Reddie Smut

Janneman

Platform- Ao3

Author- eddiefuckinkaspbrak

Words- 13039

Summary- (n.) (phr.) lit. “soul of me”; gender neutral word for sweetheart or darling.

(or a prince Richie, servant Eddie secret love au)

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Amongst all the servants in the palace, Eddie was what they considered a ‘floater’, a jack of all trades kind of boy. There was no real job that he possessed and because of that, if he was asked to carry out a job, Eddie had no reason to decline. He was too scared to decline, because this job was all he had. He had no home, no family outside of the other servants that he worked alongside. His father passed away when he was four years old, too young for him to remember anything about him. Then, when he was thirteen, his mother passed away from Tuberculosis, leaving him alone with no family and no way of surviving.

His mother, Sonia, had been somewhat of a health freak, keeping Eddie sheltered for his whole life. Therefore, when he was left to fend for himself, he had very little life skills of his own making him invaluable to employers in the village.

It was a few weeks after his fourteenth birthday, that he landed his job at the palace, thanks to a very kind woman named Elfrida Marsh. She had approached him in the streets, shivering in the cold and had offered him a place to stay for the night. She’d taken him to her house, a fancy top end house on the outskirts of the palace, where she had given him a warm bath and some clean clothes as well as warm food to heat him up before allowing him to sleep in one of the spare beds. It had been so long since Eddie had slept somewhere so comfortable, that he had fallen asleep right away.

When he had woken up the following morning, Elfrida introduced him to her daughter, Beverly, a young girl about the same age as him with fiery red hair and a wide smile. She told Eddie that she was a member of the royal court, and if he wished, she could acquire him a job in the kitchens.

Eddie had agreed without hesitation and before long he was situated in the palace kitchens, scrubbing the pots, pans, dishes and cups clean as they were brought in all throughout the day. The days were long and tiring, but at the end Eddie was giving a small wage and a bed to sleep in. He was off the street, got three meals a day and earned some money for his hard work.

Maybe one day, he would have enough to leave and make a life for himself, but right then he was content.

As the years passed and he got older, his skills improved and he was moved from the kitchens and into the stables, and then from the stables back into the palace but this time to help the clearers reach the small nooks and crannies. He was smaller than the average eighteen year old and they used that to his advantage. The one thing that didn’t change however, was his friendship with Lady Beverly and her mother, who he was still so eternally grateful for having gotten him this job in the first place.

It was Lady Beverly, who introduced him to Richie. Richard. The crown prince.

Eddie had managed to get through almost six years without ever meeting the royal family face to face and he found great pride in those statistics. He was never sure how he would react if he were to bump into one of them when he was cleaning, clothes and face all dirty. It wasn’t an image that he expected the King, Queen or Prince would want to have to see first thing in the morning. However, it seemed that Beverly had other ideas.

It had been a morning that Eddie had spent weeding out one of the gardens. His hands were covered in drying dirt, some sticking into his nail beds. His hair was still wet from the rain that had fallen earlier that morning and his clothes weren’t in the best condition. He had entered through the servants door, intending on cleaning himself up before taking on his next job of the day when Beverly’s voice called out to him.