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homosexuals) wrote2023-12-19 08:36 pm
homosexuals) wrote2023-12-19 08:36 pm[OPEN POST]
open for prompts, plotting, overflow! ♥
homosexuals) wrote2023-12-19 08:36 pm
regency era au, cw: nsfw eventually, anthony being a brat
not entirely the truth, but no one truly expects upstanding manners from the man of the house, the capital R rake, anthony bridgerton, seemingly evermore eligible bachelor of the bridgerton estate. perhaps it was more the sight of daph and hawk dancing around each other, filling up her dance card β the scandal, really. it's just a bit tasteless. that they make such a fetching pair when backdropped against each other, as if their marriage portrait existed before they ever bothered with introductions, is really βΒ it's just fine, by anthony. he couldn't care less. in fact, he decides he won't think about it at all, not even once more tonight, once he reaches the bottom of his whiskey glass.
in the room that will forever be his father's study, no matter how many years sit between edmund's death and anthony's claimed ownership of the title viscount, he takes a seat. he pours a drink. the study has a spectacular view of the backyard, so to speak, where fireworks illuminate the night sky over the ocean, and anthony enjoys exactly none of it, ripping out his cravat and unbuttoning his vest, draping himself almost drunkenly at the window, feeling especially sorry for himself. why? it doesn't make any sense. anthony does not want a partner, does not especially want children, does not imagine he'll live long enough for any of his wants in life to matter much anyway. he has a good few years until he's the age his father was when he died, and there's no divisible fraction of anthony that imagines he'll live any amount of time longer than the greatest man who ever lived. life is not that unfair, although it is unfair by a bit, and in a drunken stupor he decides he should balance the accounts of their household. and when he's too tipsy for that, he just takes out coins and counts to fifty, stacking them in little piles of ten, and then knocking them all down like a toddler with building blocks. christ. hawk and daphne would have a cute baby. his nephew. jesus christ.
maybe he should read something. or do anything that would be otherwise useful instead of sitting in his father's office and pouting. eventually when the door to the study opens, he almost isn't surprised to see hawk at all, if only because he sees him there every time he shuts his eyes, his rakish smile, his perfect hair, the long, biteable curve of his throat. anthony offers him a smile that succeeds only in confirming how bitter he is. )
You know, the title goes to the first born son, ( a lofty gesture to himself. ) and not the first born daughter, yes? If you wanted so badly, you would have been better served becoming my wife, than Daph's husband.
( he snorts. unkindly. pathetically. he can't let himself believe it to be a lovematch. )
I would love to see you prostrate before me for a change.
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it's not about the money. it's about surviving the only way he knows how - it's about keeping the few skeletons locked in a gilded closet and buried where polite society doesn't know how to get their hands dirty digging for it.
the bridgertons have been nothing but hospitable, kind and inviting the same way smith had been. leonard too, though he'd had the sense not to let high cheekbones and dark hair cloud his judgment in america. europe had a certain freedom to it those first few glorious months, letting himself fully enjoy the variety of what proper men did to bond - hunting, boxing, betting - and when no one was looking, fucking. not the kind that happened in brothels with painted faces and puffed up pillows, instead the rough terrain of the outdoors and the sound of crinkled leather from fine riding boots, the smell of blood and sweat and the pounding of feet and fists underneath bleachers in stolen moments. invigorating - enough to make hawk think twice about his own rules when it came to one-and-done. to let himself get close and charm a viscount with pretty chestnut hair and eyes richer than the brandy they shared at the gentleman's club for hours more nights than not.
two birds with one stone then - daphne needs a husband, he needs a wife. the sour twist of anthony's expression is one he tries to avoid most of the night, but when the fireworks have tapered off and hawk has pressed his lips to the back of daphne's hand with the promise that he'll come to call in two days time...he thinks he knows where he might find the eldest bridgerton instead. the solid doors close with a heavy thunk, and hawk twists the lock preemptively knowing this won't be a short interlude. there's a wry twist of his lips, icy blue glittering as he takes in precisely how rakish the boy looks in his drunken sulking, no less delectable for it.]
Lucky for me, the title's not what I'm after. Besides, white isn't really my colour.
[his steps are slow, measured. his hips carry him forward with the elegance of a predator narrowing in on its prey, bracing both hands at the edge of his father's - now anthony's - finely carved desk.]
You've yet to best me and earn that, Viscount.
Now, don't pout. There's so much we need to discuss.
[the way his gaze drops down to the plush pink of anthony's lips should indicate it has absolutely nothing to do with his sister, and frankly not much actual talking, either.]
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instead, his own smile, sour as it is, stays in place. he blinks at hawk, several times before folding his hands in front of him. does he think it'll be easy? does he think anthony will forgive him?
( more to the point: does anthony believe himself capable of rejecting him? ) )
Best you. ( he echoes after him, nodding to himself like the motion could fan out the fire in him. angry, jealous, and longing, always longing. he rises up to meet hawk, mirroring his stance. palms flat on the desk, shoulders hunched in, meeting him halfway. it irritates him that it doesn't feel as much like a threat as when hawk does it βΒ moreover, it feels more an acquiescence, an admittance of hawk's power over him, the ladies in court following the fashions in france. ) Fine. Let us fight here and now, then, and prove the better man once and for all.
( he peels back, rolling up the linen of his white shirt sleeves, and he does think he's going to go through with it βΒ here in the sanctity of his father's study, in the place anthony used to drape himself at the windowsill while observing his father balance the checkbooks, count the money, plot and plan his next children out loud and with a particular fondness only a proud father could muster. he was always a scandal in the gossip columns, daring to hold his son on his hip, in the public eye. daniel for a boy, anthony remembers. daphne if she's a girl.
with a kind of brutishness that surprises even anthony, he imagines hawk's face under his fist, what the cracking cartilage would feel like, what blood from his nose might taste like in anthony's mouth. he realizes none of it will make him feel better β but that isn't especially new for him, and he knows all the better ways at serving his body, if his heart has no sway. ultimately, he only rolls up one sleeve, and feels predictably petulant in changing his focus to sinking his fingers into hawk's knotted cravat and yanking him the rest of the way forward, leaning in to meet him with an angry clash of their mouths, before he can see the look in hawk's eyes that will inevitably say called it. )
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that's not something he can offer either. everything stays in neat compartments locked under strict key like the finely carved wooden drawers anthony faces from his side right now. that much hawk had assumed to be clear - nevermind the afternoons spent lazily under the sun with a full spread of the finest cooking from the bridgerton estate spread out like a feast for a king, the stolen moments in his sacred place on the grounds while suitors desperately wondered why the viscount wasn't available for a dance. chalk it up to the wild abandon and freedom afforded by summer's warmth, an escape from the usual day to day and a haven for the more lascivious, spoiled indulgences proper society would deem scandal-worthy.
his chin tips up as anthony pushes into a position meant to mimic his own, eyes still glimmering with the sort of amusement and appeasement he's seen the eldest son offer to his younger siblings in the halls of their esteemed home when they're behaving with utmost whimsy and delusion. hawk could have him on his back in an instant - the gallant war hero with a mean right hook who'd probably have good odds if he opted to hop into the ring for more than just keeping his body fit after tucking in to the rich suppers and pudding his standing has offered him here in europe. but it's sweet he looks angry enough to try - drawing hawk's gaze to the reveal of of that pretty skin as if a lady flashing her ankle to a man starving of thirst out in the prim and proper wilderness of fine society.
he has half a mind to reach for it, to press his lips and seal them in a kiss around the pulsepoint on his wrist, but he thinks he might well and truly earn a sock in the face if he tries.
and when his eyes draw back to meet the rich, fiery brown and imagine what his mind is roiling under given the fury stretched across the handsome curvature of his face, hawk almost wishes for a moment he would give him what he's surely earned several times over in the form of a fist.
instead, he's bestowed with a kiss, allowing himself be yanked in a brief moment of submission even as he growls against it and shifts to grip a possessive palm around the nape of his neck, teeth clacking as he deepens it and lets his tongue lick hot inside the velvet warmth of his mouth.]
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after all βΒ wouldn't one expect the viscount to have a modicum of self-respect, or one iota of shame to protect the soft, pulpy bits of his heart from being pummeled? he wouldn't have hawk's tongue in his mouth if this was anything more than physical. that has to be true. good society and the silent oaths of men like them demand it to be so β you can mess around and have your boyish fun and go to the war and fuck to your heart's content, but when all is said and all is done, you find a suitable woman and you make babies and then you die, fat and gray and full of memories instead of regrets. maybe this is a wake up call, and maybe anthony should get serious as hawk has, and maybe this is a procession for them, a funeral to lay whatever foolhardy butterflies go battering around in anthony's heart whenever hawk smiles to rest, once and for all. it should be simple. buried in the ground underneath a headstone that reads always destined to end. he has no idea why it isn't.
or maybe he does, and he just doesn't want to admit it. this is goodbye, maybe, but then it isn't βΒ because daphne is his sister and hawk will be his brother-in-law, and there will be children anthony calls niece and nephew and he'll have to be a part of it, all of it. will arrange daphne's dowry, will welcome hawk into family business, will have a portrait commissioned of the two of them, the happy couple, and pretend like he doesn't have the memory of hawk's cock shoved in the back of his throat seared like wood burning into his mind. he pants against his mouth, finding the jump between anger and desperation more like a step, hands going from mean and choking to fisting through his hair, demanding, untamed, the meeting point between wanting and needing. )
Don't make me beg. ( he says, although he knows he will, shoving hawk away with a sudden push that's more like a twitch than a conscious effort. ) I loathe you. ( he says, although he doesn't mean it, and turns quickly away from him before hawk can call his bluff. the quick, jerky movements he makes aren't the motions of a man in the throes of hatred β they're of a man who is trying fiercely to get out of his clothes, one stubborn button at a time, to have the opportunity to lay his flushed skin on hawk's.
one last time, he thinks, and that's a lie, too. the portrait of his father looks down on him, endlessly disappointed. )
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hawk's no fool. men like them don't get the things they crave, no matter how much power or good breeding they have behind their names. the fact that his father and mother made a beautiful family out of a true love match - that's more priceless than the diamond daphne's been named, a rare gem that is hardly repeated even in the finest of society from what he's witnessed. certainly not in his household, maybe not even in the smith's - though they'd grown to imitate it over time. but he remembers watching the man stay out hours later than even he in taverns and gentleman's clubs, turning down streets that would lead him the opposite direction of his wife and children. it was the only thing that ever made him question whether one could reconcile being a good man with being faithful and dutiful to one's family - and maybe that more than his own father's hatred is what he's left with carved out and hollow in his chest, filled as of late only by a certain honeyed brown gaze and thick chestnut curls between his fingertips across stolen moments.
this isn't a goodbye in hawk's estimation. at least, that's very much not his intention, rather, to watch anthony storm at him and pout and put on an extremely good approximation of a man who is furious even though propriety deems he celebrate the match and approve it. this is meant to be hawk's way of telling him he doesn't want to give up on this thing between them - not love, not the complicated feeling that burns within him when he has watched anthony asleep and boyish in his bed before dressing himself and using the inkly black, starry midnights to cloak his departures. it's an as of yet undefined sort of thing - for the sex, of course, but the rest?
his guess is good as anthony's.
there's an amused groan against those pretty lips, created as if they were meant to be nipped and bitten to a flush as rosy as the pink peonies they'd passed by earlier at lunch. the grip on him just feels hungry - as desperate as hawk feels to impart upon him that this is where the real passion will always lie for him. not the proper, polite consummation he'll no doubt have with daphne. not the obligatory fleeting kisses and a few lazy thrusts. it's this rawness - the way his own heart thunders in his chest as anthony shoves him away and for a moment hawk believes he will actually deliver with a nasty hook to the face.
but he won't let anthony turn, not because he wishes to shame him any further than his own feelings seem to be doing for him, but to cup his face in a motion that would better be suited for his sister, unable to help himself as he looks at the exquisitely sharp lines of his strong profile, thumb brushing against his immaculately carved jawline.]
The way you look - the way you feel has already implored of me to take this. Beg only if you like.
[of course he won't. maybe. hawk only chuckles at the part where he's loathed for who he is - and that won't be the first nor probably the last time. instead his fingers take over where anthony's stutter, pulling off the cravat and resisting the temptation to rip his collar open in a clicking splatter of buttons bouncing across fine parquet wood. instead he makes quick work while anthony busies himself with his vest, taking a minute to nose forward and bury his face against the juncture of his neck and shoulder, inhaling at the pulse and letting out a near wounded noise as his lips fix around the spot and his tongue laves at the pronounced tendons with sheer want.]