whenever you have time could you please drop a little snippet of the scene where kirsi accidentally gives off that she gets off to carmine and is very attracted to him? if not it's fully okay just anything you can say about it is food for my brain and soul and pus- (I get shot with ash arrows)
need you to know that i did Not have time to write this today but i couldn't think of anything else after this ask came in so now i have ~1400 words of kirmine on my hands and love in my heart also you literally made me laugh out loud i adore u
Muscles loose and limber, Carmine extricates himself from the down mattress and its overwhelming pile of furs. The perpetual chill of these lands threatens to seep in the moment his feet meet the icebound stone, to unwrite the fire from his body as though its mere existence is an offense. He casts a blister of heat about him to stave it off, pulling on first his trousers, then his silken tunic, both without wrinkle despite how long they have lain on the floor.
"Must you go?" a voice asks as he toes into his boots, high and tuneless and wrong to the ear. He knows from the rustling of fabric at his back that the female in the bed has pushed herself up on an elbow to watch him. "I could arrange for a thrall to bring us our repast. We could make an eve of it."
Carmine turns to her. Indeed, she is propped up amongst the pelts, fair as ivory, except where he marked her pleasure in pinks and reds along the expanse of her breasts. Though she arches her back to entice him with their surfeit, he feels unfulfilled to see them, just as he felt to lay with her at all.
It had not always been so.
Not so long ago, he could have lost himself between her thighs and come up feeling as satiated as if he had eaten a meal course to course. He would have partaken in this offered confection, then stayed for a spot of wine, then to break his fast come the morning, if he felt so inclined. He would have been well-pleased by his efforts and glutted on her adulations of them.
But there is a hollowness to them now.
Leaning forth to take her hand, Carmine presses his lips to the back of her knuckles. "Next time."
She pushes up further as he straightens to his full height, chasing after the lick of his flame. "Then there is to be one?"
"Surely," Carmine lies, smiling back at her in his egress. "Is there a male who could know you the once without wishing to know you all of his days?"
His footsteps echo crisply in the cavernous corridors of this wintry keep, as unlike the Forest House as two places can be: stolid where his home woos, unyielding where his home bends, glacial where his home smolders. If only he could melt this place through until it was malleable to his touch, until it came away wet and dripping on his fingers, until it sighed his name on the wind. Then, perhaps, he might feel full again.
"Lord Carmine," he hears from ahead.
This voice—velvety and smooth, like the slow draw of a bow along string—echoes out richly from its source, reverberating back to him from the small alcoves carved along his chosen path so that, for a moment, it seems she is all around him.
"Lady Kirsi," he greets, inclining his head.
A crystalline beauty, Kirsi holds herself tall and regal in her approach, her skirts tinkling along the floor, her hands tucked away in an ermine muff. She looks him over placidly: the untucked hem of his shirt, the undone ties at his wrists, the unkempt tousle of his hair. Then she glances down the corridor beyond him.
Her affect is that of still waters, of a lake surface frozen over. If anything has stirred in her at the sight of him, he cannot peer deep enough to tell, though he knows there is a current flowing in her—has glimpsed it before, in moments of quiet discussion, in knowing glances and subtle quirks of her lips.
"An afternoon well-spent?" she queries.
A shrug, lopsided and noncommittal. "It left something to be desired."
Kirsi hums out her response.
"I had hoped to spend it with you," Carmine adds, "but your ladies informed me that you had matters to attend."
At this, Kirsi laughs. "Yes," she says, slipping into the alcove beside them and lowering her voice, "and then you saw fit to take one to bed. Elena? Or—no, that was the last. Lumi, then, or perhaps Minja." Her gelid gaze tracks him as he follows after. "If you keep this up, there will be no ladies left to my employ."
Had he not suffered weeks and months of her disinterest, he might think her words born of envy. Certainly he has heard similar sentiments from other mouths, their eyes narrowed, their words sharp and their chests heaving with indignation. Yet here Kirsi stands before him as though they talk of nothing more pressing than the menu for the night.
Carmine closes the scant distance between them, enough that she must lift her eyes to hold to his. "You have never before concerned yourself with how I spend my time, lady. Nor with whom."
"You make me look the fool," Kirsi replies, quiet but no less certain for it. "I think it the very least you could do to keep your cock tucked away."
Hearing such words from her tongue, that cavern in him feels less a lack and more a hunger. "You must know that I would," he says, voice pitched low, "if only you would give me leave."
Kirsi looks aside, out into the corridor and away from him. Even so, the shifting of her hands in the trappings of her furs is the only true sign of her discontent. Were it not for this, it might seem only that she heard a noise and sought its source, or else wished to offer him better sight of the angles to her profile.
She says, "You say such things to me as though you do not carry the stench of another female on your skin."
Carmine places his hand over her fur muff, stilling the fingers wringing within. When she looks back to him, he murmurs, "It was you who I pictured. Your lips on mine. Your hands on my body. Your thighs around my head." He watches her pulse jump at her throat, and he knows with terrible certainty the only thing that will sate him now. "It is you who I wish to please."
Pale and lovely, her lashes flutter. Then, just as quickly, her expression steals over. "Yet you bedded her," she replies, shifting her arms that his hand must fall away. "Is it a matter of fickle desire, do you suppose? Or merely an insufficient hand?"
Head atilt, gaze dropping to the hands she has hidden away, Carmine says, "Ah—I hadn't realized I was contending with one so nonpareil."
Like a lone bloom amongst a field of frost, a blush rises to the high of Kirsi's cheeks.
Carmine feels the heat of it throughout the whole of his body. His need of her is made ravenous with so simple a sight, to know that she pleasures herself in the dark of the night—to see in this betrayal of her coloring that his sentiments are returned.
"What is it you think to when you let that hand drift low, Lady Kirsi?" he asks, noting the quick flicker of her eyes to his mouth. He leans in closer, close enough to hear the beat of her heart, fast and telling. "Is it the same as I? My head between your legs, my tongue in your—"
Kirsi makes a noise like a startled bird and clamps her bared hands over his mouth, her fur muff falling to the floor with a dull thump.
Carmine looks down to her long, slender fingers, and he wonders, if he breathed in deeply enough, if he flicked out his tongue now, whether he might find out what she tastes like in truth.
"Enough," she hisses, snatching her hands away as though she can read his thoughts off of his expression. "So I have thought of you. Your mockery is u—"
"I do not mock you, Kirsi," Carmine rasps.
She falls silent, then looks down to the proof of his gnawing hunger swelled against his trousers. Her eyes flare, and it is no longer another female's arousal which blossoms on the air.
"When I pleasure myself tonight, know that it is you—not my insufficient hand—that I will be picturing around me."
if carmine and kirsi had kids, what kind of parents would they be?
they're both such products of their environments and upbringings. kirsi is very involved with every single part of their lives and probably coddles them to an extreme. their safety, their longevity, their continuing lives are her utmost priority. she knows well how fortunate she is to bear three children to term with no complications—and she would treat them like the miracles they are to her. always in her lap or at her side, and if they aren't, they're in the same room as her almost always. any threats to them—any even potential threats to them—are handled swiftly and exactingly. the first time one of them falls ill/suffers injury sends her into a genuine hand-shaking, hyperventilating spiral that carmine has to try to calm her down from, which does in fact have the potential to make things worse.
because by comparison, carmine is pretty hands-off with his kids. he literally just. never had it modeled for him? he only ever really saw his mom dote on lucien, and by then, he mentally detached himself almost completely from his family and the emotions they elicited in him, so he was probably too busy distracting himself with sex to file any of that in his brain. plus if he thinks to himself that he wants to be unlike his own parents and treat his children more lovingly, then he has to accept that he has been affected by beron and amalia's parenting/lack of attention—and he just is not that emotionally mature, nor is he prepared to reckon with something like that. he's like his eldest brother that way! so carmine really let's his kids do kinda whatever. he plays with them and gives them attention enough, but he'd be just as willing to let a wet nurse/governess care for them—if kirsi would ever part from them.
which leads to a primary point of contention for my darlings once the children are born: kirsi pays much more attention to the children than she does to carmine—and that does not sit well with him. when the first is a baby, he's able to be like, okay, an infant needs to be cared for. but once the first has grown enough to be what he considers "self-sufficient" and kirsi is still all about their child all the time, he definitely gets resentful and snappish. that shitty petulance of like—you love our child more than me; you don't make time for me; you can't separate long enough from them to even have sex with me. which, of course, sex remains a huge thing for carmine, especially now that he's only having it with one person. that old unloved/unlovable wound crops up in a terrible way because this is exactly what he feared in coming to love someone: that they would eventually abandon him/withhold their love the way his parents did.
this blatant resentment hits kirsi hard as well. she understands how he feels, but she can't understand how he doesn't see that the children are the most important thing to her and that they should be to him as well. they should both be united on this, but he seems so disinterested in them. typical autumn court male—he doesn't understand how sacred this life they created is because he's used to such plenty. so she's pretty unforgiving of his attitude and doesn't offer him the reassurance he's after. she also really only sees the sex component of all this since he's never opened up about beron and amalia, so anything she knows of their relationship has been gleaned but never confirmed—which means that to her, this is all because they aren't having as much sex. she gets very paranoid that he's fucking around on her. that makes her more hostile towards him, which makes him more panicked and resentful and seeking of her comfort because it's proof that she doesn't love him.
so! all that to say! if he tries to calm her down when their child is ill/hurt for the first time, she's probably going to snap on him. all of those pent-up frustrations and fears and—do not touch me. you don't care. you don't care about them like i do. you don't love them like i do. don't tell me to calm down when you don't care at all. go—go to whatever whores warm our bed in my stead. and he's not going to take uhhhhh any of that well. because uh oh! suddenly he's his father! suddenly he's his mother! suddenly he's confronting everything that he never wanted to! and he hasn't been fucking around! but if she thinks that lowly of him, fine! maybe he will! he doesn't—but he definitely lets her think he does, at least until he comes back with his tail tucked and lays his head in her lap and they have their first genuine conversation in ages.
24. Are any of the brothers married, engaged and / or mated?
emile — emile has a mate, adonia, and they are married, as i hc is custom in autumn regardless of mate status. in classic emile fashion, he views her as a slight to him. she is from a weaker bloodline in autumn, which confirms to him that he is unworthy and weak, which makes him angrier and more vindictive. she can also wield flame where he cannot, which feels like a cosmic sort of fuck you to emile, that she has weak blood but strong power and he has strong blood but weak power. he is an absolute piece of shit to her. if she hadn't felt the bond between them snap into place and announced it in her shock, he never would have married her. at least ... he doesn't? cheat? unless you consider bed slaves and servants cheating, which none of the vanserra boys really do when they're the ones to use them.
carmine — carmine, who rules the province along the border of winter, is betrothed to kirsi, first-born daughter of the winter court family that owns most of the land bordering autumn. this is an entirely strategic alliance, and the exception to marrying within autumn is made by beron because this is a means to expand his rule without violating the treaty. kallias very much wants to contest this betrothal, especially once freed from utm, but he does not have the political strength to. carmine runs her absolutely ragged, especially at first. he is not at all subtle about the fact that he's fucking around on her. i don't think she much cares, except when he does it while in winter, where rumors spread that she must contend with directly. but then she doesn’t care about him so much that he becomes desperate for her attentions and affections->genuinely comes to have feelings for her->finally wins her over.
silas — there were talks of betrothal for silas (and marius) before his death. ladies of fine birth in their respective provinces were brought forth for them (beron) to choose from. this was also done as a way to see if any mating bonds would snap into place. he died just after one was chosen for him. beron conidered just marrying her off to marius, since marius assumed rule of silas's neighboring province after his death for being 1) bold enough to go after lucien and 2) bold enough to attack beron — but amalia intervened. she managed to convince beron to put marrying marius off. not sure how. she is much smarter than me and knows how to handle beron, so she knows what to say to guide his hand without overstepping and earning the back of it. also probably sex. anyway.
marius — marius is having an affair with emile's mate<3 it started as a crashout, self-destruction sort of thing for him after silas died. she came to check on him when he retired to his chambers in the middle of a feast one night. because that is what you do for someone who is grieving — not because she always liked marius the most of all the vanserras; not because she thought it sort of charming, the way he made such an angry face while reading, only for it to smooth away the moment he looked up from his book; not because when word reached her that two of the three brothers had died, she sent a prayer to the mother that neither was marius. and she was so concerned, so soft, so supple, in a way emile hated but sparked something in marius. the first thing he felt at all since silas died. he didn't know if it was the hope that emile would find out and kill him for it, or the pleasure in indulging in something irrational and ill-advised. he didn't care, not after the first time he lost himself in her, or the fifth, or the twentieth. by then, the way emile treated her began to truly rankle him, and he knew that it had become neither. that it had become love.
Someone should make a joke around Carmine about how he fell in love with a female Eris.
and isn’t it so fitting that the person he fell in love with was the one who subconsciously reminded him so much of the family that never showed him any love<3
i’m trying to imagine what he would do if anyone ever said this to him but all i can think about is kirsi overhearing or carmine laughingly relating it to her and her literally pulling out a gun
Kirsi Carmine with the they went as kids once before and it was a memorable meeting trope
every single one of my synapses sparked at one time over this. every single one!!! rare era of hostile truce between beron and the high lord of winter. winter!hl invites the vanserras to a banquet. beron leaves eris in autumn but brings emile and carmine. around this time, carmine is so desperate for love that he's actively being groomed by female courtiers + kirsi is so devoted to her purpose even at such a young age that she's isolated herself from everyone but her family. complete opposite ends of the spectrum.
carmine tries to engage in conversation with kirsi at dinner. she wrinkles up her nose at him—ew! a vanserra!—and angles herself away, trying instead to hear what her father is speaking to the high lords about. he's still young enough to get angry and defensive instead of adapting to a new tactic of getting her to pay attention to him. he scoffs—makes some comment about how she might as well talk to him to pass the time since no one else is paying her any mind. kirsi, who clocked the way one of the females in their entourage touched his elbow in passing earlier, makes some cool cutting remark—looks to that female way down the table and comments something about the impropriety of his autumn ways. (yeah she's victim blaming. he's a vanserra! he can't be a victim. he's a perpetrator, else he will be soon.) they sit across from each other just mutually fuming and irritable.
but those comments stick in their little formative brains.
for the first time, carmine wonders what's improper about His Autumn Ways. it doesn't get him very far, of course. vanserra ways are inherently the right ways. but he thinks about it from time to time as he gets older. when they meet again as adults, he eventually gets enough wine in him to ask. what did you mean? she tells him, then asks, you remember that? kirsi thinks him a fool. what does he know about her life? about her reception? about her relationships? she doesn't care about connecting with others. she cares about her duty and her stewardship. stupid vanserra. stupid stupid stupid. he only said it to get under her skin, and she's letting him—she's thinking about it in social settings. people are ignoring her. yet too young to politic. too noble for play with her peers. it will change once she's older. but now she's aware of it. aware enough to make a snarky reference about it to carmine when they meet again as adults. you are not the only person to pay me mind; i have others to attend. carmine's grinning ear to ear because, you remember that?
i've become very into kirsi x eris since you posted about it. how do you picture their chemistry being different than kirsi and carmine's?
let me seeeee i think kirsi has more respect for eris than carmine but in a really weird and convoluted way?? like once she gets past them being Vanserras™ she respects that eris puts on airs as being less sexually promiscuous—but she gets far more gratification in bed with carmine than eris because eris simply is not going to grovel or give her the control in the way carmine does. she respects eris’s ambition and competence—but he excludes her from political decisions that carmine would give her full agency over so with him she has to play into autumn politics more or else accept that she’ll never be a part of them. she respects eris’s diplomacy with the winter court compared to beron—but he is the heir to autumn. with him, there’s no remaining in winter. there’s no ruling sulatta. she has to become autumn, at least enough to be accepted by the populace so that eris’s image is maintained—but any amount of becoming autumn is too much autumn for her. carmine never pushes that even a little. he has no care to change anything about kirsi at all.
SO i think basically on paper eris is who kirsi would choose every single time if she had to pick a vanserra but it is carmine who she personally shines and prospers the most with. kirsi and eris have immense political savvy together (if kirsi will autumn herself enough for eris, if eris will cede control enough for her to have the control she did in sulatta) and they would get along really well interpersonally because of their similar goals/ambitions/mentalities towards duty, but their bond wouldn’t be as deep as kirmine’s and eris wouldn’t quite exalt kirsi in the ways she needs to address some of her deeper mortal wounds. both of them together are just far too stoic/private and unwilling to address their emotions without someone to push them to.
BUT i do think they would have interesting effects on each other’s sense of duty. kirsi who does it for the love of the game and accepts the limitations to her person because her parents were everything to her versus eris who is basically a chained and neglected and festering dog snarling in front of the throne because of his parents. he kind of gets her a little indignant about what she’s missed out on and introduces those things to her hornily; she kind of gets him to look past himself and towards the good he does for his people through his duty. so in these ways they are very good for each other.
primarily it’s just a difference in emotional depth between the pairings i think. both have their conflicts >:) but both also have different positive aspects to them
now that the kirmine box of pandora has been opened again can you say more about the kallias x kirsi situation? her wanting to prove herself by being with him and immediately getting disillusioned the next day when he goes back to wanting viv. the bitterness at seeing a maybe even pregnant vivianne when she herself is betrothed to this vanserra tuliveri mf who won't stop fucking around.
god kirsi who hates kallias so much and kallias who has little to no idea because the way she treats him is functionally exactly the same before and after the one (1) and only time they ever had sex. he knows she probably disdains him for betrothing her to carmine, but even that doesn’t hamper her ability to interact with him or advise him or function at court.
i think even the night they had sex she knew there was nothing between them but friendship—but there was still that almost juvenile spark of wondering about where it could lead. dutiful girl had never had a crush before! she was born to one day be steward of her province, the most daunting province in all of winter for the constant threat of autumn stretched long against it. while other fae her age were beginning to embrace their sexuality, she was demanding her father begin bringing her to meetings of strategy, on his patrols of the border, etc. now all of a sudden her childhood companion is leaning in closer than he has before and his eyes are lingering on her lips and he’s sampling her hair on his long fingers—he’s sweeping his tongue against hers and divesting her of her clothes and pressing between her thighs. afterwards, she gets a little giddy. she thinks: the heir to the court would be a match as no other. it’s the equivalent of her first time ever doodling her first name with someone else’s last name. she’s falling asleep to thoughts of potential babies and he’s staring unblinking at the ceiling thinking about how she isn’t viv.
then he’s fully dressed when she wakes up and he looks Awkward standing there. she can’t remember kallias ever looking awkward before. his face is so red and he isn’t looking at her in the face and by the time he starts apologizing and asking her not to tell viv, she’s already drawn the sheets up to cover herself completely. to him she seems as she ever does when she agrees: unmoved and unaffected, cold, detached. her expression never changes. it’s a relief to him that she’s the same kirsi as ever. meanwhile he leaves the room and kirsi feels her eyes begin to prickle and her jaw tighten and her throat become difficult to swallow through. he didn’t notice it, but her maidenhead had stained the sheets. she shoves these into the arms of the nearest thrall as she takes her leave and bids him burn them. and if that isn’t rough enough kallias tells her she’s betrothed to fucking CARMINE in the same convo she finds out her PARENTS DIED.
so yeah ummmm like u said seeing kallias and viv, especially pregnant viv, makes kirsi Unwell. by the time kirsi finds out viv is pregnant i feel like carmine’s softened her to him but they haven’t gotten married yet and she definitely doesn’t see any hope in having children with him. which means she becomes extremely distant during that diplomatic visit. carmine takes this as poorly as can be expected because he’s clocked that it’s about kallias and now he’s spinning out assumptions about their relationship and all the torrid fucknasty winter sex they surely had. it’s his first test, really. any other time in his past this would have him bedding the first female who looked at him. but kirsi’s seen him for him and not only appreciates him but prefers him when he’s being genuine. he doesn’t fuck around—he gets clingy. this is as annoying to kirsi as it is endearing. she’s like what the fuckkk is wrong with you but also his attentiveness soothes that old spurn from kallias.
what really wins her over is that this is the first time possibly ever that carmine errs as emissary and says something intentionally to insult kallias. literally because he’s jealous and insecure and pent up. nothing detrimental but a lil vanserra shitheadedness as he goes to sip his wine. kallias gets offended and turns just the sightest bit pink and kirsi watches RAPT. takes truly so much satisfaction from it. only carmine notices that shift in her: she leans onto the arm rest closest to him, her shoulders lower a fraction, she even lets him put his hand on her leg ?!!? (in large part because kallias, knowing how much she of any hates the vanserras, looks over like 🤨 when it happens) yeah okay i’ve decided this is the first time kirmine properly have sex and it is mindblowing for kirsi and it’s a full circle reclaiming moment 🙂↕️
