Castles in the Sky

Horizon

Warning: Some mature content...and the beginning of an mpreg arc 🔞

~~

By the time first snowdrops heralded nature's hopeful horizon between winter and spring, sprouting from bulb through frozen, solid black earth to bloom beneath the tears of melting icicles, housekeeper Mai had learnt the hard way to knock and wait before entering royal bed chambers.

First happening upon the King with his face dipping deep between the Queen's thighs at supper time. Next, a bathtub scene, tiles soaked slippy with sloshing water as gasps of "Harder alpha, yesss!" scribed themselves in panted breaths of condensation across steamy air. And finally, the palace employee abandoning a pile of freshly folded bed linen to the dusty floors, as she turned on her sensible heel to run with hands over eyes, after stumbling into the pair mid-fuck, feral and frenzied upon the King's creaking desk, Ciel's toes curling with ankles wrapped about his husband's strong, flushed neck.

It had been a month of much mutual bodily obsession. A proper, belated, physical consummation of marriage vows from icy cold to scorching hot - enough to make even the official parchment certificate of ceremony itself blush away in its guarded drawer.

Mew had unlocked his wife's bliss in being kissed. Cherished, in lusciously languid, eye-fluttering, sensuous tasting. Lips bitten to blood in crashes of passion. And kissed behind below as he trembled to orgasm upon the alpha's tongue.

Whilst for the omega, it was the dawning realisation that alongside raw sex every which way, above all else what his husband loved was to touch his tummy. Stroke it, squish it, pet it, pinch it or lick it - anything at all, it was his greatest soother.

And the younger wasn't so naive as to not understand the reasons why. Just as he faced the fact that when they made love, he wanted Mew's knot.

So it was that one clear-skied, crisp and frosty morning - after knocking thrice, loudly, and waiting extra seconds just to be extra, extra certain of safety - Mai entered the Queen's chamber to find him sat cross-legged on the bathroom floor, staring at a brass jug.

His reflection peered back from the polished surface, yet glassy eyes didn't see. They were far away, looking inwards and backwards, to a Ciel - almost one year ago...

Inhaling, exhaling deeply, then unfurling from foetal hug to go about his own very private, midnight ritual - filling jugs with water and kneeling to clean himself out as best he could - ridding his channel of Mew's dripping semen. He didn't want to bear that man's child any more than the King himself wished to see his Queen's belly swell.

Heart smarting, bee stung in present day, by memory's walk down country lanes of his loneliest diversion routes of treason.

It...pained.

"Do you want to be a mother?", Gulf spoke to the waiting ear at last, head still fixed straight ahead.

Mai lowering herself to join him on the bathroom tiles, considering her answer before offering:

"Perhaps I did once. But my days have belonged to the crown since I was fourteen. Half a lifetime in this palace - such dreams have long since withered"

"Can you really let go?"

"Housekeepers do not marry, my Queen. We do not create a family but serve one instead. It's not a suggestion of 'can' but 'must'. Just as, for you, it works in quite the opposite sense..."

"So either way, our bodies are not our own. Duty bound", bitter as abandoned breakfast tray's ruby grapefruit's afterbite.

And when the servant confidante glanced gaze leftways at Gulf, she could see, clearly defined, the young boy still in him. No match to his 21 years in that moment of open-hearted vulnerability.