Apologies for the inactivity of late. I have some major (and insane) life events all going on at the moment. Some good, some bad, and all of it very stressful. Notably though I am going through these shenanigans alone.
My SIL and her family are a huge, massive support but they have 5 kids and I'm not their responsibility. I don't have a spouse to lean on either.
So ya.
I am tired as dirt right now đ
I have seen a bunch of comments and reblogs recently on stuff I've posted or shared, especially To Bleed The Snow - I will 100% be replying to those when I can and I am coming back to that fic as soon as some of the life fuckery is passed. The support on it and love for it has been amazing you guys!!
this is the most rushed thing ever but here is young lyonel bc I canât get enough of him and YES Iâm going to draw more of him I have a whole gallery of references :)
considering making this a fully rendered colored piece.
also went a little wild with the chest hair, had to put a shirt on him so I wouldnât combust.
The book of faces gave me a memory today and I randomly thought I'd share it.
This is the first fanfic I *ever* completed and it was fucking dreadful.
It was a rewrite of part of one id started in 2006...at the tender age of.. fuck. 12??? Which was somehow MORE terrible. The original had a Mary Sue female OC with giant fluffy pink hair who was a princess, magic, could turn into a thing called a 'rock hogger' that was essentially a magic leopard that hoarded rocks and laid eggs, could play the violin, was an alien, was a fighter pilot, and about a gazillion other things.
It had epic space battles and random crossovers with Dr Who, Star Wars and Back To The Future during said space battles but with absolutely zero context and was essentially an endless stream of consciousness.
It is also the reason that I will for all eternity associate Stargate Atlantis with ABBA because I did not have home internet at the time but boy did I have a 4 disc ABBA Gold CD.
And I would wait until everyone was asleep and sneak into the lounge room and log into the computer and sit up all night writing this terrible awful fanfic with chapters named after song titles and all sorts of random shit.
Anyway the rewrite started in..2007-2008 ish and was marginally better and was effectively shoved down the throat of a new student in high school in the first week. (I am now aunt to 5 nephews due to this friendship)
Thankfully the rewrite was not nearly as insane sounding and was a lot more normal ish but obviously still written by an uncultured asparagus of a teenager so it was still trash.
Looking at this book makes my fuckin 30+ year old wrist hurt JFC.
It's been rewritten again since then and has spawned about 4 or 5 other stories in a series that has currently been chilling out untouched for about 5 years. I probably will try to rewrite it again soon.
My point I guess is.
Write.
Even if you think your writing is shit. Even if it objectively IS shit. Write for fun, write for connection, write to imagine, write to inspire, write for others, but above all else write for yourself.
Writing is an art form but it is so much more and so much less at the same time.
Writing - creative writing - is simply a translation of your imagination into another language.
No because tell me why I just saw a video on TikTok from a bar where you can order shots that come with a side of water in your face and a slap from the bartender and IMMEDIATELY thought of Lyonel Baratheon being ABSOLUTELY SMITTEN on the spot the moment reader lands that slap across his face.
Like he thinks 'Oh this is just going to be a light slap, it's just for show'. He plafully braces against the bar with a smirk on his face, all flirty and cocky, probably even saying smth like 'Not too hard darling, alright?' and then proceeds to recieve a slap so hard his ears are ringing. MY BOY HAS HEARTS IN HIS EYES, HE'S SMITTEN!!!
Cause for you it's been a long night on your feet and you had to deal with all sorts of customers and the manager always tells the bartenders to be believable, but not put alot of force into it. But them this loud mf comes around and he's ordering multiple rounds of drinks with his mates for a while now, always winking at you and, yeah, he's handsome and he's got charm, but when he orders that shot and gets cocky you're like 'fuck it' and proceed to let out all your frustration.
You're mortified for a split second after the fact, but then he lets out a booming laugh and just says 'Boys, I think I just met my wife'.
The boys are Dunk and Raymun. This was the 3rd pub of the night. They were barely keeping up with him all night and now he's sobered up.
Reminds me of this scene from The Musketeers BBC, btw.
your thoughts on ls tracing AKOTSK men's features while they're asleep....? đ
*explodes*
oh, these made me YEARN like a mf.
BAELOR.
Baelor sleeps wrapped around you. One arm under your neck, the other banded around your waist, his chest a broad steady heat along your spine. This man doesnât just sleep next to you. He gathers you, hoards you, his forearm snug across your middle as if heâs shielding something from sight. Some part of him still doesnât quite trust the world not to steal you while he dreams. So to trace his features you would have to disentangle yourself, slowly, without waking him, which is its own minor heist in truth. And when you finally got your hand free, what you would find, in sleep, is a face that has finally let go of duty.
His brow unknits. That crease between his brows (the one that lives permanently in the daytime, the crease that comes from carrying a kingdom on his shoulders) is gone. You would touch it lightly with your thumb because the absence of it is so striking. And you would trace the line of his nose, the slight bump where it was broken once in a tourney mishap he refuses to discuss. You would map the shape of his mouth, which in sleep falls slightly open, vulnerable in a way it never is when he speaks. You would touch the silver at his temples that the southern light at the Red Keep kisses, as if the gods simply meant to mark him there. And you would feel, with a sharp and unbearable tenderness, the thinness of the skin beneath his eyes. The bruised hollows of a man whoâs not slept properly in years until he started sleeping with you. The wonder of it would land on you like cold water: I am the reason this man rests.
He would catch you at it. Baelor sleeps the lightest of any of them despite being the most exhausted, because part of him is always listening for the realm. His hand would close gently around your wrist mid-trace and his eyes would crack open. That strange mismatched gaze, dark and pale, dazed with sleep, and he would smile, slow, delighted. What are you doing, wife? And you would, mortified, try to retract your hand, and he would not let you. No. Carry on. I should like to see what conclusions you reach.
MAEKAR.
Sleeps like a soldier. On his back, one hand resting on his stomach, the other near where his sword would be. Even now, even in your bed, even years into a marriage heâs come to want with all the fierce surprise of a man who didnât expect to want anything again, he still sleeps in formation. Braced. His body has not unlearned the war. And to trace his face in sleep is to trace a map of every fight heâs been in, because Maekarâs face is evidence of them. The faint pox scars across his cheeks. The new split scar along the ridge of his knuckle from a sword hilt that bit him years ago. The cut along his cheek that has faded but not gone from Redgrass Field.
His hands are the part that would steal your breath, though. Rough, scarred and callused from years with a sword in his hand, from battles heâs had to fight. You would lift his hand from where it rests on the coverlet and you would turn it over in yours and you would map the calluses with your fingertip. The place where the pommel sits, where the reins lie, where the bowstring pulls. And somewhere in this, he would wake. Maekar wakes fast. Soldier-fast. He would wake with his other hand moving toward where the sword should be, and then he would register it was you, and the readiness would drain out of him in a single long exhale, and he would look at you with that gruff bewildered tenderness he can never quite hide and he would grunt, voice rough with sleep: what. Not a question, exactly. More a statement of presence. And you would say, softly: go back to sleep, husband. And he would, but only after pulling you closer, his big hand settling at the small of your back, his face turning into your throat where he can smell you.
AERION.
Catastrophic. And not in the way youâd expect, because Aerion doesnât sleep braced or guarded the way a man with his obsession ought to. Aerion sleeps curled toward you, every line of him already oriented your way, like a flower that grew toward the sun in the dark and has not bothered to dissemble about it. One hand fisted in the fabric of your shift. One leg hooked over yours. His face turned into the pillow you share, lashes pale against fever-warm skin, breath stirring the loose hair at your temple. And the moment your fingertips graze his cheek (the moment you have the audacity to touch him while he sleeps)he doesnât startle, doesnât flinch. He leans into it.
Greedy is the only word for him. Aerion in sleep is greedy for you, in a way his waking self has spent years trying to disguise. Awake, his obsession comes barbed, sneering, costumed in cruelty so he doesnât have to admit how badly he wants. Asleep, none of that machinery is running. So when your thumb traces the line of his jaw, he turns his face into your hand. Open-mouthed. Half-conscious. Like a dragonling rooting toward heat. His lashes flutter. He makes a small, rumbling sound in his throat. And he moves. That lean dangerous body shifting closer, closer. Until you understand heâs not simply asleep beside you but winding himself around you, leisurely and deliberate. His face is inches from yours and his forehead nearly brushes yours and youâre nose-to-nose in the dim, his breath on your mouth.
Presenting himself. Offering himself. Look at me, the whole shape of him says, even in sleep. Map me. Mark me. It has always been yours.
And so you do. You trace the cropped softness of his hair at the nape, where it grows in stubble-pale from the time he cut it for you. You touch the scar on his jaw. Smooth your thumb along the high arrogant ridge of his cheekbone, the place that goes flushed when heâs feverish or furious or wanting. You touch the corner of his full mouth, and his lips part for you, automatically, the same way they parted for the cup of water you held to them when he was sick. And his eyes are open by then, of course they are (Aerion sleeps shallow, the dark thing in him will not let him sleep deeper than that) and theyâre pale and blown wide, fever-bright in the dark, watching you map him with the desperate attentiveness of a man whoâs been waiting for this his entire life and would die before he admitted it.
He doesnât speak. Doesnât break the spell. He simply lies there, curled around you, face inches from yours, and lets you have him. Lets you claim him. The whole tableau of it. The hot dragonish body coiled into yours, the parted mouth, the eyes that have not blinked in what feels like minutes. Heâs a man being handed over to you in the only language heâs ever been able to speak: the language of stillness while you do what you like. Heâll be vicious about it tomorrow, say something cutting about your sentiment. Your softness, your northern habits. He will perform the disdain so you canât take from him what he was unable to refuse you tonight. It wonât work. And the next night heâll be curled into you again, fiercer, before the candle is even out.
VALARR.
Sleeps boyish. Thereâs no other word for it. For a man so polished in waking (the careful cultivation of charm, the lingering look he gives you across rooms, the deliberate way he holds himself even at rest) Valarr in sleep is softened to the point of foolishness. His mouth is slightly parted, dark hair mussed. The white streak at his temple is a pale slash through the tousle. The polish that defines him by day has completely deserted him, and whatâs left is a man in his twenties with a small crease between his brows and an unguarded face that you canât stop looking at.
So you touch him. Just your thumb at first, smoothing the crease between his brows the way youâve wanted to all day. And Valarr (whoâs the most attuned to you of any of them) doesnât so much wake as soften further under your hand. He makes a small sound, sleep-thick and pleased. Turns his face into your palm, slow, instinctive. His lashes donât lift. His eyes donât open. Heâs still mostly asleep. But his mouth finds the pad of your thumb, and his lips trace it, unhurried, half-conscious, learning the shape of you with the same devotion he gives every other inch of you when heâs awake.
Then he nuzzles deeper. His cheek against your palm. His nose at the heel of your hand. A man who is, you realise with a quiet jolt, presenting himself for petting. Presenting himself to be claimed. Iâm yours, take stock, do as you like. Said with no words, only the small shameless tilt of his head into your hand, the tiny kiss he plants in the centre of your palm when his lips happen to find it. And when his eyes finally do crack open, mismatched and unfocused, they find your face and his whole expression breaks open into that helpless unguarded delight you only ever see from Valarr in sleep. The man under the prince.
He wants to be kept. Thatâs the secret of Valarr in sleep. The performance is intricate, the polish is real, the immortalising gaze is genuine. But underneath all of it is a man who wants to be a thing you keep on the bed and stroke when heâs good. And tracing his features while he sleeps gives him exactly that, and he goes utterly liquid under your hand. Heâll let you do it as long as you want, and heâll purr small wordless sounds into your palm, and somewhere in this hour youâll understand that you have ruined him for any other woman whoâs ever lived, because no one else has ever touched him like this. Without performance, without ceremony, without payment due, and no one else ever will again.
DAERON.
Oh, oh, oh. Daeron sleeps with his hand curled near his face, knuckles white, holding something back. And his face in sleep is the only place you ever see him young. Waking, Daeron is older than his years. Wine-aged, dream-gnawed, carrying the weight of visions that crawl out of him in his sleep and walk into the world. He has a face thatâs going to be ruined by drink before heâs forty if no one stops him. But in sleep, before the drink hits, before the dreams come, before the hand pours the next cup⌠Daeron looks young, handsome. He looks like the boy he was before the gift cracked him open.
So to trace his features in sleep is to map the wound the dreams have been chewing on. You would touch the dark crescents under his eyes. Deep, blue-black, constant now. You would touch the soft hair at his temple, damp at the roots. You would touch the corner of his mouth, which in sleep does this terrible thing. It twitches, downward, as if the dreams are already starting, as if even unconscious heâs bracing. And you would know, with a sinking that is its own kind of love, that you canât save him from what is in his head. You can only sit with him afterwards. You can only hold him while he sweats it out.
He will wake mid-trace. Heâll wake with his eyes already wet, dream-disturbed, half a word in his mouth that he swallows when he sees you. And he will look at you for a long moment and then his face will crumple (just briefly, just for a heartbeat) and then heâll laugh, that bitter wine-aged laugh, and say darling, you should not look at me like that, youâll spoil me for the rest. And you will say, levelly, Daeron, and heâll stop laughing, his hand coming up to cover yours where it rests against his cheek. Heâll hold it there for one long silence, and that will be the closest thing to I love you heâs capable of giving you.
LYONEL.
The opposite of all of these men. Lyonel sprawls. He sleeps the way he laughs: loud, generous, taking up the entire bed and apologising for none of it. One arm flung above his head, the other across your waist with a possessiveness so unselfconscious it reads as thoughtless, his frame radiating heat like a hearth. Heâs the man who falls asleep faster than anyone you know, because Lyonel doesnât lie awake worrying. Lyonel has never lain awake worrying. Thatâs one of the great gifts of being Lyonel Baratheon.
So to trace his features is a different kind of project entirely. Itâs not heartbreak. Itâs wonder. Heâs almost obscenely beautiful in sleep. The stagâs pride of him, the strong jaw gone slack, the dark lashes fanned against tanned skin, the mouth thatâs always grinning in waking finally at rest. You would map his face slowly. The small white scar through his eyebrow from a tourney. The flattened bridge of a nose broken twice. The soft place at his temple where his pulse beats steady and unhurried. And Lyonel, who sleeps deeply and long, would not wake. You could trace him for an hour and the man would simply continue to breathe, mouth open, lashes still.
He would wake eventually (late, slow, irritated by sunlight) and he would catch your hand without opening his eyes and bring it to his lips and kiss the palm and rumble whatâre you about, she-wolf, and when you told him, I was looking at you, he would crack one eye open, grin like sin, and say aye? And whatâs the verdict? And you would have to lie to him, because Lyonel doesnât need to be told heâs beautiful, Lyonel already knows, Lyonel will dine out on it for a week. So youâd say the verdict is you snore, and heâd roar with laughter, and pull you on top of him, and that would be the end of any further tracing.
DUNK.
Dunk is the only one on this list who sleeps completely undefended. Dunk, all seven feet of him, all knotted muscle and scarred knuckles and broken-nosed sweet-eyed enormity. He sleeps like a child. On his side, one big hand tucked under his cheek, his face slack and peaceful in a way that takes your breath. The largest man you have ever seen, and in sleep heâs the softest, and the dissonance of it is so profound that the first time you saw it your eyes burned.
So you trace his features slowly. Oh so, very slowly. Because Dunk is a man whoâs been touched without tenderness his entire life. Bruised, broken, struck by others, and to be touched gently while he sleeps is something heâs never received, ever, not in all the years of life. You would trace the cauliflowered curl of his ear, scarred from training. The ridge of his nose, broken so many times it has settled into its asymmetry. The pale lines of old scars across his cheek, his jaw, his brow. And you would touch his mouth last, most gently, because Dunk has the softest mouth of any man you know, and in sleep it lies parted and trusting like a boyâs.
And Dunk would wake. Slowly. Blinking up at you in the dim light, confused at first, his big body stirring carefully because even half-asleep Ser Duncan the Tall is afraid of breaking small things. And when he registers what youâve been doing (when he understands youâve been touching his face) he would go still, the way he goes still when something gentle happens to him that he doesnât know how to receive. And his eyes, which are honest blue and absolutely without guile, would fill. Genuinely fill. And he would say, in that quiet rumble of a voice, mâlady. You donât⌠you donât have to do that. And you would say, I know. And he wouldnât be able to speak after that for a long time.
And he would, carefully, very tentatively, lift one of his enormous hands and lay the back of it against your cheek. A fraction of the gentleness you just gave him, a fraction of the same gift returned in his clumsy, sincere way, and he would not say anything, but you would understand that heâs just made you a private vow no septa would recognise but every god in the seven heavens would.
lyonel and reader playing paper scissors rock next to maekar and bealor to see who fucks and who is being fucked tonight and the other two being like ???????? whatcha doing
MDNI 18+ allusions/mentions of peggging/sex, Lyonel and reader are freaked out and Baelor is clutching his pearls
The feast slowly started to come to an end as Baelor moved taking a seat next to his brother. Dyanna had long since retired to put the boys to bed, causing you to now sit on his other side, your husband next to you.
Baelor opened his mouth to speak, but then you began to count down and suddenly you and your husband were both holding a fist. Both brothers turned to you, eyebrows furrowed together.
âWhat the fuck are you doing?â Maekar asked, which Baelor was grateful for as he knew you were more likely to answer his brother than himself.
âTo see who get to wear the antler crown tonight,â you answered before counting down from three once again and both of you now holding your hands flat.
âAnd what does that mean?â
You glanced back, over your shoulder smiling at Maeaker, but did not answer. It was your husbandâs voice that cut through, âWanna find out dragon prince?â he asked, winking.
Suddenly the pair of you held out your hands once more, but you held two fingers out as your husband held a fist,âHa, ha!â Lyonel exclaimed in victory, leaning forward with a wide grin.
Then he was scooping you up into his arms and carrying you from the Hall with a loud laugh. Very few guests turned to look at you as if this was normal behavior in Stormâs End.
âMy chambers is next to thereâs tonight,â Maekar sighed, closing his eyes.
âWhy is that bad?â
The silver hair, raised a brow, âTheyâre going to fuck. That was what they were deciding who is going to fuck the other.â
Baelorâs eyes widened, the tip of his ears turning red in embarrassment, âShe was going to fuck him?â he questioned, whispering lowly as if suddenly their conversation was wrong.
âYes. They do it all the time I do not know why you look so surprised. He sticks it up her ass she sticks stuff up his,â Maekar grumbled, with a dismissive hand, repositioning himself.
âHe sticks it up hers too?â he the asked.
The younger then rolled his eyes, âI am going to bed,â he muttered shaking his head, but sleep was the further thing from his mind.
