johannestevans: Photo by Daisa TJ via Pexels. Steps Ahead Fantasy short. A serving boy seduces a p
johannestevans: Photo by Daisa TJ via Pexels. Steps Ahead Fantasy short. A serving boy seduces a prince who is tired of the weight of his crown. Rated M. 13.7k. M/M fantasy, with dark comedy throughout, and a rather fraught romance. Prince Alexander, who hates the weight of his crown, his kingdom, and his princely identity, tries at every opportunity to escape his position, but is foiled at every turn. A serving boy named Mahon, full of helpless compassion and a certain naivety, tries his best to offer him what comfort he can. All is not as it seems, and the two have more in common than they first thought. Themes of parental abuse, gender and assigned role dynamics, and anti-monarchist themes throughout. Please note a specific content warning for non-consensual tampering with someone’s contraceptives, in the context of a trans man. Read for free below in its entirety! Check out more stories from me on my Directory of Work. I’m also on Twitter. — The prince was the only son to a small kingdom. His father was not best pleased about his being his only heir, of course, just as the prince was not best pleased about being prince. He couldn’t leave, of course. He couldn’t travel. His father was terrified he’d be injured or lost or killed… Or, naturally, that he wouldn’t come back. When he was a teenager, he was occupied by classes in everything under the sun – long lessons in geography, learning the names of other families, memorising their complex and intersecting genealogies, studying his own family’s history, local history… Nowadays, he was occupied with other things – overseeing administrative work, constantly working through sheaf after sheaf of stacked papers, redrafting one after the next, compiling minutes of the king’s courts, looking over paperwork within the palace and the kingdom proper. His father liked to say it was important work, that he did it himself until he was king. He would say it was the best way to learn, to entrench oneself in the background running of the kingdom, to understand the economics, the noble obligation, the logistics. It wasn’t entirely true, of course – before his father took the throne, he was still permitted time for leisure, to play sports, to read, to relax. He thought it was dangerous to allow his son things like that. The prince understood, albeit in the way one understood but did not condone another’s motive for murder. Everything he did was scheduled in one way or another, no matter his attempts to supersede or get out of whatever had been timetabled for him. If he took time to ride, he would find an ambassador waiting for him; if he went for a walk, he was met with the chairman of the Royal Bank; if he retired to his quarters to read, he would cross the threshold to find paperwork, if not a messenger, awaiting him. He didn’t want to be king. He had known this since he was a child, had always known it – he didn’t want to be king, and didn’t much want to be a prince, either, but there was no escape. When he first found the young man in his room, he thought he was an assassin, lurking in the dark, and he lunged forward. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-five, small and delicate with a youthful plumpness to his cheeks, his arse, a roundness to his belly and chest. The prince had him pinned against the wall very easy, his dagger tight against the young man’s throat, but he realised in short order he had no blade of his own. “Who are you?” he asked coolly, and the young man quivered, looking up at him with his eyes wide and his lips trembling. Keep reading -- source link