COMMENTARY: Leaves of Willow and of Adder's Tongue
Here's the second fic commentary I promised! Cut for those not into that sort of thing.
Title: Leaves of Willow and of Adder's Tongue
Author: angevin2
Play: Richard II
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Richard/Aumerle
Rating: R
Word Count: 2206
Warnings: Terribly-negotiated, bordering on dubious, consent.
Summary: Edward is buzzed. Richard is depressed. And then they done sex. There is angst. And Keatsy undertones.
Notes: Dedicated to speak_me_fair, grande dame of all things Aumerle. Um, I hope you don't mind that I dedicated my dodgiest fic ever to you. Thanks also to gileonnen and lareinenoire for their input and encouragement. This fic is set a couple of months after "Nocturnal", which is actually made pretty obvious within the fic, but I thought I'd say so anyway.
Twelfth Night had been relatively subdued for the Perrivale family in recent years: there had been nobody sufficiently out of mourning to host any gathering tastefully.
Cf. the bit in "Nocturnal" about everyone's wives having died within about one summer. Victorian society had fairly elaborate mores regarding how long mourning was supposed to last and what you were supposed to wear at each stage and when it was appropriate to do certain things, although they were, naturally, stricter for women.
It had been subdued this year because Edmund York was the only one out of mourning long enough to be a socially acceptable host -- apart from Thomas, but that didn't bear thinking on -- and he was uncomfortable enough with everyday levels of social engagement.
Edmund has yet to put in an appearance in this AU, even though we know exactly what he is like: he's sort of a naturalist manqué who collects beetles and has flyaway hair and glasses. We do sort of see him in flashback in another fic I wrote, "To Your Scattered Bodies Go," where Edward remembers getting the news of Richard's death, and I think his interest in beetles is also referenced in "Delirien."
Richard has been conspicuously absent, even for someone hardly out of formal mourning; since the fire at Shene House he has become, quite uncharacteristically, a virtual recluse. And so when Edward York leaves his father's house, some time after one o'clock, he thinks it would be a good idea to call on him; it is very late, but he knows Richard is accustomed to keep late hours.
All my versions of Richard are night people, which is, to be fair, appropriate, but it's just as much me projecting my own internal clock onto my fictives. Nevertheless, there is actually a note about this in a contemporary bio of Richard II (the Vita Ricardi Secundi by the Monk of Evesham), which describes him as "so fond of late hours, that he would sometimes sit up all night drinking," although this is the sort of thing you'd expect chroniclers to say about someone of Richard's tendencies. Besides, I am sure that at least some of that time was devoted to fucking.
It is in this fic, obviously.
When the footman shows him into the library, Richard is draped over the end of a green velvet sofa,
This line originally said "red velvet sofa," but it was around this time that I noticed how frequently Richard was associated with green things in this 'verse, which seemed appropriate on account of absinthe, aesthetic color palettes, and coded messages involving flowers, so I made it green. Because I even put thought into the color of the damn couch.
wearing a grey velvet jacket that matches his eyes perfectly -- Edward knows this even though they aren't currently visible, as Richard has his arm thrown over his face in a vaguely abandoned-looking kind of way. His crimson smoking cap sits askew atop his curly hair -- Richard doesn't even smoke (tobacco); he just has an abiding interest in velvet hats.
The bit about not smoking tobacco totally sounds like Dracula's "I do not drink...wine." Richard is totally not a vampire, though, just an opium addict. (It is a shame that Richard in this universe does not live long enough to read Dracula, as he would totally love it. He also misses out on The Picture of Dorian Gray -- although that just would have made him uncomfortable -- the entire run of the Yellow Book, Burton's translation of the Arabian Nights, and Andrew Lang's Blue Fairy Book. Among other things. And no, I'm not altogether sure why I am convinced he'd have loved the Blue Fairy Book, but I'm sure he would.)
This is the fic, too, that taught me that a surprising number of people in the fandom have a smoking cap fetish of sorts. I was visualizing a specific one, incidentally: this is it.
Edward casts a quick glance at the nearest end table and finds it empty of anything other than an old, well-thumbed volume with "THE POETICAL WORKS OF JOHN KEATS" printed in fading letters on the spine; inwardly, he breathes a sigh of relief.
Richard's book was, in the first draft, Shakespeare's Sonnets. I changed it after speak_me_fair said that Richard in this fic was akin to a Romantic-era Lamia. I think it was all for the better. Plus I feel like they ought to read things written in their own damn century once in a while.
Also that is why I got the title of this fic from Keats' Lamia:
What wreath for Lamia? What for Lycius?
What for the sage, old Apollonius?
Upon her aching forehead be there hung
The leaves of willow and of adder’s tongue;
And for the youth, quick, let us strip for him
The thyrsus, that his watching eyes may swim
Into forgetfulness; and, for the sage,
Let spear-grass and the spiteful thistle wage
War on his temples.
"Abandoning the revels, I see?" Richard says, without looking up.
"We missed you this evening." Edward can't help feeling like he sounds more high-spirited than he actually is. Or rather that the feeling is entirely liquor-induced and that there is something wretchedly awful buzzing around underneath.
One of the things I always find myself doing with drunk characters is having them be aware of how they would feel if they weren't drunk -- I do the same thing with Edward (again) in "The Latest Record by the Dead Kennedys," although he is a much happier kind of drunk there. Even if it prevents him from getting a blowjob from Richard.
Richard looks up at him, very nearly incredulous, and almost laughs at that. "Oh, I'm sure of it," he says. "Someone needed something lit on fire, I assume?"
I have to admit I love this, as nasty as it is.
"That was -- " Edward breaks off his reassurance as he realizes in quick succession that the fire at Shene House is still, two months after the fact, a topic of disgusted or pitying if veiled comments, and that he is scarcely in a frame of mind to approach the matter tactfully. "Well," he finishes, "I did, anyway."
Richard smiles -- Edward has the impression it may even be genuine -- and motions for Edward to come and sit beside him, taking his arm as he does so.
"You don't know what's good for you, Ned," he says.
He is so very, very right. Which is the thing I kind of love about writing Richard/Aumerle. They both know it's such a bad idea, and yet. They can't not do it for some reason. Poor dysfunctional boys.
...oh, God.
There is nothing in the world Edward wants more than a cigarette right now, except that Richard is holding his arm, and in order to get his cigarette case out he'd have to move and then Richard would probably let go of him, and that would be...terribly unfortunate. And then Richard takes off his hat and leans on Edward's shoulder, and that makes matters rather more difficult. He would hate to set Richard's hair on fire. It's very pretty hair, gold but with a coppery sheen thanks to the firelight.
That last sentence got in there because I had Requests for more hair-perving. Because, you know, I really need my arm twisted to write about someone perving on Richard's hair.
(Which basically looks like my hair. Because I AM VAIN.)
...this is exactly why he needs a cigarette right now. Perhaps that would make his head stop spinning.
"You know, I'm thirty years old tomorrow," Richard says, seemingly out of nowhere. "Today, I suppose, if it's after midnight."
I just realized I am older than Richard is in this fic (though I wasn't when I wrote it. I mean, I was, since it was six months past my thirtieth birthday).
Edward checks his pocket-watch. "Nearly two o'clock."
"I suppose I should feel old," Richard continues. "'Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita,' and so on."
No clue where Richard learned Italian. Have you noticed, incidentally, that he has a remarkable facility for memorizing poetry?
"What?" Edward knows nothing about Italian, but if Richard is going to start spouting off in it while leaning on him, he is bloody well going to know what he's talking about.
"Dante," Richard says. "'In the middle of our life's path,' it means. 'I found myself in a dark wood...'"
"Wouldn't the middle of life be thirty-five?" Edward asks, as much to keep Richard from reciting the entire Divine Comedy to him as anything.
I am a little surprised that Edward knows this, and I wrote it. Then again, the whole "your life = 70 years" thing is biblical; I'm sure he'd have come across it somewhere.
Richard looks up at him, a hint of surprise on his face.
"So it is," he says, reclining back on Edward's shoulder. "I never really expected I'd live that long."
And of course he's right (except in the academic AU, where he'll actually make it to 50 -- we mucked about with the ages in that one because 40 is young if you're a professor).
Edward can feel that increasingly-familiar closed-in feeling, where his hands and feet turn cold and his heart is seemingly trying to flee his body by way of his throat. He always feels it when Richard begins talking about death -- and he never seems to stop. As if to anchor him to the living world, he covers Richard's hand with his own, and their fingers intertwine. His hand feels strangely solid compared to Richard's, which is slender with long, delicate fingers, as though he's stepped out of a medieval painting.
WHY YES WE HAVE HANDPORN.
I'm not sure whether the "medieval painting" reference was meant to be meta. More likely I was thinking about aesthetic medievalism (and the trio in Patience: "By hook and crook / you try to look / both angular and flat." Have you noticed how often I reference Patience in these?).
He swallows hard. "Don't talk like that," he says, trying for a light sort of reassurance, but achieving a slightly panicked quaver instead.
"Why shouldn't I talk like that?" Richard's tone is not sharp, though his words are; rather, he seems almost resigned in his melancholy. His thumb brushes back and forth across Edward's skin, from thumb to wrist and back again, a gesture that would seem seductive, as tiny as it is, if he appeared to have noticed it at all, and Edward shivers.
He is totally doing that on purpose.
"It seems unconscionably cruel," Richard continues, "that a man should find perfect love twice in his life, and then lose them both. What kind of tyrannical God would do that to someone?"
Even though Richard has a tendency -- of which he is COMPLETELY AWARE -- to drive people to shut him up by kissing him, this has got to be the worst seduction line in the history of ever.
It is more than Edward can bear. He withdraws his fingers from Richard's, and reaches up to touch him, tracing the sharp line of his jaw, and Richard turns his face upward. He is not indiscreet about his dealings with men, certainly, but Edward knows enough to know there is no need for further inquiry.
Richard does kind of project "O HAI I AM QUEER," after all.
One of the things that is kind of neat about this AU is the different gradations of Victorian queerness -- Richard has got the full Oscar Wilde thing going but is less outspoken than he is "Screw you, I'll fuck whomever I please," Robbie Vere (whom we haven't seen in fic but whom I have headcanon and a couple of unfinished fics about) isn't into the aesthetic/artistic movement but is very political about it, and Edward is an ordinary young Victorian gentleman who just happens to be sexually attracted to men.
The room seems incredibly warm, and his head is swimming -- he can't possibly have been this drunk when he left his father's house; it must be Richard -- and then their lips touch and Richard is kissing him fiercely, his tongue sliding over Edward's, and all Edward can hear is his own blood rushing in his ears.
It's Richard who pulls away for air first, and Edward leans in to kiss along his jawline, and then his throat, his fingers winding in Richard's hair, and then Richard's hand is sliding up his thigh, oh God --
-- and then Edward is struggling with the buttons on Richard's trousers, and Richard takes hold of his hands and draws back. His face is flushed, his eyes wide; his voice is thick as he asks Edward: "Shall we retire, then?"
I think it was around this point that I became very frustrated that they couldn't just go and have some nice non-emotionally-damaging sex. But then, I am not that kind of fic writer.
Edward draws Richard to him for a lingering kiss. "I thought you'd never ask," he breathes against Richard's lips.
The number of stairs and the length of hallway between Richard's library and his bedroom seems absolutely endless, although it can't be that long -- Edward has wanted this for so much longer -- and they keep stopping to exchange kisses and caresses and somewhere in the back of Edward's brain he is amazed at how discreet Richard's household must be if he is accustomed to behave this way with others
Richard's staff is treated amazingly well. Partly that is out of a sense of noblesse oblige but also it is for this exact reason.
-- and then they're at the bedroom and nothing else matters, because his back is pressed to the door and Richard's lips are at his throat as they frantically undo each other's buttons and laces, casting aside jackets and shirts and trousers --
I spent a lot of time freaking out about having to undress a pair of Victorian gentlemen, and all my research turned up was stuff about women's undergarments, so now I am just going to have to write some steamy Richard/Anne in this AU so that I have a use for it.
-- he can feel Richard's skin warm against his, and his long hands trailing downwards; Edward's own fingers brush against Richard's soft inner thigh, and Richard gasps, his hands pausing at Edward's waist. Edward can barely manage enough breath to get out "Richard, please -- "
You know what's hot, incidentally? Doorsex. Even more than wallsex.
-- and then Richard draws him toward the bed, and between ferocious kisses he whispers against Edward's skin: "There's one thing I want, Edward."
"Anything," Edward gasps, and means it.
Richard's grey eyes are dark with desire, his lips red and swollen. He is so beautiful that it aches.
"Make it hurt," he says.
I think it was gileonnen who said that Henry would have found that an enormous turn-on, and thus the sex would have been a lot less emotionally damaging. It's a shame Richard and Henry don't actually have sex in this AU -- granted it wouldn't have done either of them any good, because Victorian!Henry would no doubt be ridiculously messed up about sex, but it might have spared poor Edward some entirely undeserved angst.
Richard unclothed seems almost painfully frail; in the velvet jackets and brocade waistcoats he favors, he looks merely ordinarily thin, but now, standing naked before Edward, he appears as though he might break any minute, and perhaps that's what he wants, for someone to break him, and the thought that Edward should be the one to do it is like talons in his heart -- God, he has wanted Richard so badly, but not this way, and he can't, he can't do it -- the air is too thick, too hot, and almost before he knows it he backhands Richard across the mouth.
It is a rule of Richard!porn, apparently, that Richard must get punched in the mouth prior to consensually problematic sex.
Richard's eyes are alight with something infernal, and his lips part -- his bottom lip bleeds a little. Edward cannot bear another moment of it. His own lips close on Richard's, blood-slick and metallic, and then he releases him and shoves him roughly onto the bed.
Okay, so note that we are just about to start a sentence.
Richard closes his eyes and tilts his head back, baring his throat, and stretches his arms wide, like an obscene mock-crucifix, and then Edward is upon him;
I am so going to hell for that.
Richard slides his thigh between Edward's, and his fair skin reddens under Edward's hands, fingers, teeth, as he gasps and writhes and arches his back -- Edward winds his fingers in Richard's hair and pulls hard, and Richard cries out a little and opens his eyes, and finally he's actually looking at Edward, and he is so close, his face flushed and desperate, and Edward can't hold back anymore, oh, Christ --
-- his teeth sink into Richard's shoulder as he comes, and Richard groans, either in pain, pleasure, or frustration; Edward wants nothing more than to collapse now, but he can't just leave it there
I made him use that exact phrase in "Nocturnal." I am not sure what if anything that signifies.
One thing that I tried to get across in this sex scene and don't think I succeeded in doing was the suggestion that what enables Edward to inflict pain is that he's angry at Richard for asking him to do so. I'm not sure that's ever very clear, but of course I can't really come right out and say it in the narrative, either. Possibly it shows through at the moment where Edward hauls off and hits him.
-- he pins Richard's arms down, because, God, if he wants it to hurt -- Richard twists beneath him, nearly in agony, arching his hips against Edward's until finally with a sharp cry he spends himself across Edward's thighs -- and then it's over and Edward lets his head fall onto Richard's chest, listening to his heartbeat slowly returning to normal, and Richard strokes his hair with disquieting gentleness.
That is the end of the sentence of which I told you to mark the start.
I also feel that the hair-stroking is pretty effectively unsettling.
The stillness seems less like peace than like death -- except that death presumably brings oblivion. Edward is all too conscious of what he's done; he has never been one to torment himself unduly for loving other men, but other men are not Richard.
I don't write many people who are tortured about being queer -- really the only one who is bothered by it is Henry in some universes -- but everyone is tortured about being attracted to Richard.
When Richard's hand stills on his back Edward rolls over, sitting up on the bed. Richard's color is beginning to return to normal, but his shoulders and chest are crossed with red welts; tomorrow, he will be terribly bruised -- but he has dozed off and his expression is content. Edward begins to feel that it is he and not Richard who will bear the marks of this encounter the longest.
I have an unfinished coda to this fic from Richard's POV where he's examining his bruises the next morning and thinking about how beautiful it makes him look.
He stands up, then, to gather his scattered clothes; he should leave, he knows, leave and never come back, but -- he puts on his shirt, and then returns to sit on the bed with his back towards Richard. The movement is enough to wake him,
I'm not sure why that wakes him up but Edward rolling off of him doesn't. Narrative convenience, I guess.
The fact that Edward's got his shirt on and Richard's still naked was meant to be vaguely symbolic, but symbolic of what I am not altogether certain.
and he trails a hand down Edward's back, and up again -- even now, he can't help but shiver at Richard's touch.
"You were right," Edward says. "I don't know what's good for me."
The words should be sharp, and cruel, but his voice comes out all wrong.
Edward's half-hearted attempt to lash out here is quite possibly the most painful thing in this fic, as far as I'm concerned.
He can feel Richard take his hand away, hear him stir on the bed -- he cannot bear to look him in the face, after that, but shame compels him to turn around. Richard sits with his arms wrapped around his knees, a strangely childlike and vulnerable posture, and his expression is distant, brittle.
I am pretty sure I took that from the opening paragraphs of "With No Less Terror than the Elements." Although there it happens before the sex.
"But you know that I'm not," he says, and once again Edward feels that clenching feeling in his heart -- not because he's wrong, but because he's right, and because it doesn't seem to make one damned bit of difference. He moves closer to Richard.
"I don't care if you are or not," he says softly, and he takes Richard's hand. There are scars on his wrist, two lines running in parallel, thin and faint but still visible. Edward runs his thumb gently over one of them, and Richard closes his eyes, inhaling sharply; he seems frozen in place, now.
I don't remember if that was supposed to parallel Richard's seductive hand-stroking earlier, so let's just say that it was. This is a very handporny fic, isn't it? I don't think I meant to get all the popular fandom kinks into it, especially since there's so much subaltern ickiness going on, and yet.
"Richard?" Edward says.
"You should go," Richard says, his voice cold and frail as broken shards of ice. "I'll only break you, too. It's like a contagion. Everything I touch -- " he draws his hand back from Edward's, and when he speaks next his voice is a terrible flat veneer over a deep chasm.
O HAI MIXED METAPHORS. This is probably the sentence I most wish I could revise. I mean, I obviously could, but I am also lazy.
"I am damaged, Edward.
I saw on TV Tropes a while ago that there is an infamous Hetalia fic in which one character says something very like this to another. I cringed. Fortunately for me the context seems to be very different (there is Healing Cock involved).
Do you see these?" He holds up his scarred wrists. "Attendants in lunatic asylums don't always take care with the restraints."
This detail is established in lareinenoire's "The readiness is all," where it's noticed by Sherlock Holmes. While in an opium den. Holmes, of course, instantly grasps the significance, because that is how he rolls.
And suddenly so many things become clear.
I wish I had not put that sentence in there, since I feel like it signals nothing so much as "THIS PARAGRAPH IS REALLY RUSHED."
Edward remembers coming home from Eton at Christmas ten years ago, the keen, anxious disappointment when Richard was nowhere to be seen -- and his father telling him that Richard had suffered a nervous collapse and had gone off to Switzerland for treatment. (Henry Lancaster had murmured dourly that "He's lost his head over that fucking poof Vere, that's what's wrong with him.")
Henry is a dick. This is where I repeat, also, my comment from the "Nocturnal" commentary about the difficulty of comprehensible homophobic slurs for the late 19th century (unless you count "damned posing somdomite" [sic]).
"I know, Richard -- " he says, moving closer. " -- I mean, I didn't, but -- well. 'Thou hast not half that power to do me harm as I have to be hurt.'"
And we are back to Othello. Emilia is a much more appropriate match for Edward than Iago, I have to say.
Richard looks up at him, surprised. "You don't even like Shakespeare," he says.
Edward smiles. "No, I don't."
I worried a lot over whether this ending was too sappy given that the rest of the fic is terribly bleak. speak_me_fair assured me that it is okay, so I will trust her judgment.
Okay, those are the two I did for the meme! If by some chance anyone wants commentary on one of my other fics, there's a list here. It may take a while, but I will do it eventually, because talking about my own writing is fun.
Title: Leaves of Willow and of Adder's Tongue
Author: angevin2
Play: Richard II
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Richard/Aumerle
Rating: R
Word Count: 2206
Warnings: Terribly-negotiated, bordering on dubious, consent.
Summary: Edward is buzzed. Richard is depressed. And then they done sex. There is angst. And Keatsy undertones.
Notes: Dedicated to speak_me_fair, grande dame of all things Aumerle. Um, I hope you don't mind that I dedicated my dodgiest fic ever to you. Thanks also to gileonnen and lareinenoire for their input and encouragement. This fic is set a couple of months after "Nocturnal", which is actually made pretty obvious within the fic, but I thought I'd say so anyway.
Twelfth Night had been relatively subdued for the Perrivale family in recent years: there had been nobody sufficiently out of mourning to host any gathering tastefully.
Cf. the bit in "Nocturnal" about everyone's wives having died within about one summer. Victorian society had fairly elaborate mores regarding how long mourning was supposed to last and what you were supposed to wear at each stage and when it was appropriate to do certain things, although they were, naturally, stricter for women.
It had been subdued this year because Edmund York was the only one out of mourning long enough to be a socially acceptable host -- apart from Thomas, but that didn't bear thinking on -- and he was uncomfortable enough with everyday levels of social engagement.
Edmund has yet to put in an appearance in this AU, even though we know exactly what he is like: he's sort of a naturalist manqué who collects beetles and has flyaway hair and glasses. We do sort of see him in flashback in another fic I wrote, "To Your Scattered Bodies Go," where Edward remembers getting the news of Richard's death, and I think his interest in beetles is also referenced in "Delirien."
Richard has been conspicuously absent, even for someone hardly out of formal mourning; since the fire at Shene House he has become, quite uncharacteristically, a virtual recluse. And so when Edward York leaves his father's house, some time after one o'clock, he thinks it would be a good idea to call on him; it is very late, but he knows Richard is accustomed to keep late hours.
All my versions of Richard are night people, which is, to be fair, appropriate, but it's just as much me projecting my own internal clock onto my fictives. Nevertheless, there is actually a note about this in a contemporary bio of Richard II (the Vita Ricardi Secundi by the Monk of Evesham), which describes him as "so fond of late hours, that he would sometimes sit up all night drinking," although this is the sort of thing you'd expect chroniclers to say about someone of Richard's tendencies. Besides, I am sure that at least some of that time was devoted to fucking.
It is in this fic, obviously.
When the footman shows him into the library, Richard is draped over the end of a green velvet sofa,
This line originally said "red velvet sofa," but it was around this time that I noticed how frequently Richard was associated with green things in this 'verse, which seemed appropriate on account of absinthe, aesthetic color palettes, and coded messages involving flowers, so I made it green. Because I even put thought into the color of the damn couch.
wearing a grey velvet jacket that matches his eyes perfectly -- Edward knows this even though they aren't currently visible, as Richard has his arm thrown over his face in a vaguely abandoned-looking kind of way. His crimson smoking cap sits askew atop his curly hair -- Richard doesn't even smoke (tobacco); he just has an abiding interest in velvet hats.
The bit about not smoking tobacco totally sounds like Dracula's "I do not drink...wine." Richard is totally not a vampire, though, just an opium addict. (It is a shame that Richard in this universe does not live long enough to read Dracula, as he would totally love it. He also misses out on The Picture of Dorian Gray -- although that just would have made him uncomfortable -- the entire run of the Yellow Book, Burton's translation of the Arabian Nights, and Andrew Lang's Blue Fairy Book. Among other things. And no, I'm not altogether sure why I am convinced he'd have loved the Blue Fairy Book, but I'm sure he would.)
This is the fic, too, that taught me that a surprising number of people in the fandom have a smoking cap fetish of sorts. I was visualizing a specific one, incidentally: this is it.
Edward casts a quick glance at the nearest end table and finds it empty of anything other than an old, well-thumbed volume with "THE POETICAL WORKS OF JOHN KEATS" printed in fading letters on the spine; inwardly, he breathes a sigh of relief.
Richard's book was, in the first draft, Shakespeare's Sonnets. I changed it after speak_me_fair said that Richard in this fic was akin to a Romantic-era Lamia. I think it was all for the better. Plus I feel like they ought to read things written in their own damn century once in a while.
Also that is why I got the title of this fic from Keats' Lamia:
What wreath for Lamia? What for Lycius?
What for the sage, old Apollonius?
Upon her aching forehead be there hung
The leaves of willow and of adder’s tongue;
And for the youth, quick, let us strip for him
The thyrsus, that his watching eyes may swim
Into forgetfulness; and, for the sage,
Let spear-grass and the spiteful thistle wage
War on his temples.
"Abandoning the revels, I see?" Richard says, without looking up.
"We missed you this evening." Edward can't help feeling like he sounds more high-spirited than he actually is. Or rather that the feeling is entirely liquor-induced and that there is something wretchedly awful buzzing around underneath.
One of the things I always find myself doing with drunk characters is having them be aware of how they would feel if they weren't drunk -- I do the same thing with Edward (again) in "The Latest Record by the Dead Kennedys," although he is a much happier kind of drunk there. Even if it prevents him from getting a blowjob from Richard.
Richard looks up at him, very nearly incredulous, and almost laughs at that. "Oh, I'm sure of it," he says. "Someone needed something lit on fire, I assume?"
I have to admit I love this, as nasty as it is.
"That was -- " Edward breaks off his reassurance as he realizes in quick succession that the fire at Shene House is still, two months after the fact, a topic of disgusted or pitying if veiled comments, and that he is scarcely in a frame of mind to approach the matter tactfully. "Well," he finishes, "I did, anyway."
Richard smiles -- Edward has the impression it may even be genuine -- and motions for Edward to come and sit beside him, taking his arm as he does so.
"You don't know what's good for you, Ned," he says.
He is so very, very right. Which is the thing I kind of love about writing Richard/Aumerle. They both know it's such a bad idea, and yet. They can't not do it for some reason. Poor dysfunctional boys.
...oh, God.
There is nothing in the world Edward wants more than a cigarette right now, except that Richard is holding his arm, and in order to get his cigarette case out he'd have to move and then Richard would probably let go of him, and that would be...terribly unfortunate. And then Richard takes off his hat and leans on Edward's shoulder, and that makes matters rather more difficult. He would hate to set Richard's hair on fire. It's very pretty hair, gold but with a coppery sheen thanks to the firelight.
That last sentence got in there because I had Requests for more hair-perving. Because, you know, I really need my arm twisted to write about someone perving on Richard's hair.
(Which basically looks like my hair. Because I AM VAIN.)
...this is exactly why he needs a cigarette right now. Perhaps that would make his head stop spinning.
"You know, I'm thirty years old tomorrow," Richard says, seemingly out of nowhere. "Today, I suppose, if it's after midnight."
I just realized I am older than Richard is in this fic (though I wasn't when I wrote it. I mean, I was, since it was six months past my thirtieth birthday).
Edward checks his pocket-watch. "Nearly two o'clock."
"I suppose I should feel old," Richard continues. "'Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita,' and so on."
No clue where Richard learned Italian. Have you noticed, incidentally, that he has a remarkable facility for memorizing poetry?
"What?" Edward knows nothing about Italian, but if Richard is going to start spouting off in it while leaning on him, he is bloody well going to know what he's talking about.
"Dante," Richard says. "'In the middle of our life's path,' it means. 'I found myself in a dark wood...'"
"Wouldn't the middle of life be thirty-five?" Edward asks, as much to keep Richard from reciting the entire Divine Comedy to him as anything.
I am a little surprised that Edward knows this, and I wrote it. Then again, the whole "your life = 70 years" thing is biblical; I'm sure he'd have come across it somewhere.
Richard looks up at him, a hint of surprise on his face.
"So it is," he says, reclining back on Edward's shoulder. "I never really expected I'd live that long."
And of course he's right (except in the academic AU, where he'll actually make it to 50 -- we mucked about with the ages in that one because 40 is young if you're a professor).
Edward can feel that increasingly-familiar closed-in feeling, where his hands and feet turn cold and his heart is seemingly trying to flee his body by way of his throat. He always feels it when Richard begins talking about death -- and he never seems to stop. As if to anchor him to the living world, he covers Richard's hand with his own, and their fingers intertwine. His hand feels strangely solid compared to Richard's, which is slender with long, delicate fingers, as though he's stepped out of a medieval painting.
WHY YES WE HAVE HANDPORN.
I'm not sure whether the "medieval painting" reference was meant to be meta. More likely I was thinking about aesthetic medievalism (and the trio in Patience: "By hook and crook / you try to look / both angular and flat." Have you noticed how often I reference Patience in these?).
He swallows hard. "Don't talk like that," he says, trying for a light sort of reassurance, but achieving a slightly panicked quaver instead.
"Why shouldn't I talk like that?" Richard's tone is not sharp, though his words are; rather, he seems almost resigned in his melancholy. His thumb brushes back and forth across Edward's skin, from thumb to wrist and back again, a gesture that would seem seductive, as tiny as it is, if he appeared to have noticed it at all, and Edward shivers.
He is totally doing that on purpose.
"It seems unconscionably cruel," Richard continues, "that a man should find perfect love twice in his life, and then lose them both. What kind of tyrannical God would do that to someone?"
Even though Richard has a tendency -- of which he is COMPLETELY AWARE -- to drive people to shut him up by kissing him, this has got to be the worst seduction line in the history of ever.
It is more than Edward can bear. He withdraws his fingers from Richard's, and reaches up to touch him, tracing the sharp line of his jaw, and Richard turns his face upward. He is not indiscreet about his dealings with men, certainly, but Edward knows enough to know there is no need for further inquiry.
Richard does kind of project "O HAI I AM QUEER," after all.
One of the things that is kind of neat about this AU is the different gradations of Victorian queerness -- Richard has got the full Oscar Wilde thing going but is less outspoken than he is "Screw you, I'll fuck whomever I please," Robbie Vere (whom we haven't seen in fic but whom I have headcanon and a couple of unfinished fics about) isn't into the aesthetic/artistic movement but is very political about it, and Edward is an ordinary young Victorian gentleman who just happens to be sexually attracted to men.
The room seems incredibly warm, and his head is swimming -- he can't possibly have been this drunk when he left his father's house; it must be Richard -- and then their lips touch and Richard is kissing him fiercely, his tongue sliding over Edward's, and all Edward can hear is his own blood rushing in his ears.
It's Richard who pulls away for air first, and Edward leans in to kiss along his jawline, and then his throat, his fingers winding in Richard's hair, and then Richard's hand is sliding up his thigh, oh God --
-- and then Edward is struggling with the buttons on Richard's trousers, and Richard takes hold of his hands and draws back. His face is flushed, his eyes wide; his voice is thick as he asks Edward: "Shall we retire, then?"
I think it was around this point that I became very frustrated that they couldn't just go and have some nice non-emotionally-damaging sex. But then, I am not that kind of fic writer.
Edward draws Richard to him for a lingering kiss. "I thought you'd never ask," he breathes against Richard's lips.
The number of stairs and the length of hallway between Richard's library and his bedroom seems absolutely endless, although it can't be that long -- Edward has wanted this for so much longer -- and they keep stopping to exchange kisses and caresses and somewhere in the back of Edward's brain he is amazed at how discreet Richard's household must be if he is accustomed to behave this way with others
Richard's staff is treated amazingly well. Partly that is out of a sense of noblesse oblige but also it is for this exact reason.
-- and then they're at the bedroom and nothing else matters, because his back is pressed to the door and Richard's lips are at his throat as they frantically undo each other's buttons and laces, casting aside jackets and shirts and trousers --
I spent a lot of time freaking out about having to undress a pair of Victorian gentlemen, and all my research turned up was stuff about women's undergarments, so now I am just going to have to write some steamy Richard/Anne in this AU so that I have a use for it.
-- he can feel Richard's skin warm against his, and his long hands trailing downwards; Edward's own fingers brush against Richard's soft inner thigh, and Richard gasps, his hands pausing at Edward's waist. Edward can barely manage enough breath to get out "Richard, please -- "
You know what's hot, incidentally? Doorsex. Even more than wallsex.
-- and then Richard draws him toward the bed, and between ferocious kisses he whispers against Edward's skin: "There's one thing I want, Edward."
"Anything," Edward gasps, and means it.
Richard's grey eyes are dark with desire, his lips red and swollen. He is so beautiful that it aches.
"Make it hurt," he says.
I think it was gileonnen who said that Henry would have found that an enormous turn-on, and thus the sex would have been a lot less emotionally damaging. It's a shame Richard and Henry don't actually have sex in this AU -- granted it wouldn't have done either of them any good, because Victorian!Henry would no doubt be ridiculously messed up about sex, but it might have spared poor Edward some entirely undeserved angst.
Richard unclothed seems almost painfully frail; in the velvet jackets and brocade waistcoats he favors, he looks merely ordinarily thin, but now, standing naked before Edward, he appears as though he might break any minute, and perhaps that's what he wants, for someone to break him, and the thought that Edward should be the one to do it is like talons in his heart -- God, he has wanted Richard so badly, but not this way, and he can't, he can't do it -- the air is too thick, too hot, and almost before he knows it he backhands Richard across the mouth.
It is a rule of Richard!porn, apparently, that Richard must get punched in the mouth prior to consensually problematic sex.
Richard's eyes are alight with something infernal, and his lips part -- his bottom lip bleeds a little. Edward cannot bear another moment of it. His own lips close on Richard's, blood-slick and metallic, and then he releases him and shoves him roughly onto the bed.
Okay, so note that we are just about to start a sentence.
Richard closes his eyes and tilts his head back, baring his throat, and stretches his arms wide, like an obscene mock-crucifix, and then Edward is upon him;
I am so going to hell for that.
Richard slides his thigh between Edward's, and his fair skin reddens under Edward's hands, fingers, teeth, as he gasps and writhes and arches his back -- Edward winds his fingers in Richard's hair and pulls hard, and Richard cries out a little and opens his eyes, and finally he's actually looking at Edward, and he is so close, his face flushed and desperate, and Edward can't hold back anymore, oh, Christ --
-- his teeth sink into Richard's shoulder as he comes, and Richard groans, either in pain, pleasure, or frustration; Edward wants nothing more than to collapse now, but he can't just leave it there
I made him use that exact phrase in "Nocturnal." I am not sure what if anything that signifies.
One thing that I tried to get across in this sex scene and don't think I succeeded in doing was the suggestion that what enables Edward to inflict pain is that he's angry at Richard for asking him to do so. I'm not sure that's ever very clear, but of course I can't really come right out and say it in the narrative, either. Possibly it shows through at the moment where Edward hauls off and hits him.
-- he pins Richard's arms down, because, God, if he wants it to hurt -- Richard twists beneath him, nearly in agony, arching his hips against Edward's until finally with a sharp cry he spends himself across Edward's thighs -- and then it's over and Edward lets his head fall onto Richard's chest, listening to his heartbeat slowly returning to normal, and Richard strokes his hair with disquieting gentleness.
That is the end of the sentence of which I told you to mark the start.
I also feel that the hair-stroking is pretty effectively unsettling.
The stillness seems less like peace than like death -- except that death presumably brings oblivion. Edward is all too conscious of what he's done; he has never been one to torment himself unduly for loving other men, but other men are not Richard.
I don't write many people who are tortured about being queer -- really the only one who is bothered by it is Henry in some universes -- but everyone is tortured about being attracted to Richard.
When Richard's hand stills on his back Edward rolls over, sitting up on the bed. Richard's color is beginning to return to normal, but his shoulders and chest are crossed with red welts; tomorrow, he will be terribly bruised -- but he has dozed off and his expression is content. Edward begins to feel that it is he and not Richard who will bear the marks of this encounter the longest.
I have an unfinished coda to this fic from Richard's POV where he's examining his bruises the next morning and thinking about how beautiful it makes him look.
He stands up, then, to gather his scattered clothes; he should leave, he knows, leave and never come back, but -- he puts on his shirt, and then returns to sit on the bed with his back towards Richard. The movement is enough to wake him,
I'm not sure why that wakes him up but Edward rolling off of him doesn't. Narrative convenience, I guess.
The fact that Edward's got his shirt on and Richard's still naked was meant to be vaguely symbolic, but symbolic of what I am not altogether certain.
and he trails a hand down Edward's back, and up again -- even now, he can't help but shiver at Richard's touch.
"You were right," Edward says. "I don't know what's good for me."
The words should be sharp, and cruel, but his voice comes out all wrong.
Edward's half-hearted attempt to lash out here is quite possibly the most painful thing in this fic, as far as I'm concerned.
He can feel Richard take his hand away, hear him stir on the bed -- he cannot bear to look him in the face, after that, but shame compels him to turn around. Richard sits with his arms wrapped around his knees, a strangely childlike and vulnerable posture, and his expression is distant, brittle.
I am pretty sure I took that from the opening paragraphs of "With No Less Terror than the Elements." Although there it happens before the sex.
"But you know that I'm not," he says, and once again Edward feels that clenching feeling in his heart -- not because he's wrong, but because he's right, and because it doesn't seem to make one damned bit of difference. He moves closer to Richard.
"I don't care if you are or not," he says softly, and he takes Richard's hand. There are scars on his wrist, two lines running in parallel, thin and faint but still visible. Edward runs his thumb gently over one of them, and Richard closes his eyes, inhaling sharply; he seems frozen in place, now.
I don't remember if that was supposed to parallel Richard's seductive hand-stroking earlier, so let's just say that it was. This is a very handporny fic, isn't it? I don't think I meant to get all the popular fandom kinks into it, especially since there's so much subaltern ickiness going on, and yet.
"Richard?" Edward says.
"You should go," Richard says, his voice cold and frail as broken shards of ice. "I'll only break you, too. It's like a contagion. Everything I touch -- " he draws his hand back from Edward's, and when he speaks next his voice is a terrible flat veneer over a deep chasm.
O HAI MIXED METAPHORS. This is probably the sentence I most wish I could revise. I mean, I obviously could, but I am also lazy.
"I am damaged, Edward.
I saw on TV Tropes a while ago that there is an infamous Hetalia fic in which one character says something very like this to another. I cringed. Fortunately for me the context seems to be very different (there is Healing Cock involved).
Do you see these?" He holds up his scarred wrists. "Attendants in lunatic asylums don't always take care with the restraints."
This detail is established in lareinenoire's "The readiness is all," where it's noticed by Sherlock Holmes. While in an opium den. Holmes, of course, instantly grasps the significance, because that is how he rolls.
And suddenly so many things become clear.
I wish I had not put that sentence in there, since I feel like it signals nothing so much as "THIS PARAGRAPH IS REALLY RUSHED."
Edward remembers coming home from Eton at Christmas ten years ago, the keen, anxious disappointment when Richard was nowhere to be seen -- and his father telling him that Richard had suffered a nervous collapse and had gone off to Switzerland for treatment. (Henry Lancaster had murmured dourly that "He's lost his head over that fucking poof Vere, that's what's wrong with him.")
Henry is a dick. This is where I repeat, also, my comment from the "Nocturnal" commentary about the difficulty of comprehensible homophobic slurs for the late 19th century (unless you count "damned posing somdomite" [sic]).
"I know, Richard -- " he says, moving closer. " -- I mean, I didn't, but -- well. 'Thou hast not half that power to do me harm as I have to be hurt.'"
And we are back to Othello. Emilia is a much more appropriate match for Edward than Iago, I have to say.
Richard looks up at him, surprised. "You don't even like Shakespeare," he says.
Edward smiles. "No, I don't."
I worried a lot over whether this ending was too sappy given that the rest of the fic is terribly bleak. speak_me_fair assured me that it is okay, so I will trust her judgment.
Okay, those are the two I did for the meme! If by some chance anyone wants commentary on one of my other fics, there's a list here. It may take a while, but I will do it eventually, because talking about my own writing is fun.