#Historical Romance AU | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lemony-snickers · 2 years

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chapter three. >> part two here.

Title: Helping Hands (part 3 of ?) (AO3 Link Here) Chapter Summary: The Lord and Caretaker settle into their new arrangement, but the shadows of the past remain always in their periphery. Chapter Word Count: 5,867 Chapter Warnings: alcohol use, implied sexual content, NON-CONSENSUAL VOEYEURISM, character death (canonical), implied violence, fem!MC .

Iruka Umino grew up in a loving household; his father and mother were hardworking, diligent, and precise in everything they did.

And everything included doting on their only child, a boy born with tan skin, dark, unruly hair, and the most beautiful smile either of them had ever seen. Iruka had been a troublemaker as a young child, pulling pranks on his parents at every opportunity. He soon grew out of it, though, when he was old enough to begin following his father out on deliveries. The work they did was vital—delivering food to the many great houses that existed beyond the village limits was important work, and those who performed such duties well-regarded.

Iruka realized he was lucky to know he would one day take over his father’s business; one day be the person responsible for feedings his friends and neighbors and their families.

When he first began delivering to the Hatake Estate, Iruka hated it. The climb was steep, his horse irritable and frothing by the time they made it to the top of the drive. Lord Sakumo Hatake was kind, but strange, and Iruka was never quite sure how to interact with the man.

But the pretty face of the woman who was most often in the kitchen when he made his deliveries helped a little. His ears turned pink when she smiled at him, patted his shoulder. She was kind and easy, not stodgy or easily irritated like so many of the other Housekeepers and Maids he usually dealt with.

He would duck his head and scratch his nose, a nervous habit he developed when he first received the scar there—an unfortunate incident of a horse bucking as he attempted to saddle it when he was a teenager. He’d picked the scab over it so many times that he continued doing so long after it finally healed and the itch abated.

Iruka’s parents could not have known that sending their son to make deliveries on his own would one day have such a profound impact on his life. They noticed, of course, as parents were keen to do, that his deliveries on Wednesdays began to take more and more time, that he would return flushed and happy from his stop at the Hatake Estate.

At first, they worried a little, unsure about who might be there taking up his attentions; after the man who owned the house had died, they heard no rumors of an heir come to take ownership of it.

But then one week a young woman came into their shop in the village, cheeks rosy and hair whipped into a frenzy from her ride, to ask if it would be possible to make some last minute alterations to her upcoming grocery delivery. And as they spoke with her, they noted how easy her smile was, how gentle her laugh, how polite and kind she seemed.

They no longer worried for Iruka, even if perhaps they should have. Of course, what parents could be blamed for not seeing what might be in the heart of the person their child loves? They were blinded by Iruka’s naked affection, and it induced in them a belief that those same feelings must be returned.

For who could not love a man as sweet as Iruka?

Mrs. Umino knew she shouldn’t fall prey to gossip, but she found herself unable to hold her curiosity at bay forever. As she took the strangely robust order for delivery the following day, Mrs. Umino asked quietly, “Is someone expected at the house?”

The woman’s mouth curled up at each end. “Lord Kakashi has already arrived—unannounced—in the middle of the evening,” she whispered, leaning forward conspiratorially.

The older woman could see immediately why her son was spending so much time atop the steep hill where the Hatake Estate was nestled, and she could not blame him.

If she were a young man, she imagined she would be just as stricken with admiration for the woman in charge of the house as her son appeared to be.

Iruka’s mother said nothing to him of Lord Kakashi’s appearance, choosing to allow him to stumble upon the information himself when he made his usual ride up to the Manor. Even when he knit his brows in confusion at the large order and asked about its provenance, Mrs. Umino and her husband—whom she had made privy to the information the preceding evening—only shared a conspiratorial glance and shrugged.

Young love, of course, is a fickle thing. But that was a lesson Iruka would have to learn in time and on his own; his parents were powerless to prevent his heart from being handled carelessly. And the woman he gave his to was incapable of returning that love to him in a way that meant anything—even if she perhaps wished that were not the case.

Still, they continued to meet in the stables after that first time, Iruka and his parents oblivious to the impending disaster.

Every Wednesday, as always, Iruka would complete his other deliveries, leaving the Hatake residence for last. Once he brought the groceries in, he would sneak away to the stables either to wait for the Caretaker, or to find her there already waiting for him.

Her skin smelled like the dry hay they laid on, her mouth tasted like apples when they ripened in the fall, like strawberries in the summer. She felt soft and beautiful in his hands, the way her body arched against his made his mind reel, his heart race.

And he knew he was in love.

Unbeknownst to either Iruka or his lover, the Lord of the mansion the stables belonged to continued to watch them through the cracks in the wood.

Lord Kakashi knew he should be ashamed of spying, but the exhilaration was too great to deny. And though he tried to tell himself he did not seek them out, he knew there was no other reason to account for his newly-divined habit of taking an afternoon walk following his tea, which somehow always managed to bring him close by the stables on Wednesday afternoons.

Sometimes, he only listened—the soft rustling of the hay and the Caretaker’s skirts, the gentle plucking sound of their kisses, the high whine held in her throat as Iruka touched her and the soft grunt when he finished.

Upon one such occasion, Lord Kakashi did not leave quickly enough. Not expecting the Caretaker to jump up almost as soon as Iruka had finished, apologizing for her abrupt departure, but telling him she was quite behind schedule with her chores for the day as she fixed her hair and adjusted her dress.

Iruka, though he was a bit confused, smiled and told her not to worry. She leaned down to give him a kiss on the forehead in thanks and Kakashi realized that where he was standing would be directly in her path back to the house.

He scrambled to appear as if he were only just now walking by the stables, but she was quicker than he expected, and only a moment later, they were face-to-face.

“Oh! Lord Kakashi,” she said, stepping back. Kakashi watched as she swallowed, and though he heard Iruka scrambling out of the hay, he had the decency not to react, even when her panicked eyes flicked toward the stables in response. “Did you need something?”

Lord Kakashi cleared his throat, striving for normalcy out of respect for her dignity as well as deference to his own. “I thought I might… go for a ride,” he said, rather unconvincingly.

Her eyes widened, concerned he might find his way to the stables before Iruka had time enough to leave himself.

She stalled, “I did not think you normally rode in the afternoons.”

Lord Kakashi, aware of her tactics, smiled and took another step closer. “That’s correct, though as Lord of Hatake Manor, I imagine I am allowed to alter my schedule if I should so choose.”

“Yes!” she said, a little too loudly, hoping to camouflage the sound of Iruka climbing into his saddle. “Of course! I just did not think you usually had occasion to be near the stables at this time of day.”

Lord Kakashi grinned, feeling emboldened for reasons he could not pinpoint. Perhaps it was the way her hair was still a little lopsided and obviously tousled from her activities, or the fact that he could clearly hear the pounding of the horse’s hooves as Iruka departed, which left her grimacing.

Whatever the reason, he leaned forward and said, “I find many occasions to be many places, some of them far more intriguing than others.”

With that, Lord Kakashi turned back toward the house, leaving the Caretaker to stare after him in shock. Because suddenly there was no doubt in her mind that Lord Kakashi knew about her encounters with Iruka in the stable—knew them to be of an indecent nature. The smirk he had sported as he spoke said so plainly.

But what startled her most was that while she knew she should feel violated at having been discovered—and perhaps even watched—in an intimate position by the man who owned the house for which she worked, she did not.

Instead, she found all she felt was… exhilarated by the prospect.

Lord Kakashi felt much the same as he retreated into the house, heart still racing from his bold confession.

It had been a very long time since Lord Kakashi found himself in any intimate company and the noise of the young lovers tangled together in the afternoons had always tugged at something in his gut. He missed the feel of another in his bed; wished, perhaps, there was someone he could call to the stables with him.

Not the Caretaker, certainly, but someone.

There were no such companions to be found, however—neither in this land nor the one he left behind. And so he satisfied himself with spying on others’ romance. Satiated his desire to enjoy another’s flesh by reading dirty romance books in his bed at night and calling forth the memories he stole from the stables to satisfy his errant urges.

To live through others must suffice, he told himself. He was not cruel enough to expect anyone to tether their life—their destiny and happiness—to a man still broken by his past, still anchored in the losses he had suffered.

Sometimes, he thought of Rin Nohara and he wondered if they could have built a happy existence together. He wondered if one day their shared grief would no longer have sliced between them, keeping them apart, but wound around them like a blanket against the chill of winter.

He wondered, but it mattered not how often he thought of her.

Rin Nohara was dead, as was her fiancé Obito Uchiha. Both killed by Kakashi’s own inadequacy. Each remained a bloody, broken specter in his dreams, dark red stains on his pale hands.

Kakashi Hatake, at the moment he came to visit his father’s Estate for the first time, was incapable of being the sort of man who could love or marry. His heart had been torn into too many small pieces by the agony of his losses, the precious people who had fled his side into the afterlife.

When Obito Uchiha was washed out to sea, foot caught in a line that should have been secured under his Commander’s watchful eyes, he had taken much of Lord Kakashi with him. His superior officer, his friend, had let him down, sent him to his death. Lord Kakashi watched as Obito’s body flung over the side of their ship, as it rattled and bounced against the wood. Obito’s body was pulverized beyond recognition before it plunged into the sea, beyond Lord Kakashi’s grasp. The wounds the commanding officer had received in return—rope burns over his hands and a searing slice over his eye that nearly blinded him from the line as he attempted in futility to grasp it, to reel Obito back to safety—seemed hardly severe enough admonishment for the misfortune. It was in the wake of that loss that Lord Kakashi took leave from his command to deliver the news to Obito’s intended himself. A beautiful girl with dark brown hair and lovely, warm doe eyes named Rin Nohara.

The last words Obito had ever uttered, as he spilled over the rail of the ship to be broken apart and plummeted below into the dark, inescapable depths, had been, “Take care of Rin.”

(At least, these were the words Lord Kakashi heard. It is impossible, however, to know for certain whether Obito said anything of the kind. The roar of the waves and the storm, the sharp crack of splintering wood, were so loud that not a single curse could have been truly understood over the whole of it. In truth, it is more likely Lord Kakashi simply made up the exclamation as a way to punish himself—one final wish of a dead man to anchor himself to. The problem was that such an anchor may not always be a matter of safety, but sometimes decimation.)

But either way, with those words carved into this heart, Lord Kakashi had endeavored to honor his friend’s last wish. His salary went almost exclusively to Rin’s care—securing her a future and a home as she grieved in agonizing solitude for the man who was meant to be her husband. Once medically and honorably discharged because of the damage to his eye, Lord Kakashi returned home and brought Rin with him, promised himself to her in Obito’s stead—as if he could ever truly be a replacement for the man who had so loved her and whom she had given her heart to willingly rather than from necessity and obligation.

When they were married, Rin cried and Lord Kakashi knew it was not from the happiness of their arrangement.

They had stayed in separate rooms, at his suggestion, and Rin seemed in no haste to be his wife in any way but name. Lord Kakashi, perhaps foolishly, but undoubtedly in desperation, sought other companionship in her place. He spent many long nights drinking and gambling with his tawdrier naval acquaintances, often deciding to hire companionship for an evening or two to satisfy the persistent, lonely ache created by the empty space in his bed.

If he had known what a delicate thing Rin had become in the wake of Obito’s untimely demise, perhaps he would have been more careful. But he was angry, bitter; the loss of his father and his best friend, the marriage undertaken out of sense of duty and not of love, all took their toll. And he made mistakes.

When hadn’t he made mistakes?

Lord Kakashi had not grown up with firearms, but had come to know them in the course of his naval service. He was naturally good with both pistol and rifle, though he preferred the first given the option. He had never discharged his weapon during his time at sea, except to shoot at birds occasionally as the ship he commanded listed on the water waiting for a better wind.

After he left his post in the Navy behind, though, with his left eye half-blind and his mind no longer as clear or precise as it had once been, Lord Kakashi struggled to hit targets—living or clay.

He would often, in those days after his doomed marriage, invite friends to shoot in the afternoons before they undertook their evening plans of gambling and drinking.

He was never drunk when he shot—refused to be because of the danger. Especially with his eye, Lord Kakashi had to concentrate for his aim to be even within range of the clay pigeons or straw men they used for practice.

His discharge revealed itself to be a mercy; Lord Kakashi’s subordinates and peers would laugh at his calamitous attempts to fire his weapon if they could see him try his hand at target practice with his damaged eye.

And then, one afternoon just like all the others, he and his friends had undertaken a few hours of shooting as they often did. They’d been at it for quite some time and the sun was beginning to bow behind the horizon.

"Should we go, Kakashi?" someone asked. He didn’t even remember who the voice belonged to, even as it rang out clear and loud between his ears. The lack of a title meant it must be one of his less dignified acquaintances, though that might have been true of any man on the lawn that day.

Before he could agree it was time to take their leave, something caught Lord Kakashi’s attention, moving just beyond the tree line, and so he shook his head. “Just one more, I think,” he said, lowering his weapon toward the bird flitting between the branches.

He shot, cursing when he missed. But he had at least been close enough to send the creature flying from the branches along with a thousand others—a flock of silent birds once hidden in the shadows revealed in an instant, loud and frenetic as they took to the sky. Lord Kakashi followed the great flock’s movements, gun trained on the massive, synchronized group of birds as it raced away into the deepening sunset. Their screams were high-pitched, panicked.

He would never forget the sound.

“My Lord?”

Bang.

He fired, but the shot rang wide because of his damaged eyesight. He lowered his weapon, gritting his teeth at his inadequacy as not a single bird fell to the ground. The flock soared off into the distance, undeterred by his firing, a thousand pairs of fluttering wings beating through the air. And still, he did not realize the magnitude of what he’d done.

It was not the sound of Rin’s body hitting the grass, but the noise of her choking, gasping breath as the blood pooled in her lungs, that finally dragged his attention away from the stupid birds.

Rin Nohara, coming out onto the lawn to ask if he and his friends would like to stay for dinner at the house, had been pierced by his errant bullet.

His own eyes could not have possibly discerned the way she leaned to the side in order to effectively intercept his aim. Lord Kakashi had no way of knowing that Rin had plodded back and forth along the hall of their shared house for long hours, watching the men in the yard, looking for one she knew could not possibly be among them.

Rin had no way to tell her husband what darkness truly laid in her heart, nor would he have been capable of hearing it if she had made the attempt. So lost were they in their individual grieving, swept away in their regrets and misfortunes, they never could have found their way to one another.

That his wife took a bullet from his own weapon was indeed a great tragedy, but Kakashi Hatake would have lost his wife one way or another eventually, no matter the means. This truth did nothing to ease the pain of the moment, however, nor to assuage the dark shadows of the deed as they followed Lord Kakashi into the future.

Rin Nohara’s heart stopped as she lay in her husband’s arms, coating his hands and his clothes with blood he would never be able to wash away, no matter how often he cleaned them. It took him two days to scrub the sticky red residue of her final moments from beneath his fingernails, the buttons of his jacket; three more than that to bury her and return her belongings to her angry, grieving parents.

And only a week longer for him to flee in his father’s wake, carrying himself and his dogs an ocean away to a house on a hill in the rain, running from every mistake he’d made as if the ghosts he created could be slowed by the ascent of the hill, by the crashing of the waves against the hull of his ship.

If destiny were a thread, Lord Kakashi’s was frayed, tiny fibers stripping off, reaching out toward unattainable destinations. Perhaps his thread was twined with others, where they fell away, he picked up in their stead, tracing their path with unsteady footsteps until the end of the fiber.

He followed that thread into the Navy, followed his father’s path as far as he could before he was afraid he might plummet over the edge of the earth.

He followed Obito’s thread after he drowned, then his father’s again after he killed Rin.

The threads were so braided and knotted, now, it had become entirely unclear to him whose destiny he might yet be tracing.

The Caretaker did not believe in destiny—she hardly believed in thinking to the next day unless it was for work. She woke each morning, completed her duties, fell asleep, and did it again. That was enough. It had to be.

Iruka believed destiny was a person. And in his heart, he came to believe that person was the woman who laid with him in the hay, let him tangle his fingers through her hair after they had tired themselves with their love making. He loved settling his ear against her chest, listening to her heart’s slow, melodic rhythm.

He wondered, sometimes, if she felt even half the same. She seemed more than willing to hold him, to whisper loving words against his ear—even if none of them was ever love itself—but she was always keen enough to remind him when it was time to leave, to send him away with a wave and a smile instead of a tender touch or kiss on the cheek.

Even before Lord Kakashi had arrived, a certain distance remained. A distance which yawned wider in the wake of the young Lord’s removal to the Hatake Estate. Iruka did not miss the fleeting glances between the two and often, perhaps erroneously, wondered where the Caretaker’s attentions might fall on afternoons that were not Wednesday.

It was this fear that might have pushed him toward his decision with greater force than necessary. And Iruka’s parents spurred him to make his intentions fully clear, to tell the women who held his heart to what extent she did; to ask her the only question that mattered. But Iruka was afraid he already knew the answer, afraid it was clasped tightly within the silver locket around her neck, which she had never opened or spoken of in his presence; or that it might be hidden in the strange tilt of Lord Kakashi’s mouth whenever he watched the two of them exchange orders in the kitchen.

Though Iruka was correct in thinking her heart belonged elsewhere, he could not have known to what extent—and never would. Only those who have suffered losses of the heart can fully comprehend them in another.

As Lord Kakashi settled into his new home, so also did it settle around him. The floors that once protested against the thundering paws of his dogs eventually adjusted, the chair he favored for reading quickly took an indent that molded to his form, holding him firmly in place when he relaxed against the cushion, which he did often.

Kakashi Hatake was a voracious reader, happy to fold himself into the chair at any time of day when he did not have other duties to attend to and peruse his late father’s library. He left his more lascivious reading—the tawdry romance novels he coveted so—for his bedroom, where no prying eyes might accidentally rove across the pages.

The Caretaker offered to clean his room, change his bedclothes, but the young Lord declined, too embarrassed of what she might find if he was not careful to keep it secreted away.

She thought the arrangement very strange indeed; she had never worked for anyone who stripped their own bed and left the sheets outside the closed door for her to pick up and launder. Nor did she ever meet a man until Lord Hatake himself so willing to get his hands dirty and calloused in his own home.

Lord Kakashi hammered and sanded, he rehung the crooked shutters and greased the door hinges.

“We should really hire a proper staff now that you’re living here,” she said again. But as happened every time she mentioned doing so, Lord Kakashi waved away her complaints.

“Unless you are planning to leave, we don’t need anyone else.”

She huffed, but accepted his response until the next time she brought it up and he gave her the same answer.

Things continued like this for long weeks. Lord Kakashi rode his horse in the mornings, after taking his breakfast. Where he went, the Caretaker did not know, but he returned always appearing rather irritable and she prepared his afternoon tea without any polite chatter, serving it to him in his study where he sat with his dogs between her cleaning duties for the day.

And the house, in all its strangeness, formed around them, the rugs wearing in the hallway where Lord Kakashi paced in the evenings. His dreams often woke him, peeling open his eyelids with an urgency he could not ignore. And the Caretaker frequently heard him scream or shout in his sleep. Sometimes, she would wake when his door opened and she heard him wandering the house, muttering to himself quietly.

On more than one occasion, she found him asleep in the parlor the following morning, sprawled in his favorite chair with the smallest of his dogs—a pug she now knew to be named Pakkun—curled against his chest, a book on the floor where his grip had loosened on it.

On such mornings, the Caretaker simply created a little more noise as she made her way to the kitchen to prepare their food, allowing Lord Kakashi the dignity of rousing himself and returning to his bedroom to change before they officially greeted one another for the day.

Often, she would ask, “How did you sleep?”

And without fail, he would always reply, “Very well, thank you.”

Though she knew it to be a lie, she would never dare to ask any further, even as she knew she would soon hear him traversing the halls in the dead of evening again, almost like a ghost pacing through the rooms; as unable to leave as he was incapable of resting.

And just as she never mentioned that she at times heard him shout in the night—that his voice would crack like a whip through her dreams to rouse her—Lord Kakashi never mentioned that he sometimes found her standing outside on the grounds, fingers playing delicately with the locket balanced against her collarbone while she stared down the hill, over the rolling green grass toward something he could not see.

It was upon one night such as this, however, that their paths intersected.

Kakashi startled awake from a nightmare. It was a merciful thing. He dreamt that Obito pulled him beneath the dark water with him, limbs tangled together in a deadly embrace, like a nure-onna come to claim him for the depths.

When he finally broke free and kicked his way to the surface, he swam long leagues to the shore and climbed up on the sand, belly scraping over the beach as he dragged himself to land. And as he turned to sit up and looked out at the horizon, it was to discover Rin’s body, brown hair fanned as her corpse bobbed languidly in the waves, blood spiraling into the water around her, soaking the sand where the sea met the beach.

So waking had been a mercy. He streaked his hands over his face, wiping the sweat from his brow and his nose, rubbing his eyes until his vision half-cleared enough for him to make out the snoozing dogs around him, to see the outline of the wardrobe and the posters of his bed; the still-covered mirror.

He wandered the halls, as he always did. Aimlessly, without purpose.

When he made his way to the parlor, just as he was about to collapse into his favorite chair to steal a few hours of fitful sleep only to wake with his back and neck aching from the awkward position, something beyond the windows caught his eye.

The Caretaker stood in the yard, wind whipping at her night dress as she stared out over the unseeable grounds.

Lord Kakashi should have left well enough alone—he knew that. Knew it would be prudent to climb into his chair and pretend he’d never seen her just as she pretended she did not hear him wandering the halls or find him sleeping in the parlor.

But the way her skirt and her hair fluttered in the breeze reminded him too much of how Rin’s had undulated in the waves of his nightmare and he shivered. He needed to make sure she was okay.

The Caretaker noticed his approach long before he met her in the grass. Rather than acknowledge him, she chose to tuck her locket away beneath her night clothes and pinch her robe together at her throat, to protect both privacy and modesty.

“A little late for a stroll, isn’t it?” Lord Kakashi asked as he came up next to her. He maintained a safe distance, almost enough for two other people to stand between them if they wanted. She welcomed the jibe with a self-aware smile, a breathy chuckle almost lost to the breeze.

“I suppose you would know, my Lord, given you are walking also.”

He hummed, throat tightening at the address. Though he understood it to be his proper title, he had disliked it ever since that fateful day on the lawn.

Hearing Rin Nohara’s last words repeated endlessly as a formal and polite address felt like a cruel punishment of the gods.

Realizing he had lost himself in his thoughts and left her response unanswered, Lord Kakashi cleared his throat to shake the grief from his vocal cords. “Not by choice,” he said.

She knew as much. Though she did not expect him to elaborate, she felt that curiosity pulling at her same as it had on nights when she heard him scream down the hall.

“Trouble sleeping?” she prodded gently, but all she received in response was another hum and so she left it.

“What about you?” Lord Kakashi asked after another long silence stretched between them. And then he revealed, “I’ve seen you out here on other evenings, though none quite so late, I think.”

She ducked her head, smiling. Of course the Lord of the Manor had noticed her late night walks; the man spent more evenings awake than not. Still, she found herself embarrassed to have been caught out.

Instinctively, her fingers went to the small lump beneath her clothes, the locket nestled safely against her sternum. “Coming out here reminds me of someone. Someone I like very much to remember.”

Lord Kakashi’s sight was damaged and the darkness of the late evening did not help, but even he could discern the movement of her fingers and know that whoever she was referring to likely resided in that locket and nowhere else.

Not on the living plane, anyway.

Whoever she was thinking of lingered somewhere in the afterlife. Perhaps with Sakumo or Obito or Rin.

They stood there together for a long time, until both of their toes were frozen through.

“Can I escort you back?” Lord Kakashi asked, cordially offering her his arm.

Her eyebrows flew upward, eyes widening. He realized in that moment the move was strange—that someone of his stature was not supposed to offer her his arm.

But when had the social conventions of this strange place—or any other—ever stopped him from doing what he felt was right? Never, and this evening would be no different. Kakashi Hatake was precisely himself every place he’d ever been and in every company he had ever kept—for better and far worse.

“There’s no need, my Lord,” she said, but her companion did not lower his arm.

Rather, he smiled wickedly, knowing she was in no position to refuse him if he pressed the issue. “I insist,” he said, bowing his head.

The Caretaker grit her teeth, recognizing his tenacity for the teasing it was, as she reached out and looped her arm around his. She inclined her head and thanked him politely, and he led her back to the house.

Looking back so much time later, they each would realize that perhaps this small gesture, this innocuous evening was what might have precipitated all that came after, even if none of that would be clear for many moons, yet.

Once they entered the house, the Caretaker removed her arm from Lord Kakashi’s and was about to make her excuses to leave when he offered her a drink.

“A brandy, if you will? I’d hate to drink it alone.” She swallowed, about to decline. “Nothing will chase away the chill like a warm brandy,” he assured her.

Though her excuse weighed heavily on the tip of her tongue, she also knew he was right. Her fingers and toes felt like they’d been carved of ice and the thought of stoking a small fire and warming herself with a brandy before returning to bed was quite welcome.

Seeing her desire to say yes, LordKakashi took the option from her by saying, “Start a fire, if you please, I’ll get the glasses.”

And so it was the two of them sat in comfortable silence, sipping a snifter each of warm brandy while they thawed their feet by the gentle flames of the parlor fireplace, sitting opposite each other in the comfortable armchairs they each preferred for reading.

Though that night was the first they passed in such a way, it was hardly the last. Following that event, the Lord and Caretaker of the house on the hill grew strangely closer. Not in any noticeable way to those who might see them by chance when calling at the Manor on business.

Iruka did not notice any change in the air when he arrived that Wednesday, when she kissed him in the stables. The man who delivered the post, carrying with him weather-beaten letters from Lord Kakashi’s home, did not detect any variation in the man’s demeanor from other days when he had called at the house.

But late at night, the two would often find their way to the parlor to enjoy a finger of brandy or gin in companionable silence—one or both of them might read a book by firelight—before the Caretaker retired to her room for the evening.

Sometimes Lord Kakashi followed soon after, climbing into his bed in search of sleep. More often, though, he whistled sharply and Pakkun ran down the stairs to join him on the chair where he would rest his eyes until the sounds of breakfast being prepared roused him in the morning and he dressed for a new day.

#🍋 mix and match #lemony scribbles #kakashi hatake #kakashi x reader #fem!reader #historical au #historical romance au #tw alcohol #tw character death #chidori as actual birds lmao #long-winded historical au clusterfuck #iruka umino #poor iruka honestly

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heedeungism · 2 months

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synopsis: the duke loves you dearly, yes, but how could you possibly know that? includes: bridgerton au, suggestive, profanity , hoon is a rake

as duke and duchess of hastings, it was expected that you produce an heir within the year. being the notorious love match of the season, the diamond and the duke, the image of your family back in london was counting on your ability to ‘perform your duty’, as the ton loved to put it.

sunghoon, your husband, the duke, had been the one to propose the deal. you’d been told your whole life that your interests meant nothing if your husband did not share them, yet he had asked you what your favorite color was. you had been told that horse riding wasn’t ladylike, yet he had shown you his favorite mare and asked you if you’d ever ridden.

he was all the right things, you’d thought. though truthfully, he had one quality you couldn't look past. he was a rake. he frequented brothels, fucked whores, but called on you and gave you the most expensive flowers, and spoke the sweetest of nothings. it was almost enough to look past. you’d thought that you’d be able to get past it, that if he was in love with you enough to propose he’d be in love enough to stop visiting the brothels.

that hope was shattered the moment he’d proposed. it wasn’t romantic, nor was it anything you wanted.

“a deal?” you remember asking when he had looked at you with eyes you had never seen so unfeeling, “or a marriage?”

“you will be allowed the estate. every luxury you desire will be yours.” he had stated, “while i—“

“spend your nights at your beloved brothels?” his face when you had spoken those words had sent your heart into its own frozen hell. “you do not have to explain yourself, your grace.”

and so, the two of you married. you knew that despite the pieces he had left your heart in he would keep his word, and he did. you’d never worn such luxurious gowns nor felt fabric so soft and breathable as your nightdress.

your mama had told you little about what the night of your wedding entailed, only that if a certain event did not transpire the marriage would be null. that event was never described in full to you by your mother, only hinted at by jane austen, and yet it had been nearly a month since your nuptials and the duke had left the space between the two of you alarmingly obvious. the large bed that while you both slept on you did not share, the avoidance of eye contact, and the heat of his hand on yours only for him to pull away before you can let it pool.

on mornings that you allow yourself to sleep in, you are unsure if the ghostly touch along your cheekbone and the gentle tucking of your hair out of your face is your imagination or just the breeze coming from the open window. on nights that you are plagued by the feeling of being undesirable, you can feel his gaze on your back when he thinks you’re asleep.

on a night like this one, you find yourself reaching a point of exhaustion. “your grace.” you greet as you enter his study, the place he would keep to himself and even eat on most nights.

he barely glances up from his paperwork, “do you need something?”

shaking your head, you pull the shawl you have over your shoulders to cover the skin that your nightdress didn’t. the pink color of the fabric was what you had described as your favorite when the duke had asked. it’s the color of nearly every dress you have been provided with since moving into clyvedon. “no, i simply came to inform you that i am having the maids move my things into the duchess’s chambers.”

his interest is piqued, and he finally looks at you. “why ever would you have them do that?”

“is reason needed to move into my own chambers?”

your response garners a look from your husband, “separate rooms shall not be suffered.”

his words cause you to scoff, “yet a silent marriage will be?”

he is silent for a moment before he speaks, “jones.” the butler standing by the door straightens up, “inform the maids that they will under no circumstances move the duchess’ belongings from our chambers.”

“sir.” the man nods, exiting the room and leaving you with your husband.

“will you continue to go about your days acting as if i do not exist?” you question goes unanswered as sunghoon resumes his paperwork. “fine, i will move them myself.”

“you will do no such thing.”

“oh, i believe i will.” you retort and sunghoon stands, hands placed on the desk as his jaw shifts.

“i forbid you.”

the audacity baffles you, frustration turning into fury within the second, “you forbid me?”

sunghoon walks out from behind his desk, stopping beside it, “you are my wife. your hatred i can tolerate but i will not allow the agony of separate rooms.”

“am i your wife?” you ask, watching his hands twitch at his sides and his eyes darken, “we had a wedding, yes, but if we did not spend that night together are we truly married?”

“you speak nonsense.” he dismisses, eyes no longer on you as he turns away, “go to bed.”

“do not speak to me like i am a child—“

“i said-“ he starts, voice raising as he turns back toward you with a darkness in his gaze, “go. to. bed.”

his eyes pierce your own as his voice is low and nearly breathless, you lower your chin just the slightest as your heart aches, “i am not a child, nor am i a fool. i know you do not love me but i did not think you cruel enough for trickery.”

“trickery?” he asks, seemingly clueless as the what you mean.

you begin, “the day we met in that garden i thought you different, kind. you led me to believe such lies, you knew i could not say no to you, you trapped me in a loveless marriage that you knew i did not desire—“

“loveless? if that is what you believe this marriage to be, it is not i who is the cause,” he argues, and you narrow your eyes.

“am i to believe that you love me? have your actions up to this very moment warranted such beliefs?” your question causes your husband’s jaw to shift.

“go to bed.” he looks down at his desk again.

“do not tell me what to do.”

“what do you want from me?” he whips around to look at you. “i have given you riches, i have given you every gown you could possibly desire, i have had the finest soaps imported from india and yet you continue to oppose me. what. do. you. want?”

“i want a husband. not a stranger that i share a bed with, not a keeper.” you state, “i know you do not love me, but if I am to be duchess and produce an heir i deserve better than an absent duke.”

sunghoon remains silent for a moment before his hands clench into fists and his cold eyes meet your own. “call me a stranger, loathe my existence for the rest of your life but never think for even a moment that i do not love you.”

you are stunned into silence, and he continues, stepping closer and closer until your breaths mingle as he says, “i have spent the past fortnights in agony. suffering through the nights i cannot touch you. speaking to you is not enough, nor is being in your company. i have never in my life felt as though i cannot inhale what another does not exhale and yet i find myself suffocating with every moment i am not by your side.”

his fingers ghost over your cheekbone and you find your breath caught in your throat. “i have loved you ever since i saw you in that garden. do not dare question that.”

your lips part and his eyes follow them. your chest rises as you inhale sharply and deeply, attempting to process the words leaving his lips as well as their close proximity to your own. “you…love me.”

your tone is not one of question, and his pleasure in that fact is shown through both his actions and the three words you had yearned to leave his lips since he’d proposed. the same lips that capture yours in a hungry and insatiable kiss that has you in shambles.

your knees buckle, legs turning to jelly, and like he had expected it his arms wrap around you and pulls you closer. his tongue meets yours the moment your lips part and as he brings you to sit on his desk, the pressure of his body between your legs sends a jolt of pleasure you have never experienced before up your body, prompting a choked whimper to escape between the mess of lips and tongue.

“your grace.” you exhale against him, quickly silenced by his lips once again as he breathes you in like you’re the last atom of oxygen on earth.

“your grace.” he responds in kind, hand trailing up your thigh under your nightdress. then, there’s contact and a loud keen that like the rest of them, he swallows with ease.

©heedeungism : do not rewrite, copy, repost, or translate any of my works without my permission.

#enhypen #park sunghoon #park sunghoon x reader #sunghoon x reader #sunghoon x yn #bridgerton au #historical au #marriage of convenience #sunghoon smut #sunghoon enhypen #sunghoon drabble #enhypen drabbles #enhypen x reader #enhypen x yn #sunghoon bridgerton au #suggestive #romance #bridgerton #hoonie 🩷

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late-to-the-party-81 · 3 months

Text

The King's Last Concubine

AN: Welcome, welcome to the short one-shot that spiralled a little out of control. I’m sure none of you will complain. If you like cheesy historical romance and Bucky then you’ve come to the right place. In all honesty I could have made this story much, much longer, but unfortunately I don’t have the time, so it’s wrapped up a little fast and without as many misunderstandings as the usual Harlequin/Mills and Boon normally contains. I hope you like it anyway.

Beta’d by the lovely @seriouslydex - thank you for your assistance in wrangling this into coherence.

Likes are loved, reblogs are golden

Mood board by me and dividers by @firefly-graphics

Bingo Fills - @buckybarnesbingo Square U1 - Kink: Concubine

Master list | BBB Master list

Summary: When Bucky takes over the throne after his Father’s death, he has better things to deal with than the group of concubines he’s inherited. He thinks the tradition is abhorrent and vows he wants no part of it. When he meets the newest member of the harem he finds his moral stance tested. How can he want the woman who was bought to please his father?

Relationship: King James ‘Bucky’ Barnes x Female Concubine Reader

Chapter word count: 10.2k

CW: Historical AU, Flowery historical language, Angst, Servitude, Lust, Male masturbation, Fluff, Miscommunication, Self-loathing, Jealousy, Fluff, Mutual Pining, Attempted Sexual Assault, Explicit Sexual Content, Declaration of feelings.

A quiet tension filled the air as you wandered your way around the gardens and corridors of the place you’d called home for the last six months. That’s when you’d been purchased - a gift for the elderly and ailing king, meant to boost his spirits and reignite his youthful zeal. However, all the youth and beauty in the world could not turn back the sands of time.

For the last few weeks the king had been getting weaker, not leaving his private rooms or entertaining any guests apart from his long faithful Queen, his heir, Prince James and his daughter, Princess Rebecca. It was a waiting game now, for the Royal Family, the country, and for you and the other members of the Harem.

Entering the solar, where all of you could spend your days in conversation, needlework, painting and reading, you could see Merith, the King’s favourite in an agitated conversation with Katya, the next concubine down in the pecking order. They had the most to lose when the inevitable happened, because it would be very unlikely that the Prince would wish to keep them around. Not only were they older than him, they had both also borne the King numerous children - it would be very strange for a new King to keep the mothers of his half siblings as concubines for himself. At best, the two women might hope to be housed somewhere pleasant in their retirement, maybe with a semi-wealthy husband. At worst they could be turfed out of the palace along with any of their children that the King hadn’t yet made provisions for.

As for your fate, that was also completely unknown. However, due to your age and the fact that you had only been here a short time, with very few interactions with the King, there was a chance that the Prince would want to keep you. You’d never seen him in the flesh, but you knew he was handsome from the glimpses you’d had of his portrait when you’d been led to and from the King’s chambers on those few occasions he had requested your company. However, despite what you had been purchased for, you had never actually lain with the King. He had tried and, as it was in your best interest, so had you, but the King was old and tired.

Instead you’d provided him with company as best you could, rubbing his back, stroking his hair and reading him stories until he fell asleep and you could call the guards to escort you back to the Little Palace.

Of course, no-one knew what had occurred within the privacy of the King’s chambers, and if other concubines had had similar experiences they didn’t talk of it openly - it wouldn’t do to discuss the failing manhood of the person who held your life in their hands. However, what this meant was that you were still untouched by a man, with no experience other than what you had gifted yourself.

With a sigh, you crossed to the far side of the room, taking your place amongst the other younger and newer members of your unconventional community, picking up the sampler you’d been working on. There was no music being played and all conversations were kept to a minimum and spoken in whispers, out of a combination of respect and anxiety. The limbo dragged on.

Suddenly, the doors to the solar crashed open, and the King’s Equerry walked in, flanked by several guards.

“The King has died,” he announced. “Long live the King.”

The ladies fell into disarray.

“I really have to deal with that now?” Bucky asked of Coulson, his father’s, and now his, Equerry.

“I’m afraid so, your Majesty. It’s been two weeks since the late king passed away and decisions need to be made about those whose services you do not wish to retain. There may be some obvious candidates, but with others you may not know how you feel until you meet them.”

Bucky, now King James, sighed. It hadn’t come as a surprise when his father, King George, had passed away. His various ailments had worsened over the last few months and Bucky had actually felt relief for him at the end. The funeral had been last week and since then he’d been stuck in back to back meetings with the men who were now officially his advisors, sorting out matters of state. Admittedly, the fate of those who resided in the Little Palace hadn’t really occurred to him as important. It was an archaic tradition as far as he was concerned. Servants were one thing, but owning women just so you have a choice about who to fuck without any repercussions, just struck him as something that belonged firmly in the past. He still couldn’t get his head around how his mother had never once complained or commented about the practice - had never flinched when another Royal bastard was presented to the court so his father could make provision for them as he saw fit.

There was no question that any of the women who had provided his father with children - he wasn’t going to call them siblings - would have to be looked after in some way. He wasn’t a monster. The problem would be the others. There were about twenty or so of them, his father collecting them like fine artwork over his years on the throne and a few - and this thought turned Bucky’s stomach a little - were as young as his sister Rebecca. He didn’t feel as though he could just turn them out, however he didn’t want to keep them either. Without some kind of royal approval the women could be ostracised from normal society if their past were to become known, but could he really justify supporting all of them from the Royal purse for the rest of their days? Although, undoubtedly, there would be some noblemen more than happy to have his father’s cast offs as wives, especially as there had been no lack of suitors for their daughters. Those that had offered for them had obviously been hoping it would grant them a modicum more influence at court. Little did they know that wouldn’t be the case with him.

It also didn’t help that while Coulson could understand wanting to remove certain members of the Little Palance, he didn’t understand why the new King didn’t want to ‘get to know’ the rest of them. According to the Equerry, they were all very beautiful, demure, and accomplished, any one of them a suitable companion for lonely evenings. Apparently telling the dour man that if he was that taken with them he should feel free to fornicate with one himself, was not the done thing, but Bucky thought the look on Coulson’s face had been worth it. He’d then tried arguing that the ladies of the Little Palace deserved better than what they currently had, but his personal advisor had brushed the comment aside.

“These women want for nothing, Your Majesty. They sleep in the finest sheets, wear the finest fabrics, and eat the finest foods. Some would say they have a charmed life and what they gave up for it is very little in comparison to what they gain.”

“Fine,” he said with a defeated sigh. “I will at least deal with Merith, Katya and the other few that my dearly departed father put babies into, and maybe speak to the others. Let’s get this over and done with.”

Coulson smiled, obviously thinking that he’d won this round, and Bucky decided not to disabuse him. You have to pick your battles, as his mother was fond of telling him.

This time when the Equerry appeared, a fortnight after the death of King George, he sent nearly all of you out to the gardens, only keeping Merith, Katya and a few other of the ladies inside. It was clear that the women who were mothers to the late King’s bastards were about to find out their fate.

You walked slowly between the roses with your friend, Lila, the concubine who’d been obtained just a few months before you, swapping inconsequential small talk, neither wanting to verbalise what was actually on your minds - to say it out loud would be to court disaster. When the Royal Guards suddenly came outside you all stopped what you were doing, wondering if Master Coulson was going to deliver news to you all as well, but when a different, unexpected man appeared, you all lowered your gazes and dropped into deep curtsies. The King - the new King - was here.

Anxiety rode through you, and all you could hear was the pounding of your heart. You were vaguely aware, from your peripheral vision, that Master Coulson was introducing the King to each member of his harem. You caught snatches of conversation, when the King asked each woman in turn their name and how long they had lived here. When they got to Lila next to you, you heard your friend giggle when the King asked her the same questions and you fought the urge to roll your eyes. You liked her, but she was always a little silly. Maybe she thought to flirt her way into the King’s affections?

When the two sets of feet stopped in front of you, you waited for Coulson’s say so before coming out of your curtsey and raising your head.

“And here, Your Majesty, is our newest young lady. You may greet the King, my dear.”

You stood, glad to get out of the deeply uncomfortable pose, and prepared to finally see him in the flesh for the first time.

“Your Highness,” you said, your voice a little more breathy than anticipated, but that was because it had been knocked from your lungs at the vision that greeted you.

King James was tall and broad in the shoulders. It was clear that the painting you had seen had been created when he was still a young man, only just into his adulthood. The man who stood before you now was no stripling. He was fully grown and oozed confidence and authority. His eyes, a cross between pale blue and grey, which had not been adequately portrayed by the Royal artist. His cheekbones were high and pronounced, and his jaw exquisitely chiselled, even if it was partially obscured by his facial hair. The hair on his head was short at the sides, but fluffy and slightly untamed on top, just tempting you to run your fingers through it. Now you knew why Lila had giggled.

He took your hand in his, and you marvelled at how large and strong it looked in comparison to your own. You could clearly see the resemblance to his father, but this was a man in the prime of his life and the thought that he would have none of the problems in the bedroom that had beset the late King flashed across your mind, unbidden.

When he asked your name in his deep but clear voice, you had to swallow before you answered so you didn’t stutter like a schoolgirl.

“Master Coulson said you were new. How long have you lived here?”

“Just over six months, Your Majesty.”

“And you like living in the Little Palace?”

You hesitated for a moment, working out the best way to answer. The other’s hadn’t been asked this question. “It’s very pleasant. Thank you for asking Your Majesty.”

His lips, full and pink, twitched, picking up on the diplomacy of your answer. “Only pleasant? Oh dear. Well maybe we can improve upon that in the near future.”

He skillfully removed his hand from yours and turned back to his Equerry, and you returned your gaze to the floor. As he walked away you realised your heart was still beating fast within your chest. However, it was no longer anxiety that made it do so, but rather the newly unfurled bloom of desire.

As soon as Bucky returned to the Palace proper, he dismissed Coulson and headed directly for his private chambers. His time in the Little Palace had mostly gone as well as expected, Meredith and her cohorts fawning over him dramatically in thanks for his generosity and then meeting what seemed like a legion of beautiful, yet dull as dishwater, young women, who his father had acquired to make himself feel young. What he hadn’t been expecting though was that last young lady - he didn’t even want to think about the word concubine and all of the linked meanings it held. He’d never seen someone so beautiful, and it had been clear from the short exchange of pleasantries that you had intelligence and humour to match.

He felt the rolling heat of lust raise its head and desperately tried to push it aside. As unique in his experience as you may be, he shouldn’t - couldn’t - think about you in this way. Not when he knew you’d spent time with his father. It was more than he could bear. But he couldn’t get the image of you from his mind. The curves of your body that deserved to be traced and explored with reverence. Your large, expressive eyes that tempted him to drown in their depths. Your lips that called him to kiss you over and over until you couldn’t speak or even breathe due to how much you wanted him.

Entering his room he shut the door harshly, but he didn’t care. He was unbearably hard within his trousers, and while not a new sensation by any means, it wasn’t one he’d felt in some time. As the Crown Prince he’d had to be circumspect in his affairs,but there was no-one he’d been actively courting. Now he was King the pressure would be on for him to find a suitable wife and start producing heirs. However, he didn’t intend to be like his father. Once he was married he would be faithful and treat his wife with respect. The devil on his shoulder reminded him that he wasn’t married yet and was free to do what he desired, but he tried to push it aside.

Bucky threw himself down on his bed but every time he closed his eyes you were there, hovering behind his eyelids. He palmed himself over his trousers, trying to get some relief from his state of arousal, but it was no good. Almost unconsciously he undid the fastenings, letting out a small sigh as the pressure was lessened, but then it was just too easy to take himself in hand. A few small strokes, just to take the edge off, became harder and longer, and the vision of you behind his closed eyes smiled at him coyly, tempting him to ruin her.

He imagined kissing you and touching you. Tracing every peak and valley with his lips and tongue. He imagined you doing the same to him, taking him in your mouth, lips stretched wide and tears in your perfect eyes. He imagined driving into you, again and again, while you gripped his shoulders and tangled your legs around his waist. Marking you - claiming you - as you called out his name over and over and trembled around him.

Bucky came with a cry, his spend spilling over his hand and stomach, and leaving him with an aching, hollow feeling of disgust with himself. He needed to release you and the rest of the ladies of the Little Palace and there-by banish you from his thoughts.

The next day he put his plan into action. He set Coulson the task of going through the remaining residents, from oldest serving to newest and finding them a new situation. Respectable marriages were the first preference - the Crown could provide a dowry - but failing that independence and a stipend until they became financially solvent on their own. If this plan had the effect that you would be the last to leave, that was just an unfortunate by-product of the most logical way of sorting the whole thing out, wasn’t it?

The edict by the King that the Little Palace was being disbanded was met at first with some trepidation. The women were all of a flutter, wondering what it would mean for them, but when Marie, the most senior of the concubines now that Merith and the others who had children had retired, was informed that, should she approve him, a husband had been found for her, any anxiety morphed into jubilation. Over the coming weeks, the number of you dwindled and you couldn’t help but feel a little lost amongst all the celebration. You were a strange sisterhood, that was certain, and you hadn’t gotten along with everyone, but you wished them well with a smile, and mulled over your sense of unease in private.

You weren’t sure what it was that was making you worried. It wasn’t as though you’d be forced into anything you didn’t want. Letitia had rejected three potential husbands before settling on a fourth, much to Master Coulson’s despair, and Tiffany had outright declared she wanted no husband at all, her and Dana wishing to set up house together and start a school. This came as no surprise to any of you.

It also wasn’t because you were so entrenched in this life that the thought of anything else was scary - you’d had more life outside these walls than in it - however you had found a camaraderie here, a sense of belonging, as strange as that may seem, that you hadn’t had before. And despite the fact that the idea of being intimate with the old King had been stomach churning, once he realised each time that it wasn’t going to happen, you’d found you’d enjoyed providing him comfort and some sort of friendship. Maybe being here had spoiled you? You’d admit it wasn’t a hardship to live somewhere where all your meals and clothes were provided and all you had to do was entertain yourself unless your services were required, although you did wish for more sometimes - a cage was still a cage, no matter how gilded and glittered.

Maybe having a husband wouldn’t be so bad. Hopefully he’d let you have some freedom - have some hobby or interest to keep you occupied, other than keeping house and popping out babies. You couldn’t help but be nervous though, especially as the numbers of you lessened until it was just you and Lila left.

Each time one of the ladies was preparing to leave, the King would come and thank her for her service. How any of you managed to keep a straight face when he said that was beyond you, but it did give you the chance to watch him unobserved. He really was handsome, and seemed so kind and earnest in his thanks. A true King and diplomat. But that wasn’t all he was. Every so often he would catch your eye and you would feel… something. And you couldn’t explain what it was, other than that you felt like a moth captivated by a flame, longing to get nearer and nearer, even if it would mean your doom. It wasn’t just physical, either - although you couldn’t deny that you’d had thoughts about that. You wanted to get to know him. The real him. His hopes and dreams. What motivated him.

You got your chance when you were sitting in the solar, enjoying the sun that streamed through the windows as you read your book. Lila was outside in the garden, taking a walk with her potential fiancee, a man named Lang who was apparently some minor aristocracy. Guards trailed them at a discrete distance, but you didn’t think there was anything to worry about. From the glimpses you’d caught of them, Master Lang appeared to be a convivial and respectful fellow. He walked with his hands behind his back, not trying to touch or grab at your friend, but he leant in close to talk intimately. He also appeared to be letting Lila hold an equal part of the conversation and you watched as she giggled behind her hand at a number of points in response to what you guessed were jokes.

“They appear to be getting on well.”

A voice from behind you, made you jump and turn in your chair. At the realisation that King James was standing there, you leapt up and then immediately leant forward into a deep curtsey.

“Your Majesty.”

How had you not noticed him enter? Why was he here?

“Please stand. There’s only the two of us here. I wanted to see for myself how Master Lang was comporting himself and this seemed like the best place to watch unobserved.”

He walked closer to the window and you continued to stand, your hands clasping each other, as you watched him from under your lowered lashes. Despite the number of times you’d seen him recently you were no less dazed by his beauty than you had been the first time. You allowed your gaze to travel over his body, admiring the way his clothes were cut to show off his defined figure. Silver threads were woven through the black fabric of his coat and they shimmered in the sunlight. You itched to smooth the cloth over the broadness of his shoulders.

As if sensing you watching him, the King turned back to you.

“Please don’t let me disturb you from whatever you were doing. Pretend that I’m not here.”

Your lips twitched. “That would be difficult, Your Majesty. You do stand out.” You gestured to the walls of the solar, a pale pink colour, and then at his attire. He looked down at himself and you were taken aback by the flush that made its way to his cheeks.

“Aah, yes. I see what you mean.” He moved away from the window then, and toward the chair opposite the one you’d been occupying when he’d surprised you. “Maybe then we could sit and talk for a while? What have you been doing with your days these last weeks?”

You gave him a small nod and took your seat. “Very little, Your Majesty, other than helping the others pack up their belongings as they leave. Some reading, some needlework. I have been practising my languages too. What have you been doing? Important affairs of state I would imagine.”

“It is not nearly as glamorous as people think. Lots of meetings that seem to stretch on forever, but that is nothing to the never-ending paperwork. I swear everyone in the country will have my signature soon. Lots of time to relax and do what you will, seems wonderful to me. I admit to being a little envious.” He smiled as he spoke, his face lighting up in boyish amusement.

“I assure you,” you stated, “that after a while even relaxing becomes as dull as any paperwork.”

The King chuckled at that. “Does it now? I’ll have to take your word for it. Now, tell me, what languages do you speak?”

“French and Spanish. A little Portuguese. And I’m trying to improve my Greek.” You lifted up your book to show him the writing on the front. He smiled at you and your heart beat faster.

“Impressive, my lady. My Greek is somewhat rusty, although my Russian is still good. Come, read for me and we shall see if I can follow you.”

Feeling shy, you lifted your book and began, haltingly at first, to read out loud, your tongue trying to wrap around the unfamiliar syllables. It had been a while since you had spoken out loud, normally preferring just to read, but as you became more confident the words flowed easier and you managed to glance up at him now and again.

The King was sitting, relaxed in his chair, legs outstretched with his ankles crossed. His eyes were closed as he rested his head on the chair back, arms settled on his chest with his fingers steepled. For a moment you could almost pretend this was a domestic scene of a wife reading to her husband after a long day. However, you were not his wife and he was not destined to be your husband. That would be someone else.

When you reached the end of your chapter, you gently closed your book, placing it on the side table, and the King opened his eyes and sat up again.

“You have a wonderful reading voice and you navigated the words very well - better than I’d have done, I’m sure. I’ve always thought learning languages a worthwhile endeavour and it is my deepest regret that I do not know more. I’ll take note to ensure that my Equerry looks to place you in a situation where your skills will be appreciated. I have a feeling,” he said with a glance back towards the window where his friend was still busy gently wooing yours, “that you will soon be the only one here.

You felt heat rushing to your cheeks at the compliment. “That would be greatly appreciated, Your Majesty. I know that not all men wish for an intelligent wife, but it would be nice to not have to appear vapid just to gain favour with my spouse.”

King James snorted. “I’ll admit that I do not understand those who only wish for a doll for a wife. If you’re going to spend the rest of your days together, would it not be better to have someone to converse with. Someone to challenge you mentally. It would be rather dull otherwise.”

“I suppose,” you ventured, “that those men are probably the type to find other ways - other people - to keep them occupied.” A small smile crept across his lips at your statement.

“And I suppose you are correct, my lady. But if that is the case then those men have chosen poorly. I cannot imagine marrying someone, only to then spend all my free time avoiding them. Somewhat defeats the point of it all, in my opinion.”

“Well, I had guessed some of that about you, Your Majesty. What with you getting rid of this age-old tradition.” You gestured once again to the room around you but when you turned back to him, it was to see that the King’s eyes had narrowed slightly, studying you.

“And how do you feel about that?”

You sensed his words were a test and you licked your lips nervously before you answered.

“I have no real opinion, Sire. I live to serve and am happy to do what my King commands of me.”

There was a strange look on his face. He was no longer smiling and while he didn’t appear angry with you, his demeanor was now far more chilly than it had been a moment ago.

“And were you happy to carry out the commands of my late father?”

You hesitated before answering. “His Royal Highness was most kind to me. I was happy to serve him.”

You barely heard him mutter “I bet you were” under his breath before he suddenly stood, and you scrambled to your feet after him.

“This has been an illuminating chat, my lady, and I thank you for your company. Soon you will be free of this place and can put this part of your life behind you.”

He nodded his head and once again you dropped into a deep curtsey, your eyes locked to the floor. You stayed that way as his footsteps retreated across the marble floor and you wondered what it was you had said that had turned him so cold.

Once again, Bucky found himself stalking into the sanctuary of his private chambers. Damn you, damn his father, and damn this ridiculous fascination of his. Whilst he’d tried to tell himself that the only reason he went to the Little Palace was to get a feeling for whether his friend was getting along with his potential betrothed, he also couldn’t deny the fact that he’d known you would be there as well, all alone.

He’d been enjoying your conversation until he’d been reminded why you were even there in the first place and sabotaged himself by bringing up his father. Then you’d all but admitted that you’d enjoyed doing what you did. Bucky felt sick at the thought.

Images of you tortured him day and night, and spending time with you today had obviously been ill-advised because now he had more memories to draw on. The way you spoke so passionately and knowledgeably about the ways of the world. The way that you smiled and joked when you were relaxed.

Bucky’s fingers longed to pick up a charcoal and try to capture the way the sunlight had slid over the planes of your face, giving you an ethereal, other-worldly look, like some fae creature sent to enrapture him. Instead he tugged on the bell-pull, asking the page who appeared to go and fetch Coulson. He then paced up and down the room, chewing on his thumb nail for the few minutes it took the Equerry to appear.

“How can I serve you, Your Majesty?” Coulson asked with a low bow.

“I want the matters with Lang organised as soon as possible and the remaining occupant of the Little Palace resituated with all speed. It’s high-time this issue was finished, once and for all.

It had been a week since Lila left. A week in which you’d spent nearly every waking moment alone, other than when the servants were helping you dress and bringing you food. Although you mustn’t forget the omni-present guards stationed outside various doors. Which meant it was two weeks since the conversation with the King that had left you feeling more confused than ever.

Lila had returned from her sojourn around the garden gushing about Master Lang and his attributes. About how handsome and kind and funny he was, and how certain she was that they would suit. You plastered a smile to your face and said all the right things, but you couldn’t seem to concentrate on your friend’s happiness, your thoughts consumed by the memory of how the King’s face had looked at the end of your exchange.

He’d been so happy and relaxed, then suddenly so cold and closed. It was obviously no secret that he didn’t like the fact that his father had had concubines, but it had happened and to deny why you were living there would be foolish. Which is why you’d answered so diplomatically - he didn’t need to know what did or didn’t happen in the privacy of the late King’s chambers, and he probably didn’t want to know. What son would want those details? But he had asked a question and you’d answered the best way you knew how.

It hurt because you’d actually been enjoying yourself, and thought that maybe he’d been enjoying himself as well. There’d been a strange warmth inside you as the pair of you had talked and teased and joked, and over the last few days you found yourself wishing you could feel it again.

However, now you had something else to occupy your mind. Almost as soon as Lila had left to get married - and you were sad you couldn’t be with her on her big day - Master Coulson had come to tell you that arrangements were being made at pace for your own future. It was only mildly surprising then, when he’d come to you this morning to tell you that a potential husband had been found and you should prepare yourself to have dinner this evening. He passed you over some papers, giving you details of the man you were to meet.

Apparently he was a Baron, a widower, and a few years older than King James. His seat was on the other side of the country and apparently quite large, with the main house boasting stables, a library, and a formal rose garden. As you read through the information you pulled your lower lip between your teeth. It all looked good on paper, but you needed to be sure. You didn’t want to swap one cage for another - you had to at least like Baron Zemo, and him you. It seemed as though he spoke numerous languages, so at least you had one thing in common with him. Hopefully all would go well, and you could consign this place and thoughts of the King to the past.

A few hours later and you were putting the finishing touches to your toilette. You dabbed some rosewater behind your ears and smoothed your hands down the front of your gown. It was one of your favourites and you’d worn it every time you’d been to visit the late King. He’d always complimented it, saying that the colour of the silk brought out your eyes. You hoped the Baron would like it as well. With a gentle knock on the door, one of the servants let you know that your guest had arrived and was waiting for you in the solar. You took a deep breath and walked down the hall.

As you entered, you saw a man, dressed in deep purple, looking out of the window, with his back to you.

“Baron Zemo, you are most welcome,” you said as you dropped into a curtsey. You heard him turn and then a be-ringed hand appeared in front of your eyes, offering to help you back to your feet.

“Thank you for having me here, my lady,” he replied as you stood. “I have been intrigued to meet you ever since the King wrote to me about your situation.”

You took in his features as he smiled gently at you. He had warm hazel eyes, straight, mid-brown hair that lay across his brow, and was clean shaven. He was slightly taller than you, but not by much and you pushed away the rogue thought about how King James virtually towered over you.

“Shall we sit and dine, and hopefully get to know one another better, sir?” you suggested.

“You’ve read my mind, my dear. There is nothing like good food, good wine, and good conversation, is there?” The Baron walked you over to the small dining table that had been set up and assisted you into your seat, and you felt like a grand lady.

The next two hours passed by amenably. The Baron was eloquent and charming, and when he found out that you spoke other languages he insisted on conversing with you in them, gently correcting your pronunciation and helping you when a particular word or phrase was outside your knowledge. At the end of the meal you were full, warm and a little tipsy from the wine - it wasn’t in your nature to imbibe often.

“Maybe,” Zemo suggested, “we should take a turn about the gardens? A walk in the cool night air would probably help aid digestion. What do you think, my lady?”

“I think that would be delightful.” You allowed him to help you with your chair once more and when you stumbled he linked your arm into his and walked you outside, away from the guards and servants who’d been present in the solar with you.

The garden was illuminated with lanterns in addition to the lights from the solar, and the pair of you walked companionably along the pathways. So far he’d done nothing to worry you, and hadn’t been at all standoffish. You would have to give serious thought into accepting his suit, especially as you were unlikely to receive better. The problem with being the last to be situated was that it also meant that your options for a suitable marriage were narrower.

“You’re awfully quiet, my dear. What’s going through that beautiful head of yours?” You ducked your head at the compliment and couldn’t help but smile.

“In all honesty, my lord? I was thinking about how lovely this evening has been. I will admit to some trepidation, which I’m sure you can forgive me for. Things like this are all too new for me.”

“No forgiveness needed,” he said with a smile, one much wider than those he’d displayed earlier and you felt your heart pick up in your chest, although you couldn’t immediately say why. “It’s completely understandable. But can I say that you have vastly surpassed my expectations. The information given to me about you greatly downplayed your beauty and intelligence. And, if I may be so bold, I find myself captivated.”

You felt your cheeks warm, but you also felt a little uncomfortable, at his zealousness. Or maybe it was the wine? “That is kind of you to say, sir. However, I’m finding myself getting a little chilled. Maybe we should return inside?”

With a swiftness that startled you, the Baron took hold of your shoulders and steered you backwards until you came into contact with the wall. You gasped in shock at both the impact and his change in demeanour.

“Maybe I can find a way to warm you up?” He quipped before his lips came down onto yours, his tongue thrusting into your mouth and one hand falling to your leg, inching your skirts upwards. You tore your mouth from his and turned your head, but his lips just zeroed in on your throat instead, sucking and nipping.

“Sir! Get off me!” You tried to push him, but his bulk had you pinned. His questing hand breached the hem of your skirts and he started to grope at your thigh, and his lips trailed further down to the neckline of your dress. “I said get off!”

The Baron raised his head and stilled his hand, but didn’t move away. “Surely you must miss this? The touch of a man. And think how much better it will be with someone who is younger and knows how to please a woman.”

“I miss it less than you think,” you ground out between clenched teeth. “And I did not ask you for this. Let me go.”

He smiled predatorily and slid his hand up to cup your mound over your underwear. “Did you really think I would offer for you without seeing if you had all the necessary attributes I’m looking for. I need an heir, and intelligence and beauty can’t provide that. And let’s face it, it’s not as though you’re a missish virgin keeping herself pure for her wedding night.”

His hand started to tug at your underthings and you closed your eyes tight as fear started to take over. However, just as you felt the first touch of his fingers on your intimate flesh his weight was suddenly gone.

“I believe the lady said no, Baron Zemo.”

Your eyes shot open, and there was King James, standing between you and the Baron, who was now sprawled on the ground. The dim light of the lanterns partially lit his face and that, combined with his expression, made him look like an avenging angel. Then he turned towards you and his expression softened.

“Are you alright, my lady?”

Without the Baron’s hands on you, your skirts fell back to your ankles and you pushed yourself away from the wall to stand.

You nodded and gave a little cough to clear your throat. “I’m fine, Your Majesty.”

The Baron scrambled to his feet and brushed the dust and gravel from his coat.

“Just a little misunderstanding between my fianceé and myself, Your Majesty. No harm done,” he said, his voice smooth and oily.

You took a step forward, your body trembling with anger. “I don’t believe that I’ve accepted your suit, sir. And after that display of ungentlemanly conduct I am now fully disinclined to do so.”

The Baron’s eyes snapped to yours, narrowing and he let his facade fully drop away. “Be quiet, whore. Who else would have you? You’re used goods, even if the one who did the using was the former King. You should be grateful I’m even considering you.”

You shifted, intending to step forward again and slap him, but the King held out his hand stopping you.

“You are out of line, Baron. No matter her history, the lady is still just that. A lady. And how you treat her is tells me that, despite your title, you are no gentleman.” His voice was steady, but you could pick up the undercurrent of rage - could see it in the way he was holding himself and the tick in his jaw.

Baron Zemo let out a bark of laughter, apparently oblivious to the danger he was in. “My dear James, I cannot believe how much you are defending one of your fathers handmaidens. She was obtained by him for one purpose, but you think it’s unreasonable for me to see if she lives up to that purpose before I marry her.” He peered at the King, then his eyes widened as though he’d made a startling revelation. “Do I sense some jealousy raising its head here?” He laughed again. “I should have realised there was a reason you kept her until last. Of course - she’s your whore as…”

He didn’t get to finish his vile words, because King James’ arm snapped out and he punched the Baron right on the jaw, then watched impassively as the man crumpled back to the ground. Then, just as suddenly, he turned towards you fully and without a word scooped you up into his arms. You squeaked and threw your arms around his neck as he walked briskly back towards the solar. As he made his way inside, the guards stood to attention but didn’t turn to look at you, however, you still hid your face in his neck from embarrassment.

“There’s some filth in the garden to be sent packing.” The King’s voice rumbled in your ear as he spoke to the guards, and then he was turning with you in his arms and striding down the corridor that led to the private chambers.

“Which one?” he asked gruffly, and you uncurled from his chest slightly so you could point. He shouldered your door open and then kicked it shut before letting you down, your body sliding over his as he did so.

You looked up at him, eyes wide and heart racing, not even noticing that your hands still rested on the slope of his chest and that his hands were still on your waist.

“You’re sure you're alright?” he queried again, looking down at you with concern.

“Absolutely. You stopped him. You…” You started to shake then as you realised how close you’d come to real harm. Without a word, the king steered you over to the edge of your bed and you both sat down, your small hands held in his larger ones, one of his thumbs rubbing over the delicate skin near your knuckles.

“Just breathe, my lady. You’ve had a shock. I’m glad I was there…” he stopped mid-sentence and freed one of his hands to turn your head and bare your neck to him. You swore you heard him growl. “He marked you. I’m going to kill him.”

You took hold of his wrist and pulled it down so you could turn back to face him. “It’s nothing. Really. It will fade and in a few days it’ll be a memory. Then we can try again.”

He peered at you, confused.

“Try and find me a husband,” you clarified and then smiled in an effort to lighten the atmosphere in the room.

“No.” King James pulled himself away sharply and stood, his back to you.

Now you were the one who was confused. “What do you mean,’No’? ‘No’ to a few days or ‘No’ to a husband? I don’t understand.”

“Either. Both,” he snapped, still not turning around.

“Alright,” you replied. “We’ll find me somewhere to live, then. Discuss a suitable stipend amount like Master Coulson did with some of the others who refused a husband.”

“Not that, either.” He ground the words out and you felt your patience waning, frustration overtaking your confusion. You stood up and stepped closer.

“So no husband and no stipend. What are you suggesting? That I just leave?” You couldn’t keep the hysterical note from your voice.

He spun on his heel and moved into your personal space, just as the Baron had done only a few minutes ago. However you didn’t feel anxious or uncomfortable, and the warm feeling inside you was back, despite your anger at how contrary he was being.

“Not at all,” he said quietly, his eyes trained on you.

On your face.

On your lips.

“I thought you wanted me out of here. You don’t want any concubines, remember?” You arched your eyebrow, challenging him.

He leant forwards and your breath caught in your throat, his stormy eyes now all you could see.

“I still don’t,” he murmured and then pressed his lips to yours.

This kiss was entirely different to the Baron’s assault. It was soft and gentle. Coaxing, not claiming. The King’s hands came up to cup your face and you curled your own into the front of his jacket. The heat within you rose in intensity and you kissed him back, opening your mouth and letting him in. He moaned when you did, one hand sliding to your hair and the other to the small of your back, pulling you close to him. You could feel the evidence of his arousal, but it didn’t scare you. In fact it thrilled you. It was all the deepest thoughts you’d kept to yourself come to life, and they took you over.

Your nimble fingers worked the buttons of his jacket and as they came undone the King let go of you to shuck it off. That was followed quickly by his cravat and waistcoat, thrown without care across your room, and then he pulled his shirt free of his trousers and toed off his shoes. He took you back in his embrace then, kissing you with more passion and your hands found their way under his shirt, stroking across the hard planes of his chest. He nipped at your lower lip in retaliation and you gasped as the brief stinging shot to your core.

“Tell me you want this,” he breathed into your mouth.

“I do,” you whispered back. You’d never been as sure of anything as you were now - consequences be damned. They were a problem for tomorrow.

Part of Bucky couldn’t believe what he was doing, because he really shouldn’t be doing it. He was a King and should be the better person. But, oh, how he wanted to be selfish for once and slake this longing he had for you.

He hadn’t been able to stop himself from coming to see how you and the Baron were getting on, partially to assuage his guilt and partially to torture himself. When he’d found you both absent from the solar, one of the guards had told him you’d gone for a walk together. As he’d stepped outside and neither of you had been in the closer part of the garden a sense of unease had washed over him. Then he’d heard you shout and raced around a corner to see you pushing at the Baron as he held you against the wall, trying to violate you.

He’d barely been able to restrain himself when he saw that, only daring to separate you and check that you were alright. But then the Baron had started to spew his hurtful, cruel words and his resolve had crumbled. He’d had to make sure you were safe. He’d needed it like air.

Upon getting you inside, he’d told himself that he would just double check that you were alright and then leave, but then he’d seen the bruise on your neck and you’d tried to placate him with talk of trying to find a new suitor and he’d lost any sense of decorum.

There would be no other husband, no grand house and pension, because you were his. You were his oxygen - his sunlight. His joy and his misery and his desire all rolled into one. So he’d kissed you, almost no better than the Baron, but then you’d kissed him back. Clung to him. You’d made it plain that you wanted him too, first with your actions and then your words.

Mentally calling himself a fool, Bucky spun you around and tugged at the closure of your dress, the multitude of tiny buttons that held it together flying across the room. He didn’t care, though. He could buy you a new dress. A thousand new dresses. He eased the open neckline over your shoulders and pushed the multiple layers of silk down your frame. Taking your hand, he helped you step out of the froth of fabric and you kicked off your slippers at the same time with a giggle that shot through him like a bolt of lightning.

Bucky pulled you back to him with a groan and walked you towards the bed, laughing with you when you both tumbled onto it with a bounce. Your hands, so small and delicate, found his chest again, and he lent up and pulled his shirt over his head, watching you as your eyes darkened with desire as you took in what you saw. You traced your fingers over the definition of his abdominals and pectorals and Bucky shivered.

“I want you, Your Majesty.” Your voice was low and breathy, and fuck did he just want to bury himself in you. Feast on you.

“Bucky,” he rasped. “Call me Bucky. There is no King here tonight.”

You came back together, kissing and touching and through it you both messily and awkwardly helped each other remove the rest of the clothes that separated you. As soon as your breasts were bared to him, Bucky couldn’t hold back, latching onto your puckered nipples, one after the other, drawing squeaks and moans from you, more intoxicating than any sounds he’d imagined in his private imaginings.

His right hand skirted down your body, finding its way between your legs and you opened for him. He moaned around breast as he found your wetness and began to toy with you. Bucky teased your clit and stroked your folds, captivated by how more arousal spilled from you. When he slid a testing finger into you, you gripped his hair and arched into his hand, your soft mewl turning to a strangled gasp and he felt undeniably powerful, a small part of him, one he didn’t want to really acknowledge, feeling as though he was competing with the memory of his father. He was determined to erase it. After tonight there would only be him.

When Bucky added a second finger into your warm channel and circled his thumb on your clit, you whimpered his name. Not ‘Your Majesty’ or ‘Sire’, but ‘Bucky’ as he’d asked you. He lifted his head and rose back up your body, capturing your lips and swallowing your cries as he drove you higher and higher. Your hands now clutched his shoulders, your short, manicured nails digging into him, using him as an anchor, lest you float away into the ether. He felt your body quiver beneath him as you neared the precipice of your pleasure and then the next second you were tumbling over it, your body spasming around his fingers, your mouth drawing all the oxygen from his lungs into your own.

Bucky kissed you through it, slowing his hand before pulling it away slowly. He shifted on the bed, kneeling between your limp legs, and as you watched him with hooded, lust filled eyes, he brought his fingers to his mouth and tasted your essence. He groaned as he did so, promising himself that he would drink directly from your source soon, but he couldn’t hold back his desire to fully claim you any longer.

As his hand dropped to his cock, your eyes followed it, and you took your first real look at him. He couldn’t help but smile as your eyes widened and you tentatively raised your own hand towards his erection. He took hold of it and wrapped it around his length, marvelling at how your fingers didn’t meet. Your gaze flicked between his face and his cock, unsure which you wanted to watch. However, after a few minutes it was too torturous, and he repositioned himself to kiss you again and run his cock between your wet folds. Your hips rolled beneath him as you let out small whimpers of need and desire and he couldn’t hold back any longer.

Bucky reached between you, lined himself up and sank into your warmth.

The cry of ecstasy you let out caught him by surprise and he looked down into your eyes. The truth shone out of them as you pulled in breath after ragged breath, your body struggling to adjust to his size, despite what he’d done to you only minutes before. He couldn’t really process it, but an animalistic part of him howled in pleasure at the realisation that you’d been untouched and consumed any remaining restraint.

Bucky snapped his hips, watching in awe as your eyes rolled in your head and the breath was pushed from your lungs. It was an addictive sight and he thrust into you again and again, unable to stop, needing to see your reaction. You clutched his biceps as he braced himself, your head thrown back and he never wanted to see you any other way - debauched and ruined on his cock.

“God, you’re so fucking beautiful. Can you touch yourself for me, sweetheart?”

You mumbled incoherently but did as he’d asked, your hand moving between you, and Bucky knew when you’d found your centre from the way you clenched around him. He groaned at the sensation and let it spur him on. He dipped his hips, changing the angle of his thrusts and when you let out a wail he knew he’d found the right spot.

“That’s it, beautiful. Come apart for me. Come on my cock.”

You screamed and spasmed around him and his rational brain knew he should pull out and spill himself over the sheets, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t not have this. He cried out, throwing back his own head, and surrendered to the inevitable.

It took you a while to come back to yourself, because what you’d just experience was so different from what you’d been told about. The King - Bucky - was cuddled up behind you, his arms holding you close and his nose pressed into your hair, dozing. You turned in his embrace and his long, dark eyelashes fluttered open.

“Hi,” you breathed cautiously, unsure of how you should be acting. However, when he softly smiled at you, you felt your heart leap inside your chest.

“Hello, yourself.” He dropped a gentle kiss to your lips and you smiled in return and relaxed. He was obviously content to stay in your private, intimate bubble for at least a short time more and you were more than happy to indulge him. You didn’t want to think about how you’d feel when this ended, it would hurt too much.

Pushing yourself up onto one elbow you looked down at him and idly traced invisible designs across his chest with your finger tip.

“So, Bucky, huh? Where does that come from?”

He chuckled at your teasing tone. “From my sister, Princess Rebecca. Or as I call her, Becca-Boo or Sprout. My second name is Buchanan, and when she was learning to talk she couldn’t say it. Whenever she said ‘Bucky’ it would make me laugh, so she kept doing it and then refused to call me anything else. Then my mother picked it up, because if she called me James, Becca would stamp her foot and tell her off. And I liked it. It helped me separate the two parts of myself - Bucky, the normal man with normal wants, desires and hobbies etcetera, and James, heir to the throne, with duties and responsibilities who has to keep himself apart from those around him.”

There was a melancholy tone to his words, and you couldn’t help but bend down and press a light kiss to his lips. “Well I like Bucky.”

He brought his hand up to the nape of your neck, returning the kiss, and you wished that reality could just stay firmly outside for the rest of time.

When Bucky broke the kiss, he looked up at you with searching eyes.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” he asked quietly and you immediately knew what he was talking about. You shrugged one shoulder.

“Does it matter? Would it have changed what just happened between us? Would you have thought differently of me?”

“No, it wouldn’t have changed what just happened, but I won’t lie and say I wouldn’t have treated you differently. I thought harshly of you, driven by jealousy. How could I allow myself to like you, desire you, when you had lain with my father? I was jealous of a ghost for having claimed you first, and I hated myself for feeling that way. That was why I acted coldly to you when we conversed in the solar. What you said. You made it sound as if you’d enjoyed being with him and ugly thoughts filled my head.” Bucky’s brow furrowed as he spoke and you itched to smooth out the lines that formed there.

“Well, it isn’t really the done thing to speak out loud about the King’s impotence,” you pointed out. “Especially with his own son. I was trying to answer truthfully, but without going into detail. And I suppose I did enjoy spending time with him. He may not have been the type of father you wished, or the husband your mother wanted, but he was still a man. We’d talk, mostly. I like to think that I gave him some comfort and companionship. I can’t say that I’m unhappy about the way things turned out.” You looked at him coyly from under your lashes and he laughed.

“You liked being claimed by me? You wanton wretch,” he teased.

“It was definitely different, and much better, than what I’d been led to believe.” He growled playfully, and in one deft move rose up and pushed you back to the mattress, caging you in with his arms. You brought your hand up and brushed the back of it over his cheek. “If I’m going to be a concubine, I’m glad that I’m yours.”

At your words, Bucky reared back, as if you’d slapped him and you immediately started to apologise. “I’m sorry, Sire. I shouldn’t have presumed…” Shame and guilt washed over you at how far you’d sunk into your daydream, and you fought your way out of the sheets. Rising from the bed, you found your shift in the heap of clothing on the floor and pulled it over your head. “I will leave you to your dressing and wait for instructions from Master Coulson later.” You bobbed a curtsey and turned toward the door, your hand reaching for the handle, eager to put space between you.

“Stop!” His command made you freeze mid step, your arm lowering back to your side. In a moment he was behind you, his hands firmly gripping your upper arms.

“You are not my concubine. I never wanted one, and I won’t start now.” He spun you, and when you didn’t raise your head, staring instead at a freckle near his collarbone, he tucked a finger under your chin and made you look at him. “You deserve more than that, my darling.” His tone softened. “You will be my wife. That is, if you will have me?”

You looked at him in shock. “What? How can I be your wife? You are the King and I am, well, just me.”

“And as the King, I can do what I want. And for anyone who gets pedantic about your previous status, there is precedent. Concubines have been turned into Queens before.”

You pulled yourself from his hold, raising your arms up in confusion. “You do not need to speak of marriage, just because you have bedded me and do not want a concubine.”

“This is not solely because we have lain together, sweet fool. I love you.”

His words made you stop and you wondered if you’d misheard, but he continued.

“I fear I have done since I first laid eyes on you. And I just hope that maybe you can learn to love me too. Bucky, that is. Not just James, your King.” He reached out imploringly toward you. You looked back at him and then at his hand, before accepting it as you stepped forward, a broad smile making its way across your face.

“Learn to love you? That implies that I don’t already. How could I not, even if you were being grumpy and contrary.”

He wrapped you up in his embrace and looked down at you, eyes full of mischief. “Contrary? Is that anyway to speak to your King?”

“It is how a Queen speaks to her husband,” you joked back.

“Is that so? Then I must make you my Queen as soon as possible.” He closed the remaining distance between you, kissing you with vigour before lifting you and returning you both to the bed.

“However, nothing can be done until tomorrow. Whatever shall we do until then?” he drawled with mock innocence.

“I have a few ideas, Your Majesty,” you replied, mimicking his tone.

He shook his head. “Bucky, remember?”

“Bucky,” you agreed.

The End

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#Bucky x Reader #Historical AU #historical romance #Bucky Barnes x you #buckybarnesbingo2023 #Bucky barnes fluff #Bucky Barnes angst #Bucky barnes smut

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strlingsav · 4 months

Text

Forbidden: One

– Simon "Ghost" Riley x OC!Princess Eira of England and Wales.

— Medieval AU: The King assigns his most formidable knight, Sir Simon, to his daughter's protection.

1523 - England

A firm knock against the heavy walnut of her chamber door caught her attention. She sucked in a deep breath, already suspicious of the visitor and what exactly was to follow.

She'd heard the low mutterings of the court that followed her every footstep. Whether it be her ladies or chambermaids, the gossip passed through the palace like a wildfire. In an instant all knowledge was common and discretion was used only in her presence- though sometimes not at all.

She was used to it, to the malignity and talebearing of her father's court. For over two decades, she'd experienced the most undesirable side of belonging to her family; the loneliness.

She kept mostly to herself. Aside from her closest confidants, her ladies, all other members of court were kept at an arm's reach. She bided her time with long-lived hobbies; though she longed for connection. Someone to take away the burden of secrecy and isolation. To share in the weight that lie over her shoulders and face the scrutiny of the people with her.

Though she knew eventually she'd be forced to marry, her father had likely hastened the inevitable. She'd been stalked by rumours and whispers at every turn, quiet giggles of chambermaids and the barking laughter of the kitchen staff. Her father had, unbeknownst to her, chosen a husband for her, and it had been biting at her heels for the last week. It was only a matter of time for Eira to hear it herself.

She spun to face her visitor; a tall, sinewy woman who knew Eira well. Nearly raised Eira after her mother passed during childbirth. Her hands were clasped together over her emerald gown, eyes poring into Eira's as she smiled softly in greeting.

"The King wishes to see you," She said. "In the throne room."

Eira blinked a few times. "Thank you, Gwendolyn."

Gwendolyn could sense her apprehension- the nerves beginning to tremble in Eira's hands, the furrow of her brow that pulled her face into a frown. She neared Eira, placing a delicate hand on her shoulder.

"Don't worry," Gwendolyn smiled. "I'm sure he has good news to share."

Gwendolyn's fingers took a strand of charcoal hair between them, softly laying it over Eira's shoulder. She wished that the reassuring touch was enough to ease the discomfort in her gut, and the twitch in her muscles.

"I'm sure," Eira spoke softly, as if not entirely confident in her answer but still trying adamantly to convince herself.

"I'll wait for you in the throne room," Gwen said, moving quietly from her position.

Eira didn't respond. Her eyes peered up to find the green hills and stables across the castle courtyard. She knew disobeying her father could bring harsh consequences, though she desperately wanted to avoid the conversation for as long as possible.

Eira patiently waited for Gwen to disappear, seated at her desk, quill in hand. She'd made it a habit to document her life; entries that would bear no significance to anyone but her, and yet still, she hid it from prying eyes. It seemed that the castle walls could tell-all regardless.

She peered over her shoulder, listening for the heavy door to click shut. Her shoulders weakened, letting her posture slip as she hunched over her desk and finished her entry.

Her eyes lifted to the courtyard, and the green hills that were obscured by the stables. Spring had just arrived, rain nurturing the grass and wildflowers. The sky still hung low, grey and unexceptional as was usual for her homeland.

She pushed away from her desk, procrastinating the inevitable as she stood before the door. To her surprise, another knock resounded through her chambers.

She stepped forward, reaching out to take the brass handle as she prepared to face Gwendolyn's pitiful expression.

"I'll be right-"

Her sentence was cut short at the appearance of a tall- large, man before her. He was decorated in armour and chain mail, all but the helmet. She finally met his eyes; somber and dark, that appeared black in the dull morning sky through her windows.

He was young, likely around her age, and not of the usual appearance she expected of a Knight. Clean shaven, though he appeared disheveled with ruffled brunet hair. He had a crooked nose, hollowed cheeks and scarred lips. He looked like a fighter- like he'd seen many wars and would see a hundred more before his time was done.

"Lady Eira," A gruff voice announced.

She furrowed her brows, licking her lips before she spoke again.

"I'm sorry, I was expecting..." She trailed off, trying not to be distracted by his unwavering stare. "What is it?" She asked instead.

His presence alone was threatening. Uncomfortable and yet allured by his appearance; her face shifted to its resting state, not wanting to reveal her intrigue with the man.

His own breath caught in his throat at the sight of the Princess so close to him. He'd been assigned to meaningless posts since his knighting, though finally finding his place at the King's court meant meeting the Princess of fairytales and legends. He'd heard many things about her; some good, some bad, though he anticipated he'd find out for himself soon enough.

He hadn't expected her likeness to be so similar to that of paintings he'd seen. The black hair that curled down her back, ocean-like eyes peering up at him. She was pale; paler than most, though her cheeks reddened when she laid eyes on him.

"The King has requested your presence."

The deep, rough voice echoed through the room.

"I know," She replied. Her voice was far more meek than his own, and unnecessarily so.

The knight stirred for a moment, waiting awkwardly for her to finally budge from her spot.

"Why has he sent a knight to do the job of his guards?" Eira asked, tilting her head.

"I follow orders, m'Lady," He replied. "I don't question His Majesty."

Eira sighed. Her attempt at derailing the conversation had failed, and she was faced with yet another loyal subject dead-set on ensuring her arrival.

She glanced at her desk longingly, before nudging herself forward to attend her father's request. The knight kept himself at a distance, watching her as she strode through the castle.

The throne room was hardly full by the time she arrived. A few neighbouring Lords that had a vested interest in her father's court idled nearby. She approached her father, settled behind a large oak desk with men on either side of him, seemingly distracting him from the arrival of his daughter.

"Eira," He announced finally, his eyes falling to his daughter.

"Your Majesty," She curtsied, her gaze not lifting to his until she stood straight.

"You avoid me?" He asked- though he already knew the answer.

Gwen stood in the corner, her eyes studying the entire exchange with obvious discomfort.

"No, father. Forgive me," She said, bowing her head ever so slightly with a feigned look of remorse.

Her father waved his hand, dismissing the apology altogether. Standing from his desk, he gestured for an unfamiliar man to stand beside him. The two approached slowly, as if afraid to spook her into running off. Much like a wild horse waiting to be tamed.

"I ask you here with significant news," King John announced, his lips curling into a smile. He turned to the stranger, a hand on the pommel of his sword, then back to his daughter. "Lord Henry Smith of Hawick has travelled a long way to make your acquaintance."

Eira peered up at the stranger, now identified as Henry Smith. He was older, much older than herself. Ivy green eyes like that of an emerald, though he didn't attract her like a jewel would. Instead, she was uncomfortable. Wrinkles burrowed deep between his brows, a smile plagued by ill-intentions and perversion; he was spindly, without an ounce of fat to be seen.

Her brows furrowed, and her eyes shifted back to her father.

"An honour to meet you, My Lady," Henry said, bowing promptly.

"And you, m'Lord," She replied.

Henry straightened just as she did, a similar grin on his face as her father. His accent was Scottish; a land which her father had expressed interest in conquering. He'd been strategizing for years, waiting and watching for years, though the key to the land had conveniently arrived right on his doorstep.

"Lord Henry has asked for your hand in marriage, and I've agreed to his proposal."

Her heart seemingly dropped to her stomach; a wave of nausea sweeping through her. Her eyes glanced over at Henry again- his smile irrefutably smug and prideful, as though he'd won something.

"Oh," she breathed, feigning an enthusiastic smile. "How wonderful."

"I very much look forward to being your husband." He reached for her hand, bulging knuckles and clammy palms taking hold of it. "The children you bear me will usher in the prosperous future to come between our countries," Henry said, placing a kiss on her knuckles.

Eira fought the urge to pull her hand from his grip, and instead froze in her place until he'd finished. She felt sick.

"We will make arrangements for the ceremony, though it won't be for a few months. Henry must return to Scotland." Her father said, nodding in understanding with Henry.

"I look forward to your return, My Lord," Eira said, falling to a curtsy. "Is there anything more, father?" She asked, eyes brimming with tears. She swallowed harshly, blinking quickly as she urged the tears to disperse.

He dismissed her, turning his back to discuss the current state of affairs with the present company.

Eira scrambled to keep herself composed as she left the throne room, her thoughts mangled while she tried to fight the disappointment clawing at her throat. She managed to fight her way up the stone stairs, falling to her ottoman as she stepped in her room.

Gwendolyn wasn't far behind, calling out as discretely as possible for Eira as she disappeared before her. Gwendolyn finally came upon her; an emotionless expression as Eira stared ahead at her family's tapestry on the wall. The intertwining antlers and crossed swords stared back at her, with all defiance and ferocity; Eira inhaled decidedly: she would not succumb to her chosen fate.

#historical romance #cod mw2 #simon riley #ghost x reader #cod mwii #mwii #simon ghost riley x reader #ghost smut #simon riley smut #strlingsavwrites #historical AU #forbidden series

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fictionadventurer · 9 months

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Sometimes it's good to create stories that are nuanced and meaningful and explore deep themes and complex characters. And sometimes you need to create stories that make you CACKLE WITH DELIGHT because of how dumb they are.

#adventures in writing #anyway i got to talk about both the american hallmark royalty romance and powers and prejudice #and the delight of those absurd mashups cannot be expressed #esp with the first #applying hallmark tropes to this historical au creates some very dumb sentences and it's so fun

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madrain230 · 2 months

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THE SACRIFICE: Children of the Moon | JJK (2)

Pairing: Jungkook x f. OC

Genre: Dark Romance

Rating: 18+ (nsfw)

Summary: In the Kingdom of Oltira, a special ritual takes place once a year at the beginning of autumn. Mothers are living in fear for the fate of their offspring. Each day and night, each woman prays for the birth of a male child-a son-because once her vulnerable unborn arrives its existence to the world and is a female-a daughter-not even the most heartfelt pleading can save the unfortunate fate that may be death of her dear child.

Warnings: strong bloody violence, explicit language, disturbing behavior, sensitivity, death, animalistic tendency, triggering topics, mature situations-themes, etc. It may also touch some sensitive subjects.

note: I don't own any of the images. please note that all images and copyrights belong to their original owners. no copyright infringement intended.

- CHAPTER 2 -

A sparrow's song's melodic echo began to appear repeatedly in the silent atmosphere. After hearing the tune of bliss, several other animals joined the harmony and allowed a metaphorical entrance into the glory of the sunrise.

There were different colors of red and pink occurring in the sky, which made it a beautiful and relaxing scenery for multiple eyes to watch.

Although the captivating shadow of sunrise over the summit of the forest ceased its soothing colors, minutes later, daylight soon arrived at each perimeter of Oltira's domain.

Another day began once again.

In each household, most children opened their eyes with a motivation, which was to join the cheerful giggles of their friends. Every mother felt a smile on her face when she opened the door, and her impatient children rushed out of the house in delightful laughter.

Along with their owners, steeds, and mules began to appear in the streets with necessary objects—mostly fabrics and edible sustenance—upon their muscular bodies. Men and women began to voice their determination, their audible sentences constantly repeating a specific worth of their object for sale.

It was, thankfully, an active day for the people that were living in such an area.

Nevertheless, it was a wonder for many if the day was going to fade away with happy beliefs.

It was, however, as if nature itself were responding when an enraged rumble echoed its appearance from far away.

Some people immediately looked at the sky with thought, others looked at it with worry, and most decided not to allow their brains to be disturbed by such a simple matter.

Suddenly, in fast and fierce motions, a man with youthful facial characteristics appeared in the surroundings.

Such an appearance became the main focus of attention for the various stares that were present in the location.

When the man nearly fell upon and came face-to-face with a moving horse, everyone became frightened with fear. Naturally, the animal behaved with its instincts, which was to be expected.

It all happened in the blink of an eye as the startled animal forced its massive weight to stand and raise in the air its two front hoofs, its height becoming twice in size while its animalistic sound echoed in panic.

Then, dread reached everyone's gut when the young man fell on his backside in front of the shire horse, which weighed 2000 pounds (907.18 kg) in muscle capacity.

The owner of the steed immediately acted on time and quickly pulled the double reins with effective strength, forcing the animal's head to shift and successfully land its raised hooves away from the man.

“Hoy! Easy!”, the owner spoke out in a hushing tone to his spooked friend while caressing the gray fur.

Then his eyes hardened and narrowed into slits as his attention shifted to the young fellow.

“You almost crashed to death, son! This route is full of people! You shouldn't be running like that!”, The man almost shouted, revealing his anger through words, but all was finished off in vain when a rumble appeared from the atmosphere.

The young man immediately turned his attention to the sky, and his eyes widened in realization as dread pierced through his heart.

With astonished eyes, the spectators could only watch as the man whose body was on the ground stood up and began to run.

Within seconds, the young man's shadow disappeared into the crowd.

“Isn't he Smith's son? Something must have happened for him to behave in that manner ... ”, a man decided to utter deep in thought while approaching the owner and his horse. However, all he gained was silence from the man beside him, and the only sound that was able to prevail in the atmosphere was the sound of an enraged sky.

In a calm yet determined tone, a voice belonging to a man suddenly echoed its existence.

“Wait, let me help you. That seems to be very heavy!”

Upon hearing the words disappear, a surprised gasp appeared in their absence.

Annora's whole attention veered toward the man whose body stood beside her own. As soon as her eyes fell on his face, a beautiful smile greeted her. Instantly recognizing the familiar face, a warmth captured her heart, and before she could open her mouth to talk, after also offering a small smile, astonishment was soon visible in her facial characteristics.

Annora's unspoken words became a long-lost memory when the heavyweight she was holding up was stolen by the arms of the man beside her.

“Arnold! No, you don't have to help me carry this; I can manage.”

“Where to? Eric?”

Arnold didn't look behind him when he asked the question. Annora's eyebrows furrowed a little, clearly somehow annoyed by being interrupted, but then loosened up when a brief chuckle echoed.

Then a statement with the meaning of irony was spoken.

“Walk, Arnold. As if you haven't figured it out already.”

Arnold didn't have to veer around to look at the person who spoke. Immediately recognizing the man's voice, he repositioned the heavy sack on his right shoulder with a gesture, and then his upper lip curled up in a quick appearance.

When the conversation between the two men concluded in a state of silence, Annora was unable to maintain her curiosity and subsequently glanced at one of the men.

As expected, Annora's sight caught a pair of eyes that looked at her with a meaningful gaze that she deeply understood.

She halted all the movements of her body.

The breath she took was an indication to the man behind her that she wanted to discuss it. However, Annora was unable to express her feelings because her presence was ignored.

The sight of her brother ignoring her while walking past her provoked an almost annoyed feeling to come to the surface of her heart. Although it vanished within a few seconds as Eric spun and closed a green eye in her direction, the smirk on his face resembled that of a child's playful disposition.

Annora's eyes lit up, and she cracked a little smile as she accelerated her pace to reach the two tall figures.

It is encouraging to see that he still has that childish behavior.

“Are you planning to stay for dinner? There is enough food on the table to feed one more person.”

Eric looked at Arnold and waited for him to answer. His shoulders were still firmly anchored to the heavyweight of two sacks.

“No, thank you.” Arnold's eyes appeared for a second with a spark of regret. Nonetheless, he swiftly attempted to conceal his emotions by transferring the substantial sack containing potatoes onto another. After thoroughly rubbing both of his hands to remove the dust and dirt, he redirected his attention towards speaking. “I express my gratitude for the invitation, but I must go home.”

Eric nodded and Arnold offered a modest smile as his gaze remained fixed on Annora for a brief period of duration.

“See you around, Annora.”

“I have concerns about it, but even a dumb person can understand the importance of the stares he gives you.”

As he concluded his previous statement, Eric looked at Arnold's faraway figure.

“That man cares for you, Annora.”

A silence surrounded the siblings.

Annora's bottom lip was caught between her teeth, and the beating of her heart became trapped in emotions of distress. Despite the realization that her brother was aware of the emotional circumstances between her and Arnold, she had not anticipated that Eric would be capable of expressing them in such a manner.

Eric was seeking an explanation, but Annora was unwilling to speak at that moment. The reality of her brother's words terrified her and hoped to escape from it.

It is, however, impossible to escape reality...

Annora took a deep breath but was unable to articulate her thoughts when, with a sudden force, the door of the house in her view suddenly swung open.

“Why are you sitting outside the door? Come in quickly, both of you! You will get sick in this kind of weather.”

Upon the sudden appearance of their mother, both son and daughter remained silent for a brief period, but swiftly proceeded towards the open wooden door.

It was evident that their conversation was in a pause.

However, Annora was cognizant of her brother's implied gaze upon her and was aware that she would have to respond to his questions someday in the future.

Upon Annora's entrance through the wooden entrance, the initial odor that struck her was the familiar aroma of freshly picked tomatoes.

She turned her head to the left and immediately observed the ceramic cooking pot, which was suspended above the smoky flames of a small fire.

“What are we having for dinner—Oh! Tomato soup?”

Eric's entire demeanor exuded curiosity when he approached the flames and gazed upon the flaming pot.

“It smells delicious! My dear mother, you know how to capture a man's heart!”

Eric's cheerful voice resembled his facial expression as he gazed upon his mother, whose expression did not convey any indication of her emotions from his words. She merely approached him, holding a total of four wooden bowls in her hands.

“You should wash your hands from the dirt they have and sit down at the dinner table—”

“Yeah, yeah … Understood. Only compliments from your husband are accepted!” Despite his mother's scandalous expression, Eric continued his dramatic talking. “However, I believe you can accept this simple flower from this poor man. If you don't, his poor heart will hurt!”

Annora watched the interaction between her brother and mother with amusement.

She observed as Marianne, her mother, attempted to contain her smile as she accepted the flower from her son, who was kneeling. However, she was unsuccessful in her efforts when Eric stood up and uttered a loud shout of “Yes!” while he kissed her cheek.

Her mother shook her head at her son's childish behavior but the smile never left her face as she turned to her task of serving the dinner once again.

“Are you troubling your mother again?”

Immediately, the attention shifted towards the tall man who entered through the door, as his imposing voice pierced the silence that had prevailed after the amusing conversation between mother and son.

“You know I could never, father.”

Eric responded as he left his mother's side and approached his sister at the table. “Okay, just a bit…”, he whispered as he sat in a chair, causing laughter throughout the house.

“Your son is giving me flowers these days,” Marianne spoke, though she paused and turned to point a knowing glance at the man towards the door. “I am just curious as to who's been teaching him this advice of sweet-talking and flowers.”

The man, named Andrew, declared himself guilty and chuckled as he kissed his wife on the cheek and then sat on the opposite side of his son at the table.

Andrew exhaled, and looked towards Annora, revealing a smile brimming with warmth.

“How are you doing today, Sweetheart?”

Annora's broad smile was enough for her father to comprehend the answer for her well-being.

When dinner was served, a calm atmosphere prevailed among the family, while minor conversations began to occur.

“I suppose you were in the barn when we arrived?”

Before answering Eric, Andrew swallowed a big spoonful of tomato soup from his bowl. “Yes, I needed to check on the animals. They were acting restless this morning after the thunders.”

“It seems that they consistently exhibit unnatural behavior during this particular time of the year, do they?”

Even though it was a question, Eric's words were better called a statement, for everyone at the table knew that such thoughts would conclude in a conversation with an only end.

“It's like they understand that—”

“Enough!”

“…”

Marianne's voice enveloped the entire household in a chilling silence.

Annora observed her mother with concern.

Her mother's amber eyes were ablaze with anger and frustration, lips drawn in tightly. The appearance of such rigor was a persona that she did not embrace unless it was necessary.

“Marianne—”

“I know, Andrew. I know…”

Marianne took a deep breath and turned her gaze away from Eric. “I'm… I'll be back in a minute. You all keep eating.”

Annora could only watch with deep sorrow as her mother rose from her seat, concealing half of her expression with a hand, and hurriedly fled into the narrow corridor leading to the bedrooms. Once again, silence prevailed within the walls, however, it was swiftly dissipated when a fist was firmly pressed against the table.

Both the brother and sister looked at their father.

“Why did you feel the need to speak about this matter, son? You know how sensitive your mother is about—”

“But I'm not? You are badly mistaken, father. Do you think I am enjoying discussing this? Of course not! But we cannot pretend every single time that it's not—”

“I know that, Eric! But we have to—Do it for your sister!”

The shouting abruptly stopped and Annora felt sorrow grip her heart. She did not need to glance up to observe that both men individuals, namely her brother and father, were now focusing on her.

Despite the overwhelming pressure of their stares, Annora stared intently at the nearly empty bowl of her meal. She was aware that if she were to glance at them at least once, the initial reaction she might likely face would be a mixture of feelings of sympathy and sorrow.

Annora closed her eyes for a moment and then, with a clenched jaw, stood up from her chair and approached the one window near the door.

The ominous gray hue of the clouds was almost impossible to ignore when she looked outside.

Annora wanted to laugh.

She wanted to laugh because her family, as well as many others, wanted to forget that once a year, another tragedy was just waiting to unfold.

But how can someone forget something that seems impossible? Especially when nature itself is presenting reality with its presence.

Another rumbling echoed its existence from the sky, and Annora exhaled deeply.

For every thunder, she was able to see, Annora's thoughts kept repeating the names.

Names from so many tragedies that even the older generations could remember.

One of the tragedies was called Charlotte, a woman in her thirties.

Another was called Amelia, a young child.

An old one was called Isabel, an infant …

Lucia, Adelina, Aria, Clare, Olivia, Sarah, and many others—Dead … A sacrifice.

Annora looked beside her and found her older brother staring at her with concern.

“I'm alright, Eric.”, she blurted, and her brother took a deep breath before answering.

“I know … It's just—”

A faint cry from a church bell echoed for a single time in the distance.

Annora looked outside the window with startled eyes.

Life became a blur of uncertainty.

The creaking of a chair being pushed resonated against the concrete ground, and soon enough, Annora felt a large hand firmly touching her shoulder.

The second chime of a church bell signaled once again its existence.

Gloomy darkness devoured Annora's sanity, and her pulsating heart which was bursting with peace crumbled to a rhythm by chains of fear.

She was unable to speak … It was as if she had a knot in her throat …

Within her, the only words of a voice became endless prayer and pleading.

A deadly third clang chimed from the church's bell.

Annora's eyes were glimmering with fear when she looked at her brother, who was still standing beside her with one of his hands firmly resting on her shoulder.

His green eyes collided with her own, and then … Chaos.

#angst #bts fanfic #jungkook #jungkook fanfic #bts #jungkook x original character #dark romance #bts werewolf au #historical #werewolf jungkook #jeon jeongguk

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eve-to-adam · 7 months

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Commission sketch for @theladyelizabeth .

AU: Robert and Elizabeth at their wedding. Scene from White Bear, Red Rose.

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cherryredstars · 3 months

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“Ocean separates lands, not souls..” ― Munia Khan

DISCONTINUED

"Every night I have dreamt of you. You plague my dreams, in the most deepest, truest sense. In every vivid picture, I love you and you, I. Each dream is a glimpse of pages from the storybook of our lives together. Futures so ripe that if I were to bite into them and give in to temptation, my mouth would be forever stained with its sweetness and the forbidden fruit would dribble down my chin and dry there. My skin would absorb it until it seeped into my bloodstream and it flowed through my heart over and over again. Until it was carved into my very soul and became nothing short of everything that I am. It would coat my hands and my heart and my mind until all I can breathe is you. It transcends even Odysseus's devotion to Penelope. It is so all-consuming that even I fear it."

Where Ships Sail: A Historical Romance

Simon Riley is a dirt poor boy living along the ports of mid-1700 Great Britain. He is only fifteen when he meets her: the girl who owns the ports. She is everything that he is not, but everything he will ever come to want. No amount of class divides or silky lace dresses are a match for the love beginning to drown his heart.

But love is not the only thing Simon must face.

There are revolutions across the sea, a family who needs to be fed, and a desperate need to show his worth. With an ocean between them, Simon must fend for himself and his country if he wishes to become the best for the people he loves the most. But after receiving a wake-up call in the battle fields, Simon realizes there is no time to waste when it comes to love. Upon returning to where it all started, Simon finds he might already be too late.

original story inspiration

Chapter 1: Where it Begins

Their lives will always start and end where ships sail.

Read it here.

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adore-laur · 5 months

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FAÇADE

— a lustful enemies to lovers au set in the 1880’s 📖

Blair Lancaster unabashedly loathes Mr. Styles.

He always licks his slender index finger before flipping the weathered pages of a romance novel. She internally sympathizes with whoever is doomed to take home the book that had been in his filthy grasp.

He loudly clears his throat in the hushed space of the library far too often for her liking. She is beginning to wonder if he caught the fatal consumption disease and has a secret scheme to spread it across the city.

He viciously studies her and the other women like a predatory bird hunting its unguarded prey. She compares his calloused hands to the talons of a hawk and his blatant staring to their beady little eyes.

Perhaps Blair does not entirely loathe him. The feeling is more akin to a deep-rooted dislike for the man who supervises the alcove filled with women crammed around a small, oval table. No seats are provided, leaving them to stand on their aching feet for an unsuitable number of hours.

At the public library in Boston, New York, women are strictly required to segregate themselves from the men by sitting in the alcove if they wish to read books or write letters. Reading, however, proves rather bland when they are all given books about how a lady should properly act or ones that revoltingly mock their intellect.

Yet there is a more covert reason why they are confined to the alcove.

Library loafers is the coined term. Women have only recently been allowed access to the library, and there is a concern that they may be in danger from the men who lurk and loiter around the bookshelves and desks, leering at young ladies who just want the freedom of absorbing printed imagination.

The hickory walls are decorated with paintings of foreground femininity, yet the intended purpose is a façade.

See, the nook is still visible to other sections of the library. It resembles a shadowbox for the male gaze or a stage of sorts so they can observe the moral spectacle of well-behaved women. That is why Blair Lancaster detests the man sitting on his chair, more like a throne, flicking through pages of a far more exciting story than the one she holds. Mr. Styles is the one who polices their behavior, making sure no one is stepping out of line or provocatively reading something they are not supposed to.

Well, Blair enjoys pushing that limit every once in a while out of sheer apathy.

Whenever the book she reads starts to bore her to death, she ponders ways to aggravate him. In the past, she sighed dramatically after turning each page for ten whole minutes until he had to snap his fingers, warning her to stop. She has also pretended to fall asleep with her head on the table, purposely reaching her arm out to knock the book onto the floor with a loud thump, resulting in him huffing and picking it up for her. In one instance, she purposely gave herself a paper cut and dripped blood onto the first page of the book she was given so it would have to be thrown out. She could tell by the look on Mr. Styles' face that he knew she had only done it to be a pain in the neck.

Today, she decides to clear her throat every time he does. Only four other women are in the room, and Blair knows they like it when she breaks the quietness to bring entertainment to the dull atmosphere.

"Enough," Mr. Styles commands after her third act of mimicry.

She smirks and continues reading the same sentence repeatedly until she becomes bored. After a few minutes pass, he clears his throat again, and she does the same.

"Ms. Lancaster, may I have a word with you?"

Blair subtly rolls her eyes. She hates it when he treats her like a schoolgirl in detention, lecturing and speaking down to her as if she is inferior.

"What is it, Mr. Styles?" she asks as she walks over to him, feigning innocence to pester him even more.

He stares at her intensely. "Do you fancy being expelled from this library?"

"I think there is something in my throat," she says with a dramatic pout. "The book I was given is quite dusty."

He hums monotonously. "I must say, that was a terrible fib. I expected a better excuse from you."

Blair's lips twitch as she fixes the collar of her dress. "I do not fib, Mr. Styles. Allergies are dreadful this time of year, have you not heard? Or maybe you and I have caught…” She leans forward to theatrically whisper, “The consumption disease."

"Your hands fidget when you lie." With an unimpressed look, he jerks his chin toward the table. "Behave. Otherwise, you will be kicked out."

The conversation, if it could even be called that, dies quickly as Blair returns to her spot. Her remaining time in the alcove causes drooping eyes and raw, bitten nails. There is nothing she could possibly do to make time pass any faster, so she watches the grandfather clock until it chimes when the small hand ticks to the number twelve. Blair promised her father she would be home for lunchtime, so she sets the book she only read two pages of in the wooden bin, then gives Mr. Styles an icy glare before leaving the library.

On her stroll home, she reminisces about every encounter with him today. Every facial expression and unspoken word that was told with each glimpse. She buries the invasive thoughts that dangerously cross the streets of her mind. However, at dusk, he creeps in her brain's crevices like noxious venom. When her satin curtains are drawn, and the burning sun says its farewell, Blair cannot help but think about him after she blows out the candles beside her bed.

His eyes of marjoram green that cast her discreet glances only she noticed. She wonders if she will ever get close enough to find specks of gold in them or if they crinkle when he laughs, lighting up with radiance that has never been revealed to her. There is a chance they soften when he reads a particularly romantic line in a novel, perhaps of a private touch or confession of love.

His long fingers that flip through the worn pages of said novels. Blair wonders how they would feel slowly trailing along her arm, leaving goosebumps in their wake, or how they would feel in her mouth, the pad of his thumb erotically settled between her teeth. There is a possibility they would stretch inside another part of her body so deeply that her entire soul would ache with pleasure.

His pink lips that pout and glisten in the sunlight filtered through the clerestory windows of the library. She wonders how they would form around certain words or if they feel as soft as they look, pillowy and sweet if she were to taste them. She will not taste them, but it is nice to dream about the flawless physicality of a man such as himself.

Mr. Styles may be unbearable and shrouded with arrogance, but that does not dismiss his obvious allure. He is nothing but a pretty face that haunts her at nightfall, hung high in the gallery of her mind like the moon in the starlit sky.

He is a complicated façade.

A spring thunderstorm has blown over the newspaper stands and matted down Blair's curls as she traverses up the slippery brick steps of the library again. Violent rain hits the cobblestone streets, which are filled with umbrellas over heads and coats over the less fortunate as they all maneuver to the closest shelter.

Blair has forgone any protection from the storm, so she passes through the familiar threshold with a saturated dress and dripping strands of blonde hair that appear a shade darker due to their wetted state. As she looks around, she finds the library completely barren of townsfolk except for a stout man who bustles up to her and huffs a displeased breath when he sees the puddle of rainwater forming by her feet. She hopes he overlooks the trail of muddy footprints she left behind.

"Good evening, Ms. Lancaster," he greets with a formal cap tip. "The unfortunate weather has sprung a leak in the alcove ceiling, so you will be relocated to the main room for the day."

Blair nods, attempting to hide the eager smile that threatens to pull at her freckled cheeks. It will be alleviating to not have to tolerate being confined in a stodgy room with Mr. Styles. She prays she will have the whole room to herself so she can conceive a plan to sneakily grab a horror fiction book while the thunder rumbles outside.

She follows the man who, if she remembers correctly, is the chimney sweeper usually found by the stone fireplace, soot dusting his forehead and coughing up a storm stronger than the one currently shaking the bookshelves. Speaking of which, the first thing Blair notices when she enters the candlelit room is that the bookshelves are all locked up with hexagonal metal cages. The flickering flames dance off them menacingly.

She furrows her eyebrows when the man's presence is no longer felt beside her. Then, she feels someone else's burning gaze. A sudden flash of lightning conducts her attention to the other side of the room, and simmering rage immediately courses through her veins.

Mr. Styles is sitting on the windowsill with his legs crossed over one another. His jeweled fingers delicately hold a book as relentless rain pelts the windowpane behind him. He wears a silk shirt with small, puffed sleeves the color of ballet slippers—or perhaps the shade of the blush that spreads across his cheeks when Blair catches his not-so-subtle glance at her pebbled nipples under her soaked dress.

Blair's first step toward him creates an echoing creak on the wooden floor. "What business do you have being here?" she asks bitterly.

He smirks before licking his index finger and flipping the page of his book. "Have you forgotten that this is my place of work?"

She swallows down disgust. "I would rather sit in the alcove and let the leakage slowly drown me than be here with you."

He looks up amusedly, running his eyes across her figure. "From how you look like a sopping mess, it seems as though you already have."

"A bit preposterous coming from a man with puffy princess sleeves."

A hummed and humorless laugh sounds from his closed lips. A cup of tea is steaming on a porcelain saucer next to his thighs. The sight of the brown liquid coats her throat with warmth.

Blair is quiet as she treads closer and walks her fingers along the top of the leather couch. The popping and hissing of the nearby fireplace fill the dead silence, its blazes of orange releasing glowing embers that beautifully fizzle out on the kindling.

"I presumed you would be the only one here today," Mr. Styles mentions after an elongated and intimidating pause.

Blair stands next to the fire, hoping it dries her dripping dress. "Yes, well, a thunderstorm is quintessential weather for reading. Is it not?"

"I will not argue with you there." He stands, replacing his book with the saucer. "This tea is for you. I figured since you will be stuck with me in this room, I shall attempt to make it as pleasant as possible."

She narrows her eyes suspiciously. "You made tea for me?"

His throat bobs. "Walking here in the rain is the quickest way to become ill, Ms. Lancaster. You should know better."

"Is it poisoned?"

The click of Mr. Styles' boots becomes muffled once he steps on the oriental rug she stands on. "No. I am not as cynical as you make me out to be in your head."

She pushes her wet bangs away from her forehead. "Do you know what is cynical?"

"Divertis-moi, ange de la pluie."

Blair ignores his French, which she does not understand. She has heard him use the language countless times before if any immigrant women are misbehaving in the alcove. His fluency and intelligence spark envy, but she will never admit it to his face.

"It is cynical that I come here every day and do not have the freedom to read what I desire," she says firmly. "Some days, I do not want to read in my dreary bedroom, so I seek serenity in a library that does not even respect me. How cruel, yet I still come here for a view other than my pathetic lawn!"

All Mr. Styles does is clear his throat while setting the tea down on the fireplace mantel. Blair wants to pour the scalding liquid down the back of his neck.

"What am I supposed to read if all the books I yearn for are locked away?" she adds defeatedly.

He twists his rings and bobs his head to a red book on the couch. "I was instructed to provide The Scarlet Letter."

Blair examines the chipped spine and faded cover. "I have not read that one yet."

"Veiled misogyny is what fills the pages. I find Hawthorne to be glorified as an author to a ridiculous degree."

"How promising," she mutters. "I suppose it is better than reading about everything I should do for my dutiful husband when he returns from war."

Mr. Styles looks at the floor and scrunches his nose before asking, "You have heard of Jane Austen, yes?"

"What?" Blair blurts confusedly. "Of course, I have. No one captures blooming romance quite like her."

"And did you see anyone else in the library when you arrived?" he questions further while taking a step closer.

"N-no," she stutters, scanning the empty room. "Only the chimney sweeper."

"Then follow me."

In the blink of an eye, Mr. Styles is halfway up the spiral staircase in the corner that leads to a place Blair has never been allowed to discover. She carefully grabs the tea and a stray candelabra, then catches up to his long strides. Eventually, she is led to the top and down a dark, narrow aisle where books upon books line the walls. Some are even stacked high on the floor.

Mr. Styles takes a silver key from his trouser pocket and unlocks a shelf on the left. He briefly peeks at her. "It will be our little secret, hmm?"

Blair marvels at the various romance and gothic titles that reveal themselves when she raises the flame. Wuthering Heights, Little Women, and Vanity Fair appear to have been gracefully worn over time and through use.

"I was once told by the owner that there was nothing important up here," she tells him as her fingertips trace the spine of Persuasion. "I never quite believed him."

Mr. Styles stands behind her. She can feel his steady breaths on her neck. "I apologize on behalf of him. He is not a charming man, that one."

Clark Bennett is his name. A tall, middle-aged rich man who set the misogynistic rules in place. She sees him roam past the alcove on rare occasions, silently inspecting the women through his monocle. Never one to initiate conversation, yet always the one to give disapproving glances. It angers Blair how someone could be so despicable. The other women are too afraid to speak out about the abhorrent environment he has created.

So, Blair turns around and looks at the man she despises but is the only one who seems to care about what she has to say.

"Mr. Styles," she begins, lifting the candelabra to light his face, "I feel unbearably suffocated in a place meant for comfort. As a woman, I cannot even read in this library without arbitrary rules that bring me unfathomable misery and rage. Having to sit and read sentences with no emotional attachment to me is torturous. Surely, I do not sound ludicrous."

"You can call me Harry," he responds.

She scoffs at his blatant disregard. "Did you listen to a word I said?"

He nods. "Yes, Blair. I realize this world hinders your ability to prosper as a woman, but I cannot change the rules. I do not have the authority, so please accept my offer of letting you read something other than shameful, discriminatory novels. Is that all right with you?"

She takes a sip of the herbal tea, now lukewarm, before saying, "Is this a trick to get me in trouble? I will not be fooled, Mr. Styles."

"Harry," he corrects. "And no, I am not a scoundrel. There is no reason for me to con you."

"There are plenty of reasons. Money and praise can make a man do evil things."

"Do you take me for a man who would do evil things?"

"Yes." She takes another sip. "I take every man for a schmuck. You are no exception."

He leans his head against the bookshelf and smiles handsomely. "A schmuck?" he repeats humorously.

"A cretin," she continues, enjoying herself very much. "A muttonhead. Personally, I like to call men ratbags."

Harry's eyes crinkle when he lets out a loud cackle. So they do crinkle. What a sight to behold!

Blair blows a strand of hair out of her eye. "This is not a laughing matter."

"Oh, but it is." He pushes his body off the shelf and towers over her. "You fascinate me with your unwavering temerity."

"Is that why you stare at me in the alcove so often?" she daringly inquires. "Because I fascinate you?"

Harry inhales slowly and deeply. In French, he says, "I stare at you because of your ethereal beauty. I cannot help but count the freckles on your cheeks or watch your eyelashes flutter as you flip through the pages of those terrible books. Does this answer your question, beloved blue eyes?"

Blair blinks twice, shaking her head. "You are speaking nonsense to me. I do not know any French."

"I spoke the truth. That is all you need to know."

She sets the tea and candelabra on the floor before smoothing her dress. "Anyway, I would very much like to read Jane Austen. There is only so much time in the day, yes?"

"Of course," he whispers. "You seem particularly interested in Persuasion."

"Is it good? I have not gotten around to reading it yet."

Harry takes the book and offers it to her. "You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope," he quotes from memory. "That alone should convince you."

Blair absentmindedly nods, becoming distracted by the gold necklace he wears. The pendant is a cross symbol, one relating to Christ. Her curiosity grows as it glimmers from the quivering candle flame beside her feet.

She lays the cross on her open palm and asks, "Are you religious?"

His sloped nose almost touches hers from close proximity. "Moderately. I sin, but I see no redemption in asking for forgiveness. I suppose you can interpret my level of religion however you may."

She stares at his lips a second too long before meeting his eyes. "What sins do you commit?"

He covers her hand with his own. Blair feels his calloused thumb brush over her knuckle. "My sins are sensuellement privé."

"What does that mean?"

"It means they are done in private, curious girl."

Her skin grows warm. "Very well, then. I will not ask further questions."

He removes his hand and locks the shelf as Blair picks up her tea and sets it on the flat surface of her new book. He clears his throat, but it does not bother her as much this time.

"Let us read, shall we?"

III

The field of jasmine flowers is in full bloom, as is the month of May.

Budding dogwood trees sway under the cloudy sky as Blair walks to her favorite open patch of land to sit against the tree trunk and read a book like she does every Friday afternoon. The bottom of her white dress skims the dirt path weaving throughout the flourishing meadow. Her lace parasol shields the top of her head in case the sun peeks out.

She has been coming to the serene area for months, sometimes needing an escape from the four walls of her bedroom. She can bring the books she has received on her birthdays. Although she prefers to read in the library, she is slightly more fond of nature's quiet atmosphere.

Once she arrives at her signature spot, where the line of dogwood trees provides the perfect amount of coverage over the jasmine bushes, she stops when she sees someone already there.

Her blood boils. Mr. Styles, now known as Harry, is sitting against the gnarled trunk of her favorite tree with his ankles casually crossed while he reads from the book in his lap. He wears a ruffled, cream-colored blouse with a black vest over the silk fabric, and his matching flared trousers are provocatively tight against his muscular legs.

His eyes shoot up from his book when a twig snaps underneath her feet. He then raises it to block his face, and Blair almost laughs at the childish action. She is seething with rage because how dare he invade the only place she can get much-needed peace and quiet?

"What are you doing here?" she interrogates, a slight growl in the back of her throat.

"Reading," Harry replies flatly, still not showing his face.

"Yes, but why here? This is my spot."

"I usually only come here on Wednesdays when I do not work, but I was told my help was not needed at the library today. So, here I am."

Blair grinds her teeth. "Can you go elsewhere?"

He sets his book down and glances behind each of his shoulders. "Did I miss a sign on my way here that said: Blair Lancaster's Designated Reading Spot?"

She gives up arguing and sits against the prickly bush across from him. She is thankful he is not talkative, so finishing her book in his presence should not be a problem.

After a few minutes of unpleasant silence, she feels his gaze on her, but when she looks up, his eyes dart back to the pages before him. She subtly tries to read the title, but his attractively large hand envelops the front.

"The Portrait of a Lady," Harry murmurs as he noisily turns a page.

Blair quirks an eyebrow. "Pardon me?"

"The book in my hands," he says, finally showing her the cover. "It is the new novel written by Henry James."

"I did not ask."

He exhales a laugh through his nose. "Well, you keep looking at the cover, so I thought it would be gentlemanly to save you from straining your eyes so much. Getting cataracts at a young age would be no fun."

Blair brushes off his sarcasm and opens her own book. Harry immediately leans forward and snatches it straight from her loose grip.

"Give me that back!" she exclaims, her mouth parted in shock.

He lifts it above his head and opens it. "What does the brash Blair Lancaster read when she is not provided chauvinist books in the alcove?"

She stands and puts her hand on her hips. "That is nothing of concern to you."

"Venus in Furs," he reads from the spine with a drawl and growing smirk. "This is quite an erotic choice, chérie."

Her cheeks redden as he flips through the pages filled with risqué words of desire and submission. "Give me my book back, or I will scream until the flowers wilt."

Harry ignores her as he dramatically reads, "And every man — I know this very well — as soon as he falls in love becomes weak, pliable, ridiculous. He puts himself into the woman's hands, kneels down before her. The only man whom I could love permanently would be he before whom I should have to kneel."

Blair takes the opportunity to yank her book from him while he is distracted by his immature ways. "I truly pity your wife and children for having to live with your irritating nature," she says exasperatedly.

"I do not have a wife nor children, so you are wasting your time pitying the foolish illusion you have created in your head."

"Well," she says with a bitter laugh, "it is no surprise that you are not married. I think I would burn myself alive if I had to share a life with you."

"For someone who speaks so ignoble of me, you think about what it would be like to be around me quite often," he responds smugly.

"You are an insufferable man, that is all."

"Menteuse."

Blair draws her lips back in a snarl. "It is a terrible shame you have a handsome face that is nothing but a façade for who you actually are."

Harry slowly stands and shoves his hands in his pockets. "And who am I, Blair?"

She exhales and looks up at the wispy sky. "A lonely man who sits in the alcove and makes sure the women there are miserable. A boring man who does nothing but be a nuisance to everyone around him."

Harry steps forward and jerks his chin up like he's desperate for a challenge. "Go on."

"I detest you." She leans in close so he hears every word. "Every dratted thing you do or say gets under my skin."

He quickly glances at her mouth. "Do you use such foul language around your mother, Ms. Lancaster?"

She clenches her jaw and turns around, beginning to walk down the path she came from. "You make me furious!"

His footsteps in the weeds get closer, so she speeds up. Even the sound of his boots stomping on the plush grass aggravates her. The way he can never let her have the last word, or how his eyes tell a different story than what comes out of his pretty mouth, will be the death of her.

Blair thinks she is far enough away from him, but suddenly, two large hands clasp onto her hips and stop her in her tracks. Her book falls to the ground, and she is left breathless.

"If I make you furious," Harry murmurs deeply in her ear, "then you make me a fucking madman."

His chest is pressed against her back as they inhale and exhale heavily, butterflies flying around the flowers and hidden cicadas chirping in the meadow.

"You test my patience, and I pretend it provokes me," he continues, flexing his hands. "It does the opposite, Blair. It makes me lust for you."

She lets Harry's confession seep into her skin like pleasurable poison. "I... you are reprehensible. I cannot stand it when you tell such insolent lies."

He presses his nose into her neck. "You render me weak. I think about you until I ache."

Blair swallows roughly when his damp lips trail along her pulse point. "Every word that leaves your mouth is concocted to debilitate me."

"Your blue eyes are an ocean I would gladly drown in."

Her knees almost give out, but she persists. "I will stuff my book down your throat if you do not stop blathering."

"You would like that, I reckon."

"Jesus wept, I hate you!" she shouts as she releases herself from his spell and continues walking.

He grips her wrist and spins her around. "Look at me when you say you hate me."

"I hate" — Blair points her finger at his chest — "you."

Harry takes three of her fingers and brings them up to her bottom lip. "These," he whispers, eyes locked onto her mouth. "I could write endless poetry about them."

"Stop it this instant."

He moves one of her fingers to trace the freckles dotting the apples of her cheeks. "The most marvelous constellations should be envious of these."

Her eyes soften, much to her distaste. "Please," she says, not knowing how she intends the word to come across.

"Tell me what you want, mon rêve céleste."

"I want you to shut your mouth."

His knuckles brush her collarbone. "Do you? Or do you want me to use my mouth for something else?"

Blair steps away from him. "How dare you assume that!"

"Quit looking at my lips, then."

"I am not! Quit analyzing me!"

"Your cheeks are pink. Why is that?"

She feels like fire is encompassing her. "Because..."

Harry bends down slightly to be at eye level with her. "Look at me, Blair."

Her walls crumble at that moment when she sees nothing but lustful hunger in his eyes. She gives in because if she goes down, let it be in a blaze of flaming desire. She cannot bear the thought of not touching him at least once in her lifetime, as much as she hates to admit the fact.

Blair unclasps the button by her cleavage, never breaking eye contact with him as his posture straightens and his prurient gaze gradually lowers. She maneuvers the dress over and down her shoulders, letting the loose garment pool at her feet. Harry drops to his knees before her, pulling down her chemise and gently removing her ivory-colored slippers.

"Lie down," he commands gruffly.

She obeys, the budding flowers surrounding her naked body as her blonde hair fans out on the grass.

Harry spreads her legs open and places his forearms next to them. "How do you need me, Blair?"

"Your fingers," she responds. "Please. I need them inside of me."

He tuts mockingly. "Not even a minute ago, you were telling me I was reprehensible, but now you beg like a whore."

She should slap him for his degrading language, but it only fuels her internal fire. Her hips desperately lift to meet his knuckle running along her inner thigh, and he moves it up even further until it reaches the coarse hair growing around her pelvis. She is already dripping with arousal. His fingers are so close to where she needs them most.

"Harry," she says breathlessly, her body writhing when his mouth brushes her clit. "God, just touch me. I beg of you."

"Say my name like that again, and I will do whatever you ask of me, darling."

"Harry," she moans while arching her back.

His fingers finally stretch her open, two knuckles deep in her pulsating walls, creating a burning sensation throughout her body. She had dreamed about how deep they would go, curling and thrusting to bring her inconceivable pleasure. It feels better than she imagined, and she sees stars as his thumb applies pressure to her clit.

"Blair." Harry uses his free hand to grasp her jaw. She opens her eyes and gets lost in his fervent gaze. "Who else has touched you? Hmm? Tell me."

He hits a particularly deep spot that has her whining like a pleading idiot. "M-many others, however, they all left me empty and unsatisfied."

"Did they make you wet?" He presses his warm hand against her lower stomach. "Did they leave you with a lingering ache right here?"

"No, but do you know why?" she responds, the pressure of his hand unraveling the knot of her forthcoming orgasm.

"Tell me all your secrets, flower."

"They never used their mouths," she admits. Harry looks up with impure eyes and runs his tongue over his bottom lip. "Fingers can only provide so much pleasure, but a pair of pink lips like yours could make me fall apart completely."

"Is that right?" he breathes out.

She bites her lip with a blissful smile. "There is only one way to find out, yes?"

"I suppose so."

He takes his fingers out and spreads her thighs further open, her arousal sticking to her sweaty skin. The second his tongue licks a long stripe from her opening to her clit, Blair cries out for all the birds and bugs to hear. He laps up her wetness like sweet syrup on a delectable dessert. He kisses and nips in all the right places like he has known her body for ages, latching and sucking her most sensitive areas until she is clenching around nothing. Low, guttural groans and whimpers leave him when she grants him a raspy moan and hooks her legs around his body.

"I need— I have to release, Harry. It aches."

He hovers over her and rubs slow circles onto her lower stomach. "Let me see your eyes while you fall apart from underneath me."

Blair looks at him as his words push her off the edge. She releases, her body trembling and twitching from the strength of it. Harry sits back on his knees, untying the frilly bow from his blouse and using it to clean the remaining arousal around her inner thighs. After that, Blair stands on shaky legs, panting with tingling skin as Harry grabs her chemise and dress and helps her put them on.

"Do you still hate me?" he whispers in her ear, clasping her buttons gently. Blair can hear the smug smile in his voice.

"Maybe a bit less than yesterday."

His tongue pokes the inside of his cheek. "What if I did this?" She is taken aback when he kisses her deeply, holding the sides of her neck and making her stumble a bit from the forceful passion. "Blair?" he says as he pulls away. "How do you feel now?"

"I dislike you." Another kiss, one that sends heat spreading across her entire body as butterflies go wild in her stomach. She pulls away this time and tries not to show how fond she is of him. "All right, I tolerate you."

One more long kiss, ending in several pecks until she lets a smile take over her flushed face. "Je changerai d'avis un jour." (I will change your mind one day.)

Blair groans. "Will you ever tell me what you are saying?"

"No need." His thumb strokes her cheekbone. "I can always teach you."

"Pardon?"

"At the library," Harry elaborates softly. "I give French lessons every Monday in the study room. There should be some time slots open if that is of any interest to you."

She contemplates briefly before saying, "I think it would be an adequate way to spend my day rather than in the alcove."

Harry whistles and looks around incredulously. "Is Blair Lancaster admitting she would not mind spending time with me? Am I dreaming? Have I lost my bloody mind in this meadow?"

"Enough," she mutters. Her protest ends in a squeal when Harry slightly nips at her neck. "Stop it! That tickles!"

He grins like a fool and bends down to pluck a jasmine flower from the cluster surrounding her feet. He then grabs Venus in Furs and flips through it for a minute until he stops at a specific page toward the end. Blair watches him lay the flower horizontally, the thin stem acting as an underline for a quote.

You have corrupted my imagination

and inflamed my blood.

#harry styles fanfic #harry styles imagine #harry styles au #harry styles x oc #harry styles smut #harry styles one shot #harry styles #enemies to lovers #historical romance #adore-laur #façade

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sarahowritesostucky · 3 months

Text

Author's note: Re-formatted for Tumblr's ToS

📖"Alpha, Beta (& Omega)"

Story Rating: Explicit

Chapter Rating: Teen

Word Count: 1066

Pairing: Steve x Bucky

Tags: a/b/o, arranged marriage, domestic discipline, spanking, head of household, dom/sub elements, alpha Steve, beta Bucky, hurt/comfort, wedding night, alternate history, nobility/royalty au, Edwardian time period, m/f/m poly marriage, age gap (18/29), enemies to lovers

Summary: To save House Barnes from scandalous ruin, James must agree to a contracted marriage, accepting Lord Senator Steven Rogers as his Alpha, Husband, and Headship.

1. A Contract of Engagement

Chapter Summary: It’s a lost cause. His father broke the law in a massive way and got caught, and as soon as word gets out, they’ll be ousted from their Senatorial position. Bucky and his sisters will inherit nothing, and it’ll be the scandal of the century. “Please, mom” Bucky says softly. “Please don't make me do this."

Bucky sits despondently on one of the front parlor’s settees.

“Nobody,” he tells his mother, but of course she already knew that was going to be the answer to her question. Bucky hasn’t had interest in courting anyone, and nobody in society has expressed any interest in him. Not since his accident, leastways. His now-lame arm and the scarring that creeps up the left side of his neck have managed to dampen the interest he used to get from suiters. “I don’t want to marry, certainly not now. I’m eighteen for Christ’s sake.”

Winnifred sighs, the pen that she’s had poised in-hand lowering. “James, I love you and I’m sorry, but now is when you have to do it. You’re done convalescing from the accident, and thank God for that. Your finishing school is over, you need to do this.”

“Why?”

Bucky’s mother has never been one to suffer his bullshit. She shoots him a glare. “You know why. It’s only a matter of time before your father’s misconduct is made public knowledge. Once Frank Castle—”

“Don’t say his name.”

“Once that man testifies before congress, your father is sure to be ousted. Weapons smuggling, James? You’ll be completely ineligible. No one will have you.”

“No one like us, you mean. Not everyone has to marry into the Senate, mother,” Bucky snaps. “Christ, we’re probably all inbred at this point.”

“James!”

“I have plans. I want to go to university!” He throws his hands up. “Who even marries their beta first anyway? What’s wrong with this guy that he can’t find an omega?”

“Please,” his mother scoffs. “Captain Rogers is a very reputable gentleman.”

“You don’t know him!” Bucky stands up from the couch, walking restlessly over to the fireplace. “Please tell me you haven’t written to him already?” Winnifred tenses, but then she seems to steel herself and she nods tersely. Bucky curses. “Mother!”

“It needed to be done, James. There are no other prospects and Captain Rogers—”

“Ugh, stop calling him that. What’s his name?”

Winnie purses here lips. “He’s the Lord Steven of House Rogers, and you will be respectful, James.”

Bucky huffs. “Well I’m the Lord James of House Barnes and I—”

“You’re the lord of nothing!” Winnie snaps, standing up from her chair at the writing desk. She’s glaring at Bucky now. “And you never will be, if you don’t marry this man. We’re about to lose everything. Your father has seen to that. Soon House Barnes won’t exist. There will be elections—elections, James! Can you even believe it? We’ll all be common.”

Bucky looks away. “What’s so wrong with that?” he mumbles.

“Maybe nothing for you. Maybe you could manage, go off to university and make something of yourself despite it all, but think of your sisters. They won’t be able to marry well, and they’re omega, so what are they supposed to do? Take positions as shop girls? Ladies’ maids?”

Bucky’s heart lurches and his eyes shoot back to his mother, reproachful. “That’s not fair.”

Winnie’s features soften in sympathy. “I know, Sweetheart, I know.” She gets up and comes over to him, the long hem of her dress brushing the carpet as she goes. She pulls him into a hug and Bucky can’t help but to lean into her. “Oh, Bucky,” Winnie mourns, using his nickname for once. “You’ve always been such a little grownup. Sometimes I forget how young you really are. But life isn’t fair, and I’m afraid this might be where you have to start learning that.”

“Don’t make me do this, mom,” Bucky whispers into the perfumed fall of her hair, though even as he’s saying it, he knows it’s a lost cause. His father broke the law in a massive way and got caught, and as soon as word gets out, they’ll be ousted from their Senatorial position. Bucky and his sisters will inherit nothing, and it’ll be the scandal of the century. House Barnes has held one of New Jersey’s two seats since the very inception of the Senate. A hundred and twenty years of tradition, gone down the toilet because of Bucky’s reckless father. “Please,” he says softly. “There has to be something else we can do.”

“It’ll be alright,” Winnie tells him, pulling away from the hug and looking him in the eye. “I promise you. I’ve corresponded with Captain Rogers for several weeks now, and I’m confident he’ll make a good husband for you.”

Bucky shakes his head, angry all over again. “No! He won’t. How could he? I don’t even know him!”

It’s a silly argument, really, since many men of Bucky’s stature enter into arranged marriages. But even still, Bucky is beta: He’s always had this luxurious assumption that he’d be able to fool around for a decade longer than most; get educated, make mistakes, have fun. And now that he’s finally come of age and is on the precipice of actually getting to do those things, he has to go off and marry some old man he’s never met?

The reality of it is worse than a bucket of cold water to the head. “I don’t want to marry a fucking stranger,” he grumps.

“Really, Bucky. Don’t use foul language.”

“And I don’t want to marry some old man.” At his mother's raised eyebrow, he says, “Well he must be old if he’s already assumed the seat?”

“He’s young, actually,” Winnie counters haughtily. “Quite young. Twenty-nine."

"Oh, is that all?" Bucky scowls at the carpet. Twenty-nine, Christ. "When did he assume the seat?"

"Two sessions ago. Senator Sarah Rogers had a state funeral, James. I’d have expected you to remember it.”

Bucky waves his left arm in disdain, showing off his crippled hand. “Forgive me my 'preoccupation' these past few sessions, mother." He regrets his tone as he sees hurt flash across Winnifred's face. Dropping his hand, he sighs and looks away. "This is House Rogers of New York we're discussing, I take it?"

"The sister-seat to House Wilson, yes,” Winnie says, expression perking up as she hurries back to her desk to fetch up the stack of correspondences. “Here, I have his letters if you’d like to—”

“No,” Bucky says curtly. He straightens up and makes to leave the room. “I don’t need to read them. It’s fine. Just arrange everything and tell me when to show up.”

“Oh, Honey …”

“Don’t,” Bucky says tersely. “Just don’t. It is what it is. Guess I’m moving to New York.”

He leaves the room, and assumes that his mother writes another letter to the Lord Rogers, confirming their engagement.

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fizzigigsimmer · 1 year

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To B, With Love Chapter 11

💕 Moodboard by @prettyboylikeyousteve 💕

Genre: A/B/O Mail Order Bride Au!

Rating: Explicit

Pairing: Harringrove

Summary: Steve, a society omega, puts out an add in the paper looking for an alpha among the lonely hearts expanding the west.

Preview: He leaned closer to the omega, the finger pressed to his bare flesh digging deeper before the omega spread his hand to push back against his advance. Billy stopped, their faces inches apart, his gaze falling to Harrington’s lips, slick from where his retreating tongue had wetted them and fallen slightly open as the omega’s breath turned shallow. It was everything Billy could do not to kiss him. He looked at him instead, basking in the heat reflected back at him.

“There’s a lot I could teach you.” Billy offered.

READ IT ON A03

#Harringrove #Billy Hargrove #Steve Harrington #alpha!billy hargrove #omega!steve harrington #wild west au #historical romance au #mail order bride!au #bodice ripper #Billy is a cowboy #listen he just is #cowboy billy hargrove

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lemony-snickers · 2 years

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chapter four >> part three here.

Title: Helping Hands (part 4 of ?) (AO3 Link Here) Chapter Summary: Iruka asks the Caretaker a question. Chapter Word Count: 3,606 Chapter Warnings: implied sexual content, NON-CONSENSUAL VOEYEURISM, masturbation, fem!MC, a terrible repetitive chapter i don’t have the bandwidth to fix, apologies .

There are some matters that only become clear in the aftermath, only obvious in the retelling.

And the decimation of Iruka Umino’s heart is one such thing. Because when he replayed this story to himself many years later, he could see how it was not that things had gone wrong somehow, but that they had been wrong from the beginning.

It is so easy to give a heart away without knowing whether it is wanted, whether it will be truly cherished the way it ought to be.

And Iruka gave his love and his heart away too freely to the first woman who bedded him, without any recognition of the potential dangers. He saw her clutch her locket, he knew she withheld her true heart from him, and yet he persisted.

The first time he breathed the words, “I love you,” was with his face pressed desperately against her neck as he rutted into her. He kept his voice low and quiet, hoping she might not hear him over the sounds of their lovemaking. He said it again in similar ways, letting the sound of the hay beneath her back, the slapping of his skin against hers, muffle his ardent confessions.

He had only wanted to see how the words felt on his tongue, how they sounded as they escaped his parted lips. He wanted to try them on, test them out. See if he really meant them before he voiced them loud enough for her to hear.

He did mean them, he found, when his heart beat faster in time with the words and he said them again the next time with his head buried between her thighs. He knew they were the right words for how he felt, knew the Caretaker was the right woman for him to say them to.

And so he resolved to say other words, to bring them to her upon their next meeting.

It was a Wednesday as usual. He made all his morning deliveries with utmost haste, hoping to spend even more time at the Hatake Estate than he normally did. He crested the steep hill just after noontime and found Lord Kakashi wandering the grounds. He gave a small salute to Iruka and his steed before turning and wandering away from the main house. Iruka returned the gesture with a shaky wave, but he was too distracted by the fluttering of his heart to register much.

He dismounted his horse and disappeared into the kitchen, brow dotted with nervous sweat.

Though the Hatake Estate’s sprawling grounds surely held plenty of inspiring sights for anyone who walked them, Lord Kakashi found himself, as was typically the case, wandering closer to the stables as the afternoon dragged on.

As he approached, he expected to hear perhaps the sounds of intimacy he often did when Iruka visited the manor. Instead, however, it was a softly panicked voice matched against the quiet sobs of another.

Lord Kakashi’s brows pinched together in worry and he peered through the gap in the wooden slats as he had often done before to spy on the young lovers within the stable. What he found was not at all as he expected. Rather than the passion and intimacy he usually pried upon, it was the Caretaker kneeling in the hay, looking plaintively at a crumpled Iruka, hands covering his face.

“I’m sorry, Iruka. I thought…” she reached out as if she were going to touch him, but let her hand drop uselessly to her lap instead. “I thought you understood this arrangement for what it was, same as I.”

Certainly, this piqued Lord Kakashi’s interest, and he watched with rapt attention as Iruka allowed his hands to fall, the agony of whatever was happening written clearly across his features.

“I thought you loved me, too.”

Lord Kakashi’s heart clenched at the words. Had he…

“I…” she started, stopped, tried again. “You are a kind and caring man, Iruka. And one day you will find a woman who is equal to you in those things—a woman worthy of you and all you can offer.”

He had, Lord Kakashi decided, Iruka must have proposed to her.

“But it is you I want, can you not see that?” She bit her lip and Iruka reached out to clench his lover’s hands desperately in his own. He brought them to his lips, brushing them over her knuckles. “Please,” he said, “Give me a chance and I promise I will make you happy.”

Lord Kakashi pulled his face away from the wall, unable to watch the torment of the moment unfold any further. He listened, though—could not pull himself fully away as the Caretaker gave her answer.

“Iruka, I know you would do your very best to make me happy, I do. You are the sort of man who knows nothing else. I know you would love me as best you could, but I cannot love you in the way you deserve and I will not curse you to a life of only part-happiness. You are worthy of so much more than I am capable of giving you.”

Lord Kakashi heard a sound that might have been her pulling her hands from his grasp, or perhaps ripping the heart from his chest.

“Please,” Iruka said again and there was no disguising the sob buried in the word, the desperate ache of it.

“No, Iruka. I cannot marry you. I won’t.”

They sat in stillness a long while before the Caretaker finally reached out to brush some of Iruka’s hair from his face. “I don’t think we should continue this arrangement any longer.”

Iruka felt bile rise in his throat. In quick succession, there was a rustling of the hay, the sound of harsh footsteps, and the opening and slamming of the stable door as Iruka fled the woman he had loved and been summarily dismissed by. As he mounted his horse, he felt the harsh sting of tears and he laughed.

He’d been a fool. The only saving grace of the moment the fact that so few people knew of his intentions.

And all the while Iruka was running from his heartbreak, Lord Kakashi still leaned against the outer wall of the stable. After several moments of silence, he peered into the stall expecting to find the Caretaker had departed as well. Instead, he found the woman still kneeling in the hay, fingers worrying the locket at her throat as she stared at her knees.

He watched, waited. Lord Kakashi wondered if she would rush after the boy, run to him over the grass as he rode down the hill back toward the village. Perhaps his leaving would push her to alter her mind.

Instead, she heaved a sigh and collapsed back against the hay.

Lord Kakashi licked his lips, though he was not wholly sure why. Not for the first time since he had begun this perverse ritual, he felt the desperate urge to be inside the stables—to lie down in the hay beside her.

And when her hands ran over her body and dove beneath her skirts, Kakashi felt sweat dot his temple, the rush of blood through his body that pooled in his extremities.

He could not see where she touched herself, but he watched her face in captivated fascination. Her eyes slid closed, her mouth parted. She sighed. The small apple of her throat bobbed as she swallowed before letting out a soft, restrained moan. Her brows knit together, lashes fluttering as her chest rose and fell faster and faster. She whimpered and for a moment Kakashi thought perhaps he heard a name escape her parted lips.

And then her back arched away from the hay and she let out a long, low whine that vibrated in her throat.

When her body relaxed, Lord Kakashi realized how tightly coiled every muscle in his body had become as he watched. It took her several moments to regain her breath. When she did, she retracted her hands from beneath her skirts and he watched in mute fascination as she brought her fingers—coated and sticky with her own slick—up to her mouth and sucked them clean.

The young Lord of Hatake Manor brought his thumb to his mouth and bit down hard enough to break the skin to keep himself from groaning aloud and giving away his position.

He stood still as the Caretaker rose from her position, dusted off her skirts and left as if nothing at all beyond the ordinary had transpired.

Not long after, as she prepared dinner in the kitchen, the Caretaker would not understand the strange way Lord Kakashi watched her hands as she unwrapped peas and rolled out dough.

She had no way of knowing his mind was thinking of where her hands had been, no way to recognize he was replaying the vision of her licking her own arousal from her fingers in his mind over and over while he tried desperately not to pin her against the counter and beg her to do it again for him.

Because, Lord Kakashi realized, he would do anything to simply watch her—her graceful movements, her careful preparations, her strong arms.

He was late to dinner that evening after retiring to his room to attend to his frustrations alone, all the while remembering the slick sound of her invisible hands beneath her skirts, the soft pop as she pulled her fingers from her mouth.

Lord Kakashi thought of those hands often over the coming weeks, watching her dust the shelves and prepare his meals. When she brought the steaming water up for his bath, filling the basin and then leaving him to bathe alone, and as he dressed himself after; a thing Lord Kakashi still accomplished himself despite the Caretaker’s consistent offers to undertake the task of hiring new staff,

In truth, solitude suited Lord Kakashi much better. And he found himself well-attuned to his singular companion. The idea of filling the house with more voice and bodies sent a chill of revulsion through him.

He had surrounded himself with plenty of other people for plenty of time and hardly any of them had done him any good.

It was with this thought he mind he continued his work in adding ramps and handles and pulleys to the various rooms. Gai Maito would hopefully arrive soon, which would be more than enough companionship for anyone.

“My Lord?”

The sun was high already, his shoulders sunburnt. And though he had long since shed the sense of impropriety being shirtless in front of the house’s sole other occupant might have otherwise induced, her sudden proximity gave him pause. Lord Kakashi knew the back she was looking at was littered with scars. Surely she’d seen them before, but never so near.

And when he turned to acknowledge her, he witnessed the way her eyes darted down to his chest, following the two jagged bisecting lines that crossed over his torso, though she was quick to correct her gaze.

She stared only a moment, more curious than solicitous, even if that did not come across to Lord Kakashi, who thought anyone could only look at him with either pity or disgust.

“I thought you might have need of some refreshment.”

She handed him a cool glass of water with fresh slices of strawberries in it.

When Lord Kakashi took the glass from her, he was careful their fingers did not touch. They were certainly already guilty of too many improprieties to count, not that she seemed to mind much more than he did. Still, better to air on the side of caution. He thanked her for the beverage, and then she was gone again, off to attend to her own duties.

Almost as soon as he set the empty glass down, it was removed and he did wonder how she sometimes managed to come upon him without any warning. Lord Kakashi was a man always on edge, once trained to hear and sense enemies and friends alike approaching from his blind spot. But the years of service not only scarred his body and damaged his sight, but his hearing.

The loud crash and boom of canon fire could not be withstood for long years without suffering the consequences thereof, after all. One day, he knew he would likely be deaf as well as blind. He wondered, sometimes, in his lowest moments, who might care for him, then.

If anyone would.

With no wife, no family, he would be as like to end up an invalid in an unfeeling hospital as anything.

He shook the thoughts away and assessed his work.

The ramp he’d installed from the back door into the kitchen was crude, at best, but it held his weight easily as he walked along it., which was all that truly mattered. It had taken long months to complete the project on his own. Had he been willing to hire additional help, he could likely have sped up the work substantially, but Lord Kakashi found himself thrilled as he observed the proof of his own labor.

It had been a long time since he had made something with his hands. So long, in fact, he nearly forgot the sense of pride that accompanied the end of such a task.

Of course, there was still plenty of work to be done, but at least now the House would be accessible to his closest friend when he made his visit.

That night, the Caretaker set Lord Kakashi’s bath water and then left him to clean himself. “I’ll return to drain the bath later, My Lord,” she promised, pulling his chamber door closed.

The dogs, as usual, followed her as she left. It was a sort of ritual by now, she expected—when Lord Kakashi settled into the basin of his copper tub, his unruly pack would follow her down to the kitchens, where they would patiently wait in the doorway as she prepared dinner, tails wagging in anticipation of the scraps she often tossed to them as she worked.

The pack was an even stranger addition to her days than the arrival of Lord Kakashi himself. The Caretaker of Hatake Manor had never much considered herself an animal person. She had grown up without pets in her household, and Lord Sakumo Hatake had not seen fit to keep any but his horses.

Though she did enjoy an afternoon ride upon occasion, she had never understood the impetus to keep cats or dogs or birds inside one’s home.

Still, against all her better judgments, she found herself warming to the dogs. While not exactly helpful—in fact, often they created more work for her through the course of her day—she found them very amiable companions. She walked to visit Lord Hatake’s grave at least twice a week, usually in the afternoons while Lord Kakashi attended to his own private duties, and the dogs would accompany her, yipping and chasing one another in the tall grass, rolling through wildflowers until they sneezed, covered in sticky yellow pollen. Bisuke once bit at a bee and came home with a swollen muzzle and his tail between his legs.

Though quite spirited and rowdy, the dogs were well trained. When the Caretaker whistled, they came inside, no matter how far they had wandered on the grounds. When she snapped her fingers, they sat, and when she said, “No,” in a commanding enough tone, they stopped what they were doing to look at her with baleful eyes in the hopes she might change her mind.

No matter how much she became accustomed to them, however, the Caretaker still could not understand how Lord Kakashi ever got any sleep at all with the dogs all piled on his bed. They were sweet enough, but their breath still smelled awful most of the time and they slobbered all over her skirts, a fact which she imagined was only exasperated by such proximity and the lethargy—and therefore carelessness—of sleep.

The pack certainly made for strange bedfellows at best and rude ones more likely.

Lord Kakashi watched the Caretaker grow closer with his dogs and found himself often warmed by the sight of them. How often had he returned from his morning ride to find her lying in the grasses, dirt smeared over part of her skirt as she wrestled with Akino and Shiba, laughing all the while, even when she groaned and pulled away as one of them lapped at her cheek with a hot tongue?

She seemed to care very little about the mess they made of her, and Lord Kakashi could not help but smile when she inevitably returned to the house, rife with faux irritation at their antics.

“Shoo,” she would say, “I have work to do,” but it was all for show.

She would never say so, but the Caretaker cherished her afternoons with the dogs almost as much as Lord Kakashi cherished his evenings with her. The young Lord admired the her commitment to pretending she did not enjoy their slobbering ways, however.

It felt like another little secret part of her he could hold onto; like watching her steal away to the stables some mornings and knowing she had no duties to attend to within—wondering whether her wandering hands had found their way beneath her skirts again. Certainly, Iruka Umino no longer stayed any longer than necessary on Wednesday afternoons, and the Caretaker was kind enough to make herself scarce as much as possible so the young man would have no need to interact with her directly.

Lord Kakashi stepped in to thank Iruka for the deliveries when she found herself away, and he admired the boy for his professional attitude, always inquiring as to her well-being though it must have hurt him a great deal to do so.

The Caretaker had been right, however, and Iruka had already found a new maid interested in his persuasions, though neither of them knew it yet; a young woman named Ayame whose father brokered with Mr. Umino. The girl was lovely and fresh-faced, always blushing, same as Iruka. It would take several more weeks for them to realize their mutual attraction (with no small intervention on the parts of their parents), and in less than a year’s time, the pair would be married and Iruka would be allowed to put all he’d learned during his ill-fated affair with the Caretaker of Hatake Manor to very good use, indeed.

Of course, he didn’t know that, yet, and so he looked at her feet when they spoke, however briefly, and he rode away with as much haste as his poor horse could muster after a long day, so accustomed had he become to a long rest at the House while his rider attended to other duties.

But life did not cease for broken hearts—not even at Hatake Manor. And so the days continued on. Lord Kakashi added small ramps to the interior of the House where necessary; small steps that lead from one room to another. Indeed, he also erected a strange pulley system in one of the bathrooms that left the Caretaker much confused, as well as several bars near windows and chairs, all anchored sturdily into the walls, if occasionally at odd angles.

She had no idea what he was doing, and though the question of his intentions sometimes danced at the tip of her tongue, she never voiced it. Whenever she felt the syllables beginning to form in her mouth, she would simply grasp the chain around her neck, let her fingers focus on each link in it before finding their way to the familiar cool metal of the oval locket.

She had not opened it in so long that it would have been impossible for anyone to remember when she last gazed upon the visages within.

And much as the Caretaker had questions about the rigging in the bathrooms and the ramps built over the stairs, Lord Kakashi constantly felt himself compelled to inquire about the locket each time she took it between her fingers. But much as his companion swallowed her own inquiries, Lord Kakashi learned to focus on other things entirely—the words on the page of his book, the scratching of Pakkun’s velvety ears, the book keeping of the House he hated so thoroughly.

There was an understanding between them—unspoken and fragile; do not ask questions you know the other wished not to answer. All information offered was done so freely, there was no requirement to intrude.

In this way, the strange pair were able to move through their daily lives in tandem, without one disturbing the other. They continued their evenings by the fireside together when their energies allowed, silently enjoying one another’s company despite all social convention dictating they should not. The ritual was quiet, private. Comfortable. Though, much to her chagrin, the Caretaker found herself in much need of some new reading material several months into Lord Kakashi’s stay at the Manor. She realized, with some amount of regret, that she had been so long at the Manor she had somehow managed to read every book in Lord Hatake’s small library that interested her.

It would be very fortuitous indeed that Lord Kakashi brought no small number of books with him from his home across the sea.

Though she would not know that for some time, and the adjustment to his particular literature tastes would stretch the very fabric of their bond, straining it until the material tore in half to reveal something utterly new and unexpected.

#🍋 mix and match #lemony scribbles #long-winded historical au clusterfuck #kakashi hatake #kakashi x reader #fem!reader #historical au #historical romance au #lazy historical romance #honestly this is getting worse as time goes on but who gives a fuck anyway sa;dlkfjsadf

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