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There had never really been a terrible amount of examples of ‘man’ around when you grow up in the woods with your three aunts.
Briar Rose had wondered, of course, from her first memory of the woodcutter that travelled through every few months. It’s not hard to call to mind those nights, as rare as they were, nine years old with her head propped on her knuckles, watching Aunt Flora dance with the stocky woodcutter by the light of the firepit. She wondered, often, if all men looked like that - a little red in the cheeks, chin covered in hair, husky and often crass enough that Aunt Fauna covered her ears and scolded him firmly. He’d stopped coming by before that fateful birthday, but the image of him lingered in her conscious ideas of what a man might look like. She wondered, if one day she’d ever be able to venture beyond the wood that encapsulated her world, maybe somewhere near that great castle that rose in the distance, or the town that lay between Briar Rose, and it.
The one that lingered in Briar Rose’s dreams, however, wasn’t as much a shape as it was a feeling. Warmth, and heat, and the thought of something pressing against her mouth. Why it was there that her mind went to, she wasn’t entirely sure.
She’s had a talk with her Aunt’s, of course, on how more forest animals and people got made, but mostly the honesty of it. Nothing superfluous or very romantic, but Briar Rose dreamed of it often.
Then there had been him.
Hands, calloused and so much larger than hers, lightly grasping her wrists, long sooty lashes and tights that clung to his legs in a way that she found incredibly distracting. He made her feel shy, wanting to be reclusive almost, but then that grin . He was taller, and broader, and….what was she talking about again? Briar Rose had entirely forgotten.
Even as she runs away from him in the woods, heart beating louder than it’s supposed to in her throat and and hair flying out behind her in a golden cloud, all Briar Rose can see in her minds eye is russet hair and impossibly dark eyes.
Will I see you again?
She’ll make it so, if she has to.
Then, she isn’t Briar Rose.
Then, she is Aurora. And she doesn’t quite know what to think anymore.
How she’d gotten from waiting in her new room to waking in a tower was now and would probably always be murky and green in her memory, like a thick sleep she’d never be able to fully think through, but when she saw him, everything felt better somehow.
“Your name is Phillip?”
Her hands are cupped around a goblet, the metal weighted and heavy in her hands unlike any of the rough mugs from home were, while she looked up at him. It was incredibly overwhelming, the room of people with apparent wealth and privilege that she’d had to meet when Briar Rose had spent nearly eighteen years with the same three people (fairies, now, she supposed), so she was holding on tight to the only faces she barely knew.
He was one of them, though she supposed in this case Briar Rose’s definition of knew was rather lax.
“Yes, after my mother’s father.” The man - Phillip - leans against the banquet table and eyes her, seemingly relaxed and settled like a contented lion. The red silk of his cape and sleeves brings out even more tones in his thick looking hair, reminding her of the way the trees got at the edge of the forest upon autumn time. His lips slide up again, easy and confident, and Briar Rose envies him. She’s never felt more out of her element in my life. “Would I be correct in assuming that yours is Aurora?”
Aurora . It’s beautiful, she has to admit. It would be fun to sing, the acoustic promise of the years hewn stone that surrounds them now giving her at least one thing to look forward to in the strange castle, but it didn’t feel like her. Her nose wrinkles near unconsciously, and Briar Rose tries to hide it from Phillip with the goblet.
The curl his soft looking (soft feeling - she remembered her first kiss, at least) lips get tells that she wasn’t successful, so she settles for a little sigh, placing the cup down. “I went by Briar Rose for eighteen years,” The princess confesses, tracing a finger along the high quality embroidery decorating the tablecloths, violet eyes dropping down. “It doesn’t feel quite mine yet.”
“Then what would you prefer, my lady?”
The blonde musters up the courage to meet his eyes again “Briar Rose. Or just Rose,”
Phillip reaches for her available hand and lifts it to his mouth, turning out a remarkably thorough and sweeping bow. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Briar Rose.”
It isn’t much of a stretch for her to figure that, by whatever fancy rules this society operates with, he should probably be using her honorific, and she to use his. That doesn’t stop her from blushing deeply and executing, for the second time in Briar Rose’s life, the courtesy that Merriweather had so painfully taught her a few months after her sixteenth birthday. “You as well, Phillip.”
The butterflies in her stomach refuse to leave her even after he gets called away.
He doesn’t let her kiss him for so long after their first that the first time she manages to break his defenses down Briar Rose is almost lightheaded from the feel of it.
A lot has happened in the past two months. Thankfully, Briar Rose had always loved to learn, and genuinely looked forward to her lessons for the most part, and exploring her parents castle was more fun than it should be. Letting her ladies maid, Madeliene, help her get dressed every morning was a daily struggle for her (she’s been doing it by herself for her whole life - she could handle a few more layers and fancier clothes) but she was close to Briar Rose’s age and had proven a fast friend. Spending time with her parents every evening was helping her feel more like they were her family, and here to stay, rather than a reedy, heavily moustached man with grey streaks in his hair who got misty eyed half the time he was with her, and a woman who shared her violet eyes and had the gentlest touch she’d ever felt.
All that, and Phillip had begged off from pressing his lips to hers again.
She thinks on, often and with a frustration she didn't know she was capable of, how bold he had been in the woods. Wondered how that had transformed into this hesitancy, this distance that did not match the look he so often got in his eyes. Briar Rose didn’t like it. She wanted it to stop.
To say Briar Rose was at her wits end was an understatement. Her whole life had been turned upside down and the only bright spot had to be convinced into even lightly grazing his hands on her. They’d spent a lot of time together since that first coming out ball - dance lessons, where he was only to willing to be her partner, a valiant ally in her arguments to learn traditionally unprincessy skills like archery and politics because if she was going to take the responsibility, she wanted all the privileges too, dutifully willing to sit and watch her model dresses for him.
That had to be one of her favorite things about discovering that she was in fact royalty, Briar Rose decided - that, being the new dresses. She didn’t need nice things, but she did very much love nice things, and being presented with her choice of endless amounts and types of fabric made something in Briar Rose want to just faint with happiness. Half of that joy was because she liked looking and feeling beautiful. The other half was the way she felt when trying them on for Phillip.
The reasons he’d given her for not kissing her were flimsy at best, Briar Rose had past decided. There was something about his age - Phillip was five years older, and she’d gotten the feeling that he’d had more experience with the opposite sex than she did, not that she cared a whit. Then there was his insistence that even if they’d technically proved that what could blossom between them would be true love, he didn’t want Briar Rose to feel like she had to choose him. I won’t like stepping aside, but if you find someone handsomer than me I can certainly try, Phillip had charmed out, eyes sparkling. Maybe it was that hint of peasant in both of them that made them push the edges of decorum so often, but Briar Rose had seen him reach her and then abandon the motion too many times for her to ever believe that he actually wanted her with someone else. It didn’t stop her from placing her hand on his arm a little too long than they should in the presence of others, listen wistfully to his stories of the travels he’d been on when he’d been her age, in leaning on Phillip’s father’s portly shoulder and reminding him that he wasn’t allowed to let his son get engaged to anyone else.
And still, Phillip didn’t touch her.
He did, however, let her lead him away at balls when Briar Rose swept up to his gaggle of attentive female admirers. He tugs on her heavy curls when leaning over her shoulder and smells infuriatingly like summer and the way her sheets had smelled back at the cottage after Fauna did the washing. She wanted him to kiss her so badly she couldn’t breathe, sometimes.
Triumph, when it comes to her, is hard won.
Aurora becomes as much hers as Briar Rose used to be. She writes it on scrolls, over and over in the flowing ink of her quill, and repeats it herself like a mantra when the sickly green nightmares plague her too badly. When she tells him that it’s alright to call her Aurora now, instead of Rose, something in his amber eyes changes. “Are you sure?” He asks her quietly, under their fathers uproarious laughter and Queen Leah’s own tinkling voice, their corner of the laden table always seemingly like their own little world.
“It is quite a lot easier to say, isn’t it?” Aurora smiles, light and pleased as if waking from a pleasant dream.
Stealing through the hallways barefoot, the bare soles of her feet still unused to the thick carpet that spilled down each cold stoned turn, was no small feat without a light, but Aurora knew the castle like the back of her hand, now. Her cheeks are still flushed from the rush of the near successful journey when she slips inside of Phillip’s room, back pressed against the heavy wood door.
He’s sitting on the bench at the foot of his bed, blacking his boots in a manner entirely unfit for a Prince who has servants dedicated to that very task. The way his hands are frozen mid brush tells her that he probably stopped at the sight of her, dark eyes sharp on her.
It may have a little something to do with the fact that Aurora was only clothed in her night shift and her day travelling cloak, her legs peeking bare underneath to her scandalous shins. Her hair spilled long and freshly brushed for the night down her back, hands still clasped behind her as the princess keeps the door at her back.
Something about this feels tempting, somehow, compounded with a couple things. One, Aurora had assumed that she’d be seeing Phillip’s bed at some point, being betrothed and all, but laying eyes on it this very moment was an entirely different matter. The canopy stretched dark above it, swathes of near chocolate drapes framing the large mattress, and she can’t help her curiosity regarding the feel of his sheets. Did he ever think of her here? She thought of him in her own bed, sometimes. Secondly, Phillip was in a similar state of undress as she. The prince’s cream linen shirt fit tightly to shoulders Aurora hadn’t known before were so muscled, and her violet eyes were irresistibly drawn to sliver of his skin that the front revealed.
“You shouldn’t be here, Aurora.” Phillip’s stance widens a bit, leaning his elbows on dark breech covered thighs, and his head cocks. The blonde still isn’t used to hearing it in his deep timber, near musical in it’s confidence, and it prickles awareness across parts of her she didn’t know could be aware. “I am pleased that you are, but it doesn’t change the fact that you shouldn’t.”
“I wanted to see you.” A confession it may be, but one that Aurora’s made plenty of times before. She takes one tentative step forward, echoing the first dance that they shared what seemed like a forever ago, and Phillip shifts in response. The brush and boot join it’s mate on the floor next to him, the flames of the wide fireplace dancing in his eyes. “Phillip...you have to know that I love you.”
The silence that ticks for a minute between them yawns so large that Aurora’s half convinced she could fall into it if she wished hard enough. Where was a fairy godmother and aunt when you needed them?
“Are you sure?” There’s a thrum of emotion under that last word that gives her some hint into what he’s feeling, and Aurora takes another step. “I knew that you were the one the moment I heard you singing. And when I saw you? Talked with you? Danced with you?” Phillip chuckles, but it lacks the humor Aurora is used to hearing it. “I know that it is a terrible truth, but sometimes I count myself lucky that circumstances kept you from meeting other men.” He runs a hand through his hair, clearly a bit frustrated at himself at the supposed flaw, but Aurora can’t find anything but warmness in her heart about it. Though she still got frustrated at how her life spun so out of control, she knows that her parents sent her away just so that they could keep her safe - what happened, happened. Aurora had the tougher-than-a-princesses-should-be feet to prove it. The thought of Phillip feeling a bit possessive of her? Made her feel some type of way.
“What I’m attempting to say is, I’ve never wanted you to feel as if there were some sort of obligation to return my feelings. Betrothal and magic kiss notwithstanding. Now let me ask again, Aurora - are you absolutely sure?”
Gods above, menfolk could truly be dense sometimes. That, at least, Merriweather had always been right about when Aurora became exposed to more of them at court, and Phillip, at times, was no exception. Her whole insides lit up when she saw him, the poor fool, the way he was so kind to everyone around him, no matter their station. The way he treated Samson, how the prince would tease her with a warm familiarity that made her forget the stations that they both had. Phillip had her heart in his hands after that first dance, and Aurora was far from interested in anyone else after that.
“Phillip, you silly man.” Somehow, Aurora had made it all the way in front of him, draping her arms around his strong neck with a drive she hadn’t known she possessed. He smelled even better, being so close to her as he was, and Aurora could almost pick out every shade of mahogany in his eyes, could trace the exact slant of his handsome jaw with her hands or - the thought occurred - her mouth. According to legend, her lips were just like the red red rose, and the blonde very painfully wanted to remind this prince of what they felt like. “I have always been more than sure.”
Phillip lets out a little sigh, his eyes crinkling at the corners, and for the first time since they danced in the woods his hands settle on her hips. They’re big, still, thicker fingers and stronger cords, and his rough thumbs brush against her hip bones through the material of her nightshift. Aurora dives her own up through the nape of his neck and into his thick near sable hair. When he’s standing, normally would have to stand on her tiptoes to be this close to his face, tilting violet eyes through thick bangs just to reach him. The change in dynamic given by his seated position sends a heady kind of power rush through her, just for a moment.
“Briar Rose…” his head comes up, nose nudging with hers, but she shakes her head in response even as she’s drawn irresistibly closer between Phillip’s legs.
“Aurora.” The blonde princess reminds him, a breathy sound before she and the end of her name are lost against his lips.
The woman that spent seventeen years and forty seven weeks to the day in the woods had become a bit of a beloved nuisance to the servant staff and guards of King Stefan’s palace. No one knew what exactly had changed so drastically between Princess Aurora and her paramour, but they no longer had to keep secrets about the two of them reading in scandalously unchaperoned togetherness in the massive library, or exactly how long the two of them had been gone on their ride. Now, their discretion lay more in having to turn a literal blind eye to all the young couple got up to.
Take now, for instance, when a maid sent to deliver a tray of fresh fruit to Queen Leah’s chamber shrieks in surprise and almost loses her cargo when the prince and princess come barrelling past her, hand in hand.
Aurora’s laughter rang up and down the hallway, her available hand holding her small gold tiara to her long sunshine curls while she races after Phillip’s lead. The strikingly handsome prince’s cheeks near hurt grinning, only disappearing when they make it to the alcove that he knew was there. The two of them sweep in in a mess of Aurora’s light blue skirts and Phillip’s black tunic and it is but a moment before they are in each other's arms, a tangle of eager mouths and sure hands.
Her curls are tangled around Phillip’s hold, her hands alternately cupping her man’s cheek and pulling him down to get a better grip, and there is love between them. It shines, as true was the magical gift Aurora had received so many years ago, and it heats both of them up in a way that they hadn’t known was possible before.
Briar Rose was only able to wonder at what a man was like, but Aurora would never have to, not for the rest of her life. Any such musing could be silenced instantly by the awareness of his bare body next to hers, of Phillip’s lips pressing against her fingers and cheekbones, and the murmur of his deep voice on all the secret parts of her. They make promises to each other, and keep them, and eventually there comes a day where when she wakes up, she doesn’t, for a moment, forget where she is, because he is at her side.
When the highest priest in their kingdom pronounces them married, the blonde princesses veil stretching near down the length of the entire great hall, the length of time kneeling unable to numb the joy that spread through them both, they kiss, and the truth of what they have becomes solid and unbreakable between them.
There was, after all, no need for wonder and dreaming when real life held much more happiness.