Are you still doing writing prompts? Because a touch-starved fic with Corlath not realizing that Harry's background means she's never had much physical touch except for her family would make my day!!
Or a fic where Harry's kelar goes offline briefly, and the war hasn't been over long, and she's nervous/insecure about how Corlath would react to it?
Absolutely no worries or pressure, I just saw some of your prompts and went, "we could make a fic out of this" and also I'm DELIGHTED to find the Blue Sword fandom!
hi friend! my writing braincells are currently offline (along with my damar braincells - i still love them but i forgot about this blog, oops), but let's play with that first concept anyway, because i love it. this isn't writing, just headcanons (kind of), but i hope you enjoy! under a cut bc it's a little long.
...
so, i think harry doesn't even realize she's touchstarved, because yknow. fantasy victorian english repression. when mathin reaches out to correct her grip, or when one of the other riders claps her on the back, or when the king briefly touches her arm*, she does not know why her heart races, but while she draws into herself, she does not stop them.
(*corlath knows his position too well to touch people freely, when they might fear saying n to him. corlath, i think, would understand harry's problem completely. however - )
corlath, ever observant, draws a slightly wrong conclusion from watching harry stiffen every time someone touches her: he thinks she doesn't like to be touched at all. that's fine, he tells himself. she's in a country full of people and customs she doesn't know. it's reasonable so he bids the servants to let her dress and wash herself, he reminds the riders gently not to jostle her around as they do the others, he leaves her alone and thinks all is well. and then they get married.
harry, for her part, has neatly boxed the problem away by this time. (don't listen to her. this is more repression. she hasn't dealt with fuckall.) married people are allowed and encouraged to touch each other, so she clings to corlath like a limpet in private. he's surprised, but definitely not unwilling to indulge her, so most mornings find them curled up in a pile. (often with narknon, sometimes without, because she's very offended by the things they get up to when she's not there.)
eventually, he does ask her about it. "i assumed you didn't like being touched," he says one day. "might i ask what changed?"
"...what gave you that impression," she says, currently in such a tangle of limbs that it's difficult to tell who begins where.
they talk it over. at some point, they admit to each other that they can probably count on both hands the number of people who have ever hugged them, and hold each other a little tighter.
anyway fast forward corlath encourages her to touch him whenever she wants, because there's no one to tell them no. harry, still outlander enough to balk at the idea of PDA, holds his hand under the table, and feels very daring. she touches richard more often, too, reminded that she can - often slinging an arm around his shoulders to annoy him, or hugging him when he leaves. she's shier with jack or the riders, but she accepts their renewed touches with a smile.
i don't have a good way to end this, but i hope you enjoyed! ^^
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also hey tell me about damarian courting rituals, I am intrigued
A long time ago I made this post and it had this comment from @amusewithaview:
Um hi yes please give me ALL OF YOUR DAMATIAN COURTSHIP HEADCANONS.
Please tell me about ALL OF THE MULTITUDE OF STEPS that Corlath either skipped or did out of order. Please tell me about all of the unsubtle commentary and mostly irrelevant advice âgiftedâ to him by his Riders. Please tell me all about his inherited Riders telling the younger crop ALL ABOUT his fatherâs exploits and comparing the two.
So what I am saying is: letâs talk about Damarian courtship.
We know that gift giving is, and has been, a big thing in Damar ever since Aerinâs day, and we know that giving gifts in an attempt to convey interest was a thing at the time (Tor, poor beautiful Tor who keeps trying to convey his affection to a sol too enamored of dragon slaying to realize, she figures it out eventually), so like.
Gifts.
Damarian courtship is BIG into gifts, but itâs a desert, so normally these are things like services. Food is also popular. You start with a few small gifts or helpful actions, things that could be brushed aside as friendly solicitousness, and then once youâve gotten up the necessary courage and sussed out that this person probably does not hate you, you pull out all the fucking stops and Go Big Or Go Home. Â
Now, the key here is that the gift is theirs to keep regardless of what they say. The gift is theirs. You gave it to them because youâre generous and trying to prove a point about how much you care. The gift is also a contract--they have to be nice if they let you down, and you have to be civil about taking the disappointment. The gift is a big shrieking neon sign that says âdonât be an assholeâ to all parties.
But so anyway, youâve plucked up your courage and now youâre gonna give them the Dopest Present You Can Find, along with a statement of intent. Generally thereâs an exchange of gift giving up to this point, and sometimes if people are already aware of whatâs up, you and your potential honey kind of race to reach the Big Gift first. But regardless. You give them an elaborately embroidered robe that you stitched with your own hands while you tried not to go insane from being cooped up during the rains. You give them a saddle blanket woven out of bright red and white to make their horse look like a living flame. You give them the best and nicest sword youâve ever seen. You make them an elaborate four-course meal with all of their favorite foods and serve it to them personally and eat with them and give them your best wine.
Or, if youâre really hardcore and very sure of yourself, or alternatively extremely rich and incredibly intense, you give them the most important thing Damar has going for it at any given time.
You know.
A horse.
A whole entire war horse, hand-selected to suit their temperament and match their visions of the future.
Plus tack.
Now...this is where Corlath gets into trouble, you see.
Because he has this girl in his tent. And heâs already been giving her a lot of things--robes and food and being waited on hand and foot by his own hafor. All of that is not helping his Ridersâ opinion that the kelar is trying to get their king laid, because it looks like heâs trying to woo this girl even though--well, she needs clothes that suit the desert, not some six-layered cake of a nightgown, and sheâs obviously got to eat, and sheâs been kidnapped by people she canât even talk to. Heâs trying to make her feel at ease.
Normally, no one except the royal family gets this kind of treatment from the hafor, so by the strictest traditions Corlath may have slightly declared her his fiancee, but it was with the PUREST intentions.
But so, he concludes, the girl has to be trained as a warrior, and therefore she needs a horse and a sword and a teacher. The teacher and the sword he can justify as her nominal lord, but the horse is dicier--sheâs not technically his subordinate, and heâs not adopting her, which would be the other two circumstances where it would be socially acceptable to give someone a horse. Â
To hell with it, though, heâs the king and she needs a horse so he gives her a horse. He sells this lie to himself with extraordinary success, but not so much to anyone else.
âThatâs a beautiful animal, sola,â Faran says very neutrally, watching the Outlander girl as Tsornin more or less flirts with her.
âYes,â Corlath says through his teeth.
âThe best in our herd, probably, excepting yours.â
âShe needs a horse,â Corlath repeats for the fifth time in an hour.
âMmmhm,â Faran says, and arches an eyebrow very slowly at his king. Corlath resolutely does not blush, because heâs a king and he made a completely reasonable and legitimate gift based on the needs of someone who could help his country.
And then, of course, Harry up and leaves for six weeks to train with Mathin and the entire camp kind of observes Corlath while he Refuses To Pine and goes âYeah, okay, sola, a totally logical gift, we believe you.â
So when Harry comes back to the City, triumphant, literally no one is surprised when he gives her the blue stone garden. It was his fatherâs gift to his mother when they got married, so obviously Corlath will want to give Harimad something equally dramatic when they get married and this is just...the Damarian equivalent of a DTR talk. Â
Corlath knows what heâs doing with this one, and feels kind of guilty. The Outlander--Harimad clearly doesnât know what the gift means, and itâs unfair of him to expect anything from her (he did kidnap her), and even more unfair of him to be disappointed when she doesnât reciprocate the gift giving as the social structures dictate, because of all the things Mathin taught her, courting rituals probably werenât among them.
But he does still give her the room.
Gonturan doesnât count as a gift because Gonturan would be mortally offended to be pawned off as a possession, and Corlath knows it, and also Harry is now a soldier in the kingâs army and can receive a sword from his hands without any baggage. But the room and the horse and more robes and more meals that Corlath quietly edits to remove foods Harry doesnât like...can you blame people for whispering?
And then she disappears during the armyâs march and their king is wearing her sash.
By the time they actually get married, Harry has sussed out that the majority of the population believes theyâve been engaged since she arrived in Damar, largely because Innath finally took pity on her. Â
She goes to an enormous amount of trouble to buy Corlath a hand-worked leather breastplate for Fireheart on rush order, complete with the royal crest worked in red to flatter the bayâs coloring, and shows up with it in hand and a smug look on her face as she shoves it at him.
âThis is for you,â Harry says, triumphant.  âI would be extremely honored if you would marry me.â
Corlath blinks at her.  âHari, love, weâre getting married in a week, everything is already planned. But the breastplate is very nice,â he admits.
Harryâs grin widens.  âAh, but itâs not really polite to do half your wooing when your target doesnât even know whatâs happening. I have to admit that I donât actually know the proper forms for how this should go, though. So.â She gestures to the breastplate and says, âWill you please marry me, Corlath-sola?â
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the blue sword characters rated by how good i think they would be at hugging
Amelia: a nice hug. she'll probably comfort you and offer well-intentioned but slightly condescending advice, whether you're upset or not. tea and biscuits will be involved. 7/10
Charles: he'll awkwardly and briefly hug you, and it's fine, but 0.5 seconds later send you to Amelia instead. 3/10 at least he's self-aware
Corlath: he's big and strong and smells nice, but he's also probably worried about hurting you, which makes his grip too weak. if you don't know each other very well he's almost certainly not going to hug you. if he does anyway it's very awkward. he probably gives you at least one headpat that he thinks about at 3AM when he can't sleep for remembering the embarrassing things he's done. 6/10, but if you're family 10000/10 because you can feel how much he loves you
Harry: she crushes you a little bit because she doesn't hug people often and forgets her own strength after her training. she's more willing to talk out your problems than just sit and hug, which isn't always the best thing. 7/10, 6/10 if you're not biased by queerness like i am, 1000/10 if you're corlath and haven't been hugged by someone close to your size in a long, long time
Jack: he's not really sure what he's doing. maybe ask someone else. 5/10 he gets uncomfortable if it lasts for too long but could be a lot worse
Mathin: a good, dad-ish hug! very strong. lasts longer and is a bit more gentle if you're upset, pretty fast and probably involves a thump or two on the back if you're not. 10/10 leaves you feeling refreshed and a bit more optimistic than you were before
Narknon: fluffy but elusive. if she lets you, it's amazing. 1000/10 she's a cat you're lucky to have looked at her
Richard: he's anxious and distracted by Homelander Rules Of Propriety, but if he gets far enough past that to stop being stiff as a board it's alright. he's very gentle and would probably awkwardly ask you what's wrong, but you can see in his face that he's only asking out of politeness, so no matter what you just smile and say no reason, you only wanted a hug. 4/10 he lays awake at night wondering if you lied and feeling guiltily relieved that you did
random passerby: wow, look at the king! he's so mysterious. i wonder why he's frowning?
random passerby #2: he has the weight of our country's future on his shoulders. i'm sure his thoughts are just as heavy.
corlath: *thinking* i want to snuggle my wife for a morning but she's allergic to staying in bed past dawn. i wish i was narknon. if she falls asleep on harry, harry refuses to move.