❝a son for a son.❞

× syaf × | 23, she/her | writer, student | navigation! | requests are open! | buy me a coffee!

[george-fabian-weasley]

writer’s name: syaf

age: 20, she/her

fandoms i am in: harry potter | avatar | spiderverse | mcu | how to train your dragon

currently am: a university english student

current obsession: avatar (neteyam sully)

important links: masterlist | buy me a coffee

tags i always use: #syaf rambles #syaf answers |#fic rec! | #💌

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happy reading, everyone :)

[presentlydean]

online communities are so strange because people slip away so easily. you can be on here for years, folding people you've never met into the fabric of your daily life, and then they disappear, leaving only ghost posts scattered across tumblr behind. or their blog stays dormant, for weeks, months, years, until you're only still following them because you remember that they love sunflowers or they were kind to you when they didn't have to be or the last thing they posted was sad and raw and you still worry about them sometimes.

and sometimes they come back when you least expect it, years later, even, and there's this sudden rush of relief like there you are, there you are, even though you barely knew each other.

there's a strange kind of love to it. i don't know you and i want to hold your hand across miles and time zones and oceans. i can still see the imprint of you in this community you left. you don't think anyone will notice or care when you're gone, but we notice and we care and we wish you well.

i hope you're all okay out there. i hope the sun is shining on your face and you are breathing deeply. i miss you.

[goat-limbs]

Ruin That Boy

contents (nsfw): Benedict Bridgerton x fem!Reader, Benedict's POV, semi-established but secretive relationship, virgin!Reader (but with some experience gained already), talk of marriage, mild voyeurism, aphrodisiac, first time, mirror sex, love confessions.

synopsis: Benedict's relationship with you blooms in the confines of hushed rooms and away from everyone's eyes. When you ask him to take you to Granville’s salon, he's worried it is to broaden your palate and soon learns he's the only one there. Or: a lousy part two to Touched, but can be read as a separate piece.

word count: 5,9K

a/n: Thank you for the love, Bridgerton fandom ❤︎ Banner is by me, dividers by @pixopix and @uzmacchiato!

Thrill. Excitement so sudden and pleasurable it surprises the recipient, even when they have actively sought it out. It shudders a damp neck, licks warmth up the spine, soggs the backs one’s knees and leaves their bellies blissfully knotted. Elation. Exhilaration. Rapture. It’s everything Benedict lives for. It’s everything he looks for, wandering between parties, bottles, and legs until each blade of joy eventually dulls.

Then, a change finds him. One that doesn’t require him to reform anything about himself, because all the traits his mother lists under redeemable are openly and shamelessly admired. From secretive glances, through teasing about your improper extracurriculars, to outright begging your hands for mercy in a library—you become Benedict’s inexhaustible source of everything perfervid.

The only places he gets lost in now are your neck and knuckles and lips. The only thing he longs for is the deathgrip of your thighs on his ears when your body seizes and mouth forsakes cleverness in favour of sounds entirely unholy. The altar of your legs is the one Benedict prays at, as this is where he lays his offerings for the God who lives in the hedges.

He’s a faithful convert. You manage to sate the appetite he carries for things of lovely kind, like kissing, touching, partial undressing. And things of perverted kind in equal measure: your voice when you read out loud. Your fingers on the piano. Getting his collar fixed by your hands when nobody’s the wiser. A brush of thumb on his mouth.

Even though he knows you do not wander off either, it sheens him with cold sweat when you ask, “Will you take me? To Granville’s salon?”

He’s promised. Once, and twice, and more times than he can count after that. A place where freedom is the only law, where nobody asks questions beyond how do you want me? and where horizons stretch so vast the very notion of return goes thin. He knows refusing a kindred spirit would be wrong, and still the worry lingers. That you will see him plain. A lovesick fool already.

“Have I managed to bore you?” Benedict asks. He looks up from his shelter—his head is cradled on your lap. The library is so quiet he can hear the way your lips smack.

“No,” you say. Your fingers brush his cheek. “Never. But I wish to be with you with less… constraint.”

He seizes the hand and kisses your wrist. It would be a relief, he thinks, to stop living on thresholds. You have done everything else. You have made him shake and beg and bite down on silence. You have taught him the shape of your want with your mouth and your hands, and he has repaid it in kind, careful and patient, stopping only at the one thing that would make it final. The thing that would make you his in a way the world understands, and dangerous in a way the world punishes.

His mouth shifts to your palm. A slow lick across it, and then he draws two of your fingers between his lips and sucks. First gentle, then firmer, eyes never leaving your face. Devotion, in plain action. He lets you feel what he can do, what he means to do, and how well he can mind himself while doing it. Then, he releases you and asks, hoarse and honest, “Are you certain?”

You huff and cover his mouth, defiant. “How do you expect me to have a clear mind when this is what you chose to do?” He smiles under the gag. “But yes. I am certain. My mother leaves for the countryside this weekend, and I have already convinced her to let me be and spend time with Eloise. Opportunity like no other.”

“Saturday then,” Benedict says, your hand clasped in his. “You will need a disguise. A mask of some kind. And we’d have to arrive separately.”

“Oh? Would it hurt your carefully preserved reputation to be seen entering with a companion?”

“My darling,” Benedict says. “Of the two of us, I’m the blackguard. It would simply keep you safe from gossip. And—” He takes a strand of your hair between his fingers. “Would make it easier for you to see all the establishment has to offer. Had someone caught your eye, of course.” 

His voice stays light, but the hand in your hair gives him away. Benedict tempts fate—offers you freedom he wants for you and fears it in the same breath. Granville’s rooms are full of beautiful people whose sole purpose is to entertain, to be entertained, to make a want feel ordinary by answering it quickly. Someone will look at you there. Someone will try. He knows it. He hears it in his own pulse as soon as he says it, and his fingers tighten on the strand for half a second too long before he loosens them again. Better, he tells himself, to walk you through it with his hand at your back than to have you slip from him in a crush of bodies and candlelight. Better to be the one who sees, who decides, who can pull you away before anything becomes a story other people can tell.

You watch his mouth as he speaks, then his eyes, and the way only you can, forge scrutiny into tenderness. “Benedict,” you say. “I do not seek entertainment with another. I simply wish for a place where I do not have to whisper about how I want your hands on me.”

Benedict lets the relief come and go without giving it a face. He shifts on the chaise, rises only to resettle himself beside you, closer than manners would ever advise. His hands come together on his lap. He looks down at his knees as if they are suddenly of great interest.

“You know,” he says, voice kept painfully even, “there is a remedy society is very fond of prescribing for precisely this sort of… inconvenience.”

Your hand inches on your lap, nearer to where his fingers are laced. “Marriage.”

“Yes.” He swallows. The word tastes odd in his mouth, too large for his body and this quiet. “If we were married, you would not have to whisper about my hands. You could say it plainly and nobody would blink. They would call it dutiful.”

“I… know.” Your voice softens in candour. “But I am surprised you are the first one to mention it.”

A quiet huff of laughter leaves him, more genuine than he means. “Believe me, the rake is as surprised as you are.” His head tilts a fraction towards you, still watching your hands instead of your eyes, as if that is safer. “You must have thought of it, though.”

“I have. But—” You take his palm into a cradle of yours and set it on your lap. Your fingers begin to play with his, turning them, smoothing them, testing the shape of them the way you test words before you write. “Do not let my answer be misleading about my feelings towards you. I enjoy and cherish every moment with you, and I am certain that if our fates were bound together it would be an exquisite life. But if we marry now I will be expected to bear children and be a wife. And I wish to enjoy being a woman first. Does that make sense?”

Benedict’s throat tightens in a way he does not care to examine. He watches the hands. There’s a vow in the simplicity of it and, by rights, it should meet his every desire.

He thinks it does.

“It makes perfect sense,” he says, and it costs him something to say it without bargaining. He manages it anyway.

He turns his face and presses a kiss to your cheek, gentle and unshowy, then leans close enough to put the words where they belong, private. “I would give you anything you want, and nothing you do not want. I shall have a carriage arranged for you on Saturday, and meet you by the entrance.”

“Fantastic,” you say. “And thank you.”

On Saturday, Benedict is nervous. A juvenile, boyish thing takes up residence in his chest when he sits in his carriage and lets his eyes wander through its small window in hopes of spotting you. The city moves past in indifferent pieces: stone, iron, lamps, the wet gleam of a recent drizzle. He keeps smoothing a crease that does not exist on his glove. Keeps checking the distance as if a man can hurry a horse by thinking at it hard enough.

Then he sees you.

A figure stands by the entrance with the posture of someone attempting to look idle and failing. A full-face Venetian mask turns the head into porcelain. The mouth is painted into a calm that does not belong to you. You raise a handkerchief and give him a theatrical little wave, as if you are greeting him from a stage and not a doorstep that could undo you.

Benedict gets out before the footman can decide whether to assist. He crosses the pavement and you turn your back to him as though this is the most natural thing in the world—allowing a gentleman his proper approach.

He comes close and hums into the edge of your ear, low. “Was it hard to sneak out?”

“No,” you say. “Only because my lady’s maid is an exceptionally good egg. She believes in my best traits.”

“Naïve,” Benedict replies, and reaches for your hand. He sets it on his forearm. “Ready for a dive?”

Your answer is an audible haul of breath. It draws his eyes to the line of your throat and the careful stillness of your shoulders. Then you nod. Benedict laughs, quick and helpless, and it is a good sound on him. It makes the whole thing feel possible.

At the door, a man in livery intercepts you with the ease of someone accustomed to discretion. Not a footman. Not quite a servant, either—something between guardian and gate. “Mr Bridgerton,” the man says, and his gaze flicks once, politely, to the masked face beside Benedict. “A courtesy of the house.”

He places two bonbons on Benedict’s open palm. They sit there, glossy and innocent, wrapped in thin paper, too pretty to be trusted.

Benedict lifts his brows, knowing. “And what, precisely, is the courtesy?”

The man’s mouth twitches, as if he has said this a hundred times and still enjoys it. “A sweet,” he answers. “For those who prefer their courage taken by the mouth.”

Benedict feels your attention sharpen at his side. He keeps his face composed. His hand turns slightly so you can see the pair of them properly. Then, he nudges you with his elbow. “Keep?”

You let out a small, scornful sound. “Poppycock.”

Benedict’s smile turns. “If it is, there is no threat, is there?” His eyes dip to your hand on his arm, then back to the mask. “Or are your feet getting cold?”

You go motionless for a beat. Beneath the porcelain, your eyes deliver scrutiny with surgical neatness. “Keep,” you say at last. With a smile Benedict tries his damndest to not turn smug, he closes his fingers over the bonbons, and pockets them.

“Brave girl,” he hums, proud.

To him, walking past the threshold is crossing the border between the world that allows and the world that does not. Here, everything is permitted, and that is precisely the peril. It takes more courage, more forbearance, to be handed choice in both palms and still steer oneself true than it does to live in the safer places where rules are printed in neat little pamphlets and obedience is mistaken for virtue.

The place is what it always is. Warm lamplight that flatters skin; laughter threaded with music; bodies arranged with an ease that would make a ballroom choke. Paintings and half-finished sketches sit alongside silk and spilled drink, as if art and appetite are the same kind of work. Benedict has seen it often enough to be blasé, and yet a new thrill climbs him today, born entirely of you.

Your gaze widens beneath the mask. Little gasps escape you—small, involuntary, betrayed into the air. More than once you stop short, fingers tightening on his sleeve when something catches your eye, and Benedict has to check his own stride so he does not drag you forward like an impatient guide.

He keeps you in the lee of his body as you move, steering you with light pressure at the elbow, watching your eyes more than the rooms whose ajar doors tempt and promise and dare.

The first door shows a wrist dressed in ribbon, the bow tied with the same neatness one reserves for gifts meant to be kept. The knot is firm, pretty, brazenly intentful. The person bound is smiling as if the constraint has unhooked something in them. Someone else bends to the inside of that wrist and kisses the pulse there with slow care, mouth lingering. Your head tilts, curious. Benedict feels his shoulders ease, one careful notch at a time.

Another door, further down, holds three figures in candlelight. One seated, two standing close, the arrangement practiced enough to look effortless. A hand covers the seated one’s mouth because it is wanted there, palm sealing in sound the way silk seals in heat. It turns muffled breath into a private thing, where it’s not fear being stifled, but pleasure being hoarded. You inhale sharply, and Benedict watches the way your gloved fingers curl, then uncurl, as if you are trying not to touch the air.

He murmurs close to you, “We can leave.”

You keep looking ahead, steady. A minute shake of head is your answer.

A third door gives onto a bed and a mirror. The room looks empty at first glance, and yet it is already occupied; the glass catches you both in the corridor light and holds you there, two figures caught before you have even crossed the threshold. Your masked face turns, your hand tightens on his sleeve, and Benedict watches the decision arrive in you with a steadiness that makes his mouth go dry. He understands, all at once, what you are asking for.

“This one?” he asks.

“Yes,” you say. “But with doors closed.”

Benedict nods, and opens the door wider for you to step in.

Then, the clamour of voices and clinking glasses softens to a hum beyond the wood. He watches you step into the middle of the chamber and reach up to untie the ribbons of your mask. It comes away, revealing a face far more beautiful than any painted porcelain. In the candlelight, Benedict catches the glint of your eyes—bright, ferocious—and his own chest tightens, as if it’s him visiting for the first time.

“And what of your poppycock, hm?” you ask, setting the mask on a table.

His mouth quirks. He takes a step closer, enough that your perfume cuts through the wax-and-candle air. “Poppycock has its uses,” he says. “Granville likes a flourish. Those sweets are part of it.” His hand lifts. Hovers near your hair, and waits. “May I?”

At your assent he finds the first pin and draws it free, then another. Your hair loosens in heavy fall, arrangement giving way to something more tameless. He stands there with a breath held and his face composed by force of habit. Leans in to cover it with a mutter of lips against your neck.

“I have taken one before,” he says. “It does not steal a person’s wits. It only makes the body louder. A warmth under the ribs, a quickening. Touch lands harder. Kisses linger. Everything you already want becomes difficult to ignore.” His mouth shifts, just beneath your ear. “It takes little time. A quarter of an hour, give or take. You will know when it begins.”

He draws back enough to look at you, bare-faced, eyes still bright. “We take them only if you wish it. We stop the moment you ask. You may say it plain. You may say it once. I will hear it.” His thumb ghosts your jaw, brief. “And if you decide you would rather keep your poppycock and leave, I shall walk you out as though nothing happened at all.”

You nod once. Stifle a girlish giggle that might as well be the death of him, and begin a slow stroll. Circling him, as if he were the prey here.

Despite all the consent he needs being handed on a silver platter, Benedict still finds it in himself to seek verbal confirmation. “I am asking for the last time—are you certain?”

“Do you ask your courtesans this?”

“I am not in possession of any courtesans,” he huffs, catching your waist, exasperated with the dance. “Regardless, they do not need to guard their virtue. But I feel that I ought to guard yours.”

“Sweet boy,” you coo, ruining him a little with it. An infuriatingly patronising palm is placed on his cheek, and thankfully you have enough mercy to notice his furrowed brow. “I appreciate the sentiment, Benedict, but I’ve already bled on your fingers—I do not think there is much virtue left to salvage. Let us not be fickle and pretend a fabricated concept of feminine virtue can be vanquished only by something as blunt as a cock.” His eyes widen and the cuss and cheeks fill with blood. “You’ve torn my virtue apart with your hands,” you whisper into his mouth. “You ate it and kissed it and I am grateful for it.”

“Your beautiful tongue makes the foulest things sound hallowed,” Benedict says, rapt. He reaches into his pocket, produces the bonbons onto an open palm. “Here,” he says; you take one. The other he poises at your lips, and rattles, “Let us succumb together then.”

“Sante,” you say, pushing the ball of lust past his mouth and opening yours in the same breath.

A sweet, wicked ritual. You both accept the communion from the God of the wild parts of a person. Assent one can hold between their fingers. It leaves your cupid’s bow powdered with sugar, and Benedict licks it off, eager as a boy who’s been promised he’ll be allowed to run and get mud on his knees past the afternoon tea.

He’s about to kiss you. Rip the layers off you, when you put firm hands on his chest, and command him, “Undress.”

“And you?” he asks, grin crooked.

“I will watch. Then—” You ease yourself off him and take the most inconspicuous stroll towards the bed where you sit, politely, and entirely unfit for the scene. “Then you can undress me.”

“Wilful beast,” Benedict murmurs, fond enough that it comes out rough.

He obeys. Coat first, shrugged off and dropped where it lands. Waistcoat next, the buttons a small battle his fingers win too fast. He loosens the cravat and pulls it free, then the shirt, tugged up and over his head. All the while your eyes stay on him with a steadiness that makes him feel watched in a way no room at Granville’s ever managed. When he hooks his thumbs into the waistband and works his breeches down, the heat in him has nowhere to hide; he steps out of them, bare except for stockings, then strips those too, until there is nothing left to perform decency with.

He is shamelessly hard. Feels the weight between his legs as laden and embarrassingly eager when it kicks against his stomach.

That is when your eyes begin to travel. They drag, corporeally, and Benedict feels it like hands. His stomach tightens on instinct. He draws a breath and makes his chest broader, the old, ridiculous vanity rising to the surface. The more he tries to look like a man worth looking at, the wider your smile grows.

“You think it some kind of an assessment?” you ask, amused.

“Is it not?” Benedict says, and crosses to you. He offers his hands, palms up, and helps you to your feet. Positions you facing the mirror and settles behind you.

In the reflection he sees you shake your head. “No,” you say, eyes on the glass. On him, precisely. “Simply admiring my man.”

He hides his face in your hair at that, bashful and coy like he never is. Ahead of him is a task Benedict’s mind insists on making uncomfortably specific. His fingers go first to the small practical knots and hooks at your back that hold a woman together in public. He works them loose one by one. The gown slackens, the fabric giving up its shape with a faint sigh, and when he draws it down from your shoulders he catches the first glimpse of what has been pressed and held all evening: the fine creases in the top of your chemise where the bodice has hugged you. He gathers the gown at your waist and holds it up for you to step free of it, careful not to let it snag. Once you are out, he throws it over the nearest chair in a loose heap and turns back to the mirror.

You stand there, only looking. “That’s more naked than you’ve ever been with me,” Benedict says.

“In a way,” you tell him. “In a way you’ve seen all there is to me already.”

“That I will never believe,” Benedict says, and smooths his hands over your back.

Your face grows stern with each reveal, serious in the mirror, as if this is an examination you mean to pass on your own terms. The bonbon’s warmth begins to show itself too, not in theatrics but in small betrayals: your lids lowering, the line of your throat lengthening as you tip your head back and give him access without asking. Benedict leans in and breathes you in where your neck meets shoulder, and the scent of you hits him harder than it has any right to. Your hand finds his wrist and guides it, firm. The pressure of your fingers says closer, more, here.

He slides his hands to the drawstring of your short stays, finds the tie and loosens it slowly. The stays relax their hold. He’s grateful to Newton for putting a moniker to the force he has to thank: gravity. It agrees with you, and relentlessly. Makes a woman into a marvel he’ll get to weight in his own palm.

“So gorgeous she has every right to be wilful,” he murmurs.

The last thing to unlace is the chemise. It’s but a ribbon to pull on your sternum to make you almost bare. He opens it on your shoulders like one would a fig when nobody’s watching, and notices things he’s never had to name before, because he’s never been allowed to look this long. He realises he wants to be seen by you as much as he wants to see you. That with you there’s tenderness, always, under the filth.

Then, Benedict sinks. As he should, onto his knees. With the descent he takes final garments: your gloves roll down your arms, stockings gather at your ankles until you step out of them too. Thin skin reveals an even thinner one. His mouth is at your thighs, the backs of them, right where he sets his hands to hoist you onto a library ladder when the afternoon is particularly kind to him. 

You hum, a long throaty thing that rattles down your spine to his lips. He smiles. Turns you in his arms to face his favourite place. The circle becomes full, when Benedict husks, “Wilful creature,” and drowns himself in the hair at the apex of your thighs. “What is it in that head of yours that you want?”

Your belly rises against his face when you inhale. A hand finds purchase in the roots at his nape and tilts him so that he’s looking the goddess in the eye. “Touch me,” you say, and pull. Guide him up, up, until Benedict stands. Your fingers wrap around his girth, warm and merciless, and only now he realises how cruelly the bonbon is making him sweat.

He watches your pupils, all blown and wild. Lets you slot him between your thighs and tilt your body closer, so your chest flattens on his and your stomachs kiss. He’s surrounded by you, drowning and happy to not receive aid. You put flat palms to his temples, then stretch your fingers to his scalp. “Take me,” you say. “Show me us when we’re one.”

Brain slow, he blinks. “So the poppycock has taken hold, has it?”

“I cannot tell,” you say. Your tongue darts out to taste the sweat on him and make a small claim of it. “I’ve wanted you the same in the morning. And yesterday. And the day before that, and before that—ah!”

A squeal breaks out of you, high and helpless and outright sweet, when his arms close around you and lift you at the immediate, ugly death of Benedict’s patience. He can no longer bear you standing there, all teeth and want and trembling breath; and himself—a fool who’s promised to show you and guide you, while he feels like he’s the one who needs to follow.

He carries you the few steps to the bed and drops with you onto it, clumsy only in his haste. The landing is on his knees. He sits back on heels, legs spread to make room, to make a place for you to be pulled into. You end up seated in his lap, back to his chest, his thighs bracketing yours. One arm bands your waist and holds you there, kept. His other slides up to your neck and sweeps your hair over your shoulder so he can have the line of it and put his mouth where he wants without swallowing loose strands. Into your ear, he rumbles, “You’ll end me and I’ll thank you. I hope you know how to wield such power.”

“And you’re not disgusted,” you say, eyes all fiery glitter, fingers digging into his thighs with claws.

“No,” Benedict says. “Bested. Enthralled.”

Free hand, generous hand, wedges itself between his belly and your back, then lower, finding where you leak as though your body has decided the matter without you. He drags a slow, testing touch through the testimony of it and has to bite down on a gasp. Searing heat, the amount of you, the blunt urge. “Mad and ruined by you,” he breathes, venturing past another threshold. 

Wet one. Hot one. It resists delicately and welcomes ardently. Your mouth gets torn by a salacious sound, head tips back onto his shoulder, and he gathers all the vigilance his mother tells him he possesses none of to still and whisper, “No. Watch.”

The chuckle you give he feels in his chest. “Look at you,” you say. “Commanding me.” Audacious in mouth as you are, you still snap your face back to where he wants it.

And good. Because there, reflected in silver, you can see. Him, for what he truly is: a beggar, pleading and ready to please, to be loved, to be taken and kept and slain if you so chose.

“No,” Benedict says. “I beseech you.”

Eyes meet in the mirror. The coil inside him grows close to snapping. Your hand reaches back to cup his cheek; a gesture so gentle it makes him feel new to his own skin. You smile at him with a softness that breaks and rebuilds.

“Benedict,” you say.

Your gaze drops in the glass, precisely to where he strains, and returns to his face with that same stern steadiness you wore through every layer he loosened. Your thumb strokes along his cheekbone.

“Have me,” you say, quiet as a blade. “I will witness every moment. Take me as your own. Properly, this time.”

“My darling,” he whispers, shattered. “Take me in kind.”

He watches your face, utterly spellbound, and empties you for just a breath. With a hand slickened and poised at his root, Benedict enters where only his fingers and tongue have been before. The very heart of you, narrow and throbbing like that of a rabbit. He pushes, preposterous enough to believe the gentleness is for you, whilst it is partly for him to not snap on the spot.

And you’re as ferocious there as everywhere else. You tease him, squeeze him, claim him for yourself. One second he thinks you might banish him, the next you’re pulling him deeper.

In the mirror your features bleed through expressions: focus first, then furrowed brow, then mouth a round moue and eyes rolled back before you remember to look. You take all of him, greedy and bold, breathe deeply and set your hand to your belly where he’s under the skin.

“There you are,” you say. “You feel—”

“Good, hopefully?” he offers, kissing your shoulder.

“Right,” you tell him. “You feel right.”

“It is you who feels right,” Benedict says. The tedium of stillness grows in his spine and spurs his hips to move. He rolls them once to see how you take it. “You make me feel right,” he says, holding you by the waist while his thighs do the honest work of emptying and filling you again.

To that, your body answers with tightening. Your palms find his forearm and grip. After a few thrusts you find it in yourself to bolden and offer your own rhythm: slow and heavy, with your buttocks pressing into his lower abdomen and thighs widening on his so he’s angled exactly how you want him. He witnesses you become a thing he doesn’t deserve and still dares to want. In the mirror he sees exactly what a boy you make out of him. A ruined boy.

“Yes,” you breathe. “Oh God, yes—”

It makes him lose himself with a grace so vulnerable it feels indecent in a room like this. He lets you use him. Lets you take what you want and set the tempo, and the shock of it is how little he resists. How quickly he grows back into a man built to be handled.

The reflection gives him the most unforgiving kindness he has ever been granted. It lays the truth before him of what it is to meet someone who hears ‘rake’ and does not recoil. Who sees past the slur and expects everything but a pretty nuisance or a moral lesson. Who has enough curiosity in them to unpeel the outer layer and rejoices at what’s found underneath: appetite, yes, and the restless need for it, but also a person who has been starving for someone to say, I like this. I like you.

The result should have been freedom. Instead it turns into a craving for its opposite. Benedict wants to be bound, suddenly and fiercely, by a thing he did not expect to want from anyone. To live right here, with you, in you, and find solace in a mind that clocked him, a body that speaks the same language, a heart that opens without asking him to become smaller.

“You beautiful, wicked thing, I—” he stammers. The pleasure climbs him like fever. His breath turns ragged around his teeth upon the rising heat. He tightens his hold on your stomach, restraint battling instinct, and he forces himself to slow. His free hand moves, deft despite the tremor, and finds your centre.

Your answer comes at once. “Good God—” you breathe. “Benedict—Lord—I—”

“Just like that,” he mutters. Times the circles he draws with his fingers with the stutter of your hips, until they set as a heavy dead weight on him. They grind ineptly, muscles rebelling, and he gets to experience you in all dimensions. In front of him, where you quake and coil and fall apart on the glass surface. Against him, where your shoulderblades sharpen on his chest. Around him, and that’s the hardest of tests: tightness, inexorable. Sucking the very soul out of him.

His name loses shape when you spit it. There, he gives himself a final moment of bliss inside you, before reason sinks its claws in his back and draws him out. The tension breaks, pouring out of him in egg white and it lands on your apple-shaped loins, while he mutters, “Yes, yes, take me, take me—”

“Benedict,” you murmur.

Spent, slicked, he gathers you at once and wipes the drops jewelling your lashes. Places his thumbs on your eyelids and soaks the moisture up with his skin. 

“Speak to me,” he says. “Anything at all. Are you well?”

Laughter bubbles out of you alongside the fresh downpour of tears. “I have surpassed ‘well’,” you tell him. “There is no word for how I feel, but it is nothing ill.”

“At a loss for words?” he says, soft. He brushes your lips, and adds, “This mouth? How very unbecoming.”

“Tell a soul and I will ruin you,” you say, grinning through hiccups.

You have, Benedict thinks.

He falls with you in his arms onto the plush maw of the mattress. Reaches to the bedside basin for a damp cloth and gently wipes what’s wasted on your back. “There,” he says. “Unscathed.”

You turn solemn. Say nothing. Your hands come up to his face and map him with your fingertips—brow, cheekbone, the corner of his mouth, as if you are keeping him in a way ink could never manage. He closes his eyes and drinks the small, stunned peace of it.

When he opens them again, it hits him, hard and plain.

“What if—” The most transgressive thought takes a seat on Benedict’s tongue. What if his search is concluded even before he’s put his mind into the pursuit? What if the contentment he feels underneath the euphoria is a way to live? What if, when he binds himself to one that has no intention in taming him, it is not gaol, but amnesty?

“What if I were yours, truly? Would you want me?” Benedict asks.

“Oh, Benedict,” you sigh, and wrap yourself around him. “You are mine. Do not ever let my lack of haste to marry and reluctance to produce offspring just yet, mislead you into thinking you are not spoken for.” You take his face between your palms and the seriousness of it turns his marrow cold with shame for ever doubting. “I am not giving you to anyone. Nor am I giving myself to anyone but you.”

His smile has nowhere to go between your hands, and still it tries. “Does this mean—?”

“I love you.” you tell him. “As plain as I can say it.”

Benedict knows it in the only places that matter: in his heart of hearts, in the pit of his stomach, in the tips of his fingers. It is no poppycock, no sweet-induced madness, no fevered invention of the moment. He has felt the same thing in the clear cruelty of morning light. Yesterday. The day before that, and before that, and before that, until it has become as constant as breath and twice as necessary.

“Thank God,” Benedict says. “Because I feared I had been loving you all on my lonesome.”

[george-fabian-weasley]

I need this piece inside me, like, immediately, stat, pronto.

I'm speechless. Favorite Benedict work of all times.

[goat-limbs]

Ruin That Boy

contents (nsfw): Benedict Bridgerton x fem!Reader, Benedict's POV, semi-established but secretive relationship, virgin!Reader (but with some experience gained already), talk of marriage, mild voyeurism, aphrodisiac, first time, mirror sex, love confessions.

synopsis: Benedict's relationship with you blooms in the confines of hushed rooms and away from everyone's eyes. When you ask him to take you to Granville’s salon, he's worried it is to broaden your palate and soon learns he's the only one there. Or: a lousy part two to Touched, but can be read as a separate piece.

word count: 5,9K

a/n: Thank you for the love, Bridgerton fandom ❤︎ Banner is by me, dividers by @pixopix and @uzmacchiato!

Thrill. Excitement so sudden and pleasurable it surprises the recipient, even when they have actively sought it out. It shudders a damp neck, licks warmth up the spine, soggs the backs one’s knees and leaves their bellies blissfully knotted. Elation. Exhilaration. Rapture. It’s everything Benedict lives for. It’s everything he looks for, wandering between parties, bottles, and legs until each blade of joy eventually dulls.

Then, a change finds him. One that doesn’t require him to reform anything about himself, because all the traits his mother lists under redeemable are openly and shamelessly admired. From secretive glances, through teasing about your improper extracurriculars, to outright begging your hands for mercy in a library—you become Benedict’s inexhaustible source of everything perfervid.

The only places he gets lost in now are your neck and knuckles and lips. The only thing he longs for is the deathgrip of your thighs on his ears when your body seizes and mouth forsakes cleverness in favour of sounds entirely unholy. The altar of your legs is the one Benedict prays at, as this is where he lays his offerings for the God who lives in the hedges.

He’s a faithful convert. You manage to sate the appetite he carries for things of lovely kind, like kissing, touching, partial undressing. And things of perverted kind in equal measure: your voice when you read out loud. Your fingers on the piano. Getting his collar fixed by your hands when nobody’s the wiser. A brush of thumb on his mouth.

Even though he knows you do not wander off either, it sheens him with cold sweat when you ask, “Will you take me? To Granville’s salon?”

He’s promised. Once, and twice, and more times than he can count after that. A place where freedom is the only law, where nobody asks questions beyond how do you want me? and where horizons stretch so vast the very notion of return goes thin. He knows refusing a kindred spirit would be wrong, and still the worry lingers. That you will see him plain. A lovesick fool already.

“Have I managed to bore you?” Benedict asks. He looks up from his shelter—his head is cradled on your lap. The library is so quiet he can hear the way your lips smack.

“No,” you say. Your fingers brush his cheek. “Never. But I wish to be with you with less… constraint.”

He seizes the hand and kisses your wrist. It would be a relief, he thinks, to stop living on thresholds. You have done everything else. You have made him shake and beg and bite down on silence. You have taught him the shape of your want with your mouth and your hands, and he has repaid it in kind, careful and patient, stopping only at the one thing that would make it final. The thing that would make you his in a way the world understands, and dangerous in a way the world punishes.

His mouth shifts to your palm. A slow lick across it, and then he draws two of your fingers between his lips and sucks. First gentle, then firmer, eyes never leaving your face. Devotion, in plain action. He lets you feel what he can do, what he means to do, and how well he can mind himself while doing it. Then, he releases you and asks, hoarse and honest, “Are you certain?”

You huff and cover his mouth, defiant. “How do you expect me to have a clear mind when this is what you chose to do?” He smiles under the gag. “But yes. I am certain. My mother leaves for the countryside this weekend, and I have already convinced her to let me be and spend time with Eloise. Opportunity like no other.”

“Saturday then,” Benedict says, your hand clasped in his. “You will need a disguise. A mask of some kind. And we’d have to arrive separately.”

“Oh? Would it hurt your carefully preserved reputation to be seen entering with a companion?”

“My darling,” Benedict says. “Of the two of us, I’m the blackguard. It would simply keep you safe from gossip. And—” He takes a strand of your hair between his fingers. “Would make it easier for you to see all the establishment has to offer. Had someone caught your eye, of course.” 

His voice stays light, but the hand in your hair gives him away. Benedict tempts fate—offers you freedom he wants for you and fears it in the same breath. Granville’s rooms are full of beautiful people whose sole purpose is to entertain, to be entertained, to make a want feel ordinary by answering it quickly. Someone will look at you there. Someone will try. He knows it. He hears it in his own pulse as soon as he says it, and his fingers tighten on the strand for half a second too long before he loosens them again. Better, he tells himself, to walk you through it with his hand at your back than to have you slip from him in a crush of bodies and candlelight. Better to be the one who sees, who decides, who can pull you away before anything becomes a story other people can tell.

You watch his mouth as he speaks, then his eyes, and the way only you can, forge scrutiny into tenderness. “Benedict,” you say. “I do not seek entertainment with another. I simply wish for a place where I do not have to whisper about how I want your hands on me.”

Benedict lets the relief come and go without giving it a face. He shifts on the chaise, rises only to resettle himself beside you, closer than manners would ever advise. His hands come together on his lap. He looks down at his knees as if they are suddenly of great interest.

“You know,” he says, voice kept painfully even, “there is a remedy society is very fond of prescribing for precisely this sort of… inconvenience.”

Your hand inches on your lap, nearer to where his fingers are laced. “Marriage.”

“Yes.” He swallows. The word tastes odd in his mouth, too large for his body and this quiet. “If we were married, you would not have to whisper about my hands. You could say it plainly and nobody would blink. They would call it dutiful.”

“I… know.” Your voice softens in candour. “But I am surprised you are the first one to mention it.”

A quiet huff of laughter leaves him, more genuine than he means. “Believe me, the rake is as surprised as you are.” His head tilts a fraction towards you, still watching your hands instead of your eyes, as if that is safer. “You must have thought of it, though.”

“I have. But—” You take his palm into a cradle of yours and set it on your lap. Your fingers begin to play with his, turning them, smoothing them, testing the shape of them the way you test words before you write. “Do not let my answer be misleading about my feelings towards you. I enjoy and cherish every moment with you, and I am certain that if our fates were bound together it would be an exquisite life. But if we marry now I will be expected to bear children and be a wife. And I wish to enjoy being a woman first. Does that make sense?”

Benedict’s throat tightens in a way he does not care to examine. He watches the hands. There’s a vow in the simplicity of it and, by rights, it should meet his every desire.

He thinks it does.

“It makes perfect sense,” he says, and it costs him something to say it without bargaining. He manages it anyway.

He turns his face and presses a kiss to your cheek, gentle and unshowy, then leans close enough to put the words where they belong, private. “I would give you anything you want, and nothing you do not want. I shall have a carriage arranged for you on Saturday, and meet you by the entrance.”

“Fantastic,” you say. “And thank you.”

On Saturday, Benedict is nervous. A juvenile, boyish thing takes up residence in his chest when he sits in his carriage and lets his eyes wander through its small window in hopes of spotting you. The city moves past in indifferent pieces: stone, iron, lamps, the wet gleam of a recent drizzle. He keeps smoothing a crease that does not exist on his glove. Keeps checking the distance as if a man can hurry a horse by thinking at it hard enough.

Then he sees you.

A figure stands by the entrance with the posture of someone attempting to look idle and failing. A full-face Venetian mask turns the head into porcelain. The mouth is painted into a calm that does not belong to you. You raise a handkerchief and give him a theatrical little wave, as if you are greeting him from a stage and not a doorstep that could undo you.

Benedict gets out before the footman can decide whether to assist. He crosses the pavement and you turn your back to him as though this is the most natural thing in the world—allowing a gentleman his proper approach.

He comes close and hums into the edge of your ear, low. “Was it hard to sneak out?”

“No,” you say. “Only because my lady’s maid is an exceptionally good egg. She believes in my best traits.”

“Naïve,” Benedict replies, and reaches for your hand. He sets it on his forearm. “Ready for a dive?”

Your answer is an audible haul of breath. It draws his eyes to the line of your throat and the careful stillness of your shoulders. Then you nod. Benedict laughs, quick and helpless, and it is a good sound on him. It makes the whole thing feel possible.

At the door, a man in livery intercepts you with the ease of someone accustomed to discretion. Not a footman. Not quite a servant, either—something between guardian and gate. “Mr Bridgerton,” the man says, and his gaze flicks once, politely, to the masked face beside Benedict. “A courtesy of the house.”

He places two bonbons on Benedict’s open palm. They sit there, glossy and innocent, wrapped in thin paper, too pretty to be trusted.

Benedict lifts his brows, knowing. “And what, precisely, is the courtesy?”

The man’s mouth twitches, as if he has said this a hundred times and still enjoys it. “A sweet,” he answers. “For those who prefer their courage taken by the mouth.”

Benedict feels your attention sharpen at his side. He keeps his face composed. His hand turns slightly so you can see the pair of them properly. Then, he nudges you with his elbow. “Keep?”

You let out a small, scornful sound. “Poppycock.”

Benedict’s smile turns. “If it is, there is no threat, is there?” His eyes dip to your hand on his arm, then back to the mask. “Or are your feet getting cold?”

You go motionless for a beat. Beneath the porcelain, your eyes deliver scrutiny with surgical neatness. “Keep,” you say at last. With a smile Benedict tries his damndest to not turn smug, he closes his fingers over the bonbons, and pockets them.

“Brave girl,” he hums, proud.

To him, walking past the threshold is crossing the border between the world that allows and the world that does not. Here, everything is permitted, and that is precisely the peril. It takes more courage, more forbearance, to be handed choice in both palms and still steer oneself true than it does to live in the safer places where rules are printed in neat little pamphlets and obedience is mistaken for virtue.

The place is what it always is. Warm lamplight that flatters skin; laughter threaded with music; bodies arranged with an ease that would make a ballroom choke. Paintings and half-finished sketches sit alongside silk and spilled drink, as if art and appetite are the same kind of work. Benedict has seen it often enough to be blasé, and yet a new thrill climbs him today, born entirely of you.

Your gaze widens beneath the mask. Little gasps escape you—small, involuntary, betrayed into the air. More than once you stop short, fingers tightening on his sleeve when something catches your eye, and Benedict has to check his own stride so he does not drag you forward like an impatient guide.

He keeps you in the lee of his body as you move, steering you with light pressure at the elbow, watching your eyes more than the rooms whose ajar doors tempt and promise and dare.

The first door shows a wrist dressed in ribbon, the bow tied with the same neatness one reserves for gifts meant to be kept. The knot is firm, pretty, brazenly intentful. The person bound is smiling as if the constraint has unhooked something in them. Someone else bends to the inside of that wrist and kisses the pulse there with slow care, mouth lingering. Your head tilts, curious. Benedict feels his shoulders ease, one careful notch at a time.

Another door, further down, holds three figures in candlelight. One seated, two standing close, the arrangement practiced enough to look effortless. A hand covers the seated one’s mouth because it is wanted there, palm sealing in sound the way silk seals in heat. It turns muffled breath into a private thing, where it’s not fear being stifled, but pleasure being hoarded. You inhale sharply, and Benedict watches the way your gloved fingers curl, then uncurl, as if you are trying not to touch the air.

He murmurs close to you, “We can leave.”

You keep looking ahead, steady. A minute shake of head is your answer.

A third door gives onto a bed and a mirror. The room looks empty at first glance, and yet it is already occupied; the glass catches you both in the corridor light and holds you there, two figures caught before you have even crossed the threshold. Your masked face turns, your hand tightens on his sleeve, and Benedict watches the decision arrive in you with a steadiness that makes his mouth go dry. He understands, all at once, what you are asking for.

“This one?” he asks.

“Yes,” you say. “But with doors closed.”

Benedict nods, and opens the door wider for you to step in.

Then, the clamour of voices and clinking glasses softens to a hum beyond the wood. He watches you step into the middle of the chamber and reach up to untie the ribbons of your mask. It comes away, revealing a face far more beautiful than any painted porcelain. In the candlelight, Benedict catches the glint of your eyes—bright, ferocious—and his own chest tightens, as if it’s him visiting for the first time.

“And what of your poppycock, hm?” you ask, setting the mask on a table.

His mouth quirks. He takes a step closer, enough that your perfume cuts through the wax-and-candle air. “Poppycock has its uses,” he says. “Granville likes a flourish. Those sweets are part of it.” His hand lifts. Hovers near your hair, and waits. “May I?”

At your assent he finds the first pin and draws it free, then another. Your hair loosens in heavy fall, arrangement giving way to something more tameless. He stands there with a breath held and his face composed by force of habit. Leans in to cover it with a mutter of lips against your neck.

“I have taken one before,” he says. “It does not steal a person’s wits. It only makes the body louder. A warmth under the ribs, a quickening. Touch lands harder. Kisses linger. Everything you already want becomes difficult to ignore.” His mouth shifts, just beneath your ear. “It takes little time. A quarter of an hour, give or take. You will know when it begins.”

He draws back enough to look at you, bare-faced, eyes still bright. “We take them only if you wish it. We stop the moment you ask. You may say it plain. You may say it once. I will hear it.” His thumb ghosts your jaw, brief. “And if you decide you would rather keep your poppycock and leave, I shall walk you out as though nothing happened at all.”

You nod once. Stifle a girlish giggle that might as well be the death of him, and begin a slow stroll. Circling him, as if he were the prey here.

Despite all the consent he needs being handed on a silver platter, Benedict still finds it in himself to seek verbal confirmation. “I am asking for the last time—are you certain?”

“Do you ask your courtesans this?”

“I am not in possession of any courtesans,” he huffs, catching your waist, exasperated with the dance. “Regardless, they do not need to guard their virtue. But I feel that I ought to guard yours.”

“Sweet boy,” you coo, ruining him a little with it. An infuriatingly patronising palm is placed on his cheek, and thankfully you have enough mercy to notice his furrowed brow. “I appreciate the sentiment, Benedict, but I’ve already bled on your fingers—I do not think there is much virtue left to salvage. Let us not be fickle and pretend a fabricated concept of feminine virtue can be vanquished only by something as blunt as a cock.” His eyes widen and the cuss and cheeks fill with blood. “You’ve torn my virtue apart with your hands,” you whisper into his mouth. “You ate it and kissed it and I am grateful for it.”

“Your beautiful tongue makes the foulest things sound hallowed,” Benedict says, rapt. He reaches into his pocket, produces the bonbons onto an open palm. “Here,” he says; you take one. The other he poises at your lips, and rattles, “Let us succumb together then.”

“Sante,” you say, pushing the ball of lust past his mouth and opening yours in the same breath.

A sweet, wicked ritual. You both accept the communion from the God of the wild parts of a person. Assent one can hold between their fingers. It leaves your cupid’s bow powdered with sugar, and Benedict licks it off, eager as a boy who’s been promised he’ll be allowed to run and get mud on his knees past the afternoon tea.

He’s about to kiss you. Rip the layers off you, when you put firm hands on his chest, and command him, “Undress.”

“And you?” he asks, grin crooked.

“I will watch. Then—” You ease yourself off him and take the most inconspicuous stroll towards the bed where you sit, politely, and entirely unfit for the scene. “Then you can undress me.”

“Wilful beast,” Benedict murmurs, fond enough that it comes out rough.

He obeys. Coat first, shrugged off and dropped where it lands. Waistcoat next, the buttons a small battle his fingers win too fast. He loosens the cravat and pulls it free, then the shirt, tugged up and over his head. All the while your eyes stay on him with a steadiness that makes him feel watched in a way no room at Granville’s ever managed. When he hooks his thumbs into the waistband and works his breeches down, the heat in him has nowhere to hide; he steps out of them, bare except for stockings, then strips those too, until there is nothing left to perform decency with.

He is shamelessly hard. Feels the weight between his legs as laden and embarrassingly eager when it kicks against his stomach.

That is when your eyes begin to travel. They drag, corporeally, and Benedict feels it like hands. His stomach tightens on instinct. He draws a breath and makes his chest broader, the old, ridiculous vanity rising to the surface. The more he tries to look like a man worth looking at, the wider your smile grows.

“You think it some kind of an assessment?” you ask, amused.

“Is it not?” Benedict says, and crosses to you. He offers his hands, palms up, and helps you to your feet. Positions you facing the mirror and settles behind you.

In the reflection he sees you shake your head. “No,” you say, eyes on the glass. On him, precisely. “Simply admiring my man.”

He hides his face in your hair at that, bashful and coy like he never is. Ahead of him is a task Benedict’s mind insists on making uncomfortably specific. His fingers go first to the small practical knots and hooks at your back that hold a woman together in public. He works them loose one by one. The gown slackens, the fabric giving up its shape with a faint sigh, and when he draws it down from your shoulders he catches the first glimpse of what has been pressed and held all evening: the fine creases in the top of your chemise where the bodice has hugged you. He gathers the gown at your waist and holds it up for you to step free of it, careful not to let it snag. Once you are out, he throws it over the nearest chair in a loose heap and turns back to the mirror.

You stand there, only looking. “That’s more naked than you’ve ever been with me,” Benedict says.

“In a way,” you tell him. “In a way you’ve seen all there is to me already.”

“That I will never believe,” Benedict says, and smooths his hands over your back.

Your face grows stern with each reveal, serious in the mirror, as if this is an examination you mean to pass on your own terms. The bonbon’s warmth begins to show itself too, not in theatrics but in small betrayals: your lids lowering, the line of your throat lengthening as you tip your head back and give him access without asking. Benedict leans in and breathes you in where your neck meets shoulder, and the scent of you hits him harder than it has any right to. Your hand finds his wrist and guides it, firm. The pressure of your fingers says closer, more, here.

He slides his hands to the drawstring of your short stays, finds the tie and loosens it slowly. The stays relax their hold. He’s grateful to Newton for putting a moniker to the force he has to thank: gravity. It agrees with you, and relentlessly. Makes a woman into a marvel he’ll get to weight in his own palm.

“So gorgeous she has every right to be wilful,” he murmurs.

The last thing to unlace is the chemise. It’s but a ribbon to pull on your sternum to make you almost bare. He opens it on your shoulders like one would a fig when nobody’s watching, and notices things he’s never had to name before, because he’s never been allowed to look this long. He realises he wants to be seen by you as much as he wants to see you. That with you there’s tenderness, always, under the filth.

Then, Benedict sinks. As he should, onto his knees. With the descent he takes final garments: your gloves roll down your arms, stockings gather at your ankles until you step out of them too. Thin skin reveals an even thinner one. His mouth is at your thighs, the backs of them, right where he sets his hands to hoist you onto a library ladder when the afternoon is particularly kind to him. 

You hum, a long throaty thing that rattles down your spine to his lips. He smiles. Turns you in his arms to face his favourite place. The circle becomes full, when Benedict husks, “Wilful creature,” and drowns himself in the hair at the apex of your thighs. “What is it in that head of yours that you want?”

Your belly rises against his face when you inhale. A hand finds purchase in the roots at his nape and tilts him so that he’s looking the goddess in the eye. “Touch me,” you say, and pull. Guide him up, up, until Benedict stands. Your fingers wrap around his girth, warm and merciless, and only now he realises how cruelly the bonbon is making him sweat.

He watches your pupils, all blown and wild. Lets you slot him between your thighs and tilt your body closer, so your chest flattens on his and your stomachs kiss. He’s surrounded by you, drowning and happy to not receive aid. You put flat palms to his temples, then stretch your fingers to his scalp. “Take me,” you say. “Show me us when we’re one.”

Brain slow, he blinks. “So the poppycock has taken hold, has it?”

“I cannot tell,” you say. Your tongue darts out to taste the sweat on him and make a small claim of it. “I’ve wanted you the same in the morning. And yesterday. And the day before that, and before that—ah!”

A squeal breaks out of you, high and helpless and outright sweet, when his arms close around you and lift you at the immediate, ugly death of Benedict’s patience. He can no longer bear you standing there, all teeth and want and trembling breath; and himself—a fool who’s promised to show you and guide you, while he feels like he’s the one who needs to follow.

He carries you the few steps to the bed and drops with you onto it, clumsy only in his haste. The landing is on his knees. He sits back on heels, legs spread to make room, to make a place for you to be pulled into. You end up seated in his lap, back to his chest, his thighs bracketing yours. One arm bands your waist and holds you there, kept. His other slides up to your neck and sweeps your hair over your shoulder so he can have the line of it and put his mouth where he wants without swallowing loose strands. Into your ear, he rumbles, “You’ll end me and I’ll thank you. I hope you know how to wield such power.”

“And you’re not disgusted,” you say, eyes all fiery glitter, fingers digging into his thighs with claws.

“No,” Benedict says. “Bested. Enthralled.”

Free hand, generous hand, wedges itself between his belly and your back, then lower, finding where you leak as though your body has decided the matter without you. He drags a slow, testing touch through the testimony of it and has to bite down on a gasp. Searing heat, the amount of you, the blunt urge. “Mad and ruined by you,” he breathes, venturing past another threshold. 

Wet one. Hot one. It resists delicately and welcomes ardently. Your mouth gets torn by a salacious sound, head tips back onto his shoulder, and he gathers all the vigilance his mother tells him he possesses none of to still and whisper, “No. Watch.”

The chuckle you give he feels in his chest. “Look at you,” you say. “Commanding me.” Audacious in mouth as you are, you still snap your face back to where he wants it.

And good. Because there, reflected in silver, you can see. Him, for what he truly is: a beggar, pleading and ready to please, to be loved, to be taken and kept and slain if you so chose.

“No,” Benedict says. “I beseech you.”

Eyes meet in the mirror. The coil inside him grows close to snapping. Your hand reaches back to cup his cheek; a gesture so gentle it makes him feel new to his own skin. You smile at him with a softness that breaks and rebuilds.

“Benedict,” you say.

Your gaze drops in the glass, precisely to where he strains, and returns to his face with that same stern steadiness you wore through every layer he loosened. Your thumb strokes along his cheekbone.

“Have me,” you say, quiet as a blade. “I will witness every moment. Take me as your own. Properly, this time.”

“My darling,” he whispers, shattered. “Take me in kind.”

He watches your face, utterly spellbound, and empties you for just a breath. With a hand slickened and poised at his root, Benedict enters where only his fingers and tongue have been before. The very heart of you, narrow and throbbing like that of a rabbit. He pushes, preposterous enough to believe the gentleness is for you, whilst it is partly for him to not snap on the spot.

And you’re as ferocious there as everywhere else. You tease him, squeeze him, claim him for yourself. One second he thinks you might banish him, the next you’re pulling him deeper.

In the mirror your features bleed through expressions: focus first, then furrowed brow, then mouth a round moue and eyes rolled back before you remember to look. You take all of him, greedy and bold, breathe deeply and set your hand to your belly where he’s under the skin.

“There you are,” you say. “You feel—”

“Good, hopefully?” he offers, kissing your shoulder.

“Right,” you tell him. “You feel right.”

“It is you who feels right,” Benedict says. The tedium of stillness grows in his spine and spurs his hips to move. He rolls them once to see how you take it. “You make me feel right,” he says, holding you by the waist while his thighs do the honest work of emptying and filling you again.

To that, your body answers with tightening. Your palms find his forearm and grip. After a few thrusts you find it in yourself to bolden and offer your own rhythm: slow and heavy, with your buttocks pressing into his lower abdomen and thighs widening on his so he’s angled exactly how you want him. He witnesses you become a thing he doesn’t deserve and still dares to want. In the mirror he sees exactly what a boy you make out of him. A ruined boy.

“Yes,” you breathe. “Oh God, yes—”

It makes him lose himself with a grace so vulnerable it feels indecent in a room like this. He lets you use him. Lets you take what you want and set the tempo, and the shock of it is how little he resists. How quickly he grows back into a man built to be handled.

The reflection gives him the most unforgiving kindness he has ever been granted. It lays the truth before him of what it is to meet someone who hears ‘rake’ and does not recoil. Who sees past the slur and expects everything but a pretty nuisance or a moral lesson. Who has enough curiosity in them to unpeel the outer layer and rejoices at what’s found underneath: appetite, yes, and the restless need for it, but also a person who has been starving for someone to say, I like this. I like you.

The result should have been freedom. Instead it turns into a craving for its opposite. Benedict wants to be bound, suddenly and fiercely, by a thing he did not expect to want from anyone. To live right here, with you, in you, and find solace in a mind that clocked him, a body that speaks the same language, a heart that opens without asking him to become smaller.

“You beautiful, wicked thing, I—” he stammers. The pleasure climbs him like fever. His breath turns ragged around his teeth upon the rising heat. He tightens his hold on your stomach, restraint battling instinct, and he forces himself to slow. His free hand moves, deft despite the tremor, and finds your centre.

Your answer comes at once. “Good God—” you breathe. “Benedict—Lord—I—”

“Just like that,” he mutters. Times the circles he draws with his fingers with the stutter of your hips, until they set as a heavy dead weight on him. They grind ineptly, muscles rebelling, and he gets to experience you in all dimensions. In front of him, where you quake and coil and fall apart on the glass surface. Against him, where your shoulderblades sharpen on his chest. Around him, and that’s the hardest of tests: tightness, inexorable. Sucking the very soul out of him.

His name loses shape when you spit it. There, he gives himself a final moment of bliss inside you, before reason sinks its claws in his back and draws him out. The tension breaks, pouring out of him in egg white and it lands on your apple-shaped loins, while he mutters, “Yes, yes, take me, take me—”

“Benedict,” you murmur.

Spent, slicked, he gathers you at once and wipes the drops jewelling your lashes. Places his thumbs on your eyelids and soaks the moisture up with his skin. 

“Speak to me,” he says. “Anything at all. Are you well?”

Laughter bubbles out of you alongside the fresh downpour of tears. “I have surpassed ‘well’,” you tell him. “There is no word for how I feel, but it is nothing ill.”

“At a loss for words?” he says, soft. He brushes your lips, and adds, “This mouth? How very unbecoming.”

“Tell a soul and I will ruin you,” you say, grinning through hiccups.

You have, Benedict thinks.

He falls with you in his arms onto the plush maw of the mattress. Reaches to the bedside basin for a damp cloth and gently wipes what’s wasted on your back. “There,” he says. “Unscathed.”

You turn solemn. Say nothing. Your hands come up to his face and map him with your fingertips—brow, cheekbone, the corner of his mouth, as if you are keeping him in a way ink could never manage. He closes his eyes and drinks the small, stunned peace of it.

When he opens them again, it hits him, hard and plain.

“What if—” The most transgressive thought takes a seat on Benedict’s tongue. What if his search is concluded even before he’s put his mind into the pursuit? What if the contentment he feels underneath the euphoria is a way to live? What if, when he binds himself to one that has no intention in taming him, it is not gaol, but amnesty?

“What if I were yours, truly? Would you want me?” Benedict asks.

“Oh, Benedict,” you sigh, and wrap yourself around him. “You are mine. Do not ever let my lack of haste to marry and reluctance to produce offspring just yet, mislead you into thinking you are not spoken for.” You take his face between your palms and the seriousness of it turns his marrow cold with shame for ever doubting. “I am not giving you to anyone. Nor am I giving myself to anyone but you.”

His smile has nowhere to go between your hands, and still it tries. “Does this mean—?”

“I love you.” you tell him. “As plain as I can say it.”

Benedict knows it in the only places that matter: in his heart of hearts, in the pit of his stomach, in the tips of his fingers. It is no poppycock, no sweet-induced madness, no fevered invention of the moment. He has felt the same thing in the clear cruelty of morning light. Yesterday. The day before that, and before that, and before that, until it has become as constant as breath and twice as necessary.

“Thank God,” Benedict says. “Because I feared I had been loving you all on my lonesome.”

[rylandsgrace]

Pride & Prejudice (2005) // Bridgerton (2026)

[lokihiddleston]

BRIDGERTON (2021-) #when she takes control

[whorevolo]

HELLO!!

I’d love to read about AU about Ben or Fem character traveling back in time or to the future (in case of Ben) and meeting their second half there

A WRINKLE IN TIME.

pairing : benedict bridgerton x fem!reader synopsis : you’ve always had an interest, albeit a quiet one, for antiques. visiting an antique shop on a thursday was one thing, but a leap in time was another. warnings : very wordy（ around 2.7k words ）, be warned. slow, slow, sloooow burn. mentions of execution and implication of being exiled. no romance yet - might consider a part two. author’s notes : i feel very proud of the shop name i created, hahaha. forgive me if i lack too much knowledge about london, all my knowledge comes from british artists and pop culture so i don’t know if it’s totally accurate. especially the currency. thank you for the request, anon ! i was super hyped to get into this. （ plot inspired by anon & a post from @ivanttier < 3 ）

Birds flew overhead your apartment, the sun shining brightly upon London. A rare, almost suspicious gift from the city, you thought—London did not often allow itself to be this generous. Upon moving to London, you’ve come to terms with the rather unpredictable weather windows. The first few days were novel, fresh in a way; everything was new, unfamiliar. First came excitement—the feeling of anticipation for new experiences, new people, new food… that was the life.

Then came dread—the quiet, creeping kind—the realization that you had willingly dismantled the version of yourself you once knew. You had packed her into boxes and left her across an ocean. It was a big move after all; it wasn’t just cross-country. It was continental. It was irreversible.

You woke at 7:04AM to the sound of your upstairs neighbors’ kitchen utensils clanking. Metal striking ceramic. A chair scraping above tile. It was domestic. Alive. It was still quite dark, courtesy of your blinds you installed the day prior. Your hand reached for your phone, patting every surface it could possibly be placed on, before finding it resting on your nightstand.

You squinted your eyes, the screen lighting up. A few notifications—Pinterest bombarding you with ‘new pins,’ a few texts from your new SIM carrier, Twitter notifications, and texts from your friends asking you how London is treating you.

You stared at it longer than necessary.

All of which you choose to ignore.

An exhale pushes itself out of your lungs as you sat up, rubbing your eyes. Debating on what to do today, you mentally browsed your options. You’ve yet to explore the city, but have no friends—at least none that you’d like to ask and make plans with today. You’d love to lay in bed, but felt the need to be productive; you convince yourself you cannot just sit and do nothing until two in the afternoon. As if productivity and movement would make you feel like you belonged in this new city.

And so you decided to move.

Standing up, you shuffled to the kitchen. These days, you were only ever greeted by the mundane humming sound of your refrigerator. London mornings felt softer, grayer, than those back home. Opening the fridge, you blankly stared at its contents. The items were mostly groceries thrown in for the sake of filling the space. The egg carton. Strawberries you sworn you’d finished. An oat milk carton. Butter. Vegetables you’ve barely touched.

Making do, you settled on toast, coffee, and eggs. Just enough to boost the mood, but you suspect it would be insufficient until at least noon.

You sat on the window nook, the place you’ve been lounging in these past few days. You placed your plate and mug nearby. You finally open your phone, still dismissing the notifications, and open Google Maps. You’ve already mentally convinced yourself to go out, explore. It would be a shame if you didn’t; London was—is—a beautiful city, not adventuring in it would be a shame.

You chewed on your food, zooming in on your location pinpointed on the digital map. Your finger hovered on the search bar, before deciding to type the only words that felt like belonged to you in all of London’s geography.

Antique Shops near me.

Patiently, you waited for it to load. And when it did, you zoomed in—eagerly, giddily. The first surge of remote happiness you’ve felt since the initial move here.

There were many shops near you.

One was named “Time & Time Again.” It was fifteen to twenty minutes away. You could use the walk, you thought—you haven’t gone beyond the local bakery a few blocks down. But it didn’t look like the type of shop you want to visit. Reviews say it’s constantly crowded, lots of clutter—more than acceptable, more than you’d tolerate. That’s a pass, you decide.

You scrolled, then saw another named “Ware and Wander.” Your brows creased; this seemed like a trendy place. Scrolling down, the exterior seemed charming. Exposed brick, florals. A chalkboard with the words “VINTAGE FINDS” written on it. You hesitated. As trendy as it was, it felt performative in a way, curated even. Not quite what you were looking for.

The closest one was called “The Artist’s Ambrose Archive.” It was about seven minutes away, given that you weren’t about to be run over by a Lime bike. Damn those bikers. You click on the shop, browsing the pictures attached. A few reviews were there, most dated around a year or two ago, but it seemed well liked by the locals. Most of them praised the owner—which you learned was named Mister Ambrose. Weird name, you thought, but you assumed he was an elderly man, hence the name.

And you concluded that you would go there, to The Artist’s Ambrose Archive. Whatever that name meant, really.

You pulled together an outfit you deemed half decent. Enough that you seemed presentable. You grab your things, fumbling with your necessities: your phone, wallet, keys, and earphones. You considered an umbrella, reasoning that it might drizzle or even rain harshly, but ultimately decided that you’d be quick and come home before noon. Enough time for you to sprint home before it rained.

You walked down to the lobby, nodding to the doorman. You liked him. He was nice, polite enough to acknowledge your existence when barely anybody did in the apartment complex. As you made your walk to the shop, your fingers fiddled to untangle your earphones. Then gave up, promising yourself you would fix it someday, not today, but someday.

This was when you began to appreciate London. The noise, the gloom and shine, the city.

It was a brief, beautiful walk.

You arrived at the shop shortly after two and a half songs that had been blasting in your tangled, otherwise working, earphones. You looked up, the dark, polished oak sign hung above you. It was slightly crooked, the edges worn down from years of weathering.

You took a moment to admire the exterior before stepping inside.

A bell rang out in the shop—it was fairly sized for an antique store. You looked around, eyes beaming at the items displayed before you.

“Anything specific you’re looking for, dear?”

You jumped, just slightly, at the sudden sound that had disrupted your daze.

You looked ahead, and behind the counter was an elderly man, gray haired, glasses, mustache. His voice was soft, welcoming, despite the rasp that age had laid on him. A thick accent as well, which was likely from the years of remaining in London.

You smiled awkwardly, pressing your lips together. “Nothing specific, sir. Just looking,” you briefly gestured to your surroundings. That answer seemed to satisfy him as he nodded, going back to what you assumed was dusting things off behind the counter.

There were many things to be discovered, all of them decorated by the trace of time—rust, patina, faint scratches and dents. Your eyes graze over each item.

The first item you picked up was a teacup. It seemed to be made out of delicate porcelain, with floral designs on the sides. There was a chip on the rim, and the saucer had a slight crack. The paper price tag was tied on the handle, £20. “Pricey,” you muttered to yourself. “But pretty.”

You set it aside as a potential purchase. A ‘just incase’ if you find nothing else to buy from here.

You continued browsing the small aisles, finding a leather journal tucked between a jar and a book. You reached above, grabbing the spine of the journal. Successfully wiggling it out from between the items, you examined it. It was dusty, worn out. You gently blew on the cover, dust particles coming to life.

Excitedly, you opened it.

And was met with absolutely nothing.

Aside from the stained, almost brown pages, there was no traces of writing. None that showed wear or tear, unfortunately.

Frowning, you sighed and shoved it back to where you had taken it from. You liked when items had shown history. When it showed that there was a past, a previous owner, some sort of story that had existed way before you did.

You surrendered, walking up to the counter where the owner stood. “Sorry, Mister Ambrose, was it?” You asked, eyes flickering to anywhere but his eyes.

He nodded, returning a question. “Perhaps what you are looking for is in the section to your right? I reckon you’re one of the… artistic types.”

You weren’t, but since he so kindly redirected you, you decided to follow along. You walk to the aisles to your right, mainly filled with sketchbooks and portraits. None of them piqued your interest, partially because you wouldn’t like a potentially haunted painting of a person from the olden days lurking in the shadows of your already lonely apartment.

As you sift through the sketchbooks, one painting—framed, landscape, slightly bigger than the others—that hung on the wall caught your attention. Right below it, in script: Property of the Bridgertons, 1815. You stared at the painting, seeing the strokes of oil slightly faded from time, the wear of the canvas itself. You tell yourself you were just intrigued of the history, nothing more—despite the feeling of your stomach dropping and your gut instinct telling you something was amiss.

How could anything be possibly amiss when the only people in the shop were you and Mister Ambrose, who has shown no reason for you to doubt him?

You continue looking through piles of objects, before settling on a few items that you carried in your arms. Namely: a silver brass key you plan to make a keychain or necklace of sorts, a wooden trinket box with some letters written inside, a vintage ink bottle and quill set, and a miniature picture frame about the size of your palm.

Walking to the counter, it felt as though the air had shifted in a manner you were unsure how to describe. Nor have you had any proof that the air did change. You chalked it down to the combination of the lack of air conditioning and the outside weather.

“Good finds you have ‘ere,” Mister Ambrose praised shortly.

You nodded, placing the goods on the counter as he rounded the total. You stood there, shifting your weight from one foot to another. From where you were, you could still see a good bit of the antique shop.

You squint, noticing that the painting—the family one, the one that was named under the Bridgerton residence—wasn’t where you had initially seen it. Rationally, you assumed that Mister Ambrose had taken it down while you were in another section of the store. Although it would’ve made much more ruckus and noise, which you barely heard at all.

You brush it off, deciding that it was best not to question or speculate such things. It’s not like you wanted to buy it, it was tagged for £250, for Heaven’s sake.

Mister Ambrose finished ringing up your items, placing them in paper bags, stapling them shut. Your total came up to about £67.90. You pull out your wallet, fishing out your bills, then handing them over. He took them with no fuss, handing you back your exact change.

”Thank you, Mister Ambrose,” you nodded politely at the elderly man.

For a moment, he stared. You met his eyes, something knowing hiding behind them. But you scratch it off as some… old person thing. Something old people just do, as they claim to be all wise and know everything about life and beyond.

“Have a good day.” He said, nodding his head back and turning away.

Odd. You decided to move on about your day, clutching your goods in your arms. You shuffle between the aisles, careful not to break anything—God bless your bank account—to exit the building.

You watched your step as you pull the door, anticipating the breeze, the honking of vehicles, the buzzing of bikes, the chaos and loud of the city. You patted down your pockets, ensuring everything was there—phone, wallet, keys, earphones. You nodded to yourself when you felt all four, then looked up.

This certainly was not London.

Well, not the London you know. Clutching your paper bags, you look around. Your heart dropped to your stomach, and you suddenly feel the anxiety creeping in. The heat crawls through your neck, feeling as though you were wearing ten layers of clothing in the raging summer.

“What the fuck?” you murmured. This was not the city, nor did it even feel like the 21st century. Just when you moved to a city where you felt like you didn’t belong, the universe decides to stick you in a time where you really didn’t belong.

You did not dare take a step forward, as people busk and crowd the streets in their… absurdly thick dresses. And absurdly layered tops. And absurdly styled hair. At least some of them. The others just seemed like they had somewhere to be.

Your heart pounded, hammering at your ribs as you tried to figure out what was going on. Was this a sick joke that someone had played? Do you wait for the cameras to pop up from some corner of the street while everyone laughs at your demise? Is this perhaps a flash mob you didn’t know of? Some sort of London tradition you haven’t heard of at all?

As questions flood your head, a carriage trotted by in front of you, in the middle of the street. Your eyebrows furrowed. This was definitely not a prank, you realized. This was not a sick joke. You crane your head around the area, noticing that this was for sure not some sort of mind game—the buildings were structurally different, the lack of humming from vehicles replaced by the creaking of carts and carriages, horses neighing, the Church bells ringing, peoples raised voices.

Your first instinct was to turn back to the store. You turn on your heel, and shockingly, the store remained. The state of it was different—new, polished, and it didn’t stick out weirdly between buildings like it did in… the London you were just at moments ago.

You grab at the door handle, before realizing it was locked. You tugged and rattled at the handle to no luck. “Pardon me, madam. But what business do you have here?” A stranger approached, gesturing toward the door you had been pulling at in attempt to open. Well, you didn’t intend for it to look like attempted robbery, but what does one do when they’re thrown into a different era?

Your thoughts scrambled, “Uh,” you paused. “I’m… I was mistaken.” You awkwardly stepped back from the building, stumbling and catching yourself immediately. “I’m sorry.” You apologized, though you were unsure what you were apologizing for.

”Whose household do you belong to?” the stranger inquired, voice suddenly growing suspicious, aggressive in a way. That question makes you pause.

Because what were you supposed to say? “I’m from another timeline, please help me.” “I’m not from here.” “I don’t know.” Each possible answer sounds like lunacy.

An answer mustered up from your throat, “I’m waiting for someone.” You felt as though your voice was out of place.

The stranger raised an eyebrow, “And that someone would be?”

Your mouth opens. Nothing comes out. You mentally braced yourself to be publicly executed for lying, or whatever unreasonable cause it is that these people exile others for.

And another voice cuts in—smooth, amused. “I believe she is with me.”

You, as well as the stranger, turned to the direction of the voice. The owner of the voice was tall, standing a few paces away. Chestnut hair, paired with dark brown eyes. And unfortunately handsome. His eyes held contact with yours, the wrinkle in his eyes implying he was more amused than concerned.

”Ah, Mister Bridgerton,” the stranger said, nodding his head at the man.

Bridgerton? You looked back at—what was meant to be—the antique shop, eyeing the section where you had found the family portrait. Dated 1815, approximately 211 years ago.

You paused, looking back at the stranger and the man. Connecting the dots, it had finally clicked. In an impossible, fantasy-adjacent, absurd way, it clicked. The reason why the painting had disappeared was because you were no longer looking at history, but standing inside it.

The painting was no longer hanging on an antique shop’s wall because it was standing before you.

[captainbucky-yt]

The Artist Found His Muse Bridgerton 4.08

[george-fabian-weasley]

The first ever painting that Benedict Bridgerton had COMPLETED and FRAMED TO THE WALL was Sophie's fucking portrait-- GET AWAY FROM ME

[platonicsource]

BRIDGERTON 4.07 – The Beyond

[george-fabian-weasley]

I really love this scene. Eloise, out of all, noticed how out of character it was for Francesca to hold a platter of biscuits and basically use it as a shield from feeling too much despair over her husband's passing and Eloise just, played along with it and even urged their other siblings to indulge Francesca. JUST ANYTHING to distract their sister and THEY PLAYED ALONG, the siblings caught on so well and played along to distract her and IT WORKED until those ladies interrupted their sibling bonding moment. That little scene meant so much to me.

Grief is weird, grief is avoidance, overwhelm and every ugly little thing before it turned into acceptance. And the fact that they know her well enough to do that is just-- UGH CHEFS KISS

[quotefeeling]

“Move on. It’s a chapter in your life. Don’t close the book, just turn the page for a new chapter.”

— Brooklyn Copeland

[george-fabian-weasley]

well fuck how am i supposed to finish my benedict x oc fic now????? no one is more perfect for him than sophie baek UGHHHHH I love them

[captainbucky-yt]

An Offer From A Gentleman Bridgerton 4.08

[sophie-baek]

BRIDGERTON 4.08 "Dance in the Country"

[corporalicent]

Anthony is just like your father. But you... you are my son, through and through. —Bridgerton S4E8 "Dance in the Country"

[george-fabian-weasley]

I truly love this scene, reminds me of that tiktok sound AND IT SUITS THEM SO WELL

[jiwoodawnstarnation]

[george-fabian-weasley]

AHHHH NEW FAMILY PHOTO

[jiwoodawnstarnation]

Breathtaking

[benophievlog]

I don't know what to do.

[george-fabian-weasley]

replayed this fucking scene over and over i love u sophie baek