blood bank
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: Daeron Targaryen x Reader, modern au Word Count: 1.5k Rating: TV14 (idk man)
Context: You meet Daeron in group therapy.
TW: mentions of substance abuse and struggles with addiction
A/N: fuck it here is the Daeron drabble before the Daeron banner, my ocd can go fuck. it is 3x longer than it was supposed to be… whoops. based on the song “Blood Bank” by Bon Iver.
✧─────✧
you count the tiles on the floor because if you don't count them you'll start thinking again.
seventeen across. cracked near the coffee table. grout the color of old teeth.
you've been here six minutes. your coffee has gone lukewarm already but you keep drinking it anyway because the cup gives your hands somewhere to go. because otherwise they'll shake. because you don't entirely trust what they'll do empty.
the room smells like burnt coffee and wet wool and radiator heat. folding chairs creak whenever somebody shifts their weight. somebody coughs into their sleeve. somebody else keeps clicking a pen open and closed like they're trying not to crawl out of their own skin.
you know that feeling.
you've known it for months now. ever since—
no. not that.
your brain moves toward it and you shove it away so hard it almost makes you dizzy.
hi, my name is—
you say your name when it's your turn. your voice comes out normal enough that it startles you. steady. human. meanwhile your body feels like a house after a flood—everything warped slightly out of shape, swollen at the hinges.
someone talks about their mother. someone talks about not being able to get out of bed. you know that one. the negotiation you have with yourself every morning—the ceiling, then the wall, then maybe sitting up. then maybe brushing your teeth. then maybe becoming a person.
you almost didn't come tonight.
you came tonight because you ran out of ways to be alone with it and you still almost didn't. you sat in your car for forty minutes. you counted that too.
you don't know what you expected this place to be.
not this, probably.
not him.
he's sitting to your left. you don't notice him immediately. you feel him first somehow—the dense, exhausted gravity of another person barely holding themselves together.
you look over.
he's looking at the floor. jaw set. there's a scar on his cheek, pale and old, and a bruise around his left eye that isn't—the black eye is new. still that deep wine-purple that means days, not weeks. still a thing that happened and not a thing that's healing yet. his hands are wrapped around his knees and he's holding on the way you hold on. just barely.
he looks up.
catches you looking.
you brace for it—the polite smile, the pretending, the mutual agreement to become strangers again immediately—but it doesn't come. what comes instead is just recognition. bare and exhausted. like two people on a road who both know where it goes.
you don't smile. neither does he.
but something moves through you anyway. something that feels embarrassingly close to relief.
afterward it's snowing.
not hard. just that quiet snow that makes everything feel like it's being put to bed, like the world is trying to be gentle about something.
people linger on the church steps smoking cigarettes they probably shouldn't be smoking anymore. somebody laughs too loudly. somebody cries in the parking lot with their arms folded tight across their chest.
you end up standing beside him without either of you deciding to.
up close, he smells faintly like laundry detergent failing to cover cigarette smoke.
his nose is pink from the cold.
you both stand there for a minute not saying anything.
then:
that was bleak as hell, he says.
it catches you so off guard you laugh once through your nose before you can stop yourself.
his mouth twitches a little at the sound. not quite a smile. more like he’s trying to remember how to wear one.
i'm daeron, he says after a second. six weeks.
you tell him your name.
still deciding if this whole thing is bullshit, you admit.
yeah, he says quietly. me too.
snow catches in his hair. melts there.
you don't know why you say the next part. maybe because it's late. maybe because he's looking at you like he can already see the shape of the wound anyway.
i think maybe some people are just built wrong, you say.
the words come out rougher than you intended.
you stare hard at the parking lot after, heat rushing up your neck immediately. like maybe if you don't look at him you can still pretend you didn't say it.
for a second he doesn't answer.
then:
i know, he says.
not reassuring. not dismissive. just true.
something about that almost undoes you right there on the church steps.
because he doesn't argue.
because he looks like somebody who knows exactly what it means to feel unfixable.
he glances toward the street.
i don't really want to go home yet.
he says it to the air more than to you. like the sentence escaped accidentally.
you understand it with horrifying immediacy.
yeah, you say softly. me neither.
✧─────✧
the convenience store is the only thing open. fluorescent and too-bright, outside of time. the coffee machine hums in the corner. somewhere near the back, a refrigerator motor rattles loudly and continuously.
you walk the aisles slowly because there's nowhere to be and the cold is still in your coat and it's something to do that isn't going home.
he stops at the candy. stands there for a long moment, considering it with more focus than should be possible for someone running on whatever he's running on. picks up a Twix. puts it back. picks it up again. there's something methodical about it, something almost careful, like this is a decision he's taking seriously because it's the one decision tonight he can actually make for himself. as small as it is.
you don't rush him.
you notice, without meaning to, the way his eyes don't go to the back of the store. the glass-doored fridges along the far wall. he's not looking at them. he's looking at the candy in his hand with that precise, deliberate focus—and you understand, suddenly, what it costs. the not-looking. the standing here with a Twix instead. six weeks of it.
at the register he pays for both of you before you can protest.
you almost do anyway. reflexively. because accepting things from people has started to feel dangerous somehow.
instead you let it happen.
outside, the snow has gentled further. soft flakes drifting sideways under the parking lot lights.
you sit in his car with the heat coming up through the vents, the windshield fogging slowly at the edges. you notice there's dried blood crusted on the edge of his steering wheel.
you pretend not to.
he breaks the Twix in half—doesn't ask, just breaks it, holds out your piece—and you take it, and you think: this is maybe the most uncomplicated thing anyone has done for you in so long you can't remember what came before it.
you eat it. he eats his. the car holds the quiet. it's strange how intimate silence becomes when nobody is trying to escape it.
he looks over at your hands in your lap, shaking from the cold. you hadn't realized.
you're freezing, he says softly.
before you can answer, he reaches over.
no hesitation. no awkwardness. just takes your hands carefully between his like it's the most natural thing in the world.
his palms are rough and startlingly warm.
he starts rubbing slow circles over your skin, steady and absent-minded, the way you'd warm something fragile.
you stop breathing for a second.
not because it's romantic.
because it isn't.
because it feels worse somehow.
because it feels gentle.
you cannot remember the last time someone touched you gently.
the realization moves through you slow and catastrophic.
you don't say anything.
he doesn't either.
outside the snow keeps falling in soft white sheets. the parking lot light catches against the scar running along his cheek. his head is bent slightly over your hands in concentration, like this matters.
like you matter.
your throat tightens so suddenly it hurts. there’s that specific pressure behind your eyes that means you are about to cry—not from sadness exactly, not from anything you could point to—just from this. just from someone noticing your hands were cold and doing something about it without making you ask.
you hold very still.
so does he.
nothing has changed.
you are going to go home to the same apartment, the same silence, the same long night waiting for you like it always does. nothing has been fixed. nothing has even been named right. whatever is broken in him is still broken. whatever is broken in you is still there too, living under the skin.
but this—
this small warm thing in the middle of the night—
feels unbearable suddenly.
you look out the windscreen hard enough to blur your own vision.
when he speaks again, his voice is very quiet.
sorry, he says softly, starting to pull away like he crossed a line.
no, you say too fast.
both of you freeze.
then, softer:
don't.
he stills.
your hands stay folded between his.
heat moving slowly back into your fingers. into your wrists. into parts of you that have been cold for so long you forgot they were cold at all.
neither of you say anything after that.
there is nothing to say that wouldn't ruin it.
years later, you will forget entire conversations from this period of your life. whole weeks lost to exhaustion and grief and survival. names. faces. days.
but you will remember this exactly.
the snow falling soft outside the car.
the taste of cheap chocolate.
the ache in your throat and behind your eyes.
and the precise heat of a near-stranger's hands holding yours like something worth saving.
✧─────✧
A/N: i have to go to therapy tm but at least I get to have a pina colada after. it’s like a reward.
