Re: asks and drabbles about things Onyx had to be trained in - yes, that sounds delicious! May I start with the "not allowed to touch princes' personal things" rule? Because I found that really interesting – I first assumed that he's not allowed to touch their things for any purpose other than cleaning (e.g. that picking up a photo frame or some other knicknack to dust it off or to wipe the dust from the shelf would be ok for him) and I was intrigued when it turned out that wasn't the case.
content warnings: royal/servant whump, nonhuman whumpee, burning, insults, carewhumper (? maybe? someone feel free to correct me on this idk), multiple whumpers
masterlist | ask game that this is from
I am so sorry about how long this has been marinating in my inbox 😭😭 but the rule actually does not apply to both princes! Onyx does all the cleaning for Cardan, he's just not allowed to do things for Ryan. The short reason why is that Ryan is a control freak, but you get the long reason too <3
“Onyx! Did you bring my soup?”
I bowed, all the way to the floor like Her Majesty liked me to do. “Of course, Your Highness.”
Prince Cardan grinned, leaning towards me with his hands out to receive it. Leaning towards me over his brother’s bed, actually, and I hesitated. “I… Your Highness, I don’t know if…”
“Oh, come on. It’s not that big of a deal, just give me the fucking soup.”
“Of course, Your Highness.” I leaned toward him, slowly handing the bowl over-
His hand slipped as he grabbed the bowl. The soup tilted left, spilling onto my hand, and I hissed at the scalding liquid, yanking my hands back to myself.
“Hey, angel, what the fuck was that?”
I looked back at the prince, who was staring at the quilt that I’d just dropped his soup on. “Shit,” I blurted out. “My, my apologies, Your Highness, I- I can fix this, I-”
“Can you?” Prince Ryan asked from the doorway, and I jumped.
“Yes, Your Highness,” I insisted quietly, grabbing napkins from Prince Cardan’s desk and shoving them at the quilt, at the bright red tomato soup spilled on it. “I, I can, I swear, I didn’t mean it and-”
“And all you’re doing is spreading it around. Stop.”
“I- please, Your Highness, I can, please-”
“Just- stop it, Onyx. Stop touching things.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I-”
“I don’t care! I don’t care. Shut up for one fucking second and let me fix this.” I froze. Prince Ryan didn’t yell at me. His brother did, all the time, but Prince Ryan told me clearly and concisely what he needed. There was never any need for him to yell at me. I dropped slowly to my knees and leaned forward, the way I was supposed to do when I saw him, instead of arguing and talking back.
I didn’t apologize, because he’d told me to keep quiet, but fuck was I sorry.
“What did you do?” Prince Ryan asked, and Prince Cardan laughed.
“Me? What did I do? Your bird is the one who spilled my soup.”
“Yeah. On my bed. What the fuck was he even doing over here?”
Prince Cardan made an I-don’t-know sound and went back to typing on his computer. Prince Ryan stayed silent for a long moment, and I squeezed my eyes shut as tight as they would go.
“Onyx,” he snapped eventually, and I looked up quickly.
“Yes, Your Highness? My apologies for spilling the soup. It won’t happen again.”
“Pull the quilt off and wash it. Handwash, not the machine. If the soup is soaked through any other layers, you can throw them in the machine. Come find me when you’re done.”
Handwashing took a long time. It was reserved for once every month or two, whenever the royal family could spare for me to miss almost an entire day of duties to wash the things that were more fragile than the rest. Things with embroidery or delicate fibers, things that the royal family owned in abundance. It was not a punishment, not by any measure, but it was a task that wouldn’t be simple to add on to the chores of the day.
“Yes, Your Highness.”
~
“I don’t want you touching my things again.”
I frowned. I had washed the quilt, gotten every shadow of a stain out, and then found the prince like he had asked me to. Because my whole job was washing things, cleaning things. “My apologies, Your Highness. I don’t understand.”
“What is there not to understand? Seems pretty fucking clear to me. I don’t want you ruining my things when you do shit like this.”
“Of course, Your Highness. Just. How else am I supposed to tidy for you?”
He rolled his eyes. “I’ll do it. You, just, like, vacuum and whatever. I’ll make sure there’s nothing on the floor to get in your way. Just quit messing with my things.”
I lowered my eyes to the floor. He was right. I wasn’t a very good servant at all if I tried to clean and only made more messes. And if being a servant was my purpose, and I wasn’t a good servant, there was nothing else left for me.
“Yes, Your Highness,” I agreed after a few moments. It didn’t matter what was left for me. Regardless, I was always supposed to agree with the prince.
“Good. Why were you near my bed in the first place?”
“I was bringing soup to His Highness Prince Cardan. He was waiting for me on the other side of your bed.”
“And you managed to spill it while you were handing it to him?”
“I, um. He- I think I made a mistake, Your Highness. I was careless about handing it over. I thought that he was holding more weight than he was, and so I stopped carrying all the weight. And the bowl titled and the soup got on my arm, and I- My apologies, Your Highness. I did not stay still when the soup hit me, and I dropped the bowl.”
He stared at me. “So Cardan spilled hot liquid on you after telling you to hand it to him over my bed? And then it just happened to accidentally spill?”
“Ye… es? Yes, Your Highness.”
“I am going to kill that bastard someday,” he muttered. He grabbed my wrist, flipping my arm over to look at the underside. The burned part was bright red, and I glanced away, wincing as he poked it. “That hurts?” he asked, and I nodded. “Alright. No punishment tonight for the quilt; this burn is plenty of punishment. Did you clean your arm with any type of soap or disinfectant?”
“I rinsed it off with water, Your Highness.”
“How warm was it?”
“Cold tap water, Your Highness.”
He made a disapproving noise in the back of his throat. He pushed and pulled at the angry red skin, trying to gauge where it started and ended, and I swallowed a whimper.
“You didn’t ice it at all, did you?”
“No, Your Highness.”
“Good,” he said. “If you know where any aloe vera is, you’re welcome to it for the next… two days, I guess. Be careful with the burn and don’t make it worse.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
He sighed. “I’ll… I’ll talk to Cardan about doing this kind of thing. He’s mad at me, and since he can’t actually do anything to me he’s trying to get back by doing things he knows frustrate me. Like pulling this shit with you and being a whiny bitch about it and-” He stopped, releasing my arm and turning back to his computer. “You’re not supposed to hear that. Don’t repeat it to anyone. Go finish your chores.”
This is such a dumb thing to randomly send an ask abt but your post showed up on my recommended and we have the same pfp and I thought that was cool :]]]
don't feel dumb!! I saw your ask and went "omg same profile pic" before even reading what you sent 😭😭
anyway varian is super cool and I love your pfp :]
5. What moments have made them pity whumpee, if any?
for Ryan ?
.... lets pretend I didn't literally forget to answer these...
ask game
"What would you consider to be too far?"
Ryan's expression lights up with humor for a brief fraction of a second before returning to its careful neutrality. "What, morally? Morally, I don't give a shit what I have to do. I'm a prince. I do what I need to; no more or no less. That doesn't change when it comes to Onyx. The only thing that changes is that I generally need him working the next day. So we try not to break his bones or do anything that gets him limping or bedbound or whatever. But make no mistake, there is no moral sensibility keeping him safe. Only his usefulness."
"What moments have made you pity Onyx?"
"It doesn't really matter if I pity him," Ryan mutters. "It doesn't change anything. Pity does nothing. I hate when he cries. I can't do anything about what he wants. He used to- he really was miserable before I stole his memories, did you know that? He used to cry all the time and beg me for the weirdest fucking things. He wanted a specific translation of the Odyssey. He said he had planned to annotate a copy with his boyfriend. It was-"
Ryan cuts himself off, shaking his head sharply. "He was a special case. He was there with volunteer status, so I didn't need to be entirely cruel to him. But he didn't really want to be there. He- he was weird about things sometimes. The morning before he got the surgery to mess with his memory, he just kept crying and asking me if he could hug me. It was… strange. Most people that hate me as much as he did don't want to hug me. His loneliness and desperation was… unnerving, to say the least." He swallowed past a lump in his throat. "It doesn't matter if I pitied him for it. He still had to do it. I pity all the cats who whine about the vet, too, but that doesn't really change anything, does it?"
What is up with Ryan and his first time using swords???? I'm getting So curious <3<3
Plot wise, it's not that important tbh 😭 it definitely gives some insight as to why Ryan is the way he is, if anyone cares about the reasons, but yeah the short answer is just that I felt like writing it.
because I LOVE writing for the royal family
Ryan and Cardan have my favorite dynamic in the whole story. They're so evil I love them so much
But I write unimportant things very often! Usually they're only a few paragraphs, so I don't include them in the polls, but Ryan's first time using a sword ended up being a pretty long scene so I figured I might as well. Ryan would definitely think it's relevant 😭
What would Onyx do if someone kidnapped him?, like during his captivity era most likely, if someone just nabbed him from the royals house?
this is an excellent question omg
Well. Not much tbh. But every scenario with this would probably fall into two categories, one where he thinks the royal family has given permission and one where he doesn’t. So it would be something like:
“Excuse me, sir? I don’t mean to be rude, but I think I- um, I am not yet done with the chores. I need to clean the princes’ bathroom.”
“Aw, don’t worry about that, angel! Prince Cardan said he didn’t mind if we borrowed you for a bit!”
“My apologies for the confusion, sir. With His Highness’s permission, I will serve you like my own master for the time being.”
OR (with a specific person because there are not very many that onyx wouldn't wholeheartedly believe about having permission):
“Excuse me, sir? I don’t mean to be rude, but I think I- um, I am not yet done with the chores. I need to clean the princes’ bathroom.”
“Don’t you worry about that, Onyx. I’ve got it all taken care of.”
“With all due respect, sir, His Highness Prince Ryan ordered me to- um, he said that I am not to leave the house with your daughter or you. And I have responsibilities to attend to. If that’s okay.”
“And what do you think you’re in a position to do about that right now? …Yeah. Stay silent. You can’t do anything.”
like… frankly it would not matter if he knew the person or not. if they said they had permission, they probably had permission! and even if they didn't, what is he gonna do about that? they would not even have to restrain him or anything, he is such a good little servant <3
(set in vampire au) i wish to hand him silver jewelry and watch what he'll do >:)
I’m so thrilled that you like the non-existent vampire au as much as I do akgjadhfjak (also I’m assuming this is for Onyx? let me know if you wanted to do it to another character)
He smiles at you, bowing before accepting it. “Thank you, Mx,” he says, over and over as you put it on him. “The royal family and I are very grateful for your gift.”
As soon as you leave the room, he finds a member of the royal family and tells them what it’s made of. At their request, he takes it back off.
Im sending people questions to add some positivity so here's a question :3
Favorite non-human body part to put on a character?
hiii thank you for the ask!!
I feel obligated to say wings because a LOT of my characters have wings. namely the main character of the main thing I write. but honestly I think my favorite is tails! I love a good tail. I don't even care what kind. just. tails. I love tails.
