Prompt: New Year's Kiss for Sharon (from Fluffy, as my Sharon)
Rating: K
Warnings: BreakSharon. Kinda.
Can you believe I sometimes write shippish things. Can you believe I sometimes write fluff. I can't.
It's been a long time since they could attend the New Year's extravaganzas that, by all means, a young noblewoman should be attending on such a holiday; it's the choice they made, the risk they took in their contracts, and it's pushed them out of the eye of high society except for in terribly special cases. Xerxes can't say he minds—he was never a man of parties or frivolities—but he feels bad for Sharon, for the loss of the life she should have been able to lead, especially as they're alone on even this night.
They had made it a celebration of their own, with a few choice friends and servants, a chance to drink and be merry and enjoy the holiday as it is meant to be, but surely it wasn't the same—they were trapped for it, but they would make the best of what they could, would they not?
But the last minute is ticking down on the clock now, and the idea of kisses at midnight has only been tossed around in jest—even so he saw that sad smile she gave at the idea, and again he feels the weight of her lost youth. For she has never truly met with suitors (if she has even had interest in them) and she has surely not been part in such a tradition, but she has heard the story and it is yet another thing lost, as he sees it.
He doesn't want to think she lost anything for him—he isn't sure if that's it at all, but he also has no way of knowing; he can't read her mind, can't ask such a thing, but she is always his support even when he doesn't wish for it, even when he most wishes to be hers. It's that sort of mysterious thing that ties them together beyond mistress and servant, beyond childhood friends and sibling figures.
She's had a bit to drink herself and she's counting down with the second-hand of the clock, and it's only because time is passing so very steadily yet surely that he's able to do something so near impulsive, pressing her shoulder aside to make her face him as her counting grows quieter in mild surprise—
( It's just for the sake of tradition, he says to himself, and giving her something like a normal holiday (though from him, it's always going to be anything but), just to make good on the joking words from before. )
It's not an extravagant kiss, but the timing is perfect—as she finishes whispering the final "one" his lips brush over hers, almost light enough to mean nothing at all. But he's gently holding her chin in delicate, careful fingers and he moves back just a bit more slowly than he perhaps ought to, with his usual smile—though just maybe, through a trick of the eye, it's gentler than it usually is, just as his tone is maybe a touch softer than normal as well.
( That's all it is, he says to himself, nothing more—but he doesn't express anything like that aloud. )
"Happy New Year, Milady."