The Red Room

Words: 1,165
Warnings: Smut.
Title: The Hat Stays On
Summary: Here – for unconventionalcourtship.
Rating: DW / LJ (18+)
Pairings: Joshua / L'Arachel (/ Ephraim)
Fandom: Fire Emblem – The Sacred Stones
Characters: Joshua, L'Arachel

A / N: The premise of Unconventional Courtship, as noted here, is to write a pairing using the back cover of a dime store romance novel (e.g. Mills & Boon, Harlequin, Silhouette, etc.) as a basis. (Again, one supposes that Sumia might read a story like this in Awakening.) Apologies to Ephraim for turning him into a plot device.

* * * *

Ephraim had his good points. He had dozens of them, in fact, and the other heroes – especially Eirika, his sister – had never hesitated to list them for L'Arachel. That had been the reason she had consented to the arrangement of a marriage to him – a marriage between their kingdoms of Renais and Rausten, in effect. The marriage had not yet happened, since there had been too many tasks requiring their attention (i.e. the reconstruction of the entire continent), but ... there had been certain expectations, at least in the mind of L'Arachel and those had, unfortunately, not been filled.

To put it politely, she had expected her husband-to-be to at least take a slight interest in her. He had always been kind to her, and he had always treated her respectfully, but ... that had been about it. No lingering glances, no brushing of his fingertips against hers, nothing like that, and, frankly, she expected more from a husband-to-be who had fought by her side, had saved her and been saved by her. Granted, she did give him the benefit of the doubt, since he put the interests of both Renais and the continent ahead of ... everything else, but both her carnality and her patience had their limits.

Those limits had been passed, and she intended to make that clear to him. As good fortune had it, they had both made plans to attend a conference of nations in Carcino, there to discuss the progress of the reconstruction, but that only occupied their days. Their nights, they had open, and she made certain to clear her schedule for the first of them, all the better to corner him, raise a key question about the progress of their relationship, and, if her plan bore fruit, to keep him up late into the night – in more than one sense – showing him at least one of the key perks of a potential marriage to her.

And so she stood inside his chambers – at least, she thought them to be his chambers. Her sense of justice might have been as keen as a razor, but her sense of direction occasionally managed to be as keen as a shillelagh. That being said, she trusted it, and she took a deep breath. As she had half-expected, he seemed to be in his bath, on the other side of a door from her, and he did not seem to be aware of her presence ... yet. Because he was going to be aware. She was going to be impossible to ignore. Appearing before a gentleman in the nude tended to have a rather immediate effect.

She blushed. Not nude, per se. She had been clad in her raiment before arriving – no sense arousing suspicion, among other things. Only after closing and locking the door had she shed everything but the mantle of a Valkyrie. Thus, she intended to be fully clad at first glance, but all she had to do was make one quick gesture, and ... boom. Impossible to ignore. Despite that, she had to take a deep breath before pushing open the door. After all, no one had seen her in the nude since the day of her birth, and that did not count. (Except for that one time involving Rennac, but that had been a —)

Hmm. No one to be seen, but the bath had been filled up to the top, and steam rose from it – and not only that, but bubbles appeared on its surface. Ephraim must have submerged himself, then. She might have waited patiently, but patience had no role in her plan, so she cleared her throat loudly before stating, "Saint Latona implores us to have the will of the mountain, to stay our ground, but I will have you know that –" And he emerged from the water with more of a splash than she had expected. Not only that, but he seemed to have a sword in hand. ... Wait. A sword? But Ephraim did not —

Before she had a chance to protest, the assailant – such quickness – had her on her back, his blade to her throat. She barely had time to realize that he had tackled her to the floor, let alone that he had knocked the air from her lungs. A long second passed as they both absorbed the reality of their situation. He seemed to process that he had jumped at the Princess of Rausten, and she noticed that he ... did not seem to be Ephraim. At all. No, this person had long, red hair, and eyes to match, as well as a physique that seemed very ... naked. And her mantle had come undone, too.

"Joshua?" she asked, her voice sounding very high and squeaky in her ears. He blinked, apparently at a loss for words, but he at least moved his sword back from her throat. (Had he hidden it in the water? Had he heard her coming, thinking her a villain?) That did not change the fact that they had become rather intertwined. While being rather naked. And rather wet, thanks to his explosion from the bath. L'Arachel could feel her heart racing, as well as a dizzying warmth in the pit of her stomach. And it quickly became obvious to her that she was not the only one aroused by the situation.

"That's ... definitely my name, yeah," he answered. "I'd, uh –" He swallowed, smiling sheepishly. "I guess I'd better move, huh?" He set down his sword, then used the same hand to grab his all-too-familiar hat and put it on his head. And yet he did not seem in a hurry to move. Nor did she quite want him to. "I really think I ought to move." Still not moving, though. "Except, uh –" Not like the swordsman of Jehanna to be indecisive, and yet there he was, his face changing from a smile to what seemed to be the weighing of a very serious choice. And he was not the only one doing the weighing.

But L'Arachel had a gift for snap decisions, and she said, grasping him by the back of his neck, "Say nothing of this." She crushed his lips to hers, and he kissed her hungrily. Her heart pounded, and her toes curled, prompting her to add, a dizzy feeling rising up into her head, "The hat stays on, if you wish." He did not finish his nod before resuming the kiss, and she happily groaned into his mouth, thoughts of marriage and Ephraim – and scandal, too – disappearing quickly into the ether as she got what she had long been craving, though not from the person she had originally been expecting.

Later, after her first child came into the world with a full head of red hair, L'Arachel commented to Ephraim that she remembered her late father telling her of a great-aunt who had hair of the same color, and her husband decided not to question that.

END.