Fic: A Lady As Thou Art
Title:A Lady As Thou Art
Author:speak_me_fair
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Kate/Hotspur
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: This second tetralogy AU is set primarily during WWI and just before it. Terrible liberties are taken with real history in both directions :-) and probably horrible things to the characters as well...
Summary: Swear me, Kate, like a lady as thou art,
A good mouth-filling oath...
Notes: This AU is very much in progress, and I have no idea where it will end up. But if anyone has any ideas as to what other characters might be up to during this time, feel free to discuss it with me!
She tried to write to him, sometimes.
Dear Harry, she would start, and screw her face up in frustration, because when on earth had she ever called him that?
Love, she had cried out, in the August rain, feeling the heat of his body through his drenched shirt. Love, love, oh God, my love...
She had licked sweat and rain both from the beating hollow of his throat, and felt no shame, rubbed her wet hair dry on his jacket and laughed.
"Will you give me a son, Kate?"
"I'll give you a broken head, damn you!"
His own hair had still been dripping, one lock falling into his face and so close that it had left one drop on her nose.
"Over a son?"
"I'd need more practice to it before I promise you that!"
His wide, wide eyes, gold-brown in the dark afternoon storm light.
"God, you're perfect."
"Oh flattery - cheap, Harry!"
"Perfect to fit me."
Perfect to fit me...
They had not even been married then, and yet she had never counted the cost. Not because Harry was honourable, would do the right thing by her (hideous words that had nothing to do with her or him), but because they had known each other for a belonging from the first moment they met.
"I'm here to meet your brother?"
"I have two, which one would you prefer?"
"You, lady."
Lady, his lady-Kate, nine years old and her skirts caught up for freedom. His lady. "Lady-mine,", he said later, half-joking, while the others claimed and grasped and scrambled for a single dance, and Harry's thin face demanded she yield to none of them.
Ah, Lady, he said on the terrace, her ill-fated cigarette smouldering below them and his father's words clanging in their ears like a mad belfry on a Sunday morning. "Oh my Kate, my Kate..."
Her own words, years past, furious and fierce and utterly unlike her -
"Fuck your father!"
"Ah Christ, can I leave that to a better man?"
His laughter.
His lovely, bony, broken-nosed face. His hands on her body.
His hands, oh Christ, she missed his hands more than any words he had ever fumbled for, more than the intimacies that she had wept over, believing herself damned for the ecstacy they brought her.
His hands that were killing men and blocking out words from his own hurried scrawls to her, bitten nails and long, calloused fingers, and they had only to touch her, anywhere, her face, her arms, her hands, her ankle, dear God her thighs, her breasts - and she -
Licence my lover's roving hands... she thought, and laughed.
Dear Harry...
She stared at the words, crumpled the paper up once more, and began again.
"Oh you bloody bastard," she wrote, and the ink suddenly seemed to last all that much longer. "Harry, you rotten bugger, how do you think I'll find jam to send for your whole bloody battalion...."
Author:speak_me_fair
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Kate/Hotspur
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: This second tetralogy AU is set primarily during WWI and just before it. Terrible liberties are taken with real history in both directions :-) and probably horrible things to the characters as well...
Summary: Swear me, Kate, like a lady as thou art,
A good mouth-filling oath...
Notes: This AU is very much in progress, and I have no idea where it will end up. But if anyone has any ideas as to what other characters might be up to during this time, feel free to discuss it with me!
She tried to write to him, sometimes.
Dear Harry, she would start, and screw her face up in frustration, because when on earth had she ever called him that?
Love, she had cried out, in the August rain, feeling the heat of his body through his drenched shirt. Love, love, oh God, my love...
She had licked sweat and rain both from the beating hollow of his throat, and felt no shame, rubbed her wet hair dry on his jacket and laughed.
"Will you give me a son, Kate?"
"I'll give you a broken head, damn you!"
His own hair had still been dripping, one lock falling into his face and so close that it had left one drop on her nose.
"Over a son?"
"I'd need more practice to it before I promise you that!"
His wide, wide eyes, gold-brown in the dark afternoon storm light.
"God, you're perfect."
"Oh flattery - cheap, Harry!"
"Perfect to fit me."
Perfect to fit me...
They had not even been married then, and yet she had never counted the cost. Not because Harry was honourable, would do the right thing by her (hideous words that had nothing to do with her or him), but because they had known each other for a belonging from the first moment they met.
"I'm here to meet your brother?"
"I have two, which one would you prefer?"
"You, lady."
Lady, his lady-Kate, nine years old and her skirts caught up for freedom. His lady. "Lady-mine,", he said later, half-joking, while the others claimed and grasped and scrambled for a single dance, and Harry's thin face demanded she yield to none of them.
Ah, Lady, he said on the terrace, her ill-fated cigarette smouldering below them and his father's words clanging in their ears like a mad belfry on a Sunday morning. "Oh my Kate, my Kate..."
Her own words, years past, furious and fierce and utterly unlike her -
"Fuck your father!"
"Ah Christ, can I leave that to a better man?"
His laughter.
His lovely, bony, broken-nosed face. His hands on her body.
His hands, oh Christ, she missed his hands more than any words he had ever fumbled for, more than the intimacies that she had wept over, believing herself damned for the ecstacy they brought her.
His hands that were killing men and blocking out words from his own hurried scrawls to her, bitten nails and long, calloused fingers, and they had only to touch her, anywhere, her face, her arms, her hands, her ankle, dear God her thighs, her breasts - and she -
Licence my lover's roving hands... she thought, and laughed.
Dear Harry...
She stared at the words, crumpled the paper up once more, and began again.
"Oh you bloody bastard," she wrote, and the ink suddenly seemed to last all that much longer. "Harry, you rotten bugger, how do you think I'll find jam to send for your whole bloody battalion...."