important: this is a very low maintenance thing, and i’m mostly using this blog as a way to dump some of my writing that i don’t feel like posting on my main for everyone to see. it's going to be different to my usual content, so please do not feel obligated to read, follow, or interact if this is not your thing <3 this is just my little archive!
this blog is sfw! if i want to write smut i’ll take the depravity over to my main blog. do not plagiarise, translate, or reupload my writing ANYWHERE, including feeding it into AI, or a thousand year curse shall be unleashed upon you and doom you for eternity.
masterlist
these lonely and greedy demands; a knight!nanami au
i think one thing that needs to be said more often is that it’s not like lesser to write shorter works or to write less
i see people praise length a lot and that’s good! but please know that the aim of a good work is not necessarily length!
there’s a reason why poetry and short story collections exist. depth of a fic is not directly proportional to length, and it’s absolutely possible to ruin a story by making it too long whether it’s through inconsistency or incoherence or straight up not being interesting anymore. it is also just as possible to compress a story and make it coherent by removing excess.
if your writing form is more amenable to brevity, do so. you’ll find an audience that works for you and appreciates it!
So like is there gonna be more of knight!nanami or will I just be left to wither away and die? That's a bit cruel isn't it?
Jk jk, not trying to pressure you into writing, but if you're thinking about writing *anything* for nanami, pleaseeee do!❤️❤️
u might have to wither, unfortunately, since he is destined for eternal longing. but at least you are one step closer to nanami because both of you are yearning for something you cannot have 😭
synopsis: in the quiet of your bedchambers, your loyal knight considers the kingdom’s future, his sworn duty to protect you, as the princess who will soon inherit it, and the weight of the devotion he keeps close to his heart.
tags: knight au, medieval royalty au, reader is a princess and nanami your most devoted knight, very mildly suggestive themes, repressed chronic yearner nanami, just an entire story of unbearable yearning really, he’s lowkey trying very hard not to lust over your shadow on the floor that’s how bad it is, implied age gap, wc: 2.6k
a/n: honestly this was so much fun to write!! i have been plagued by knight fucker thoughts and just wanted to try something new.
The sunlight is a cruel thing.
Nanami Kento stands with his back pressed to the wall, both arms raised to rest atop the hilt of his sword. Outside the castle, the evening sun sinks lower into the horizon, a gentle whispering of a late summer day that filters through the stained glass windows, painting your chambers awash in a golden haze.
Behind the divider on the other end of the room, your maids are busying their hands with the whispers of silk and lace upon your skin. He’s long grown used to this rehearsed choreography — of hushed voices and ties pulled tight upon your waist; of lavender oil that threads through the air and settles deep into the trenches of a heart he still has yet to tame.
The last offerings of daylight casts your silhouette across the polished floors, and your knight forces his gaze away. It is this sight itself he cannot get used to — a cruel taunt of the outlines of your body drawn upon the floor with shadow and light; a battle so onerous even the kingdom’s best warrior struggles against yielding to.
The sunlight is especially cruel today, in fact, for it casts the outline of your shape perfectly across the floorboards; moving when you lift your arms, bowing as you bend. If Nanami only looked — a temptation he is trying his very best to avoid falling into — then perhaps he would be able to see the locks of stray hair yet to be pinned in place by your maids, or the way you shift on your feet, clad in just your stay as you pick out a gown for the evening.
And perhaps his heart would be weaker at the sight of something about you remaining so unmade, unguarded and untouched by the weight of the crown or the stifling air of ceremony.
But he does not. Instead, his eyes drop on their own accord each evening, standing guard by your door and counting the hinges, the latch, and the exact number of footfalls it would take to cross the room to you if he had to.
Seven.
Seven too many, but seven Nanami commits to memory just the same. He averts his eyes from the outline of your body and counts those seven steps; before recounting the hinges on the door and the scratches on his sword — and he thinks of the crown with a heart equally as heavy as the armour he wears.
No, not the thing itself; not the heavy gold adorned with intricate carvings and precious gemstones his unlearned tongue struggles to identify with confidence — but what it shall mean to bear the weight of it.
A life of inevitability, of responsibility you shall have no choice but to bear with your head held high and your smile fixed tight upon your face. Meetings that drag on till dawn and do not resolve. A charming prince whose smile hides something far sharper than the blade he wields. A throne too hot in the summer and ice cold in the winter.
(Too lonely, no matter what the season.)
The wooden screen that divides him from what his heart so stubbornly longs for is adorned with tanchozuru taking flight; red-crowned cranes with their ink-dipped wings outspread, the sky almost boundless amidst the gold lacquer.
They are symbols of longevity and good luck, amongst other things, and although Nanami has never been one to count on something as flimsy as luck, or on something as intangible as hope, he supposes now might be a worthy time to begin.
You are but nineteen years of age, and if the whisperings within the castle walls are to be believed, then you will quickly be expected to rise to receive your new title within the year, as the only heir to a rapidly weakening king, inheriting a kingdom bordered by blood-thirst and neighbours that circle like vultures at the slightest hint of instability brewing.
Nanami hopes to god the rumours are wrong.
They never are. And he should know better by now than to hope for the impossible.
But still — his stubborn heart persists.
He hopes that you might breathe a little longer in the powder pink and baby blue of the gowns you favour so much, before the crown turns them into bold shades of crimson red and royal purple, before your bright laughter is stifled beneath heavy velvet and brocade. Before his tongue must adapt to the way the words Your Majesty hang a little too heavy off his lips, before you stop being his Princess and are called upon to become the Queen.
The screen shifts. The cranes ripples in place as it does, and Nanami has to wonder if they truly are as untethered as they seem, or if even these birds before him are held down by some unspoken force, the same force that binds him to you, and you to the throne.
Then, the silhouettes behind the screen multiply briefly. One maid comes into view, peering round the screen with surprise and curiosity she fails to conceal entirely. She is young, new to her role, and perhaps not used to seeing a knight in the princess’s private quarters. Another maid bends down to fix the hem of your dress, the rustle of silk continuing until they finally step away and leave your shadow standing alone.
Finally, you step out, and the smile you seem to spare only for him these days is probably more cruel than the sunlight that was casting a sinful outline of your body upon waxed floors.
It doesn’t take much to undo him — the corners of your lips simply have to tip upward, the edges of your eyes carrying a softness that twists at his heart.
You call his name quietly, and as taken as he might be with you, he isn’t blind to the way your smile has recently lost some of the light it once carried so easily.
The air in the castle rests heavier and heavier each day, like a breath held in trepidation of the fall of a great king. But the dark eye circles, the hollowness to your cheeks; nothing bites at Nanami’s heart more than seeing you like this.
Lonely.
“…I saw the physician leaving father’s chambers earlier,” you say. You hesitate around the next words, fiddling with the fabric of your gown. “He isn’t getting any better.”
His fingers tighten fractionally. He bows his head because he cannot bare to see your sad smile fracture further. The sunlight is cruel for multiple reasons, he supposes. Each new dawn brings the beloved king one day closer towards the edge of a precipice the kingdom will soon mourn for.
“No,” Nanami replies, less of an affirmation and more of an apology. “I am afraid he is not, your Highness.”
You do not ask if your father will be alright. You do not cry. A younger you would have — he can picture it still, your eyes brimming with tears, lips quivering as you cried for a week straight over your favourite horse, inconsolable by nothing and no one.
The crown is changing you before it even rests atop your head. You grieve silently these days, without tears, and for all Nanami swore to protect you against, he never imagined it would be the weight of the inevitable itself. Of destiny that looms in the distance.
Nanami watches as you move to the windowsill, palms coming to rest on the ledge. He joins you because he knows this is the kind of heaviness that begs for a companion to hold it with.
He joins you because words have never been his forte, and what he cannot offer with an eloquent tongue he tries to offer with a steady presence.
That is a knight’s duty, after all.
(Or at the very least, it is his.)
“I do not know if I can do this,” you whisper after a long silence. You do not cry anymore, but the quiver of your voice still betrays your sorrow. “I cannot be like my father.”
“You do not need to be your father, your Highness,” he replies lowly. “The realm does not seek a copy, it seeks you.”
An easy answer, but one that is no less lacking in honesty.
Nanami doesn’t doubt that you will become a great ruler; his only fear lies in what the crown will demand in return for greatness. He wonders if your easy laugh will still carry over the breeze, if your hands will still obstinately reach for him in those small, thoughtless moments where you refused to see rank and status, where he only found himself a mere man before you.
(He hopes, yet again, for just a little more time.)
“Whatever happens,” he adds, because in your continued silence he reads of your need for something more solid to hold onto. “I shall keep you.”
At that, you smile. A tired, amused curve of lips. “You have said that before. At a time most similar to this one.”
Of course, he remembers it too.
A younger you, your hands pressed similarly on the windowsill, the sunlight falling in the same patient streams through the panes of glass. The scene is painfully similar, except your eyes were burning with tears and your head was bowed to hide the way they trickled down your cheeks in hot streams.
“You do not want me,” you had sobbed bitterly, your shoulders shaking as you cried. “Am I correct?”
Even as he watched you, he could still feel the ghost of your lips lingering on his own before he had quickly stepped back from you, the heat of that touch now burning against his skin as you wept quietly.
Nanami thought to himself, then and there, that he ought to be put to death for daring to draw sorrow from your eyes like that. Instead, he had simply stood the same way he stands now, unmoving, pretending he wasn’t choking on his own splintering heart.
He had the good sense to turn away before his body could betray him with a hand reaching out to fix your collar, or to adjust the ribbon in your hair — before he could accidentally lay bare his lifetime of devotion on impulse to console you with more than words could allow.
“No,” he told you quietly, and his own voice was weak and fractured at the edges with the kind of emotion he rarely let himself show. “You are not correct, your Highness.”
“Then—” you turned to face him again, your lashes darkened and wet, “why do you hold yourself so far from me?”
His answer had been similar to the reply he just offered you now.
Because I must keep you.
And for now, keeping requires distance.
“Will it always be this way?” you’d asked, and though your brows were furrowed, your eyes were desperately searching his for a hint of hope to be found within the autumnal warmth of hazel irises.
“No,” Nanami found it in himself to say, because he could not bear the sight of seeing you like that for a single breath longer. “Not always.”
He might be a stone statue enclosed in steel, but his heart has always seemed to move for you, and you alone.
And so he held those words close to his heart, and they became his new oath that day. He held them tight, not as a mercy spoken lightly by a lesser man — but as a promise, a plan he intended to uphold.
“I meant it then,” he tells you. “But I mean it even more now.”
Your head tilts, considering him, and when your eyes flicker over to his mouth and back, Nanami knows you must be reliving the same searing heat against your own mouth, the same pull of gravity.
“…Do you also remember what else you said?”
He swallows, feeling his throat working around a reply. You answer for him in his hesitation. “You said,” you remind him, eyes steady on his, “Not always.”
“Yes,” he agrees quietly. “I believe I did.”
“And has that hour finally come?” you ask, and in the slow flutter of your lashes against the glow of the dying sun, he finds himself going weak in the knees.
Keeping requires distance, and Nanami is familiar with distance.
It is woven into the three steps he trails behind you at all times, in the seven it would take to reach you from where he stands guard at your door each night, and now, in the one singular step it requires to close the distance and let his desire be louder than reason.
What he is unfamiliar with, however, is the sort of keeping that asks him to stand near enough to hold.
His breath trembles in his chest, but he doesn’t have it in him to refuse you a second time. Not after it nearly killed him inside a year before. He thinks that maybe the kindest thing he could do for you now would be to stand nearer, not farther.
“If you’ll allow it,” he says slowly, every word laid down like permission being sought, “then it shall.”
You simply shift towards him in response, wordless, and suddenly the one singular step between your bodies is no more.
The last inch that remains is for him to close.
The last inch is for a knight to decide if he shall break his princess’ heart once more.
“Are you sure about this?” he murmurs, even though the answer is written plain as day on your face. He does not need to seek confirmation, but he does so anyway.
“I am,” you whisper, certain, sure. “Keep me, Nanami. But for the sake of my heart, do not keep me alone any further.”
Weary as you are lately, Nanami has never seen any beauty comparable to the lady in front of him. Closeness is an indulgence his duty has never allowed him, but now, standing only a few breaths away, you are positively radiant – even the sunlight does not dare compete. That must be why it lays itself softly on your cheek, threads itself through your hair in awe, and sketches your silhouette upon the floor like an artist does before their muse.
There are vows fixed by words etched on stone tablets and set in the obsidian ink of a quill taking to paper. But then, there are also vows not spoken nor written, and instead forged by inches and breath, in the distance between two people finally closed and not withheld.
Nanami takes that last step, closes that last inch, and already your head tilts toward him. In your instinctual response he finds the sharp reminder that his longing for you was never a well-kept secret, and neither was it an unreciprocated desire.
And so–
He kisses you.
He kisses you because you are his Princess, but in the privacy of your quarters, he finds himself not your knight, and just a man losing something he’s never had the right to hold in the first place.
He kisses you because one day you shall be Queen, and you shall sit atop a throne that might as well be an unscalable mountain, and Nanami Kento feels very determined to rebel against that fate today.
He kisses you back because the sunlight is unbearably cruel, and each new dawn brings you closer to a destiny he hopes would just wait for a gentler time to call your name.
The truth is, Nanami knows more than anything that the destiny that looms on the horizon could never be gentle.
But he kisses you as if it could be.
Let me keep you, he thinks. It doesn’t matter where I have to stand. Three steps behind you, seven by the door, or kneeling at your feet; I shall keep you.
And when the time comes where keeping no longer requires any distance at all, your loyal knight will never be standing too far.
a/n: honestly i have no idea what this is LMFAOOO but i mostly wrote it for myself and i had a lot of fun in the process so that’s what matters.
— the title of this fic is from a song, and the full lines are: so can we pretend sweetly, before the mystery ends? // i am a man with a heart that offends // with its lonely and greedy demands
— red crown cranes symbolise longevity and long life, but these birds also mate for life and can be taken to represent devotion and loyalty, which, uh… nanami has plenty of. i figured it would be appropriate lol
