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sweetfirebird · 5 months

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Rose-red

Prompt for Lieselotte on Patreon who asked for Azar/Bernard. This is probably not what you wanted, like, at all, but this is where they are at in my head… in fact, they are still kind of here. Azar’s eventual attempt at directness (at the end of this summer) almost doesn’t matter because it was the outcome she kind of expected by then. Bernard is clueless but he was not actually the problem here. (He was the problem later when he kept trying to help Azar in a way that would only work if she hadn’t been controlled by her parents. Anyway.)

Content tags: age difference (but it’s one-sided at the moment). Think teen with a crush. Zazzie, my pet. You are a child. Uh. Also, Azar’s parents (offpage) consistently and constantly undermining her even when they aren’t there. Dramatic teen behavior but totally justified and valid feelings. Body issues. My poor little rich girl. :( uh. Spoilers for His Mossy Boy and Treasure for Treasure.

m/f, in case anyone didn’t know that going in.

Rose-red

“There you are, my gorgeous queen. You only had to ask.” Bernard’s low, warm voice was audible even on the landing, where Azar stopped to listen and quickly check to make sure the hair around her bun was smooth.

She took a step to peer down the stairs to where Bernard was dusting and speaking to the house. Of course, it was the house. She didn’t know why she’d thought anything else, no matter how briefly. Bernard loved the house. Azar’s family had a claim on it, stronger than anyone’s except the one who had built it, but to Bernard it was his house.

He never said that, not to them, anyway. But he said it to the house all the time.

Azar put a hand to the banister, which was smooth, well-polished wood that gleamed in the morning light. Probably preening for Bernard. If any house could preen, it would be this one, and it certainly wouldn’t do it for Azar.

“Going to have you looking exquisite.” Bernard was practically cooing. “There will be no complaints.”

Bernard didn’t use a feather duster to dust. He said it just spread dust around. He used soft, clean cloths and went through the house room by room on a regular schedule even when he was the only one there. He didn’t wear a uniform. He wore jeans, t-shirts, and sneakers, even when Azar’s parents were around, and after only one attempt, her parents had given up trying to make him. Azar wished she knew how he’d managed that.

He had somewhat wild hair at the moment, shining like the banister, and metal in his ears and leather cuffs at his wrists. Those were new or he didn’t normally wear them where Azar or Zarrin would see.

Azar continued down the stairs before he could look up and see her watching him, tugging one last time on the hem of her red shorts when it felt like it was riding higher than she would have liked. After the disaster of her arrival last night, she’d wanted to look better—more put together.

She didn’t like flying. Thankfully, no one in her family had caught on to that, but her fears plus turbulence had left her shaken. She’d had days of exams and studying before then, which she’d been grateful for at the time since they’d meant she’d had that to focus on and not her impending summer at the mansion. She never knew what to feel about the place where her parents sent her and Zarrin when they didn’t want to deal with them. She loved the woods. She liked the house. She loved her brother. She hated that she was sent there because her parents were not proud of her. And Bernard was there.

She’d seen him first thing as she’d gotten out of the car. Bernard had been on the porch with Zarrin, already home… well… home was what the mansion was to Zarrin. Like Bernard. Azar was merely there, but they were home.

She had been a sleepless disaster: hair in a drooping ponytail, tired eyes, hungry because she hadn’t eaten on the plane, her study materials in her arms while the hired driver got her bags. Bernard came forward to take them, in a band shirt with rolled up short sleeves that clung to his biceps.

The driver had been trying not to show his fear of dragons but Azar had smelled it most of the way, distracting and uncomfortable, and made worse when the driver stepped away from her before she could thank him.

Then Bernard had said, “Studying already?” with a disapproving glance down over Azar. “It’s your summer vacation.”

A cloud of something had taken over Azar for those to be his first words to her in months. She’d walked past Bernard to greet Zarrin, and told him she was tired and wanted to go to bed, then left them both there, staring after her.

She was no kind of valedictorian, she had reflected later. She’d been rude and stupid just because she was tired and Bernard had… it didn’t matter. She was determined to do better now, anyway.

She kept her book in one hand at her hip, because she did need to study to get a jump on next year and stay ahead and at the top, but she kept the title facing out in case Bernard happened to have read The Cherry Orchard and might want to talk about it.

She had a pencil case with her highlighters in her other hand, and tapped her rose-red fingernail on it before she controlled her nerves. Her polish matched her lipstick. She’d only done a hint of eye makeup, not wanting to seem too obvious, and chosen a simple necklace of small gold chain for the same reason. Her earrings—hoops as large as she dared—were less subtle but she thought they went with the twist of her bun.

Without her parents around to see, she’d put on clothes borrowed from her roommate, red shorts that rested high on her thighs, but her roommate insisted Azar had the legs for them. She’d almost put on a tank top, but then worried about her chest. Flat was fine for a dragon, but might not appeal to others, so she’d thrown on a loose, long-sleeved shirt with thumb holes at the cuffs that she’d cut in herself—another piece of clothing she never wore around her parents. She was casual and comfortable and elegant. Last night might not ever have happened.

The staircase gave her away and creaked beneath her tennis shoes.

Bernard looked up.

Azar’s heart pushed against her ribs and was nearly consumed by the fire inside her. A shock went through her all the way down to her toes and she worried she might trip, and then that she might blush. She could never seem to be cold-blooded how she was supposed to be, and wouldn’t forgive herself if it happened to her now, with Bernard gazing up at her as she came down the stairs.

“Oh, it’s you, Miss Azar,” he said, and Azar felt herself slow and then stop. Bernard hadn’t put down his dusting cloth. “I was expecting Zarrin to wake up first,” he went on. “He mentioned an early hike yesterday.” Bernard glanced over Azar much as he had done the night before. He frowned and then possibly smiled, but it was so quick Azar might have imagined it. “There’s no way your mother approved of those shorts.”

Azar glanced down without thinking. All of her tugging had not lowered the hem any. “I’m nearly eighteen,” she answered without thinking, louder than she’d meant to speak. “She doesn’t dress me.”

“Okay,” Bernard said, lifting his hands in a placating sort of way that he had no business using. “I take it from that, that you could use some breakfast.”

“Take it from what?” Azar asked in return, even louder before she caught herself and looked away from Bernard’s incredulous face. She realized a little too late what he meant and her voice crept higher again. “You think I’m upset because I haven’t eaten?”

“Don’t worry.” Bernard gave her a warm, crooked smile to go with his warm, friendly voice. Warm and friendly because he thought Azar was being irrational and ridiculous because she was hungry. “When I heard you were coming back this summer as well…”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Azar clutched her pencil case so hard it should have broken in two. “It’s as much my house as Zarrin’s.”

“Of course it is.” Bernard’s eyebrows came together. Then he bent down to set his dusting cloth aside before he straightened back up. He cleared his throat. “I was just letting you know that I made some Brioche for your French toast.” Her French toast, the recipe with the Brioche and orange peel, honey, and cinnamon that Bernard had discovered in his first years of figuring out how to be a housekeeper. Zarrin liked it but Azar had loved it. Bernard directed another brief smile her way, sending more lightning through Azar’s nervous system. “I got berries and cream too. I can make simple pancakes to satisfy Zarrin but you always did have a sweeter sweet tooth.”

Azar stared at him with eyes that almost felt like they were burning. “Yes, when I was a child.”

She was only one or two steps from the bottom of the stairs. One or two steps above him, and then another one or two steps from where he was standing. Close enough for her to see the quirk of his eyebrow and the way he pursed his lips.

Because he thought she still was a child. Or just childish.

Azar drew herself up, although she was not a large dragon. “I don’t eat that anymore. I’ll have oatmeal.”

“Oatmeal?” Bernard was absolutely astonished. “You loathe oatmeal.”

“No, I don’t,” Azar insisted. Then, uncomfortable with the lie, added, “I have it every day at school.”

“Because that’s what they serve.” Bernard stared at her while his eyebrows came together again. “That’s why you hate it. You said so last year.”

“I’m surprised you remember,” Azar returned immediately, crossing her arms and then uncrossing them because the pose gave away too much.

“Oh yes?” Bernard answered with a hint of the attitude that he gave to rude delivery people, or anyone in town who stared at him, or, occasionally, Azar’s parents. But she barely had time to notice it before Bernard sighed and gestured loosely at something. “Is this how it’s going to be this summer, Miss Azar? Just like winter break?”

Miss Azar. He never called Zarrin Mr. Zarrin. Azar was the only one who got that nickname. She’d used to think it was done out of fondness, but it clearly wasn’t. Bernard was mocking her.

And why shouldn’t he? Zarrin had hobbies and interests. Azar didn’t have anything but a room full of books hidden under her clothes so her parents wouldn’t worry about her wasting her time on novels. She didn’t know what Bernard thought of them, but he definitely knew about them. She shied away from the memory from a few years ago, and how she’d been heading outside to hike and read, and a novel had fallen from her bag and Bernard had been the one to pick it up; a thick paperback from the library, the cover red and pink, with a human woman with a large, heaving breasts in the arms of a tall, dark-haired human man. The title had been A Rake for the Duchess.

Azar would have to study all summer to stay at the top of her class. She wouldn’t go anywhere or do anything. She wasn’t permitted to travel during school breaks, and she had no license, so she couldn’t even drive into Everlasting. She’d half hoped Bernard might teach her if she could get a permit in time. But now she decided bitterly that he would probably think she’d needed a car seat.

“Is what how it’s going to be?” she demanded with all of that on her mind. “I can’t imagine we’ll have much interaction.” She raised her chin. “I don’t mingle with staff.”

Bernard’s mouth fell open and he took a step back. He swallowed, then narrowed his eyes. “Is that what you’ve learned at that boarding school they made you go to?”

“What do you care?” Azar nearly hissed it, and shook to think of what she must look and sound like. Probably flushed and loud enough to wake Zarrin. She was nearly eighteen. Her parents had already started to introduce her to other dragons, hoping for a match because they didn’t yet realize…. Azar took a deep breath and made herself quiet and haughty the way that other dragons liked. “Never mind. I won’t bother with breakfast. I’ll just have coffee.”

Bernard’s voice went flat. “You hate coffee.”

“Coffee is perfectly fine,” Azar the dragon said and descended the rest of the stairs. She went past Bernard without looking at him, although there was frustration in the air. She could taste it.

“I have the kitchen set up for your tea,” Bernard said, not evenly. “You want your tea.” He didn’t ask. He got that way sometimes. Certain. It was probably elf magic.

Azar briefly stopped but still could not look at him. “You don’t know me as well as you think you do. No coffee either then?” She raised her head but didn’t meet his eye. “I’ll prepare it myself.”

“That is my kitchen.” Bernard had no problem facing her, or in snapping at her, dragon or not.

But Azar wasn’t much of one. So she said what her mother would have said. “Then do your job.”

Of course, Bernard wasn’t intimidated by Azar’s mother. What he could be was hurt, and Azar had hurt him. She could not have done this worse.

She brought her gaze up to Bernard’s eyes, as warm as the rest of him, though a gentler heat than the fire inside Azar. “Sorry,” she said quietly and pulled her book to her chest. “I’m going out. I don’t know when I will be back.”

She had hurt him, but Bernard stopped her again. “You need to eat. You had no dinner either.”

Azar almost pulled her lower lip in between her teeth, but then remembered the rose-red she’d stupidly put on her mouth. A blush did nothing for the feeling in her chest. “You don’t tell me what I need.”

“Forgive me, your majesty,” Bernard said, tricking Azar’s heart into pounding even though Bernard had to be talking to the house. “If Miss Azar wants oatmeal, then I will prepare oatmeal.”

Azar was so hot she shivered.

He didn’t mean it. He was being condescending because he knew Azar really did loathe oatmeal.

“I’m not hungry,” she answered at last, as frostily as she could with her fire like this.

“Azar,” Bernard began, taking a moment before speaking again, “did you not want to come home?”

“Home?” Azar echoed softly, barely audible even to herself.

“Maybe,” Bernard was still halting, finally uncertain, “you got a boyfriend and didn’t want to leave him? A girlfriend? I suppose it’s about time you started doing that. I guess I just don’t think of you as old enough.” He laughed a little.

Azar looked up.

Bernard stared back at her, stunned silent. By what, Azar didn’t immediately understand. She just gazed back, wishing she’d never come here. Then she saw why Bernard was staring. There was gray smoke around her.

Gray, as if Azar hadn’t given enough away already.

“Azar….” Bernard tried. “Did I… do something?”

“No.” Azar was beyond blushing, beyond hot. She was about to explode, nearly out of control, like a child. “No, it’s nothing. Never mind.”

And Bernard only stared, a frown forming as he considered Azar’s childish display.

If it would have made a difference, Azar would have apologized, but there was no way to do that without telling him everything. How very silly he would find it. He would be embarrassed for her, the rude child. The dragon who could not even… her parents were right.

“I have to study,” she muttered, not allowing the word she wanted most to say to pass her rose-red lips. Then she turned and was out the front door and running for the safety of the trees.

#charity prompt #charity prompts 2023 #m/f #beings in love #his mossy boy #treasure for treasure #the dragons of everlasting #azar/bernard #prequel

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