shooting Jeno a smile as you directed that at him. He narrowed his eyes at you and smirked in retaliation. His smirk put a horrid feeling in your stomach, because that confirmed to you that Jeno knew exactly how he was acting towards you, and that he couldn’t find it within him to care.

“That’s great!” As you spoke with Jaemin, the servants brought out the food, setting down steaming plates in front of all three of you. You sipped at your wine and listened to Jaemin as he went off on a tangent about marriage. You noticed that throughout the meal Jeno had flagged down the nearest maid multiple times to refill his glass of wine.

“May I ask what brought you here today Jaemin?” You asked when he’d finally taken a moment to stop talking and to eat instead. He swallowed his food and looked at Jeno before looking back at you. He was about to answer when Jeno spoke up first.

“He visits once a month.” His voice was deep and held little emotion.

“Oh, may I ask why?” You asked Jaemin despite it having been Jeno that gave you an answer.

“Our mothers are sisters, when his mother comes to visit my mother, she brings him with her.” Jeno was the one to answer you yet again. This is the most conversation you’d gotten out of him since you arrived, and it was a bittersweet moment for you. On one hand you were happy that he was actually talking to you, and on the other hand you were devastated that he sounded so emotionless.

“So basically, we’re cousins.” Jaemin nodded and smiled, taking a sip of his own wine. “He’s older by a few months.”

“That’s lovely.” You gave Jaemin a genuine smile and you could see that he really looks up to Jeno, despite the small age gap.

“Not as lovely as you Princess.” Jaemin winked at you and sipped at his wine again. You felt your cheeks flush and you shot a glance to Jeno who had one eyebrow raised, but apart from that, he didn’t look like he cared. “I must say, I am rather envious of my cousin for being the one to marry you, but I wish you happiness.” You almost begged Jaemin to take you away from this kingdom and to take you home with him, but you knew it wouldn’t make much difference and would only make things worse for you in the long run. “But you know where the Western kingdom is.” He winked at you. Jeno cleared his throat as a warning but Jaemin didn’t seem phased at all.

---

Jaemin’s visit two weeks ago had seemed like a lifetime ago, and you wished the handsome boy would come more often so you had something to look forward to. Jeno hadn’t spoken to you much, which you were getting used to. It made you wonder if this is how he was going to treat you even after you were married and with children. You hoped not, that was enough to make anyone go insane. It became too much for you one morning, and after sitting through breakfast on your own in the large dining room, you decided to make an effort with the Prince. Walking down the east wing of the palace that would take you straight to the Prince’s chambers, you passed Mark who had a smile on his face the moment he saw you.

“Good morning your Highness.” He bowed to you, expecting you to just bow and continue walking but you stopped, holding your hand out to him to stop him too.

“Good morning, do you happen to know where the Prince is?”

“Oh yes, I believe he’s just finished his breakfast and he’s relaxing in his bedroom. Would you like me to take you to him?”

“No that won’t be necessary, thank you Mark.” You bowed your head to him. He bowed in return and bid you goodbye. You walked towards the Prince’s bedroom and stopped in front of his door. You took in a deep breath and gingerly knocked on the door, regretting it almost immediately as all your courage drained from you.

“Come in.” The Prince’s voice called through the door. You noticed that his tone was light and airy, not like anything you’d ever heard from him since every time you’re in his presence he’s hostile and blunt. As you entered the room, you saw him look up to see who it was. His face fell when he saw you stood timidly in the doorway; his eyes boring into yours for a moment before he turned to look away once more. “What do you want?” his voice was no longer airy and light, his tone more resembling daggers stabbing at you with the intent to harm.

“I wish to get to know you better. We are going to marry after all.” You tried to hold a tone of confidence, but you were afraid you sounded like a nervous child about to tell their mother they’d wet the bed.

“I’m busy.” He grunted, not even sparing you a glance.

“Doing what might I ask?” You walked into his room, nerves flooding your body with such unease that you could feel it in your toes and fingertips. He slowly turned to look at you and narrowed his eyes, clearly not liking how you questioned him.

“Fine. Let’s spend time together.” He stood up, his chair skidding across the marble floor with an ear tingling screech. He snatched your wrist into his hand and pulled you harshly out of the room. The grip he had on you was hurting, but you decided not to say anything as he dragged you through the castle. You struggled to keep up with him, having to alternate between jogging and walking fast so that you didn’t fall. He pulled you outside into the freezing wind and let go of you. Your arms automatically wrapped around your body, goose bumps rising on your body as the long-sleeved dress you wore did nothing to protect you from the wind. Flurries of snow hit you as the sky coughed out the snow in sparse gusts. “Go stand over there by that tree.” He commanded you, pointing at a tree that had a large trunk. You gulped but obeyed him, not wanting to make him mad, but you were very confused as to why he had instructed you to do so. You trudged through the snow and stood with your back to the tree, your body shivering from the chill. He went over to a small wooden shed nearby and pulled out a bow. Your eyes widened as he grabbed 3 arrows and stood parallel to you, about 20 feet away.

“What are you doing?” You questioned as he loaded the bow with an arrow, standing with two feet apart and his left side facing you.

“Spending quality time with my fiancée! You’re helping me practice my archery!” He gave you a wide smile, but you could see the sinister look behind his eyes even from far away. “Now stand very still, don’t worry my love, I am very good at this.” He winked at you and your stomach plummeted through the snow.

‘He’s going to kill me so he doesn’t have to marry me.’ You thought to yourself as he pulled back the string, closing one of his eyes as he aimed at you. You didn’t think that the shivers you were experiencing were from the cold anymore, but from the paralysing fright you were undergoing. You couldn’t move, your feet feeling anchored to the floor like a one of the criminals they locked away in the dungeons. Jeno smirked to himself when he saw you squeeze your eyes shut, letting go of the string and sending an arrow flying towards you. It hit where he had aimed it for perfectly, and it stuck into the bark of the tree an inch above your head. You let out a whimper and flinched as you heard the ear-splitting crack of the wood above you, your heart pounding in your chest and your breathing becoming too quick for you to control.

You were having a panic attack. Something you hadn’t had in a long time. As a child you were riddled with anxiety after one of your nanny’s had told you a story of a princess being kidnapped from her home. You lived under the constant fear that bad people were going to break into your chambers and steal you in the dead of night, using the guise of the dark to get away with it. Needless to say, once your mother and father found out why you were suffering from constant anxiety attacks and would flinch whenever anyone approached you, they had banished that nanny from the castle. After months of therapy, you had found your life much easier to cope with and your parents had assigned guards to be with you and stationed outside of your door every night. You grew out of it by the time you were a teenager. But this was bringing back all the feelings you’d been able to push aside for so long, and you felt like a child once more, cowering at the thought of being killed by a stranger. Jeno loaded another arrow into his bow and aimed it at you, pausing once he saw you let out a sob, your frame hunched over and arms wrapped around yourself.

“Shit.” He mumbled, knowing he’d taken his little joke too far. He was one of the best archers in the kingdom, so he knew his arrow wouldn’t hit you. But you didn’t know that, and in your mind, he had every reason to want you dead. He lowered his bow and gulped, throwing it to the floor and running through the snow to you. “Open your eyes.” He grunted, placing his big hands on your shoulders and giving you a firm shake. You couldn’t breathe. It felt like his arrow had hit you in the throat and punctured your windpipe, the air not successfully inflating your lungs and your head feeling like someone was crushing it with their hands. “Hey!”

“D-don’t k-k-kill me.” You stuttered out, your lungs gasping for air as your throat gave it restricted access to small puffs of oxygen. Jeno was taken aback by your words. Standing frozen in the snow with his eyes watching you have a meltdown in front of him. He snapped out of his daze and gulped down his guilt, sighing like you were a nuisance as he scooped you up into his arms. You whimpered as he touched you, your body going completely stiff in his grasp as he trudged through the snow, carrying you like you weighed nothing.

“I won’t hurt you.” He mumbled, taking you inside and setting you down on a lavish chair that was in the corner of the hallway beside a small round table that held fresh flowers in a beautifully painted white and blue vase. He kneeled down on one knee so that he was facing you. “Breathe…” His voice was uncharacteristically soft, and he took one of your hands into both of his. You looked at him, your eyes bloodshot and your cheeks freezing cold from where the winter air had hit the tear tracks on your skin. You hadn’t seen him this close since you were fifteen and had been dancing with him at the ball. He was beautiful. His straight nose, his deep brown eyes, his very slightly plump but very pink lips and his strong jawline had you distracted from the internal panic you felt. Your breathing slowly steadied as he kept his stare on you, looking you dead in the eyes as he studied you. His thumb stroked the back of your hand, and you gulped down the lump in your throat as you looked at him. You bottom lip wobbled and one tear fell from your eye as your brain came back around to its normal state. “Are you alright?” He asked, slowly withdrawing his hands from your own. You nodded in response, not trusting your vocal cords to answer him. He stood up, and with a curt nod of his head he hurried off down the hall of the castle, leaving you alone in the chair he’d sat you in. Not long after Jeno’s retreat, Mark came running down the hallway with a panicked look on his face.

“Princess!” You knew that Jeno had recruited Mark to go see if you were okay. It hurt you that Jeno couldn’t even bare to be with you that much that he couldn’t stick around and be with you himself, instead he sent his servant. Mark kept asking you questions and trying to gain your attention, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care about what he was saying. He timidly helped you up to your feet and took you to your bedroom, checking on your every hour to make sure you were feeling okay. You weren’t.

---

It had been three and a half weeks of your dearly beloved Prince Jeno doing his finest effort to avoid you. You had briefly seen him during a dinner that the King and Queen both required your attendance for. You sat opposite each other and he refused to meet your eye, his attention on his mother most of the night and it seemed as though he was ignoring his own father as well. Although you had no idea why he would do that to the King. But you didn’t want to ask to find out. He spoke to his mother and even sat beside her, seeming almost as if he was being clingy with her like you’d expect a 5-year-old mummy’s boy to be. She played up to his whims and always responded to him like a loving mother, even going as far to pat his cheek at one point when he shot her a small pout at something his father had said. The whole scene didn’t look very Queen and Prince like, more mother and son like. But because the dinner wasn’t official business you assumed that they didn’t care. It was now obvious to you that the slap she’d struck Jeno with on your first day in the castle was a very rare occurrence.

You had spent a few afternoons with the Queen, getting to know her and learning how to do your official duties as the upcoming Princess and Queen of the Northern Kingdom. She was a very gentle soul and you always felt comfortable around her. As for the King, you didn’t really see him much unless it was in passing or that one time during your dinner with the royal family. Nayeon went missing for a week, and Mark had told you that she was on leave for those 7 days just to visit her family, but that she would be back again in no time. So for that week you had no one to keep you company, which saddened you deeply and left you wallowing in your loneliness as if you were being punished like a criminal on trial for manslaughter.

When Nayeon came back she made sure to spend a lot of time with you to make up for her absence. She made you tea every night before you slept, and she would tell you stories that her family had embarked on. Your favourite story of hers was the one about her father going into war when she was a child. Her father had been in the Northern army and had fought along many men, old and young, in an attempt to stop the four Kingdoms being invaded by the Country of Hacin across the seas. You remembered being very young when armies from all four Kingdoms banded together to fight off the incoming threat. The war had started after your parents refused to set you up for an arranged marriage with Prince Renjun of Hacin. They didn’t want you to be in a different country, so they refused the offer presented to them. Which the King and Queen of Hacin didn’t like. Causing them to declare war. It was mostly the Western Kingdom that got the brunt of the war, as they were the Kingdom parallel to Hacin across the sea. The troops made their way to the Western Kingdom and fought against the threat, but it wasn’t until the Northern Kingdom joined that the war finally came to an end. You had heard that thousands of men had lost their lives in battle, and you were eternally grateful to them all. Nayeon’s father was one of the men who never made it home to their families, and that’s the reason why it was your favourite story of hers. Because you could see the pain in her eyes and her strained tone in her voice as she tried to hold back her tears, and it made you feel grateful for the life you’d been given. You had made sure that Nayeon knew how you felt towards the war and she could tell that you were grateful for her father’s sacrifice.

A few days ago you started to feel really hot, despite the chill drifting in like a haze into your room through the open window. The curtains billowing from the slight breeze the cold winters air presented the Kingdom with. You shouldn’t shake the burning feeling that you had sitting inside of you like a furnace with an unlimited supply of coal. It caused unwanted sweat to bead on your skin and your lungs to speed up in attempt to cool yourself down. It was night-time so you knew most of the staff would be asleep or busy doing their own chores. You gripped onto the sheets of your bed and squeezed your eyes shut as a wave of nausea flushed through you and made you feel on the verge of throwing up. You gritted your teeth and stood up, involuntarily bending and gripping at your stomach as the unbearable sense of sickness stabbed at your gut. You whimpered, a sob falling from your lips as your knees buckled, your body hitting the floor with a dull thud. Externally you felt numb, the tips of your fingertips having no feeling and your body crashing to the floor didn’t bother you. Internally though you felt like you were going to die a slow death. You tried to steady you breathing, but you couldn’t, nothing but choked sobs falling from your lips as you gently blacked out.

---

The sun shining on the white snow was causing Jeno to squint as he drank his morning tea. His mother was accompanying him during breakfast, and they sat peacefully inside of her personal dining room. The floor to ceiling length windows allowing the hot sun to hit his skin and leave behind a warm feeling. It was a rare day of no clouds or falling snow, which always had Jeno waking up in a good mood.

“Jeno, my dear…” The Queen sipped at her tea and delicately dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. “You should be having breakfast with (Y/N), not with me.” She gave him a soft smile and let out a laugh when he sighed, immediately popping food into his mouth with his fork in an attempt to delay his response. “She is a lovely girl, and I know you don’t want to marry her. But avoiding her isn’t going to do either of you any good in the long run.” Jeno chewed his food slowly and gulped it down, sighing once more before nodding.

“I know mother.”

“Is that all you have to say?” She tilted her head, furrowing her eyebrows and rolling her eyes.

“No, I-” He was interrupted by the doors to the room flying open, Mark stood in the doorway, out of breath from where he had been running.

“Your Majesty, your Highness, you have to come quickly!” He gulped watching as the mother and son both stared at him in confusion. The Queen slowly rose from her seat but Jeno stayed where he was sat.

“What is it Mark?” She asked, approaching him quickly.

“It’s Princess (Y/N), we found her on the floor of her room about ten minutes ago. She was breathing but she was unresponsive. The Doctor is looking at her now.” Mark spoke so quickly that Jeno almost couldn’t understand what he was saying. He widened his eyes and stood up quickly. He then paused, and slowly sat back down in his chair. He coughed awkwardly and bowed his head once to Mark.

“Make sure she gets the best care. Keep me updated.” His voice held no emotion, and Mark knew that the Prince wasn’t going to be following him anytime soon. The Queen frowned at her son, but instead of chastising him, she quickly followed Mark.

Jeno sat at the dining table and pushed his plate away from him. He felt sick with worry that something bad was going to happen to you, but he couldn’t bring himself to face you. He was still holding guilt from the stunt he had pulled with you but didn’t want it to seem like he cared too much about you. He let out a sigh and rubbed his hands over his face in frustration, unsure of what to do.

---

The anticipation had killed Jeno over the day that he avoided everyone in hopes of not having any updates about you. Every time he heard footsteps approaching his bedroom, he made himself busy and refused to let anybody in, acting as if his work was more important than you. He hadn’t had a chance to take a step back and gather up all of his thoughts and feelings towards you. He was conflicted. On one hand, you were probably one of the most beautiful humans he had ever laid eyes on, and you had a very sweet personality to go with your sweet looks. But on the other hand, he did not want to get married yet, he also didn’t know you that well and because of his stubborn nature, he didn’t want to get to know you purely out of spite at his forced marriage.

The next morning, Jeno went about his day as normal, eating breakfast and then making his way to the palace courtyard to practice his archery. When he made it to the doors without bumping into anyone of significance, he metaphorically gave himself a pat on the back. Until Mark approached him from behind.

“Your Highness,” Mark spoke up, causing Jeno to jolt in surprise at the sudden chirp of Mark’s voice. Mark had always been silently stealthy and was almost a professional at silently making his way around the palace. “Sorry to interrupt, but you told me to keep you updated on Princess (Y/N).” Jeno turned around and let out an irritated sigh, nodding his head at Mark.

“Go on.” His voice was gruff, and he rolled his eyes. Mark took a deep breath, giving Jeno eyes that were full of pity.

“The Doctor has diagnosed her with the Macetipis Virus…” Jeno felt like a surge of heat rush through him at Mark’s words. His throat created a lump of emotion that made him feel uncomfortable and he had to look away from Mark to keep his cool. “She has all the symptoms, a high temperature, she keeps floating in and out of consciousness, and she keeps throwing up a yellow liquid.”

“I know the symptoms Mark.” He growled, storming off down the hall without giving Mark another look. He made his way to your bedroom, not bothering with knocking as he let himself straight into the room. Nayeon looked up at him with a wide-eyed look as she set down a steaming cup of tea on your bedside table. She immediately bowed and cleared her throat awkwardly. “Out.” Jeno grunted. She complied immediately and left the room without another word. Jeno gulped when he saw you tucked up in your bed, your eyes closed, and head lolled slightly to the side. Tears gathered in his eyes as he looked at you, feeling a horrid guilt at how he’d treated you as he stared at your limp body.

He sat down on your bed, taking one of your cold hands into both of his. He lifted it up to his lips and laid a gentle kiss to the back of your hand, a tear falling down his cheek as in that moment, he absolutely hated himself. You were going to die. He was sure of it. The last person he saw with the Macetipis Virus didn’t last longer than a week before she took her final breath and died peacefully in her sleep. He was sure his sister was going to live, but she didn’t. And at the age of thirteen he watched her slowly wither away before him even though the doctor had told the family that it was possible to overcome the disease. She was only ten years old, and she had her whole life ahead of her. Jeno had always promised her that when he became King that no one would ever harm her, and she could live her life as a beautiful Princess wherever she wanted to be, without having to worry about an arranged marriage. Now he couldn’t fulfil that promise because her little life was cut short, all because of the virus that was unavoidable. It wasn’t contagious, and so far, no one had figured out how people became ill with it. There had been no cases of males having the virus, so it was assumed that only females could contract it. Jeno knew this, that’s why he wasn’t worried about being by your side during this even if it wasn’t supposed to be contagious.

“I’m sorry.” He whispered, stroking the back of your hand with his thumb. “You didn’t deserve how I’ve been treating you…I should have realised that you’re in the same boat as me and you’re going through an unwanted marriage as well.” He gulped, keeping his voice in a low whisper so that no one outside of your room could hear you. “Now you’re probably going to die, and you’ll have died unhappy and I am so sorry Princess.” The lump in his throat started to burn, but he didn’t care. He sat by your side all day, ordering anyone that entered your room to leave. He left around mid-evening to eat some dinner. You hadn’t woken up at all throughout the day, much to Jeno’s dismay. He wanted nothing more than for you to open your eyes so he could voice to you how sorry he was with you actually being able to hear him.

---

“What the fuck do you mean the wedding is being pushed back?” Jeno growled in a low tone, his teeth gritted, and his fists clenched. He had a surge of anger flush through him and he could feel his hands start to shake in aggression.

“Well Your Highness, Princess (Y/N) is very s-”

“I know that she’s sick.” He snapped; the poor servant stood opposite him flinching in fear. “Who made this decision? Tell me!”

“T-the King and Queen.” The servant gulped but visibly relaxed when Jeno stormed off down the hall, making his way to the throne room where he knew his mother and father were. He wasn’t subtle as he burst through the wooden doors to the throne room, completely ignoring the small crowd of people and storming up the royal red carpet to his parents who were both sat on their respected thrones.

“You pushed back our wedding?!” He shouted, his legs moving fast in his haste. He stopped in front of his parents, a scowl marred on his face and his shoulders rising and falling as he tried to catch his breath. “She’s going to fucking die any day now and you want her to die an unmarried woman?!” Jeno’s voice got louder, his anger evident to the people who brought him into the world. Everyone in the room was dead silent as they listened to the distressed Prince. The King frowned at him, shaking his head and rolling his eyes.

“Jeno calm down.” His father spoke with a stern voice, sitting up straighter on his golden throne and looking down his nose at his son.

“NO!” Jeno stepped closer, running a hand through his thick blond hair in frustration. “You know how frowned up it is to die an unmarried woman, and you want that to happen to her?!” He gulped, tears filling his eyes as he flicked his eyes over to his mother. “Mother…she doesn’t deserve this…” He knew the Queen would be the one to pity him and end up giving him what he wanted, like she had most of his life. “Please.”

“Jeno, she can hardly hold her own head up. She can’t marry someone in the state that she’s in.” Her voice was soft, and she gave him a look that shows how much pity she felt for him.

“It’s been three days and they’ve told me that the keeps waking up, she can do it!”

“No.” The King spoke again, shutting Jeno off and causing the young Prince to let his emotions get the best of him. His face crinkled up as he started to sob. He felt embarrassed at his crying so he covered his face with his hands. The King rolled his eyes and let out a sigh. “Don’t even try to turn the water works on, your mother isn’t going to give in.” They were both used to Jeno turning on his emotions to make his mother give him what he wanted, and the King assumed that what he was doing this time. This made Jeno angry again, ripping his hands away from his face and staring at his father once more.

“Go to hell.” He turned around and ran out of the room, not bothering to look back as his mother called for him. He ran until he reached his own room, knowing he needed to gather his thoughts and calm himself down before he visited you for the day.

He left it an hour before he collected a small bunch of bright yellow flowers from the palaces inside garden, letting himself into your room and coming to a dead stop when he saw your eyes staring back at him. This was the first time he’d been around to witness your consciousness, only having heard about it from Nayeon.

“Jeno?” Your voice was raspy and barely audible from where you laid in your bed. Jeno gulped, approaching you slowly with a slight hesitance in his heart. He felt like your eyes were piercing through him, making his insides tighten and his throat close up.

“How are you feeling?” He asked the first thing that came to his mind as he gently set the bunch of flowers into an empty vase on your bedside table.

“Bad.” You whispered out, unsure of how to communicate with the man who had only ever shown hostility towards you. If you didn’t have the horrible sense of nausea swimming inside of your stomach, you probably would have felt butterflies of anxiety take flight. He timidly sat on the edge of your bed, awkwardly grasping his own hands before letting out a sigh.

“I want to apologise to you for how I treated you.” You watched him from where you laid, your eyes nervously darting around the room when he stared you dead in the eye. “You’re a Princess, and you didn’t deserve to be on the receiving end of my immaturity.” He reached out and took your hand in his own, lifting it to his lips and pressing a lingering kiss to your cold skin. “I’m so sorry.”

“Jeno.” You used all the strength you had to try and sit up, but you couldn’t quite muster it. Jeno let go of your hand when he saw that you wanted to be more upright, placing his hands underneath you to lift you up against the pillows. He grabbed the cup of tea that was still lukewarm to the touch and raised it to your lips. You sipped the tea and cleared your throat, feeling a sort of relief at the liquid at it slid down your throat. “It’s okay, I forgive you.” You spoke in a soft manor, shocked at the sight of the hard-headed Prince being apologetic to you. You’d never seen this warm-hearted side of the Prince, and you wanted to cry your heart out at how sweet he was being.

“They pushed our wedding back…but I promise you, when you recover, we will have the biggest wedding in all of history.” His encouraging smile made you let out a whimper of a giggle, your throat still feeling groggy and not allowing you to make all the noises you wanted to. “And I will be the best husband I can be. But until then, you need to get better, so that I can take you on some dates.” He chuckled, ignoring the tears that came to his eyes as he had it in his mind that you weren’t going to survive.

“Tell me about the dates.” You closed your eyes when a burning sensation ran down your oesophagus, causing you to wince as a rush of nausea hit you in the gut once more.

“Okay well I don’t know if you’ve been to the inside gardens yet, but I want to have afternoon tea there with you. It’s beautiful, there’s an array of so many colours and smells, and it’s so quiet in there. The walls are made entirely of glass, so it gets rather hot when the sun hits it, but the white of the snow outside is such a contrast to the colours inside that it-” He paused as you started to cough, your chest jolting as the uncontrollable coughs left your mouth. Jeno immediately jumped to his feet, pulling you forward so you were sat completely upright. He patted your back firmly, then rubbed his hand in circles on your back. “It’s okay, cough it up.” He grabbed the nearby bowl that had been set aside for when you needed to throw up, holding it in front of your mouth as he patted your back with his other hand. You felt embarrassed as you coughed, eventually puking into the bowl and letting out a whimper from the mortification you felt at throwing up in front of your fiancé. “Good girl, it’s okay.” He put the bowl down, grabbing a handkerchief from your drawer and wiping your mouth with it. He gently kissed your forehead without thinking about it, laying you down again and stroking your hair gently.

“Thank you.” You whispered out, your cheeks burning and the sick feeling sitting heavy on your stomach still.

“My sister was ill with the same illness you have.” He looked down at the floor, a heavy sinking feeling washing over him as he thought back to watching his sister die. You didn’t even know that Jeno had a sister, and you were intrigued to find out more. No one had ever told you about the Princess of the Northern Kingdom, so you had no idea she even existed. You wanted to ask him about her, but you didn’t know if he would respond to you with hostility, and you also found it hard to speak after the onslaught of pain you felt in your throat from throwing up. Jeno continued speaking without having to be prompted, feeling a slight weight lifted off of his shoulders at finally talking about his sister after being silent about it for so many years. “I spent all day every day by her side, I wouldn’t even let the maids help her, it had to be me. I was her older brother and I felt the need to protect her.” He cleared his throat as a lump arose inside of it, all his emotions pilling up and making tears well up in his beautiful eyes. “She died 4 days after being diagnosed.” You reached out and took his hand in your own, giving it a weak squeeze just to show him that you were listening, and you felt empathy towards him. “I won’t let that happen to you.” His eyes bore into your own, and you could see how broken the Prince was, all of his bad attitude making sense, but not excusing it.

He sat by your side all evening, talking to you for about ten more minutes before you drifted back into unconsciousness, but he still stayed by you. He asked Mark to fetch him a book so that he could keep himself entertained whilst keeping watch over you. At around 7 o’clock the door to the room opened slowly. Jeno looked up and smiled softly when he saw his Mother entering the room. She looked slightly surprised to see him sat there, her eyebrows raising on her beautiful face.

“Jeno I didn’t know you were here.” She closed the door with a gentle push, not wanting to make too much noise as she saw that you were sleeping.

“You shouldn’t be here; you could catch it mother!” His eyes widened with worry, not wanting his own mother to catch the disease that took his sisters life. He knew it wasn’t contagious but he couldn’t risk it.

“Jeno I will be fine; I’m only stopping by for a few minutes.” She smiled softly to him, giving him a small bout of reassurance. “You’re a good man Jeno, you being here for her when she’s in this condition is a good thing for you to do.”

“I don’t want her to wake up alone,” He closed his book and set it aside, moving to stroke your lifeless hand that laid on the bed. “I owe her so much; she can’t die alone.”

“Oh sweetheart.” The Queen sighed, approaching her son and leaning down to place a kiss on his head. She felt a sudden rush of pride at his confession, glad he was finally acting like the fiancé that you deserved. She was finally seeing the young man that she’d raised to be a compassionate, loving Prince. “I’m glad you’ve finally come around to marrying her…may I ask what changed your mind?”

Jeno thought for a moment, before taking a deep breath and letting out a long sigh. “Miyah never got to have her happy ever after and seeing (Y/N) like this broke my heart. I want her to have her happy ending.”

“You know you have to apologise to your father. The way y-” She was cut off as you started to cough in your sleep, your eyes suddenly blinking open as you couldn’t cough up what was stuck in your throat. Jeno jumped up from his spot and lifted you up so you were sitting upright, patting your back hard to stop you from choking. The Queen watched with wide eyes as you coughed up blood, it staining the sheets over you and dripping down your chin. Jeno gasps loudly, frowning in confusion at the sight of the blood. He rubbed your back as you started to sob from seeing the blood, his stomach dropping as he looked over at his mother. “Miyah never coughed up blood! It isn’t one of the symptoms, she may not have Macetipis!” He propped up the pillows against the headboard and laid you against them, not sparing any moment before sprinting out of the door towards the palace’s doctor’s room.

You looked at the Queen and whimpered, fear rushing through you and your stomach twisting in anxiety. “I don’t want to die!” Your voice was hoarse, and you shuddered before spewing more blood onto the sheets. The Queen stroked your head as your breathing picked up, your chest rising and falling fast in your panic. She opened her mouth, but you couldn’t hear anything she was saying, everything sounding muffled and cloudy as your vision blurred. The world went dark as your eyes closed, your consciousness slipping away once more.

---

The sound of birds singing is the only sound you heard when your body brought itself out of the slumber of sleep that you’d been in more than 24 hours. The last thing you remembered was the sight of your sheets being spoiled by the sight of your own blood, but as you stared down at the sheets placed delicately over your body, you saw nothing but pristine white. You laid there for what felt like ages, feeling thirsty but not having the energy to reach for your glass of water that you could see sitting on your nightstand looking appetizing and delicious. You felt better than you had felt since you’d come down with your sickness, and you prayed that you didn’t get any worse. Jeno entered the room half an hour later, surprise written across his face when he saw you staring back at him.

“You’re awake!” He rushed to your side and took your hand straight into his. He had a soft smile playing on his lips, but you could tell he was being suspicious about something. “How are you feeling?” You cleared your throat as he helped you sit up, propping your thick pillows up behind you to keep you steady.

“Better.” He passed you the glass of water when he heard how croaky your voice was, it sounding like you had a thousand swords lodged inside of your throat.

“I have something to tell you, and I don’t want you to panic. Just know before I tell you this, that everything has been sorted out, and you will be getting better okay?” His fingers traced soft circles on your skin that left a tickling sensation in their wake. You nodded, not wanting to use your voice if you didn’t have to as your throat felt stiff. “You didn’t have Macetipis, after you started coughing up blood, I knew something wasn’t right. I got the doctor, and he knew immediately that you’d been poisoned.” Your stomach flipped and you felt queasy at the thought of someone trying to kill you. “It didn’t make sense at first, no one from the outside had access to your room. So I knew it must have been someone who had been coming into your room. I’ve been here most of the time, and the only people who were allowed in this room were my mother, my father, Mark, the doctor, Nayeon, and myself. The doctor tried his best to save you, so it wouldn’t make sense that he was trying to kill you. My mother, father, and I would never do such a thing. If we wanted you dead, you’d be dead.” His words made your eyes widen in surprise that he’d say something that dramatic in such a calm manner. “I trust Mark with my life, and when questioned he said he knew nothing about it, and I could tell he wasn’t lying to me. Which left dear, sweet, Nayeon.” He growled her name, his fists clenching around your hand but not hard enough to hurt you. “When questioned, she confessed almost immediately. She’d been putting poison in the tea she’d been serving you.” Your heart dropped as you thought of the sweet maid who’d made you feel welcomed. You had no idea she could even do something like that. “The poison was a weak one that would take at least two weeks to finish you off. It was meant to give you a slow, painful death. But you have to take all doses of it for it to work. She said she’d gotten if when she was visiting her family. She blames you for her father’s death in the war.” Your heart ached as Jeno told you that. You had trusted Nayeon, and you felt tears fill your eyes as you thought it all over inside of your head.

“What’s her punishment?” You closed your eyes, willing the tears not to fall as your throat hurt even more with the rising lump inside of it.

“Death.” He sneered, his body tense with hatred and anger. He couldn’t believe that someone had the nerve to try and take his Princess away from him, right underneath his nose too. You gasped, your eyes opening quickly.

“No! Please don’t kill her Jeno!” Your tone was desperate, and Jeno knitted his eyebrow together in confusion at your plea.

“She tried to kill you (Y/N)!”

“You shot an arrow at my head.” You deadpanned at him, showing him you weren’t afraid to speak against him if you had to. His face immediately fell, and his mouth opened and closed as he tried to conjure the right words to say.

“I didn’t ever intend on hurting you though…” His voice was soft, and he glanced down at his hands.

“You could have. Prince Jeno, please…spare her life.”

“No. The punishment stands, and I don’t want to hear you ask for me to change it again. Am I clear?” You shuddered at his dominant tone, immediately losing all the courage you previously had to speak against him and just simply nodded. He sighed and momentarily closed his eyes. “They’ve set a date for out wedding. It’s a month away.” You didn’t reply to him, sipping your water slowly and keeping your eyes anywhere but on him. “Princess…don’t ignore me.” You looked at him and gave him a blank stare, only giving him the silent treatment to show him that you were displeased with his choice. He frowned at you and took the glass of water out of your hands. “When you’re better, we are going to spend a lot of time together, because I am determined to make this work between us. So you’ll have to talk to me eventually.” When you didn’t reply to him, he started to get frustrated, not used to people pulling this kind of thing with him. “Fine.” He stood up and before you could say anything, he’d stormed out of the room so he could throw his tantrum without you seeing.

You let out a sigh and snuggled back down into your bed, feeling a wave of fatigue hit you as you got comfortable. You flinched when the door flung back open and Jeno was stood in the doorway with a scowl on his face.

“You win! She’ll have her life spared. But you are forbidden to speak with her, and she will be sent to live in the Western Kingdom as a slave. Happy?” The smile that you gave him after hearing his defeat made his heart flutter, and he knew in that moment that if all if took for you to smile like that at him was him giving you your own way, then he’d have to start getting used to not having things go his way.

---

It had been two weeks since Nayeon’s confession. You were up and about on your feet and finally enjoying your time in the Northern Kingdom now that you had a fiancé who cared for you. It made you slightly sad that you had to be on deaths doorstep for him to come to his senses and make an effort with you, but since spending most of your days with the Prince, you were overjoyed that he’d changed his mind about you. Your first official date with Prince Jeno was a simple walk around the castle the day after you’d found out about Nayeon poisoning you. You were still rather tired, and Jeno didn’t want to tire you out completely, so he took you on a slow walk around the castle and told you all the stories he had about growing up in the castle. He held your hand tightly, keeping you close to him and enjoying every second he spent with you, just talking about sharing stories. It wasn’t an extravagant date, but it meant the world to you, and your opinion on the cold-hearted, hot head-headed Prince had completely changed. He’d taken time everyday to see you, whether it was to take you out and about on walks, or just to have breakfast, lunch, or dinner with you. Which you really appreciated, considering how busy the Prince was with his duties as the heir to the throne. He had told you that your parents had been exchanging letters with his own parents, but they had decided not to visit you during your illness, instead hoping to see you next on your wedding day. It hurt you that they couldn’t be bothered to make the trip to see you, but you pinned it down to it being such a long journey and you knew just how hard it was to sleep in a horse drawn carriage for the two day long journey.

The flickering candlelight sent shadows dancing on the spines of the thousands of books that lined the walls. Books that told stories, real and fiction, of wars, love, and of creatures of the night you knew didn’t exist. The library felt warm, the large fireplace lit with simmering flames to keep the Prince and his Princess warm in the late hours of the night. You watched Jeno’s lips as he read from the book opened in front of him, his eyes darting back and forth as they trailed across the words written on the paper. Your cheek was resting against the palm of your hand with your elbow keeping it steady on the table, and you couldn’t help the small smile on your lips as your listened to Jeno read about a Prince and a Princess falling in love. It was him who picked the book off of the shelf, and to be honest you had zoned out when he was reading some parts of the story, your brain focusing on his beautiful face more than the poetic words that tumbled from his mouth.

“He grasped her hands in his own, the softness of her fingertips causing riptides in the ocean of love he held deep within his soul, riptides he was ready to dive headfirst into, wanting nothing more than to drown from the assault of her love. The moonlight hit her rosy cheeks, if he wasn’t already blinded from her beauty then that would have ended his eyesight in that moment. Her lips were inviting, like a poison apple begging him to take a bite, but he knew in his heart that the poison she was offering with her plush, angel like lips, was one that would do him more good than bad.” He suddenly closed the book, glancing up at you with slightly reddened cheeks. You furrowed your eyebrows, moving your hand from your cheek to rest it on the table.

“I was enjoying that…” You pouted at him, wanting to know what happened next with the Prince and Princess. “What happens next?”

“Come with me.” He stood up abruptly, hoping that you couldn’t see how his hands were shaking as he snatched your hand into his own.

“Where are we going?” He started to walk so fast that you had to use your free hand to raise your flowing dress up off of the floor before you tripped over the loose material. He failed to respond to you as he steered the both of you through the dimly lit palace. He took you down three flights of stairs until you were on the ground floor, and he didn’t stop until he was stood outside of an arched wooden door. He pushed open the door and held it open for you to enter, smiling sweetly at you wondered past him. The first thing you noticed was the smell. The fresh, crisp smell of flowers and dirt was a welcoming smell, and one that you loved because it reminded you of the springtime in the Southern Kingdom. You couldn’t see much because of the looming darkness, but the full, bright moon shone through the glass ceiling and walls, lighting all the beautiful flowers giving them all a dim colour. You just knew that in the bright sunlight this place would be absolutely stunning.

Jeno gently guided you through the gap between the large flowers and leaves, following the trail that was purposely left and bringing you to an opening where a small table and two chairs resided. You then noticed a small indoor pond off to the side, surrounded by an array of different coloured roses. He pulled you into the clearing, the moonlight beating down on your both and causing shadows to fall on Jeno’s perfectly sculpted face. Your breath hitched in your throat when his hand came up to cup your cheek, his thumb stroking your hot cheek and his other hand lacing your fingers together. He smiled softly at you, his eyes memorizing every detail on your face that the moon bestowed upon him.

“You wanted to know what happened next in the story.” He whispered, his tongue darting out to lick his bottom lip causing your heart to almost skip a beat in anticipation. “I’ll show you.” He gulped as he leaned in, both of your eyes drawing to a close as his cool lips settled timidly on top of yours. You breathed in sharply through your nose, shock sinking into your nervous system as you realised that you were finally kissing your future. Of course you’d felt his lips on your forehead before, but that felt like nothing compared to the feeling of his lips slotted between yours. He drew away, his lips lingering on your own as his thumb started to sweep across your cheek again. You felt your lips automatically pulling into a shy smile, your eyes blinking open with the surprise of seeing his piercing brown eyes gazing at your face. “This is our story…”

---

The wedding came and went faster than you’d wanted it to. The build up to the wedding only days before had felt like they’d dragged. Your wedding dress fitting, seeing how the grand hall was decorated with the most beautiful and expensive décor that the staff of the palace could find, and finally seeing it all come to be. Your parent’s arrival the day before the wedding had you in floods of tears just from how overwhelmed you felt. You had been on deaths door just a month ago, and there you were, watching your parent’s carriage be pulled by horses with fur as black as night into the grounds of the castle the day before your marriage. Jeno had very busy, so you’d only seen him in passing in which he had looked slightly stressed and had barely given you a rushed kiss on your lips. He had to go to the town hall and give a speech in front of the civilians of the Kingdom about his marriage to you and what it meant for the Kingdoms future. You’d been there at his side, dressed up beautiful in his Kingdom’s colours and looking regal and stunning in the glowing sunshine. The snow had melted away, giving you a view of the Kingdom in a different light, but you knew that it would probably be back soon as the weather in the Northern kingdom was unpredictable.

On the day of your wedding you’d been whisked out of bed, hurried through your breakfast, and immediately taken to be dressed. Your hair had been pinned up and had beautiful white snowbell flowers woven into it. Your face had been subjected to a light dusting of makeup to accentuate your naturally stunning features. You felt like a Princess. You also felt sick with nerves, the familiar feeling of anxiety swimming around like a shark inside of your stomach. But you couldn’t let yourself be taken over by the panic, especially as you stared in the full-length mirror at yourself. Your wedding dress had long sleeves, the entirety of the dress having a layer of snow-white lace over the top of it. The body of the dress coming up over your chest and covering the corset you’d been stuffed into, the tightness of it making your anxiety worse as it felt like a constricting snake wrapping itself around your body. The skirt was a typical Princess skirt that would drag across the floor as your walked despite the beautiful white and gold heels you wore. Your lace veil was so long that it dragged along behind you as you walked. On top of your head you wore a heavy, solid gold crown that was fit perfectly for a Princess.

Once you’d arrived at the Kingdom’s church in your beautiful white carriage pulled by white horses, you waved timidly at the crowd of hundreds of civilians waiting outside the church to give you their well wishes. You noted that Jeno wore a similar crown to your own that sat on top his white blond hair when you finally got to see him as your father, the King of the Southern Kingdom, walked you down the aisle. Seeing Jeno stood at the end of the long aisle made your heart flutter. All of the past worries you had washing away like the melted snow as he stood in his white and gold royal uniform, the same one he’d been wearing on the day you’d arrived at the castle. You’d forgotten about how he’d treated you upon your arrival, but you didn’t care as you took a deep breath, your feet carrying you slowly walked down the aisle. Jeno knew he wasn’t supposed to turn around and look at you, but he couldn’t help himself. He turned around and felt his breath hitch in his throat, tears pooling in his eyes when he was how stunning you looked. After you fell ill, he never thought he’d get to see the sight of you looking like an ethereal angel as you walked down the aisle to marry him. So the sight overjoyed him, his heart bursting with the love he’d found within himself for you. He hated himself for how he treated you, especially now that he knew he was head over heels in love with you.

The ceremony flew by, your hands connected and his lips feeling warm on your own after you’d exchanged vows and rings. The gold ring felt heavy on your finger, but not from the physical weight of it, more from the emotional meaning it had. You were tied to Jeno for life now, and it had your heart beating in joy. You caught sight of Prince Jaemin wearing his own royal uniform in the front line of the crowd, his smile so wide that you couldn’t help but smile just as wide as him. Jeno bit his bottom lip, contemplating his next move, but in his head, he thought ‘fuck it’, and he swept you up into his arms. You squealed in surprise and held onto your husband tightly, the bouquet of red roses in your hand falling to the floor from your shock. Carrying you bridal style out of the church made Jeno feel a sense of pride in himself, and he ignored the heavy feeling sitting in the pit of his stomach about what was to come later. You both climbed into the awaiting carriage, Jeno’s lips finding your cheek as soon as the carriage door closed.

“I love you.” He whispered, lacing his hands with yours and causing you to almost combust on the spot. It was the first time he’d uttered those words to you, and it had your eyes filling with tears of happiness and love.

“I love you too.” You whispered back just as gently as he had. The two of you waved at the people who lined the streets of his Kingdom, your Kingdom. It dawned on you that you were no longer the Princess of the Southern Kingdom, and instead, the Princess and future Queen of the Northern Kingdom.

The wedding ceremony was followed by all the guests of the wedding going to the castle to celebrate with a banquet, soon followed by lots of dancing and mingling. You sat by your husbands side the entire time, greeting your guests with a smile and bow. The two of you held each other close when it was time for the two of you to have your first dance as husband and wife. The entire room going silent apart from the echoing music of the large orchestra as you moved around slowly with him. Soon after everyone else was able to join in, and the room was filled with joy of the festivities.

You were ushered away from Jeno by one of the maids and Mark when it hit 11pm and the guests were starting to dwindle. Your stomach hit the floor as you knew exactly what you were being taken away for. Mark’s voice echoed around your head, but you didn’t take in any of his words as he spoke to you about what was about to happen, despite you already knowing exactly how things were about to go down. You were taken to your new bedroom that you were going to be sharing with your new husband. The décor was beautiful, and it was very similar to the bedroom you’d previously had in the castle. You had a feeling Jeno had requested it to be that way to bring you more comfort. Mark excused himself and left you with two maids. They stripped you down from your wedding gown, leaving you in the white, lace lingerie that you’d been told to wear earlier on in the day. The brassiere came down to an inch above your belly button, the wire in the bra pushing your breasts up and making them look very appealing to the eye. It was paired with a matching pair of panties that did nothing to hide your ass. You wore white, thigh high stockings that were clipped onto the white suspender belt wrapped around your waist. They touched up on your makeup, pulled your hair from the pins to let it fall at your shoulders, tousled from being up all day, and finally left you on your own to await Jeno’s arrival.

It was Kingdom tradition to consummate the marriage on the day of the matrimony in order to create an heir. You were very nervous, especially as you had been dolled up to look sexy, which is something you had never had to be before in your entire life. But you supposed if it pleased your Prince, then it was worth it. You waited for Jeno, nervously pacing around the room in your heels before ultimately deciding that you felt uncomfortable and slipped them off, padding around the room in your stockings instead. You bit at your red painted bottom lip, deciding to sit on the bed to wait for your husband. You sat in the centre of the large bed, the silk bedding feeling like clouds on your bare skin as you leaned on one arm. The doorknob turning had your stomach erupting in the butterflies that had chilled out momentarily. Jeno entered the room and quickly closed the door behind him, leaving his hand on the doorknob as he looked at you with a shocked expression. He wasn’t expecting to see you like that, and his cheeks went bright red with heat from his sudden embarrassment. He hated that they’d undressed you like that, having would have preferred to undress you himself from your beautiful wedding dress. You watched him with shy eyes, wanting to cover yourself up from how he was just stood by the door, dead still, with his eyes on you. Eventually his eyes narrowed, and he shook his head. You looked like the epitome of innocence and grace, and he hated it. He hated that he was expected to ruin you in that way by taking your innocence.

“I can’t do this.” He spoke lowly, your stomach falling through the floor at his words. “No I can’t do this.” He shook his head, his eyes moving around the room to look at everything apart from you.

“What do you mean?” Your voice was soft and fragile, mirroring how you felt in that moment.

“This was a mistake!” He shouted at you, his face looking hard, his eyebrows scrunched up and his eyes seemingly darker than what they had been when he entered the room. You flinched, gulping in fright at his sudden outburst. You didn’t think you’d ever seen this Jeno again after how sweetly he’d been treating you since you fell ill. But maybe that was all an act. An act he couldn’t keep up any longer.

“Jeno…” Your eyes filled with tears as you watched him grab the vase of flowers on the dresser beside the door. The vase hit the wall on the other side of the room with a deafening smash, the flowers and shards of porcelain hitting the floor and making you squeal in surprise. He was angry, and he had never learnt how to control his anger. So he did was he always did when he couldn’t cope with his emotions. He acted on them and ended up getting aggressive.

“This was a huge fucking mistake; I don’t love you. How could I love you when I hardly fucking know you? I was forced into this and I can’t do this anymore!” His shouts echoed around the room, causing a sob to fall from your lips at his confession. The vein in his neck was prominent from how hard his shouts were and his strong jaw was tensed. His eyes held so mush hostility you wanted to cower away. “It would have been better if Nayeon had succeeded. Then neither of us would be here.” With that final blow to you, he pulled the door open and stormed out of the room, slamming it shut behind him with a loud thud that felt like it set a crack in your heart. He’d just told you that it would be better if you were dead. And it hurt. Nothing had ever hurt you more in your life than those words he’d just thrown at you on what was supposed to be the happiest day of your life. You sobbed harder than you ever had before, your throat burning and face wet from the tears that tracked down your cheeks. Eventually after you’d calmed down some maids entered the room to clean up and comfort you. But you just ignored their presence, feeling numb and staring at the broken vase across the room. Picturing your heart to be just as shattered as the vase.

---

You hadn’t seen your new husband since he’d ran out on you. It had been five days, but it felt like five months. You felt a longing in your heart, which surprised you because your heart felt so broken and your mind felt so numb. Every member of the palaces staff was either avoiding you, or treating you like you’d break if they spoke in any other way that didn’t sound patronizing. So it didn’t take a genius to put two and two together and figure out that the word had spread about your husband running out on you on your wedding night. Humiliation was a good way of describing how you felt, on top of the sadness and longing, it sat at the edge of your heart, ready to dive off into the pit of your stomach and bring back the butterflies that felt like daggers hitting the walls of your gut. You’d asked Mark where Jeno was, but he just told you that he couldn’t tell you as he was instructed not to. He seemed deeply apologetic though, and you couldn’t blame him for staying loyal to the family he worked for.

The last thing you wanted to do was meet with Prince Jaemin for lunch. But you found yourself being forced to because apparently he wouldn’t take no for an answer and he was prepared to go to extreme lengths to get you smiling again. You soon found out what those extreme lengths were when he let himself into your bedroom with a few maids in tow. The maids were each pushing a metal cart that had steaming hot plates of food you wished you had the appetite to want. Jaemin gave you somewhat of a sad smile, going to the table and chairs inside of your bedroom and pulling a chair out.

“Take a seat Princess.” He nodded down to the chair in his grasp, waiting for you to move from your seat on the bed. You let out a soft sigh, standing up and taking a seat at the table. Jaemin sat opposite you and cleared his throat. “This is probably a silly question, but how are you feeling?” You wanted to laugh at his question, giving him a strained smile as you picked up the mug of hot tea placed in front of you.

“I’ve felt better…have you seen him?” You sipped at the liquid slowly, keeping your eyes on the dark head Prince of the Western Kingdom as he started to pick at his food. He nodded, giving you another sad smile.

“I have. He’s…” He sighed as he thought about what to say, his eyes narrowing as his brain ticked over his words. “Jeno. He’s just Jeno.” The maids left the room as Jaemin dismissed them with a curt wave of his hand.

“He told me he loved me, then hours later he told me that he never loved me… He also said it would be better if I was dead.” You looked down at your fingertips that were clasping the handle on the mug tightly, trying to will the tears that flooded your eyes away.

“He’s stupid.” Jaemin’s words caused Jeno’s ears to prick up as he stood outside of the door, listening in on your conversation as they door had been left open by the maids when they left. He gripped the bouquet of roses in his hands tighter and his eyebrows furrowed. “You’re such a beautiful woman, and he doesn’t deserve you. You’re kind, he’s not.” You glanced up at Jaemin, feeling like a knife had been twisted in your gut as you listened to Jaemin’s heavy words. “I can only regret that Jeno’s parents beat my own to asking your parents for your hand in marriage.” He let out a sigh, continuing to eat as if he hadn’t just told you that he wished he was your husband and not his own cousin. Jeno felt his blood boiling, and he wanted nothing more than to hit his cousin around the head with the flowers in his grip. But instead he let out a sigh and stomped off, pushing back his plans to apologise to you as he didn’t want Jaemin to hear what he had to say to you.

“Prince Jaemin…I’m a married woman, you shouldn’t be speaking to me like that.” You wanted to sound assertive, but instead your voice was shaky and showed how nervous the conversation was making you.

“I do apologise, I didn’t mean to make you think about what could have been.” He gave you a slanted smile, clearing his throat awkwardly. “You need to eat, you look awful.” This had you letting out a curt laugh, your eyebrows raised as you looked at the cheeky Prince.

“That’s no way to speak to a Princess!”

“I’m just telling you the truth! Please, eat.” Jaemin pushed the bowl of soup in the middle of the table towards you, holding a spoon out for you to take. You let out a gentle sigh and took the spoon, sipping at the warm soup in hopes it shut Jaemin up.

---

Jeno had spent the rest of the day boiling over what he’d heard Jaemin say to you. He paced around his room and had made a complete mess of his normally neat hair from tugging at it in frustration. The sun had long gone down and he groaned as he laid on his bed staring up at the ceiling with a blank expression. He had yet to prepare for sleep, still wearing the loose white shirt tucked into his tight dress trousers. His mind wondered to thoughts of you. He heart was breaking just as much as yours was. He hated himself for the things he’d said to you, and the reasons why he said them to you. The Prince could no longer bare it and came to the decision to put an end to his distress.

He pushed himself up from the bed and didn’t think much of it as he left his room. He let his legs carry him across the castle to where you had been staying in what was supposed to be your shared bedroom. Without even thinking to do the polite thing by knocking on the door, he swung open the bedroom door, his words caught in his throat as he saw you sat by the large window, staring out at the moonlit night wearing a silk robe, your bare legs stretched out on the floor in front of you. You turned to see who had just rudely let themselves into your bedroom and your breath hitched at your eyes fell on your husband, stood with his lips parted and his hand still gripping the door handle as he stared at you. He pushed the door closed and took a few steps into the room, not really knowing what he was expecting your reaction to be. But he knew for sure he wasn’t expecting the reaction he got.

You stood up, pulling the robe tighter over your pyjama clad body, the cotton tank top and shorts not doing much to hide your body, but you weren’t expecting anyone to burst into your room unannounced. Without a word you walked up to the blond Prince stood in the middle of the room, his eyes trained on you as you moved. Your palm hitting his cheek let out a slapping sound echo off the walls, his mouth popping open as his head snapped to the side from the surprising strength you had put into the attack. He was shocked, he had no idea the meek, timid, placid Princess who he’d grown to love had it in her to lay her hands on her husband like that. But he found a fire burning inside of his stomach that made him love you more for doing that.

“Are you proud of yourself?” He slowly turned his head to see the fire behind your teary eyes. A fire that looked like it was about to be put out by the water begging to fall from the waterline of your eyes. “You made me think you loved me, and then on our wedding night you told me you wished I was dead. Now I have to be married to someone who doesn’t love me and be in a loveless marriage for the rest of my life!” He looked down at his feet, letting out a short sigh and trying to ignore how pained your voice was. “Get out.” You turned to walk back to the window, wanting to watch the falling snow in the moonlight in hopes it would calm down your racing heart. You were stopped by a strong grip on your wrist that pulled you against a firm chest, your free hand coming up to land against it in your surprise. The hand on your wrist loosened and a pair of strong arms wrapped around your body, keeping you pressed to Jeno’s torso. The feel of his grip and his familiar scent is everything you’d been dreaming about for the five days that you’d been apart from him. It was almost overwhelming being so close to him, the tears finally breaking past their barrier and streaming down your face as your heart felt like it was slowly mending itself. He pulled his arms away from your waist and moved them to cup your face in both of his hands. Tilting your head up so that your gazes were locked, he poked his tongue out to wet his lips as he took a deep breath.

“I love you so much that it physically pains me to watch the tears as they fall from your bewitching eyes. Being away from you for the past five days knowing how my words would have affected you made me want to throw myself from the tallest tower to my own demise because I knew how hard it would be to coax you into trusting me again. After the wedding, my father took me aside and reminded me of my duty as a Prince, and that I was expected to produce an heir. So that was swimming around in my head like a poison fusing with water and turning all my thoughts damaging. When I opened the door to see you poised like an angel with no wings, I felt like I was doing the world a disservice by tainting your innocence and I don’t know where my mind took me but it was an unpleasant place that left a bitter taste in my mouth and a tear in your heart.” Your eyes glistened with tears as Jeno never once glanced away during the poetic words he spilled to you. He sounded like the Prince in the book that he was reading to you in the library on the night of your first kiss. “I would never wish you dead, nor would I want to ever live in a world that you didn’t exist in. I love you, and I can spend the rest of my life telling you so and apologising if I have to. If it means that you will love me the way you did before I let my mouth talk without my hearts consent. Forgive me Princess.” He stared into your eyes, his own swimming with sincerity leading you to know that he meant the words he spoke.

“I forgive you.” You whispered, letting out a soft sigh as you gazed as his facial features, falling more in love with him as your mind went over his speech.

“Thank you, from this moment on, I will be the husband that you deserve.” He leaned in and placed his lips to your own, the kiss being soft and long as his arms moved from your cheeks to your hips. You moved one of your hands to his jaw and the other to his shoulder, feeling lost in the kiss as he slowly moved his lips against yours. This was everything you’d been dreaming about since your wedding night, and you couldn’t describe the joy and relief you felt at finally having your husband by your side. He licked at your bottom lip, pushing his tongue past your lips when you gave him entrance and letting it explore your mouth as he slowly backed you up to your now shared bed. You’d finally get to share the too big bed with the man you love instead of sleeping alone. That thought alone send sparks across your body that gave you a tingling warm feeling you’d never experienced before.

He moved his lips to your jaw, placing tender kisses to your warm skin before trailing them down your neck. He sucked gentle bruises on your neck as quiet mewls and gasps left your parted lips. His hands tugged at the silk tie of your robe and let the silk slide open. He pushed it from your body and let it fall to the floor, leaving you scantily clad in your pyjamas. His hands scaled up and down your sides as his fingertips got used to the feeling of your body, the silk bunching up as he let his hands wonder underneath your pyjama top. Pulling away from your neck, he gently lifted you onto the bed, crawling over the top of you and diving back in to kiss your lips with vigour. His hands framed your head, holding his body up as his tongue trailed your bottom lip. His body rested against yours, slotted between your legs with his crotch pressed to your own.

You knew the basics of sex. You’d been taught by a very red-faced Mark a few days before your wedding and he’d assured you that Jeno had also received the same embarrassing talk. But you still felt a bundle of nerves wind itself up inside of your stomach and the thought of having the Prince on top of you without any clothes on. But at the same time, you felt a spark of excitement travel to your core that you’d only ever felt before when you’d gotten curious and let your fingers wonder. All the orgasms you’d had were self-inflicted by the use of rubbing your clit late in the night when there was no one around to hear your quiet whimpers. So the feel of Jeno hardening against you through his clothes and your thin pyjamas was causing that familiar feeling to build, spurring you on to want more.

You turned your head and let his lips kiss at your cheek leaving faint marks of spit against your warm skin as his tongue darted out to taste you. Your chest was rising and falling fast as you tried to catch your breath, Jeno’s lips never stopped as you opened your mouth and spoke. “Have you ever…?” You felt your cheeks flare up as you blurted out the question, unable to finish it and hoping he would catch your drift. He paused and his silence piqued your curiosity, so you turned your head to look up at him. His mouth was parted, and his eyebrows were furrowed, almost as if he was annoyed at your question, and you could almost see the cogs turning in his mind.

“No of course I’ve never had sex…have you?” His eyes widened slightly, and he pulled back slightly. You had a feeling if your answer was yes then he was going to cause a scene that would wake up everyone in the castle. It was expected of a Prince or Princess to stay a virgin until their marriage to another Prince or Princess. So you would feel the same way if you found out that Jeno wasn’t a virgin, and you could understand why he had pulled such an annoyed face now you knew he thought you were asking about having sex.

“No! Oh no I didn’t mean, er…I didn’t mean that. I meant have you ever…touched yourself?” Your cheeks were boiling as your embarrassment set in, your voice almost a whisper as you asked him. Jeno visibly relaxed and a small smirk arose on his face.

“Yes, I have. Have you?” He lowered his head and laid gentle kisses to your neck that left a heavy feeling in your stomach. “Have you been a dirty girl and used your fingers to do the job your Prince should be doing?” His voice dropped an octave and your stomach fluttered as his lewd words, your hips bucking up into his as you wished for him to copy what you did late into the night. “Do you want me to do the same to you?” His fingertips trailed down your side, sending shivers up your spine and a small whine to leave your chest.

“Yes.” You whispered breathlessly as he sat back on his knees, staring down at you like a predator staring at its prey. He smirked; his bottom lip caught between his teeth as he tugged your pyjama shorts down your legs slowly. You suddenly felt shy, automatically closing your legs to block his view of your heat but he gripped at your knees and forced them apart.

“Be a good girl.” He gazed down at your glistening pussy, his tongue darting out to wet his lips as his eyes darkened. He tried to push down his own nerves, wanting you to think he was confident even though you knew he’d never seen a vagina before. He paused, taking a deep breath as he trailed a tentative finger over your folds from your clit to your dripping hole. “Wow…” He breathed out, shuffling back on the bed and laying so that he was at the right angle to lean out and lick at your centre with his slow tongue. You let your head fall back against the pillow as his tongue flicked up and down slowly, circling your clit and forcing a loud moan to erupt from your lips. Your moan provoked him to take your clit between his lips and suck on it softly, his finger trailing down to your waiting entrance. He slid it in very hesitantly, remembering the words Mark said about it being very painful for a woman if they aren’t prepped properly.

“Jeno…” You whined and lifted your head to watch him as he started to devour your pussy, his enthusiasm making you almost see stars as your toes curled and back arched, the ball of pleasure in the pit of stomach flaring up as if it was going to explode at any moment. “Oh!” You squeaked, biting your bottom lip to stop yourself from screaming as he brought you to the edge that you’d sat on many times before from your own doing. Only this time it felt a hundred times better. He stopped abruptly, removing his mouth and stopping his finger. As he pulled his face back you noticed his lips and chin glistening with your juices, causing your stomach to do a flip at obscene sight.

“I want you to finish on my cock baby girl.” His words almost shoved you over the edge, but you nodded and gulped down the saliva that had built in your mouth as you watched him. You nodded eagerly and licked your lips, gasping slightly as he pushed another finger inside of you. The slight stretch made you wince at first, but after a minute of him pumping his fingers in and out of you slowly the pain dulled, and you could feel the pleasure pouring through.

He pulled his fingers out and sat up again, popping open the three buttons at the top of his shirt before pulling the loose shirt over his head. You propped yourself up on your elbows, staring at his defined body with hearts in your eyes. His blond hair was fluffy from the friction of pulling his shirt over his head and you wanted nothing more than to tangle your hands in the light strands and trail your tongue down his chest. He threw the shirt to the floor and paused as he took the button of his trousers between his fingers and thumbs. He visibly gulped and looked up at you with hooded eyes. You could see that all his confidence had flown out of the window as he stared at you. You smiled softly, sitting yourself up and pulling your own top off, throwing it to the floor with his and leaving you completely naked in front of him. His eyes went wider than you’d ever seen as his sight dropped from your face to rest on your breasts.

“Shit.” He gulped again, his mouth almost watering at the sight of your chest. It was the first time he’d ever seen a pair of boobs in the flesh from what he could remember, and he wasn’t disappointed. He hurried to pop open the buttons on his trousers and he discarded of them, leaving him completely naked. You didn’t get much of a chance to look at his penis as he hurried to lay over you, taking on of your nipples into his mouth and cupping your other breast with his big hand. You wrapped your legs around his waist and could feel his hard cock brushing against your core, making you want more.

“Jeno, I want you now.” You whispered, his eyes glancing up to look you in the eyes as his tongue swirled around your sensitive bud.

“Hang on.” He mumbled against it, taking it between his lips once again and sucking hard. You giggled softly, reaching up and running a hand through his hair and pushing it away from his forehead.

“You like that don’t you?” You bit at your bottom lip as you watched his lips suckle on your nipple. He closed his eyes and nodded, pulling his lips back and letting your nipple go with a pop.

“Are you ready?” He moved a hand down sitting back slightly and taking his cock in his right hand, pumping it a few times. You finally got to see it, your eyes zoning in on the large member he held tightly in his hand. You’d never seen a man’s privates parts either so you had nothing to compare it to, but it definitely didn’t look small, and had a vein running up the underside, the head a pink colour with a milky bead of pre-cum leaking out from the top.

“Yes.” You nodded eagerly, settling your head against the pillow and trying to relax. He smiled softly at you, leaning over you and placing a tender and lingering kiss to your lips as he started to push his cock into you. You gasped, the pain a lot worse than the pain you’d felt from his fingers. Your back arched and tears pooled in your eyes as you tried to cope with the pain, not wanting him to stop as this was the most intimate you’d ever been with anyone, and it being your husband that you loved with all your heart meaning you’d be crushed if he stopped. He went slowly, pulling out a few times only to push in again in an attempt to fit inside of you better. He stopped once he was fully inside of you, laying kisses on your cheek and stroking your side affectionately to calm you down.

“Tell me if it gets too much Princess.” He spoke quietly into your ear, pulling his hips back and rolling them into you again. He was laying over you so that his forearms were pressed to the pillow on either side of your head, wanting to be as close to you as he could be but still so he could control the situation. He repeated this slowly, letting his head drop into the crook of your neck as his eyes squeezed shut from the immense pleasure shooting up his cock into the pit of his stomach at how tightly your walls were sucking him in. It took at least a minute of Jeno pushing his cock in and out of you for you to feel the pleasure that you’d felt when he’d used his fingers. The pain died down and you focused more on how his strong figure loomed over you, his breath panting against your neck and the sound of skin slapping against skin as he fucked you slowly. “I love you.” His voice was deep and gruff, but the words held so much meaning to you that you let out a loud moan, gripping at his back, leaving red marks on his skin as your nails dragged across it.

“I love you too.” You whimpered, your back arching and thighs starting to shake as euphoria fluttered down onto you like the snow that fell from the sky outside of the window. His thrusts got faster, and he let out little grunts and moans, his tongue darting out to lick at your neck before his teeth bit your skin, sucking a dark bruise into your skin. Your senses felt heightened and you felt like sobbing as the burning in your stomach roared like a fire about to explode. You couldn’t hold on any longer, and as Jeno’s lips met your own in a sloppy kiss, the ball of fire in your stomach finally burst and sent the best feeling you’d ever felt across your system. The orgasm Jeno gave you felt so much better than any you’d been able to bring upon yourself, and you felt yourself wanting to cling onto the man above you as he continued to make love to you.

“Fuck, baby.” He groaned, his eyes tightly shut as his rhythm faltered and he tensed up. His biceps on either side of your head became more defined as he tensed, his hips slamming into you one final time as he came inside of you, his hot seed spilling into your velvety walls. He lifted his head up and slowly opened his eyes, gazing at you with half open eyes. He let out a dazed smile, his hips rolling into yours a few times as he rode out his orgasm. He leaned in and laid his lips on yours, kissing you sweetly and full of love before attempting to pull back from you. You whined and gripped at his body, shaking your head as non-verbal sign that you didn’t want him to get up yet. He let out a soft chuckle and wrapped his arms around your body, rolling you both over so that you were laying on top of him. You laid your head against his chest and let out a sleepy slightly smile. “Thank you.” His chest vibrated against your head and you looked up at him, stroking at his skin with your fingernails as you raised an eyebrow.

“What for?” You asked, pressing your ear to his chest once more to listen to his heart as it started to beat slower.

“For being such a forgiving, and loving person. What I did was inexcusable, and you had every right to ignore me and tell me to back off. But you didn’t and I am so thankful for that, because I love you, and I’ll love you until my dying breath.” His words tugged at your heartstrings and made you feel a sense of elation. It helped that you were basking in the bliss of sex and his cock was still tucked inside of you, so you hadn’t yet felt the soreness you were sure to feel.

“You’re my Prince,” You pressed a kiss to his chest and smiled at him. “And I am your Princess. I wouldn’t change that for the world.” His arms wound around your body tighter and he placed a kiss on your forehead. It was quiet for a few minutes before his voice broke the silence.

“Can we do that again? Now?”

“Jeno!” You gasped, using your hands to push up on his chest to give him an amused, but shocked expression. “…Okay!”

---

The castle felt like a much happier place to you now that you could walk around without worrying about whether you’d end up pissing off the angry Prince if you came across him. Instead you now walked around actively trying to find him, wanting to spend as much time with him as you possibly could. The first night you’d spent together those five months ago had been the kickstart to the happy ever after that you’d read about in the books. And ever since that night, Jeno had stuck to his words and had been the best husband you could have asked for. When he wasn’t doing his Prince duties, he was by your side. Keeping you company, reading to you, trying his best to bed you, or talking to the ever-growing bump you had that held the future Prince or Princess of the Northern Kingdom. It didn’t come to a surprise to either of you when you’d found out about your pregnancy a month after you consummated your marriage. And the King and Queen were thrilled once you announced it to the Kingdom. The Queen had been spending a lot more time with you too, ecstatic that her son had finally seen the light and started his life with you. You had exchanged a few letters with your own parents, and they were happy for you and promised to visit you soon. Prince Jaemin had given you a wide smile and a friendly hug, before turning away and letting his face fall at the news of your pregnancy. He couldn’t ignore the thudding in his heart as it longed for you, but he had to pretend everything was fine and that he was happy for his cousin and yourself. You hadn’t heard anything about Nayeon, but you wished her well and decided to let go of all the negative feelings you felt towards her, giving her your forgiveness despite her attempted murder.

“Will you read to our little Prince or Princess when they’re born?” You sat in the library, opposite your husband at the table in front of the large window, watching the snow as it calmly settled on the ground of the Kingdom. Jeno looked up from the book in his hands and gave you a bright smile.

“Of course I will.” He laid the book down on the table and followed your gaze out of the window.

“They’ll love the fairy-tale books, especially the one about the brooding Prince who fell in love with the kind Princess.” Your smile widened as you talked about the book he’d read to you on the night of your first kiss. You turned to look at him and let out a soft chuckle, licking his bottom lip.

“Yes, it sounds rather familiar doesn’t it?” He tone was teasing, and he glanced out of the window again before letting his eyes fall on your prominent baby bump.

“How did the story end again?” You rested a hand on your bump as Jeno stood up. He helped you to your feet and stood in front of the glass with you, looking out at the Kingdom from the high window as he wound his arms around your frame. You placed your hands on his chest and gazed up at him, a soft smile playing on both of yours lips.

“They lived happily ever after.” He leaned down, capturing your lips with his own, pouring all the love and affection into the exchange. Thanking you in his mind for how you took his cold heart and heated it with your own love.

----

Hey, it’s finally out! This took me over a month to write and it’s brought me stress, joy, and finally a sense of achievement at writing something 20k words long. I would appreciate it dearly if you took a moment to tell me your thoughts and feelings about this piece. I’d love some feedback! I hope you enjoyed it x

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pochiperpe90 · 4 years ago

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Points of view – The Interview: Luca Marinelli

How do you approach your characters.

Sometimes I also wonder how I get to the character. For “Non essere cattivo”, I had a very detailed script and a fascinating director at my disposal, so I didn't struggle to relate. It was a very brave script for the way it dealt with reality. At first my auditions went in the direction of Vittorio's character but also knowing the figure of Cesare, more than once I thought I would like to play him. I saw the auditions of others and I stopped to think how I could have done Cesare. Then at a certain point I remember that Claudio looked at Valerio and told him that it would be better to reverse the roles, to let me try Cesare, and so it went. When I read the script of “Lo chiamavano Jeeg Robot”, the first thing that struck me, besides the courageous imagination, was to understand how a film of this kind could be made.

In the first part of your career, you brought an image of introverted and staid youth to the screen. Was this a choice.

Absolutely not. Or rather yes, it was the choice of those who met me first. Perhaps a part of my personality has been seen that could best marry the characters in question. It happened both in “La solitudine dei numeri primi” by Saverio Costanzo and later with Virzì in "Tutti i santi giorni", then it can be said that with Casare of “Non essere cattivo” and the Zingaro of “Lo chiamavano Jeeg Robot” I was allowed to turn things around slightly, to play a character who had a disposition and behavior that was completely the opposite of what I had faced previously.

What do you remember about your debut with Saverio Costanzo.

He was my initiation into cinema, I came from the Academy and I had no idea what it was like to work on a set. The best memory, in addition to the experience of the film with him and Alba, is the first meeting, the first audition, where I really understood that I strongly wanted to work with him and that if this had happened I would have ended up in the hands of a great author.

With that film you found yourself in the main competition of the Venice Film Festival. What memories do you have of that first time at the lido.

Of a huge confusion and a big headache. We were tossed around from one interview to another and not only that, because the worst thing was always answering the same questions, and I was terribly worried not to make the situation even more boring for the machine operator, who never changed, and I don't think could take it longer to hear the same phrases over and over. Fortunately, Alba was there as well and saved me in more than one interview. The experience helped me because the following times I knew slightly more what I was going through and how to manage situations and keep stress at bay. Or maybe not yet, it's a long way.

I noticed that when you talk about your job you do it using the verb “to play” (giocare). Is it a coincidence or the choice has a precise meaning.

Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that in English the term recite is said precisely in this way because in my opinion to play, or the French jouez, represents the feeling of freedom and fun that is inherent in the job I do, better. As far as I'm concerned, the moment of the take is when the actor has to stop thinking, abandon worries, to be able to bring out the energy of his character. He has to play with the same seriousness and commitment with which a child does. I remember a piece of advice from Carlo Cecchi on the fact that in acting counts listening and the here and now. Being actively present to oneself and to others at that exact moment.

You have a method for achieving this condition.

If someone asked me something about technique, I wouldn't know what to answer, apart from listening. On the set of Andrea Molaioli's film in which I am the father of the young protagonist, the actor who plays him, Ludovico, who is really good, full of talent and very smart, once asked me what was the technique to make the best of the character, and the only thing I felt able to advise him was to try to be present in that moment and then to let go, listen and not think about the rest.

But I imagine that there are also practical aspects in the preparation that precedes the start of filming.

As for me, I try to prepare as much as I can before arriving on set because at the start of the shoot it would be good to be ready. But not everything happens automatically, in the sense that you can’t always find the character immediately. However, I have always been lucky enough to have more or less long periods of rehearsal before starting a film. I remember this moment with Saverio and Alba, where we spent weeks among us and also with the kids who would have played us as children, to try the various scenes and to create a union and harmony between the characters. The same happened with Paolo Virzì, Thony and I, more than once we gather, facing the script, to clarify all the passages and moments of the scenes.

And how did things go with Claudio Caligari.

The same thing also happened with Claudio even though the illness made everything more complicated for him. He asked us to change our bodies, to participate in the auditions of the other actors. This allowed all of us, the cast, to integrate and develop a unity of purpose and a truly rare familiarity. So in front of the camera it seemed to me that the gang, to which Cesare and Vittorio belonged, was really part of my life, that it wasn’t hard to pass from Luca to Cesare, because I had found him. And always to identify with the environment of the story, I preferred a house in Ostia, and Alessandro often came to me from Rome to spend time between the two of us. Claudio, in addition to having reading meetings together, also showed us films that were a source of inspiration for him for this film, such as “Accattone” by Pier Paolo Pasolini, “Rocco e i suoi fratelli” by Luchino Visconti and “Mean Sreet” by Martin Scorsese.

Instead, I wanted to ask you what happens between takes, for example when you come home after a day of work. You stay inside the character as it happens to Daniel Day Lewis, or you put it aside and think of something else like Marcello Mastroianni did.

I try to disconnect from the set. I try. I go home and try to do something else, but the last thought before falling asleep always goes to the next day's work plan and I leave myself a few minutes for the memory and concentration useful for tomorrow and then I close my eyes.

We asked Roberta Mattei and we ask you too. During the processing you were aware of the exceptional nature of what you were doing.

Yes. Let me explain: I saw with my own eyes that what was happening was exceptional, a man who was dying wanted to give his latest work to the public, to his audience, to his people, to people. This has no equal for me. Don't think about yourself in such a situation but about others.

Then it was the turn of Lo chiamavano Jeeg Robot.

I shot Jeeg Robot in March 2014, and therefore before “Non essere cattivo”. The fact that Mainetti's film is only coming out now is due to the long post-production period necessary to assemble the shot with the special effects present in the film.

Here as well it was an interpretation and a character who completely overturns the transparent and pristine image of the first part of your career.

To make Jeeg Robot we had to convince each other, Gabriele Mainetti and I, about my success in the character. I pushed him towards a theatricality and Gabriele towards a real madness, a pure pain. In the end, I think we have found the right amount.

The construction of the Zingaro was already very clear in the writing and it was up to us, however, to find its true aspect.

Guiding him is this crazy and boundless ego, and the obsession with having to leave a mark. The Zingaro's eccentricity is partly reflected in his look, halfway between a rock star and a suburban bully. For the costumes and make-up we were inspired by the great rock icons. We dared in some choices, such as the black coat with pink leopard lining that characterize the wardrobe. For the aspects related to the way of performing, his model was Anna Oxa and in particular the video of her at Sanremo, when she sings “Un’emozione da poco”.

In part you have already answered, but I wanted to know how you choose to accept the proposals that are made to you and if you have any foreclosures towards television, or more generally towards commercial cinema.

I choose the proposals on the basis of love at first sight that must happen with the film, with its screenplay. Then figure out who will be leading the film, meet the director. I don't have any kind of foreclosure, let's say that if I don't like something I don't do it and if I like it I do. And it doesn't matter if it's cinema or television.

As a spectator what is the cinema you love.

I like films that have something to say and that I also choose based on who directed and starred in it. Usually when they ask me to name some titles I have a void. Think that the same thing happened to me also during the audition to enter the experimental center, when Lina Wertmuller asked me the title of a film I had seen recently. I was struck by a cosmic void and instead of naming her an authoritative and important film I left her stunned by citing Batman, I think Nolan's first, still a good film, but I still had Wertmuller in front of me... But to go back to what you asked me, I tell you that in general I always like to watch films that come from Sundance, of which I remember, for example “Like Crazy”, which I found disarmingly beautiful, the films of P.T. Anderson, Wes Anderson, the Cohen, there are many, and among the Italians those played by Alba Rohrwacher, Valerio Mastandrea, Elio Germano, Kim Rossi Stuart and directed by Alice Rohrwacher, Costanzo, Virzì, Sorrentino, Garrone, Salvatores. Without forgetting those of the great Joaquin Phoenix. But in reality I look at everything, let's say that I try not to lose anything of these.

Despite the certificates of esteem you have received for your performances, the impression is that of an understatement that almost seems not to be aware of what you have achieved so far as an actor.

Whenever I see a film of mine I always think there is something I could have done better. But basically I'm happy with what I've done so far. Having said that, I think that the films alone should be enough to explain everything and that the interviews don’t add anything new to what there was to say before making them. But when I am in the dance, when I need to promote, I am committed to doing it in the best possible way. I strongly think that in life and at work it’s important to demonstrate that you know how to do and not to show at all costs that you do.

DREAMINGCINEMA

Just wanted to translate this old interview for the non-italian’s fans ^^ (sorry for my English)

#Luca Marinelli #interview #english translation #mine #english #non essere cattivo #lo chiamavano jeeg robot #slam tutto per una ragazza #la solitudine dei numeri primi #Tutti i santi giorni #actor #cinema #film

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tardytothepardy · 4 years ago

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Fruits Basket - Vol. 20

I want to try to break the book into three main chunks. The last time I did that, it was easier to write about. So uh, the first chunk has to do with Tohru and her feelings about Kyo, and Kagura's reaction, the second chunk is Akito and Ren's past being revealed (it's totally a mess but it's to be expected), and the third chunk is about things unraveling.

Ok cool let's do it. (The picture was at the end of one of the chapters, I just liked it a lot idk) (also tumblr needs to increase the character limit for the alt text, it's only 200 characters, which goes by quick. twitter has like,, 420, which is more manageable)

Tohru came to Kazuma's house to visit Izusu, and Kagura came to confront Tohru about something. What possibly could it be (as if I didn't say so in the beginning)? Kagura was talking about it a bit with Kazuma, and he said he just hopes that Tohru's feelings don't come from a place of pity (which is a mild "oof" point for Kagura, because that's mostly why she loved Kyo), because Kyo has had to deal with people either flat out hating him, or being nice to him out of a sense of pity. Even Kazuma admitted (earlier in the series. I don't remember when but I remember reading it) that part of the reason he took in Kyo as a child was because he was making it up for how he treated his grandfather, the previous Cat. Over time, those feelings fell away, in favor of genuinely caring for Kyo's wellbeing, but Kazuma doesn't seem to be the one who would forget about stuff like that. (Also it turns out that the previous Cat's partner basically stayed with him out of a sense of pity, as well)

It turns out that Izusu and Tohru were talking about the same thing, and Tohru worried if her feelings for Kyo were selfish, because she wanted nothing to take Kyo away from her, not the curse, not the Sohma family, nothing. Kagura then bust into the room, smacked Tohru across the fucking room it seems, and said, "Then fucking tell him that!!" (direct quote, 100%) Izusu yelled at Kagura for hitting Tohru, asking what right she had for doing that, but given Kagura's nature, it doesn't seem completely out of nowhere. She just got pretty emotional in that moment.

For Tohru, it seemed to knock the right screw loose for her, and she thought back to when she was talking about her father to Kyo, and if he said really anything against what she was talking about, she apparently would've just zipped her lips and pretended she hadn't said anything, and moved on, but he didn't. Which is pretty nice of him to do, honestly. Anyway, when she came to again (because she got knocked out from Kagura's emotion-packed slap), Kyo was sitting there, because Kazuma had called him, ("Hey dude so there was a smackdown here and Tohru got knocked out lmao" is how I'm imagining the call. kjdhkfgjh can you imagine Kazuma saying "lmao" I can't) but Kyo didn't ask about the fight (which was a Wise Lesson from Shishou™), another nice thing for him to do, though in my opinion it would be a pretty easy thing to explain.

Ok, so now onto the second chunk, which kinda has some of the stuff in the third chunk later on but whatever. Story flow, it's pristine today.

It starts with some of the,, maids? or something that are in the Sohma house (they never get names so far as I can tell, and I don't really know what to call them, but at one point someone referred to one of them as a maid, I think? Idk.) talking about Ren, and wondering why Akito still let Ren wander around freely like she does. Another said that Akito can only do so much, because apparently there is a crowd of people in the house that are "Ren-followers", and if she had Ren be completely contained within an area, there's a chance that those followers might start some shit, which would be a headache to deal with. One of the maids said that Akito has been sick (or holed up in her room) for too long, and the rest of the Juunishi are doing nothing to help, which does not help with Ren, who spouts out stuff about how the Juunishi doesn't really care about Akito at all. The maids seem to have a particular thing against Ren, because they view her as an unsuitable woman who somehow managed to become partners with Akira, the previous God, I think, but also the father of Akito.

Speaking of Akito, she has a box. That same box that Ren tried to use Izusu to get back. Something about that box has to do with Akira, and it seems important to both Akito and Ren, though honestly at this point Akito is probably just holding onto it out of spite for Ren, I wouldn't be surprised (I, too, am a petty bitch. I understand the mindset). She asked Kureno if he has any idea what is in it, and when he says he doesn't, she simply says, "Father."

Now we jump over to Ren and Shigure, who are also talking about about that elusive box. Apparently Shigure was tasked to get the box, but obviously he didn't succeed. He said (thought? He didn't say it aloud, it was one of those thoughts thing--- anyway) that he didn't really care, he didn't even want to touch that box, much less even look at it, it was no loss to him. Out loud, he says that it would be inappropriate for him to hold it, and Ren agrees, saying that only she can have it, just like how only she could have Akira, when he was alive. Are you already sensing where this is heading? Well, I'll say it anyway.

Flash back to Kureno, he's thinking about Akira, from when he was younger and Akira was still alive. He remembers Akira as very beautiful, in a fleeting way. Akira was sickly, all the time, and sad. Everyone knew that he wouldn't live for very long. But since he was the head of the house, of the family, it was imperative that he find a partner and produce an heir. That person was Ren, who was one of his care-takers. The rest of the staff (or something??) didn't like that she was going to be with Akira, it seemed unsuitable, but she was the only candidate. She was the only person who recognized how lonely he was, is what Akira said as a defense when people objected. And so, they were married. The older members of the family despised it, the younger thought it was the beginning of a new change, a new era. Ren said (because this section is flipping between Kureno and Ren) that it was only them two (haha grammar): Akira and Ren, they were all who mattered. She was everything to Akira. So when she had Akito, well, that muddled things. Because now there was another person that Akira loved: his own fuckin child. That's right. Ren got jealous of her own child because Akira loved his very own daughter. That's,, that's something. Shortly after that, Ren decided that Akito would be raised as a boy. Or maybe it was while she was still pregnant. At any rate, she said it was because it would be unsuitable for the head of the family to be a woman, but we all know the real reason: it's so that Akira wouldn't be loving another girl, even though that other girl was his daughter. Jfc Ren is a handful. From Kureno's memory, it seems like even as a kid, Shigure recognized that.

Back to Shigure and Ren, Shigure says that he feels sorry for Ren, probably thanks to all that upset she has. She says the same, that the Juunishi have had to deal with the abuse that Akito has dealt to them simply because of that "bond", and that there's no way that anyone could honestly love Akito. Shigure also comments that sometimes he thinks that if Akito had been raised as a woman, she'd look exactly like Ren, which instantly pisses Ren off. She just starts screaming about "Who do you have to thank for Akito being born! I'm the reason that (insert angry comment about how she's the only reason why x happened)". I'm kinda glad she isn't in the series much, this is exhausting. I know she's in the book later, and maybe a bit more in the next few, but jeez. It's a lot.

Anyway, let's end the chapter with Momiji having his curse be broken. The end is near (for the Juunishi, not this post lmao).

The second that the curse breaks, Akito knows it (that's probably the bond. I doubt it's some kinda "we'll be friends forever uwu" kinda thing, it's just kinda an awareness of each other, or maybe just God's awareness of everyone) and races towards Momiji, begging him to not leave. Now that the curse is broken, Momiji is confused as to how those thoughts he had prior for Akito were even there, now that he sees Akito clinging onto him, whimpering and panicked. Momiji waves her away, saying that he'll keep it a secret, and that Akito should go rest, wasn't she feeling sick earlier?

We pan over to the school, where Haru is asking Yuki if he's noticed anything off about Momiji. Haru can't place it, but something seems off, maybe not. Kyo ends up running into Momiji walking down a hallway, and asks him about it (he overheard the others talking about it), and Momiji just out and says it: his curse broke. He said he imagines that Tohru would be happier about it if it were Kyo's curse that broke, and that he (Momiji) lost. (I guess he lost in some unspoken one-sided competition of "getting" Tohru, because y'know she's not her own person who is capable of deciding these things for herself or anything)

Later, Momiji goes back to the main Sohma estate, to apologize to Akito for how he acted yesterday, but also to say that he won't be staying there any longer. Akito takes it like a champ, slapping Momiji across the face and insulting him, saying that he's a traitor, he has nowhere else to go, his family either doesn't remember him or hates him, he'll never be happy! and Momiji's just like, "Yeah lol I already feel lonely", that he can't be with the person he loves, and he no longer has that One Thing that previously connected him to most of the other people he's close with, and that there's no going back. He does say though, that it's not Akito's decision or place to say whether Momiji will ever be happy or not, because he might not be happy now, that does not mean that he won't ever be happy in the future. He then asks Akito how long she will stay at the house, thinking that eventually, everyone will come back to her, that no one will be happy without her. What if it's actually her that is most afraid-- Akito isn't down for an analysis, she just tells Momiji to leave.

Let's now go down memory lane, down a nice and happy time, especially for Akito and Ren: Akira's death and it's after effects. Happy times. (apparently i was wrong, the thing i said was the third chunk that wove in nicely with the second was just the second chunk, i think this is the actual third chunk)

Akito is thinking back (on a rainy morning, extra points for setting the mood) on her relationship with her parents. With Akira, it was nice, he always was kind and caring, telling Akito that she is what everyone has been waiting for, and that she thought she was the one Akira loved the most. With Ren, however, she was always cruel, from the start. She always glared at Akito, she was always mean. Akito hates her. We're brought back to the day Akira died, where Ren bursts into the room, asking why she wasn't notified sooner, why Akira had to die alone. One of the attendants said his condition worsened too quickly to call Ren close by, but also that Akira hadn't died alone; he died with Akito by his side. The attendant said that Akira's will had been passed onto Akito, she was now the head of the family. Ren was angered at that, there's no reason for Akito to still be around now! She only tolerated her child being around because Akira liked her, but now that Akira is gone, there is no one to love or care about Akito. Akito said that wasn't true, that all of the Juunishi will love her, because of their bond. (Which is basically what Akira said. He put most of that stuff into her head, and she doubled down on it whenever Ren said anything against it, which might as well be every single time they were around each other)

Back to the present, Kureno comes in the room to talk about something, but Akito interrupts him, saying that she was happy when Yuki was born, as the Rat. It was mostly just something she used to prove Ren wrong, and she used it as long as she could (much to the deterioration of Yuki's mental health). She thought back, over the years, to all the bad things that had happened, how she tried so hard to keep everyone close, and how all of them had, one by one, come to "betray" (cough cough, try to live their own lives, cough cough) her. After Shigure and Yuki left to their present residence, Ren said that they had given up on Akito. When Akito again mentioned their bond (which, really, now that I think about it, has basically been the singular thing straining to keep everything under control. Akito's sole sense of identity was being God, she's never had anything else.), Ren waved it away, then challenged that if any of the Juunishi can go out into the world, experience it in all it's freaky magical ways, and not be taken in by it, and instead return to Akito, then she will have been proved wrong, Akito's claims this whole time will have been correct. If they failed to, however, Ren said that Akito would have to give up the Sohma name. But Akito believed it, she truly believed she was right, that nothing big enough would come between her and the rest of the Juunishi (Tohru has entered the chat). She had to believe it, she just had to. But now, it's evident, between how Haru reacted upon learning about Izusu, Momiji's demeanor after the curse broke, the general way that the rest of the Juunishi float away from Akito, that it isn't true, and with that, she has nothing to hope for.

Upon this realization, Ren bursts into the room, knee-length hair floating around her, eyes crazed, knife in hand, demanding for Akira. Demanding for that box, and whatever contents were inside. In response, Akito fuggin yeeted it at Ren, she didn't give a shit. It flashed back to right before Akira died, and he soothed Akito by saying that, despite dying, he will always be with her. He wanted for Ren to be happy. He wasn't upset that he was dying so soon, he knew that he was just a man who was going to die, but he was happy that he was able to have a child, and to have had that child with Ren, and since that child was special, it was proof that their relationship was a special one. Back to the present, Ren scrambles to the box, tears it open hungrily to find,,, nothing. The box was empty. It'd always been empty, said to have held Akira's soul, but it was mostly just something to help Akito with Akira's passing. Suddenly, Akito grabbed the knife that fell from Ren's hand, poised to stab Ren but then--

Hiro's curse broke. Ren can thank that bond she always scoffed at for saving her life. But hey, now Hiro can hold his baby sister, which is nice. Yay for family moments.

Boo for Akito, because it's just really grinding in that the curse is quickly falling apart, and there's absolutely nothing that she can do about it. Ren taunts Akito, asking if she was trying to kill her. The attendants blow up, one yelling at Ren for making such a scene, taking a knife with her, and another scolds the first for giving Akito that box in the first place, it's stupid! The first attendant said that Akito knew from the start that it was empty, common sense would say that much! (idk man it could've held one last letter from Akira to Akito, a letter wouldn't affect the weight of the box significantly, it's not common sense)

Akito leaves the room, and Kureno follows. Akito says that it was both common sense but also not, that there wasn't anything in the box. She wanted to believe there was a chance that something was in that box, some kind of invisible energy that would help her. But even after opening it, seeing that it was empty, she still held onto it, knowing there wasn't anything. And that was her common sense, that's what she thought. She'd never been given any other way of thinking, of living, so why and how should anyone expect differently? Kureno says that she can start learning now, that that was what he wanted to talk about earlier, that she can't stay here, she'll never be able to move on, to which Akito cuts him off with "Fuggin now, bitch?? You're saying that now?? That doesn't help me! It would have helped in the beginning! But not fucking now!" (which btw is true. i doubt akito was even allowed to go to a public school, that she was schooled within the estate. i really believe that she's never really been outside of the the properties that the Sohma family owns) Then she stabs Kureno, with that knife she's been holding all this time. She reasons with it saying that Kureno's "halfway kindness" has been killing her this whole time, that it can't be fixed by Kureno saying that maybe Akito should go touch some grass. As Akito is running from the scene (more like haggardly stumbling), she continues thinking that it's Kureno's fault, it's not on her, until she remembers what Yuki was saying at the New Year's gathering about blame. It doesn't really fix anything, it just momentarily makes you think that you're not in the wrong. *record scratch* What if it's Akito's fault, then? All of this? What if it's her fault? What if it's the fault of the person who made everyone change? What if it's Tohru's fault?? (dun dun dunnnn)

Meanwhile, back at the other Sohma house (Shigure's house?) Tohru has some confessing to do. Before that though, Kyo has some confessing to do, though not about the same thing. He tells Tohru that he knew her mom before she died, and that he was the reason she died. He tells her that they met when he was really young, and how they had kinda become friends (in that way that people become friends by talking often, but Kyo never told Kyoko his name, because he had some weird thing about having a name so similar). That all fell apart the day that Tohru went missing. He promised that he would find her and rescue her, but after finding that Yuki had done it (the evidence was The Hat), he lashed out, and never talked to Kyoko again. Years later, when he was at the crosswalk, who was beside him but Kyoko, who he recognized instantly. He wasn't sure what to do, whether to say something to her or hold back. He was totally able to grab her arm, get her out of harm's way, but he didn't, he was too scared. (plus yaknow the whole cat thing) He beats himself up about, still to this day. He does the same with his own mom's death. It was his fault that his mom killed herself, she couldn't stand having such a monster as a child. It was too much for her, and she couldn't take any longer. (It wasn't. I won't say that his mom wasn't put under strain for having Kyo, for knowing that he wasn't human, that he turned into a weird monster if his bracelet was taken off, but from what we've seen of his dad, it was probably at least 85-90% his dad's fault. He was too caught up in the politics of the Sohma family, ashamed of the fact that Kyo was the Cat, the worst out of them, that he couldn't even salvage having one of the good freaks to have as a child of his, and he took it all out on his wife and later his son.)

And the book ends on that cheery note. (Why do I say stuff like that why I am I like this)

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batbobsession · 4 years ago

Text

“What does it mean to be a father?”

Maurice will never know how he got to be in such a position as this, and he certainly wishes for a handkerchief—or something to wipe his paint-stained hands with—to be nearby. He’s sitting next to the most powerful man in the land, after all, though at the moment, his looks did not match his title.

The regent—or is he the king? Maurice wonders—is dressed in a simple coat and trousers, both of which are an earthy brown. The absence of the wig reveals natural greying hair, and without any bracelets or jewels he looks quite…normal. Nothing at all like the paintings in the West Wing.

Even more of an interest, he muses, is the look in the man’s eyes. They are a hard, rather miserable gray, a shade Maurice would only use when painting a thunderstorm or a cloudy night. But his expression does not match such a sad color. The man’s hands are folded politely in his lap, and on his face, there is a genuine look of interest.

He somehow looks skeptical even without the skepticism, Maurice thinks, and tries to compose himself before speaking.

“Forgive me, Sire, I believe I misheard you.”

“Please don’t,” the man replied, and for a second Maurice’s thoughts flew to the etiquette lists Cogsworth had so graciously made for him, wondering if he had said the wrong thing.

“I have been neglecting my duties for years now,” he continued. “I am no more a royal than you are.”

Oh. Maurice opens his mouth, compelled to reassure him that it isn’t his fault, that magic is a fickle thing, but something stops him. There’s a flicker in that gaze, hinting that he meant more than what was said.

The old artist did not know much about Adam’s father, only that he was absent the night the curse was cast, meaning he had forgotten about the inhabitants of the castle just like everyone in Villeneuve. Maurice had arrived with Monsieur D’Arque, just as the sun rose above the highest turrets and towers. In his search to locate his daughter, he had noticed this same man, haggard yet joyful in the presence of his son. He had no idea he was staring at the true master of the castle until Lumiére—the candlestick, he still couldn’t believe that—had addressed him as such.

“Well, I…I wish I had an answer that would suffice, Monsieur,” Maurice finally says. “To tell the truth, I’m not much of an expert on the matter.”

“And yet your daughter is one of the most remarkable women I have ever had the pleasure of meeting,” the king replies. “Most of the princesses I would have picked for my son would only have their titles going for them. Shallow, easily influenced, lured here under the prospect of an alliance. Your daughter is—”

“Perfect.” The word is out of Maurice’s mouth before he can think of what to say. He stares hard at his hands. One has a rather large smudge of yellow on it.

“Certainly,” the king admits. “I’ve not found fault with her yet, and I usually have a knack for that sort of thing. Strange how things dissipate over time.”

Maurice blinked, again struggling to speak properly, but now there was something like a cloud over them, and he wondered if the other man knew about the curse at all.

“Your—Monsieur,” Maurice begins again, “I—”

“Maurice, isn’t it?” he interrupts.

“Oui, Monsieur.”

“I am asking this genuinely, as someone who has no experience in the matter.” He is silent for a moment, and stares out the window. “It’s been such a long time since I’ve seen my son, and I’m sure his memories of me are…few and far between.”

Maurice notices it then. There is something keeping this man back. The way he speaks of the prince is not as a son, but as an unapproachable. Something that he is hesitant to think of.

Is this man really Adam’s father?

“You believe that you cannot father the prince because of your absence? Is there something you’re afraid of?”

Sacre…the yellow smear now seems alarmingly bright. Since when did such a color exist?

He had thought that his initial fear of speaking to a royal was enough to stay his tongue, but…

It’s almost as if he has not spoken at all. The king retreats into himself, eyes glazing over, head inclined, on the verge of remembering, but not quite there.

“I don’t know. I’ve forgotten how. But I’d like to try again.”

Maurice blinks, and the cloud dissipates. This is something that the curse had very little to do with. Something that could have very easily been Adam’s childhood, or lack thereof. He had never let the lives of the noblemen grace his thoughts, but now he imagines that because of their upbringings and various duties to attend to, they never had time to enjoy.

The man sitting across from him probably has no idea what rain smells like.

Maurice folds his hands and smiles.

“The reason I happened upon this castle was because I was attacked by wolves, and I was seeking shelter from an oncoming storm. I let myself in, as the lamps were lit, but no one was inside.”

Maurice pauses, but there was no sign of anger from the other man, so he kept going.

“After I left, I noticed that the garden—your garden, I suppose—was filled to the brim with roses. They were white, absolutely pristine despite the snow. Though I was in quite a state of distress when I left, I remembered the last thing my daughter asked of me was that I bring her back a rose.” Maurice chuckles. “In hindsight, that action could have cost me my life, but I still would have done it, thinking back on it now.”

“Pardon me,” the other man interrupts, “it could have cost you your life?”

“Ah—” Maurice halts, staring. He quickly shifts his attention to a paintbrush he left by the window. Perhaps this man does not know the entirety of it. Surely, he could explain, but this man is still a stranger. And Adam’s father. It’s not his place to tell. “In a way, yes. But there’s no need for concern. If there had been a threat before, it has long passed.”

In the window, Maurice can see the young boy, Christopher, and his mother, playing outside. Maurice cannot see them smiling, but he can tell just by looking.

I suppose I have a knack for those kinds of things.

“I’m a lucky man,” he admits. “I was able to use my passion to create a living for us. But I would burn every canvas if it led to her happiness. I would give up anything and everything for the sake of my little girl.”

The king is quiet, and for a moment Maurice thinks he got through to him. Then he said “And your wife? Where is she in this wonderful family?”

It is Maurice’s turn to be quiet. He closes his eyes and her face swims before his, smiling and proud, tears in her eyes. He is able to smile back, and he thanks God for it.

“Her mother died of plague a few months after she was born.”

There is nothing from the king. In the silence, Maurice turns his hands over in his lap, wondering if he should say more. Instead, he glances up, and the king’s expression is one of a man trapped. He stares at Maurice with such sympathetic agony that Maurice wonders how long he should hold his gaze.

He’s caught in something, Maurice thinks, but does not look away.

In this moment, the answer forms.

“Sir, if I may,” he begins, “I think the answer you are searching for is just to be there.”

The other man snaps out of his reverie. “I beg your pardon?”

“Be there. Smile when Adam notices you watching him. Answer any question he asks as honestly and as truthfully as you can. Support him in everything he does, even if you don’t like it.”

“But that seems too simple.”

“It’s the hardest thing in the world,” Maurice replies. He goes to gesture to his studio—before cringing inwardly at how haphazard and disorganized it is. “When I was a young man, I lived in Montmarte, in an old repurposed windmill that my wife was able to earn. When Belle was born, I—I wanted everything to be flawless. I felt like she would never experience any of life’s troubles, not as long as I was around. I never wanted her to stop smiling. Of course, life will never work out the way you want it to.”

The king nods. “I’ve no right to call my life treacherous. But wandering these halls again, it’s so different. Familiar.” He raises an eyebrow as his gaze travels upwards towards the chandelier. “But lost.”

“To be lost is to be blind to everything around you,” Maurice replies. “In a way, I was cursed to be perceptive in everything I did. I saw everything in painstaking detail. So much so that the only way to be rid of it was to paint it.

“But in recent years,” he continues, “I’ve begun to forget small things. How many gears fit into a music box. How many folds to draw in a frilly dress. And almost as if to correct my memory, my daughter will round the corner with the correct gear in her hand or twirl for me until I remember.”

The man tilts his head, but Maurice can tell that he’s getting it.

Good, he thinks inwardly, I fear I’ve started to ramble.

“Though our relationship needed no improvements before, I’m grateful for my weakening senses,” he finishes, “because now I am constantly reminded of how much she means to me.”

“You’ve made no mistakes, sir, it seems,” is the response. Maurice laughs.

“Oh, don’t say that; I’ve made plenty of mistakes. There was a time, after her mother died, when I refused to acknowledge it.” This sparks something in the king’s dark eyes, and Maurice pushes on, refusing to let him think of it. “It wasn’t until Belle decided to find her mother on her own that I knew I couldn’t hide from it any longer. And there have been moments like that as long as I’ve lived.”

“Sometimes those moments seem to last forever.”

Maurice grins then, at what the king probably thought was a morbid statement. But that is what makes life beautiful.

“You, sir, are not blind, so you are not lost,” he decides. “In fact, the very action of asking me for advice shows that you see your son, and you see the bond that you want with him. But pay no attention to my story; I’m a humble painter with no knowledge of the world inside these exquisite walls.”

He gestures to a painting in the far corner of his studio. His daughter stands there, mid-twirl, the sun on her smiling face and a few rose petals drifting in her wake. Her joy is his now, and he will experience it every time he looks at her.

“Maurice, I possess none of the detail-oriented capabilities of an artist like yourself—”

“No,” Maurice interrupts, and this time he’s not afraid. “It’s just smudges on a canvas. I don’t see every detail anymore. But I see the emotion, and that’s far more important than any scrutinizing on my part.”

Maurice leans forward, smiling. “Be there. And if you truly want it, the rest will come.”

The man nods then, and Maurice can see that his words have somewhat fallen through the other’s sadness. “Imagine finding such a profound man in a village somewhere. I’m very lucky, aren’t I.”

“I’m an old fool,” Maurice assures him. “The villagers used to call me crazy.”

“I imagine they stopped when you moved in,” the king murmured.

“No,” Maurice shakes his head, “they stopped when your son greeted them.”

The man’s lips part in surprise, and for a split-second Maurice can see a smile on his face. “I suppose that’s very like him.”

Then the moment melts away, the two rise, and he offers his hand. Maurice freezes. He’s not wearing gloves. The handkerchief is once again at the forefront of his mind. But he’s also not one to leave a hand unshaken, so he takes it.

“Merci. I would like to visit with you again, if my presence was not a bother to you.”

“O-of course,” Maurice responds. “But please, a word of warning. My study…is not a sight for sore eyes at the moment.”

“A pleasure to meet you, sir,” is his reply, and he’s gone. Maurice can hear a second set of footsteps tailing him, and he wonders if the attendant heard the conversation or not.

But instead, he sits back down and stares out the window. Chapeau and Lumiére have joined the Potts in the courtyard now. The roses are in full bloom. It’s a lovely picture. He’ll have to remember it for when he buys a bigger canvas.

He raises his paintbrush. The smear of yellow is gone. He can feel tears coming.

“Be there,” he murmurs, and adds a stroke of carnation pink. “And the rest will come.”

He glances at one of the roses outside. Have I done enough, mon ange?

Tagging those I think might enjoy this: @lumiereswig @tinydooms @naturepointstheway @im-too-obssesed @morgaine2005 @forr-everrmorre @greensearcher @firstherofirstlove @ginnyweatherby @sweetfayetanner

#batb2017 #batbfics #maurice #adam's father #this was supposed to be my father's day fic #SORRY FOR THE LATENESS #I hope I haven't lost it #I wrote a fic YEARS ago #about Adam's father being alive and regretting his actions #This is a sequel #enjoy best dad and worst dad having a conversation

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ashintheairlikesnow · 4 years ago

Note

oooh those prompts are GREAT 👀 if you're taking them, 45 - svelte?

Vic is the second winner of “saw a prompt list I didn’t actually intend to post yet” today, haha. Hm... I give you:

CW: Teenage child of recovering whumpee, brief kleptomania, SERIOUS mommy issues, referenced intimate whumper/captivity and referenced abuse

Jax Gallagher (referenced) belongs to @comfy-whumpee

She’s only in the classical section of the shop to browse - or she tells herself, anyway. It’s a tiny bookshop with music in the back, everything crammed together on shelves and stacked on tables. The music - records and CDs, for the kind of people who still seek them out - is organized loosely on a set of tables in cut-off plastic crates, and she spends some time flipping absently through Alternative, Pop, and Rock before her eyes shift to Instrumentals.

She likes these little shops - they smell like dust and old books, two scents she has known only in the safest places in her life. She has three paperbacks already crooked in one arm, two sci-fi stories and then a true story about a woman in the states kept captive for ten years.

She has a bunch of these books, they pile up under her bed, hidden carefully away in a long flat box, underneath some other things she isn’t hiding. She reads them at night, alone, sitting up with a torch under the covers, trying to understand the immensity of there being others out there who have lived this way.

Not that she remembers much - but some.

Enough.

None of the books talk about the people like her - the children, who go to a new world in the end, and they have stories but their privacy is respected, and so Izzy searches for the children as best she can between the lines written by their parents or by the ghost-writers or by true crime authors that never spoke to them at all.

She finds a mention, here and there, of things she knows as well as her own breath - the crying, the quiet, the fear.

Try as she might, though, she ends up in the Music section. And then in Instrumentals. And then... Classical.

Izzy Gallagher flicks through hard plastic CD cases, barely seeing the names. Always the same, a person with an instrument, a tree, a landscape, meaningful words, a list of songs on the back.

Then she stops. She finds what she refused to tell herself she was looking for.

Her mother, years and years ago - nearly fifteen years ago, her mind supplies. She stands with her violin in hand on a pristine, polished white floor, in a room with white walls and ceiling. There’s a skylight and sunlight pours down onto her mother’s hair, wild untamed dark chocolate brown, a riot around her shoulders and down to her waist.

There are plants everywhere, in white pots - lush green leaves that brush against her skin, frame her like a saint’s halo, paint her in such deep colors she seems like a Renaissance painter’s muse. Her mother smiles, bow drawn against strings just so, and her eyes are on the camera, bright and wide and so very blue.

She’s beautiful.

Izzy picks the CD up, almost against her will.

Savannah Marcoset, reads the swirling script across the front. Along the bottom, the word Bella.

She’s gorgeous- svelte and with the slight color to her skin set off by the brilliance of the natural light, the green of the plants clustered all around her. She had the photo taken in the sunroom, the bright white room Izzy remembers best because it was the only place she and her father could feel alone, and free, before. It was Jax’s room, and here is her mother standing in it, violating it. Taking even this small piece he was allowed to keep for himself, and forcing her way into it, like she did into everything.

She’s never let him be weightless, she has always given him things to drag him down into her orbit, forced him to live captured by her gravity. She marked him with scars, left him with night terrors, forced on him the two children he could not leave behind.

Even in this, her music, the songs are all for him, about him, inspired by him, in some way. She named this CD after a daughter she was hiding alongside the man in the house. Izzy would have been a year old, she thinks, when this album came out.

A year old, silent baby hidden in silent spaces by a father threatened to teach her to stay quiet.

Savvie, though, is here endlessly lovely, utterly awful, hiding it beneath the beatific smile. She’s beautifully soft in her thin white shirt and skirt, angelic-sweet. Somewhere just out of sight, though, is a man begging for himself and his daughter to be found. And he won’t be.

He’s never found.

He had to find - and save - himself.

In a sudden burst of energy, she slips the CD into the waistline of her pants, tucks it against her hip and abdomen, covers it with the billowing fabric of her own shirt. She could pay for it, of course - she should pay for it, but she... can’t. She can’t make herself.

Instead, she walks with the CD jamming its corner into the space where hip and thigh meet, hoping it looks casual and natural. Her pulse races, she barely hears the total for the three books as her blood rushes in her ears. She digs out the money to pay, gets change, doesn’t know how much.

She keeps waiting to hear them yelling, running after her, stop, thief! But no one does. No one chases her. No one stops her from curling up on a bench, knees up nearly to her chin, staring down at the little booklet included with the CD. Flicking through page after page of her mother, sitting in her practice room, standing near the rose bushes, laughing with her head thrown back.

Izzy shivers with uneasy memory of the sound of that laughter.

She thinks she will take the CD home and hide it, in the flat box under the bed, with all her other reminders of the way she was born to be a block of concrete dragging the person she loves most under the water, to force him to drown.

She thinks she will take the stolen music home.

Instead, she finds herself snapping it in half, dropping it in a wastebin, tearing the images of her mother into tiny pieces, a trail of breadcrumbs leading her back to a house that was never home.

In an album named for her daughter, every single song is about him, instead. Izzy is not jealous.

She is only so, so sorry to be here giving him no escape from her scars.

#izzy fucking gallagher #poor jax #savvie marcoset #referenced torture #referenced captivity #kleptomania tw #(brief)#child of whumpee #identity issues #referenced abuse #recovering whumpee

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diosefm · 4 years ago

Photo

ATONEMENT: the demise of diose valey

there’s a new revolution, a loud evolution that i saw born of confusion and quiet collusion of which mostly i’ve known a modern day woman with a weak constitution, ‘cause i’ve got monsters still under my bed that i could never fight off a gatekeeper carelessly dropping the keys on my nights off

tw: death, alcohol, paranoia, violence, kidnapping, murder, torture

TIME OF DEATH: 2:13 AM

trigger free tl;dr

FRANCIS FOREVER — i don’t know what to do without you, i don’t know where to put my hands. i’ve been trying to lay my head down, but I’m writing this at three am

3:08 AM

Sleep evades you. It’s a recurring thing now.

Wine doesn’t help. You’d think it would at least make you tired enough to lie in bed and empty your head, but all it does is give you a headache that can only be cured with more and more glasses. And you think too much. Hyperaware of everything going on around you.

And even if you can’t sleep, you still have nightmare. You’re wide awake when you swear someone is banging on your window, but it’s just the rain. The sun comes out, hits your eyes and forces you to close them as you get used to the light. Then your door opens.

You’ve lost count of how many times the avoxes there to serve you have been victims of your latest tirades. You lash out. Scream and shout as you destroy your suite because it’s all you can do. Hysterical, that’s what you are. So you drink more. Slur out a poor attempt at an apology. It doesn’t matter. Next morning it’ll be as if nothing happened and you will snap again.

Sleep could help, but you’re no longer used to not sharing your bed with someone.

Days and nights blur together. There is not an end nor a beginning to your days. You’re lying on the floor, at the brink of passing out with a glass of wine in your hand. For weeks, you’ve feared someone will slip something in your drink, poison you. Little did you know, you’re already doing all the work for them.

You can’t remember the last time you ate, nor the last time you slept. You’re delirious. Weak after spending the little strength you had yelling at the avox with the black hair. That is why when your door is opened, you don’t bother to look up.

Your bruised cheek rests against the floor of your suit, the coldness making some of the soreness go away. Someone approaches you, kneels down beside you and runs their hand through your messy hair.

“Pista?“

Incredible how despite everything, you are still able to hold onto the smallest glimmer of hope. If he is there, maybe you can stand up. Do better. Be better. You promised.

Your eyes are tired, but even despite how blurry your vision is, you can tell it’s him. Desperate, you prop yourself up with the help of your arm and cling onto him, allow him to lift you off the ground. It’s not until you breathe in his scent that you notice his smell is different.

Frightened, you take one look at his face and realized you’ve been tricked. It’s eerie how much this man looks like him. Has all of this been done on purpose? Flight or fight. You manage to get him to let you go, but your body is nothing but alcohol at this point, you stumble and fall onto the ground. He calls you a bitch, which you think you deserve. Grabs onto your hair before you can flee, tugging so hard you feel he pulls part of your scalp with it.

You’d yell for Slate to move save you like he’s done before, but he is gone. And soon so will you.

Out of the corner of your eye, you see him pull something out of his pocket. He jabs a needle into your neck, and you finally get to sleep.

SEVEN DEVILS — seven devils all around me, seven devils in my house. see, they were there when i woke up this morning. i’ll be dead before the day is done

8:42 PM

The faint scent of expensive perfume stirs you awake. Your body is sore, and your head pounding. But your outer appearance doesn’t show how terrible you feel. You catch your reflection on a glass table and marvel at what you see, because you swear you’ve never looked more beautiful.

The dress you are wearing is very familiar. It takes you a few minutes until you realize it’s one of your projects, one that had been sitting in your studio for months. They’ve been at your home, invaded your privacy, gone through your things.

Hair is freshly dyed, perfectly styled to frame your face and the gorgeous job the makeup artists did. No matter what your circumstances have been, you’ve had the ability to always look magnificent. Still, they’ve done a masterful job showing your full potential.

No wonder so much people have always been desperate to be you, with you, or they just want to end you.

As your eyes get used to the light, you notice you’re sitting in the middle of what appears to be a television set. Your first instinct is to explore it, to leave the pristine mint green couch you’re sitting on, but you notice the shackles around your ankles, essentially holding you in place.

You’re not alone for long. Far away, you notice your father’s assistant woman. A petite woman with a fiery red mane of hair and much younger than you. You know very well she’s his latest conquest and a social climber you managed to spot the second you first set your eyes on her.

Cherry, you think her name is. Tacky, just like her. But as much as you hate her, she seems to be your only hope. You call out her name, but she ignores you. Long gone are the days of her begging for your attention. Now you’re the one desperate for her to even glance your way.

This is only the start.

Slowly, more people start arriving,, all of them with a job to do. And despite being surrounded by a crowd now, you’re ignored by everyone. It’s the first time this has ever happened. It doesn’t matter how much you’re glowing, you’re no one to them.

Despite your screams and your pleading, no one tells you what’s happening until a man arrives. You’ve seen him already, you just can’t remember. It’s his scent that clues you in, and you go feral. But you can’t move. the shackles are noisy enough to get everyone to look at you, but he is the only one focused on you, telling you that you need to shut up and avoid making yourself look bad because you will have all of Panem’s eyes on you soon. He adds a threat to his spiel, he brings up Sage and shows you her icture and you instantly press your lips tightly together.

Caesar arrives shortly. Does’t greet you, doesn’t acknowledge you. Whatever fake yet cordial relationship existed between the two of you is now gone. He is there to do his job, that’s it. He shuffles his notes, deep in thought. The show should commence shortly.

Prime time TV, here you come.

YOU’RE ON AIR

The title card is gorgeous. But how could it not, given who seems to be behind all of this. First thing you see on the screen behind Caesar is a slide announcing the following show will be a mandatory viewing all across Panem. Odd, so you keep watching.

Next, you see your father’s name on his signature font and golden lettering following by his title as executive producer. It only adds to your confusion, brows furrowing as your eyes remain fixated on the screen. Your father is an all-too powerful media mogul whose name is attached to anything related to the games, but you still don’t understand why you’re there.

At least not until you see the name of this TV special. Inside Panem: Framing Diose Valey

What happens next is a blur. Two hours filled with memories you thought you had forgotten or wish you could forget. The list of little tidbits and scenes the people of Panem are presented with are as followed:

It all starts with your more than humble beginnings. Images of the run-down house you were born in are shown. You find out who your real parents were along with the rest of the country. A butcher and a seamstress. Both starved to death after after the Capitol left Ten with almost nothing to eat. all to celebrate Snow’s birthday. Your father doesn’t show it that way, but you are able to look past his tricks and propaganda now.

He is an artist, painting the image of a perfect family. Her parents are heroes, saving a child from an imminent death and giving her a life she could have never dreamt of. If you didn’t know any better, you’d be touched. But you are that child, and you’ve grown up and realized you were nothing but a pawn. A tool to up their social standing, to improve their public image. Not that it matters now. Your father has done an incredible job making himself look like father of the year. And maybe a long time ago you genuinely believed that, but the more of this you watch, the less you’re inclined to give him or your mother the benefit of the doubt.

You grow up, flourish into a poised and beautiful young lady. But you’re still a child. Barely into your teens and already perfectly groomed to be just like your parents. It’s the Valey way. Why bother with a normal childhood when you ought to be busy aiming for greatness. Everyone loves you, lauds you. Great things are coming for you.

Your debut is a complete success. The younger stylist in the history of the games, it’s a great honor and your parents couldn’t be any prouder. From the get go, you demonstrate how talented you are. Despite your age, your creations are the best in the entire lineup. Many stylist didn’t want you there, thought you had only gotten a spot in the team due to your name. You proved all of them wrong.

You are a child forced to grow up too fast, but why does that matter when you have a successful career and a thriving business.

To you, the next scene doesn’t come as a surprise. More of your accomplishments are shown before you are forced to see a summary of the 55th games. You look away, not wanting to see Aven and what they did to Caspian, but your head is held in place by someone behind you. Your eyes begin watering as you see him take his last breath, covered in blood, his face unrecognizable. A makeup artist is ushered in and she pats your face with a tissue and fixes a makeup. Someone orders her to stay by your side, telling her that will happen again. That sounds like a warning. Not directed at her, but you.

Showing what became of Caspian right at the start is something you think was done on purpose. It makes it hurt more when images of you two appear on screen. Laughing, talking. Your father’s collection really has everything; he’s kept a close record of every single thing you’ve ever done. It enrages you when you replay your first kiss in the middle of a private fitting, the way Caspian caresses your cheek and promises he is coming back for you. It’s pure evil that you are forced to watch all of this, but you think it’s even worse every personal detail of your life is now being used to keep others entertained.

Your father, always so careful about his image, does not show how he refused to keep him alive. Your mother’s punishment after his death is not mentioned either. Your trauma doesn’t matter.

After more images of the rest of your teenage years, your introduction into adulthood is shown and there is a shift in the tone of the program. Your innocent is now long gone. You’re a woman now, one that is perfectly aware of how to use her womanly charms to get what she wants. What your mother encouraged is now a bad thing. Unbecoming of a high society lady. Your behavior is a product of your own trauma, a combination of your mother meddling with your unresolved issues, using them to toy with your head and turn you into something cold and calculated. Having her tell you tears weren’t a woman’s only weapons was a recurring thing all through your life, but given that she is supposed to be the perfect mother, Panem doesn’t see that.

Tiberius was a constant in your life for years. Not in the same way Slate was, obviously. You never shared your bed with him. You never schemed with him to cheat and favor your tributes. You never plotted to have nuisances murdered. Tiberius was the brains behind everything but the Capitol won’t let such a beloved figure like him see his legacy be tarnished, especially by the likes of a newly disgraced figure. Everything is blamed on you. Diose tricked him. Diose forced him to do this. Diose seduced him. Tiberius is innocent. It’s all bullshit, but you’re not innocent either. If there is something your father has proved so far, it’s that the best calumnies are spiced with the truth.

You’ve left a sizeable list of victims. Some are dead, some were luckier, having only suffered by seeing their own reputations ruined by the great Diose Valey. This was something else your parents encouraged, but not it’s being used against you. You could argue that things are being taken out of context, but you did all of those things. You lied, you cheated, you killed. Not directly, but does that matter now? You’re heinous person, the worst Capitol has to offer. Why someone wanting to do good and change the system you’ve upheld and taken so much advantage of would trust you is a mystery.

Your accomplishments are presented along with more of your escapades and intrigues. Death, suffering, greed. Diose Valey is nothing but an evil woman, a harlot desperate to amass as many power and money as she could No one saw it before, but thankfully this story has a hero. Minos Valey is here to open everyone’s eyes. He’s proved no one outside the Capitol should trust you, potentially destroyed the few alliances you’ve made, what else could he do?

Rebel sympathizers have more than enough reasons to hate you now that it’s been shown you’re the shining example of the sins and crimes important Capitoles have incurred in. They’ve always know they’re bad, but now your name is at the top of the list of the worst of the crop.

Cut all ties. Despite everything, you’re not the only one with skeletons in her closet. There is still people out there stupid enough to forgive your sins because they don’t know any better. Everything you’ve done so far could be excused by saying you did it to continue protecting the values and principles of the Capitol. People have done worse and still came out of top, you could do it. Or could have, had it not been for the train.

You see Pista and you start screaming again. Caesar glances at you before he asks someone to gag you, your screams won’t let him focus and you’re giving him a headache. As per usual, the editing is top notch. Diose Valey, the perfect Capitolite, is now a heinous traitor. More of your words are taken out of context, a narrative crafted to make it all seem that your change of heart happened because you wanted to benefit only yourself. You were willing to destroy the people that gave you everything and turned you into what you are now. Murder can be excused, disloyalty and treason cannot.

Neither you or Pista did anything to hurt any of the Peacekeepers that stood in your way. Did you threaten them? Absolutely. But it was done to protect the man you forced to help you. An image of you attempting to intimidate a peacekeeper by telling them they don’t know who they’re messing is shown. You remember that. It happened. But the next bit revealing the bloody remains of the Peacekeeper you confronted was not your doing. Thing is, who would believe you at this point?

You’ve switched teams, seem content plotting against your current government. The sensitivity that came with your new goals is nowhere to be found. According to your father, all you’ve done after the train has the only intention of benefiting you. Selfish, entitled, spoiled. You will never change.

He doesn’t misses the chance to embarrass you even further by letting the whole country be a witness to your outburst at the wedding along with you supposedly mistreating your poor mother after some heavy drinking. There is a new narrative line he is following, one you don’t quite understand until it’s explained how unstable you are. You’ve been kind enough to give him more than enough material to work with in the past few days. The awful behavior caused by your paranoia has been turned into a montage of Diose Valey’s worst moments. You’re an unhinged drunk now, an unruly and hysterical woman that can barely function because the weight of every bad thing she’s ever done is eating her up. You think she is being poisoned, people are ought to get you. The terrified faces of the avoxes tasked to care for you are shown in between shots of you screaming and destroying your suite. No mention of Slate’s disappearance and it being the cause of most of your lunacy is made.

It should be all over now. The screen goes black, no one is talking. They’re all too busy looking at you in pure disgust. You’re given a three minute break before you have a camera pointed straight at your face. Another threat is made. The same man who’s been silently torturing you ever since he took you from your room shows you more pictures. Virgo, Robyn, Slate, Pista. That must mean he is still alive, but you’re not given any time to process this information. He doesn’t have to say anything for you to understand. You know how it all works. If you don’t comply, others will pay. A nod is given before the makeup artist fixes your makeup.

The show is back on and a clearly glum Caesar comments on what all of you have witnessed. Everything is a shame, it’s all so sad. You were a role model, what happened? Please, as if this isn’t nothing more than a punishment. You’re being framed by your own father and every person in that room is a willing participant.

The interview part of the special doesn’t last very long, because it’s not actually an interview. It’s your father’s own clever way forcing you to confess. You get the privilege of being the final nail on the coffin you will be buried in. that is, if you ever get that.

You blackmailed Tiberius, forced him to be part of your nefarious plans. Yes, you meddled with the games. We got a list of people who passed due to your doing, can you confirm it all being true? Fine, that one you can’t deny, even if everything is not what it seems.

I cheated, I lied, I killed, I destroyed many families. You hate that you’ve been beaten at your own game, but there is nothing else to do. It’s either this or seeing those you love suffer. You tired of seeing people be affected by your actions, so you lie again let them pin every single bad thing that’s ever happened on you.

Everything is almost over. You’re quite proud of yourself or avoiding crying. You were warned about having to look perfect, and you’ve complied with them again and again. No one else is getting hurt. Only you. But you’ve accepted it.

Caesar goes on a spiel about your recent actions, questions your mental stability, though he is not talking to you, but to the camera. Another announcement is made. His voice is soft and sympathetic as he explains that given how clear it is you’ve gone beyond dangerously teetering on the edge of insanity and have clearly crossed it some time ago.

Do you agree? There is no answer from you. Well, as we all care so much about you, certain measures have been taken. Diose Valey, all your assets will be seized, put under your mother’s name.

Some more is said, a proper explanation is given in order to give viewers some context and explain what all of this means, but you stopped listening the second you understood you now have… Nothing. Your home, your business, your money. Without people to trust that was all you had to rely on, your only way of protecting yourself, but now you’ve got nothing.

Your credibility is shattered. The alliances you’ve made on both sides, you fear, are certainly ruined now. All the information, connections, and secrets you’ve gathered throughout the years and could be used against them now are unusable. The Capitol has shown you the house always wins.

Everything is over and you’re dragged away. You’d scream, but it’s pointless. You’ve come to terms of what’s coming next. Because, there is nothing else they could do to you. Death, that’s it. You’ve been shamed and humiliated, tortured one last time before they get rid of you for good.

YOUNG & BEAUTIFUL — will you still love me when i’m no longer young and beautiful? will you still love me when i got nothing but my aching soul?

1:51 AM

You didn’t notice you were put to sleep again. You don’t understand why you’re still breathing, nor why you’re naked and tied to a table face down. Everything is pitch black until you manage to spot a very faint and orange light near you. You can’t make up what it is, not until it’s almost dangerously close to your face you can feel the heat whatever that thing is irradiates.

ЯOTIAЯT

You’re so out of it. But then, you remember seeing those things before. Your father owned a customized branding iron he used to mark all of your horses with the Valey family logo. Everything clicks into place and you start screaming again just as more people come into the room, one of them holding you down as the tool is pressed against the back of your right shoulder. It’s past 2 am by that point.

All you remember is the smell of burnt flesh before you pass out due to the pain.

4:29 AM

Beaten. Bloodied. The wound cauterized itself and that’s enough for them to be done with you. They’ve done a number to your face, and body. You can feel it in the soreness affecting you from head to tie, but you’re not concerned with that. It’s your shoulders that is killing you. You can still smell the burn flesh as well as the dried blood stuck to your skin all mixed in with the putrid scent of the garbage all around you. You don’t know what time it is, whether if the darkness you see is due to the time or being inside a garbage bin.

You attempt to get out, but the pain on your shoulder is unbearable. It renders you unable to move enough to be able to do much. And when you attempt to use your hands, you notice them going numb, refusing to follow your orders.

Maybe you ought to stay there. Maybe now that they’ve taken your money and the allure that drove people to you, you’re finally right where you belong.

#IT'S PRIME TIME TV BELOVEDS #sp #ch: 5 #i spent a lot of time writing dis. read all of it or perish

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purplebass · 5 years ago

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Alastair Carstairs and Charles Fairchild: Uneven Love

In this essay I will try to be as brief as I can about what it meant to be part of the LGBTQ+ community at the beginning of the XX century and a few points on why Charles and Alastair were an uneven/unbalanced couple. Have a nice read!

Being gay in Victorian/Edwardian London

Legality of Charlastair’s relationship

Uneven relationship

Before I start delving into this topic, I just wanted to tell you a few things about what it meant being part of the LGBTQ+ community at the beginning of the XX century. I will briefly tell you about Great Britain specifically because the story is set in London, but you have to understand each country has its movements of emancipation and its laws, so there are a few things which may differ. I will also just mention about homosexual relationships at this time.

Being a gay man in London at the beginning of XX century wasn’t easy, because if two men were caught together in compromising positions, they could be arrested and detained and accused of buggery or attempted buggery. There was a law passed in 1885 which condemned public indecency between males, and such law won’t be abolished until the 60’s of the XX century. The only places gay men were allowed to be themselves were the Molly Houses. Those places were like modern taverns, pubs, coffeehouses where they could meet and engage in sexual activities with other gay men. Speaking of Charles and Alastair, I do wonder if they met in such a place, although since the former is so obsessed with keeping the appearances, maybe not. Or maybe he went in secret, but let’s not forget that in 1902 Alastair was 17.

Why is Charles so obsessed with his image?

For one, homosexuality was the opposite of the idea of “manliness” in Victorian/Edwardian age. During this period, what counted the most to British people was their image, how they appeared in public, and being gay was considered as a deviant act, an immortal act which was the evidence of a corrupt morality. A Victorian family had to be presentable, impeccable - the public sphere had to be pristine even if the private sphere was not. Charles Fairchild is a man of the public sphere because he’s sort of a politician’s figure who was born during the highest point Victorian mentality. It’s no wonder he is concerned with how others perceive him, and he sees his sexuality as a threat to his preferred career, which is all about “manliness”. Remember before Charlotte became Consul? Even there we saw the sexism of the Inquisitor and other members solely because Charlotte was not a man, hence, she couldn’t be “manly”. Charles would be regarded the same way, this is why he decided not to be openly gay. But mark my words, sooner or later he will because that is an inner conflict he has which is at war with his outer goal.

I’ve seen people say that one of the first reasons why Alastair and Charles’ relationship was not appropriate is because Alastair was 16 and Charles was 22. Of course I agree. I wanted to check whether it was legal or not in the XX century, and I discovered that after the Criminal Law Amendment Act passed in 1885, the age of consent was 16, which meant that as much as I find it repulsing, Alastair and Charles could have a relationship and they wouldn’t be breaking the law except for the not so little detail that they were homosexual. Like I said above, homosexuals could risk a prison sentence.

I want to tell you more about this topic but I don’t want to derail from the purpose of this essay.

First and foremost, from the interactions we had of them, you could tell Charles seemed to have promised things to Alastair, because when they speak in Chapter 11 of CoG, the latter is pained and all of his hopes are destroyed. “But you said - I thought” that is what Alastair says. That is the realization that he believed in Charles and what they shared in Paris. Charles says he doesn’t make “false promises”, which means that he may have already thought that their relationship could not be more than what it was - a secret affair. Secret because the act was illegal at the time, and affair because it’s clear Charles might have used Alastair’s affection to fuel his own ego.

I’m convinced that Charles may have an inferiority complex. His mother Charlotte is Consul, the first female Consul. I believe he admires her because despite being a woman, she could get this post because she is also very able with her job. Charlotte is someone Charles looks up to and wants to emulate, but as we see through CoG, Charles’ regent job is laughable. He slanders James, he seems to side with Tatiana whenever he is concerned without having evidence (you see, Tatiana may have manipulated Charles into doing what she wants). This is not what a promising Consul does, and Charles probably knows it.

Then why Alastair?

Why, you say? For one, Alastair also likes politics. I hope he likes politics because he wasn’t influenced by Charles, but I’m convinced that is what Charles and Alastair bonded on; politics. I could see Alastair also getting into politics, by the way, but this is a chat for another time.

Alastair, 17 year old Alastair, felt confident of baring his soul to Charles when they started getting acquainted. He was also very young, I think Charles was the first person that he recognized also loved men like he did. He lived in an age were homosexuality was punished, the majority of gay men tried to hide their sexuality not to be deemed immoral and deviant. I think Alastair was ecstatic that he had found someone he could like and who could like him back, and this is why he decided to be with Charles. We don’t know when this relationship started, but probably after 1899 and the Academy. Maybe Paris in 1902 was the first encounter they had because they couldn’t see each other all the time, maybe they had been together longer… I don’t know. I hate that we don’t know the exact timeline, but we may get it in the future.

I was saying. In Chapter 11 of CoG when Charles goes to Alastair’s house, he reveals that he loves him. “I have loved you since Paris,” Alastair says, which, like I said above, makes it impossible to define if they just had Paris and Alastair fell for him from that only moment of connection (because they might have had sexual interactions there, maybe Alastair lost his virginity to Charles - these are just my assumptions, I have no idea if I’m right).

The Paris affair also makes me think about: “We’ll always have Paris”, which is a famous line from Casablanca. What does it mean? The only thing the protagonists of that movie can hold onto is Paris, since WWII broke and they can only have the memory of what happened in Paris because they can’t be together/won’t be reunited. Rings a bell?

Before I also add how prophetic it was for Alastair to find Thomas in Paris at the same moment he was waiting to spend time with Charles - because it was indeed a coincidence, but also how tricky fate is. Alastair was probably already attracted to Thomas in Paris, but he was loyal to Charles, otherwise… but this is also a chat for another essay.

Then Alastair and Charles kiss. The way Charles treats Alastair is very controlling: he doesn’t just reply “You know I do” when A tells him he loves him, he leads the moment and draws Alastair towards him for a kiss. Then they end up on the sofa, Charles on top and Alastair under him - which isn’t very casual, is also a way for Charles to control everything, because he knows fine well Alastair loves him and he’s indulging into the moment because he doesn’t dislike A, but he also doesn’t love him. Alastair gives Charles the validation he isn’t getting in his political sphere. (See a few paragraphs above).

Sex is also a way to exert power. We don’t know Alastair’s and Charles’s private lives in detail, but from the ways this scene is written, I can tell Alastair is the type who bares himself for the one he loves. Now that his heart was broken I don’t know what to expect.

Then they stop. Alastair is in pain because he longed for Charles. Of all the things he could ask Charles, what does he ask?

“What is wrong, Charles?” he said, his voice husky and rough. “If this is not what you came for, then why are you here?”

I mean, what? Do you know the heaviness of this sentence? It means that most of Alastair and Charles’ interactions as a couple might have been lead by sex or by making out. Why do I think this? Because otherwise Alastair wouldn’t say that - he’s basically implying that most of the occurrences between them started because of something sexual…

“IF THIS IS NOT WHAT YOU CAME FOR…”

It makes me so mad. So mad. Because it is clear to me that after the Academy, Alastair was devastated and also regretful of his actions towards the other guys. He also had to take care of his family. He also points out how he managed his household when his father was “sick”, how Alastair has been a brother and a father and the head of the Carstairs family for longer than we can imagine. I understand why meeting Charles could have changed his life, but Alastair is a giver, he gives a lot to those he cares about, meanwhile Charles is a seeker, he also wants to feel loved but he can’t exchange the affection the same way.

We can consider Charles and Alastair’s relationship dead and gone, anyway. Not only because Alastair said he was done and understood that Charles just wanted to matter (his words, not mine) and that he only cares about his career. In the scene I mentioned above, we also know that the reason why Charles came to Alastair’s was to inform him that Barbara Lightwood had died. Metaphorically speaking, her death could also signify the death of Charlastair and the moment in which Thomastair’s door was truly open to explore.

Now to conclude my thoughts - which I hope weren’t too jumbled - I’ll just say that as much as he unnerves me, I do think Charles could have a nice arc if played well. But, my dears, without Alastair. This is for sure.

Footnote: If you want to know more this, especially concerning gender, you can read What is Gender History? By Sonya O. Rose which treats different topics.

#alastair carstairs #charles fairchild #thomas lightwood #the last hours #gender history #chain of gold #chain of iron #chain of thorns #charles and alastair #thomastair #alastair and thomas #tlh #tsc #the shadowhunter chronicles #tales from the shadowhunter academy #my edits

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the-marauder-corner · 4 years ago

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Dollhouse

If there is any place on earth to fit the perfect description of dark, unwelcoming and dangerous it would either be a cave in the forbidden forest or my house. Malfoy Manor. A facade made of lies, corruption and despair, a facade that shows others a perfect life, full of riches, jewels and anything your heart desires but that’s just not the case. As much as I get those things they’re just for the pictures in the papers. They don’t bring me joy, not anymore.

I never used to fear my family until I went to Hogwarts. Being sorted into Slytherin made my family and pureblood society proud and I was never disliked by my Slytherin peers but my friendship group was highly expanded outside of my own house, my closest friends being Lee Jordan and Fred Weasley along with Fred and George’s brothers and sister, Harry and Hermione who I spend almost everyday with. My boyfriend being George Weasley. When my father found out my friends were ‘mud-bloods’ and ‘bloodtraitors’ he was furious. Never did I fear my father until the day he found out. Never did I stop fearing him since.

No one knows about my fears, no one outside of family that is. Managing to keep our pristine image amongst the public by pleading he was under the imperious curse throughout the first wizarding war my father was relieved of charges and back at his ministry job. The public eye isn’t fearful, it isn’t judging and it’s not on the fact that he is a death eater.

Instead the public eye is on our family. We’re in the press. Me and my younger brother Draco were in newspapers before we could read. Our births, school days, quidditch matches, sortings and Yule Ball dates were documented and released. No matter how big or small the matter it seems to always be put in the paper. The biggest matter so far is that alongside Harry, I’m seeming to be a chosen one. More keeps coming out about a Slytherin that abandons her life with her family to fight for what she truly believes in. So when Rita Skeeter and all of her colleagues found out that Y/n Malfoy had tried to run away. You’d better believe it was in the paper.

Running away was the easy part, staying hidden was the hardest. Since I didn’t want to put any of my friends in danger by going to them I just tried to stay hidden in different buildings until school started. Obviously it didn’t work. I was in my third year I couldn’t use any magic to hide myself and Father had sent out aurors from the ministry to look for me, pretending to be worried sick. When I inevitably was found the story to the papers was I was kidnapped. The Malfoys know the whole story. Let’s just say the punishment wasn’t as easy going as running away.

As far as I see it they aren’t my family. Instead my family dynamic lies with the Weasleys, Harry, Hermione, my cousin Tonks and my uncle Sirius. So this time that’s where I’m going and this time they’re not going to find me. I walk carefully downstairs with a suitcase I charmed with reducio, to fit it in my pocket when I realise that I royally fucked up.

In the kitchen sits the death eaters, Voldemort at the head of the table. Father coughs and grabs my attention "Y/n I thought you were studying?" "I was going to get some air, Father" he looks skeptical "With your wand?" Shit "You can’t be too careful. Not with the aurors around and looking after students and all" at least I’m of age so I have an excuse. He still looks skeptical but turns back to the meeting. I rush out and down the street, quickly apparating to Grimmauld Place. "How many times do you need to be told?! Just because you can use magic does not mean you have to whip your wands out for everything!" Mrs Weasley looks surprised when she sees it’s only me "Hello y/n dear, sorry about that" I laugh "It’s alright Mrs Weasley"

"Please call me Molly" looking around the house I take in the atmosphere. It’s ancient, the wallpaper is peeling at every inch, the hinges are creaking and crying out for mercy. This wasn’t what I expected from ‘The noble house of Black’ at all. Maybe, if anything it’s a nice change of scenery from the pristine look that Malfoy Manor shows all the time.

"Y/n?" Sirius stands in the doorway and I hug him "I’m sorry. It’s just...you said I could come if I ever needed to and..." a sob escapes me and he pulls me to him "They were going to turn me into a deatheater" a look of shocked is painted onto his face "He was there when I left" "Who?" "Voldemort. They were all having a meeting. I just. I had to go. I told Draco to come with me weeks ago but he said no. I tried convincing him for ages, up until yesterday and he said no. I’m worried that he’s too far gone" he strokes my hair sympathetically "I understand y/n/n. I know" "Is...are they..." Fred and George appear in the hallway and I hug them "Hey blondie. What’s the matter?" "Malfoy Shit" they nod and return the hug.

George welcomes me with a hug and soft "Are you okay?" I nod and let him pull me closer. "I was worried about you" "I was scared they’d find you here. I’d wait and listen to their meeting to make sure they weren’t" he smiles "You didn’t need to do that" "I know but it made me feel safer, knowing you’re safe" "I love you" "I love you too"

I’m lead into a dining room which has a much lighter tone, like a weight was relieved from my shoulders and the bad memory of my old house could just all be washed away. Everyone welcomes me with smiles and recognition, sitting me down for a conversation along with a home cooked meal.

And for the first time in years I feel safe. That for once I could be happy around these people. This family. That’s all I ever wanted, not jewels or pretty dresses or pureblood respect. Isn’t that what matters? Love, compassion and just some emotion. I’d take that over my old dollhouse life any day. In a dollhouse the walls close and you never see what happens inside but the dolls do and if a doll doesn’t look perfect it gets thrown to the side, well I was a broken doll but I got lucky. Lucky enough to have people to catch me and start to put me back together.

#sirius black x platonic!reader #harry potter #oneshot #grimmauld place #malfoy manor #fanfic #george weasley x reader

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geminimoonbeamx · 5 years ago

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Moon lit Serenades

A/N: Dedicated to the reader, may you find happiness. I am so nervous for TROS, I saw a rumor that Poe dies and lost it. That plus the fact that there is literally no Plus Sized ReaderxPoe community? I had to remedy that. This is porn.

Warnings: This is porn. Serious smut from pretty much start to finish. Please enjoy.

Summary: Poe seeks comfort after a particularly hard mission in the only way he knows how. A Poe x Plus Sized Reader story

I am a moth, who just wants to share your light.

I’m just an insect, trying to get out of the night.

I only stick with you, because there are no other’s.

You we’re all I need.

I’m in the middle of your picture.

Lying in the reeds- Radiohead

War had finally caught up with Poe Dameron.

Had finally taken it’s toll, and far more then it’s chunk of flesh. Battle wary and blaster shocked, it was hard to think of the resistance these days as just that- a resistance. No, this was more of a bloodbath.

War.

He’d never thought of it like that before, always held his head high, a defiant flame in his eyes. This was fuck the system- fuck the First Order. Fuck anyone who tried to tell him what to do. He was willed, motivated by the sheer rage that anyone would have to live their life in oppression. Under the thumb of Snoke or Phasma, dead and gone now- Hux and Ren hopefully to follow sooner rather than later.

And that fire to see them fall was still there...but it was dimmed.

Had been stomped on, choked out.

Watching people you love die for you, because of you on a daily basis...it wasnt something he’d wish upon anyone. Friends, family. Allies, brothers and sisters in arms. His fleet which had once flourished with dozens of pilot’s was down to a mere handful of lucky ones.

He was willing to breathe and bleed for the cause. It was in his blood- the sticky substance that matted his dark hair to his head as he climbed out of his X-wing. His parents had been the same.

Was he willing to keep watching others die for it though?

He couldn't stop form pondering the question as he and his unit arrive back to the makeshift base, in the middle of nowhere on a planet in the outer rim- the name of it he could barely pronounce. The shabby hut like quarters made the memory of D’quar and its green covered everything throb longingly in his gut.

That seemed so long ago, now.

No matter. No time for getting attached. They’d be on the move again within a fortnight, never staying any one place longer than a month at a time. Rey usually kept them one step ahead, connected to Ren through the force in a way that made Poe’s stomach churn, but that came in handy with them not getting caught.

Thinking about Kylo Ren always made him sour from the inside out. Muscles clenched in memory of the torture he’d endured at the hands of what used to be Leia’s son, but was now just a shell with his dead fathers nose and the mark of his dead uncles betrayal on his black soul.

Poe would kill him in an instant if he got the chance. He prays to fuck that one day he does.

Clenching his fingers into fists is painful right now- the small mission had gone awry and they’d had to punch their way out of it. Literally. He’s feeling the aftermath of it all over, aching and sore.

He doesn't have it in him to attend the debrief. Can't muster the will, not right now. Maybe after a hot shower, maybe after he gets some food in his stomach and allot’s himself a moment to wallow. He forces himself to stand straight, spine elongated in a way that has his bones and muscle screaming.

Poe tries not to limp, as he scurries away to lick his wounds. He fails.

“Poe, you need to see a medic!” Finn insists, somewhere behind him. Always worried, always caring. Poe has nightmares about the night that he eventually loses him, too.

“Don't worry, I will” Finn wonders how someone who looks like they’re going to keel over at any moment- can manage to sound so cheeky.

Rey, who stands beside Finn, bruised bleeding herself wonders if he realizes that Poe is on the verge of tears. The pilot rippling and vibrating so hard she could feel it, taste it on the air.

Neither of them say anything though. The just watch him disappear into the stormy, starless night.

----

Sleep isn't something that comes easy to you as of late.

Not only did you spend your days(and most hours of your nights, too) in the Med Bay, you had never been the kind of person that could handle big changes, sharp adjustments. This hop forts every couple of weeks trend was killing you.

Your mind couldn't relax, R.E.M. State was always just out of reach.

Especially when he was gone...which also seems to be a trend these days. The missions just kept getting longer and longer- the time that he was on base shorter and farther between.

But it was raining tonight- the soft rhythmic pitter patter of it on the roof of the hut reminding you of your home planet, you could almost pretend you were there; the smell of petrichor tricking your brain. Making it easier to curl up on the bed that was really more of a cot and cozy into the Resistance standard blanket.

For the first time in two weeks- you sleep. Hard. Like a rock. The exhaustion finally overtaking your body, and putting you out of commission. General Organa was right to send you back to your bunk, physically removing you from your post.

You feel kind of, extremely, guilty for the attitude you’d thrown at her -

“I’m fine, if I don't do my job, who’s going to?”-

aimed her way even though she didn't deserve it. She was right, of course. She tended to be most of the time. Why anyone ever doubted her, why you ever doubted her, you didn't know.

The sleep is dreamless, just the way you prefer it...you hadn't always, but nothing was better then the nightmares. Nothing is far from peace, but close to quiet. A middle ground that could be called purgatory, depending how you looked at it.

So when there's a knock at your door, the wooden one that gave you more privacy then you’d had in months, that wakes you from your much needed slumber, you can't help but feel the irritation surge through you. Your hypothetical feathers bristled as you huff and puff and pull yourself out of bed, yanking a pair of breezy sleep pants up your chubby legs and a robe over your shoulders- not wanting to answer whoever it was in the near nude.

When you pull open the door- well, it was the one person who wouldn't have minded if you had greeted him in your panties.

“Poe?” You question, because your eyes still haven't adjusted, your mind still three fourths asleep and one fourth confused.

“Yeah, it’s me, sweetheart” And oh? Sweetheart? In that gravelly voice, tired and worn and fragile...you're instantly aware of what kind of state he’s in.

When you pull him inside, flipping on the light orb, and are able to see him. Clearly now; all bloody and bruised, you inhale sharply. His eye is blackened on the same side of his face that seems to be saturated in crusted crimson.

“Stars, Poe” You whisper as you crowd him, urging him to sit on the cot that’s still warm from your body heat. Poe frowns, pretty lips pulled down as he takes it, and you in. Your hair rumpled, your robe falling off your shoulder as you gather medical supplies from what seems like all over your small “room”

The first thing you do is take out a small capsule full of neon blue liquid from a jar and hand it to him. He takes it gratefully, tossing it down the hatch before you can even offer him water. Painkillers aren't the easiest to come by since they’ve been on the move.

“I woke you up, didn't I?” He inquires, after he swallows.

“Obviously” You answer as you step back into his orbit, close enough that he can smell your skin. That his eyes can trace each of the freckles that dot across your nose, your cheeks. You put your finger under his chin and tilt his head up, and fuck, isn't that a pretty view?

“I’m sorry” He whispers, hissing between his teeth as you, gently but deftly, begin to clean his head.

“Mmm, it’s fine. I’m awake now, Kriff Poe, you look like warmed over shit. This gash in your hairline is going to need stitches” You’re focused, wiping and dabbing as you speak.

He didn't realize, until that moment, just how much he missed your voice.

“Your bedside manner is spectacular as ever” He grins as he says it, even though it hurts to do so. His busted lip is next on your itinerary.

“Well when you show up at my bedside and not the other way around, I’m pretty sure that changes up the rules”

“Didn't you miss me...at your bedside, that is?” He pushes on, he wants you soft and sweet for him but he knows from experience it takes a bit to get there. Especially since he’s been gone so long.

“Stop distracting me” You mutter. You're only half pretending to be completely focused on the task at hand, at this point you could probably stitch a wound with your eyes closed.

“M’sorry” He’s not. It’s selfish, but he really isn't. He’s not sorry for barging in on you and waking you up, or for sitting in your bed reeking of blood and days worth of dirt. How can he be, when this feels so good? Your soft little hands working at him, healing with every touch. There’s no hurt when he’s around you- only good.

The painkiller makes the edges fuzzy, makes the fact that your repeatedly pulling a needle through his skin seem mild. It’s not like it’s his first time getting sewn up, and he highly doubts it’ll be his last.

Poe can't stop staring at you, dark eyes hooded. Hungry in a way that he doesn't care to hide. Drinking you in, gulping. It’d been almost a month and he was dying to get his fill. Your round body, nothing but curves and dips that he was itching to touch, is mostly covered, but the robe is still hanging off your shoulder. Satin skin exposed, so pretty and pristine.

It’s almost out of his control when his hand skims up our arm, skin seeking out skin. His palm sears as it settles on your upper arm. The plush flesh so soft under his calloused hands that he’s almost worried that it would give if e pressed down too hard.

In the back of his mind he knows better, though. Recalls just how much you can take.

“Poe” You warn tightly, lashes fluttering as you shoot him a look. One that makes him chuckle, because you're not fooling him.

He’ll play, mostly because he wants to, but he knows you missed him as much as he missed you.

You wonder if he can feel the way that you're trembling, already shaking for him. It’s stupid, you feel stupid, and yet you cant stop it. You have healers hands, medic’s hands- and at least you can get them to stay still as you finish with his head, then his lip.

Going insane from the simplest touch, from the way that he rubs his thumb in circles over and over on your upper arm. You remember when that would have made you uncomfortable, big arms that you wanted covered at all times used to be a big no-no.

But with Poe it was different. He wasn't there to judge. He just wanted to feel.

You don't want to pull away, but you have to. Your brain is torn, but ultimately resorts back to it’s resting state: health driven. Medically inclined.

“You need to go take a shower, wash the rest of the blood out of your hair. The hot water will help to start to bring down the swelling” you instruct, and it would be how you talked to any patient. Except for the way you cradle the side of his face, your voice breathy as you touch is thick locks that are greasy. A bit tangled.

Poe nods, he knows your right. Knows he should have done that before he even came here…

“Can I come back?” It’s hopeful, he spits it quick- desperate.

It feels like someone yanked, hard, on a loose thread inside your chest.

“Always. You know that”

While he showers, forced to go a few huts over to the community bathrooms, you’re a flurry of anxious thoughts and movement. Tidying up the small space and yourself the best you can. You’d showered earlier in the evening, using the last of the last of the Obsidian Lily oil that you’d carried with you. You still smelled good, pretty.

Your hair was wild, but not untamable and you end up brushing it smooth. You hadn't shaved since before he had left and curse yourself for not doing so earlier. How were you supposed to know that he was coming back tonight? Growing up on your home planet, there was a moss based soap that everyone used that minimized body hair. But still…

You wished, like you had more than once, that you could be better for him.

You're trying to swallow that horrid ugly little thought back down when your door opens, Poe not bothering to knock this time. Barges in, and he seems a bit more like himself in that moment.

His hair has gone back to his natural curls, thick and bouncing, dripping and the navy, loose materialed sleep clothes hang on him. Dont cling to him with dirt and sweat...all and all, he looks so much better.

Or so you think. Until you see him in the right light, his top falling open and revealing his chest.

“Poe!” You exclaim and his thick brows furrow, he had been drying his hair with one of your spare towels.

“What?”

“Take off your shirt” You demand and one side of his lips pull up- a smirk that doesn't meet his eyes.

“You know if you ask me nicely, sweetheart, I’ll give you whatever you want” It’s a purr, a ploy. Many a person- male, female and Wookiee had fallen for that charm of his. Your own name thrown in that pot.

But he was hurt, had to be in pain, and that thought cut through the others that that coy tone had stirred up.

“I’m serious, that bruising looks deep- why didn't you show me this earlier? You could have internal bleeding! Something could be broken”

Poe would never let it be known, would deny it to the ends of the galaxy...but he loves the way you fret over him. It makes him feel warm.

“Okay- Okay!” He sighs as you start to reach for him demandingly, knowing that you'd pull it off yourself if he didn't. There's a handful of winces as he tugs the fabric up and over his shoulders. You’re silent the whole time, and then for a long moment after.

“Oh...baby”

It’s the first time you've called him that tonight. In weeks. The first time an affectionate name has slipped from your mouth.

You can't help it, can't help the overwhelming feeling of...horror. Of shock and worry. His tanned chest and abdomen are hard, dusted with ebony hair that matches that of which grows from his scalp...and covered in bruises.

Four huge patches of yellow, and black and purple and blue...he looks like a fucking water color painting. You’d seen him in some pretty bad states over the years, and this was up there with some of the worst. The worst? Well you didn't like to think about that particular bloody day.

You reach out, fingertips tracing the purple bloom on his left ribs.

“It’s not so bad” And that’s Poe in a nutshell. Always trying to convince not only the people around him, but himself, that things were going to be okay.

“That one’s a deep tissue bruise” You point out to him, fingers gently probing, trying to detect if anything is broken “It has to hurt like a bitch, it’s going to get worse before it feels better”

“Not so bad” He loves the way you're touching him, and his hand, that big paw, goes to our waist. Holding you. Urging you to keep going “Those painkillers are something else”

You snort through your nose. He’s something else- you tell him of that fact, often.

Poe can only be so patient, can only allow you to touch him, feather light, for so long. Eventually, his impulses win out. Just like the always do.

You’re almost done, checking his bones, when he grabs your hand, envelopes it in his large one. It’s still for a moment- the air sparkling with energy. His eyes are mahogany, dark wood. Deep forests as they stare down at you.

The want in them is raw, unbridled.

“I missed you, so fucking much. Every day. Have I told you that yet?” His words, mixed with the timbre- vehement. Honest. It makes you want to squirm.

“No- you haven't” You wish your voice at that moment wasn't so anxious, weak and almost a whisper. Something about Poe had always brought this out in you. He was so bright, beaming. Everyone around him flocked to him, in hopes of just being able to taste a fraction of his light.

Sometimes, you still couldn't believe that he let you fill your cup, that he sought you out, parted the crowd for you.

You had never been a weak woman; had never let your weight or your too loud opinions or your tendencies to be overly emotional make you feel small, or less then...but being with Poe-- the level of intimacy was suffocating.

You felt burned up. Icarus who flew too close to the sun, who willing allowed himself to be burned up just to feel its warmth for a moment...you could relate.

“I did” Poe continues “I missed the way you feel, the way you taste-”

You close your eyes at that, images of the last time you’d gotten a moment alone with him, of a head of dark curls between your legs, assaulting you. Smacking you right in the face.

“-You taste so good, Y/N. Should've bent you over when you came to say goodbye. You would've let me, huh? Let me get one more taste- you have no idea how bad I want to stick my tongue inside of you. All the time. No one else gets to taste, right?”

Poe is well on his way to being rock hard, already. It had taken all of him to not jerk off in the showers.

“No one, Poe. You know that” you’d meant to tell him to fuck off, that you didn't belong to him. That he couldn't just have you whenever he wanted you. That came out instead.

“I need you” He tells you, roughly “feel how bad I need you, Y/N, fuck” he still has your hand in his grasp, againts his chest. When he begins to slide it downward, you know where its destination will be.

That doesn't stop the thrill, the flip flop of our tummy that comes with Poe pressing your hand to his crotch, hard and hot. The thin pants the only layer between your palm and his erection.

“You’re the only one who gets me like this, I need you to make it better, Y/N”

The switch is flipped then. Hard.

You’re surging forward, and he's meeting you halfway, your mouths slotting together. Lips and tongue, so much tongue. He talks all about how you taste, but stars, the way he tastes is intoxicating. Want to suck the taste of him off his tongue, off his cock.

Its blurry and ferocious. Hands everywhere. Touching, grabbing. While you are gentle with him and his tattered body, he doesn't extend that same sentiment. He’s groping, fingertips bidding into flesh. Groaning into your mouth as he clutches your thick, dimpled thighs. Reaches around to squeeze our ample ass.

Best ass in the galaxy, he'd write fucking sonnets about it, if he was good at anything but flying.

Clothes are shed, way too fast you worn Poe who doesn't listen. Because he never does- and he ends up hissing in pain, and relenting, sitting on the cot and letting you take off his pants. Slowly. You make it up to him by standing over him, grabbing his hands and guiding them to strip you. Slow drags of fabric over supple skin.

You’re so fucking sexy, and he tells you so as he urges you into his lap, you stay on your shins to mind his middle. Poe worships with his words. His fingers and lips do their fair share of praying next.

“Fuck I missed these the most” your breasts are large, heavy globes. Puffy sweet nipples are pebbled and just begging to be sucked on. He licks them messy, wet before he does just that; sucks them into the hot cavern of his mouth.

“Oh, oh, ugh” Your hands are twined in his hair, dripping down onto his thighs already, when Poe feels the wetness drip on him, his fingers go searching, hand pressed in between your thighs. Fingers slipping through sopping, heated flesh. You grasp, a high sound as he presses up and circles your clit, firm and pointed.

It’s so good, pleasure shoots down your legs, all the way to the tips of your toes.

It’s not enough. For either of you.

“Poe, fuck. Please” He’s injured, and you know it hurts him to do, and you should scold him for it, but when he manhandles you, flips you easily onto your back to that he can climb on top and situates himself between your thighs-

It’s just as hot as it always is. You know you have to be dripping down onto the cot, can feel your slick covering your thighs, slipping down your crack.

Kiss, Kiss and Kiss and Kiss and Kiss and…

You get lost in it, caught up in the way his stubble burns. His fingers slide back inside you and he watches your face as he crooks them, pumps them fast. Finger fucks you until you’re sobbing, letting out animal sounds.

“Do you still have the implant” he pants, head swimming. He gets like this when you let him make you feel good- wants to go down on you, but wants to be inside you even more.

“No, I took it out in the last few weeks” You’re cheeky, even with his fingers burried inside you. He loves that about you, “Of course I do, Poe”

You’d be damned before you ever brought a child into this world.

Poe holds your thighs wide, staring between them, your pussy wet and clenching around nothing. You’re so vulnerable for him, it makes you dizzy. He lines himself up, clock head dipping into your slit, resting against your hole, when thrusts inside of you it’s in one fluid movement.

You mewl, so full it’s hard to breathe and Poe makes a punched out sound. Like he’d been shot by a blaster in the chest and his hips start undulating, needing to be deeper. It feels so right inside of you. Feels safe. He wants to tear into your softness, rip you open and nestle inside. Settle himself in your bones.

You let him take what he needs, how ever he needs it. On your back, on your hands and knees. You bounce on his cock when he gets to achy,letting him run his hands all over your tummy, sides, breasts.

He can have it all.

After, the two of you lay spent, cuddled tight to one and other in the small cot. Standard issue thrown over your naked bodies, the sound of the rain starting up again mixed with Poes breathing is a lullaby you hadn't known you needed.

This...thing between you might have started as a way for both of you to numb the pain. To seek support. But it was more now. You were so in love with him that it made your eyes sting if you thought about it for too long.

“You’ll always come back to me, right?” Its so, so timid that he almost doesn't catch it and you almost hope he’d miss it.

Poe does what he always does; tries to convince you both that it’s going to be okay.

“Always”

You let yourself believe him.

Well I wasn't expecting this to turn into pure porn, but here we are lmfao. I loved writing for Poe and there will definitely be more of him coming soon! If you are able- listening to All I Need by Radiohead and the Hot Like Fire cover by the XX really sets the tone for this. I actually dropped a line from hot like fire in this- who can point it out?lol

As usual, I'm going to ask that if you can please give me some feedback. I truly love interacting with my readers and would love to hear your thoughts and opinions.

#poe dameron #poe dameron x plus size reader #poe dameron smut #poe dameron x reader #star wars #oscar issac

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mikauzoran · 4 years ago

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Lukadrien: Among the Wild Things: Chapter Nine

Read it on AO3: Among the Wild Things: Chapter Nine: Ghosts

Nino, Adrien, and Marinette continued to snuggle in subdued silence for a few minutes more until Nino took it upon himself to lighten the atmosphere by asking Marinette about what kind of outfit she was going to design for Luka for the wedding-slash-coronation the following day.

Marinette launched into an impassioned doctoral dissertation on the designs she had in mind that would match the outfit she had already created for Adrien while also suiting Luka.

Luka, Adrien, and Nino stopped her every so often to ask questions and seek clarification.

Soon, the lively discussion turned to mortal wedding customs and the order of the ceremony.

Adrien explained that Nathalie would make sure that Luka knew everything he needed for the ceremony, but the three humans took turns describing aspects of the event and answering Luka’s questions.

Nearly an hour had passed when Adrien’s stomach rumbled, and the young king was reminded that it had been hours since he’d last eaten.

Bidding a fond farewell to Nino and Marinette and assuring them that they would meet again soon, Adrien and Luka made their way to the King’s chambers where dinner was waiting for them.

“The kitchen made your favourite dishes, Your Majesty,” Chef Cheng announced, bowing as he removed the dish covers with a flourish.

Luka (with his glamour back up) gawked openly at the feast in miniature set before them on the small table near the windows in the King’s chambers. There was a wide assortment of vegetable and seafood dishes, curries, salads, hummuses, and bread…and a tiered tray of bite-sized desserts to round out the meal. Luka found himself astounded by the variety of colours and textures partnered with the heady yet pleasing mix of spices.

“Thank you, Shifu,” Adrien responded with a wide grin overflowing with gratitude as he scooped up some of the lemon and rosemary hummus with a slice of pita still steaming fresh from the oven. “I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed your food. Please give the kitchen my thanks.”

“Of course, Your Majesty,” Chef Cheng assured, glowing with pride at Adrien’s show of appreciation. “It is our honor to serve you. Please enjoy your meal.”

With another bow, the great chef took his leave, and Adrien greedily bit into his pita.

The food seemed to turn to dirt in his mouth, leaving Adrien choking.

“My Love? What’s wrong?” Luka entreated, getting to his feet and hurrying around the table to his husband’s side, his hand going to rest on Adrien’s back between his shoulder blades.

Adrien reached for his wine goblet, taking a large swallow of the liquid and nearly spiting it out again just as fast.

“It tastes like over-steeped tea,” he choked, staring at the spread of food with a look of utter betrayal.

“Oh, no…” Luka breathed as he realized what had happened. “You can’t eat mortal food anymore after consuming fairy food for so long. I’m so sorry, Adrien. I completely forgot.”

“Me too,” Adrien muttered mournfully, picking up a pickled radish and taking a tentative bite. He cringed as the expected acidity of the vinegar failed to materialize on his tongue, replaced instead by the taste and texture of hay.

He looked up at Luka. “Does it taste this bad for you too?”

Luka scooped up a creampuff from the dessert tray and popped it into his mouth. “…It’s fine. Light, flakey exterior…subtly sweet, creamy interior.”

Adrien grabbed a mini pain au chocolat, biting into it in desperation.

He waited for semisweet chocolate to coat his tongue and bring back the usual rush of memories of his childhood…but the pastry was gritty in his mouth.

His hand fell away from his lips, and the pain au chocolat landed with a bounce, leaving crumbs and a smear of chocolate on the pristine tablecloth.

“Adrien?” Luka called gently, concern building with every passing second.

Adrien fought to keep his breathing steady as his heartrate picked up, a wave of panic overtaking him. “…I used to eat those with my mom.”

“Oh, Adrien,” Luka cooed, his heart breaking as tears began to spill over his mate’s cheeks. “Little Prince, it’s going to be okay,” he promised, pulling Adrien out of the chair and into his arms, holding his husband tight, holding him together.

Adrien choked on a sob, wrapping his own arms around Luka and squeezing to keep himself grounded. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize… I’m sorry. It’s just food. It’s not important. I haven’t even thought about pain au chocolat this whole time. I just…”

“Shhh.” Luka gently started to sway, rocking Adrien from side to side. “It’s okay, Adrien. It’s going to be okay. If it helps, Alya’s mother is an exceptional chef. We can figure out how to make the foods that are important to you. You haven’t lost anything. Okay?”

Slowly, Adrien started to nod, mentally grabbing onto Luka’s words like a life raft. “Okay,” he agreed shakily. “Yeah. That…That’s a good idea. We can ask her when we get back home. Sorry. I’m just feeling a little emotional being back here.”

“There’s nothing to apologize for,” Luka whispered, nuzzling Adrien’s hair comfortingly. “I get it. I’m sure being back here dredges up a lot of old memories for you, and there’s a lot going on at the moment with your father’s death and everything. It’s okay to feel raw right now…. I’ve got you.”

Adrien tipped his head up to lick Luka’s cheek in gratitude. “I love you.”

“Love you too,” Luka assured, returning the lick lovingly. He paused, noting, “You taste like you did that day I first licked you…. You were crying then too.”

“I cried all the time back then,” Adrien chuckled ironically.

“It made me think you were fragile…that I needed to protect you,” Luka hummed, reflecting. “But you’re not, and I don’t.”

“What if I want you to?” Adrien chuckled, tears gradually drying up as Luka continued to bring him back into the present moment.

“Don’t you have a guard to protect you, though?” Luka teased. “Nino has the biggest queerplatonic crush on you. He’d be happy to do the job.”

Adrien leaned in, touching his nose lightly to Luka’s. He then shook his head so that he was nuzzling his husband as he pretended to pout, “No. I want you to protect me.”

“You’re very persuasive,” Luka observed, tipping his head to lower his lips to Adrien’s.

The kiss slowly deepened and picked up intensity until Luka began to wonder if they were skipping dinner and going straight to bed.

But then Adrien’s stomach noisily groaned in protest, threatening to eat itself if no other suitable substitute was offered to slake its hunger.

Luka pulled back with a chuckle, making Adrien whine almost as loudly as his stomach. “Later, Love,” he snickered. “First, we need to feed you. I’ll run back home and grab you something edible until we can make other arrangements to keep you nourished for the duration of our stay.”

“No!” Adrien cried in a sudden fright, tightening his hold on his husband. “Please,” he added in a more level, composed tone. “Sorry. Please don’t leave me. I don’t think I can take being alone here right now, not even for half an hour.”

Luka pursed his lips, studying the worry lines cutting into Adrien’s face. “Adrien, you can’t deal with all this on an empty stomach. Water should be fine for you to drink, but what are you going to eat?”

“There’s plenty of food,” Adrien argued, tipping his head back towards the myriad dishes covering the table. He tried not to cringe as he took it all in. “I’ll just…”

“What?” Luka snorted lightly. “Choke it down?”

“…Yeah,” Adrien sighed in resignation, breaking away from Luka to rescue the rest of the pain au chocolat he had earlier dropped.

He closed his eyes, imagined the burst of flavor that he should be experiencing, took a bite…and tasted dust. His eyes began to water as he forced himself to chew and swallow.

“Oh, My Love,” Luka cooed sympathetically, gathering Adrien into his arms and pulling him down to sit on Luka’s lap in the red velvet armchair. He rubbed Adrien’s back encouragingly as the repatriated king sullenly consumed his dinner.

It was slow going, but, eventually, Adrien managed to eat a sufficient amount to quiet his stomach and keep himself going.

“I feel sick,” he whimpered into Luka’s neck.

The kelpie continued to run his hand up and down his husband’s back, making the soothing whickering and whinnying sounds Adrien liked so much.

Adrien had told Luka once that the sounds reminded him of the horses in the royal stables that he had befriended and often talked to about his problems.

“I’m sorry, My Love,” Luka whispered.

“Don’t be sorry,” Adrien sighed, reluctantly disentangling himself from Luka and getting to his feet. “I brought this upon myself. It’s not like it’s your fault.”

Luka grimaced as a stab of guilt pierced his chest. “Isn’t it, though? In a way, at least? If not for me, you’d still be able to enjoy this food.”

Adrien rolled his eyes and gave his head a toss. “If not for you, I wouldn’t be able to enjoy this food because I’d be living a purposeless life without freedom and full of misery.”

Luka hummed thoughtfully at this new perspective. “Well…if you put it like that…”

“Exactly,” Adrien snorted. He then seemed to get distracted by dark thoughts as he looked to the chamber’s double doors. “…I suppose I should make a show of retiring to the Queen’s rooms so that we don’t scandalize the servants.”

Luka’s eyes narrowed as he picked up on the hint of fear in Adrien’s tone.

He stood, placing his own hand on top of the hand Adrien had rested on the table. “Something wrong, Little Prince?”

Adrien turned his head to look at Luka, and Luka saw that Adrien’s lips were quivering almost imperceptibly as he entreated, “Come with me, please? I don’t know if I can…” He paused and took a breath, trying to wrangle his flighty thoughts. “I haven’t been in my mother’s rooms in years. Not even after I convinced Father to open them back up again after he’d initially walled them up right after her death. I wasn’t ever able to do more than peek inside, so…” He shook his head, screwing his eyes closed. “I think this is going to be another one of those things that makes me emotional.”

“Shh,” Luka cooed, lacing his fingers through Adrien’s and giving his hand a squeeze to reassure him of Luka’s presence. “Of course. I’m with you.”

“I feel so stupid,” Adrien laughed at himself, an unkind bark. “I’m acting like such a baby.”

Luka tipped up Adrien’s chin with a finger, making Adrien meet his loving, empathetic gaze. “You are the strongest, bravest person I know. In the Couffaine family, we tend not to confront problems. We pretend they’re not there or we avoid them or run away from them. We don’t take responsibility or ownership. You, though,” he chuckled, smiling and shaking his head in disbelief. “You chose to uproot your life, leave your happiness behind, and come back here to deal with other people’s problems because you care about what happens to your subjects. You didn’t have to do that, Adrien.”

“Yes, I did,” Adrien argued, blinking in confusion. “This is my kingdom. What happens to it and its people is my direct concern.”

Luka continued to shake his head. “It’s really not,” he informed. “Your sense of duty and decency tells you that it is. My Love, you could have stayed home and let the kingdom figure out things on its own. You didn’t have to come here…but you did anyway because you’re a good, compassionate person. I can’t convey how much I admire you for that.”

Adrien looked to the side with a blush, warmth spreading from his cheeks outwards as he was unable to face the intensity of the emotions in Luka’s eyes, unable to deal with the way Luka’s expression made him feel.

“You’re here confronting all these issues head on when I would have looked the other way and pretended that it didn’t concern me. You have carte blanche to cry however much you need to cry,” Luka informed insistently. “You have every right to panic or shut down or respond however you need to respond because you’re here facing your demons, and that’s about the hardest thing a person can do…and I think the world of you for having the courage to come back here and do this.”

“How do you always do that?” Adrien laughed weakly, on the verge of tears even as he smiled and slipped his arms around his mate.

“Do what?” Luka quirked an eyebrow curiously.

“Make me feel like I’m an amazing person worth loving and not a pathetic waste of space,” Adrien snickered.

Luka squeezed Adrien protectively, mentally cursing Adrien’s parents for failing to instill in their child any sense of self-worth.

“Easy,” Luka whispered into Adrien’s hair. “It’s just a matter of showing you the truth, replacing those nasty lies about yourself you’ve believed your whole life. It’s easy to believe the truth.”

Adrien hummed softly in thought for a moment. “You make me feel like it really is the truth.”

“Would I lie to you?” Luka challenged without heat.

“…I don’t think so,” Adrien realized.

“Then it stands to reason that I’m telling you the truth,” Luka pointed out.

Adrien laughed, an ironic puff of air so soft Luka might have missed it.

“Yeah,” the young king whispered, pulling back with a cloudy smile. “I guess I’m still learning to see myself the way you see me and not the way that people here saw me.”

Luka squeezed Adrien’s hand. “You’ll get there in time. I’ll see to it.”

“Thank you,” Adrien stressed, gratitude shining in his eyes.

They stayed there, suspended in that moment, for a long beat, and then Adrien gave Luka’s hand a reciprocal squeeze before letting go and going over to the wall by one of the large, oak bookcases.

Luka arched an eyebrow as Adrien reached up and took hold of one of the brass sconces, pulling it down.

With a groan of unoiled hinges that hadn’t seen use in years, a hidden door swung open, granting passage into the room next door.

“Oh, wow,” Luka laughed, taken by surprise. “These old castles actually have secret passages? I thought that was just in the human tales.”

“This place is full of secret passages and hidden doorways,” Adrien snickered impishly, motioning for Luka to follow him. “How do you think I used to sneak around without getting caught?”

“I assumed your attendants felt sorry for you and looked the other way,” Luka snorted, stepping through into the Queen’s chambers.

Adrien stopped just inside the doorway and looked around, all manner of mirth falling away in an instant as nostalgia hit him hard.

Luka stood by his husband’s side and took in the room with interest.

It was quaint and yet stately, comfy yet decorous. The furnishings were mainly in the Victorian style with a few Second Empire pieces. The walls were papered a soft, avocado green with intricate floral designs, and the furniture was upholstered in shades ranging from pear to muted wasabi.

It was a calm, dignified room—nothing like the brazen, authoritarian scarlets, garnets, and vermillions that had reigned imposingly in the King’s chambers.

“Your mother had good taste,” Luka quietly observed. “It has a cheerful, serene atmosphere.”

Adrien nodded, taking an unsteady step forward like a sleepwalker. He went over to the sitting area by the empty fireplace and ran a hand along the back of the settee, remembering when he had sat there with his mother, taking tea, when he was a child.

“She brought most of this over with her when she came from England,” Adrien explained softly. “She liked to surround herself with things that reminded her of home.” A wane smile lifted the corner of his mouth as he added, “I’ll have to show you the little English rose garden we have out back. I insisted that the gardeners keep it up after she died because it reminded me of her.”

He blinked and frowned as it occurred to him, “I don’t know if they’re blooming yet or not.”

“You can still show me,” Luka encouraged, following Adrien over to the writing desk. “I’m sure that just listening to you describe it will be wonderful.”

“Flatterer,” Adrien snorted, brushing his fingers over the wood of the desk.

“Not at all,” Luka assured. “I’m just that smitten with you.”

Adrien hummed as he opened the top drawer of the desk and pulled out a small family portrait painted when Adrien was probably about ten.

The child in the picture was smiling and bright-eyed yet obviously trying to rein in his boundless energy in an attempt to appear regal.

Behind him was a beautiful blonde woman with clear, peridot eyes much like her son’s. She smiled sedately, and the action didn’t make it to her eyes.

Beside her was a scowling, taciturn man already starting to go grey despite his relative youth. He projected power and control, and he rested possessive hands on his son’s shoulder and at the small of his wife’s back, laying claim to them.

Luka could read the unhappiness of the family contained in the miniature portrait as clearly as if it had been written out for him.

“You were an adorable kid,” Luka remarked conversationally. “You favor your mother.”

“Oh? Yes…. Yes,” Adrien responded distractedly as Luka’s words pulled him out of his thoughts. “We’re a lot alike, actually.”

“How so?” Luka prompted gently, giving Adrien an opening if he wanted to talk.

“We have similar dispositions,” he elaborated. “Similar circumstances.”

Adrien stared down at his mother’s image, running a thumb over her painted face. “…Her father pretty much sold her. He was land-rich but cash-poor like a lot of the old, titled families. He had two daughters, and he’d already married my aunt to a wealthy merchant’s son who was looking to buy his way up in the world. My father met my mother at a party while he was abroad and promptly fell in love with her.”

Adrien chuckled bitterly, carefully setting the portrait back down into the drawer and closing it. “It was the only rash, idealistic thing he ever did in his life. He made my grandfather a generous offer, and that was that. It didn’t matter that she didn’t want to go, that she didn’t really care for my father. They packed up her things and shipped her off.”

He looked up and around the room, watching a hundred ghosts of his mother reenact memories tied to the space.

“…She was so miserable here,” he whispered sadly. “Father was cruel. The only way he knew how to express love was by exerting control and subjugating. She told me she thought about running away many, many times…but then she had me, and she told me I made it a little more bearable here.”

Luka stepped in, slipping his arms around Adrien from behind and giving his ear a comforting nuzzle.

“She’s a big reason why I knew I could never marry someone I didn’t love. I saw how it slowly choked the life out of her. I watched as my father killed her year by year….” Adrien turned in Luka’s arms, burrowing his face into his mate’s chest as he whispered tearfully, “I knew the same thing would happen to me if I let him marry me off.”

Luka squeezed tighter, pressing bolstering kisses to the shell of Adrien’s ear. “It’s okay, Little Prince,” he soothed. “Go ahead and cry. I’ve got you.”

Adrien’s fingers curled around the fabric of Luka’s tunic, gripping it to keep himself grounded as his heart broke for a mother who had felt trapped and hopeless.

Luka patiently served as a supportive presence for his husband, radiating comfort and acceptance as Adrien slowly recomposed himself.

“Thanks,” he whispered, pulling away with a sheepish smile.

Luka gave Adrien’s cheek an answering lick. “Any time.”

“I just get so upset when I think about how she must have felt…how easily I could have been in her position.” Adrien shuddered and shook his head. “Some of the women my father was considering for my wife… He made sure that they were firm, strong-willed…someone who could keep me under her thumb just like my father had.”

Luka leaned in, placing a solid kiss on Adrien’s forehead, and then carefully wiped away the tear tracks still lingering on Adrien’s face. “It’s okay, My Love…but you’re safe now, and your mother’s suffering is over.”

Adrien took a deep breath, shaking off morose thoughts. “Right. You’re right. Sorry. I feel ridiculous crying like this over every little thing.”

Luka shook his head slowly. “These aren’t little things. …You remind me of Juleka, actually. You’re both traumatized by the accumulation of your experiences, so it may feel like just a bunch of little things, but a lot of little things really add up in the long run. So don’t feel ridiculous. Like I said before, you’re facing your demons, and that’s an amazing thing.”

Adrien’s eyes went reflexively to a door at the far end of the room. “…This is nothing. The real demons are in there.”

Luka frowned, following Adrien’s gaze. “What’s in there?”

Adrien gulped. “The bathroom.”

Luka’s first inclination was to ask what was so frightening about a bathroom, but he held his tongue and was later glad that he had.

“The bathroom?” he echoed instead.

Adrien nodded, cautiously beginning to approach as if he were sneaking up on a sleeping dragon. He took the doorknob in a shaking hand and held it, frozen there, for a long beat.

Luka rested a hand on Adrien’s shoulder in solidarity. “If it’s too much, we don’t have to do this now. Just coming in here after not being able to for six years is quite the accomplishment.”

Adrien shook his head. “I’m not going to be able to sleep in this room tonight if I don’t open this door. I’ll have nightmares. I need…” He gulped. “I need to know that she’s not in there.”

Luka nodded despite not quite understanding. He placed his other hand on top of Adrien’s on the doorknob. “Want to turn it together?”

“…Okay,” Adrien agreed in a small, scared voice, just on the edge of tears.

“On three,” Luka instructed and then slowly counted down.

The door opened, and Adrien’s knees nearly gave out on him, making him stumble, leaning on Luka for support.

His mother lay in the overflowing bathtub, her hair and dress billowing out around her reminiscent of Millais’s Ophelia. Tendrils of blood snaked through the water spilling out onto the floor and soaking Adrien’s shoes.

Luka turned on the bathroom light, and it all disappeared.

“See?” Luka coaxed as he half held Adrien up. “No one’s there.”

Luka winced as he saw how translucent Adrien’s complexion had gone. “…You doing okay, Little Prince?”

Adrien shook his head, swallowing a few times before he was able to articulate, “This is where I found her.”

Luka arched an eyebrow. “You…found her?”

Adrien nodded. “The chamber door was locked, so I used one of the passageways. I heard the water running, and I called out to her, but she didn’t respond…. I don’t know what I was thinking at the time. My memories are so blurry after I opened the door and saw her,” he admitted. “I think I thought she was sleeping or sick or something, so I went to the door and unlocked it and called for the guards. Nathalie was out in the hallway, and she came and saw and had one of the guards take me to my room. Later, Nathalie came and told me Maman had drowned.”

Luka’s eyes went wide in horror, and his stomach flipped as he realized that Adrien had been the one to find his mother dead. He had to choke back the bile that rose up in his throat. He felt absolutely ill.

“Oh, Adrien,” Luka gasped, pulling him into a crushing hug. “How could those nitwits make you sleep in here? And for what? To keep up some semblance of propriety? They should have just let us have guestrooms. This is unforgiveable. How could they make you come back here?”

“It’s okay,” Adrien protested without strength, melting into Luka’s arms.

“It’s not,” Luka growled, already plotting the pranks he would play on Damocles, Raincomprix, and Bourgeois throughout the remainder of their stay at the palace.

“It will be okay,” Adrien rephrased, turning his head to look once more at the empty bathtub. “I had to get over this sooner or later, didn’t I?”

Luka couldn’t form words to express the sentiment that he didn’t think Adrien would ever truly be over something like that.

“Come on,” he whispered, tugging Adrien gently out into the main room, turning off the bathroom light, and closing the door. “We’re done here, right? You saw that she’s not in there?”

Adrien nodded weakly.

“Okay. Good,” Luka sighed, guiding his mate over to the banquette seating by the windows lining the circular turret.

Adrien didn’t protest as Luka pulled Adrien down to sit between his legs and wrapped his arms tightly around Adrien from behind.

It felt good to be supported and protected as Adrien’s body struggled to recover from the intense stress.

“…You don’t need to worry. I really am fine,” Adrien whispered several minutes later when he was finally feeling calmer.

Luka scoffed softly into Adrien’s neck. “I’m not fine.”

Adrien lifted his head, twisting to get a look at Luka’s expression. “What’s wrong?”

Luka shook his head.

Adrien got up to sit on the banquette beside his husband, taking Luka’s face in his hands. “Hey. Talk to me. Please? What’s wrong?”

Luka met Adrien’s gaze forlornly. “It’s pointless wishing I could change things that are long past, but…if I could, I’d do anything to save you from some of the pain you’ve suffered.”

“That’s sweet, but I’m really okay,” Adrien assured, rubbing his thumb back and forth along Luka’s cheekbone. “Don’t get upset on my account.”

“But there are so many things…” Luka bit the inside of his cheek as he thought about how to get across what he was feeling. “…I thought I’d understood what your life here was like from what you’d told me when you used to come to our clearing and vent about what your father had done to upset you that particular time…. Adrien, today I’m seeing how little I understood, and it grieves me deeply.”

Adrien averted his gaze, dropping his hands to clasp Luka’s. “It was fine. I mean…I hadn’t known any different until I came to live with you. I just thought that that was how the world was, so there was no need to really talk about it. I wasn’t trying to hide anything from you.”

“I know,” Luka reassured, giving Adrien’s hands a squeeze. “I didn’t mean to imply that. It’s just… Was there anything good about this place?”

“I was happy here sometimes.” Adrien looked up to meet Luka’s eyes. “I have happy childhood memories, and there were people who were very good to me. It wasn’t all bad,” he muttered defensively.

Luka nodded even though he wasn’t sure he fully believed Adrien.

“…I just missed my mother…and wished my father were capable of expressing love the way I’d seen other parents do…. And I thought I would never know what it was like to love someone so much it burned inside of me and for them to love me in return just as fiercely,” Adrien admitted. “But there were still good things. Nathalie isn’t a very expressive woman, but she loves me. Nino and Marinette are the truest friends I could ever ask for. I enjoyed some of my lessons…. There were good things,” he assured sedately.

Luka leaned in, pressing an airy kiss to Adrien’s temple. “Of course there were. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that your life before me was all bad or anything. I just…today has been eye-opening. That’s all. Just when I think I know you, you go and surprise me. It’s not a bad thing to have layers. I’m just…”

“Processing?” Adrien supplied, and Luka nodded, glad that his mate was following him.

“Definitely,” Luka agreed. “Processing.”

Adrien hummed thoughtfully. “Yeah. Today’s been a lot for me. I didn’t even stop to think that maybe it’s been a lot for you too.”

“I’m glad I’m here, though,” Luka hastened to assure. “I’m glad I’m with you, that we’re here together.”

“Like I said before,” Adrien chuckled, “I’m so grateful not to be on my own. I really don’t know what I would do without you.”

“Oh, you’d make it,” Luka snorted, giving Adrien’s cheek a bolstering lick. “I believe in my Little Prince.”

“At least one of us does,” Adrien snickered, leaning in for a quick kiss. “Come here. I want to show you something good about this place. I think you’ll like it.”

“Oh?” Luka arched an eyebrow in interest as Adrien took him by the hands and pulled him to his feet, leading him across the room to the harpsichord halfway between the bed and the door out to the hall.

“Oooh,” Luka purred, pleased with the prospects that the instrument offered. “Am I finally going to get to hear my talented spouse’s true musical abilities?”

“If this thing is in tune,” Adrien chuckled, pulling out the bench and taking a seat, motioning for Luka to sit down beside him. “They’re supposed to keep it in tune as part of the general maintenance cleaning, but I don’t know if they’ve bothered since I haven’t been here to pester anyone about whether or not it’s been done.”

Adrien pressed his fingers to the keys, playing a simple D major chord. He nodded in satisfaction as the picks inside of the instrument plucked the strings and the notes sounded true.

“Looks like we’re in business,” Luka hummed in pleasure. “What are you going to play for me?”

Adrien folded his lips back over his teeth in thought as he warmed up with a series of scales and arpeggios. “Don’t laugh when I fail miserably. I’m completely out of practice, but…this is a song my mother and I used to play. It won’t sound right, since it’s supposed to be played by two people with four hands, but…”

He shrugged and started to play the first minute or so of Mozart’s Harpsichord Sonata in D Major, K.381.

Luka closed his eyes and listened as Adrien’s fingers fluttered up and down the keyboard.

“You’re not out of practice at all,” he snorted. “Unless you were truly phenomenal before, anyway.”

Adrien rolled his eyes, elbowing Luka in the arm. “Do you even know what the song is supposed to sound like? I’m missing notes all over the place, and I’m completely off tempo.”

Luka clicked his tongue. “Not at all. Maybe a few finger flubs here and there, but it’s still very pretty. I like your harpsichord playing.”

“Maman was better,” Adrien whispered, fingers going still.

Luka opened his eyes and turned to find silent tears parading slowly down Adrien’s cheeks. He wiped them away and replaced them with a kiss. “Maybe I should learn to play harpsichord. Would it be good to have someone to play the pieces you used to play with your mother with, or would that just make you sad?”

Adrien bit his bottom lip, chewing on it in thought. “I think I would like that…. Someday, I want to play the songs I played with Maman with our children. It would be really nice to share them with you in the meantime.”

He turned to Luka with a timid smile and was rewarded with an enthusiastic kiss from his husband.

“I really like the sound of that.” Luka could barely contain a face-splitting grin at the thought of their future family together.

“Good to know we’re on the same page,” Adrien chuckled, smile growing wider. “…Shall I play something else?”

“If you’re feeling up to it,” Luka encouraged. “I could listen to you play for hours, honestly.”

Adrien nodded, fingers beginning to flow over the keys once more. “This is one my father makes me play all the time, but I still like it.”

He played Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in G Major first and then followed it with a few more short pieces. Eventually, his fingers slowed to a stop, and he lowered his hands back down into his lap.

“All done?” Luka inquired, reaching up to play with Adrien’s hair.

Adrien nodded. “For tonight, anyway…. This was nice. I used to hate when my father made me practice, but…I did miss this.”

“It sounded lovely. Thank you for sharing that with me.” He leaned in to nuzzle Adrien’s ear.

Adrien closed his eyes and let himself enjoy the attention.

After a minute or so, he spoke up, bringing himself back to reality: “…I should probably go and visit my parents in the mausoleum…pay my respects.”

He grimaced at the thought.

Luka shook his head. “I think you’ve done enough emotionally taxing things for one day. We’ll go first thing in the morning. For now, you should go to sleep and rest up.”

Adrien contemplated protesting out of a sense of duty but ultimately decided against it. “Okay. First thing in the morning, but only because I am completely drained, and I don’t think I can bear to face them right now.”

“They’ll understand,” Luka assured, taking Adrien’s hand and giving it a bolstering squeeze. “Go back through the passage into the King’s chambers and make a show of leaving and coming in here so that we don’t scandalize any servants. I’ll wait here for you.”

“You’re the best,” Adrien chuckled, giving his husband a kiss before getting up to go.

#Lukadrien #Miraculous Ladybug #Miraculous Ladybug Fanfiction #Adrien Agreste #Luka Couffaine #Fae AU #Fae Luka #Hurt/Comfort #Confronting the Past #Childhood Trauma #Fluff #Healing #Supportive Luka Couffaine #Mikau's Writings #Among the Wild Things

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