Le Chevalier d'Eon
I'll cut this fic earlier than usual, because my long author's note/series commentary contained many spoilers.
First and foremost, I'd like to say I love this series to death. Zombies. Shortly pre-Revolutionary France. No, that's really everything I could want from life. Now, onward to the criticism:
I really didn't like episode 23. Actually, I like Maximilien quite a bit in it, but Lia, Lia! It just completely undermined everything we'd known about her personality (the pre-death one at that) thus far for the sake of furthering the plot and I really can't reconcile that.
Also, Teillagory's betrayal, wtf. If it had happened much earlier in the series, yeah. There were hints of that when his character was first introduced. To betray them when he did was incredibly stupid, both in terms of his character and as a purely in-world strategic decision.
And Louis's revelation about Maximilien and Lia at the end. I figured out the Maximilien part a good bit in advance, actually. The Lia part, no. When it was first revealed, I had to pause the episode and laugh hysterically for five minutes. Ten seconds after starting it again, the characters came to conclusion I already had: Hey, that's why he was trying to break up the marriage. The only thing find odd about what little I've seen of this fandom is that, when I learned their relationship, it didn't even make me so much as blink in my shipping.
And this stupid story. Which I wrote over Thanksgiving break and am only just now posting. Ug. Influence strongly by every philosopher my roommate ever read to me while studying for her "post-Industrial rev search for utopia" class. Except for that hilarious gastrology guy, even though he was actually French and only a little too far forward in time. This is AU, set pre-series, in case that's not obvious.
Yes, and the actual story,
Title: “Le Chevalier de la Révolution”
Fandom: Le Chevalier d'Eon
Characters: Lia/Durand/Maximilien
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: through episode 24 (honestly, in the author's note more than the story)
Warnings: explicit sex, see pairing and take from it what you will, double penetration, blasphemy
Word Count: 2159
“The visionary, the knight, and the woman who saved Russia.”
“France. I was trying to save France.”
“Now it’s time to save the people everywhere.”
“Don’t be so serious, Maximilien,” Lia scolded, putting her head in his lap.
“People will get the wrong idea from you two,” Durand teased.
Lia pulled Maximilien down into a kiss. “What’s the wrong idea to get?”
They had the look they got when they were speaking into each other’s minds through some kind of Poet bond. Keeping all expression off his face, Durand said lightly, “You both look like boys, that’s all. I’d better be going…”
“Durand…” Lia caught his hand.
“I’ll give you two some…”
Lia launched herself from her restful sprawl to a fighting stance and held his wrist in a tight grip as she kissed him on the cheek. “Tsarina Elizabeth has dozens of lovers. She must be sleeping with every man in Russia.”
“Is that also your plan for gaining power?”
“Among them. I’m not above being a woman; I’ve seen how much power some of them wield.”
She pushed Durand in the small of the back and pulled Maximilien forward by the hand. Maximilien said, “We want you,” before kissing his best friend. He clearly wanted to kiss fiercely, but held himself back to keep from scaring him off.
“You’re our knight,” explained Lia, whose soft hair he had grabbed onto for balance.
“Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth--for thy love is better than wine. Because of the savor of thy good ointments thy name is as ointment poured forth; therefore do the virgins love thee.”
“Draw me, we will run after thee: the king hath brought me into his chambers: we will be glad and rejoice in thee. We will remember thy love more than wine. Rightly do they love you.”
“I am dark, but comely, O daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.”
“Look not upon me, because I am dark, because the sun hath looked upon me. My mother’s children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards, but mine own vineyards have I not kept. Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest your flock, where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon: for why should I be as one that turneth aside by the flocks of thy companions?”
Not with the power of Psalms, but they were enchanting him surely enough. Durand cut in, “If thou know not, O fairest among women, follow in the footsteps of the flock, and feed thy kids beside the shepherds’ tents.” At their incredulous looks, he added, “I may not be a Poet, but I can quote scripture.”
This was true power, not being able to control the dead or overthrow nations, though they would, but Maximilien’s body pressing Lia’s soft breasts into his chest.
She kissed him again, hard and demanding and unlike any woman he had ever kissed before, but it was Lia, so he was unsurprised.
Maximilien grabbed both their hands and yanked them after him. Lia growled in annoyance, but he soothed her, “No one’s seen us yet, but I suggest we retire to my chambers.”
Durand shivered as the other hand stopped dragging once he was coming along and started to smooth fingers over his sword calluses.
Once they were inside, Lia broke off to lock the door and began to casually unbuckle her sword belt, while the other Poet pushed him into the bed. Being pushed down under another body shouldn’t have been so erotic; it happened all the time grappling.
In a moment between his eyes rolling back from kisses, Durand noticed Lia walking to the bed, casually unbuttoning her shirt.
“You don’t wearing anything under that.”
“Yes, I actually dress in men’s clothes. Have you seen how troublesome female undergarments are?”
Tossing her shirt aside, Lia sat down on the bed and began on Maximilien, while he in turn started stripping the knight. Durand allowed his jacket and tunic to be pulled over his head; Lia took the revelation of skin as reason to lick up his chest and bite down on his collarbone.
Durand gasped, then bit his cheek in embarrassment. He was far too popular with the ladies to be acting like the blushing virgin as he was now. Maximilien quickly returned to trying to eat his tonsils, though. His skin burned from direct contact with theirs and his nails dug red lines in Maximilien’s arm and Lia’s back.
“God I love you,” she muttered quietly, shaking, but then she shoved her hand down his pants.
“Lia,” he gasped at her warm fingers.
Maximilien kissed down her neck. He was a knight, but he was rarely one to wield a sword, so he looked fit but more effeminate than the swordswoman. Well, had she been wearing clothes.
Somehow they had managed to work the rest of his and their clothes off. They didn’t particularly act in unison, but they could speak to each other in a way he could not hear, so they could gang up on him when they put their minds to it. Skin on skin contact felt soft and smooth and hot over muscle, and how had he not noticed that before?
Lia pushed Maximilien off where he was licking down the side of her breast and straddled Durand and rolled him over so he was on top of her. Courtly love or not, how many times had he dreamed of this, having her gazing longingly up at him while he was inside her? His gasp was cut off by Maximilien’s kiss. The other man squirmed up beside and spooned against both of them.
The muscles of his shoulders and back clenched against the pressure of Lia and Maximilien’s hands. Maximilien’s slender hips brushed against his and his cock slid against his and Durand realized he was pressing into Lia’s body alongside him.
Lia made a breathless sound and scrunched her eyes shut. Worried they’d hurt her, Durand was able to pull away, but though her eyes opened full of tears it was undoubtedly a happy face and her nails dug deeper into him to draw him closer.
And oh did he want to be closer. Everything he could have thought of wanting, but the guilt he was vaguely aware he should have been feeling about the whole affair would have been against his nature. Overwhelmed, yes. Conscious thought had long since fled in favor of the combined feeling of Lia, wet and impossibly tight and throbbing, and Maximilien, rock hard and rubbing just so against him.
His whole body shook, wanting this to last longer, but their possession of him, undoubtedly what this was, told him they had every intention of this happening again. He came with a shout, every feeling in his body hitting him full force all at once, all the bolts of pleasure struggling for dominance at the same time.
Lia gave a long yelp a moment later and Maximilien a choking sound he had never heard a human throat produce before. His tired body shivered at it despite itself.
The swordswoman used her arms still over his shoulders to pillow Durand’s head on her breasts, putting his eyes just level with a bite mark he didn’t remember leaving there. His other lover rearranged himself to be pressed up against his back, his arm thrown diagonally across Durand’s shoulder to rest on her hip.
“You’re beautiful,” Maximilien murmured with his lips against his shoulder. Lia made a slight inquiring sound and he laughed softly. “You too.”
Durand wanted to sleep peacefully in their arms, but he had to know. “So… you want to be revolutionaries.”
“The king is not the country. It’s not a matter of a good king or a bad king, because there will always be good kings and bad kings. Everyone running around, trying to change kings. They don’t understand it’s the institution of monarchy that is unjust and they cannot imagine another way. The country is not the king and the country does not need the king.”
“It is not by the Grace of God, but the work of man that the king reigns. God set the world in motion; it is now the providence of man.”
“This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them for himself, for his chariots and to be his horsemen, and some shall run before his chariots; and he will appoint him captains over thousands and captains over fifties, and will set them to ear his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war and instruments of his chariots. And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries and to be cooks and to be bakers. He will take your fields and vineyards and oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants. And he will take the tenth of your seed and of your vineyards and give to his officers and to his servants. And he will take your menservants and your maidservants and your goodliest young men and your asses, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants. And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king.”
“You can say you’re loyal to France, but that means so many things to so many people. The king, the land, the people… what is France? Every order you obey or action you take out of your own conscious is a choice, whether you consider it one of not. No many only has one master, his own conscience if none else; what matters are priorities.”
“We’ll gather a core group of people we’re sure we can trust, us, my brother, Sir Teillagory. Then we play off each of the many groups who want to overthrow the king and place their leader as the new king. Then we proclaim our message in the streets, so loud that all can hear and we cannot be hushed up.”
“Then the people will rise up and throw open the Bastille and march on Versailles.”
“This is no peaceful reform.”
“Those in power cling to it like misers. We must strike a swift blow to minimize the losses and we must march at the head of our troops because we can do so.”
“Using the power of the Psalms to strike at the king, by the grace of God.”
“Yes. It is only fitting for the true power of God to overthrow those claiming its providence.”
“We’re young, idealistic, utopian philosophers. Nothing will ever work in real life the way we think it will.”
“We’re not entirely scholars. We are Poets and powerful ones at that.”
“And we have you, the stalwart and true knight, as our moral compass.”
“The fact I was able to change my allegiance says I am not a loyal knight.”
“Being stubborn and not changing your mind based on new information does not make you a superior person.”
“You’ll tell us when we’ve lost perspective of our true goals. We’ll change things in France, then,” she trailed her fingers down his arms like she was indicating points on a map, “we go after England next after France. They already have the most limited monarchy. Then we get Russia and we can attack Prussia and Austria from both sides then.”
“Militaristically or politically?”
“Both. The peasantry of other countries will be eager to join us once they see what we do in France. We may not have to do anything for the fires of revolution to spread of their own.”
“What will we do in the colonies, since our belief is that all people are created equal?”
Lia smiled at Durand’s “our”. “We must break them out of their tribal ways and teach them civilization, but once we have we must step back and allow them their equal rights of citizens.”
“Everyone will be equal and we’ll be the creators of this new order,” Durand cautioned.
“We won’t set ourselves up as the new kings!” Maximilien said passionately. “That’s what everyone else wants to do with the Psalm of the King.”
“After the Revolution, we won’t be kings, because there will be no kings.”
Maximilien’s expression softened. “It might be nice, someday, to be normal citizens, just like everyone else. To be married and raise a family.”
“Don’t edge away and try to give us private time again.” Lia chastised Durand, who did feel rather stupid trying to slip away inconspicuously from two people holding him so tightly. “We still want you there.”
“What place is there for me in your perfect future?”
“By our sides, Durand. When the world is at peace and we are no longer needed, that’s our chance to be together, to be happy.”
First and foremost, I'd like to say I love this series to death. Zombies. Shortly pre-Revolutionary France. No, that's really everything I could want from life. Now, onward to the criticism:
I really didn't like episode 23. Actually, I like Maximilien quite a bit in it, but Lia, Lia! It just completely undermined everything we'd known about her personality (the pre-death one at that) thus far for the sake of furthering the plot and I really can't reconcile that.
Also, Teillagory's betrayal, wtf. If it had happened much earlier in the series, yeah. There were hints of that when his character was first introduced. To betray them when he did was incredibly stupid, both in terms of his character and as a purely in-world strategic decision.
And Louis's revelation about Maximilien and Lia at the end. I figured out the Maximilien part a good bit in advance, actually. The Lia part, no. When it was first revealed, I had to pause the episode and laugh hysterically for five minutes. Ten seconds after starting it again, the characters came to conclusion I already had: Hey, that's why he was trying to break up the marriage. The only thing find odd about what little I've seen of this fandom is that, when I learned their relationship, it didn't even make me so much as blink in my shipping.
And this stupid story. Which I wrote over Thanksgiving break and am only just now posting. Ug. Influence strongly by every philosopher my roommate ever read to me while studying for her "post-Industrial rev search for utopia" class. Except for that hilarious gastrology guy, even though he was actually French and only a little too far forward in time. This is AU, set pre-series, in case that's not obvious.
Yes, and the actual story,
Title: “Le Chevalier de la Révolution”
Fandom: Le Chevalier d'Eon
Characters: Lia/Durand/Maximilien
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: through episode 24 (honestly, in the author's note more than the story)
Warnings: explicit sex, see pairing and take from it what you will, double penetration, blasphemy
Word Count: 2159
“The visionary, the knight, and the woman who saved Russia.”
“France. I was trying to save France.”
“Now it’s time to save the people everywhere.”
“Don’t be so serious, Maximilien,” Lia scolded, putting her head in his lap.
“People will get the wrong idea from you two,” Durand teased.
Lia pulled Maximilien down into a kiss. “What’s the wrong idea to get?”
They had the look they got when they were speaking into each other’s minds through some kind of Poet bond. Keeping all expression off his face, Durand said lightly, “You both look like boys, that’s all. I’d better be going…”
“Durand…” Lia caught his hand.
“I’ll give you two some…”
Lia launched herself from her restful sprawl to a fighting stance and held his wrist in a tight grip as she kissed him on the cheek. “Tsarina Elizabeth has dozens of lovers. She must be sleeping with every man in Russia.”
“Is that also your plan for gaining power?”
“Among them. I’m not above being a woman; I’ve seen how much power some of them wield.”
She pushed Durand in the small of the back and pulled Maximilien forward by the hand. Maximilien said, “We want you,” before kissing his best friend. He clearly wanted to kiss fiercely, but held himself back to keep from scaring him off.
“You’re our knight,” explained Lia, whose soft hair he had grabbed onto for balance.
“Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth--for thy love is better than wine. Because of the savor of thy good ointments thy name is as ointment poured forth; therefore do the virgins love thee.”
“Draw me, we will run after thee: the king hath brought me into his chambers: we will be glad and rejoice in thee. We will remember thy love more than wine. Rightly do they love you.”
“I am dark, but comely, O daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.”
“Look not upon me, because I am dark, because the sun hath looked upon me. My mother’s children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards, but mine own vineyards have I not kept. Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest your flock, where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon: for why should I be as one that turneth aside by the flocks of thy companions?”
Not with the power of Psalms, but they were enchanting him surely enough. Durand cut in, “If thou know not, O fairest among women, follow in the footsteps of the flock, and feed thy kids beside the shepherds’ tents.” At their incredulous looks, he added, “I may not be a Poet, but I can quote scripture.”
This was true power, not being able to control the dead or overthrow nations, though they would, but Maximilien’s body pressing Lia’s soft breasts into his chest.
She kissed him again, hard and demanding and unlike any woman he had ever kissed before, but it was Lia, so he was unsurprised.
Maximilien grabbed both their hands and yanked them after him. Lia growled in annoyance, but he soothed her, “No one’s seen us yet, but I suggest we retire to my chambers.”
Durand shivered as the other hand stopped dragging once he was coming along and started to smooth fingers over his sword calluses.
Once they were inside, Lia broke off to lock the door and began to casually unbuckle her sword belt, while the other Poet pushed him into the bed. Being pushed down under another body shouldn’t have been so erotic; it happened all the time grappling.
In a moment between his eyes rolling back from kisses, Durand noticed Lia walking to the bed, casually unbuttoning her shirt.
“You don’t wearing anything under that.”
“Yes, I actually dress in men’s clothes. Have you seen how troublesome female undergarments are?”
Tossing her shirt aside, Lia sat down on the bed and began on Maximilien, while he in turn started stripping the knight. Durand allowed his jacket and tunic to be pulled over his head; Lia took the revelation of skin as reason to lick up his chest and bite down on his collarbone.
Durand gasped, then bit his cheek in embarrassment. He was far too popular with the ladies to be acting like the blushing virgin as he was now. Maximilien quickly returned to trying to eat his tonsils, though. His skin burned from direct contact with theirs and his nails dug red lines in Maximilien’s arm and Lia’s back.
“God I love you,” she muttered quietly, shaking, but then she shoved her hand down his pants.
“Lia,” he gasped at her warm fingers.
Maximilien kissed down her neck. He was a knight, but he was rarely one to wield a sword, so he looked fit but more effeminate than the swordswoman. Well, had she been wearing clothes.
Somehow they had managed to work the rest of his and their clothes off. They didn’t particularly act in unison, but they could speak to each other in a way he could not hear, so they could gang up on him when they put their minds to it. Skin on skin contact felt soft and smooth and hot over muscle, and how had he not noticed that before?
Lia pushed Maximilien off where he was licking down the side of her breast and straddled Durand and rolled him over so he was on top of her. Courtly love or not, how many times had he dreamed of this, having her gazing longingly up at him while he was inside her? His gasp was cut off by Maximilien’s kiss. The other man squirmed up beside and spooned against both of them.
The muscles of his shoulders and back clenched against the pressure of Lia and Maximilien’s hands. Maximilien’s slender hips brushed against his and his cock slid against his and Durand realized he was pressing into Lia’s body alongside him.
Lia made a breathless sound and scrunched her eyes shut. Worried they’d hurt her, Durand was able to pull away, but though her eyes opened full of tears it was undoubtedly a happy face and her nails dug deeper into him to draw him closer.
And oh did he want to be closer. Everything he could have thought of wanting, but the guilt he was vaguely aware he should have been feeling about the whole affair would have been against his nature. Overwhelmed, yes. Conscious thought had long since fled in favor of the combined feeling of Lia, wet and impossibly tight and throbbing, and Maximilien, rock hard and rubbing just so against him.
His whole body shook, wanting this to last longer, but their possession of him, undoubtedly what this was, told him they had every intention of this happening again. He came with a shout, every feeling in his body hitting him full force all at once, all the bolts of pleasure struggling for dominance at the same time.
Lia gave a long yelp a moment later and Maximilien a choking sound he had never heard a human throat produce before. His tired body shivered at it despite itself.
The swordswoman used her arms still over his shoulders to pillow Durand’s head on her breasts, putting his eyes just level with a bite mark he didn’t remember leaving there. His other lover rearranged himself to be pressed up against his back, his arm thrown diagonally across Durand’s shoulder to rest on her hip.
“You’re beautiful,” Maximilien murmured with his lips against his shoulder. Lia made a slight inquiring sound and he laughed softly. “You too.”
Durand wanted to sleep peacefully in their arms, but he had to know. “So… you want to be revolutionaries.”
“The king is not the country. It’s not a matter of a good king or a bad king, because there will always be good kings and bad kings. Everyone running around, trying to change kings. They don’t understand it’s the institution of monarchy that is unjust and they cannot imagine another way. The country is not the king and the country does not need the king.”
“It is not by the Grace of God, but the work of man that the king reigns. God set the world in motion; it is now the providence of man.”
“This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them for himself, for his chariots and to be his horsemen, and some shall run before his chariots; and he will appoint him captains over thousands and captains over fifties, and will set them to ear his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war and instruments of his chariots. And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries and to be cooks and to be bakers. He will take your fields and vineyards and oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants. And he will take the tenth of your seed and of your vineyards and give to his officers and to his servants. And he will take your menservants and your maidservants and your goodliest young men and your asses, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants. And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king.”
“You can say you’re loyal to France, but that means so many things to so many people. The king, the land, the people… what is France? Every order you obey or action you take out of your own conscious is a choice, whether you consider it one of not. No many only has one master, his own conscience if none else; what matters are priorities.”
“We’ll gather a core group of people we’re sure we can trust, us, my brother, Sir Teillagory. Then we play off each of the many groups who want to overthrow the king and place their leader as the new king. Then we proclaim our message in the streets, so loud that all can hear and we cannot be hushed up.”
“Then the people will rise up and throw open the Bastille and march on Versailles.”
“This is no peaceful reform.”
“Those in power cling to it like misers. We must strike a swift blow to minimize the losses and we must march at the head of our troops because we can do so.”
“Using the power of the Psalms to strike at the king, by the grace of God.”
“Yes. It is only fitting for the true power of God to overthrow those claiming its providence.”
“We’re young, idealistic, utopian philosophers. Nothing will ever work in real life the way we think it will.”
“We’re not entirely scholars. We are Poets and powerful ones at that.”
“And we have you, the stalwart and true knight, as our moral compass.”
“The fact I was able to change my allegiance says I am not a loyal knight.”
“Being stubborn and not changing your mind based on new information does not make you a superior person.”
“You’ll tell us when we’ve lost perspective of our true goals. We’ll change things in France, then,” she trailed her fingers down his arms like she was indicating points on a map, “we go after England next after France. They already have the most limited monarchy. Then we get Russia and we can attack Prussia and Austria from both sides then.”
“Militaristically or politically?”
“Both. The peasantry of other countries will be eager to join us once they see what we do in France. We may not have to do anything for the fires of revolution to spread of their own.”
“What will we do in the colonies, since our belief is that all people are created equal?”
Lia smiled at Durand’s “our”. “We must break them out of their tribal ways and teach them civilization, but once we have we must step back and allow them their equal rights of citizens.”
“Everyone will be equal and we’ll be the creators of this new order,” Durand cautioned.
“We won’t set ourselves up as the new kings!” Maximilien said passionately. “That’s what everyone else wants to do with the Psalm of the King.”
“After the Revolution, we won’t be kings, because there will be no kings.”
Maximilien’s expression softened. “It might be nice, someday, to be normal citizens, just like everyone else. To be married and raise a family.”
“Don’t edge away and try to give us private time again.” Lia chastised Durand, who did feel rather stupid trying to slip away inconspicuously from two people holding him so tightly. “We still want you there.”
“What place is there for me in your perfect future?”
“By our sides, Durand. When the world is at peace and we are no longer needed, that’s our chance to be together, to be happy.”