FEATURING: Jacaerys Velaryon x fem!reader, minor Aegon II Targaryen x fem!reader
SUMMARY: From the moment you were born, you were faced with the scrutiny of the court—the twin who lived while brother and mother died in a bed of blood. Rhaenyra had always done her best to shield you from its cruelty, so when her son is born with dark hair and dark eyes and that cruelty is turned on him, you vow to shield him the same. It is a promise that would come to shape both of your lives far more than either of you could have imagined.
WARNINGS: fem!reader. TARGCEST (aunt-nephew, half-sibling). reader is a Targaryen (daughter of Viserys & Aemma)—no physical features are explicitly described (silver hair, purple eyes, etc) BUT it is implied through Jace's insecurity that he does not look like her because he references not looking like "everyone else". forced marriage (reader & Aegon). Reader & Aegon are VERY young when they have their kids (14 & 13 respectively), and reader has some complications/health issues following the birth because she was so young/her body wasn't ready for it. Eventual smut. Infidelity (technically—Aegon and reader are both cheating on each other LOL but neither gaf). Jace is wildly unhinged about reader and everybody but reader knows. Codependent relationship. Slight age gap (5 years between reader & Jace)
NOTES: WOWWWW my great step into targcest. This will be 3 parts—this first part is their childhood, the second part is driftmark & the inheritance dispute, the third part is the dance. Lowkey I can't believe it took me so long to write targcest LOLLLL, but it is fitting it is for our prettiest prince, Jacaerys Velaryon, prince of Dragonstone, heir to the iron throne <333 There are some things to note so please read: I adjusted the ages for this fic for convenience purposes, but the general timeline will remain the same. Reader is born in 105, Aegon 106, Helaena 108, Aemond 109, Jace & Daeron & Baela/Rhaena 110, Luke 111, Joffrey 118. Laena's funeral takes place in 120, the inheritance dispute & the Dance begins in 128. When it comes time for the Dance, ages are as follows: Reader is 23, Aegon is 22, and Jace is 18. Comments and reblogs are always appreciated! Love you all!
You were not supposed to be the twin who lived.
Nobody tells you that in so many words, but it is the first thing you learn all the same.
You catch your father staring at you sometimes with an empty look in his eyes, and you know he is seeing the ghost of your mother, thinking that if Baelon had been the one to survive instead of you, he might have been able to justify her death. The lords and ladies of the Red Keep constantly look upon you with polite smiles and carefully chosen words, lowering their voices whenever the topic of your birth is raised, as if you are too young to understand them, even though it was the first thing you ever understood at all.
Such a tragedy.
The queen gave everything.
The prince…
The prince, the prince, the prince—it is always the prince.
A son who never lived is afforded every virtue. He would have been strong. He would have been the perfect heir and the perfect king. He would have united the realm, and he would have spared your father his grief. He is remembered with all the generosity reserved for the dead, and none of the criticism reserved for the living.
You grow accustomed to measuring yourself against a brother you never knew. Every accomplishment is met with the unspoken question of whether Baelon might have done it quicker or better, and every celebration carries a shadow of mourning that you will never escape.
It is only Rhaenyra who has ever looked at you and seen nothing to mourn.
She has never spoken of Baelon as though he ought to have taken your place. She sneaks you your favorite desserts when you are sad, and she wipes your tears before anyone else can see them. When you are too scared to be alone at night, she slips into your chambers with stories of dragons raining fire from the sky and queens who crossed seas.
Your father has always been distant, but you have never minded because Rhaenyra is enough warmth for two parents, and when the whispers of the court become loud enough to reach you, she rolls her eyes and steals you away to the dragonpit or cuts the gossipers down with words sharp enough to leave them speechless.
She is your shield whenever the court would have you bleed, and your sword when distraction alone is not enough. For a little while, that is enough.
Then Jacaerys is born.
You are still young enough to be bundled off to lessons with Septa Elaine, feet dangling from chairs too tall for you, when Rhaenyra places him in your arms for the first time.
You think he is beautiful.
He has a mop of dark curls and bright brown eyes that seek you out in every room. He laughs more readily than he cries, and he reaches for your finger whenever you are near, curling his tiny fist around it as though he has claimed you for himself.
He is perfect—you know it the moment he giggles up at you the first time, but the whispers begin before the bloodied sheets are removed from your sister's bed.
Strong. Bastard. Plain.
The words are spoken with feigned innocence, as though they are not daggers pressed to both his back and your sister’s. For the first time since you were born, the court’s attention shifts to another, and you desperately wish that it hadn't.
You know what it is to have your life measured against someone who is not there, but Jacaerys is measured against people who are.
Your half-brother, Aegon, with silver-gold hair that gleams in the sun and eyes the color of amethysts, every inch the image of Old Valyria from the moment he was pulled from your stepmother's womb. Beside him stand Helaena, Aemond, and Daeron, no less unmistakably Targaryen. Silver hair and purple eyes; four children who look exactly as the world insists dragonlords should.
By the time Jacaerys is born, the image of a Targaryen prince has already been firmly etched into the court's mind, and it is not a little boy with brown curls and warm eyes who resembles neither the princess who bore him nor the husband sworn to be his father.
You recognize the look in their eyes intimately when they turn their gazes on him. It is the same one they once turned on you—a child who has already failed to become what the realm expected of them before they have spoken their first words. You had been the daughter who survived instead of the son who should have. Jacaerys is the son who does not look as though he should have.
Rhaenyra never allows you to bear your burden alone. Before the whispers find you, they find her first. Whenever cruel words are spoken, hers are always sharper. She stands between you and the court so often that most days you hardly realize she’s shielding you at all.
So when the whispers begin to follow Jacaerys instead, you do the only thing you have ever been taught—sharpening words and standing between him and the world whenever you can.
If your sister has always been your sword and your shield, then you will be her son’s.
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JACAERYS, 2; READER, 7; 112 AC
“He really does adore you, doesn’t he, princess?” one of your ladies in waiting, Melynda Darklyn, says with a soft laugh after Jacaerys climbs into your lap at Lucerys’s first nameday celebration. You wind your arms around the boy, relishing in the delighted noise he makes once he’s wrapped in your arms.
Your sister and her husband are sitting at the center of the table, chatting with your father and entertaining the assembled lords while musicians fill the hall with cheerful melodies and servants weave between tables bearing silver platters piled high with roasted meats and sugared fruits. Rhaenyra occasionally looks in your direction, casting a small smile your way when she sees how Jacaerys is tucked against you, fisting the embroidery of your gown tight enough that you fear he might rip some of the tiny pearls from the fabric.
“He has excellent taste,” you answer primly, with all of the seriousness a girl of seven can muster, earning a ripple of laughter from your end of the table. “It certainly has nothing to do with the fact that I let him have his sweets before supper.”
Jacaerys blinks, head lolling against your shoulder, unconcerned with being the subject of conversation. You can feel his small fingers picking at the ribbon tied around your wrist, freezing comically every time you look down at him. Each time you return your attention to the feast, his fingers creep back toward the knot with painstaking care, his tongue peeking from the corner of his mouth in concentration. He glances up at you every few moments to make certain you are not watching before tugging experimentally at the ribbon once more.
You pretend not to notice, smiling lightly to yourself when you hear the triumphant little hum that escapes him as the knot finally begins to loosen.
“His hair really is so dark,” Aegon suddenly says on your left, voice idle as he yawns.
The conversation immediately halts.
You wonder if Aegon knows the gravity of the words he spoke, stiffening slightly from where you’re sitting, enough that Jacaerys seems to sense the shift in your demeanor, lifting tiny hands to your face to squish your cheeks. It’s only when you smile at him that he finally lets go, and he returns to toying with your ribbon.
You look at your younger half-brother from the corner of your eye carefully, catching the bored expression on his face as he absently pokes at his peas, still looking at Jacaerys. You do not know why your father insists on seating him near you during feasts—you desperately wish he would sit with his mother and your other half-siblings. He has spent half the evening kicking the legs of his chair and playing with his food, bothering you with inane questions about whether there is an end to the Sunset Sea and if you think there is such a thing as water dragons or ice dragons.
You see three of your ladies-in-waiting exchange glances, Melynda stiffens slightly as she glances between the princes before her gaze meets yours, riddled with concern, and two lords further down the table quiet down immediately to listen in on whatever Aegon might say next. No one speaks openly of Jacaerys’s… coloring. Not yet, at least. The whispers have remained whispers, traded behind fans and cups of wine, because everyone is unwilling to be the first to give them voice.
So the court waits, each lord and lady wondering who will finally speak the unspeakable.
For one fleeting moment, you can’t help but wonder if the Queen has whispered something into Aegon's ear before the feast, if she has sent him here to say what no grown lord dares so that life might be breathed into the whispers haunting Jacaerys. You would not put it past her—she has always had a certain disdain for you and your sister—but you do not think that is the case this time. Aegon is six, and he hardly has the patience for lessons in High Valyrian, much less the conspiracies of court. Every thought that enters his head escapes his mouth within moments, innocent of the havoc it might wreak.
He is simply a little boy who has noticed that his nephew's curls are brown where everyone else's are silver. The court, however, has spent so long waiting for someone to say too much that even a child's idle observation is enough to make half the hall hold its breath.
Aegon notices the silence at last, mid-motion to tug Jacaerys’s hair. You slap his hand away before he can. His brow furrows, and he glances around the table. He looks from one lady to the next as though expecting someone to satisfy his curiosity. Instead, they busy themselves with their cups of wine and suddenly find the roasted lamb before them intensely interesting.
He frowns. “What?”
“I suppose everyone else is too kind to say it,” you say dramatically, giving Aegon a bright smile as he tilts his head questioningly. “You should not speak on someone else’s hair when yours is so greasy, valonqar.” You reach forward to tug a long lock of silver hard, and Aegon yelps, squirming away. “It only draws more attention to it. Did you not bathe before the feast?”
Little brother.
“I did bathe! It’s not greasy!” he disagrees loudly, lifting his hands to cover his hair. “You’re a liar!”
“Of course it is,” you insist. “Why else do you think no one dares look you in the eye? You should be grateful that you have me to tell you the truth when others would avert their gaze and pretend they do not notice. Say, thank you, mandia.”
Older sister.
“No!”
“Do it, or I’ll pull your hair again, you little wretch.”
Aegon gapes at you and looks around the table for help—unfortunately for him, the only one who might have taken his side, scandalized by your behavior, is sitting on your father’s opposite side, watching the two of you from afar, unable to do anything about it. You give the Queen a faux-sweet smile before raising your eyebrows at Aegon and lifting your hand threateningly.
He shrinks back. “Thank you, mandia.”
You raise your chin proudly, and the tension slips away. The tension eases from your shoulders when you realize you’ve successfully averted the crisis, but the dread you feel remains even as goblets are lifted once more, and conversations that had died on waiting breaths begin again. One lord clears his throat loudly and returns to discussing the harvest with his neighbor, and another asks after plans for hawking.
Around the table, everyone is suddenly very eager to prove they had not been listening at all; as though moments before, they hadn’t been on the edge of their seats waiting for someone to give them a chance to speak what they’ve all been thinking.
Jacaerys gives one final victorious tug, and the ribbon slips free into his hands. He squeals with delight, waving it triumphantly in the air, utterly oblivious to what just took place.
You pluck it gently from his fingers before he can stuff it into his mouth, and he immediately looks up at you, big brown eyes watering, lower lip quivering. He pleads in a tiny, wobbly voice, “Please.”
You raise your eyebrows at him pointedly. You say firmly, “Ivestragon ziry drējī.”
Say it correctly.
He stares up at you, brow furrowing in fierce concentration. His lips part once, then close again. He glances toward his mother for help, but she is much too far to be of any assistance, so his little nose wrinkles as he thinks harder.
“K-k…” he begins uncertainly, fingers curling tight around the sleeve of your gown. You wait patiently, toying with the ribbon. At last, he says proudly, “Kolilus!”
“Close,” you say, tapping his nose, smiling softly when he immediately scrunches it again with a giggle. “Kostilus.”
Please.
“Kostilus!” he repeats, beaming. “Kostilus! Kostilus!”
“Sīr albie,” you praise as you tie the ribbon around his small wrist, watching as he waves his hand in the air trying to show Rhaenyra across the room. “Olvie tolī albie pār aōha qȳbor.”
So smart. Much smarter than your uncle.
Jacaerys spends the rest of the feast showing anyone who will look the ribbon tied around his wrist, never noticing the glances that follow him, and you are filled with a dread that will haunt you for years to come, because one day, someone will find the courage to finish Aegon's thought, and when that day comes, no amount of distraction or childish innocence will be enough to swallow the words back down.
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JACAERYS, 3; READER, 8; 113 AC
“Sleepover!”
You wake blearily from where you’re dozing off on your couch as the door to your chambers swings open, exhausted after a day of flying. Rhaenyra finally gave you leave a few months ago to take flight with Zūgaxes, once she was certain you would not go flying off the large dragon's back the moment he took to the air, and you have spent almost every waking moment with him above King's Landing and the Blackwater. Your thighs are sore, and you barely fight a wince when you push yourself into a sitting position just as a small ball of energy slams into your abdomen, pushing you back down against the couch.
You blink once, a smile instinctively curving your lips when Jacaerys’s face pops above yours, a wide, toothy one spread across his lips as he looks down at you, excited, dressed in his nightclothes and holding his favorite blanket.
“Mandianna,” you say fondly, lifting your shoulders enough to press your lips against his cheeks, biting down lightly to make him squeal happily. “What are you doing here?”
Nephew.
“I hope I didn’t wake you, sweet sister,” Rhaenyra murmurs as she makes her way into your room. She holds Lucerys carefully on her hip—the boy is half asleep, blinking sleepily in your direction before giving you a small smile. She nods in the direction of the couch you’re lying on and asks, “May I?”
You tilt your head curiously and nod, shifting to sit up properly. Jacaerys clambers off your lap to go play with the toys he left in your room the other day, and Rhaenyra sits next to you, smiling at you softly as she lifts a hand to tuck your hair behind your ear. Your eyes are wide and adoring as you look up at her, leaning into the familiar warmth of her hand—you have been so busy flying that you've hardly seen her as of late.
"Look at you, growing up so lovely," Rhaenyra sighs lightly, running her thumb along your cheekbone as Lucerys nuzzles into the crook of her neck. "I heard father was upset with you this morning. What happened?"
You scowl immediately, crossing your arms and looking away. The reminder of the argument sets your mood afoul, throat already tightening with a something caught between irritation and hurt.
"He is always upset with me," you mutter. Rhaenyra raises her eyebrows at you, waiting for you to explain, and you push your bottom lip out into a pout. "I only mentioned that I wanted to fly to Highgarden. Ser Lowen says the flowers will be at peak bloom soon. I should like to see them."
Rhaenyra laughs lightly, and your cheeks feel hot as you keep your gaze averted even as she tilts your face toward her. She strokes your hair lightly and says, "You have only just turned eight, hāedar. You cannot expect him to allow you to fly off on your own across the kingdom."
Little sister.
Your eyes well with tears immediately, and Rhaenyra's expression shifts into one of alarm, shifting Lucerys on her lap so that she might face you fully.
"He can hardly even stand the sight of me, mandia. He could at least let me travel. I do not just want to see Highgarden—I want to see the Wall and Casterly Rock. I want to cross the Narrow Sea and travel the Free Cities, see the ruins of Old Valyria, walk the House of the Undying in Qarth. It is not fair. He cannot keep me trapped here forever when nobody even likes me."
Rhaenyra's expression softens; she tilts her head slightly to the side as she holds your face between her palms, stroking your cheeks steadily with her thumbs. You grit your teeth hard to try to stop the tears from spilling over, but you fail miserably, breath shuddering as you sniffle and choke back sobs.
"Did someone say something to you?" she asks you, lips pressed together and eyes a bit cooler. "Ali—the Queen? One of her sons?"
You shake your head, trying to pull your face away, but she does not let you. "I just—"
You just what? You're lonely? You're tired of the way everyone looks at you? It feels unfair to say that to Rhaenyra, who has always done her best to shield you from it all. It feels unfair to say it when Jacaerys and Lucerys have faced worse from the court these past three years.
It is all unfair, you think miserably. All you want to do is lounge in gardens and snack on oranges with your sister and your nephews. You want to watch as Jacaerys plays with his wooden dragons and finds pretty flowers to put in your hair, as Lucerys naps in his mother's arms, oblivious to the world around him. You want to do it all without the eyes of judgment constantly pinned on the back of your head; you want to do it without the fear that someone, one day, will speak the words that will condemn them all.
"Well, then, perhaps it is a good thing that Jacaerys asked for you, hāedar," Rhaenyra says softly. "I did not realize you were so upset. Were you really planning to spend the night alone?"
"I did not want to bother you," you reply glumly, glancing away to where Jacaerys is trying and failing to gather all of his toys up in his arms, pouting each time he drops one back to the floor.
"You are never a bother, sweet sister. You must come to me whenever you feel like this. I loathe the idea of you being alone," Rhaenyra tells you softly as she leans in to brush her lips against your forehead. "Jacaerys, come here."
The boy immediately pokes his head up from the other side of the room, putting down all of his toys except for the wooden dragon you gifted him for his first nameday. He bolts across the room, tossing himself on Rhaenyra's lap and jostling Lucerys, who immediately starts sniffling. Rhaenyra raises her eyebrows at Jacaerys, who gives her a sheepish smile before he gives Lucerys a hug.
"Sorry, Luke," he says dutifully before shifting to sit between the two of you, holding his wooden dragon in his lap. He gives his mother an expectant look.
"Didn't you want to ask your muña something?" Rhaenyra prods, raising her eyebrows. "Instead of coming in here and demanding?"
Aunt (mother's sister)
Jacaerys's face lights up as he swivels his body toward you, brown eyes bright with delight. "Can we have a sleepover, muña?"
You say, "Ivestragon ziry drējī.”
Say it correctly.
Jacaerys immediately wrinkles his nose and gives Rhaenyra a pleading look, but your sister only gives him a small smile, beckoning him to do as you asked.
"You're so mean, muña," Jacaerys whines, giving you a pitiful look, wide eyes and a pushed-out lip that he certainly learned from you whenever you're trying to convince Rhaenyra to get you extra snacks from the kitchens. Unfortunately for you, it is infinitely more effective coming from baby Jacaerys with big brown eyes and chubby cheeks. He wrinkles his nose as he thinks, a few long moments passing before he tries, "Kostan ēdrugon toliot?"
I can stay over?
You correct, "Kostagon nyke ēdrugon toliot?"
Can I stay over?
"Kostagon nyke ēdrugon toliot?" he repeats instantly, leaning forward, tiny fingers wrapping around your hand. "Kostilus, kostilus, kostilus."
Can I stay over? Please, please, please.
You lean in with a small smile and tell him softly, "Hen rhinka, kostā."
Of course, you can.
Jacaerys lets out a squeal of glee and immediately leaps off the couch to run over to your bed, climbing on top and bouncing happily three times before flopping down and rolling around. Your lips curl up into a smile as your sister leans in to nudge her shoulder against yours.
"Are you truly going to look me in the eye and say nobody likes you when mine own son adores you so deeply?" she asks you quietly. "When I do?"
Your shoulders slump slightly, unable to meet her gaze.
"Jace would be distraught if you left," Rhaenyra continues, undeterred. "He has… been having night terrors. He struggles to sleep through the night. He has tried sleeping in bed with Laenor and I, but nothing seems to be enough to rid him of them. At first, I thought he simply preferred being fussed over, but the servants have made me aware that he does not cry out once during his naps in your chambers. When he wakes beside you, he is… lighter."
You turn to look at Jacaerys. He has managed to wrap himself in your blankets like a cocoon, your favorite stuffed dragon tucked to his chest. Every few moments, he glances over his shoulder to make certain you're still watching him before burying himself deeper beneath the covers.
You hear your sister let out a soft huff of laughter at your side at the sight of him, brushing a sleeping Lucerys's curls away from his forehead.
"I did not know," you whisper, guilty now—not just for wanting to leave and travel, but also for the number of days you've landed in the dragonpit with Zūgaxes to find Jacaerys sitting there waiting for you. For hours, Ser Steffon told you once when you'd asked how long he'd been there. "I…"
"I do not think he does either," Rhaenyra admits, smiling sadly. "Children simply know where they feel safe, and he feels safe with you."
Rhaenyra watches Jacaerys for a long moment as he buries himself beneath your blankets, only the top of his dark curls visible.
She says after a moment, "I should like it if you spent more time with him." You blink and give her a questioning look. She amends immediately, "I know you already do, but… he adores you. There is no one in the Seven Kingdoms whose presence delights him half so much as yours. Every morning, he asks whether you will break fast with us. Every afternoon, he asks whether you are flying. Every evening, he asks whether you have already gone to sleep. Laenor has begun telling him that dragons require princesses to nap as often as hatchlings simply to stop the questions."
You giggle, hand flying to your mouth as you imagine an exhausted Laenor forced to answer question after question—Jacaerys is insatiable when it comes to needing things answered. You once spent two hours trying to answer incessant whys when you told him that dragons could not fly forever without taking breaks, and you know Laenor well enough to know his patience is not endless.
"He is noticing things," Rhaenyra tells you after a moment, voice breaking. "He does not understand why some lords smile at him only when I am looking. He asked me last week why everyone stares at him, if he had done something wrong—I had to tell him that people only stare because he is a prince. That they admire him. I lied to him."
You stare at your folded hands, unable to think of anything to say that would make her feel better. You know she lied because there had been no other choice. What else could she have told a three-year-old boy? That grown men whisper about him behind closed doors? That ladies who smile at him in passing spend their evening wondering aloud whether he has any right to the Velaryon name?
Children should not know such things.
You should not have known that the court would have preferred you dead to your brother.
"He believed me," Rhaenyra says quietly, "but he will not forever, and I dread when that day comes. And it will come. One day he will hear every cruel thing that we have kept beyond his reach, but—"
"I will make them stop," you say immediately, leaning forward and grabbing her hands. Rhaenyra gives you a small, sad smile, but you insist with a nod. "I will, mandia. I will cut them down. Ser Steffon is teaching me the sword, I—"
Rhaenyra blinks. "Does father know that?"
"—I will take the head of anyone who says such things about him. I will feed them to Zuzu, and I'll burn their keeps," you declare, ignoring her question, because no, your father does not know, and you have no intention of telling him. "You do not have to worry, mandia. I will protect Jacaerys and Lucerys forever. And you."
Then, she laughs. It is quiet and watery, born through tears rather than amusement, but it is a laugh nonetheless. A success, you think.
"Oh, sweet girl."
You frown. She says it the way she always does when she does not believe you.
"I am serious," you insist.
"I know you are," she sighs, reaching up to cup your face with both hands, smiling softly. "You are a child. You should not be talking about taking heads and feeding people to dragons."
You frown again, deeper this time. "But I mean it," you tell her again. "I will take their heads, and I will feed them to Zuzu. I will burn their keeps, should I please."
"You are eight, hāedar."
"Then, I will wait until I am nine," you say firmly. "I will grow very tall. Taller than Ser Steffon. Even Ser Harrold."
"I think that unlikely."
"I shall," you say fiercely. "And I shall be stronger than Ser Erryck, and wiser than every maester."
You do not know why Rhaenyra looks as though she's going to cry again as she looks down at you, stroking your hair gently. "So, when you are the tallest, strongest, and wisest princess in the Seven Kingdoms…"
"I will protect all of you," you finish. "Anyone who is cruel to Jacaerys will regret it. And Lucerys. And you."
Rhaenyra's smile softens, and your lashes flutter as she leans in to brush her lips against your forehead.
"Well, if you are so adamant, then I suppose I must believe you." You nod at her words, pleased. "Will you promise me one more thing?" You look up expectantly. "If one day, the court makes him feel alone… find him, please."
You nod immediately. "I promise."
"And if one day the court makes you feel alone…"
You hesitate. "… He is only little."
"He will not always be," she tells you with a faint smile, and your nose wrinkles at the idea of Jacaerys growing older. You like him the way he is now—tiny and cuddly. "Promise me you will let him find you, too."
You glance over to where he's curled up in your bed, fast asleep now, ignorant of the conversation taking place between you and his mother. He is so small, you think doubtfully—you cannot imagine a day will ever come when he will be the one to seek you out.
Still, Rhaenyra has that expectant expression on her face, so you find yourself nodding.
"I promise."
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JACAERYS, 4; READER, 9; 114 AC
"Jacaerys?"
You rise to your feet from where you were sitting with your half-sister, Helaena, on the edge of the gardens in Maegor's Holdfast as a small figure rushes past the two of you. Helaena blinks once, tilting her head to the side as she cradles her beetles between her palms.
"He looked sad," she says quietly. "Do you think he's okay?"
You don't respond, rushing after Jacaerys as soon as he turns the corner, ignoring the eyes of the knights and servants lingering as you push past them. You thought he was supposed to be in the training yard with Laenor today? He was excited about it last night—so excited that he kept you up for hours, asking for tips to impress his father and Ser Criston. So why—
"Jacaerys!" you call again as he turns down the hall, taking a familiar path through the holdfast. Where is he going? To his mother's chambers? To yours? "Jacaerys!"
Jacaerys skids to a stop halfway down the next hall, and you glare at a passing knight whose gaze lingers a moment too long on the sniffling boy. He hurries away, leaving you alone with Jacaerys in the long hall. He lifts his face to look at you, and alarm shoots through you when you see the dark bruise on his jaw.
"Jacaerys, what happened?" you demand, making your way over to him. He rushes toward you, throwing his arms around your waist and burying his face in your stomach. You wrap your arms around him, fingers threading through his thick hair as you hold the back of his head to your body, lowering yourself to your knees in front of him. "Jacaerys."
You pull his face back gently. His fingers clutch desperately at the back of your gown, bunching the fabric in both fists as though he fears you'll disappear if he loosens his grip. He is trembling. He is shaking so badly that he can hardly hold himself upright. Your fingers bite a bit too hard into his shoulders as your hands slide from his face down to his upper arms, forcing him to look you in the eye.
"Tell me what happened," you say furiously, rage already bubbling in your chest, vision tinted red as you squeeze his tiny biceps. "Who hurt you? Jacaerys, answer me!"
Jacaerys lifts a hand to wipe at his eyes, tears stubbornly clinging to his long lashes. The bruise on his jaw makes your stomach lurch. You force your grip to ease as you lift a hand to his cheek, cradling it gently as you brush your thumb over the mark.
His lower lip trembles violently before he whispers, "… I fell."
You stare at him blankly. "Did you?"
He gives you a tiny nod, refusing to meet your gaze. He is a terrible liar.
"I see," you say slowly, eyes narrowing slightly, "and the floor struck only your jaw?"
He sniffles and nods again.
"How curious," you say flatly.
You wonder if it was Aegon or Aemond. You thought Aegon was getting along with the boys, for the most part, but your half-brother has always been fickle and capricious, prone to changing his mind on a whim; and Aemond has taken to the sword, but he has always been careful enough with smaller children, more interested in proving himself than hurting anyone else. You struggle to picture him throwing a careless blow at a four-year-old.
"It must have been a very malicious floor," you say at last, the anger ebbing away at the sight of his mouth twitching up into a small, wobbly smile. "I shall have the castle steward informed. Dangerous stones cannot be allowed to wander the halls attacking little princes."
Jacaerys giggles, lifting his fists to wipe clumsily at his eyes.
"It wasn't the floor," he admits in a tiny voice. "I lied."
You sigh lightly as you brush the last lingering tear from beneath his lashes, leaning in to press your lips against his forehead. You say, "I suspected as much. What really happened, mandianna?"
His gaze immediately drops to the floor. "Ser Criston was teaching me how to wield a sword."
You stare at him for a moment and then ask slowly, "Ser Criston gave you this?"
"He didn't mean—" Jacaerys begins quickly, fumbling for words. "He was showing me, that's all."
"Showing you what, exactly?" you question, voice strained.
Jacaerys withdraws, shrinking a little. He says quietly, "I do not want to get in trouble."
"Iksā dōrī isse qopsa lēda nyke, mandianna," you say, softening your tone, sighing lightly as you brush your lips atop the welt forming on his jaw. Jacaerys clutches at your arms, trying to keep you close."Nyke mērī jaelagon ao naejot ivestragon nyke se drēje."
You are never in trouble with me, nephew. I only want you to tell me the truth.
"He was showing me how to block," he finally says, sniffling again as he presses his face into the crook of your neck. "I was supposed to stop it, but I didn't. He said I should have blocked it, and then went back over to Aegon and Aemond."
You do not reply immediately, rubbing between his shoulders to soothe him, one hand sliding down to his tiny wrist and tinier hands, small and uncalloused, barely able to wrap around the hilt of a sword. Ser Criston is a grown man, you think, outraged. He is years older than Rhaenyra, and he struck Jacaerys.
"How hard did he strike you?" you ask him softly.
"It hurt," Jacaerys says, voice small and muffled. Your eye twitches—a kingsguard striking a prince, Criston Cole gets away with far too much because of the Queen's favor. "He said if I cannot stop a practice sword, I will never stop a real one. I couldn't find father—he was supposed to be there—and mother has been busy all day in court, and I—I wanted you, muña. I always want you when…" His face twists as he searches for the right words. "… when things hurt."
Your expression softens into a smile as you sit back on your heels to look him in the eye. Jacaerys looks at you through wet lashes, bottom lip still wobbling, and you hold his face between your hands, squeezing his cheeks gently until he giggles and turns his face into your palm.
"Well," you say lightly after a moment, "your muña is here. How about we go down to the dragonpit and check on Vermax?"
His face lights up instantly. "Yes! Maybe they'll let me feed him. Do you think they'll let me?" he asks, excited, grabbing your hands and squeezing. Before you can respond, he presses, "Will Zuzu be there? Can we go flying?"
You lean in and lower your voice conspiratorially as you whisper, "Only if you promise not to tell your mother."
"I promise! I promise, I promise, I promise!" he cheers.
You give him a small smile, running your thumb one last time over the welt on his cheek before you rise to your feet and hold out your hand to him. He takes it quickly, entwining his fingers with yours as he takes off in the direction of the dragonpit, and you laugh as he drags you along with him.
Jacaerys forgets all about the bruise and Ser Criston Cole by the time the two of you reached the dragonpit, but you do not.
—————————
JACAERYS, 6; READER, 11; 116 AC
Jacaerys becomes your shadow over the next two years.
He rushes to your chambers before you've even woken, and will linger there long into the evening until his mother finally forces him to return to his own. Some nights, he sneaks back well after midnight because he insists that your room is safer than his, though you suspect he simply sleeps better with your dragon stuffed beneath one arm and your hand draped over his back.
He follows you everywhere.
When Ser Steffon trains you in the yard—now with your father's permission, though you had to put up quite the fight because your father was unconvinced that there was any need for a princess to learn the sword—Jacaerys perches himself on the balcony, his chin resting in both palms as he announces every successful strike as though you had just won a tourney.
"You got him!"
"It is a wooden dummy, Jacaerys."
"But he was losing!"
"The dummy?"
"Yes! He looked frightened!"
When you fly Zūgaxes, Jacaerys waits patiently in the Dragonpit with a book in his lap that never seems to advance beyond the same page. The moment your dragon's shadow crosses the courtyard, he leaps to his feet, waving both arms high above his head before racing to meet you
"How high did you go?"
"Very high."
"Higher than the towers?"
"Certainly."
"Higher than the clouds?"
"Not quite."
"Tomorrow?"
"Perhaps."
When you retreat to the gardens with a book, he appears scarcely minutes later, carrying one of his own. He cannot yet sit long enough to read more than a page or two before asking questions, but he tries valiantly, resting his head against your shoulder as he sounds out unfamiliar words. When he inevitably grows frustrated, you take the book from his hand and read aloud instead—by the third chapter, he is almost always asleep against you.
The servants quickly learn that if the young prince cannot be found, they only need ask where the princess has gone, and he is always there.
Which is why you feel so terrible about what you have to do today.
"Tell me it's not true," a shrill voice accuses from the door of your chambers as you finish packing the last of your bag. Ser Steffon gives you an apologetic look as he holds the door open for the little prince, and you grimace but signal for him to close it and step outside so that you can talk to Jacaerys. "You can't be leaving. Say that you're not leaving!"
"Mandianna," you start to sigh, turning to face him. His eyes are already welling with tears, face red and fists clenched at his sides. "I—"
"No!" he screeches. "You're a liar. You're a liar. You promised you wouldn't leave me. You promised I wouldn't be alone. You're a liar, and I hate you."
"Jacaerys," you say quietly, kneeling in front of him. He has grown over the past year, but so have you—and unfortunately for him, you have been growing faster. Where he once nearly reached your shoulder, the top of his curls now barely reaches your chest. He'll be even taller when you return, you think mournfully—how much will you miss? "Come here."
"No."
"Please."
"No!"
"I only want to talk, mandianna."
"I hate talking to you. I don't want to talk to you."
"Jacaerys…" you sigh again, a helpless feeling tugging at you because you do not want to leave while he's angry at you. You knew this would be a difficult conversation, but you'd hoped to at least leave with one last hug. "I know you are angry, but—"
"You don't!" he cries, stamping his foot so hard the floorboards rattle beneath him. "You don't know anything! Everybody hates me here. They all stare at me and think I don't notice, but I do! You promised you would stay, that I would always have you. You're a liar!"
Your breath hitches as you stare down at the tears tracking down his cheek. For a moment, you are no longer looking at Jacaerys. You are six years old again, yourself, standing in the halls of the Red Keep, wondering why everyone always stares at you, convinced that if you disappear, no one but Rhaenyra would notice.
You had spent years hoping he would never know the feeling.
"I know that they do," he insists before you can speak, as though he already knows you will try to deny it to preserve his innocence, as Rhaenyra has been doing for years. "They look at me all the time. They whisper, and then they stop when you or mother comes. They think I don't notice, but I do." He wipes furiously at his face with the heel of his sleeve. "They don't like me because—because I'm not pretty like everyone else, because I don't look like mother or father or grandsire or Aegon. But you always liked me—you said I was clever, and brave, and you said that I always would have you."
"You do, Jacaerys," you start to say. "I meant it."
"Liar!" he shouts again. "You wouldn't leave me if you meant it!"
You do not have a choice, you want to tell him.
Your father has asked you to go to Pentos to convince Daemon to return. You are not sure the Small Council knows of his request, because he has specifically asked you not to breathe a word of it to anyone, knowing too well how fiercely they opposed Daemon and how quickly they might act to convince him otherwise it if they learned where you were bound.
He thought he was doing you a favor—he remembers how badly you wanted to leave two years ago, and is giving you the opportunity now under the guise of a request from him. You did not know how to tell him that the last thing you wanted to do now was leave when Jacaerys hardly goes an hour without you.
You rise slowly from where you are kneeling, crossing the small distance between you. The moment you lift your hand toward him, he recoils.
"Don't touch me! I don't want you to touch me!"
Your fingers freeze in the air before falling back to your side. Your heart feels as though it is stuck in your throat as you stare at him, watching as he wipes hard at his face again, gnawing at his bottom lip as he fights a sob.
"Okay," you finally say, hand dropping back to your side.
"I don't want you to come back," he tells you, sniffling loudly, refusing to look at you. "I hate you."
You know he does not mean it. You do. Children have so few weapons when they are hurting, and cruel words are among the first they learn to wield. You know this better than most, and yet, somehow, his words still manage to find every wound you've ever been dealt in this keep, salt on open wounds because they are being spoken by the one voice whose opinion matters more than any vicious noble ever could.
Your throat feels swollen, and your chest aches so painfully that you fear you might die. You had imagined this moment so differently. You had imagined Jacaerys helping you fasten your cloak, asking you to bring him back gits and insisting you write him every day, faster even than the ravens can deliver. Instead, there is only a frightened little boy glaring at you through tears, insisting that he hates you and never wants to see you again.
"I'll see you soon, mandianna," you say quietly. "Avy jorrāelan. Kesan sagon arlī gō ao gīmigon ziry."
I love you. I will be back before you know it.
You wait just in case he changes his mind, but he does not answer, turning his back on you as your hand closes around the handle of the door.
It is the first time the two of you have to bid goodbye to one another.
It will not be the last.
—————————
JACAERYS, 7; READER, 12; 117 AC
It has been a year since you departed King's Landing.
Pentos had become a fortnight, then a moon, then half a year, and before anyone quite realized what had happened, an entire year had passed. Your father had sent you to talk to his brother, hoping that you might be able to convince your uncle and his wife to return home. Instead, Daemon had laughed in your face and said you were too small to be so bold, and refused every plea you had bade.
You had failed. The only consolation was that Daemon had immediately not sent you away. He had taken one look at your pinched expression and fisted hands, and he took you flying over the bay and the Velvet Hills. He taught you more about your history than any maester in King's Landing ever had, and filled your head with so many stories of Old Valyria that it had you dizzy with homesickness for a place you've never known, longing for a future you would never know.
Every morning, you would challenge him for Dark Sister, and he would pummel you into the tiled floors of the Prince of Pentos's palace, and every evening, he would make you do it again until he properly beat out the "poor teachings of Ser Steffon"—his words, not yours.
You met your cousins for the first time, too.
For years, you only ever had Rhaenyra, Laenor, Jacaerys, and Lucerys, but Baela and Rhaena quickly latched themselves to each of your arms, showing you all around Pentos, desperately trying to keep you in the Free City with them longer.
Baela had insisted on racing dragons before she'd properly introduced herself, offended when Zūgaxes won by what she declared was an unfair margin. She reminded you so much of Jace, forever at your heels, rarely letting you out of her sight for long. Rhaena spent long afternoons wandering Pentoshi markets with you and her mother, pointing out fabrics she thought would look pretty on you and teasing you relentlessly whenever Daemon tripped you and claimed he was only trying to hone your reaction time as you fell flat on your face.
For the first time in years, your world stretches beyond the walls of the Red Keep and lingering gazes, and yet not a single day has passed without you wondering whether Jacaerys still sits in the godswood, waiting for someone who is no longer there.
When your father finally sends a letter recalling you to King's Landing, tiring of your frolic with Daemon and not wanting to deal with another member of his family joining self-imposed exile, you spend the entire flight back thinking about what you would say to him, wondering what he might do when he finally sees you.
You have imagined him running at you and throwing himself into your arms, and you have imagined him turning his back to you once more. You do not know what to expect from him, so your heart is in your throat when you see him standing with the dragonkeepers as they bring out a sheep for Vermax, dark hair flopping around his face, a bright smile on his face.
In your worst fears, the smile drops when he realizes that you have returned.
You clear your throat and force a light expression on your face as you say, “He is almost big enough for you to ride now, isn’t he, mandianna?”
Jacaerys startles, smile dropping just as you feared, eyes widening as he whips around to face you. He stares at you, blinking once, head cocking to the side—for a terrible second, you wonder if he even recognizes you. It has been a year apart, you try to rationalize to mitigate the hurt. You have grown a lot; your hair is styled in the typical Pentoshi way, and you have spent the majority of the past year basking in the sun. It would not be so far-fetched if he did not recognize you right away, in fact—
"Muña?"
"Jacaerys," you greet quietly, hands behind your back to hide the way they're trembling uncertainly. Is he still angry at you? What if he doesn't— "I—"
Jacaerys is across the vast pit in an instant, a blur of black and red as he charges in your direction. The air leaves your lungs in a whoosh of relief as you dip down to catch him in your arms, lifting him off the dirt floor and swinging him through the air. A noise caught between a gasp and a broken sob escapes his lips as he buries his face in the crook of your neck, arms wrapping so tight around your neck that he momentarily chokes you.
For a long while, neither of you speaks. His fingers clutch desperately at the back of your riding leathers, bunching the fabric beneath his fists, and you hold him just as tight, arms wrapped around his waist and face buried in his fluffy hair.
You have spent an entire year imagining this moment, worrying he might shrink away or turn his back on you, fearing that he might remember only your departure and not the years that had come before it. But he clings to you so tightly that your arm and neck begin to ache, and you have never been happier for the pain.
"I'm sorry," he blurts into your shoulder, words muffled against your neck. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
"Mandianna, you have nothing to apologize for," you murmur, pressing your lips to his temple, and letting out a wavering sigh. "I—"
"I said I hated you," he cries, voice catching over the words. "I didn't mean it. I promise."
"I know, Jacaerys," you murmur. "It's okay."
"I wanted to hug you," he sniffles, words tumbling out, desperate to be heard before the courage abandons him. "I was going to, I really was, but then you started leaving, and I got scared, and I thought maybe if I didn't hug you goodbye, you wouldn't leave, but you did leave. I wished I'd hugged you every day."
You let out a huff, unsure if it's a laugh or a sob of your own. "I'm here now, mandianna. You do not need to cry."
"I thought maybe you weren't coming back," he admits, pulling back just enough to look at you, cheeks damp and his eyes red-rimmed. You brush his unruly curls back from his forehead. He hiccups as he presses his nose into your hand. "I thought I made you mad, and you were going to stay away forever. I wanted to send a raven, but I was scared I would only make it worse."
"I could never be mad at you, silly boy," you murmur, carding your fingers through his hair absently. You give him a small smile, and he gives you a wavering one back—he's missing his front tooth. "I missed you."
"I missed you, muña," Jacaerys sniffles, pulling one hand from where he's clutching the back of your tunic to rub his face. You hum lightly, putting him back on the ground and kneeling in front of him, lifting your own hands to cradle his cheeks between them, thumbs wiping away his tears. He returns to clutching your arms, nails digging into your bicep. "I hated going to lessons with Maester Gerardys, and I hated going to feasts, and I hated training, and I hated everything. I just wanted to sit in the garden with you all day, but you weren't here."
You exhale through your nose as you hold his face gently, watching as he tries to hide it in your palm.
"I tried reading by myself," he continues in a rush, "but it wasn't the same because you weren't there to do all the voices. Mother tried, but she doesn't make the dragon sounds the way you do. It made me mad."
"I brought some books back from Pentos," you tell him with a small smile, hoping to calm him down and dry his tears. You pull him closer so that you can ghost your lips to his temple again. He immediately latches back onto you, arms wrapped tight around you. "I think you'll like them."
"What are they about?" he asks, eyes finally shining with excitement instead of sadness as he pulls back to look at you.
"Dragons, of course," you say with a mysterious smile, and Jacaerys gasps in delight. "How about tonight you help me unpack, and afterward I'll read you the first chapter?"
"With the voices?" he presses.
"Would I ever read a dragon story without the voices?" you ask, mock offended.
He smiles immediately, bright enough to chase away every trace of the tears that had been welling in his eyes. For a moment, he looks exactly as he did before you left—missing tooth, unruly curls, and eyes sparkling with excitement at the prospect of a story.
Then, the smile falters. He says quietly, "I missed you."
Your expression softens as you brush his hair back gently. "I missed you too, mandianna."
His gaze drops to the ground
"Sometimes…" he hesitates, chewing nervously on the inside of his cheek, like he isn't sure if he should tell you this next part. "Sometimes I still went to your room. I knew you weren't there! I knew that, but… it still smelled like you. I slept with stuffed Zuzu instead."
You tilt your head with an amused smile. "Surely it did not smell like me for the whole year, mandianna."
"I asked the servants not to wash your blankets," he blurts out before you can finish your sentence. You blink, brows furrowing slightly. "I thought—I didn't want them to smell different. I missed you. When they smelled like you, I could pretend you were still here."
You tilt your head slightly, letting out a puff of air as you give him a small smile. "Oh, Jacaerys."
He shrinks beneath the tenderness in your voice, cheeks red, suddenly looking embarrassed. "I know it's silly."
"It's not silly."
"I just missed you," he says again quietly, bottom lip trembling again. You reach up and cup his cheek again, your thumb brushing beneath his eye. "I missed you a lot, muña."
"You should have written to me," you tell him softly.
His eyes widen. "I wanted to," he insists again. "I really did."
"What stopped you?" you press, raising your eyebrows.
"I told you," he says with a pout, gaze averting to the side. "I didn't know what to say."
"You could have said anything, mandianna," you answer, pinching his cheek enough to watch it redden, laughing when he squeals. "I would have been happy to hear from you even if you were just complaining about Lucerys stealing your honeycakes."
"He stole them all the time!" Jacaerys says furiously. "And mother didn't do anything about it!"
"How dare she?" you gasp with mock offense.
"I was so angry!" he scowls, puffing out his little cheeks. Then he deflates and looks away. "I thought if I wrote the wrong thing, maybe you would stay away longer, so I just… I talked to your room instead."
You give him a bemused smile. "You spoke to my room?"
He nods once. "I told stuffed Zuzu what happened every day the same way I would tell you, but it wasn't the same," he says quietly. He lifts his gaze to yours, and his eyes are shiny again, but you can tell that he is trying his best not to cry from the way his throat bobs, and he chews at the inside of his cheek. His voice breaks in a way that makes you sick as he holds your hands tightly and whispers, "Please don't leave again. Please, muña."
"I won't," you promise, squeezing his hands gently. "Never again."
"You promise?" he asks skeptically, nails digging deep into your skin.
"I promise."
—————————
JACAERYS, 8; READER, 13; 118 AC
"He's so tiny," you say softly as you lounge with Rhaenyra in her chambers. Jacaerys and Lucerys are in the training yard—you were supposed to go with them, because Jacaerys never likes training with Ser Criston without you there to watch, but the birth was harder on your sister than she is willing to admit, and someone needs to look over her. "Tinier than Jacaerys and Lucerys were."
You poke at Joffrey's forehead, delighted when the boy gurgles and reaches for your finger, and Rhaenyra lets out a soft laugh, a fond expression on her face as she looks at the two of you lying in bed, resting back on the settee a few feet away. You had tried to insist that she should lie down, but she was quite adamant against it, and you are not fond of fighting with her when she struggles to keep herself upright.
"As much as I do adore the way you look after me, sweet sister, I am sure you have more important things to be doing. Were you not meant to sit with our father in the small council today?" Rhaenyra asks with a tired smile, pretending she is not in pain as she adjusts her legs.
You hate the way she winces every time she shifts.
You are certain this is Queen Alicent's fault—you had been furious when you passed Laenor and the boys on the way to her apartments, and he told you that the queen had called Rhaenyra to her chambers immediately after the birth, insisting upon seeing the babe before your sister had even been given the chance to rest. She had walked, bleeding and trembling, barely able to stand after the labor but forced to climb the winding stairs from her own apartments with a newborn in her arms, crossing the holdfast while every servant and noble stopped to stare at the blood trailing after her.
You had not been there—you had been in the sky for hours with Zūgaxes, oblivious even to the fact that Rhaenyra had entered her labors—but you found her immediately afterward. Still, she had smiled at you, even as her face had gone pale with exhaustion, and she leaned too heavily against Laenor when she thought no one was looking.
Maester Gerardys had ordered her to remain in bed for several days, but everyone was more concerned with tiny Joffrey, who was born too small for their liking, so no one noticed that your sister was already wandering around after an hour.
Except you, of course.
"All of your attendants and the maestars are focused on Joffrey," you say simply, sniffing as you raise your chin. "Somebody has to attend to you."
You do not notice the way Rhaenyra's expression changes at your words, snatching away the fluff he tries to stuff in his mouth. You stare down at the boy, a conflicted feeling tugging at your chest. You love Rhaenyra's boys—you do, but…
"Mandia," you say quietly after a moment, shoulders a bit hunched as you glance over at Rhaenyra, who tilts her head to the side curiously. You know that all women are meant to bear their husbands sons—you perhaps, more than anyone, so that the blood of Old Valyria might be passed on—but… "I do not think I should like to have children of my own."
Rhaenyra hums. "I used to think so too, did you know?" she tells you, and you look up, blinking at her in surprise. She nods with a small smile when she sees your surprise. "I was terrified when I found out I was with child the first time. I never pictured myself as a mother."
"Really?"
"Really."
You frown. "But you're…" You glance down at the little bundle wriggling happily in the bed next to you. "… You're perfect at it."
Rhaenyra laughs. "I assure you, I am not," she says with a smile. "I have made more mistakes than I can count."
You sniff. "I have never seen one."
"You had never seen a pufferfish until two weeks ago—does that mean they do not exist?" she teases, reminding you of the argument you got into with Laenor a few weeks ago because he insisted there was a type of fish covered in spikes and you refused to believe him until he dragged you out to sea to show you. Your face feels hot as you look away. "As I thought."
"Still," you say primly, crossing your arms and looking away.
"What made you think of this, sweet girl?" Rhaenyra asks, and you know she wishes to cross the room to brush your hair out of your face, but you scowl at her the moment she starts to move, and she sighs, holding her hands up in defeat as she lies back against the settee. "Did my boys horrify you so much they scared you off children altogether?"
She is teasing, but you frown anyway.
You say firmly, "No. I love your boys. In fact, I do not think I need children of my own when I already have two—three, now—little boys who insist on occupying all my time."
Rhaenyra laughs, tilting her head back. For the first time since you arrived in her chambers, she looks genuinely happy. She says, "Jacaerys would be terribly offended to hear himself counted alongside his brothers."
You scoff. "He ought not be. He is the worst offender," you tell her fiercely, smiling. "He sneaks into my apartments almost every night, steals the snacks I go through the effort of stealing from the kitchen, and has somehow convinced himself that half of my wardrobe belongs to him. I found my favorite cloak in his chambers the other day—I had been looking for it for weeks, mandia."
Rhaenyra's shoulders are shaking, though you think they ought not be because it is not funny in the slightest.
"Oh, hāedar, you misunderstand," she manages between laughs, wiping at the corner of her eye. "He would be offended because you called them your little boys as well. He gets rather cross whenever he's reminded that he must share you with his brothers."
You squint. Last week, Lucerys had fallen asleep against your shoulder while you read aloud in the gardens, and Jacaerys had spent the better part of an hour attempting to wedge himself between the two of you under increasingly flimsy pretenses until you had finally sighed and let him climb into your lap as well.
"You may be right," you concede at last, "but I digress."
"What made you think of this then, if not for my boys?" Rhaenyra asks again, determined to get to the bottom of the issue.
Your shoulders hunch slightly. You busy yourself with fixing the blanket wrapped around Joffrey as you try to figure out how to phrase what you want to say.
"The Queen said something to me this morning," you finally admit. "It is why I've spent the whole day flying."
Rhaenyra's expression shifts instantly, fondness hardening and lips pressed together. "What did she say to you?"
"She said she was glad to hear that I've flowered… I did not tell her, I assume one of the servants must have," you say quietly, playing with your own fingers, unable to lift your gaze to meet hers. "She said that she would speak to the king about—matches."
Flowering means womanhood, and womanhood means marriage, and marriage means children.
Rhaenyra exhales hard through her nose, jaw tightening, and you feel guilty instantly. Your sister has just given birth. She has just given birth and was forced to cross the Keep because Queen Alicent demanded to see the babe, and now you are throwing more issues at her as if she isn't already faced with enough.
"Mandia, I—"
"I will speak to our father, hāedar," Rhaenyra says before you can say anything else, gaze lifting to meet yours. She gives you that familiar, reassuring smile that always puts your nerves at ease. "Do not fret. Your elder sister will handle everything. I will not see you forced to do anything you displease."
You know that she means it. If Rhaenyra said she would move the heavens for you, she would spend every waking second ensuring that it happens. Even so…
"I do not wish to be a burden. I—I know it is a woman's duty to wed and bear children, but I—"
"You are not a burden, hāedar. How many times must I remind you?" Rhaenyra tells you with a soft smile. "Be at ease. I shall speak to father. I—"
The door to Rhaenyra's chambers opens with a loud bang, and both of you startle, gaze lifting just as Ser Harwin enters the room. Rhaenyra blinks once and gives the man a questioning look, and you tilt your head to the side.
"Forgive me, princesses," the man says, dark curls framing his face as he looks between the two of you. His gaze settles on you. "The dragonkeepers sent for you, princess. Zūgaxes is—agitated."
—————————
"Are you upset with me?"
You exhale as Jacaerys barges into your chambers later that night, brows furrowed indignantly, as though to mask the anxiety plain in the way he otherwise holds himself. Your gaze slips down to the way his fingers tremble at his sides and his shoulders are too stiff, and Jacaerys instantly shrinks, hiding his hands and standing straighter.
You glance away, lips pressed together, fingers thrumming against your desk.
"'I waited for you in the garden, but you didn't come," Jacaerys continues, voice pitching in accusation as he comes closer to you. "I waited in the library, but you didn't come. And then I thought you'd definitely come for supper, but you didn't. Where were you?"
"I was busy, Jacaerys," you say, clipped, and Jacaerys freezes a few feet away. You stop yourself from glancing at him over your shoulder because you know the moment you see his bottom lip wobbling, your anger will start draining away. "Perhaps you would be better suited attending etiquette lessons with Septa Elaine. You have clearly missed far too many."
Jacaerys does not answer for a long moment. He asks hesitantly, "What does that mean?"
"What that means, Jacaerys," you hiss, whipping around to look at him. He flinches backward, but you barrel on anyway. "is that I found my half-brother crying in the dragonpit after nearly being burnt alive by my dragon because you thought it would be a good idea to taunt him with a pig."
Jacaerys stares at you for a moment uncertainly, shoulders hunching inward as though to make himself small. He has been mad at you countless times before. If he feels as though you're paying more attention to Lucerys, he will give you the cold shoulder all evening, and if you dare to even hint at missing story time, he'll insist he never wants to speak to you again, then will appear in your chambers after supper, asking you to read to him with the sweetest smile.
You have never been angry at him before.
"It was just a joke," he whispers, voice small. "I didn't—"
"You didn't what?" you interrupt. "You didn't mean it? Is that it?"
Distantly, you know you should not yell at him like this.
He is only a boy—you're almost tall enough to reach your sister's shoulders now and still growing at that, but Jacaerys hardly reaches your chest, cheeks still chubby with fat, giggling at every unfunny joke that Laenor makes. Aegon is likely the one at fault for the prank, miserable wretch, but Jacaerys—
Jacaerys should know better.
Jacaerys knows, as you do, what it's like to be ostracized by the court for something out of his control. Aemond is not your favorite sibling—he is too uptight, clings to his mother so much that it makes you roll your eyes—but to mock him for not having a dragon?
You yourself did not have Zūgaxes until your fifth nameday. Your cradle egg did not hatch, and Dreamfyre, Vermithor, and Silverwing had all rejected you. Zūgaxes had been nigh wild after the years he spent terrorizing the Riverlands following Princess Daenerys's death to the Shivers in 60 AC, having hatched moments before the princess took her last breath. The newborn dragon fled in the chaos after losing the bond as soon as it had formed, and if he had not come to you by chance while you were flying with Rhaenyra, you might be in the same position as Aemond is now.
"Aegon said it would be funny," Jacaerys whispers, bottom lip wobbling. "It was a joke."
"Aegon says a lot of things," you hiss. "He is a fool. If he told you to jump from Maegor's Holdfast, would you do it?"
Jacaerys's eyes drop to the floor. He says quietly, "No."
"You know what it is like to have people laugh and whisper," you continue furiously. "You know it feels like to have people smile to your face and question whether you belong the moment you leave the room. You cry to me because they stare at your hair and your eyes, and you cry to me when people mention that you do not look like Ser Laenor. You know those are not jokes."
Jacaerys flinches. "Muña—"
"No," you snap. "Do you think your uncle feels any different when the whole keep laughs at him for not having a dragon?"
"I'm sorry—"
"Your mother will be queen one day, Jacaerys, and you will be king after her," you interrupt. "Everything you do matters. Every laugh and every foolish prank—every time someone sees you, they are deciding what sort of man you might become."
"I didn't mean it—"
"The lords do not whisper about Aegon the same way they whisper at you," you continue harshly, kneeling in front of him and grabbing his shoulders. He is crying now, fat tears rolling over his chubby cheeks, chest rising and falling rapidly as he tries not to sob. "They already question you, Jacaerys, and it will not stop. Every action you take makes them wonder whether or not you deserve the throne your mother will leave you. They are waiting for you to fail, Jacaerys, they—"
You cut yourself off when Jacaerys chokes on a sob, the sound rips through your anger as though someone had plunged a knife straight into it. His little shoulders shake beneath your hands. He is trying so desperately not to cry that it hurts to watch, biting down on his lip so hard you worry he might draw blood.
What are you doing?
"I'm sorry," he whispers again, tears falling freely now. "I'm trying to be good. I am. I didn't think."
Good will not be enough, you think, but do not say, fighting a sob of your own as you pull Jacaerys forward into your arms, sitting back on the floor and letting him clamber into your lap. He buries his face in the crook of your neck, muffling his cries into your skin.
Good will never be enough. You have watched the court use every careless word he has ever spoken as proof that he is unworthy. You have watched them turn his hair, eyes, and face into evidence against him. They will not stop because he grows older—if anything, they will only become crueler and louder.
And you fear one day that words will turn to swords.
You see the glances exchanged between the Queen and her allies, how every feast ends with another whispered slight and word disguised as courtesy. One day, your father will die, and everything held together by his presence will begin to crack.
Your sister will be queen, Jacaerys will be heir, and there are already too many people who have decided they will never accept either of them.
You are scared.
Perhaps you are imagining monsters where none exist—you have spent years watching nobles smile with their mouths and sneer with their haves, and it has made you cynical. You hope one day the two of you will laugh about how frightened you had been over nothing, but until that day comes, the fear remains.
You tighten your arms around Jacaerys until he lets out a tiny squeak of protest. Then he melts into you, arms looped around your shoulders, sniffling into the wet spot at your neck.
"I do not want you to grow up," you whisper before you can stop yourself.
"Why?" Jacaerys murmurs.
Your eyes slide shut. Because the older he gets, the fewer days remain where the greatest thing you have to worry about is a prank gone too far. You smooth a hand through his curls and press another kiss against his temple.
Instead, you say, "Because I like you just as you are."
He giggles. "I still want to grow up."
"Traitor," you tease, brushing your fingers through his hair as he snuggles into you.
"I want to be brave, and I want to ride Vermax all by myself, and I want to protect mother, and Luke, and Joffrey, and—" He pulls back to look at you, big brown eyes still watery. "—and you, muña."
You smile at him, your own eyes stinging with tears. "I'm the one who protects you, silly boy."
Jacaerys shakes his head so vigorously that his curls bounce. "Not forever," he claims. "One day I'll be big and grown, and I'll have a sword, and Vermax will be bigger than Zuzu, and I'll be the one to protect you."
You exhale softly through your nose, swallowing the lump that forms in your throat. He lifts his tiny hands to your cheeks, squeezing hard the way you always do to him when he is sad, then he leans forward until your foreheads touch.
"Don't be scared, muña. I'll be a good king," he tells you simply. "I'll be kind. I won't do things anymore just because Aegon tells me to."
"I know you will, mandianna," you murmur. "I know."
He bites his lip, twisting nervously in your lap. "Are you still mad at me?" You pull back just enough to look at him properly. His eyes are swollen from crying, cheeks blotchy and damp, fingers clinging to you. He whispers, "I want you to be proud of me."
You lift your hands to cradle his cheeks and say firmly, "I'm always proud of you, Jacaerys. Always. I'm sorry if I was cruel—I was only scared."
Jacaerys wrinkles his nose.
"Then don't be scared, muña," he says firmly. "I'll make sure you never have to be."
—————————
You should have known things would never be so easy.
"Where are my trunks?" you ask as you make your way to where Rhaenyra and the boys are getting ready to leave for Dragonstone. Jacaerys's face lights up from a glum frown when he sees you, and you toss him a wink that he giggles at. You look back up at your sister and say, "I told my handmaidens to make sure they were brought down."
Rhaenyra's brows furrow. "They are coming, perhaps?" she offers, making her way toward you to ghost her lips against your cheeks in greeting. "We are not in a rush, hāedar, do not fret."
But there is a tightness in your chest that unsettles you. Something has been off the past few days—you know it. The Queen always has that small, knowing smile on her face, and your father seemed inordinately pleased with himself. You had thought, maybe, the Queen was just pettily satisfied that Ser Harwin was being sent away and your father was just happy having his third grandson, but there was something—something off-putting that could not let you rest.
"Mandia," you whisper, clutching the sleeve of her gown. Your fingers are shaking. Rhaenyra looks down at your hands, alarmed. "I don't…"
"There you are! To think it would be so difficult to find my own daughter for a conversation," you hear your father say from the top of the steps leading into Maegor's Holdfast.
King Viserys leans on his cane as he makes his way down the steps toward you—Rhaenyra blinks in confusion, lips parting but words escaping them as she moves forward to greet him.
He looks worse, you think absently. Even just walking down the stairs is an effort, his face pale with exertion, sweat beading at his temples. Heaviness weighs on your chest—grief, maybe, but what is there to grieve about a man who has spent most of your life incapable of looking you in the eye?
"Father," Rhaenyra greets with a sad smile. "You did not have to come down to bid us goodbye. You should be resting."
"Nonsense," your father dismisses, squeezing her hand. The Queen Alicent and your half-brother, Aegon, follow behind your father. She looks too pleased with herself still—your heart drops to your stomach. "But it is not the only reason I have come. My dear—" King Viserys turns to look at you, eyes upturned. You think it is the first time he has ever looked you in the eye. "—I would like for you to stay behind."
He reaches out to take your hands in his, passing his cane to a nearby attendant. They are clammy and unfamiliar; you are not sure if you are breathing.
Somewhere behind you, you hear Jacaerys inhale sharply, and to your side, Rhaenyra makes an audible noise, confused.
"Father," she starts, a bemused smile on her face, "I—"
"Alicent—she had the most wonderful idea to unite both sides of the family," King Viserys continues with a breathless smile, squeezing your hands. Behind him, Aegon, who had been bored and looked as though he wished to be anywhere else, starts to squint, realizing something might be wrong. Alarm hits him slower than it has hit you. He looks at you questioningly, but you cannot even bring yourself to meet his gaze. "It is high time we put these petty squabbles behind us, don't you think?"
You cannot feel your fingers.
Your pulse pounds so violently in your ears that you can almost not even hear your father over it. Across the city, you hear Zūgaxes let out a screech, feeling your fear as his own.
"Father," Rhaenyra starts to say, voice riddled with disbelief. "You cannot mean—"
"You and Aegon shall wed, my dear," King Viserys says, squeezing your hands as though this is news that shall delight you. "You are both of age. A marriage between the two of you shall bind the family once and for all. Alicent proposed it only a few days ago—I confess, I do not know why I had not thought of it sooner."
"What?" Aegon blurts out, eyes wide. "Me?"
"Quiet, Aegon," Queen Alicent says sharply, and Aegon silences immediately, gaze darting over to you as though you have any means of fixing this. "It is a fine match."
"A fine match?" Rhaenyra demands, arm extending outward to push you behind her, stepping between you and your father. "They are children. You cannot be serious, father."
Aegon stares at you, and you stare at him.
He is only twelve; you are only thirteen.
You can see the fear you feel reflected in his eyes.
"Alicent tells me that she has bled," Viserys dismisses. You knew it—you knew something was wrong, you knew to be scared. "She is a woman grown, Rhaenyra."
"She is thirteen," Rhaenyra hisses. "Aegon is twelve."
"The King has already made his decision, Rhaenyra," Queen Alicent says coolly. "Would you question it?"
Rhaenyra stares at her in disbelief, a scoff slipping from her lips. She asks quietly, "How could you do this?"
For a moment, something flickers across the Queen's face—her lips become pinched, her gaze flits to the side—guilt? It couldn't be—Alicent is cold and cruel, stone made flesh, she has always hated you and your sister. You must be mistaken.
"Was it not you who offered marriage between your son, Jacaerys, and my daughter, Helaena?" the Queen asks. You blink, unsure if you heard her properly. "Let us bind our families through marriage, as you once proposed yourself."
Your head snaps toward Rhaenyra, appalled. She was trying to marry Jacaerys off? Rhaenyra does not meet your gaze, so you know it is true.
"It is not the same," Rhaenyra says, shaking her head, stepping forward again. She turns to your father, expression clearing of anger and disdain as she gives him a more pleading look. "Father, please. She has only just flowered—she has hardly had a chance to understand what that means. You cannot mean to—"
"Enough, Rhaenyra," King Viserys interrupts, exhausted. He looks as though he's aged decades in a matter of minutes. Did he really expect everyone to be made happy by this news? "I have made my decision."
The pavilion goes quiet, and you cannot breathe. This cannot be happening. It is—it is not possible. You are not meant to marry Aegon, of all people. You would rather anyone else. You would rather take the vows and become a septa. Your gaze lifts to meet Rhaenyra's, but there is a terribly defeated expression on her face—one that you have never seen before. You feel nauseous, bile rising in your throat, lightness in your head.
"What does that mean?" Jacaerys finally asks, breaking the silence somewhere behind you. "What does that mean? Muña is still coming with us, isn't she?"
"Jacaerys," Rhaenyra begins quietly, voice low and unsteady, because if the king puts his foot down, there is nothing she can do. She looks at both of you desperately, because for the first time in her life, your sister does not know what to say. "I—"
"She promised," Jacaerys interrupts, voice becoming a bit shrill—understanding enough from Rhaenyra's tone to know that you will not be coming with him. That you will be breaking the promise you made to him not two years ago. He turns his gaze onto you, eyes blown wide with anxiety. "You promised, you—"
"Jacaerys," you say, barely able to keep your voice steady as you make your way over to him and kneel in front of him. His eyes well with unshed tears, and you lift one hand to his face, brushing your thumb beneath his eye to catch the tears before they fall. You lower your voice, speaking just to him as you say quietly, "Do not let them see you cry. You are a prince of the realm, your mother's heir. You must be brave, remember?"
Jacaerys's bottom lip wobbles as he nods.
"I will not be across the sea this time, mandianna—only the bay. Vermax is growing quickly. You will be able to visit as frequently as you please," you soothe, brushing his curls from his forehead, "and I will be able to come to you."
"But—"
"There are no buts, mandianna," you say softly, and Jacaerys inhales sharply, fighting a sob. "We all have our roles to play. You will be king one day, your duty is to the realm, and mine—" Your voice threatens to crack, before it can, you clear your throat and force a small smile. If you start crying, so will Jacaerys, and he needs to be strong now more than ever. "—and mine is to a husband. I must stay at his side."
"Then I will be your husband, muña," Jacaerys says desperately, fingers clinging to your sleeve. "You can come with us then. You won't have to stay here."
You exhale through your nose, pulling Jacaerys closer so that you can press your lips to his temple, rubbing easy circles against his upper back. He flings his arms around your shoulders and buries his face into your hair to hide his sniffles.
"That is not how it works, Jacaerys," you tell him quietly. His shoulders are trembling, small whimpers in the back of his throat as he tries not to cry. You hold him a bit tighter. "The king has made his decision."
"It's not fair," he sniffles. "You're my muña. Why does Aegon get to have you? He doesn't even want to marry you. I want to marry you."
You laugh despite yourself, because Jacaerys is too young to know what marriage entails, but he says it with the conviction of someone who has never been more certain of anything in his life. You press your lips to his hair before you pull back just enough to look at him. You find him glaring over your shoulder at Aegon with all the ferocity he can muster with shiny eyes and wobbly lips.
Aegon has gone pale, but you do not think it's because of Jacaerys's righteous fury.
"I don't think…" Aegon begins awkwardly, scratching the back of his neck. "I mean, I never—"
"Quiet, Aegon," Alicent says again sharply, and he falls silently immediately, shoulders slumping. She lifts her gaze to Rhaenyra, giving her a curve of the lips that doesn't reach her eyes. "Well, you and yours had best get going. Safe travels, Rhaenyra."
Rhaenyra scoffs and turns on her heel, but Jacaerys's grip on you tightens at the prospect of leaving.
"He doesn't even know your favorite story," he says desperately, as though it might change something, "or that you don't like onions, or that you can only eat two honey cakes before you start feeling sick, or that you can only sleep if there's a candle going. It's not fair. He doesn't know anything. He'll never take care of you."
"Jacaerys—"
"But I can!" he insists, wiping angrily at his cheeks. "I already do. I make sure you eat when you forget, and I bring your favorite cloak when you're cold, and I tell the servants not to wake you if you've fallen asleep reading. I know how."
"Jacaerys, come here," Rhaenyra says quietly, but Jacaerys only clings more desperately, nails digging into your skin. "Jace—"
You look up at your sister. There are tears in her eyes now too, though she does not let them fall. She gives you the smallest nod, an apology, a goodbye, and a promise wrapped into one gesture. This would not be the end of this—she will get the boys settled at Dragonstone, and she will return for you.
"Mandianna," you murmur, cupping Jacaerys's damp face between your hands. "You must go with your mother." You press a kiss to his forehead, then another to each cheek. "Look after Luke and Joffrey, and mind your mother—she is terribly stubborn and will forget to rest if no one reminds her."
Jacaerys fights another sob and nods, but Rhaenyra successfully pulls him away this time. She gathers him into her arms, and he clutches at her desperately, still looking at you over her shoulder.
"I'll come back for you," he promises. "I promise, muña! I do!"
You smile because he needs you to, even as your vision blurs—luckily, he is too far to see the unshed tears.
"I know you will, Jacaerys," you tell him. "I'll be waiting."
childe x reader
summary: with a job like yours, it was easy living. after all, it wasn't as if writing letters got you involved with the fatui... or would it?
notes: fluff, 2.5k
masterlist
The sign above your table says LETTERS WRITTEN, ALL LANGUAGES, FAIR RATES, and beneath it, smaller, added after your first month in Liyue Harbor taught you what the work actually was: DISCRETION INCLUDED.
Sailors, mostly. Men who never learned their characters or learned them in some northern script the harbor has no patience for. Dockworkers sending mora home with a line or two of proof they're alive. Once, memorably, a Millelith sergeant dictating a love poem so bad you charged him half price out of pity. You write what people say. You do not improve it unless asked. You have learned that the errors are usually the point — that a wife in Qingce reading the food here is grate hears her husband's voice in the misspelling, and would not thank you for correcting him out of the letter.
He arrives on a Tuesday in the ninth month, when the harbor smells like rain that hasn't decided yet. Two fingers of his right hand splinted together, the wrapping clean and professional, the kind of clean that means Bubu Pharmacy and money. Fatui greatcoat, worn open. Ginger hair, and a face that has decided in advance to be pleasant.
"You write letters," he says.
"The sign is fairly honest."
"Snezhnayan?"
"Among others."
He sits down across from you without being invited, which you will come to understand is simply how he enters spaces, and lays his splinted hand flat on your table like a passport.
"Occupational thing," he says. "Should be a few weeks. I write my family every week and my handwriting with the left looks like a chicken died on the page. Can you do today?"
You take out paper. You uncap the ink. Around you the harbor goes on shouting at itself, cargo and gulls and someone's argument about salt fish, and he watches your hands settle into position with an attention that feels less like curiosity and more like assessment, like he's checking your grip the way you'd check a stranger's knife.
"Whenever you're ready," you say.
He starts talking.
The first letter is to a brother. Teucer. Aged somewhere in the single digits, going by content, which concerns a toy salesman, a promise about a whale, and an extended lie about how boring the work is here. Nothing happens all day, he dictates, cheerful, one boot hooked around the leg of his chair. I sit at a desk and stamp papers. Yesterday I stamped forty papers. Pray for me.
You write it exactly. You do not look up. There is a bruise coming through at his collar, older than the fingers, yellow-green, and you write I sit at a desk in your best hand and let it lie there on the page being untrue.
"You didn't ask," he says, when you're blotting it.
"Ask what?"
"Anything." He's tipped back on the chair's rear legs now, balancing, testing. "Most people ask. Fatui walks up, everyone's got a question. You just wrote it down."
"You paid for a letter. Questions cost extra."
He laughs — a real one, short, surprised out of him — and pays for the letter, and overpays, and is gone into the crowd before you can make change.
He comes back the next Tuesday. And the next.
The letters map a family the way a coastline maps a country: edges first. Tonia, who is owed a dress from Fontaine and reminds him of it, apparently, in every letter she sends. Anthon, who broke something and blamed the dog, and the dog, whose innocence Ajax argues for at dictation length. His mother, to whom the letters are shorter and gentler and never once contain the word cold, though it's October now and you know what his home country is in October. His father gets a single line most weeks, and the line is always sturdy, weight-bearing, the way you'd speak across a fence to a man you respect and cannot talk to.
He never says the word Fatui in a letter. You never write it. The work stays offstage, a scuffed boot, a new cut across the knuckles of the good hand, a week where he shows up with his voice sanded down to something quieter and dictates three sentences and stares at the water while you write them.
You learn him the way you learn anyone whose mail you carry — sideways, in negative space, from what gets left out. You know a dozen men on this dock who lie to their families. His lies are better made. He builds his mother a version of her son who is safe and bored, builds it fresh every week, plank by plank, and pays you to hold the boards straight while he nails them.
"You want to know what I actually did this week?" he asks once, catching you catching the bandage on his forearm.
"No," you say.
"Liar."
"Discretion included. It's on the sign."
He looks at the sign. Then at you, longer.
"Everyone in this city wants to sell me something," he says, almost to himself. "You won't even sell me your curiosity."
In November he starts asking your opinion.
Small things at first. Whether miss you reads better at the top of a letter or the bottom. Whether Teucer will notice that the harbor festival he described happened, in reality, to be four months ago. Whether his mother can tell, in someone else's handwriting, when he's lying.
"She can tell in your handwriting?" you ask.
"She can tell in my breathing. From across an ocean." He says it with the helpless pride of a man describing a natural disaster he happens to love. "But letters, yeah. She says my loops go tight when I'm hiding something. Started ignoring anything I wrote below a certain size."
"And in mine?"
"In yours, everything comes out even." He watches you square the page. "You'd have made a good forger."
"I'd have made a rich forger."
"So why letters?"
You could give him the practiced answer, the one about steady work and honest coin. Instead — and later you will not be able to say why, except that the rain had finally decided and was coming down soft on the awning, and the harbor had gone quiet the way it only does under rain — you tell him something true. That you like being the room where other people's tenderness happens. That most people are braver on paper than anywhere else, and you get to sit in the blast radius of it all day, and it ruins you a little, and that the ruination, their trueness is something you've decided to keep.
He doesn't say anything for a while. The rain works on the awning.
"Blast radius," he repeats, finally, like he's turning it over for flaws and not finding one. "Yeah. All right."
He pays for the letter. He doesn't overpay this time, which somehow feels like a greater intimacy which unnerves you — as if the transaction has stopped being a performance and become just the ordinary cost of a thing he needs.
The splints come off sometime in late November. You know this because you notice everything about his hands by now, which is your own confession, though you try and keep it under discretion. The two fingers move stiff for a week, then less stiff, and by the first snow that doesn't stick he is flexing them absently while he talks, cracking the knuckles, drumming the table, a hand entirely returned to service.
He keeps coming.
You say nothing for three Tuesdays. On the fourth, watching him spin the pen you have never once seen him need across the back of those healed fingers, coin-trick smooth, you set down a blank page and don't pick up your own pen at all.
"Your hand's fine," you say.
The pen stops.
"It's been fine for a month. You've been paying me to transcribe letters you could write yourself." You keep your voice level, fair rates, all languages. "I don't mind the money. But I improve errors when asked, and this looks like an error."
He looks at you across the table. Behind the pleasantness there's a rapid analysis going on — you can see it, you've watched him do sums on people all autumn — and then, remarkably, you watch him decide to stop doing it. The pleasantness doesn't drop so much as it opens, a door left unlocked from the inside.
"She writes back more," he says.
You wait.
"My mother. Since it's been your hand. Longer letters, more of them." He turns the pen over once, sets it down. "Took me a while to work out why. Then I got it. My handwriting, she reads on guard. Looking for the tight loops. Waiting for the lie. Yours, she just — reads. Believes the boring desk. Sleeps at night." He shrugs with one shoulder, a gesture that wants to be light and isn't. "Turns out the best thing I ever did for my mother's peace of mind was break two fingers."
The rain awning drips. Somewhere down the pier, a bell.
"So no," he says. "The hand's fine. The letters aren't. They're better here."
There are perhaps four things you could say to that, and you consider all of them, and what comes out instead is:
"You could just tell her the truth."
"I could," he agrees, easy, terrible. "She'd carry it the rest of her life. She'd carry it into her sleep and her cooking and her other kids." His eyes come up to yours, and there's no pleasantness in them at all now, only the accounting, turned inward this time. "I'm not buying handwriting. I'm buying her a son who stamps papers. That's the whole product. You're just the only vendor."
You pick up your pen.
"Same time next week," you say, and something in his shoulders comes down half an inch, and you pretend not to have seen it, and he pretends not to know you're pretending, and this, you understand later, is the exact moment the ground shifted, though at the time it only felt like Tuesday.
Winter arrives at Liyue Harbor the way a rumor does, secondhand and diluted, nothing like the real thing. He tells you about the real thing. Not in letters — between them, after them, in the ten and then twenty and then forty minutes that have attached themselves to the transaction like barnacles. Snow that erases fences. Silence you can stand inside. A porch with amber lights his mother has kept lit so long the whole family navigates home by them without thinking of it as navigation.
You tell him things back. You're not sure when that started either. The village you came from and won't return to. The three languages you dream in, unevenly. The Millelith sergeant's poem, recited from memory, which does to him what it did to you and leaves him wheezing against the table with his forehead on his sleeve.
He starts bringing tea. Two cups, from the place near Feiyun Slope, always the same order for you, which means at some point he watched you order and kept it.
You are not a fool. You write love letters for a living; you know the genre; you can read the tropes at a distance in any of several languages. You know what it is when a man memorizes your tea. You also know who employs him and what the coat means and that men like him are a lease, not a purchase — the Tsaritsa's first, the mission's second, the family's third, and whatever's left over after that wouldn't fill a teacup. You have done this arithmetic. You do it again every Tuesday. The number never improves and you keep, every week, arriving anyway, setting out the good paper anyway, learning his order back.
The last Tuesday in the twelfth month, he sits down and doesn't start talking.
This is new. He always knows the first line before the chair takes his weight — you've teased him about it, said he must draft on the walk over, and he'd grinned and not denied it. Today he sits with his elbows on your table and his healed hands folded and looks at them like a man about to bet more than he brought.
"Letter to my mother," he says.
You get out the good paper. You uncap the ink.
"Ready."
He starts slow. Mama. The weather here doesn't know how to be winter, you'd laugh at it. The usual bones — Teucer's whale, Tonia's dress, the desk, the papers, forty of them, pray for him. Your pen goes along, even and believed. And then, without any change in his voice at all, without so much as a breath's worth of warning:
"There's someone I should tell you about."
Your pen writes it. Your pen is more professional than you are.
"She writes letters for a living," he goes on, eyes on the middle distance, voice at dictation pace, level, unhurried, as if this were the salt-fish argument and not — "here in the harbor. It's her handwriting you've been reading since autumn, you've probably noticed, your eyes are better than mine. I broke my fingers in September, which was the second luckiest thing that ever happened to me."
The pen keeps going. It has to. That's the work — you write what people say, you don't improve it, the errors are the point, and this letter is arriving through your own wrist one clause at a time, in your own even hand, on your own good paper, and you have to keep your loops from tightening.
"She knows what I do. Not the details — she's never once asked, which you'd like about her, she's discreet the way you're discreet, it's on her sign but it's also just true. She lets me be the boring man at the desk. Every week she helps me build him. I don't think she knows" — and here he pauses, the first pause, and you feel him look at you and do not look up, cannot, the ink would betray you — "that he's the man I'd rather be. That an hour at her table is the only hour all week I'm anything like him."
The harbor makes its sounds. The bell down the pier. Your pen at the bottom of the page, waiting.
"You can stop writing," he says quietly. "That part wasn't for her."
You set the pen down. You look up.
He's watching you with everything unlocked, no accounting, no product, just Ajax — the name from the top of the letters, the one the world hasn't gotten to yet — and his hands flat on your table like that first Tuesday, a passport, offered.
"I'll finish it left-handed," he says. "Chicken and all. She should read that part on guard."
You look at the page. At your own even hand carrying his voice, all the way down to the last honest line of it.
"No," you hear yourself say, and pick the pen back up. "I'll write it. She'll believe it in mine."
And it lands the way the rain did that day in November, soft, decided, both of you in the same small dry space while outside the harbor goes on shouting — his laugh coming out low and stunned and real, his hand crossing the table, and your pen already moving, even, believed, writing you both down.
SUMMARY: A prince washes up on the shore outside your cottage, and you must decide whether you’re going to leave him to his fate or save his life. Either way, you know there will be consequences.
WARNINGS: fem!reader, commoner!reader, eventual dragonseed!reader, jace lives, eventual smut, class differences (jace is obviously a prince and reader is a commoner). Reader is not too fond of him at first because she is from Sharp Point. This is a bit of a mix of show canon and book canon in that Jace went to the Gullet to save his brothers and Rhaena still claimed Sheepstealer
AUTHOR'S NOTES: i HADDDD to do a fic for our beloved boy </3 i miss you jacaerys velaryon, prince of dragonstone, heir to the iron throne. I will truly never move on from this death </3 so we need a world where he does not die. I'm saur excited for this because it's my first time writing a reader who comes from a commoner background, AND I finally get to write the dragons ... originally she was not supposed to be a dragonseed, but I just cannot help myself. If I'm going to be writing a hotd era fic, our girl is going to have a dragon. ANYWAY I hope you guys enjoy! please leave a comment or reblog mwah mwah
You wonder whether it is chance or divine intervention that a Targaryen prince washes ashore beside your cottage.
By the time you get to the edge of the sea after catching a glimpse of the corpse from your porch, it is half buried in the wet sand, lying limp at your feet, and there is a lump in your throat that you cannot seem to swallow away.
You do not know how you didn’t notice the sigil sooner.
It should have been the first thing that caught your eye, considering it was only a fortnight past that the Prince Aemond brought the great dragon Vhagar over the town you were raised in and razed it to the ground. The green and gold banners have been flying over the area since, and soldiers from the Reach have been constantly patrolling the roads, seeking out rebels and sympathizers.
You know better than to involve yourself in the affairs of any man that dons the three-headed dragon, you tell yourself, trying to will yourself to walk away from the corpse before anyone can catch you standing near it.
Red or gold, black or green—it does not matter to you, the wars of nobles are graves for common folk, and you have no desire to meet an early one. You have done well enough for yourself since your father passed. You refuse to squander the life you’ve built because a prince washed up on the shore near your home.
The boy at your feet is young, you cannot help but notice—your age, perhaps—dark of hair and fair of skin. At a distance, he had looked like any other body the sea had decided to return, and your first instinct had been to rush toward him rather than avert your gaze and pretend you had seen nothing.
Your hands tremble at your sides, and you have to forcibly still them as you take in a deep breath.
This is war, you recall the soldiers saying when the survivors demanded to know the reason for the tragedy that took place at Sharp Point—mothers with tears in their eyes and no bodies to bury, fathers who had lost their livelihood and the children for whom they built it, your neighbors, your friends. They say Lord Bar Emmon sits on the usurper’s council, so all of the commonfolk who were unfortunate enough to be born beneath his banners have been made to pay the price of his loyalties, allies of a queen they have never seen and casualties of a war they never chose.
This is war, they will tell you the same as they cut off your head if they see you kneeling beside this corpse and call mercy treason. Because it is always the burden of the commonfolk, paying the price of noble quarrels. Princes speak of honor and succession, of rights and oaths and stolen crowns, and it is fishermen and farmers who have to bury their dead. They will not care to hear what you have to say if they think you're affiliated with the Black queen and her supporters, just as the Prince Aemond did not care whether the people of Sharp Point had declared for the Blacks or merely happened to be born beneath the wrong lord.
But now, a prince lies dead upon your shore, and you wonder if this is how it begins again.
You should leave him.
The thought comes immediately, sensible in light of the circumstances, even if it does make your stomach flip. You should turn around and go home, bolt your door, and tell no one what you saw. The sea will reclaim him, or the crabs will pick his bones clean; maybe the patrol will stumble upon the body before the tide rises, and they can parade it through the streets the same way you heard they did to Princess Rhaenys’s dragon.
By the morning, he will be gone one way or another, and you can move on with your life as though you never saw him at all. He will be somebody else’s misfortune, or more hopefully, no one else’s at all.
It is a corpse, anyway. The boy has not moved since you arrived, and his chest does not seem to be rising and falling. There are two arrows through his shoulder, and a blueness to his lips that you’ve only seen in the dead, so—
As though to mock you, he lets out a wet, ragged cough, water bubbling at his lips, lashes fluttering just enough for you to catch sight of dark, hazy eyes that slip over you once before they slide shut again.
You feel sick to your stomach.
He does not stir again. One side of his face is bruised an ugly purple, his dark hair plastered to his brow with seawater and blood. He cannot be much older than you—the traitorous thought crosses your mind again. There is something terribly young about him, lying there half-drowned in the surf, one hand curled weakly into the sand as though, even unconscious, he is still trying to cling to something.
He does not look like a prince, you think miserably. He looks like a boy who is going to die.
The sea foams around your boots, and his body twitches as it threatens to reclaim him—the only feeble resistance he’s capable of in his state. You do not know how he still breathes—the fires might still burn on the Gullet, but the fighting ended days past. How long has he been floating about, dragged around by vicious currents and tossed by waves? It doesn’t even seem as though it should be possible, as though the Seven themselves intervened and—
—and dropped him on your shore, in your hands, and you are contemplating leaving him to die.
The thought is unpleasant, a heavy stone in your chest in place of your heart.
You are not a cruel person. You have cared for gulls with broken wings, and you leave scraps outside your door for the old orange cat that wanders the area. During the winter three years prior, you spent a fortnight nursing a lamb that did not even belong to you because you could not bear the sound of it crying.
And now there is a boy at your feet—bleeding, drowned, scarcely clinging to life—and because there is a dragon sewn onto his chest, you are trying to convince yourself to let the sea finish what arrows and war could not.
His lashes are dark against his cheek. Young, you think again, even more traitorous than the last, no older than ten and nine, if even. There is salt crusted at the corners of his mouth and blood soaking through his tunic in sluggish, rusty streams that stain the pale sand beneath him.
He looks cold—traitor, traitor, traitor.
He looks like a prince, you try to insist. A dragon prince, fire and blood and ruin, dangerous.
Cold. Hurt. Dying.
You need to walk away, you tell yourself again, desperate this time, because the longer you stand there staring at him, the more you fail to convince yourself of the correct path.
A prince's life is worth more than yours, more than your cottage and your little patch of land and the fishing boat your father left you. It is worth armies and dragons and castles and men willing to kill for a name.
If this boy lives, others will come looking for him.
And if the soldiers discover him in your home, they will not ask questions. They will not care that you found him by chance or that you never bent the knee to Queen Rhaenyra—that you could not even tell anyone why one half of House Targaryen wishes the other dead. They will see the three-headed dragon on his breast and the roof over his head, and that will be enough to condemn you.
Worse, the Prince Aemond and the dragon Vhagar could return. You think of Tom, the miller’s son, pulled from the boiling river after dragonfire reached the gristmill. You think of little Grace’s face as she searched the ashes for her mother. You think of all of your neighbors, all of your friends, who hardly survived the first time fire rained from the sky, and you think of all of those who didn’t.
He is not worth it. He is not worth the risk. A prince is only a man born with a special name, there’s no reason you should save him and condemn countless others—he bleeds the same, he dies the same, and when the Stranger comes for him, he is no more spared than any other man.
Except, he didn’t, did he?
He should be dead—any other man would be dead.
Two arrows through the shoulder, half-drowned, tossed upon the sea for days on end—there is no surviving that. Yet he breathes still, ragged and shallow though it may be, his fingers twitching every now and then.
The Stranger came for him and left empty-handed.
The Stranger came for him and left him with you.
Why?
There are no prophecies in your life, no gods whispering in your ear. You are a fisherman's daughter with a cottage by the sea and enough coin to keep yourself fed through winter if the catch is good. You know little of the gods save for the prayers your father taught you as a child and the candles you light for him on his nameday. The Seven did not save your father or your town; they did not save Tom or Grace’s mother or any of the others who screamed as dragonfire turned their homes to ash.
So why? Why this boy? Why this prince? Why should the gods spare a dragon's son when they had not spared children and fishermen and mothers? Why have they left him for you?
You do not have an answer. The only answer before you is a body on the sand, breathing when it ought not to be.
You stare down at him, furious and distressed and so, so unsure. He looks dead again—still as driftwood, cold and pale, stiff. His lips are blue like the dead, and his chest hardly rises and falls. You wonder if you imagined what you saw before. If your guilt conjured a cough where there had been none, if your conscience simply could not bear the thought of walking away even from a corpse.
Slowly, you sink to your knees beside him, damp sand clinging to your knees, the sea foam wetting your trousers. Your hand is still trembling in spite of all efforts to still it. You lift it to his throat, hesitating only for a moment.
If there is life, you will do what you must.
If there is not, you will turn and walk away.
You have never prayed for someone to be dead before.
Please, you think now miserably. Please.
Your fingers brush the skin of his throat—it is cold. He must be cold. So cold, that for a brief, terrible moment, hope flares in your chest, and then—
There is a flutter—it is weak and uneven, so faint that you almost miss it, but it is there.
Your head hangs forward, and you blink away the tears that prick in your eyes, because you know this action will have consequences. You know that there is no going back once you have entangled yourself with dragons. You know that every story told of House Targaryen ends in blood and fire and ruin for everyone foolish enough to stand too close them.
You know that this boy could be the death of you.
The soldiers could discover him. Your neighbors could discover him—as much as they care for you, they fear Vhagar more. If word spreads that a prince of the black faction lives and is hidden beneath your roof, you could hang for it. They could burn your cottage to the ground. They could drag you through the streets and call you traitor.
Worse still, he could recover.
Because then he would not be a half-dead boy on the sand. He would be a prince again. A son of the house of the dragon. He would leave, and the war would continue, and perhaps one day you would hear his name in some tavern and learn that he had mounted a dragon and burned a town much like your own.
The sea rushes forward again, cold water washing over your boots and his legs alike. He does not move. He is so cold.
“Why did you have to wash up here?” you breathe out—frustrated, angry, resigned, because you have never been one to turn your back on someone in need.
His pulse flutters once more against your fingers, and he does not stir.
Then, because the gods have a cruel sense of humor and because your heart has always been softer than your head, you slide your arms beneath the prince’s shoulders and knees.
With a soft curse and the sea at your heels, you gather the dragon prince into your arms and carry home your ruin.
—————————
He is Jacaerys Velaryon, son of Queen Rhaenyra, Prince of Dragonstone, Heir to the Iron Throne.
Three days have passed since you found him on the shore, and he has hardly stirred since you dragged him into your cottage. You have been riddled with anxiety since, jumping at every sound and fearing the worst when someone addresses you. It is only a matter of time—whenever a rider passes on the road beyond the trees or the patrol sweeps down your shore, you think they care coming for him. Coming for you.
You spend the first day trying to keep him alive.
You drag him home, soaked to the bone and half-frozen, laying him atop your bed as you get a fire going and wrap him in your blankets. For a while, you can only stand there staring at him, because it is one thing to decide not to leave a boy to die and another entirely to realize you have no idea how to save him.
You have to cut away his tunic to remove it, and it makes it easier to breathe once the three-headed dragon is out of sight, but then you have to address the monstrosity beneath it—bruises darkening one side of his ribs, yellow and purple and black, cuts everywhere, salt crusting his skin and body a ruin of blood.
You wonder how many rocks the currents slammed him into before he finally washed to shore. The sea around Sharp Point is, well, sharp. Jagged rocks and narrow inlets line the coast, and more than one fisherman has vanished into the sea after his boat drifted too close to reefs beneath the tide.
It is a cruel stretch of sea—crueler still to a boy half-dead and alone.
And then there were the arrows.
The shafts protrude from his shoulders at awful angles, the flesh around them angry and swollen. You cry while removing them, because you have never done something like it before, and your hands cannot stop shaking. A part of you wonders if the gods left him for you so that his blood could be on your hands instead, and you cannot fathom what you’ve done to deserve this.
You expect him to wake once you start removing them. At the very least, you expect him to scream. The first shaft pierced cleanly through his shoulder and is easy enough to ease out, but the second lodged itself deep in the flesh, refusing to budge until you brace your foot against the bedframe and pull with both hands.
It should have been agony—any man would have cried out.
The prince does not so much as flinch.
You remember staring at him afterward, the arrow clutched in your hand and your own cheeks wet with tears, wondering if he had died while you were removing it. You press your fingers to his throat with a panic that borders on hysteria, and you aren’t sure if you’re relieved or disappointed when you feel the fluttering pulse still there.
A traitorous part of you wishes that he had died.
A corpse is a tragedy, but a tragedy can be dumped in the sea and abandoned. A tragedy will not bring more war to your ravaged home.
A living prince, on the other hand, is a catastrophe that you do not know what to do with. Your home has already faced ruin once, and the longer he remains in your care, the more at risk you will be of bringing it upon you all again, because if he is captured in your care, then that means war and blood and fire and more dragons. The whole town, all of the survivors, everyone will be branded traitors to the crown.
But the prince lived, so you can only hope that he will heal quick enough and be gone before you have the chance to regret helping him.
The fever comes on the second day, and the corpse in your bed finally gives to life.
You notice it when you are wiping the blood from his face, and your hand brushes his forehead. It’s as though all of the cold of the sea had fled his body at once and left only fire behind. It’s what you expect of a Targaryen prince, really—the burning heat, closer to dragon than man— it feels more natural than the cold, but you are scared anyway.
You do not know much about treating battle wounds, but you do know about fever.
Your younger brother died of it during a long winter a decade past—no matter how hard your mother worked to keep it at bay, he was dead by nightfall. Your mother passed in the same moon, to the same sickness, as did half of the children in Sharp Point, because fever does not care whether you are young or old, rich or poor, prince or peasant.
His skin is flushed, sweat beading along his brow and soaking the dark hair at his temples as he twists in the sheets violently, threatening to reopen the wounds you just stitched close. His breathing changes too—no longer the slow drags of air, shallow and erratic, like he had spent days at sea only to begin suffocating on dry land.
You fetch water from the well until your shoulders ache. You lay cloths upon his brow and change them whenever they grow warm. You feed the fire, then fear you have made him too hot and let it die down, only to panic that he would grow cold again and build it back up.
Every few minutes, you find yourself pressing your hand to his forehead or his throat, checking for fever and pulse alike. There is never a change—still alive and burning, and you don’t know whether to be grateful or terrified.
At one point, he begins muttering. You cannot make out most of it—the words are slurred, little more than broken sounds spilling from fevered lips. Names, you think. Places, maybe. Some do not seem to be spoken in the common tongue.
Once, very clearly, he whispers, "Mother.”
You have to change the cloth on his forehead afterward and pretend your eyes are not stinging with tears. You curse the gods throughout that second day—you wish that you’d never left the cottage at all the morning you found him, you wish you’d left him to die, you wish, you wish, you wish, as though any of it matters anymore.
You sleep little that night, sitting beside your bed and watching him breathe. Terrified every time his breathing slowed, and equally terrified every time it quickened. You count the moments between each breath until dawn creeps through your shutters, and by morning, you feel like you have lived a lifetime in a single night.
The third day—today—you have to make the trek into town.
You have used the last of your willow bark, and there is only a heel of stale bread left, a few onions, and enough drinking water to last another day if you’re careful. You need fruit and vegetables, more barley, and you have a catch that you never got the chance to bring to the market to trade the morning you found the prince.
You cannot put it off any longer, much as you may wish—the prince needs supplies, and unfortunately, so do you.
You do not like going into town. You have never liked going into town—you have always been fond of your neighbors and your friends, but you were not fond of the way they circle and crowd you whenever you make your weekly appearance for trade. You got overwhelmed too quickly, and you didn’t know how to make an exit without seeming rude, so you ended up staying there for hours when there were many chores you had to get done at home.
Now, it is like a graveyard. The destruction following the Prince Aemond’s attack on Sharp Point has yet to be cleared. The soldiers are too busy with war and patrols, and the survivors are too busy trying to salvage what they can of their ruined lives.
When you enter the town, you can still smell charred flesh and death.
The children usually run to you when you arrive, chattering about the games they’ve played and the rumors they’ve heard, if you saw the wild dragon Grey Ghost while you were out on your boat this week, and you smile and nod along with them. But all of the children are dead now, and you are not crowded by friends and neighbors eager to make conversation with you, because most of them are dead now too.
It is in the market when you overhear green-cloaked soldiers talking about the battle that took place in the Gullet, and you finally put a name to the face of the prince in your home. You try to pretend that you’re not eavesdropping, fingers shaking terribly as you sort through the fruits and vegetables that Wylem carted in from his farm, because you need to know if they have figured out what you’ve done, if they know the prince is in your care, under your roof.
But they only laugh as they speak of dead dragons and a mourning pretender queen. They say the Blacks have lost two dragons, and the bastard prince, Jacaerys Velaryon, is dead. Any man who can find his body washed up on the shore to deliver to the King will see unfathomable riches.
Momentarily, you are angry at yourself because the royals brought this war and have caused all of this suffering, but when your lashes flutter shut, for a split second, you can only picture the haunted look on your mother’s face as she held your dead brother in her arms. You think of Miss Ellyn, who tossed herself into the sea when she found out her son had been killed on the Kingsroad. You think of your friend, Marie, who you found screaming, fisting her infant daughter’s ashes after the burning of the town. You think of them, and then you think of the black queen on her throne, and you feel the same lump in your throat.
Then you remind yourself that this is her doing.
Her doing, her half-brother’s doing, the other nobles’ doing. They brought this war to Westeros, they brought death and destruction, fire and blood, and you force yourself to shake your head and push it all away, trading some of the fish you caught for fruits and vegetables and barley with a watery smile that you’re sure Wylem took notice of.
There are more important things to worry about: if there is a bounty on the prince’s body, everybody will be searching for him. Not just soldiers, the people too—your friends, your neighbors, everyone. Many starve, more struggle, so if there is an opportunity for gold, they will all be on the hunt. You need to burn his cloak and tunic when you get back to the cottage, anything that associates him with House Targaryen.
You nearly trip over your own feet racing back to the cottage, second-guessing every conversation you had in the town. Wylem asked you why you were getting twice as much food as you usually get—you do not remember how you responded.
Did you imply that you had a visitor? Why can’t you remember? What excuse did you give? Did the soldiers overhear? Are they following you? Do they know? Why can’t you remember? You’re scared—you do not think you’ve ever been so scared in your entire life.
You look over your shoulder every five steps, worried that they’re going to come charging after you, demanding you to bring them to the Prince Jacaerys before taking your head. You’re not cut out for this—you’re the daughter of a fisherman. There’s no world where you should be worrying whether soldiers are going to hunt you down for saving a prince.
There are tears in your eyes when you make it back to the cottage, and your fingers are trembling around the bags Wylem packed for you. You shut the door behind you, and it takes you three tries to bolt it properly. When you finally do, you rest your forehead against the wood and let out a trembling sigh.
You—
“Who are you?”
There is a knife to your throat.
You stare at the crack in the wood of your door, breath catching, desperately trying not to move lest you risk the knife slicing through your skin. The crack appeared last winter, you remind yourself, trying not to focus too much on the fact that you can feel the cool edge of the blade. Your friend, Evander, was meant to fix before the next, but Evander is dead now, and you may well be too, if the knife at your throat presses any deeper.
“Answer me, who are you? Where am I? Wh—” the prince—Jacaerys Velaryon, Prince of Dragonstone, Heir to the Iron Throne—falters suddenly, and you can only breathe again when the knife drops from your neck, and you feel the presence at your back disappear. “You—you are a woman.”
You do not turn to look at him immediately, eyes sliding shut as you fight to steady the frantic beating of your heart, drawing one slow breath after another until your shaking eases enough to trust your legs. Your fingers tighten on the bags cradled in your arms before you force yourself to turn around.
Prince Jacaerys Velaryon stands three paces behind you, one hand braced against the edge of your table, pained, pale, barely conscious. He is bare from the waist up, and the stitches you painstakingly worked through his torn skin have pulled loose, fresh blood soaking the bandages and dripping down his chest and back.
You see more clearly in the light of the afternoon sun just how ruined his body is, bruises and cuts—you think his ribs must be broken, you did not notice just how bad off he was when you had him lying in the dim corner where you keep your bed.
For a moment, you forget that you are face-to-face with a Targaryen prince—it is only the boy you dragged in from the sea and spent hours trying to keep alive.
Your lips curve down into a deep frown, brows knitting together. You exhale as you say, “You reopened your wounds. It took me an hour to get them properly closed.”
The prince stares at you.
As soon as the words fly from your mouth, you remember who it is before you. The son of a queen. The heir to the Iron Throne, if one listens to his mother. A pretender's heir and bastard, if one listens to her enemies. You do not know which of them is right, nor do you particularly care. Such questions belong to lords and knights and people with far too much time to argue over crowns.
To the likes of you, prince is title enough for you to keep your mouth shut and your head bowed.
He does not immediately respond, gaze flicking around your cottage uncertainly. Your bed, stained with his blood. The dying hearth. The table where you left out the last bits of the bread, just in case he awoke while you were gone and was hungry. The bandages you left at his bedside. The basin of pink water you forgot to empty before leaving for town.
His lips, dry and cracked, part as he stares at you and murmurs more to himself than to you, “You tended my wounds.”
You hesitate, then nod, swallowing once. “I found you on the shore a few days past, my prince—” Your Grace? What is the proper way to address a prince? My Lord does not seem grand enough for the heir to a queen. Prince feels the safest—whatever he may be, no one seems inclined to dispute that part. “—I… you should probably be resting.”
“I need to know what happened,” he says instead, stepping closer to you. He is too pale, sweat beads at his forehead, dark curls matted to his skin. His eyes are wide and wild, pupils dilated the same way you’ve seen in men mad with grief or fear or fury, moments before lashing out at the nearest person. You find yourself tensing instinctively. “What do you know of the battle that took place on the Gullet? Did Baela make it back to Dragonstone? And Rhaena—she was on that wild dragon, and—my brothers, did my brothers make it back? How long has it been? Where are we? How far is it to Dragonstone? I must return immediately, I—”
The prince only just seems to realize how you’ve drawn away, back pressed against the door to your own home, arms tightening around the sack in your arms whenever he comes closer. His tongue darts out to wet his cracked lips, gaze flicking to the knife he dropped onto the floor and the fear in your face.
Shame crosses his expression instantly.
“I—” His expression twists as he puts space between the two of you again. You wonder whether it’s from pain or from struggling to force out an apology. Both, likely. He continues, “You have helped me—saved my life, most like—and here I am frightening you. I… I thought I’d been captured. I woke in an unfamiliar place. I didn't know where I was. I didn't know if I was a prisoner or if the battle had been lost. I heard the door open and…”
He trails off, and you stand there awkwardly, tension easing slowly from your shoulders. He is still on guard, but he does not seem so inclined to pull a blade on you again. Your lips part to tell him where he is, what little you know of the battle on the Gullet.
Instead, you ask, “Do most enemy strongholds look like a fisherman’s cottage, my prince?”
You are mortified the moment the question spills from your lips—he is a Targaryen prince, they are known for blood and fire and madness, dragons and crowns, and you speak to him as though he’s one of your peers.
Prince Jacaerys stares at you for a long moment, and then, to your astonishment, his gaze flicks around the inside of your home again, and something suspiciously like embarrassment crosses his face.
“I suppose not.”
The corner of your mouth twitches despite yourself, and you let out a soft puff of air through your nose before making your way across the room to place the sack you’ve carried from town onto the table. You will have to sort all of what you’ve got later; for now, you need to get the prince resettled before he opens up any more of his wounds.
You turn to look at him again, faltering when you see the pained expression that crosses his face, so sudden that it steals all the color from his cheeks. His hand shoots to his side, fingers digging into the bandages wrapped around his ribs.
“My prince?” you ask hesitantly, taking half a step forward, arm only slightly extended. It is one thing to carry him to your cottage and treat his wounds while he’s unconscious; it is different now that he’s awake.
Prince Jacaerys inhales sharply through his teeth. He is swaying on his feet, breath gone shallow—he looks as though he’s moments from collapsing hard onto your wooden floor. Still, his jaw clenches and the muscles in his neck tighten as he draws himself upright through sheer stubbornness.
“I am fine,” he insists.
“You should sit, my prince.”
“I am standing,” he replies with a tight smile, as though a bead of sweat isn’t rolling down his temple from strain to remain upright and his lips aren’t trembling with pain.
“Barely.”
The prince blinks as though caught off guard by the response, casting a look that is partially confused, and mostly offended in your direction. Your lashes flutter shut as you brace yourself for a volatile reaction, because he is a prince and you are a fisherman’s daughter, and you are arguing with him as though he is an equal and not one of those dragon-riding royals people compose songs about. You think you must have lost your wits entirely these past few days.
Instead, he shoots back, with all the dignity he can muster while visibly swaying, "I have endured worse."
You stare at the blood soaking through the bandages wrapped around his shoulder, uncertain if you believe him. You say with less heat, "That is not the same as being well, my prince."
His jaw tightens, and you fight a sigh. Gods, he actually looks as though he is preparing an argument.
You wonder, briefly, what your life has become. Three weeks ago, your greatest concern had been whether the currents would ease up enough for you to take the boat out of the shallows to catch some fish. Now, Sharp Point has burned and you are standing in your cottage, arguing with a dragon prince about his injuries.
The absurdity of it nearly makes you laugh, wondering if perhaps this entire ordeal is some fever dream brought on by bad fish and Leila’s uncle’s dubious ale.
Then, Prince Jacaerys’s left leg buckles.
He reaches for the table and misses, injured shoulder slamming into the edge hard enough to wrench a strangled cry from him, and before you can think better of it, you're moving.
You let go of the sack of fruits and vegetables and barley you were keeping steady on your table; it topples over, and all of your pristine apples go rolling across the floor of your cottage, but you barely notice, panicked when you realize that he careening right toward the hardwood floor.
You catch the prince around the waist just as he starts to fall, but he is heavier than you expect.
You brace yourself, convinced that he is going to take you down with him, but you manage to steer him sideways toward the chair beside the table. He collapses into it heavily, breath hissing through clenched teeth as pain flashes across his face.
Momentum carries you forward with him—far, far too forward.
One hand lands against the uninjured side of his chest to steady yourself, the other gripping the arm of the chair. For a horrifying second, you are practically sprawled across the heir to the Iron Throne’s lap. You jerk away so quickly you nearly trip over one of the escaped apples, face burning and hands shaking.
"Sorry," you blurt, mortified. “Sorry. Sorry, I did not mean—”
“I believe,” Prince Jacaerys begins with a grimace, “that was my fault.”
You do not respond, flustered, trying to put more distance between you to calm yourself down. Your gaze flicks back over to him, but he is too busy grinding his teeth as he glances down at his wounds to pay you any mind. You let out a soft puff of air through your nose before you look at the apples rolling about your floor, and then reach for one still on your table—you might have lost some sense over the past three days with the little sleep you’ve gotten, but you are not about to feed a prince food off your floor.
You make your way back over to him and hold the apple out to him. He blinks once at it before his gaze lifts to yours questioningly.
“I do not know when last you ate—a while, certainly,” you tell him quietly. “You should get something in you while I redress the bandages. I’ll cook some stew once I’m certain you’re not going to bleed out.”
Prince Jacaerys exhales through his nose before he takes the apple from you, rolling it between his fingers. You step past him so that you can move the basin of water closer to where he’s sitting, grabbing a clean rag and the bandages that you left next to your bed.
You come to stand in front of him again, hesitating before you motion to the wounds on his shoulder. You ask, “May I?”
His dark gaze flicks up to yours briefly before he nods, and your throat tightens as you shift closer, fingers fumbling a bit as you grab for the edge of the bandages to unwind them from around him. It is much more intimidating doing this while he’s awake, inches away from you, and eyes tracking your every move.
“I found you three days ago, my prince,” you tell him at last, trying to remember all of the questions he asked earlier so that you can busy your mind with something other than the fact that you can feel his skin hot against yours. “Before that, the fighting died another three. In truth, my prince, I do not know how you survived so long at sea.”
Prince Jacaerys says nothing in response. His attention remains fixed somewhere beyond the wall behind you, expression distant. You suspect he is counting the days since the battle, the hours his family has believed he is dead, the minutes his mother has spent mourning him. You keep your gaze trained on his shoulder as you unwind the last of the bandages and set them down on the table.
You press your lips together when you see that the stitches have loosened at the back of his shoulder—where one of the arrows had dug deep, but not deep enough to pass cleanly through. Pulling it free had torn through muscle and flesh alike, leaving a ragged injury that had taken you nearly an hour to clean, stitch, and stop bleeding.
You exhale as you run the pad of your finger briefly over the stitches, trying to figure out if you can salvage what effort you already put in or if you would have to pull them out and redo them entirely.
“And my family? My younger brothers? Baela and Rhaena? Have you heard what has become of them?” the prince asks, and you glance up just enough to see how his jaw tightens when your finger brushes over the wound. “Did we win the battle?”
“I do not know if anyone can be said to have won that battle, my prince,” you answer quietly, tongue darting out to wet your lips as you finally start to get to work at reclosing the wound. Your gaze slips to the side when he finally starts to eat the apple you passed to him. He makes a noise in the back of his throat, as though he’s only just realized how hungry he is. “Both fleets were decimated. The dead still wash up on the northern shore.”
How did Prince Jacaerys make it to your shore, then?
Not for the first time, you have to wonder if the gods themselves placed him directly into your hands.
Most of the rest of the dead have washed up on the northern and western shores of Sharp Point, as it is where the currents run strongest, but the prince somehow made it to where your cottage sits on the eastern shore. If he had washed up anywhere else, the patrol would have certainly found him by now. You've heard they have spent the last several days combing the beaches, hauling bloated corpses from the tide and turning them over with the tips of their spears, searching for the dragon prince they are certain the sea claimed.
Prince Jacaerys’s breath hitches when you tug lightly at the stitches holding the skin of his shoulder together. Already, he’s finished the apple you handed him, absentmindedly turning the core between his fingers while his thoughts remain leagues away.
It is only when the last bite is gone that he seems to notice, and his gaze drifts toward the table. He hesitates, and you think it is almost comical—this is the heir to the Iron Throne, a dragonrider, a prince who has flown into battle, and he looks as though asking for another apple might be an imposition too great to make when he’s been floating at sea for at least a week.
You hold the stitches carefully with your right hand so that you can lean forward and grab another apple from your table to pass to him. His cheeks color slightly when he realizes that you noticed.
“I did not mean to stare,” he murmurs, taking the apple from you and cradling it carefully between his hands. He asks again, “Have you heard what has become of my family?”
You shake your head, focusing on tending to his wounds again. You think that you’ll be able to salvage your work. It is good, you think—you can get him resting and then cook some stew for the two of you. You didn’t eat much yesterday, frazzled by the fever and trying to keep him comfortable, and you’re starting to feel a lightness in your head.
“I’ve only heard what the soldiers say in town, my prince,” you murmur, trying to figure out how to go about speaking the news he certainly won’t take well. The last thing you need is for grief to send him bolting for Dragonstone before he can so much as walk across your cottage without collapsing. If he does not kill himself by straining his body when it is not ready, then the patrols will certainly catch him and have his head—and then yours.
You let out a soft sigh as you tie off the stitches on his shoulder blade and lean down to wet the clean rag before lifting it to his bloody skin. You’re careful around the edges of the wound, trying not to disturb the stitches, working slowly at the dried and wet blood from the curve of his shoulder, over the collarbone, down the length of his back.
You try not to think too hard about what you’re doing.
If you do, it begins to feel far too intimate.
It is one thing to drag an unconscious stranger from the sea. It is another to stand so close that you can feel the warmth radiating from his skin, to brush your fingers across the line of his shoulders. You have spent three days tending him without much thought, because there had been no room for embarrassment while the Stranger lingered at his bedside.
Now he is awake and watching you, and every accidental brush of your knuckles against his skin seems to linger a heartbeat too long. He is a prince of the realm, and you are a fisherman’s daughter—people like you are not supposed to touch people like him, and yet—
You exhale through your nose harshly. You busy yourself with the rag, scrubbing a little harder than necessary at a streak of dried blood along his collarbone simply to distract yourself, and his jaw pinches.
“Sorry,” you say quietly.
“It does not hurt,” he replies—a lie, surely, any man would be in agonizing pain. But maybe not; any man also would have died in the sea. Maybe the rumors are true: the Targaryens are closer to god than man; they do not feel pain or have to fear the Stranger the same way people like you ought to. “What have you heard from the soldiers in town? Where are we?”
“Half a league from Sharp Point, my prince,” you answer, still evading the question, which he seems to realize from the way he glances at you over his shoulder, gaze sharp and accusing. He knows you are withholding something. You exhale lightly through your nose and then say hesitantly, “They say two dragons fell over the Gullet. I could not tell you which.”
“Two?!” Prince Jacaerys demands, immediately rising to his feet, so quickly that the chair scrapes against the floor, and you fear he might rip back open the stitches. He whirls on you, eyes wide, pupils large as coins, and you almost flinch. “Two dragons?”
You swallow thickly as you nod. “My prince—”
“One must be—” His voice catches. He cannot finish the thought. For the first time since he awoke, real grief overtakes him completely. It drains his face of what little color had returned, leaves him staring at nothing as though he can already see the answer waiting for him. “I need to know the second. Whose was it? Which dragon fell?”
It unsettles you how close he sounds to pleading when moments before, you had been wondering whether the stories of the Targaryens’ deism held some weight, because gods do not look like this. They do not stand in a stranger’s cottage with fear plain on their face, hands trembling as they wait for an answer they already dread.
The same lump forms in your throat now that did when you heard the soldiers mocking a grieving queen and couldn’t help your thoughts from turning to your own mother, to Miss Ellyn, to your friend, Marie. For a moment, he is not a Targaryen prince or a dragonlord; you see a son and an older brother. A boy your age who knows there are only a handful of dragons flying over the Gullet, and every one of them belongs to someone he loves.
“I do not—”
“I need to return home,” he says immediately, as though his face isn’t white with pain and his stitches don’t strain every time he moves. His eyes glaze over you as though you’re not even there, and he takes a step toward the door to your small cottage. “Sharp Point—there must be passage to Dragonstone, there—”
Panic flares in your chest when he makes as though to leave. It is noon, and the patrols have become more frequent along the shores outside your cottage. They’ve spent a week carding through the western and northern shores, and they’ve been sending more and more men to the east—you worry they’re becoming desperate. The longer they go without finding a corpse, the more they may fear that there isn’t one.
If they have an inkling that Prince Jacaerys is still alive, they’ll start kicking down doors, and if they start kicking down doors, they will find him, and your life will be forfeit for harboring him.
“You cannot,” you say before you can think better of it, lunging forward as though to grab his wrist, but you stop yourself before you can make a terrible mistake, stopping a hairsbreadth from brushing his skin.
What is wrong with you? you think furiously. You need to rest tonight before you do something you cannot take back. Already you have gotten snide with and you have argued with a prince of the realm—now you have commanded him and nearly tried to seize him. You would have been lucky to only lose your hand in any other circumstance. Had he been standing in a hall instead of your cottage, surrounded by knights instead of rough-hewn furniture, you might have lost your head.
“I cannot?” Prince Jacaerys turns to you, bafflement momentarily eclipsing the fear that had consumed him only seconds before, as though he cannot quite fathom that someone has just told him no.
“My prince, you can scarcely stand,” you say. His gaze drops to where your hand is still hovering near his arm, head cocking to the side and brows lifting, and you snap it back to your chest immediately, heat flooding your face. “You have lost a lot of blood, you have barely eaten in a week, your wounds have only just been stitched again, and there are patrols searching for you every road between here and the sea.”
He continues to stare at you, disbelief riddling his expression. You have the distinct impression that no one has ever spoken to him this way before—certainly not a fisherman’s daughter. You force yourself to press on while he’s silent, hoping to make your point and rid him of this futile endeavor before he gets you both killed.
“The Prince Aemond burned Sharp Point’s harbor. There are no ships capable of navigating the currents of the Gullet, and the water still burns besides. I do not have a horse for you to ride to Stonedance. You could not get to Dragonstone even if you were not hurt,” you insist. “I will return to town tomorrow to try to get more information, but please, my prince, you mustn’t leave. You will only be putting us both at risk.”
For a long moment, you think that he will invoke his title or duty and insist upon leaving anyway, or maybe he will simply walk out the door despite everything you have said, and there is nothing you could do to stop him.
Then, his expression changes, twisting into something pained as he looks away, a shuddered breath escaping his lips. His shoulders, held tense since the moment you uttered the word two, sink ever so slightly. The panic that had driven him to his feet has nowhere left to go, draining from him all at once, leaving only exhaustion behind.
One hand drops back down to his ribs, pain crossing his face. Whatever strength carried him to his feet abandons him just as quickly as the panic, leaving him swaying where he stands. He closes his eyes for a moment, and when he reopens them, the panic has been replaced by a type of defeat that is infinitely more difficult to look at.
You step forward cautiously when you see how his body is trembling, hand hovering uncertainly between the two of you, silently asking permission to help him. Prince Jacaerys stares at your outstretched hand, then at the bed on the far side of the room; you think, for a second, that he will attempt to cross on his own, but then his nostrils flare as he exhales, inclining his head just enough to grant you the permission his pride refuses to voice aloud.
Carefully, you slip beneath his uninjured arm, taking care to avoid the fresh bandages. He is warm—still warmer than he ought to be—and you can’t help but wonder if his fever has returned or if this is just how hot dragon prince’s typically run.
He leans into you only slightly, weight settling lightly against your shoulder—you suspect he is trying very hard not to. The journey from the door to your bed is scarcely a dozen paces, but it feels much longer.
“We were supposed to win this victory for her,” Prince Jacaerys says after a moment, voice breaking, the words slip free before he can stop it. You do not think the admission is meant for you, so you stay quiet. His throat works as he swallows. “We were supposed to—”
He cuts himself off, looking away again as you help him ease back down into your bed. As soon as he is seated, something close to relief crosses his face, lashes fluttering; the pain is still there, but not quite as terrible as it was when he was straining on his feet.
“The fact that you are alive at all is a victory, my prince,” you say quietly, even though you do not think the words will be of any reassurance. “You should rest. The sooner you are well, the sooner we can figure out a way to get you home. I’ll cook up a stew and wake you when it’s finished.”
He exhales again, jaw tightening as he looks away with a resigned expression. You turn your back on him to deal with the mess you made of the kitchen area, grimacing slightly at everything spilled across your floorboards and the table.
“What is your name?” Prince Jacaerys asks you suddenly. “I think I ought to know the name of the woman who saved my life.”
You let a soft breath, glancing over your shoulder at him. He is pained still, but there is an earnest look in his eyes that makes you falter—you remember how close you were to leaving him to his fate, and you have to look away again before he can catch the guilt that crosses over your face.
With a shaky exhale, you give the prince your name, and you cannot help but feel as though your life has irrevocably changed, and you do not think for the better.
————————————
The sea is on fire.
Jace cannot tell where the flames end and the water begins. Ships burn around him, masts collapsing into the waves with deafening cracks; men scream as they’re consumed by the fire, and dragons let out terrible shrieks as they dive low to bring down another ship full of Myrish mercenaries.
He tries to focus.
He chases after the rogue dragon, hoping to kill the rider before the dragon can burn any more of the Velayron fleet—or worse, catch Baela and Moondancer. But there is panic clawing at his chest, and smoke and salt clogging his throat and stinging his eyes. He’s screaming at Vermax to fly faster, to kill the rider, and then—then he sees Rhaena.
He sees Rhaena atop the wild dragon, and she is screaming, crying, desperately trying to get it under control, and Jace is confused, reeling as he yells at Vermax to stop at the last second. He and dragon both diving down away from the chase before Vermax could breathe fire on his cousin.
Rhaena does not have a dragon, he thinks, trying to figure out what is happening, and Rhaena is supposed to be with his brothers, and his brothers are captured by the enemy, and he isn’t sure if Stormcloud and Aegon made it to shore, and there is too much going on, and—
—and Vermax is falling.
Vermax is banking hard, being dragged down into the sea, and Jace’s stomach lurches. He’s yelling—begging—Vermax to fly, and Vermax is trying, he’s trying so hard, wings beating smoke through the air. He shrieks as another bolt catches him in the wing, and Jace feels the pain himself—he feels the pain, the primal fear, everything that Vermax does, because Vermax is his, and he is Vermax’s, and they are bonded, and Vermax is drowning, and the water is so cold, and Jace cannot feel his legs or his hands or his face.
He fumbles as he tries to unhook himself from the saddle, choking on water and air, maybe a sob, as Vermax sinks into the sea, a stream of bubbles rising to the surface as he cries for Jace, slowly disappearing into the dark waters. Jace desperately tries to dive after him, as if he has the strength to hold them both above the sea, because Jace has already lost Luke, and he—he cannot lose Vermax.
Not the dragon who had slept beside his cradle before he was old enough to walk, the hatchling he had grown up alongside, whose neck had once fit beneath his arm, whose first uncertain flights had ended with both of them tumbling into the sandy shore of Dragonstone while his mother laughed herself breathless.
Jace does not know a life without him—he does not want to know a life without him. His earliest recollections are not of nursery songs or wooden swords, but of warm green scales beneath tiny hands and the deep, rumbling croon that had lulled him to sleep when he was scarcely more than a babe.
When Jace learned to walk, Vermax learned to fly; when Jace’s voice deepened, Vermax’s roar had too.
There has never been a Jacaerys without Vermax.
But Jace’s lungs are burning, and he cannot see the familiar green scales anymore, and his body is reacting, seizing and spasming because there is no air left in him and water all around. He does not know which way is up and which way is down, the water is too dark and too cold, and he cannot think, but—but he sees the bubbles. He sees the bubbles, and he follows them, and even as Vermax sinks to the bottom of the sea, he saves his rider one final time.
He reaches the surface with a gasp, gulping the smoky air, and everything hurts. His arms ache, his chest is too tight, his eyes burn, and he cannot breathe, because Vermax is gone. He can feel that Vermax is gone; there is a gaping hole in his chest where his dragon used to be, and Jace does not know what to do, he does not know how to live anymore, and he wants—
He wants his mother.
He just wants his mother.
He hears the cheers before he feels the first arrow, gaze lifting to the sky as he searches for Baela and Moondancer—they are not too far, he thinks, she'll come for him.
And then, there’s a dull throb in his shoulder blade as he pulls himself over a floating piece of driftwood, but he hardly takes note of the pain, because everywhere hurts, because Vermax is gone, because he wants his mother. He turns when he hears the cheering, and he sees the men on the ship, and he sees the crossbows and the bows and the Myrish banners, but he does not see anything at all, really, blinking once, staring.
The second arrow catches him closer to the chest.
And then—then all he remembers is sea.
White foam and bubbles, vicious currents and sharp rocks. He thinks he is dead more than he thinks he is alive, but there is so much pain. There is pain and emptiness, and Jace just wants—
“... prince, the stew is ready.”
Jace startles awake, breath hitching in the back of his throat. His body tenses immediately, because he does not remember where he is—he remembers the sea and the waves and rocks and pain and Vermax, but he does not remember…
The cottage. Waking up alone. The door opening, the fear—was he captured? Where is he? Where are his brothers? Where is Baela? What was Rhaena doing on the wild dragon? Mother, mother, mother—
You avert your eyes suddenly, an awkward expression on your face, and Jace suddenly remembers. He remembers you, the apple you passed him as you tended to his wounds; how he held a knife to the throat of a woman who is risking her own life to save his. He remembers that he is stuck bedridden in the bed of a commoner while his mother thinks he’s dead and fights for her throne alone.
He opens his mouth to apologize—to tell you that he will leave as soon as he is able, that he will ensure you’re properly compensated for saving his life—but he falters when he feels something hot and wet drip down his face.
He lifts his hand to his cheek and wipes at his face, looking down at the wetness smeared on his fingertips. For a long moment, he does not understand—seawater, maybe? But he is no longer being tossed around by the sea. He is warm in your cottage, the hearth burns low and your blankets are tangled around him. He blinks once, and another fat droplet of water rolls from his eye down his cheek.
Is he crying?
Heat rushes to his face so quickly he thinks it rivals the fever. He wipes away furiously, not sure if it’s more or less humiliating that you’re pretending not to notice for his sake, turning your back to him to ready the table.
Jace has wept before, more than most ought to—for the father who taught him fishing and sea shanties, and the other who passed before either of them could speak the truth out loud, for the grandfather he never truly knew, for the brother who felt less like a brother and more like his other half—but never, never in front of a stranger.
Jace promptly clears his throat and pulls himself together. He glances at you, praying that his face does not betray him, an excuse on his lips as takes a deep breath. Then he falters, mouth watering instantly, gaze cutting to the side where you are busy ladling stew into two chipped wooden bowls, back politely turned, as though you never noticed anything at all.
Jace doesn't think he’s ever been this hungry. He has dined in castles all his life—roasted swan, lemon cakes, arbor wines. He has consumed the finest meals Westeros has to offer and found them lacking, but he almost feels dizzy with need and pleasure at the scent of the stew you made.
“It—” Jace’s voice is hoarse from sleep. Embarrassed, he clears his throat again to try to even it out. “It smells good.”
You look at him over your shoulder with a small smile and murmur demurely, “I’m sure nothing compared to what you’re used to, my prince.”
“I do not know that,” he says lightly as he forces himself to his feet, grimacing as pain immediately shoots through his body.
Everything aches—his chest, his shoulders, his legs, his arms, his head. In truth, all he wants to do is curl up and sleep more; he cannot bear to keep going. Not now. Not after Vermax, after Luke, after making such a terrible mistake that he might have cost his mother her throne. His stomach flips at the thought, and he fights a shuddered breath.
He needs to keep going—there is no other choice. He needs to get back to Dragonstone as soon as possible.
You pause in the middle of setting the bowls on the table at his words to give him a questioning look. “My prince?”
“I have not tasted it yet,” he tells you, forcing levity into his tone, because you have saved his life, tended to his wounds, and now stand over a pot of stew you cooked for him, worrying that it is not good enough to satisfy a prince. The least he can do is ease your mind. "It would seem unfair to compare a meal I have not eaten yet.”
You blink at him once, and then you smile slightly—it’s a genuine one, not like the small one you forced in his direction just before—and Jace tries his best to return it as he crosses the small room. He shuffles the last few steps toward the table with considerably less grace than he would have liked.
“Perhaps” you reply softly, waiting for him to take a seat at the table before you do as well.
You do not immediately lift your spoon, and Jace hesitates—for a brief moment, an old childhood lesson surfaces. Do not eat until someone else has tasted it. Feasts at King’s Landing and supper at Dragonstone had been meticulous about such things—cups were poured and tasted before his mother, and plates were sampled before any of them took a bite of their food. The paranoia claws at him and disappears as quickly as it comes.
You had dragged him half-dead from the sea, spent days stitching his wounds and breaking his fever, and gave up your bed so he could sleep comfortably. If you wished him dead, you need only have left him on the shore.
“I never thanked you for what you’ve done for me,” he says at last, fingers grazing the wooden spoon dipped into the broth. “When I return to Dragonstone, I shall speak with my mother. She will see you properly rewarded.”
“There is no need,” you murmur, finally taking a sip of the stew when Jace lifts the spoon to his lips.
The broth is hot enough to sting his tongue, but he scarcely notices. It is a simple meal—carrots and celery, chunks of what he thinks is rabbit. It is the plainest thing he has eaten in years, and yet somehow, the best meal he can remember.
His stomach twists painfully as warmth settles into it, and before he can stop himself, he takes another spoonful, then another, the hunger of the past week overwhelming whatever restraint court etiquette had once led him. It is only when half the bowl is gone that he realizes how quickly he is eating.
Embarrassed, he forces himself to slow, lowering the spoon.
“My apologies,” he says, clearing his throat. “I fear I may have forgotten my manners.”
“You haven’t had a meal in over a week, my prince. You’re allowed to be hungry,” you say with a faint smile.
Jace lets out a half-hearted huff of amusement through his nose, though his smile fades as quickly as it came, returning to conversation to try to force himself to slow down and show a modicum of etiquette before he embarrasses himself further.
“There is every need for reward,” he disagrees, leaning forward slightly to look at you. For the first time since he woke in your cottage, he actually observes you—you cannot be much older than he is, beautiful certainly, but there’s a weariness in your expression that Jace cannot help but feel as though is his fault. “You saved the life of the heir to the Iron Throne. You surrendered your bed, tended wounds that would have killed most men, and risked the wrath of the Greens simply by allowing me beneath your roof. I cannot allow that debt to go unanswered.”
You stare at him for a moment, a conflicted expression on your face, and Jace shakes his head slightly as he presses.
“I do not possess enough coin to repay such a debt myself—” nor, he suspects, does anyone “—but my mother will. You needn't live here any longer if you do not wish to. We could see your cottage rebuilt if the fighting has damaged it, or grant you land elsewhere, if that is what you'd prefer. Whatever you ask, so long as it is within my power, I will see it done.”
You are quiet for a long while as Jace finishes off the stew, but he expects hesitation as you mull over what to ask for: gold, land, a better ship, perhaps. Your gaze drifts off to the side, and Jace’s follows it, faltering when he realizes that you’re looking in the direction of what remains of Sharp Point.
That’s right, he remembers—you mentioned your cottage was less than a league away.
From where he sits, he can just see the destruction through the small window. The town is little more than scorched foundations and splintered timbers now, dragonfire having reduced generations of work to ash in the span of a single afternoon. He cannot look at it for long, stomach twisting so unpleasantly that he fears the stew you just cooked him might come right up.
You stay silent for so long that Jace wonders if you have not heard him, and his lips part to repeat himself futilely.
“We used to think they were beautiful, you know?” you say, voice barely over a breath. “We would watch your family fly from King’s Landing and Dragonstone. The children would cheer and call out the names of whatever dragon and royal was passing overhead, even though they knew you could not hear them.” A wistful smile tugs briefly at your lips, and Jace suddenly feels a rock in his stomach, a heaviness that he cannot seem to push away. “There is a wild dragon in these parts—we call him Grey Ghost. He hunts fish along the eastern shore. I see him frequently when I take my father’s boat out. We lived alongside him for years—sometimes he swoops down close when we have a big catch, but he never bothers us. My father always said he was curious—shy, but curious.”
You exhale suddenly as you rise to your feet; Jace wonders if he should ignore the unshed tears in your eyes the same way you politely did for him.
“Then the Prince Aemond and Vhagar came,” you say at last. “The only thing I want, my prince, is for this war to end, but I know you cannot give me that. If you don't mind, I should see to my father's boat before the tide turns. There is more stew in the pot if you would have it. Then you ought to rest. You'll not heal by arguing with your own body.”
Jace opens his mouth.
He does not know what he intends to say, caught between guilt and indignation, because everybody wants the fighting to end—he does, his mother does. Maybe not Daemon, but why do you say it as though he stands opposed to peace? He did not choose this, nor did his mother. It is not his fault that the Greens usurped his mother's throne.
He desperately tries to formulate an answer, but how is he supposed to respond to that? What were they meant to do? Yield to the usurpers? Stand aside while his mother’s birthright was stolen? Let Luke die for nothing? Should he say that he is sorry for your loss? That his mother would never have done this? That Vermax would never have burned a fishing village? That this was all the Greens? That they fight to avenge what happened here?
That dragons are not cruel creatures, he feels the need to tell you when he sees the disdain on your face—it is the people who ride them. It is the Greens. It is Aegon and Aemond, Alicent Hightower and her father.
His lips are parted as though to respond, but he only finds himself staring at you helplessly.
You incline your head politely before slipping out the door, the cool air rushing briefly into the cottage before it shuts behind you once more. Jace remains where he is, staring into the last of his stew until the steam no longer rises from it, the reality of his situation settling over him—Vermax is dead, Luke is dead, and his mother believes them both lost. He does not know whether his brothers and cousins are safe, if his mother still fights for her crown. He is useless, wounded in a fisherman's cottage, alive only because a woman from a town his family failed to protect chose mercy over sense.
He does not think he has ever felt less like the heir to a kingdom.
SUMMARY: aerion wants to get to know you better, trying to gauge whether or not you might be willing to return with him to westeros. you think that he’s snooping for information about volantis to report back to his family. everything goes spectacularly wrong.
WARNINGS: fem!reader. reader comes from valyrian lineage but no physical traits are mentioned/described. aerion is aerion. the high valyrian is not properly translated because we don’t know the words for the words I needed so bear with me LOL. valyrian exceptionalism is believed by the old blood of volantis (implied heavily through reader's narration). brief mention of incest. implied abuse through reader's childhood but she does not see it as abuse. reader and aerion fight (like steel is drawn and blood is spilled LOL). aerion is extra unstable/unhinged in the last scene. knife play (also not really play HUDFAISSDUIHFAS). jealous aerion. possessive aerion (like to an extreme in this part, lowkey yan at certain points). reader and aerion are both terribly hard-headed and not listening to one another. reader is a liar. unprotected sex. switch!reader. switch!aerion.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This part makes me laugh lowkey because it probably could have been cut in half, because the first three scenes are just meant to be build up for the last scene, but I was just having so much fun getting into reader’s memories/worldbuilding for Volantis/her relationship with her family that each of the “build up” scenes became egregiously long LOLLL. But ANYWAY, this is the longest installment by far and with good reason, it is very much a bonding chapter for our girl and Aerion, despite the conflicts that take place, because they are learning about each other, the way they were raised, how they came to be who they are today, and it’s eventually what catapults them into becoming the very close confidants they will become in time. There are many hurdles that both of them must go through to get there though, the first and foremost currently being the impermanence of their relationship It has obviously been weighing on both of them, and they have widely different ideas of how to proceed (reader not wanting to follow Aerion to Westeros, Aerion all but expecting her to), and it comes to a head here (though be warned, it is not resolved in this part, but a certain party thinks that it is). Also, please be aware that this installment has a lot of my own lore/worldbuilding for Volantis, and the way that I’ve built it, the Volantene old blood do not hold the Targaryens in high regard, because I think the Targaryens are in a very interesting position that they’re not “Andal enough” for their subjects (ie. Raymun’s whole rant), but they’ve abandoned too many Valyrian customs/traditions to appease the Faith & their subjects and have “diluted their blood” too much to be seen as “Valyrian enough” for the old blood of Volantis who obviously still lean into their Valyrian heritage more than anyone else in the world. + There’s additional resentment there over the Targaryens having (and being the reason for the deaths of) the last dragons. All this to say, I had fun with this installment and it was probably my favorite to write thus far even though the vibes are a bit different from the last few, and I hope you enjoy too! Also, I kind of lost track of the timeline so now its been 6 months ndhfaiudfhsudf LOLLL. Anyway, comments and reblogs always appreciated! I hope you guys enjoy!
READ: FEVER STRUCK
“Hm? What was that?”
The argument begins with a conversation while the two of you are drunk on firewine and lounging in the sand, watching the sunset, though neither of you knows quite yet the disastrous path Aerion’s line of questioning will lead you down.
It’s been almost a moon since the two of you came down with sea fever, and Aerion has been acting odd ever since. At first, you assume it is simply one of his moods—Aerion has many of them, after all. Some days, he wakes restless and sharp-tongued, prowling through markets like a caged beast looking for something to bite. Other days, he is languid, stretched across cushions with a goblet in hand, while you entertain yourself by irritating him until he snaps. Recently, he has been quieter, more prone to lashing out, quicker to assert himself at your side when you drift away.
Which is normal-ish.
If it were just that, you might be able to brush it off as another strange, territorial mood. But it’s also the way he watches you now—like he is calculating something, weighing your words before they have even finished leaving your mouth. It’s the way his questions come, one after another, circling the same subjects as though he is trying to pin them in place. Volantis. The Black Walls. Your father. The factions at court. Old rivalries. Trade.
At first, you laugh it off, answer lightly, deflect when you can. But he does not let things lie—he has never been inclined to do that, but it appears even less so now. He presses and doubles back. He remembers what you say and returns to it days later, asking the same question from a different angle, as though he’s watching for inconsistencies.
It’s not how one makes conversation. It’s how one… interrogates when they’re trying not to be obvious about the interrogation. You know the difference because you have done this before—because you have had it done to you. There was an Elephant heir once—Aenys Vyninar, son of one of the current ruling Elephant Triarchs—clever and smiling, pretty and soft-spoken in a way that made men and women underestimate him. The two of you spent years circling one another at court, trading questions dressed as pleasantries, testing for weaknesses, loyalties, and limits, anything that could be turned into leverage later. You learned quickly that the most dangerous questions are never the ones that sound like interrogations—they are the ones that sound like curiosity.
Aerion does not smile the way the Aenys did, and he does not try to lower your guard with stolen kisses and touches as he asks the questions—he is far less subtle—but the pattern is the same.
And when the red flags start waving, when you start paying attention, you notice other things. The servants say he stays up most nights trying to write up letters to send by raven to Westeros. That ravens come more frequently now, dark shapes cutting across the sky toward the Vyrano’s manse at odd hours. One of your harbor boys tells you the same—that the prince has been sending more birds west than he had when he first arrived.
Which—that upsets you, because when you put it all together, it leads you to one conclusion: that he’s trying to get information out of you to send back home. It upsets you far more than it should. More than it ever has when men try to use you. It is logical, you tell yourself. He is an exile trying to regain favor with his family; of course, he would look to a foreign noble from a city that has bordered on enemies with his family for three hundred years to try to get information to curry favor. It is logical, and it would not bother you so much if he were anyone else, and yet—
And yet, it makes your stomach twist. Terribly so.
“I asked,” Aerion says again slowly, as though he suspects the wine has dissolved whatever good sense you possess, “whether you have ever been west.”
You pause, fiddling with your wine glass.
A broad question. Broader than the last few he’s asked, but questions do not have to sound precise to be useful. Sometimes the broadest ones tell you the most—where someone has been, what they have seen, which courts have shaped their thinking. It is how you learn, not just what a person knows, but how they know it.
You assume he’s talking about western Essos, and you imagine that he’s going to ask about Volantene political relationships with the rest of the daughters of Valyria. Yesterday, he asked about the Tiger and Elephant parties—it would be the next logical step, from internal politics to foreign. You can picture the reports to his father, telling him which Volantene nobles would be amenable to a trade negotiation, which Westerosi goods would be most profitable, which Free Cities might take issue with a Westeros–Volantis alliance, and how they might take advantage of it.
The most important thing an exile can do in exile is prove to his family that he is still of use—that he is worth bringing home.
You know this because you have tried it yourself.
In the first year, when the sting of exile was still fresh and pride had not yet slipped into hopelessness, you played this same game. You listened more than you spoke once the anger passed, collected names and allegiances, traced who held power and who only pretended to. You sent word where you could, careful little reports dressed as courtesy and loyalty and proof that distance had not lessened your value. That you were still worth the future they had taken from you.
You still do, sometimes.
But they never answer. Never acknowledge the work you put in. Not you, not when exile is a mercy, but Aerion—
Aerion’s exile isn’t permanent, and it isn’t mercy. Aerion’s exile centers on the question of when he will go back, not if. Aerion’s exile can be shortened if he proves to his father that he has been properly chagrined by his time abroad, if he proves that he is useful to his family. You told him this yourself when the Tyroshi and Myrish envoy docked in the harbor.
You should not indulge it, not when you know what he is doing. You know this.
“West,” you repeat vaguely after a moment, when the silence has stretched on too long.
He hums, silently beckoning you to continue, and your brows furrow.
You wave a lazy hand in the air. “A couple times,” you say. You speak even though you know better, and your voice is light, but there is a pit in your stomach that you cannot seem to rid yourself of. “When I was younger. Pentos and Tyrosh when I was two and ten. My father was threatening some merchant lords, and thought I should join to see how it is done. The Stepstones several times to rout pirates who looted our ships.”
Aerion’s gaze does not leave your face, lips flat, deadpan.
“I meant farther west, you fool.”
Westeros?
You blink, trying to figure out why he would be asking you about Westeros of all places, unless he’s trying to gauge the old blood’s opinions on his homeland—in that case, he will be seriously unhappy with the answers he receives, and you will have to tread carefully.
“Oh.” You consider that for a moment, fingers sliding through the fine-grained sand as the sun begins to set over the sea. “No.”
Half-draped over his lap, you peer up at him curiously, watching the way his lips pinch together. He doesn’t look down at you, gaze pinned on the sunset, even though you can tell he’s not really watching it at all. You do not watch it either, even though you were the one who insisted on coming out here to watch the sunset.
You watch him instead.
It is easier, you’ve found, to understand Aerion when he’s not speaking at all. When he speaks, he is sharp and cutting, and never truly says what he means, using words as weapons or shields depending on his mood. But when he is quiet, you can see all of the things he would ordinarily hide behind his chosen mask, how his lips tighten and his eyes shift as he stares into the distance, how his brows furrow and his nostrils flare as he exhales. As though this is just as difficult for him as it is for you—you like the idea of that, at least. That he is using you for information, but it is not easy for him to do so.
As soon as the thought crosses your mind, it pisses you off—you like the idea of that? Consoling yourself by telling yourself that at least it is not easy for him to do this? Who even are you?
“Why?” you ask, propping yourself up on one elbow, watching as he hisses in annoyance when the bone digs into his thigh. You give him a sweet smile as he shoots you an accusing glare. “Hm?”
“I was just curious,” he says after a moment, still shooting you a vicious glare. “What do you know about it?”
Yes, you realize, tongue pressing to the back of your teeth when you realize you were correct in your assumptions. He’s trying to figure out Volantene opinion on Westeros. Why does it bother you so much that he’s using you for information? It shouldn’t. It’s logical. You would be doing the same if he were from a kingdom worth the old blood’s time. So, why can’t you push away the way your chest tightens? Worse, why are you allowing it to happen? Why haven’t you shut this down and accused him of what he’s doing?
It all comes back to the same questions that have been plaguing you for weeks: What will you do when he leaves? Is this really just a taste of fire? Indulgence? Distraction? Why do you not sabotage, when you have never been above such methods before? Why, ever, would you think of home, and then think of bringing him to see it? Why would you sit at his bedside while he’s sick and nurse him back to health? Why do you sit here and let him use you as a source of information to report back to his family?
It is becoming increasingly intolerable to pretend this isn’t what it is—and what it is, is entirely unacceptable.
You press your lips together and raise your eyebrows. “That is a very broad question, dragon prince.”
Aerion scowls. “Answer it.”
You huff softly, shifting your weight so that you’re more comfortably draped across him, fingers idly brushing patterns into the sand.
“Fine,” you concede. “Let me think.”
You tilt your head, gaze drifting toward the horizon as you lay your head in his lap, lashes fluttering when his fingers lift to toy with the ends of your hair. You hum, mind racing from thought to thought as you try to remember something not totally unpleasant to give Aerion as an answer. Westeros is not fondly spoken of in Volantis, or throughout Essos generally, really, and the Targaryens are—well, the Volantene old blood have low opinions of the western dragon family for countless reasons.
“I know that it is called the Seven Kingdoms, even though there are technically nine,” you say after a moment, proud of yourself for coming up with something neutral. You hear Aerion snort above you. “I know that House Targaryen rules over them. Though from news that has crossed the Narrow Sea, I hear that rule has been… contested, recently.”
Aerion’s fingers still in your hair. Touchy subject, you realize, and decide to move on.
“Your people call themselves more civilized than the rest of the world while chopping each other apart over titles and inheritance disputes,” you continue wryly, unable to help yourself, but you catch yourself when Aerion scoffs. “Your winters are long enough to kill cities, and your summers long enough to make men forget the cold exists at all.”
“Go on,” he murmurs, absently smoothing your hair back from your face.
“I know that your men love the idea of honor until it becomes inconvenient for them,” you add, lips curving, “and that half your court would sell the other half for a slightly better seat at your king’s table.”
Aerion bristles with a huff. “That is hardly unique to Westeros.”
“No,” you agree, “but you dress it up in prettier words and act as though you are better than everyone else.”
Aerion scowls. “What are the Volantene courts like, then?” he asks after a moment.
“Vicious,” you say immediately, a small smile curling at your lips as your eyes slide shut, and nostalgia floods you in an instant. You miss your home. Miss it so much that you’re willing to talk about it with someone who is clearly only trying to fish for information from you. When did you become so sentimental? “But we are honest about it. Mostly. We do not pretend otherwise, or cloak it in honor or chivalry or whatever pretty words your lords use to justify their ambitions. We want power, and we take it when we can. If we cannot, we position our pieces on the board so that we can”
It is the pride of the old blood, you do not say out loud, who refuse to hide their nature behind gentler fictions.
It is said that thousands of years ago, while the rest of the world prayed to gods, the Valyrians became them, and though the Freehold burned, that arrogance did not. Gods are not bound by the morality of men. They do not temper themselves to be palatable, and they do not soften themselves to be loved, or feared, or understood. They simply are. They take what they want, and the world bends around them—or breaks.
Even the Elephants, in all of their coin and venom, live by that same understanding—smiles sweeter and daggers in ledgers instead of hands, but no less sharp for it. They do not pretend their wars are anything but wars. They just prefer quieter battlefields. You do not have to question who your enemies are in Volantis; the lines are drawn clearly, etched in blood and coin and old grudges that no one bothers to soften with pretty words.
“We are what we are,” you finish, voice soft with wistfulness, though your eyes remain closed. “We do not dress it up to make ourselves easier to stomach.”
Aerion’s fingers slow in your hair. “And what is that?” he asks.
You smile faintly.
“Cruel,” you say simply. “Ambitious. Patient when we must be, vicious when we can be. We remember what we were, and we do not pretend we have become something lesser simply because the world hopes we have.”
Unlike the Targaryens, the old blood of Volantis lost its dragons during the Doom, but it never lost its blood, its rites, or its rituals. You’re not quite sure why you try to get that dig in, because you know it will irritate Aerion, but you’re feeling quite irritated yourself, so you think you should share the wealth, so to speak. You shift slightly, turning your face more fully into his lap, his warmth a pleasant contrast to the cooling sand beneath you. He doesn’t lash out the way you expect him to.
“And you think we do,” Aerion says, voice cool.
“I think your Sunset Kingdoms dress its power in virtues it does not actually believe in. Honor. Duty. Piety. As though naming something noble makes it so,” you reply. Then, you add, “I think your family has learned to soften what it is to make it palatable to those who would fear it otherwise.”
“That is untrue,” Aerion scoffs, jaw tight.
“Is it?” you ask, raising your eyebrows, but you decide against pushing further, because you don’t want to argue—not really.
You think, bitterly, that if any of your friends could see you now, they would laugh in your face. It is not that you want to argue, you understand, not really, you are just frustrated with yourself for giving Aerion everything he wants without protest, even when you know what he’s doing, even when you know that if anyone back home knew this, they would lose their mind. You befriending and fucking the dragon prince is already bad enough, but giving him information like this?
They’d never look at you the same. Never.
The Westerosi royal family has long been spoken of with disdain. They are dragonlords who traded their blood for crowns, who bent themselves to lesser men and called it conquest. They are diminished, your father would say, softened in a way the Volantene old blood refuse to be, and when the last of the dragons died for their inheritance dispute after years of the old blood trying to work with the Targaryens to restore the Freehold…
Well, many of the old blood would prefer a union between rival houses than anything to do with the Targaryens.
Aerion drawls, “You seem to have a very low opinion of my family and my homeland.”
“I have never been, dragon prince,” you remind him, dismissive, hoping to shift the conversation back to him. “I only know what I have been told.”
“And yet you speak as though you have seen it yourself.”
You crack one eye open to glance up at him. “Is it inaccurate?”
Aerion’s lips press together. “…Not entirely.”
You smile faintly, satisfied, and let your eyes slide shut again. “Tell me about your courts, then.”
Aerion does not immediately reply, and you think he has some nerve—so quick to seek information from you, but not even willing to put on the front of reciprocation. But then he speaks, and the brief spark of anger is extinguished.
“They are not so different from what you described,” he admits. “Ambitious and petty, although they pretend as though they are above it. They speak of honor and duty and loyalty to the Realm, and then they undermine each other at every opportunity, scheming and lying and making alliances that last only as long as they are useful. Everyone has their own nest of vipers, but they insist on pretending the snakes are doves.”
You snort. “How exhausting.”
“It is,” he agrees. “You are expected to smile at men who would gladly see you dead, call them allies, break bread with them, trust them, invite them into your home—”
“And then poison them later,” you finish lazily. “In Volantis, if a member of an Elephant family sets foot in the palace of a Tiger family without invitation, it is known that their life becomes forfeit if they are caught. And vice versa. We do not waste time pretending we are anything but enemies, would sooner break a neck than break bread.”
“It is not all bad,” Aerion says quietly after a moment. “It can be amusing—at times.”
“How so?” you ask, gaze lifting to his face as you stretch in his lap, fighting a yawn.
“Watching them,” he replies. “They whisper behind closed doors and pass notes through servants they think loyal, make careful little moves across the board as though no one else can see them. They are so convinced of their own brilliance that they cannot see that they’re not as clever as they believe themselves to be. It is like here—sitting on the balcony above it all, watching the magisters and merchant princes scramble with their alliances below. I think that—”
He cuts himself off abruptly, jaw tightening as he looks away. You tilt your head curiously. “You think that…?”
“Nothing,” he says after a moment, voice unusually subdued.
You watch him for a beat longer, eyes narrowing slightly.
“You were about to say something,” you press.
“I changed my mind.”
“Well, change it again.”
Aerion huffs softly, irritation creeping back into his expression like a mask snapping into place. “No. I decided it was not worth saying.”
You watch him carefully for a moment, noticing how tense he suddenly is, fingers flexing where they rest against your body, restless energy thrumming beneath the surface of his skin. He is terribly on edge, all of a sudden, and though it makes you curious, you have little desire to antagonize him after the mind-numbing day of feasts and politics you had.
“If you say so,” you say lazily. Then you add quietly, “It does sound like it could be amusing, watching it unfold—at times, that is.”
Aerion’s gaze flicks toward you, an unreadable expression on his face, something terribly and uncharacteristically soft in the amethyst of his eyes. His throat bobs. Briefly, you wonder if maybe your assumptions were wrong because Aerion has never looked at you like this, not so open, not so hopeful, but you disregard the thought immediately, because what else would it be?
“Yes,” he agrees. “At times.”
——————————
Several days later, he prods again, and you are aggravated, though you try to play it off.
“Did you just say something?”
Aerion rolls his eyes, irritated. “I asked you what you did as a child.”
You pause, mind working to figure out what information he might be trying to gather from this. “That is a strange question.”
“It is a simple one,” he counters. “Try to keep up, wench.”
You scoff, rolling your head back against the cushions and swinging your feet onto his lap, ignoring the indignant look he shoots toward you. You lift your wine glass, beckoning for one of the courtesans to come fill it for you, and as she does, you tilt your head to look at Aerion again, calculating.
“What does it matter?”
Aerion shrugs, though his gaze remains fixed on you in that sharp, assessing way he’s been the past few weeks. “I am curious.”
“You have been unduly curious these past few weeks,” you note, subtly calling out his attempts at intel gathering, swirling your glass once it’s filled and lifting it to your lips, taking a long sip and staring at him from over the rim. Aerion flushes and gives you an accusing look. Some nerve. “Why do you care to know about my childhood?”
Aerion sneers, realizing you’re not going to drop the why. “Children are taught what matters long before they are old enough to understand it,” he says after a moment, voice clipped and logical. “How they play is how they learn to think.”
“Ah,” you realize, lips curving into a smile that doesn’t quite reach your eyes. “You are asking how the old blood raise their heirs.”
Aerion does not deny it, but he does squint lightly with a small frown, so you wonder if you got something wrong. You don’t press again, though, humming lightly, head falling back to look up at the ceiling as you decide how you want to answer. You feel his hand curl around your ankle, thumb running absent circles around the bone protruding there. Your gaze traces the impeccable marble above, considering your words.
You should not indulge him, you think as you do every time he snoops for information. You know what he’s doing.
Yet, you find yourself wanting to anyway. You want him to understand you—where you came from, who you are, how you became this way—and you want to understand him to.
This is not indulgence, not a taste of fire or a distraction, this is—
“Well,” you say lightly, “we did not play at knights and maidens, if that is what you are imagining.”
Aerion scoffs. ”I am not.”
“Good,” you reply. “Because that would be terribly dull.”
He fights a sneer and then presses, “So? What did you do then?”
“We played cyvasse, of course,” you say first. “Before we could properly hold a blade, we were taught to move pieces across a board. Have you played before?”
“I have not,” he says after a moment. “How is it played?”
“It is a strategy game,” you explain, despite better judgment, despite knowing that if he were anyone else, you would have told him to fuck off and take his snooping to shove it up his ass. But he’s not anyone else—he’s Aerion, and you hate that it changes anything, everything. “Two players, each with their own set of pieces—elephants, dragons, heavy horse, spearmen, trebuchets, more—arrayed in secret behind a screen before the match begins. The board is made of varied terrain, so positioning matters as much as the pieces themselves, if not more. Each piece moves differently, and the goal is simple: outmaneuver your opponent and capture their king. It is more about learning foresight and patterns, and how to weaponize them, than anythign else—anticipating moves, controlling space, forcing your enemy into mistakes before they even realize they’ve made them. I will teach you to play one day—” The promise slips out before you can catch it, and you hate how easily it does. “—but you must promise not to cry when you lose, dragon prince.”
Aerion bares his teeth at you. “I do not lose.”
“You will,” you say with an easy curl of your lips, head lolling to the side to look at him. “I have not lost a game of cyvasse since I was a child.”
Aerion huffs and raises his chin. “We will see.”
So arrogant, you think fondly, a small smile on your lips as you roll your head back again to look up at the ceiling, exhaling through your nose as you recall the first time you remember sitting across from your father at the game table.
You were young—four or five, maybe. You vaguely recall staying up half the night flipping through a war book detailing the Century of Blood. You didn’t understand half of the words yet, but you understood the pictures, and that was enough.
He was proud of you—your father was always proud of you. You were his pride and joy, his sharpest blade, the child he paraded before the Tigers as proof that his bloodline would not falter when it came time to name a successor. Your brother was always your mother’s favorite, her soft little boy who only wanted for music and laughter, but you were your father’s daughter, cut from steel with a mind honed for war.
You had not won back then, you were still only a child, but you remember how the room had gone quiet when your father realized what you’d done. How you’d unwittingly shaped the terrain to choke his advance, funneled his stronger pieces into narrow passes, sacrificed just enough to bait him forward. You had not understood the full scope of it then, only moving pieces in the way you’ve seen others and in books—you were just happy that you had made your cold father smile, determined to do it again.
But the men around the table had understood.
The old blood weigh their children in potential, and you proved in one game that you were not merely clever for your age, but prodigious in a way that could be honed with time. You saw patterns quicker than most, and moved pieces with an an instinct that could not be taught. You were invited to more tables after that, tested and pressed and always watched—and you always, always rose to the occasion.
You were fucking inevitable, and everybody in the Black Walls knew it—from your peers to the elders to the Elephant cunts who watched you with wary eyes the moment you began shadowing your father at council meetings.
The Tigers were desperate for someone sharp enough, ruthless enough, visible enough to rally behind without fracturing themselves in the process. Old blood bred pride, and pride made men difficult to follow—that was especially true amongst the warhawks of the Tiger party—but you made it easy. You were young, brilliant, charismatic, undeniably of them, and you made victories look effortless. You gave them something that they had not had in generations—momentum, the miracle needed to steal the majority from the Elephants after three centuries of losses dressed up as compromise.
Until you weren’t.
From future Triarch to a prince’s whore.
Now you’re lounging with a fucking Targaryen, letting him pick you apart piece by piece, drive a blade into your chest, after you hand him the steel and stand there with open arms, smiling as he does it.
Who the fuck even are you? What have you let him make of you?
A fool, that’s what.
Your teeth grind together, tongue pressing against the back of them as you school the heat that rises at your train of thought.
“We played at war, too,” you force yourself to continue, clearing your throat, forcing the lingering thoughts away when you see Aerion watching you with those calculating eyes, trying to figure out where your mind is when it drifts. You do not want him to know, so you push it all away. You do not know whether you are more angry at him for asking, or at yourself for answering. “Much more violent than Cyvasse.” You toss him a wink and a smile that barely makes it to your eyes. “And much more fun.”
He raises his eyebrows. “War?” he echoes, and when you hum in affirmation, he says blandly, “War is not a game.”
“It is when you are a child,” you say. “Or rather, when your tutors wish to see what you might become. They would divide us—children of the Tiger families against one another. Give us each a stretch of garden, or a section of a family’s palace, or even an entire courtyard, and tell us to take one another’s. Whoever has the most territory by the end is crowned victor.”
Aerion’s eyes narrow, amused, curious. “How would you take territory?”
“With whatever we could find,” you say easily. “Wooden swords, practice bows, servants bribed into acting as informants, other children convinced to betray their sides. Once, I set fire to the stables one of the boys was given as his territory to smoke him out, and then had him hunt down another in exchange for keeping him in the game as a vassal.”
His lips twitch faintly. “That sounds less like a game and more like training.”
“It was, partly,” you admit. “Cyvasse showed them how we think. War games showed them what we would do with that thinking. They were able to determine which of us were worth investing time in, and which should only be used as broodmares and trophies for the ones who were.”
Aerion raises his brows slightly, as though considering your words. He asks at last, “And what did you do with your thinking?”
You give him a sharp smile. “I won, of course.”
Your eyes slide shut, your smile softening. Your brother would always wait for you to find him during war games. He would try to slip away to some hidden corner of the palace whenever the bells rang to signal a day of games, but your father’s men always found him in time for the starting horn. So he learned to wait instead—counting on you to reach him first, so he wouldn’t have to face your father’s wrath for being the first to lose his territory.
You’re too old for war games now, but you can’t help but wonder what your father has roped him into now that he’s his only heir left. You know well what it looks like—long days in the yard until your arms tremble and your grip fails, tutors who strike first and correct later, lessons in strategy that bleed into lessons in cruelty. You thrived under it, but he never did, fingers better suited to strings than steel, temper too gentle for the kind of world your father demanded you both to master. You stood between him and the worst of it for as long as you could—taking the harder paths and drawing the attention away, winning quickly so he wouldn’t have to lose slowly—but there is no one left to do so now.
Your throat tightens, and you ask after a moment to change the subject, “And what do Westerosi do as children, dragon prince?”
Aerion doesn’t answer for a moment too long. You crack one eye open to peer at him, seeing how his expression is all twisted. He says after a moment, voice little over a mutter, “Knights and maidens.”
You laugh loudly, ignoring the way he sneers at you, a smile pulling at your lips as you roll onto your side to look at him more clearly.
“Were you the knight or the maiden?” you tease, laughing again when he gives you an offended look, grabbing your ankle to drag you closer to him, until your head is flat against the cushions. He shifts so that he is hovering above you, forearms pressed on either side of your head, narrow hips slotted between your thighs. You lean your head up to brush your lips against his as you purr, “I would be your knight, zaldrīzes dārilaros.”
“I was the dragon,” he says, snapping down on your bottom lip. Your eyes flutter shut as he bites hard enough to draw blood before sucking lightly, running his tongue over the wound. “I am the dragon.”
“Yes, yes,” you agree, lifting your hands to cradle his face between your palms, fingertips skimming against his temples. “And a ferocious dragon, you are. Even back then, I’m sure.”
His eye visibly twitches at your words, and you fight another laugh as you lean in to press your lips to his again, sighing lightly into his mouth as he lets out a pleased hum, instinctively sinking into you. You drag your tongue lightly along his, tasting the honey he was picking at earlier off his tongue. After a few moments, you exhale through your nose and lay your head back against the cushions again.
He tilts his head, gaze sharp, trying to figure out what you’re thinking.
“I think it sounds nice,” you admit quietly, tracing your fingers along his face before you let your hands drop. His brows furrow. “Knights and maidens growing up. It sounds…”
You trail off with another sigh. Your brother would certainly have preferred it. He might have actually been happy when the two of you were younger if he’d grown up in a place that had children play pretend instead of war. A lump forms in your throat. You swallow it away.
“Peaceful,” you finish at last. “A better way for children to be raised.”
Aerion’s expression is unreadable as he stares down at you.
“You think so?” he prods, an odd tone to his voice.
“Yeah,” you agree softly. “Yeah. I do.”
——————————
“Hm?” you ask during the final conversation, the damning one, head lolling to the side so you can look up at him, mind fuzzy from the copious amounts of firewine you’ve consumed, limbs warm and weightless from the incense creeping around the gardens of the First Magister’s estate. “What did you say?”
“Do you ever pay attention when I speak, you useless whore?” Aerion snaps at you.
From the gardens below, a flutter of giggles reaches the balcony you’re lounging on with Aerion. You frown, peering forward through the marble bars to shoot a glare down at the gaggle of courtesans entertaining the First Magister’s eldest son, though they’re too drunk on wine and clouded by incense to feel your ire.
“Go silence them,” you mutter, even as you return to where you were using Aerion as a cushion, head against his shoulder, back to his chest. “They give me a headache.”
“You do not order me, wench,” he replies immediately, but there is a distinct shortage of heat behind the words, and he sounds thoroughly distracted.
You squint, tilting your head to the side before you look up at him again, catching an unusually contemplative expression on his face.
“Careful, dragon prince, you might strain yourself thinking so hard,” you say with a lazy smile, to which he instantly shoots you a sneer. Even that is lacking in its effect, so you ask again, “What did you say?”
Aerion exhales through his nose, arm returning to where it was snug around your waist. After a moment, he says stiffly, “Do you enjoy gardens?”
What type of question is that?
It is both the question itself that catches you off guard and the way he asks it—careful in a way he only is when he’s trying to fish for information, like he is circling something larger and cannot quite bring himself to say it.
But what the hell would he gain through asking about your interest in gardens?
“What?” you say immediately, voice so riddled with confusion at his question that Aerion’s grip on you tightens, and when you glance at his face, you see the tips of his ears going red. Baffled, you back track, “Well, who doesn’t?”
Aerion frowns, as though not satisfied with your answer, and you stare at him, bemused.
“Now who doesn’t listen?” you say petulantly instead of answering, still trying to figure out the purpose of the question. All of his questions have led somewhere. This one must, too—you just cannot see where yet. “I told you all about the gardens in Volantis a few weeks ago.”
Aerion glares at you. “When?” he demands. “You did no such thing.”
“I did,” you hum, looking away spitefully.
“You did not.”
“I did. But I shall remind you, since I am feeling generous,” you tell him after a moment. “Back home, my family’s palace had a garden that stretched larger than the docks here in Lys. We had flora from all over the known world—Yi Ti, Ghiscar, even your little Westeros—my brother cried once because he could not understand why winter roses would not bloom in Volantis. He was so distraught that my mother asked my father to go down to the spellslingers and bloodmagickers to see if there was a way to sequester a section of the garden and alter the climate so that the roses might bloom for him.”
Your lips curve up into a smile at the memory.
Your brother wailed when your father came back with the unfortunate news that there was no way to make the roses bloom in the palace’s garden. The two of you were only six then, and he was already openly softer than you, more than what was acceptable to your father and your tutors, and this incident only further confirmed what they already feared—that he would never rise to be the kind of heir they demanded. They hoped to nip the weakness in the bud by separating the two of you, because you were always quick to rise in his defense whenever they tried to beat the fragility out of him, but they only succeeded in making sure that the two of you became very creative about disobedience.
You were meant to spend the mornings being bored to death in the music hall learning the harp and the flute, while your brother suffered through sword drills and archery in the yard below. Then, in the afternoon, the two of you would swap: you would take to martial studies while he would take to the arts.
It only took three days for you to begin switching places after you discovered that the eastern corridor connecting the music hall to the training yard had a servants’ stair that no one bothered to watch.
You would double down on your favorite lessons and abandon the rest entirely. No one ever realized what the two of you were doing, or if they did, they didn’t dare tell anyone who mattered. You were both good enough at lying anyway—the only tells you had, squinting lightly before you speak and smile tightening slightly at the edges, were ones that you could only ever pick out in each other. No one ever knew either of you well enough to catch them. It worked out.
It always worked out for the two of you until it didn’t anymore.
Your heart aches suddenly, and you blame it on the wine still wet in your mouth.
You do not like thinking of your brother, or home, or anything. You wish Aerion would not ask about it, but he does not seem keen on stopping anytime soon, and you clearly lack the ability to stop yourself from answering.
It is aggravating. You are aggravated already.
“There was no way, of course,” you finally say, blinking once as you realize you lost yourself in your own thoughts, and Aerion is waiting for you to finish your story, watching you carefully. “Or if there was, they were not going to waste blood and sacrifice on roses to dry my brother’s tears. But even without the winter roses, it was beautiful. We would spend hours chasing each other up and down the rows of flowers and shrubs, climbed the orange trees even when our governess yelled at us to get down.” You sigh and finish softly, voice heavier, “They were easy days, back then.”
You can feel him listening more closely than the story warrants, as though this—of all things—is what he had been trying to draw out of you.
It makes no sense, you think, frustrated. What are you missing?
And then he says:
“You speak of magic casually.”
His voice is quieter than usual, thoughtful in a way you do not often hear from him. His chin rests lightly against the top of your head where you lean against him, and you feel the vibration of his words through his chest.
You scoff softly. “Of course I do,” you reply. “It is casual. Half of our rites are steeped in it. If your family hadn’t fled to the west before the Doom, you would know of them.”
“If our family hadn’t fled to the west before the Doom, we would’ve perished alongside the twoscore families of dragonlords who remained,” Aerion drawls. Then adds more curiously, “But you make it sound simple. As though one can simply walk into a shop in Volantis and purchase a spell the same way a Lyseni merchant buys silk. Is it truly so common there?”
Ah, you think, mood souring even more as Aerion reaches the intel he wants. You can feel the turn in questioning now, the question beneath the question. Not just what Volantis is, but what it still has, and what might be taken. What he might bring to his father to prove himself a worthy son.
You tilt your head with a hum, eyes sliding shut as you force away the bitterness. You should stop here—redirect the conversation elsewhere.
You don’t.
You say lazily, “Within the Black Walls? More or less. When I was nine, I had a bloodmagicker curse an Elephant boy bald after he pulled my hair in court.” Aerion snorts behind you, but his arm tightens slightly around your waist, as though he wants to ask more but can’t formulate the questions. You know exactly what he’s doing. You press anyway, giving him the opening he needs. Your eyes slide shut in frustration—you do not know if you hate yourself or him more. “Are you interested in magic?”
He doesn’t answer right away, and his voice is clipped when he says, “Well, it is our blood, isn’t it?”
“It is,” you agree blithely, running your fingers along the back of his hand, enjoying the way his fingers twitch under your touch, though you shouldn’t be enjoying anything at all. “Though your Westerosi maesters pretend otherwise, like to claim that magic died with the old city. The magic of Valyria will not die until the blood that birthed it does. Your family kept it alive with dragons, for a time, and ours keeps it alive through old rites and rituals passed down from our ancestors.”
You should not be telling him this.
Aerion makes a sound in the back of his throat. You feel him shift slightly behind you, velvet cushions rustling as he leans back against them, pulling you with him. Your limbs are heavy and weightless at the same time; you sink back into him because you can do naught but, head rolling back against his shoulder with a hum. You hate yourself for it.
“Our family has not passed down many rites and rituals,” he admits quietly after a moment. “I—” He cuts himself off, and you crack one eye open to peer up at him, seeing the way his jaw works as he tries to find words. “I sought them out. Hoping to bring them back.”
He does not have to say what they are. You know by the wistfulness in his voice, the yearning in the way his grip tightens on you. You remember the expression on his face that day he woke after his fever broke—nyke ēdrugon ēdan iā zaldrīzes—and the bitterness that had begun to claw at your chest dissipates. Your gaze traces up to his face as he stares up at the night sky with the same unreadable expression he wears whenever the conversation edges too close to something he actually cares about.
At last, you hum and say, “Well, the old blood still remembers what your family abandoned. We retained many of the rites and rituals of our ancestors.”
It is easier to bicker with him than it is to acknowledge that you understand him far better than you should—because acknowledging that means admitting that you have really, truly known what he was doing from the very beginning, and that you have been giving him everything he wanted anyway. And that is an admission that will lead you to both a question you are not ready to face and an answer you’re not ready to hear.
Aerion bristles immediately, snapping him right out of his spiraling thoughts.
“We abandoned nothing,” he hisses.
“You did,” you reply, voice airy, though there’s an edge to it now. “Your family crossed the Narrow Sea, wrapped itself in Andal customs and Westerosi superstition to appease your new people. You built a kingdom among people who feared the very blood that made you powerful.”
His jaw visibly tightens.
“We conquered them.”
“Is that what you call it?”
He makes a sharp sound of disbelief, and you continue, because it is also easier to provoke him than to sit with the way he looks when he speaks of wanting to understand Valyrian customs and tradition, because that only makes you want to indulge more, because it makes you want to tell him things you should not be telling him, because that makes you angry—at yourself, at him, at everything. Because you want him to understand you, where you came from, where he came from, even though you know his intentions.
“You married outside the blood, and adhered to their laws and justice,” you say, counting lightly on your fingers against his hand. “You took their Faith, their maesters, their customs. Do you even know the names of the Fourteen Flames?”
“The mountains?” Aerion scoffs, becoming increasingly more irate the more you speak. “I—”
“Our gods, dragon prince,” you say, gaze shifting out toward the gardens again. Aerion cuts himself off immediately, going silent. “I speak of our gods. Not the mountains.”
“I know the names of our gods,” he says through his teeth, face reddening. “Balerion, Meraxes, Vhagar, Syrax, Ty—”
“But you did not know that the mountains were named for them. You do not know the proper rites. Have never stepped foot in a temple,” you finish lightly. Then continue lazily, tone far too conversational for the touchy subject. “I have heard stories of your Half-Year Queen letting smallfolk claim dragons in her little war with her brother.” You tilt your head slightly, amusement curling at the corner of your mouth. “I oft think I, too, was born in the wrong generation, because I would have paid dearly to see the faces of the old blood when that particular bit of news reached Volantis. They must have been absolutely aghast.”
His grip on you turns briefly bruising. Aerion’s voice becomes colder, more defensive. “They were dragonseeds.”
“Commoners,” you correct.
“They carried Valyrian blood.”
He speaks as though the words are poison in his mouth, as though he agrees with you, but cannot bring himself to say it plainly—will not speak ill of his own house to someone who does not share its blood.
“So do half the whores in Lys,” you say mildly. “Should we have allowed them to become dragonlords, too?
You don’t know why you’re pushing him like this, needling a subject that is clearly sore.
No, that is a lie. You know exactly why. Because you would prefer to turn this into a fight than admit that you are still answering his questions, than admit you are weak for him, than admit that you lo—
Aerion’s arm tightens around you again. “That is not the same.”
“Isn’t it?”
“I tire of this conversation,” Aerion says through his teeth, shifting as though to rise to his feet. “You are exceptionally irritating tonight.”
“You are the one who brought up the topic,” you disagree, settling back against him when he tries to move you off of him. He bares his teeth at you furiously when he finds that he cannot move while you’re on top of him. You give him a sweet smile in return. “You can only blame yourself, truly.”
“I did not,” he spits. “I only asked if—”
He cuts himself off, looking away, and you raise your eyebrows, curious.
“You asked about gardens,” you recall, stretching languidly on top of him, a pleased sigh escaping your lips as his body shifts beneath you. “A terribly riveting topic. Why is it that you asked me about them again?”
It couldn’t have been to get to the topic of magic in the Black Walls—you had been the one to bring that up. There must have been some ulterior motive that he abandoned when the topic of Valyrian magic presented itself.
But what was it? You find yourself stuck on it even now—all of the pieces he’s handed you fit together perfectly except for this one, and it’s bothering you. Because you feel as though you should know how it fits, like the true reason for his question is on the tip of your tongue, but you can’t put it into words.
“It does not matter now,” he scoffs, looking away. When you glance up, the tips of his ears are red. You squint, suspicious. “It was only a question.”
Only a question, he says—like all the others.
“Well, did you intend to follow that thought somewhere?” you ask mildly. “Or were you simply struck by a sudden and unprecedented interest in my opinion of landscaping?”
Aerion exhales through his nose sharply. “You speak far too much,” he mutters, but his expression has gone distant now, uncertain, and you tilt your head to the side with growing interest.
“You were going to follow the thought,” you say, voice soft in realization, sharp in accusation. “With what?”
“I was not.”
“You were.”
“I was not.”
“You absolutely were.”
Aerion scowls.
“You are intolerable.”
“And you are very bad at being evasive.”
Instead, he stares out over the gardens again, his arm tightening faintly around your waist as though grounding himself in the present moment.
After a moment, he says stiffly, “I only meant to say that there are gardens in Westeros.”
What does that mean? you think to yourself, bemused, thoughts faltering mid-turn, trying to figure out how this fits in with everything else, but you find yourself at a loss, because it doesn’t fit. Not with the others, with the pattern you have been so certain of this whole time. What the hell do Westerosi gardens have anything to do with intel to send back to his family? Flora for trade?
Or—have you been off mark since the beginning?
No. That is ridiculous. It was obvious.
Right?
“Well, I would certainly hope so,” you reply dryly. “Nine kingdoms and not a single garden would be a strange place indeed.”
Aerion bristles like a furious cat. “Forget I said anything, you impudent wench. I no longer wish to speak of this subject.”
This time, you do laugh, turning in his arms to look up at his face. He does not look down at you, but he does hold you, one hand cradling the back of your head so you don’t have to strain your neck to hold it up, the other resting on your hip, nail biting into your skin.
“Very well,” you say lazily, mercifully letting him retreat from whatever thought has him so wound up. “Then I suppose we should return to more pleasant subjects.”
Aerion glances down at you suspiciously.
“Such as?”
You hum, nosing into the soft silks draped around his shoulders, thoroughly comfortable, though your thoughts are no longer quite so loose, still trying to figure out what this might mean.
“Well,” you muse, “we could return to arguing about how your family has abandoned Valyrian tradition.”
Aerion hisses angrily. He really is a lot like a cat, you think, terribly amused as you lift a finger to his lips only for him to snap at it. “You speak boldly for someone in my arms. I should snap your neck.”
You grin up at him easily. “I would enjoy the feeling of your hands around my throat.”
Aerion scoffs with a roll of his eyes, but he doesn’t quip back a snide retort as you expect. You can feel his mind turning again, circling something, and you wait for him to speak. Finally, he says, voice quieter, “If it still lives there as you say—magic, the old rites and rituals—why has Volantis not conquered half the known world? Why have you not—”
Why have you not brought back dragons?
You snort outright at that, and you can feel Aerion’s indignant gaze trained on your face.
“Oh, dragon prince,” you sigh, lifting your hand to cradle the side of his face, thumb brushing over his bottom lip. You don’t wince when he bites it hard, irritated by your condescension. Instead, you slip it into his mouth, stroking his tongue lightly to make his face flush. “Now who sounds like a child listening to stories? Magic is old and costly and temperamental. It only answers blood, and rarely in the clean, simple way men want. One can ask for rain and receive flood. Ask for victory and receive it at devastating costs. Ask for life and pay in something worse.” You pause, slipping your thumb out of his mouth, back to resting on his cheek, and you say more quietly, “There is no blood in this world valuable enough to restore what was lost.”
“You are wrong,” he replies after a few moments. You raise your eyebrows at the certainty behind his words, gaze flicking up to his face again, but his attention is somewhere beyond the gardens, and his body is terribly tense. “There must be.”
“Must there?” you ask dryly.
“Yes,” he says through his teeth. “Yes. There must. I’ve seen it. I—” He cuts himself off again, exhaling through his nose. You lean up slightly now, tilting your head to the side when you see the feverish intensity that suddenly spreads across his face, a frown settling on yours. “They will return. I know it. We just need to find the right price.”
“And what blood would you offer, dragon prince?” you ask him, voice light, but a bit more cautious now. “A thousand slaves? A hundred magisters? Our bloodmagickers have tried it all, I assure you.”
Aerion scoffs. “Volantis thinks too small.”
You’re more amused than offended as you ask, “Do we now?”
“Yes,” he says, amethyst eyes sharp as they cut toward you. “You speak of magic as though it’s some crude exchange. A goat for rain, a king for victory.”
“Because it often is,” you reply, rolling your eyes. “Are you to lecture me on magic now?”
“Dragons are not rain or victory,” he hisses. “They were bound to blood. Dragonlord blood. Goats and common blood would never be enough, regardless of the droves they come in.”
You pause now, tilting your head to the side, lips curving down as you realize where his thoughts are turning. “If it were blood alone that was key, Volantis would have solved this problem centuries ago. Do you imagine our bloodmagickers have not thought of that? The old blood still runs thick and pure within the Black Walls, and it has spilled more of its own veins than you would find tasteful in its attempts to return life to our stone eggs.”
Aerion’s gaze flicks down toward you, jaw tight. “I do not mean Volantis.”
You hesitate, recalling the way he insisted that his poppy dream was not a dream, not really, and you feel unsettled. You do not like where this conversation is going. You do not like the feverish look in Aerion’s eyes, nor the certainty in his voice. You do not like any of this.
You scoff and say, “Then who? You sound as though you would be willing to offer yourself to the flames.”
“I am not afraid of fire,” he says after a moment. His gaze drifts once more to the sky, and you sit up from where you’re lying in his arms, lips pressed together, suddenly not feeling all too drunk at all. Your stomach drops. He adds quietly, “Dragons are born in fire.”
“Now it is my turn to tire of conversation,” you say after a moment, looking away, a pit in your stomach and a lump in your throat. You especially do not like the image that this evokes—fire and pain and charred bone and Aerion. “I think I preferred to speak of the gardens. Tell me more about Westerosi gardens. I might like to see them one day.”
You need to pull this back to something simple. Something you understand. Except, you don’t understand the gardens either, you realize desperately. You don’t understand any of this. You suddenly feel terribly out of depth, but you would rather he keep asking his pointed little questions, picking at you for answers you should not give, than sit here and speak so easily of throwing himself into the flames for a mummer’s farce.
Aerion’s attention snaps back toward you, expression caught between something wounded that you refuse to acknowledge and something hopeful that you also wish not to see. As though he can’t decide if he wants to be hurt by your dismissive words, or if he wants to lean into the fact that you’re willing to indulge his initial question.
He evidently decides on the former and says tightly, “I thought you would understand.”
You exhale through your nose, watching the glittering courtesans below, though they feel strangely distant now. “Understand what?”
“That some things are worth more than comfort,” Aerion replies.
You scoff. “I understand ambition, dragon prince,” you say mildly. “Volantis practically breeds it. But ambition and martyrdom are not the same thing.”
“I did not say anything about martyrdom,” he replies, watching you with an intensity that makes something uncomfortable twist in your stomach. Is he fucking serious right now? you think incredulously. You are aggravated. You have been aggravated for weeks. You’ve been aggravated with yourself. You’ve been aggravated with him. You’ve been aggravated with this situation, the way you’ve handled it, the way he handles it. And now you are fully aggravated because how dare he come to you with I am not afraid of fire, and expect you to understand. He continues, frustrated, “You just spent the better part of an hour explaining that magic answers blood. That the rites of Valyria still live in your city. That the old blood still have access to the dragonlords’ secrets, and yet the moment I suggest that perhaps the answer lies closer to us than your bloodmagickers believe—”
“You suggest setting yourself on fire,” you say through your teeth, trying to rein in your temper. “I prefer my dragon princes alive and breathing, not charred bones.”
“I am not suggesting dying.”
“You quite literally suggested burning.”
“I said dragons are born in fire.”
“And men die in it.”
Aerion shrugs faintly. “Most men.”
You withhold a deep sigh and instead ask, “Why did you ask me about gardens?”
Aerion stiffens, scowling at you from the corner of his eye. “I told you I no longer wish to speak on the subject.”
“And I no longer wish to speak on this one, so either sit here silently or put your mouth to better use.”
Aerion sneers at you, seemingly just as aggravated as you are, hand darting out to fist your hair roughly. “Perhaps I should force your mouth to better use,” he spits. “Put that vile tongue of yours to work at the only thing it’s good for.”
You lean in to press your lips against his before you can stop yourself, huffing sharply against his mouth when you feel his breath hitch as you shift back into his lap. His grip on your hair eases as he cradles the back of your head, and you slide your hands beneath his silks, nails grazing his abdomen in the way that always makes him shiver.
“I will teach you,” you say after a moment, before you really understand what you’re offering to him. You rest your forehead against his, lips brushing his as you speak. His lashes flutter as he opens his eyes to look up at you. You keep yours closed. “The old rites, the rituals, our gods and traditions—all of what your family has lost over time, but you will promise me something in return.”
What the fuck is wrong with you?
All of the questions ring through your head again: What will you do when he leaves? Is this really just a taste of fire? Indulgence? Distraction? Why do you not sabotage, when you have never been above such methods before? Why, ever, would you think of home, and then think of bringing him to see it? Why would you sit at his bedside while he’s sick and nurse him back to health? Why do you sit here and let him use you as a source of information to report back to his family? Why do you find yourself so aggravated by this whole situation? Why did your stomach drop when he spoke of himself in terms of blood sacrifice? Why are you willing to teach him all of the things his family willingly abandoned, knowing how much it would infuriate your people?
You don’t have to look at him to know the rapturous look that must be in his eyes, amethyst slivers around widened pupils, lips parted. He always gets this way when you talk with him about Valyria and what is left of it. Aerion is almost breathless as he says softly, “Anything.”
Your hands slide up along his ribs until they rest flat against his chest. The words leave you far more bluntly than you intend. “You will not burn yourself alive trying to bring life to stone.”
Aerion blinks, and then his brows draw together. His hands go still at your waist and in your hair. He says slowly, “You think that is what I intend to do.”
“I think you are arrogant enough and reckless enough to try, if you convince yourself you can, and you sound half there already,” you reply, nails digging slightly into his pale skin. One hand slides up further—to the Valyrian steel he wears on his throat—and rests there firmly. He tilts his head back slightly, baring his neck to you. “You are mine. You will not go somewhere I cannot follow, and I will not follow you into the flames.”
Aerion’s lips part as he stares up at you. Instead of becoming defensive, like you expect, his breath catches in his throat as he asks, “And where would you follow me?”
Would you follow me back to Westeros?
The real question he’s been asking this whole time lands all wrong. Lands late. Like this question has been hanging between the two of you for weeks, waiting for you to catch up. The uncertain, wide-eyed look on his face now is the same one he’s worn every time he’s asked about Volantis—every time he circled and pressed, every time you told yourself he was picking you apart for something to send back across the Narrow Sea. Volantene politics, the Black Walls, what you knew of Westeros, how you grew up, the gardens.
You knew from the beginning that he was never quite asking what he really wanted to ask, but you didn’t realize it was this.
He was not asking what Volantis could give him; he was never trying to figure out information to send back to his family to shorten the sentence of his exile. He was—he was trying to gauge whether or not you would follow him back to Westeros; he was trying to make sure he would not have to leave you behind when it ended. The thought is almost laughable—that he has been dancing around the same question that has been haunting you for months—but the more you think of it, the more it makes sense.
He wanted to know your opinions of his homeland to know if you would ever be willing to make it your own. He asked you about your childhood and the way you were raised to understand what you would be leaving behind if you did. He circled around politics and simple things like gardens to find where you might bend—to see what angles he should press if you proved reluctant, which arguments might sway you, and which might make you dig your heels in deeper if he brought it up.
Your jaw tightens, remembering all of the ways you had inadvertently implied you would because you did not realize what he was asking.
It does sound like it could be amusing, watching it unfold—at times, that is.
I think it sounds nice. Knights and children growing up. It sounds… peaceful. A better way for children to be raised.
Tell me more about Westerosi gardens. I might like to see them one day.
Fuck.
Your throat tightens. “That is not a promise.”
“And that is not an answer,” he counters, matching your quiet tone. “I will decide whether or not I will give you my word after I’ve heard your answer.”
Would you follow him back to Westeros?
You do not know, you realize blithely. Lys without Aerion Brightflame here to warm your bed, to chase you across rooftops and join in your mockery of this island of silk sounds like a dreadful existence. Now that you have had a taste of life in exile with him, you do not want a life without him.
But would a life in Westeros be any better?
Aerion is a prince, and you are an exile. You would never be allowed to marry him—it would be a political disaster for the Targaryens if they allowed it. The Elephants could even take it as a declaration of war—and though you do not believe your father and the rest of the Tigers would back military action against you, the Elephants have their own means of war through coin and secrets. They’ve felled many an empire with gold and words, and you do not wish to see Aerion cast out permanently, as you have been, because of you.
And what would that mean for you, then? Would you be a mistress while he frolics with a proper lady wife? While she bears his children and his name? You would rather slit her throat, his, and then your own. You would rather set fire to their keep and give him the flames he so desires. You do not want to share him, and if you cannot have him, you do not want to be anywhere near him and the woman who does, lest you find yourself doing something regrettable.
“I do not know,” you say at last, shifting away as his expression twists. He did not expect that response; you can tell from the way his lips part, from how he blinks once and then furrows his brows, recalculating.
“You do not know,” he echoes flatly.
“I do not know,” you repeat stiffly, gaze shifting to the garden.
Aerion scoffs suddenly, pushing you off his lap to rise to his feet, his face a war of pride and anger and embarrassment and hurt and disbelief. He convinced himself that your answer would be anywhere, everywhere, iksan aōhon, iksā ñuhon, and you cannot even blame him—weeks of careful questions to build up the courage to ask you more directly, and perhaps if you hadn’t been so blind, so quick to assume the worst, you could have subtly dissuaded him from this answer.
Instead, you unintentionally led him right to it, not realizing his ultimate goal.
Fuck.
“Of course, you do not know,” he says bitterly. “I will make your answer easy, then: do not follow me anywhere.”
“Aerion—”
“Remain here, and play your games, drink your wine, fuck your whores,” he spits, making his way off the balcony, back into the First Magister’s manse. He casts a derisive look over to where you’ve risen to your feet. “You have made a life here. One that suits you well enough.”
“And what, exactly, does that mean?” you ask.
Aerion pauses in the doorway, one hand braced against the carved wood as he glances back at you over his shoulder. For a moment, he says nothing. Then his mouth curls. It is not a pleasant expression.
“It means,” he says slowly, “that you have grown very comfortable amongst silk and pillows for someone who was once meant to preside over the Black Walls.”
Your spine straightens, fury flaring hot in your chest as he uses what you told him against him.
“You—”
His gaze drags over you, distasteful.
“A daughter of Volantis,” he continues, voice edged with something cruel. “Heir to one of the oldest bloodlines in the city. Future Triarch, if I recall correctly.”
You stare at him in disbelief, anger hot, hurt worse, burning deep in your chest, in your lungs, behind your eyes.
“And now?” he adds. “Now you lounge about, bickering with courtesans and playing at being amused by everything around you. You speak of your city’s power as though it still belongs to you, but you do not even live within its walls.”
“Fuck you,” you say, the words a low hiss because you cannot manage anything else.
“Done that, as has half of the city, I’m sure,” he says with a sharp smile. The steel on his neck gleams traitorously in the moonlight. “You were meant to rule the last standing city with the secrets of Old Valyria, and you cower at the idea of leaving your pillowed prison. Perhaps you are not who I thought you were. I have no interest in dragging a coward content on being a whore across the Narrow Sea.”
You stare at him blankly, words ringing in your ears long after he’s finished speaking. You don’t know why you’re so wound up, don’t know why it feels like there’s fire flooding your veins, why your heart is racing and your pulse thuds in your ears. You have not felt this way in a long, long time—not since you were on your knees in the Ivory Yard with shackles on your ankles and wrists. Even in that first year of your exile, when everything was still jagged and new and unbearable, when you were learning of the existence of new wounds every time someone spoke to you, no one managed to get under your skin the way that he has right now.
It is infuriating.
It is humiliating.
It is—it is fucking ridiculous.
You should not be so upset.
You rationalize that it’s because he’s caught you while your guard was down, because you let him wear your guard down, even though that is something that you haven’t allowed in a long, long time. He’s been inadvertently whittling at it for weeks. All of his questions about Volantis, talking about your past, your father, your brother, your childhood—it reminded you of the future you were promised and denied—you should have deflected or redirected, but you answered, and it has put you in a state of wistfulness, of yearning, of what was and never will be again. You miss being home. You miss your brother. You miss your father. You miss who you were before exile. You miss who you could have been. Years of resentment, of anger and bitterness, have long since settled into something bearable—a still, glassy lake you’ve learned to live beside without looking too closely at your reflection in it. And Aerion—
Aerion has hauled a fucking boulder over and dropped it straight into the center. The surface shatters. The calm you’ve built annihilated, replaced with violent waves that drag everything buried beneath it back up—old anger, old pride, old longing, all of it rising too fast, too consuming, too much.
And he has the audacity to stand there and look at you as though you’re the one who has done something wrong.
Worse than anger, worse than pride, worse than longing, is the fucking hurt that spreads through your chest, cruel and unrelenting. Is it because you feel like a fool for not realizing all of this sooner? Because this was avoidable? Because this feels like your own fault? Because he’s using what you confided in him against you? Because you trusted him with something that he used as a knife to drive into your back?
Or is it because he’s right?
You say, “Get out of my sight before I cut your fucking throat.”
“Gladly,” he hisses through his teeth. “You may find me when you remember who you are.”
——————————
“Remember who I am,” you echo, spitting the words at Caelyx. “Who does he think he is? He has no idea who I am. He thinks he knows me after a few months together on this island? I should have drowned him the moment he called me a whore on that rock, let him drink that poisoned wine, put my fucking blade into his throat. I—what?”
Caelyx is smiling into his wine next to you. “Nothing,” he says, laughter in his voice. “I just have not seen you so wound up in a very long time.”
You scoff loudly and look away, gaze flitting across the hall of Vyrano’s manse, where you have been forced to make an appearance for yet another of his ridiculous feasts. You got into an argument with the First Magister earlier in the day because you did not want to attend, but he insisted that your presence tonight was necessary, so now you are forced to sit in the same general area as Aerion as he lets two whores paw at him while wearing your Valyrian steel.
“I should kill him,” you say after a moment, teeth grinding together as your gaze draws over to where a girl with your hair color is kissing up his neck, and another with silver hair is positioned half in his lap. You don’t even want to look at him, but your attention keeps pulling back toward him. He’s not even looking at you. You want him dead. “Can you fucking believe this?”
Caelyx hums, shifting to face you. He lifts his hand, fingers grazing your chin before he tilts your face toward his, smoothing his fingers over the line of your jaw to try to make you ease how it’s clenched. You relent after a moment, sighing, and he runs a thumb over your bottom lip before he murmurs, “You are giving him what he wants, my lady. You must not keep looking at him. He grows more smug each time your eyes draw to him.”
You know that he is right. You press your tongue to the back of your teeth, eyes sliding shut.
You can feel his gaze on you now that your attention has been forced away from him.
That is as it has been for the last fortnight—you watching him when he is not looking, him watching you as soon as you look away. Both of you far too aware of one another while pretending not to be aware at all.
You have not spoken to him since that argument in the First Magister’s manse. He has not sought you out, nor you him, and the days have been long and agonizing, terribly boring. You drink, you find whores to entertain yourself with, you lounge on sun-warmed rocks and velvet cushions. You do as you have done for five years, and it is unbearable in a way that it has not been since the first months of your exile. You are bored and restless, and your temper has been outrageously quick to snap, and you find yourself looking toward the east at dawn and dreading your bed at dusk.
Is this how it is meant to be once he leaves?
You are furious. You are furious at the situation. You are furious at Aerion. But most of all, you are furious at yourself for allowing yourself to get attached to this Targaryen prince the way you have, for allowing him to become more than just another distraction, for allowing him the power to hurt you. You never should have let him become more than what he was that first night at the mid-summer festival: a plaything, fun to antagonize and toy around with, fun to pass the time, but nothing worth fussing over. The moment that Caelyx caught on to what was happening, and you felt your temper fraying just at the mere idea of him leaving for Westeros and you staying in Lys should have been warning enough for you to start pulling back.
Instead, you sat there and convinced yourself that it was worth it—that you would prefer a taste of fire at the risk of being burned to a lifetime of ash. Here you are, burned thoroughly, not for the reasons you anticipated, and you have no one to blame but yourself after lighting the fire and handing him the flame.
“This is not who I am,” you say through your teeth, turning your face slightly into Caelyx’s palm. “I am not so—”
Weak.
“You are furthest from weak,” Caelyx murmurs, knowing what you’re about to say without you having to say it at all. You can feel Aerion’s eyes boring into the side of your head. It takes all of your will not to turn to meet his gaze. You distract yourself by letting Caelyx hold the weight of your head in his palm, lips curving down when he lifts his other hand to cradle your face with both. “You are the first daughter of the oldest bloodline in Volantis. Lady of the Sorrows—how many men can say they’ve made the River Rhoyne run red?
“Do not pander to my ego,” you mutter, but you do traitorously find yourself feeling better at his words.
Do not forget who you are, he tells you without saying anything at all, which serves to irritate you because it reminds you of what Aerion had the gall to say to you two weeks ago. But Caelyx actually knows who you are, you tell yourself—he was here when you were at your worst, eased you through the rockiest days of your exile when you were angry and violent and only wanted to go home. It is different coming from him than it is from Aerion, who only threw it in your face to wound you.
“Ah, but you have always liked when I pandered to your ego, my lady,” Caelyx says with a familiar teasing smile, leaning in to ghost his lips against your jaw. He breathes out, “Though it’s true that you never did care much for words when I had you distracted properly.”
You huff out a soft laugh, tilting your head back slightly to give him better access to your neck. Your pulse flutters as his soft lips trail down your throat, nipping and licking at your skin the way you like. Caelyx has always been good at this—soothing you, pleasuring you, being with you when no one else dares to. Even now, even as fury clouds your mind and desperation runs through your veins, you find the terrible pulse pounding in your ears easing beneath his touch.
“You are shameless,” you accuse, though there’s no real heat behind it, letting him kiss down to your collarbone, and then back up to the corner of your lips. He brushes them there once, pale lashes fluttering as you tilt your face to him so that your lips ghost one another.
“Only for you,” he replies easily, hand from your face to your abdomen, fingers smoothing over your bare skin after he slips his hand beneath the silks.
You do not answer. You do not trust your voice not to betray you. You still feel Aerion’s eyes on you, and it is maddening, the way your awareness of him lingers even when you refuse to look at him—like heat at your back, a blade hovering just shy of your skin. You know the threat is there even if you cannot see it with your own eyes. You itch to look at him, but Caelyx stops you before you can make the mistake.
“Let him stew,” Caelyx murmurs. You let out an airy sigh as he sucks lightly at the underside of your jaw. “You do not chase. Do not start now.”
A bitter laugh threatens to rise, but you swallow it down. “I am not chasing.”
“Not yet,” he says, lifting his face to brush his lips against yours again.
“Not ever,” you reply, and his violet eyes glitter, pleased by your words. He nips at your lips. You let him. You click your tongue. “He is an idiot. He thinks the world should bend to him. That I should bend to him.”
“He is a prince,” Caelyx corrects, thumb stroking the line of your jaw. “He thinks the world belongs to him.”
And he thinks you do too.
The thought once sent a thrill running up your spine—iksan aōhon, iksā ñuhon, I am yours, you are mine. Now, it only frustrates you, because he was never yours, not really, and the months you’ve deluded yourself into believing otherwise have finally caught up to you now that he’s asked the question you’ve been dreading since Caelyx first brought up the topic. You slide your tongue along the back of your teeth, frustrated.
“He is a fool,” you insist with a scoff. “Do you think I would get in too much trouble if I shoved him over the balcony?”
Caelyx laughs, a pretty sound, one that has always settled your nerves. “If you want him gone, my lady, all you need to do is say the word. I will have it done, and no one will know it as anything but a terrible accident.”
And yet, therein lies the issue.
You do not want him gone. You want him. You want him completely, and you hate the idea that one day, someone else will have him. That the day will come where you either have to bid him goodbye or be okay seeing someone else have him in a way you will never.
What a double-edged blade it is, you think, that exile is the only reason you were able to meet him, and it is also the reason you will never be able to have him.
Or maybe you would have found your way to one another anyway, you think wryly—somehow, someway. Though you cannot imagine how, because had you not been exiled, you would have been elected Triarch and married to your brother, but Aerion is—well, Aerion. And he matches you in a way that no one has ever been able to. You cannot fathom a life where the two of you never met.
Perhaps through war, you consider at last. You are both violent little things; it would be fitting that you met on opposite sides of the battlefield.
“I dislike seeing you like this,” Caelyx murmurs, a heavy look in his violet eyes as he pulls back to look at you, more serious than you’ve seen him in a long time.
“Do you? I’m surprised you haven’t hit me with an ‘I told you so’, yet,” you say, more a joke than anything else, but Caelyx flicks a disapproving look toward you.
“I find no satisfaction in being correct. If you remember, I only brought this up out of concern,” he says. Then his lips flick up into a familiar smirk. “Though if you insist, I did tell you this would be an issue.”
You roll your eyes, nipping playfully at his fingers, and he lets out another pretty laugh, leaning slightly into you. You mutter, “You are incorrigible. I cannot believe that you were the one sent to deal with me all those years ago. How did I not kill you?”
He winks at you. “You were too distracted to manage it.”
Your brows lift. “Was I?”
“Mhm,” he hums, voice dipping lower, amusement curling through it. “If I recall correctly, you were far too occupied with my tongue to be thinking about murder. Hard to stab a man when he’s got you too busy forgetting your own name.”
You snort despite yourself, shoving lightly at his shoulder. “Arrogant.”
“Is it arrogance if it’s true?” he replies smoothly, catching your wrist before you can pull away, pressing a brief, teasing kiss to the inside of it. “You’ve always had a weakness for my particular talents.”
“Mm,” you murmur, though your lips twitch. “A tragic flaw, truly.”
“A devastating one,” Caelyx agrees solemnly, though the smile in his eyes gives him away. His thumb traces slow, absent circles against your pulse. “Though I would be happy to remind you of it.”
“Perhaps I should take you up on it,” you murmur, lips curling up into a small smile when he leans in to ghost his lips against yours. “I find myself in desperate need of a distraction.”
Caelyx hums softly, pleased, the sound vibrating against your lips as he closes the distance properly this time, his mouth settling against yours with a familiarity that puts you at ease. He shifts closer, sliding closer to straddle your lap as his hands come up, one to the back of your head, fingers entwining with your hair, and the other slinking loosely around your shoulders.
“Desperate?” he murmurs against your mouth, amused. “That’s not a word I hear from you often, my lady.”
“Enjoy it while it lasts,” you scoff, but you’re smiling, eyes sliding shut as he kisses down your throat, one hand dropping to slide beneath your silks, skin warm against yours as he trails his fingers up your abdomen, your body instinctively shivering. “I—”
Aerion is across the room in a heartbeat, though neither of you notices until too late.
You hear Caelyx let out a hiss in surprise, violet eyes flying open, and your attention snaps upward as he’s forced off you, yanked away with brutal force, balance lost as he’s dragged backward by his collar.
“Aerion, what the fuck?” you start to snap when you recognize Aerion standing at the edge of the cushions, amethyst eyes ablaze, jaw tight, a type of fury rolling off of him that you’ve never seen from him before.
He doesn’t even acknowledge you, and as you’re pushing yourself up to sit straight, you see steel flash in his right hand. Your eyes widen, and you’re moving before you even really understand what’s going on, hand wrapping around Aerion’s wrist as he tries to drive a dagger forward, fast and vicious, aimed straight for Caelyx’s throat.
The force of his swing jolts through your arm when you stop it, a hair's breadth from plunging through Caelyx’s neck. Your fingers press bruises into his skin as you hold him in place, grimacing slightly as he strains against you, trying to force the blade forward anyway, driven more by fury than sense. Distantly, you notice courtesans and magisters alike fleeing the room, and you gape at Aerion in sheer disbelief, but Caelyx has the nerve to let out a breathless laugh, eyes wild.
“Careful, dragon prince,” he purrs, voice smooth, despite the fact that the tip of the blade grazes his skin. “You’re looking rather unstable.”
You give Caelyx a sharp look, but he only winks at you, which only serves to set Aerion off even more from the way he bares his teeth. He drops the blade out of his right hand, left hand darting out to catch it by the hilt midair, but you jam your shoulder into his chest before he can swing outward with his free arm. He stumbles backward, eyes flashing furiously as he finally turns his attention to you, and you shift so that you’re standing in front of Caelyx, head falling slightly to the side as you stare at Aerion.
“Is this how it’s going to be?” you ask him, voice light despite the tension in your shoulders as your fingers wrap around the grip of a fruit knife. The blade is much too thin for you to actually be of use in a fight with him, but it’ll be enough at least to deflect the blade. You just need to disarm him. “What the hell is your problem? There’s no way this isn’t going to get back to your father.”
That only serves to irritate him—maybe you should have bit your tongue. He says coldly, “Get out of my way.”
Who the fuck does he think he is?
You smile sharply, although it doesn’t reach your eyes. It is only the two of you now—everyone else has fled the room, even Caelyx’s better judgment finally got the best of him, leaving the room as soon as you were between him and Aerion. “Make me.”
Steel clashes as Aerion lunges forward again, faster this time, both of you letting loose two weeks of frustration and fury onto each other as the dam finally breaks. The fruit knife in your hand catches the dagger with a sharp noise, the impact jarring up your arm as you deflect the strike just enough to send it skidding past your side instead of through it. You step into him, closing the distance, and you drive your elbow hard into his chest, knocking him off balance enough for you to lift your leg and put your foot into his thigh, forcing him down to one knee.
“You’re out of practice, dragon prince,” you mock, pressing the tip of the fruit knife under his chin, enjoying the way his eyes flash furiously at your words, “or perhaps you are better off a whore than a knight. Your father chose the right Free City to exile to after you embarrassed him.”
His jaw tightens at that, something ugly crossing his face, but you are angry—his words echo through your head. You may find me when you remember who you are. He has no idea who you are, but if he wishes to know so badly, then you will show him the worst of you.
“If you ask Caelyx nicely, he might be willing to give you some tips—he’s quite good at what he does, and I doubt your father will take you back anytime soon after this little display. You might be able to make some decent coin with his help when Vyrano inevitably kicks you out of his manse for causing too much trouble,” you continue when he doesn’t immediately respond, voice cutting, lips curled up into a small smile. “You cannot even hold yourself together long enough to stand in a room without drawing steel like a rabid dog, and you think—”
You don’t notice that he’s wrapped his hand around your ankle until too late, the air ripping from your lungs as he yanks your foot off the ground to knock you off balance, dragging you down onto the floor with him. Your back hits the ground hard, knocking the air from your lungs, and you grimace in pain when the back of your head smacks against the marble. Aerion is on top of you in a second, weight heavy on your hips as he leans over you to press his dagger against your throat, amethyst eyes wild.
“How many times have I warned you that your tongue was going to get you in trouble?” he breathes, dragging the blade up your neck to press it against the corner of your mouth. “Do you think this is a game? That you can say whatever you want and walk away untouched? That you can take what you like and leave the rest in pieces at whim? I’d sooner see you dead, whore.”
Your lips curl up despite the sting of the blade sliding against your skin. You ignore the taste of iron as you murmur, “And what, exactly, do you think I’ve taken from you, dragon prince?”
His grip tightens on the dagger, and he doesn’t answer, but his expression tightens, jaw flexing and amethyst eyes shifting into something far more vulnerable than the rage that has consumed him. You hate the way it makes your throat swell. You hate even more than you know the answer to your question as soon as you ask it.
His breath comes out unevenly, and the dagger is still at your lips, pressing deep enough for blood to trickle into your mouth, but the expression on his face is all twisted, like he doesn’t know what to do with himself anymore.
You notice, absently, that his fingers are trembling around its hilt—at your collar too, where he fists the silk you wear.
It would be so easy to mock him.
The thought rings through your head traitorously. You would if you were back home and he were any of your peers—you have in the past, laughing in Aenys’s face when brought up binding the most powerful families of the Elephant and Tiger parties through marriage, telling Jaenys to fuck off when he told you that he might love you. Only one person has ever been spared from your cruelty, and that person is not Aerion. You could make him bleed right now in a way that’s far more painful than the blade he has pressed against your mouth.
You do not.
“You know what you’ve taken,” he replies, voice hoarse, little over a breath. The dagger slides down your cheek to your jaw, and he drags a thin red line until the tip of it is pressed to your pulse point. His eyes fixate on the droplets of blood that bead at the shallow wound before they flick back up to meet yours. “Do not play the fool. You knew what you were doing this whole time—clinging to me, mocking me, covering for me when you could, telling me about your home, taking care of me while I was ill, bringing me to places that you claimed were only yours. You knew what you were doing, and you do not get to pretend that you don’t. You do not get to pretend as though this is nothing. You do not get to walk away.”
“Aerion—”
“It is infuriating,” he spits, the tip of the blade digs a smidge deeper into your skin. “You’ll take everything someone is willing to give you, but the second they ask something back, you run—as though you think you do not owe anyone anything. You get close, you take everything you want, and then you leave before it can cost you anything, like nothing ever mattered. It is infuriating. You are despicable. I will not allow it. I am not a silk boy for you to toy with—I am a dragon. I am the one who takes. Not you.”
Your heart thuds in your chest, lips parting and breath coming out too shaky for your liking as you stare up at Aerion. You can feel his breath fanning across your lips, the haze in his eyes reflecting a war of pride and fury and indignance and desperation. You’ve seen this before—never this raw and never this close, but you have seen it nonetheless. You have known that this volatility was there from the very beginning, tucked beneath the sharpness of his tongue and the arrogance he wears like armor. He burns too hot and too fast; everything in him is always just on the verge of spilling over into something uncontrollable, because Aerion feels everything too intensely, and he doesn’t know how to deal with it so he shows it in the worst ways possible.
“When I am called back to Westeros, you will come with me,” he says at last, eyes searching yours for an answer even though he speaks it as a command, dagger pressing into your neck a bit deeper as though reminding you that you do not have a choice, threatening you that he will go through with what he promised should you deny him, because he would rather you dead than with anyone else. “Say it.”
“No,” you reply.
Aerion lets out a noise caught between a hiss and a whistle, eyes flaring dangerously. “You think I won’t? I’ll kill you before I let you walk away from me. I’ll—”
“I don’t think you will,” you reply quietly, and Aerion makes another noise, this time in the back of his throat, wounded and furious like he didn’t expect you to call him on his bluff, “and you cannot make me come with you.”
Aerion grinds his teeth so hard that you’re sure it must be painful. He digs the blade into your skin deeper, as though trying to force himself to do it, and then he lets out a terribly broken exhale, letting the blade clatter to the ground next to your head. Frustration, rage, desperation all swim plainly through his face.
He vows instead, “Then I will kill everyone else. If you stay behind when I leave, I’ll have them all hunted down.” When you sigh and shake your head, looking away, his hand darts up to grab your chin, forcing you to look at him. “The whores you surround yourself with, the harbor brats that cling to you—anyone dares who comes close to you when I cannot. I will have them burned for it, and I will have their corpses delivered to you with Brightflame branded on their face, so that every time you look at them, you think of me—so that you may never dare to forget me.”
You exhale through your nose. “I will not forget you, Aerion—”
He bares his teeth. “Then I will make you wish that you could.”
You roll your eyes. “This is deranged—”
“I do not care,” he snaps immediately. His grip on your chin tightens, fingers digging in just enough to hurt. “You do not get to walk away from this. You don’t get to walk away from me. This was not nothing. I was not nothing. I am not nothing.”
“You’re wrong,” you say after a moment. A lie, it tastes bitter on your tongue, makes your chest ache so terribly that you want to take it back as soon as it leaves your lips. “It was nothing, Aerion. Just a bit of fun. You made it into something it isn’t. It—”
“Liar!” Aerion accuses, voice loud and shriller than he intends, expression twisting violently. “Iksan aōhon, iksā ñuhon—” His voice breaks over the High Valyrian. “—you’re the one that said it. You are the one who said it. You do not get to say that and leave; you do not get to make me say that and leave.”
“It is not as easy as you’re making it out to be!” you finally explode, hands driving upward to push him off of you. He tumbles back onto the marble, and you grab the dagger he dropped near your ear. You swivel so that you’re the one straddling him, pressing the blade to the apple of his throat. “You are a fucking idiot, Aerion. You are an idiot, and I will not go to Westeros with you just to watch you get married off to some noblewoman—”
“You dare to call me the idiot,” he hisses, leaning into the blade without fear, forcing you to pull it back when it starts to sink into his neck. “You think I’ll let myself be married off to some dumb cow when I have you? You—”
“It is not up to you,” you spit, shoving his shoulder back down so he’s lying flat against the ground. He sneers up at you, lips parting, blood trickling down the length of his neck, amethyst eyes wide and wild, slivers around dilated pupils. You repeat more calmly, because one of you desperately needs to calm down before you end up killing one another, “It is not up to you, Aerion. You are beholden to your father and king, and they will never allow—”
“Fuck my father, and fuck the king,” Aerion interrupts viciously. “They can both fuck off. I will wed you here. Now, even—” What?! “They cannot stop me from having you.”
You exhale, shaking your head and closing your eyes, setting the dagger to the side. You look away as you sit back on his thighs, frustrated and just wanting this conversation to be over, because he will not listen to what you have to say. He sits up, one hand lifting to grab your chin again, more gentle now as he turns your face to him, thumb stroking the line of your jaw.
“I will do it,” he says, quieter now. “Here. Before we go back, so they cannot stop it. We can do it in Valyrian tradition—by blood and fire.”
Your throat bobs as your gaze meets his, the fervor still there, but the fire behind it has tempered into something less volatile, something warm and steady that settles over you like heat rather than wild, open flame that has been licking at your skin. It would be easy to lean into it, to let yourself rest in it. You want to—desperately, desperately you want to.
“I thought your family didn’t retain any of our rites,” you say, voice hoarse as you try to rebuild the walls that he has broken down stone by stone over these last few moons together, so that you can put this to rest.
“We retained one,” he amends, thumb pressing against your lower lip. “Let me have it with you. We do not need anyone’s blessing—not my father, not my grandfather, not anyone’s. We do it here. We bind our lives in blood and fire, and it’s done. They can rage about it later, but it won’t matter. You’ll be mine, and I’ll be yours—iksan aōhon, iksā ñuhon—no one will be able to take it from us.”
You want to agree.
You so desperately want to agree. You do not think you have wanted anything so bad since the Triarchy was within reach. Since you were chained in the Ivory Yard, staring up at your brother for the last time as you waited for your fate to be decided. Since you were put on the ship to Lys, not even able to say goodbye to those you love. And you think it is ridiculous. It is ridiculous that you want this as badly as you wanted to be Triarch, as badly as you wished for a life with your brother, as badly as you wished to say goodbye—it is simply not possible that Aerion managed to carve himself this deeply into you in six short moons.
It is ridiculous, it is absurd, it is exactly the sort of thing you have spent your entire life learning how to avoid. You have had men before him—men and women, better men and better women, safer men, safer women, easier men, easier women. You have had partners who would have given you everything without demanding anything in return—Aenar joined your campaign through the Shallows and Slaver’s Bay, knowing the risks, knowing it was treason, fighting at your side, spilling blood in your name, Jaenys almost started a war for you when the Elephants dared to chain you, Aenys would have set aside three centuries of family grudges and risked disinheritence to wed you—and yet—
And yet, your chest aches, and you cannot drag your eyes from his, wide and searching, tracing your face for a hint of an answer before you speak. You have never wanted any of them the way you want him. Never felt anything close to this—the tightness in your throat and the pull in your chest, the terrible, overwhelming urge to give in.
You start to shake your head, and Aerion’s jaw tightens. “We can’t.”
“Why—”
“Because I will not see you exiled as I have been, Aerion!” you say loudly, shifting to get off of him, but he grabs your wrists to hold you in place before you can. His face is riddled with confusion, like he doesn’t understand what you’re saying—of course, he doesn’t, you think bitterly, because he hasn’t thought so far ahead. “You—you do not understand the gravity of my exile. I should be dead right now, Aerion. I should have been torn apart in the Ivory Yard. I parted on good enough terms with my father and the Tiger Party, yes, but the Elephants are the majority, have been the majority for three centuries, will likely be for the next three after what I’ve done. I am lucky that I am not dead, and if word gets back to the Elephants that the Targaryens have taken in someone they exiled for high treason, they can take it as a declaration of war, Aerion.”
Aerion presses his lips together. “They cannot do anything to Westeros—” You laugh, it is a harsh, cruel sound, and you roll your eyes, shaking your head in disbelief. He is a fool—an arrogant, idiotic fool. “—They can’t. I would like to see them try to declare war on us. They would—”
“Westeros has been facing civil unrest for over a decade, Aerion,” you spit. “Do you think we are fools who do not pay attention to what happens across the Narrow Sea? Your lords are already looking for excuses to turn on you. The court bristles over Rhoynish influence, and the Blackfyres did not rise from nothing. They had support, they still have support. Men who lost lands and sons and pride for backing them, men who would seize any chance to see your line weakened again. They sit here in Essos now, building their power in that sellsword company that just sacked Qohor, and all the Elephants would have to do is whisper in the right ears, send the right coin—”
You shake your head. You cannot swallow away the lump in your throat. You knew all of this already—it has been hanging over you for several moons now, but it is different speaking it out loud. You will never be able to be with him, not unless he accepts that being with you would mean setting aside any hope of ever being able to go home.
“Your father will not risk it—your king will not risk it,” you tell him. “Westeros cannot afford to make an enemy of Volantis when there is so much unrest already, and I will not see you bind yourself to me through blood and fire, knowing that as soon as you do, your father will have to permanently exile you to avoid a war with my people.”
He’s quiet for a long moment—too quiet, and too long. You expect him to argue, to snap and deny and twist your words into something easier to fight against, but he doesn’t. His grip on your wrists loosens slightly, not enough to let you go, but enough that it no longer feels like he’s trying to restrain you, so much as it is that he just wants you close.
“I do not care,” he says simply after a moment, but his voice is stripped of anger and frustration; there is something small and childlike in the words, as if he knows what you’re saying and understands the logic behind it, but can’t bring himself to accept it, even if all he has a flimsy lie to shield himself from the truth. It is so far from the arrogance and fury he hides behind that it cracks your chest right open. His gaze doesn’t leave yours, wide and stubborn and far too open as he shakes his head. “I don’t. I just—”
He falters, staring at you, lips parted as he shakes his head.
“It is your fault,” he accuses, throat bobbing as he swallows. “It is your fault. You should have left me alone—” The edge to his voice comes back now, not entirely, but enough. His breath is unsteady, eyes locked to yours as though he’s trying to force you to understand. “You should have treated me like everyone else on this pillowed prison, but you didn’t. You dragged me through your city, into your games, into your ridiculous, arrogant little world where you pretend you are above anything. You let me in. You told me you were mine, and that I was yours, and now you expect me to go back to Westeros and sit in that viper’s nest and pretend that I am—that I have not had you? That I have not felt—”
He stares at you, his face twists, he is angry, and you are not sure if it’s at you, himself, or both. You do not dare speak, because there is a heat that threatens behind your eyes, and a tightness to your throat that is overwhelming.
You know this, you want to tell him to shut him up. You know this is your fault, you know you never should have let this go so far, you know this is a mistake that has irrevocably destroyed you both.
“You’ve ruined it,” he breathes out. “Do you understand that? You’ve ruined everything. I have thought about it, you know? Every day since my father exiled me, I have thought about leaving this wretched place and going home—there was nothing I wanted more than I wanted to go home.”
His voice is strained, and the words come faster, more accusing, like he’s been holding them back for too long. You wish he would stop talking. You don’t want to hear this—it will only make everything harder. He continues before you can bring yourself to speak.
“I counted the days, envisioned our banner in the harbor, imagined walking up to my father and—” He cuts himself off abruptly, grimacing as he looks away, as though he was about to admit to something that he realized he shouldn’t. “I would step back into it, and everything would be as it should be—and then you—and now I—” He rubs his face hard, frustrated. “Now I think about going back, and it feels like I am being dragged back into something smaller. I look at it now, and all I can think about is that you will not be there.”
“Aerion—”
“And I am supposed to want that?” he demands, something incredulous slipping through the anger. “I am supposed to be satisfied with it, knowing—” He exhales sharply, cutting himself off again before the words can come out wrong. “I won’t be. I know I won’t be. I will think about this place, about you, and everything else will feel like a poor imitation of something I’ve already had, and it is your fault. You’ve made everything else feel—” He falters again, as though searching for a word to describe what he means. “—less. You have made everything feel less, and you do not get to ruin it—me—and walk away like it is nothing, do you understand?”
You do not respond for a long time, staring at him helplessly. You do not know how to respond—and it is such a foreign feeling, truly. All of the years you spent honing your blade in the training yard and your tongue in court, and this dragon prince has it tied in knots, because you do not know what to say that will make him understand.
“Say it,” he says again, hands slipping from your wrist to hold your own, fingers sliding between yours. “Say that you will come with me.”
You let out a shaky breath, and then you smile. It is tight at the edges. “Okay. I will.”
“You will?” he breathes out, eyes searching your face rapidly.
You swallow, and then you nod, breathing in deeply, squinting slightly before you say again, “Yeah. I will.”
Aerion visibly relaxes, breath leaving him in a rush, like something in his chest has finally unclenched after being wound too tight for too long, like the fire burning him from the inside out has finally been extinguished. His hands tighten around yours firmly, and he searches your face again.
“You mean it,” he says, not quite a question, but he waits for you to answer as though it is one.
You nod.
It feels easier than speaking.
He exhales again through his nose, separating his hands from yours to lift them to your face. He cradles your cheeks between his hands, gaze tracing your face, and you hope that he does not see the lie thinly veiled behind your eyes. You lean in to press your lips against his before he can search for too long, hands sliding up his abdomen to rest firmly on his chest. You can feel the rapid pace of his heart thrumming beneath your touch, can taste the wine on his tongue as it mixes with the blood still wet in your mouth.
He kisses you back, lips sliding messily against yours, fingers biting into your cheeks. One hand slides behind your head so that he can thread his fingers through your hair, and the other slides down to your waist, so he can pull you impossibly closer. You have kissed Aerion hundreds, thousands of times since he’s arrived in Lys, but this kiss feels different—it is not rough and biting, a fight more than a caress, and it is not even like the slow kisses you share in the cove, a place that is only yours and only his, where you can fall into each other without fearing unwanting eyes. This kiss is—
It feels like surrender. Surrender to this. To each other. To this mess that you have found yourselves entangled in, with no hope or desire to be free from. To everything you have been denying for moons on end, because this is not distraction, or a taste of fire, or indulgence—if it were, you would agree to his request without hesitation, you would not lie to appease him, knowing you will renege on your promise when the time comes, because you would not care if Aerion was permanently exiled for binding himself to you through blood and fire. You would not care because it would mean you get to keep him, because all you care for is your wants and whims, without restraint and without consequence.
But you do care.
You see the way he looks west, and you see the yearning in his eyes when he speaks of home, though he tries to hide it behind a veneer of arrogance and bitterness. You see it, because you are intimately familiar with it yourself—and you will not be the reason he is stripped of his birthright and cast out. Not when you know very well that he will never truly be happy choosing you, when you know the what ifs will haunt him for the rest of his life, and he will look west when he thinks you are not looking, and he will dread sleep because he will be forced in front of all of the faces he left behind.
It is not your right to make this decision for him, a traitorous part of you whispers as he sighs into your mouth, hand sliding up and down your back as he kisses you deeply. It is his decision to make, and if he chooses you, then so be it, but—
But you know better, you counter viciously. He doesn’t know exile as you do. How could you condemn him to what you’ve suffered for five years, what you will suffer for the rest of your life, knowing how it’s ruined you? What would you do if you were in his position? If you had a chance to go home, but it would mean leaving him behind for good? Would you take it?
If you had a chance to go home, but it would mean leaving him behind for good, would you take it?
Your breath catches against his mouth as he drags his tongue across your lower lip, waiting for you to part them for him. You do, and he lets out a pleased hum against you as he licks at the inside of your mouth, tongue pressing against the cut he made at the corner, lapping at the blood he drew.
You love him—somehow, some way, Aerion has managed to worm his way into your heart. He has lit up the part of you that you thought died the moment you were cast out from the Black Walls, stripped of everything that made you who you are, your promised future, the one you bled and destroyed yourself for, ripped away like it was nothing. Five years you’ve spent rotting away, cold and empty and always lying to yourself, and he was able to reignite the flames that once burned through you like it was nothing.
And he loves you, you know this now, too. If he didn’t, you would not be having this conversation; he would not be convinced that he wants you more than his birthright, he would not be so upset over the idea of you not coming with him, he would not allow himself to be so—
His breath hitches into a soft moan against your lips when you shift your lower body so that you can sit more comfortably, unwittingly putting pressure on his half-hard cock. His pupils are blown wide as he stares up at you, waiting for you to do something rather than take it himself. You hesitate just for a second, gaze tracing the flush high on his sun-kissed cheeks before you slip your hand beneath the silks he wears, fingers wrapping around his cock.
Aerion’s jaw falls half slack, head lolling backward as you lazily stroke his cock, thumb running over his tip, smearing the precum already dribbling down his length. It’s not long before he’s heavy in your hand, breath leaving his lips in ragged pants, the whites of his eyes slivers as his eyes roll half-back when you squeeze the base of his cock. He tries to turn his face away, chest heaving.
“Jurnegon rȳ nyke,” you breathe out, free hand coming up to cradle his cheek gently as you pick up the pace of your wrist, leaning in to ghost your lips against his, nipping his bottom lip. He lets out a low moan, pale lashes fluttering as his hazy gaze tries to focus on you. “Jaelan naejot ūndegon ao.”
Look at me. I want to see you.
Aerion’s breath is hot and shaky against your lips, eyes lidded; you can feel his abdomen tensing and spasming as he tries to stop himself from jerking his hips up so that he can fuck your fist. You press your lips to his more firmly, tasting the wine on his tongue as you drag your tongue against the roof of his mouth. The next noise he lets out is more of a whine than a moan, pitched and breathy and so sweet that you just can’t help yourself from giving him what he wants when he gasps a: “Kostilus,” into your mouth.
Please.
You part your lips from his and smile when he instinctively finds himself chasing you, a pout forming on his kiss-swollen mouth when you lean back a little further, just far enough so that he can’t catch you. Before he can start complaining, you shift forward, hand sliding down to your own silks so you can shift them to the side.
“Oh,” you breathe, breath hitching when his tip presses against your cunt, slipping against your slick folds.
You nudge your nose against his, forehead-to-forehead, eyes sliding shut as his trembling fingers find your waist so that he can help you ease down on his cock. He nips your bottom lip once before you start to sink down, and lets out a low moan when he feels your walls clamp down around him. You take in a breath that sounds almost like a hiss, a sharp whistle between your teeth as your back arches into Aerion’s chest, the burn of his cock against your walls, stretching you open, makes your thighs tense and your head all hot.
“Sīr ȳrda,” he groans, leaning back slightly so his lidded gaze can drop to where the two of you are joined.
So tight.
One hand slips from your waist to your cunt, lithe fingers sliding down to your clit so he can rub slow circles on it; your head drops forward as you gasp, forehead pressed to his temple, you mouth absently at his jaw, biting back a whine as he lifts your hips up off his cock until only his tip is stretching your hole, and then guides you back down. He does it again, and again, again—a slow, agonizing pace that makes tears prick your eyes.
You rock your hips against his, desperately trying to take over to set a quicker pace, teeth grazing his neck; his fingers bite deep into your thigh, thumb still rolling your clit, chest heaving as he lets you bounce on his cock at your leisure. Each time you drop your hips so that you’re flush to his thighs, you swear that you can feel him in your stomach, so deep that you can hardly breathe, hardly think, so full of him that all you can feel is him.
Your fingers claw at his back, and he grunts lightly, arm slipping around your waist so that he can drag you closer, until your chest is to his and you can feel the rapid thuds of his heart against your body. You bury your face into the crook of his neck, muffling a moan by biting down hard when he starts fucking his hips up into you, meeting your bounces, burying himself deeper, deeper, deeper. He pinches your clit lightly, shifting the angle of his hips, and you choke out a noise—a sob or moan or gasp, you’re not sure, half his name, half a curse—as your whole body shudders, nails raking down his spine, jaw falling slack as you cum so hard that spots dot your vision.
“Gevie,” you hear him breathe, arm tightening around your waist, holding you close as you come undone on his cock. Your pulse pounds in your ears, and your thighs burn, and your body is trembling violently, and the lewd sound of his cock driving in and out of your cunt has you dizzy. You can hardly even make out what he’s saying, drowning in the feeling of his slick body sliding against yours, the sound of his hitched gasps and pitched moans, the taste of his skin, of the blood you drew at his throat before you tossed the knife away. You cannot get enough of him. You will never get enough of him. “Kesi—kesi sagon mēre. Ao se nyke. Rȳ ānogar se perzys. Ivestragon ziry.”
Beautiful. We—we will be one. You and I. Through blood and fire. Say it.
You feel his fingers leave your waist to slide up your body, threading through your hair. He pulls your head back, and your breath hitches at the sight of his swollen lips and sweat-slick skin, glistening as the sun begins to set outside. You choke on air as he thrusts his hips up, eyes sliding shut again, thighs so tense that it’s almost painful. You already feel as though you might cum again, chest fluttery and stomach tight and hot, and Aerion’s grip tightens on your hair, the pull at your scalp forcing another moan from your lips as he tries to get your attention to him again.
“Say it,” he demands, but you don’t even know what he’s referring to, all of his words sliding in one ear and out the other, eyes big and watery as you lose yourself in the familiar amethyst, black blown wide and so fucked-out that you can see the haze he’s feeling in them. His jaw tightens when your cunt spasms around him again, lashes fluttering as he lets out a low groan, abdomen flexing beneath your hands. His cock twitches inside of you, and your eyes half roll back when you feel it grind against that soft spot that makes you writhe, a whimper spilling from your lips. “Say it!”
If you had a chance to go home, but it would mean leaving him behind for good, would you take it?
“Avy jorrāelan,” you gasp, because you do not know what he wants you to say, and the question that keeps ringing through your head makes your eyes wet and your chest hurt, and that is the only thing you can think of when he looks at you like this, when he holds you like this, when he is so deep inside of you that you cannot even breathe, much less think. There are no walls to keep in what has been plaguing you for moons now, no way for you to twist what you feel for him into something more manageable—more understandable.
I love you.
The words rip from your lips so honestly that it stuns you—that all you can do is stare up at Aerion with parted lips, only barely processing what it is that you spoke, watching the way he physically falters, eyes widening. It is the truth, it is the truth you have been avoiding acknowledging for months in fear of what it means—the truth you have been terrified of, desperately trying to explain as something else.
You want this for the rest of your life, you want him—this was never just indulgence or distraction. Never. This was always—it was always him. It was always you. It was always the two of you together, from that first meeting until now. This was how it was meant to be. He is the fire to your steel. You are sharp enough to cut, and he is hot enough to burn, both of you are reckless to actually try, and you love it—you love him.
But if you had the chance—
His grip on your hair loosens, mouth hanging open, and then he leans in, before you can blink, pressing his lips to yours in an open-mouthed kiss, hot and messy, lips slipping and teeth clashing. He kisses sloppily down your neck to your collarbone, teeth catching skin, and then he drags his mouth back to yours. He does it again, and again, and again.
He muffles a pitched moan into your mouth, and it catches on something close to a whine. He is mumbling something, the same thing you spoke: avy jorrāelan, avy jorrāelan, avy jorrāelan, avy jorrāelan. He says it like a prayer, desperate and reverent all at once—over and over and over again, through gasps and groans and whimpers, muffled into your mouth, against your skin.
His grip on your hair and waist tightens, and he pulls you down on his cock, fucking his hips up into you for one last reckless thrust as he spills his seed deep inside of you with a choked noise, pretty face twisting as his eyes knock back and his jaw falls slack.
You shudder against him when you feel him fill you, cum pumping deep inside of you, so much of it that you can feel the excess dribbling out of you, smearing on your thighs. You’re hardly even able to kiss him back when he finally brings his lips back to yours, breath ragged as he drags his tongue across the back of your teeth, sliding it lazily against yours. You sink into him, a pleasant, boneless feeling settling into you, one arm slinking around his waist while the other entangles with his hair as the two of you come down from your high, sharing the same air, the same warmth, unwilling to unwrap yourselves from one another.
You do not know how much time has passed by the time you finally speak, but the sun has set, and the stars glitter through the night sky, and you finally ask the question that has been bothering you for a fortnight now:
“What brought all this up? About going back to Westeros?” you ask quietly after a moment, carding your fingers through his silvery hair. Aerion is still panting, eyes half-glazed over as he buries his flushed face into your chest. “Hm?”
“I… I have been in correspondence with my father,” Aerion says after a long moment, tongue darting out to wet his lips as he pulls himself together. You knew this already from your harbor brats and courtesans, but you hum anyway as though it is new knowledge, ignoring the pit in your stomach. “I am sure you have heard of the fever spreading through the Seven Kingdoms.”
“I have,” you agree after a moment, fingers stilling briefly in their steady movements as you wait for him to continue. It is hard not to hear about it when all of Essos has closed its ports to their neighbors across the Narrow Sea. From what you hear, half of the folks in their major cities are succumbing to the sickness; a strong man could wake up healthy in the morning and die by evening.
“My grandfather and two of my cousins have come down with it,” Aerion says quietly after a moment, and you’re grateful he doesn’t see the way your eyes slide shut in shame, as you remember what you’d been spiraling in paranoia about a fortnight ago. His kin is dying, and you thought he was sending ravens to betray your trust. “The maesters do not think they’ll live through the moon, and my uncles Aerys and Rhaegel are in the Red Keep too—if the worst comes to pass and they all succumb to the fever, then my father will have to bring me home when the ports reopen. It could be months from now, it could be next week.”
You do not know how to respond to this. You have never been good at comfort. “I see,” you say after a moment, voice soft. “I’m sorry to hear about your grandfather and cousins. Were you close?”
Aerion scoffs softly into your skin. “No,” he mutters. “My grandfather and grandmother always preferred Uncle B—” He falters over the name, but then clears his throat and continues. “—Uncle Baelor and his sons. After what happened in Ashford, well, they could hardly stand to look at me and my father. They blamed us for Baelor’s death, even if they wouldn’t say it out loud.”
There is something odd in his voice as he says it, as though it is only a front of indifference that he’s putting up, as though it bothers him more than he’s letting himself accept, but you do not call him on it.
Instead, you ask, “And your cousins? Were you close to them?”
“No,” he says immediately, and then pauses. He says again, with less certainty, “No.”
His fingers tighten slightly where they rest against you, like he’s searching for something to do with them. You do not respond yet, because he sucks in a breath as though he has more to say, but doesn’t know how to push it out.
“They’re Baelor’s sons. Valarr and Matarys,” he continues after a moment. He adds bitterly, “Everything I was supposed to be, according to my father.”
His throat spasms as he swallows. “Matarys—he is younger. He did not take to combat or jousting. I do not see much of him. We are not close. Valarr—” he starts, and then huffs a quiet breath against your skin. “Valarr is always around, always doing what is expected of him. The perfect prince. The perfect son. My grandfather adores him. My father—” He cuts himself off, jaw tightening as he lays his forehead on your shoulder. “Everyone does.”
You hum, just so he knows you’re listening.
“I speak to him,” he admits, quieter now, like it’s something he doesn’t particularly enjoy admitting. “Spoke to him. More than the others. We wrote to each other when my family left for Summerhall after the rebellion, and sparred often when we visited King’s Landing. I thought—he did not write to me after Ashford, when I was sent here. Did not speak to me after the trial. I almost died—nearly bled out on the tourney field, almost had my skull crushed by that oaf of a hedge knight, and he did not even bother to—no one bothered to—I—it does not matter. I do not wish to speak of this.”
You want to ask him about the Ashford Tourney, curious to hear what actually happened. Rumors have crossed the Narrow Sea, of course: Prince Maekar’s mad son invoked an ancient blood trial to cull the line of succession, that he meant to cut his way through kin and rival alike beneath the guise of honor, that he laughed when he learned his father struck a killing blow to his uncle. You have never been one to put stock in rumors—there are countless that follow you and the reason for your exile—but there’s always some level of truth to them.
But Aerion’s voice is strained, and his fingers have gone still against you, so you do not press. Your fingers resume their slow path through his hair—it is longer now, six moons ago, it was cropped short to his ears, but now the silver brushes past his shoulders, soft, silky strands that you could spend hours toying with. He breathes out against your skin, uneven at first, then slower, as though trying to regain some control over himself.
“It does not matter,” he repeats again, hands curling against you, forehead dropping to your shoulder. “I do not care about them. I do not care if they send ravens, and I do not care if they drag me back or leave me here to rot.”
He is lying. You can hear it in his voice, feel it in the way his grip on your waist tightens, the way his fingers tremble despite ardent attempts to still them. Your eyes slide shut.
He lifts his head from your shoulder so that he can look at you, and your hand slides from the back of his head to his face, thumbs absently stroking the faint scars that line his cheeks. Usually, he would turn his head away or bat your hands, but now, he lets you, leaning into your hand slightly, like the touch steadies him, like he needs it more than he wants to admit. His eyes slide shut for a moment at the contact, lashes resting against flushed skin as he lets out a heavy sigh.
“You will come with me,” he says again at last, forcing his eyes back open so that he can look up at you. “You will. We will do it here, if we must, if that’s what will convince you—blood and fire. I do not care.”
His gaze searches yours with that stubborn, unmovable certainty that makes it impossible to argue with him properly. You exhale through your nose, not responding right away.
“Say it,” he adds, quieter now. “Say that you’ll come with me.”
He doesn’t need to speak the please that almost comes with the words.
Your lips part, and your fingers still against his face, the pads of your fingers brushing over the raised skin before your hand slides down to rest on the side of his neck. Your thumb glides along his pulse, feeling how it flutters unevenly beneath your touch.
If you had a chance to go home, but it would mean leaving him behind for good, would you take it?
You smile lightly—it is small, and it is tight at the edges. “I will. I’ll come with you.”
Summary: Fueled by the betrayal of your betrothed, you tumble into bed with the worst person you can think of- Aerion of House Targaryen. Whilst you may see it as a one time mistake, Aerion Brightflame does not.
Warnings: 18+, cheating (not by Aerion), vaginal fingering, Aerion calls reader a whore, biting with blood, slightly oc Aerion?, blood play, canon divergence, obsessive behaviour, slight dub-con, loss of virginity, hunting, canon typical violence, vaginal sex, no protection, unedited
Word Count: 10k+
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The air in the corridor was cooler than usual. With a shiver, you tucked your hands under your armpits after checking that you were quite alone, and began to make your way to the hall for dinner.
Ashford Meadows was different to your home. Grayer, colder, busier. It seemed an unusual time to hold a tourney until you had found out it was Lady Gwin Ashford’s birthday. Lord Ashford himself had invited your family down to join in on the celebrations and your elder brother, Leon, had been eager to join the lists.
It was rare you got to spend time with your family. Your elder brother Edwyn was the heir to your father’s title and, as such, the pair of them spent a great deal of time overseeing the land and renters. Leo, as a second son, was antsy and often busied himself on adventures that you could only dream of. Your sister Marian had been married some six months ago and you missed her dearly. When you had heard than she and her lord husband would also be in Ashford, you had been more than content to brave the long ride down just to see her.
And then there was the matter of your betrothal to Lord Frey’s son, Owen.
You hummed to yourself as you navigated the dark corridors, slippers padding along the stone floor. The only sign of life you could hear was from yourself. There was a good chance that you had gotten yourself turned around so you stopped and began to retrace your steps.
The pair of you had met at your sister’s wedding and both Lord Frey and your own father had been delighted at the way you seemed to draw together. Owen Frey was handsome enough, and not unkind, and he knew all the right things to say. When your father had told you of the potential for an arrangement, you had agreed without really thinking about it.
Owen Frey seemed a sensible enough man, and you certainly tried to be a sensible woman. Lord Frey was said to be an honorable and loyal man, and he and his wife genuinely seemed to care for one another. You hoped that with them as an example, Owen would also come to care for you as a husband should.
You paused, huffing a breath as you scanned your environment. It all looked the same. You were just about to turn on your heel again when you heard something ahead. Some kind of scuffling, and a laugh.
Pressing your lips together, you debated turning around. But by now you were likely already late for dinner and your father would not be pleased. Not when the Ashfords were such accommodating hosts – and not when the Targaryens were also staying.
With a nervous breath, you made your way forward and peeked around the corner. Immediately you sucked in a breath, clapping your hand over your mouth as you registered what was before you.
At first you saw only two lovers entwined. Hands beneath shifts and unbuttoned trousers and choked gasps. Then you recognised the clothes on the woman – a household servant of the Ashfords. You cringed at the way she scratched down the male’s back, moaning into his neck as his hands did something down the front of her dress.
You were not ignorant to the ways of man and woman. Well, not entirely, anyway. But you knew enough to know that it was incredibly bold of the pair to be so intimate so out in the open. You stifled a laugh and turned to dip away – and then you heard it.
“Oh, Owen, please!”
You stalled, mouth popping open with a silent ‘oh’. Shaking, you peered round the wall once more, just to confirm. Neither of the pair had spotted you. This time you saw what you had been previously blind to. The sword at the man’s hip, the Frey sigil on the pommel. The hair, an unassuming shade of brown, that only now you recognised. The man’s hand moved to grip the girl’s hip and you saw the rings adorning his fingers.
You stayed for only a moment longer, a headache forming between your brows. You did not confront them. Instead, you raced away, as quietly as you could, turning blindly down corridors until you bumped into a maid who was, by chance, looking for you.
You trailed after her until she reached the dining room, slipping by her as she held the door open for you. Your father stood to greet you and you heard yourself explaining that you had been lost. So silly of you! Your father laughed boisterously and made some joke about you being distracted due to your engagement.
“For a moment, daughter, we thought you had snuck away with Owen,” he chuckled, “Lord Frey told us the boy is ill.”
Baelor Targaryen offered you a polite smile as he responded to your father. Distracted once more, your father sat down and began conversing with the heir. Feeling that all attention was once again off of you, you made your way to the table and found yourself a seat.
You sat down at your brother’s side without looking up. It was only after your brother had pushed a steaming plate in front of you that you glanced about. You found yourself squeezing at your utensils, something hot and uncomfortable brewing in your stomach as you picked at your beef.
After a particularly vicious stab, you set your cutlery down. Tucking your hands beneath the table, you squeezed at your thighs until you were sure you drew blood. Your eyes stayed dry. You searched yourself for despair, for sadness, and instead found red hot fucking fury.
A shiver wracked through you and finally you looked up. Aerion Targaryen met your gaze. He did not blink as he stabbed a hunk of beef and brought it to his mouth. He chewed it nicely but his eyes were anything but.
You knew about Brightflame. About his propensity for anger and cruelty. You had made a game of avoiding him all week, despite the fact your family took meals with his almost daily. And now, with him sitting across from you, this was the closest you had ever been.
It must be exhausting, you thought, to be so angry all the time. You could feel your own righteous rage swirling in your chest, taking violent swipes at your heart every time you attempted to push what you had seen from your mind.
Aerion stopped chewing and stared openly. You blinked as you realised your lips had curled in something like a snarl. Your anger burned hotter than you knew what to do with. You slouched back in your chair, ignoring the way your brother coughed at your ill manners, and stared right back.
It was stupid. You knew that but you did not look away. Let him be cruel, you thought, let him spit and curse at you for your disrespect. You discovered that you anger enough to return the fire. It needed to go somewhere, did it not?
Your brother stilled, hand finding yours beneath the table and squeezing in warning. And still, you did not move. To your surprise, it was Aerion that moved.
He cleared his throat and set his fork down. He leaned forward and you readied yourself for the fall out of your disrespect.
“Woman,” he said slowly, “what is your name?”
Your brother nudged you to answer. Distantly, you wondered if Owen remembered your name. If you thought about you at all as he fumbled with the maid girl in the corridor, where anyone could come across them. Did he feel guilt as he humiliated you? As he made you look like a foolish, sheltered girl?
“You do not recall my name,” you said slowly, “despite the fact that our families have dined together all week?”
Your brother choked on his wine. Aerion’s eyes widened, something chaotic and wild fluttering in his pupils. It looked like fire.
“I do not,” he answered just as slowly, chin dipping as he waited for your response.
You should tread carefully. You should apologise. You should lower your gaze and speak only when spoken to. You should pretend you never saw Owen and the girl and marry him anyway, settle for a life long of betrayal and disappointment.
“Then I do not wish to tell you,” you hissed, slamming your palms to the table as you shot up out of your chair. All eyes landed on you. “Father, I am unwell. I wish to retire.”
Aerion’s eyes made your skin burn. They drilled into the side of your face as you stoutly ignored him, dipping your head as your father stammered out an excuse and the host bid you well.
You walked quickly from the table, wrenching open the door before the guard could do it for you. Once alone in the corridor, the cool air brushing at your heated cheeks, a hysterical laugh bubbled in your throat. To Aerion and Leon, it probably looked as though you were running. But it was not fear that had driven you from that hall.
Alone in your room, you waited for the tears to come. When the hours dripped on, and the tears still did not come, you resorted to pinching your thighs until bruises welled beneath your nails. Your eyes remained dry.
The anger would not leave. Seething, you threw yourself across the bed, tempted to tear at the sheets like some wild animal. You did not feel like the lady you had been raised to be. But where had that gotten you? Reeling and thoroughly humiliated, you felt lost.
What Owen had done was not out of the ordinary. You were sure that even your father had fathered a bastard or two in the village. But it was not what you wanted for yourself, and as a fourth daughter, you had more choice than most.
Owen had seemed like the safe choice. The sensible choice. You were vexed at your own naivety, annoyed at your own surprise and subsequent disgust. You had been willing to settle for the first man that seemed reasonable and now you were stuck. Did a right choice even exist?
There would be no wedding. You were sure that you could get your father to agree once you told him of what you had witnessed. Your father would not take kindly to his daughter being embarrassed in such a way. The Freys were going to benefit from the wedding more than your family so it would be no great loss.
You sighed. So much had changed in so little time. The tourney was over tomorrow and you would be making your way back home by mid-afternoon. Once on the road, away from the Freys, you could tell your father what you had seen. He would send word of the cancelled arrangement to the Freys, all without you having to set eyes on Owen ever again.
As the sky began to darken further, a maid came in to light your candles and the fire in the grate. Idly you wondered if she was the one you had seen with Owen earlier. Once she had left, you sat up and went to the window, peering out with boredom.
Anger still kindled in your stomach. You rested a hand over your lowed belly, half expecting to feel heat.
The castle was quiet. The gardens below were quiet, too. Your father would kill you for walking around in the dark without a guard but the room was beginning to feel stifling.
When you were young, you had been an unruly child. Eager to escape your finishing lessons and play with your brothers or roam the grounds alone. Your father had assumed you had grown out of it and maybe you had.
Now, though, all you wanted was to leave the suffocating grip of the castle. Owen was under the same roof as you, somewhere, sleeping soundly or perhaps not alone. If he was going to flout the rules so blatantly, then so would you.
Like earlier, you got turned around several times before you eventually found your way outside. The ground was slightly damp from the earlier rain. You would have to clean your slippers before dawn.
You wound your way around bushes and flower beds until you found your way to a hidden alcove. The moon was bright enough to guide your path and you kept carefully out of sight of the castle. The wall was slanted enough for you to rest against it, almost sitting.
The air was soothing against your harried flesh. You closed your eyes and imagined it cooling further, eager to shake the weight of emotion from your chest.
The garden was enclosed in high walls. Beyond them you could hear raucous laughter and singing. The final night of the tourney was just as loud as the first. What would it be like to be among the smallfolk? To laugh, to dance and to drink as they did? As men did?
What would it be like to fuck as they did?
The word was so crass that you open your eyes and looked around, half expecting your father to appear and scold you for the mere thought. Satisfied that you were indeed alone, you settled back and closed your eyes once more.
It was hard to tell how much time had passed when you heard it. Your name, cutting through the careful silence you had cultivated, drawing a shocked yelp from your lips.
Aerion Brightflame stood five feet in front of you, hand on the pommel of his sword. The gesture was not threatening – or maybe it was. It was difficult to tell when everything about him was threatening.
Aerion silver hair was tousled, as though he’d been running his hands through it. His clothes appeared hastily thrown on, as though he had gotten ready for bed and then changed his mind. Perhaps the night air cooled his temper, too.
He repeated your name again, and you realised that someone else must have told him it. He looked smug and you wanted to smack him clean across the face for thinking he had won whatever stupid game it was that he thought you were playing.
“Do you make a habit of sneaking about alone?” he asked, stepping closer.
You squinted at him and did not reply. Was this the same man you had been avoiding all week? Whatever fear you had previously felt had been eaten away by fire and now fatigue as you slumped back against the wall.
Aerion’s lip curled at your silence; displeasure dotted in the creases of his face. You tilted your head a little. He was not unpleasant to look at, even when he scowled. He was handsome, you admitted, as all Targaryens tended to be.
“Answer me, woman,” he finally snarled, “or I’ll drag you before your father.”
Aerion had stepped closer. If you reached out a hand, you would be able to lay it on his chest.
What would it be like to fuck as they did?
It was a terrible idea. Downright stupid. When was the last time you had been stupid? Been anything other than the lady you were supposed to be?
You reached out and laid your hand on the dragon’s chest.
Aerion stilled. You met his eyes steadily, attempting to gauge interest. He did not stop you when you stepped closer, tilting your head until your eyes landed on his lips. They looked red and bitten already.
Aerion did not stop you when your hand slid up his chest and into the short hair at the base of the back of his neck. His lips parted and his breath puffed out when you tugged a little, curious. Owen had tugged that woman’s hair. It seemed like something that was done.
“Woman,” Aerion finally said, “are you stupid?”
“No,” you murmured, “but I think I’d like to be. Just for tonight.”
You were not sure who moved first; only that, one second you were thinking how similar a shade Aerion’s hair was to the moon, and the next you were pressed up tight in the alcove.
Aerion used his body to pin you there. At first, the kiss was clumsy and unpracticed. It was your first, after all. But you had always been a quick learner.
Aerion’s mouth was firm and unforgiving. Your lips parted under his like they had done so a thousand times, tongue reaching out to brush silkily along Aerion’s and earning a surprised groan. His hand came up to squeeze your face, holding you still as he had you how he liked.
It felt good. The kissing and the rebellion of it all. Throughout it all, your hands remained in his hair, tugging hard whenever he did something you particularly liked. He nipped at your lips, pulling sweet gasps and moans from them as he went. That push and pull of his tongue in your mouth, smoothing softly over yours – was that what fucking was like?
Aerion pulled away and you almost hissed. His hair looked messier than previously, the front of his clothes ruffled from where you had been pressed together. His lips were red and wet from the kiss and you watched as his tongue darted out and smoothed over them.
The anger had given away to something impossibly hotter. Something molten and desperate was welling in your core. It was nothing you had ever felt or even considered feeling when it came to Owen. You tilted your head back against the stone wall and waited for the prince to make a move.
“Foolish girl,” he finally said, dragging his eyes from where your breasts heaved against the ribbon of your dress. “Is that what you wanted? To act like a whore for the night? Are you satisfied, then?”
You laughed quietly, the sound ringing through the garden. “I think whores do a great deal more than kiss, my Prince.”
Before you could think too much, you reached down to rest your hand over the hard outline of Aerion’s manhood. He made a choked sound and jolted forward, no doubt surprised at your boldness. Instead of laughing at the shock on his face, you pressed your nose to his chest, seeking out the sliver of bared skin you had seen then.
And then you bit down. Hard.
Aerion groaned long and loud, hand coming up to grip the back of your head as he allowed you to sink your teeth into his flesh. It felt powerful. You did not relent until blood welled beneath your teeth, copper leaking onto your tongue as you laved it over his wounded flesh.
You kept your hand firmly on his cock, rubbing the heel of your palm over where you assumed the head was. Aerion’s grip grew tight before he let you go, chest heaving, staring down at you with blow pupils.
He said your name again, quietly this time, and with no mocking. His hands had fallen to grip your wrists but he let go of one, reaching up the place his palm over the spot you had bitten.
“And yet,” you sighed, “I still do not feel like a whore.”
You kept your mind switched off as your hands dropped and began tugging at the strings on his trousers. Your own core throbbed with every little move. It was different from the lazy self-exploration of yourself you had previously indulged in. Was this feeling normal or was it to do with the dragon before you?
“Fuck,” Aerion swore as you popped his cock from his trousers, the heated flesh pulsing in the cooler air.
It looked big – but that did not matter. You had no intention of taking it inside of yourself. Instead, you smoothed your palm over the head, collecting the wetness that had gathered there. You squeezed experimentally and smiled at the sound it produced from Aerion.
Aerion cursed again and then his hands were on you. You yelped as he held you firmly against the stone wall, damp rock pressing into your back, and began to ruck up your dress until it was fluffed around your waist. He kicked your legs apart and shoved his hand down the front of your garments until his fingers met the soft curls at the apex of your thighs.
This was not the plan. Not that there had been one in the first place – but this definitely was not it.
Aerion’s fingers met the soft, pillowy flesh on your cunt with little ceremony. His eyes were glued to your face, chest rising and falling swiftly as he parted you with his fingers and ran his index over the tight flesh of your hole.
“Even whores do not get this wet,” he growled, cupping your tender flesh. “Put your hand back on my cock. Now.”
You resented the bite in his voice but your mind was surprising gentle exploration of his fingers. Instead of sliding inside, they ventured up, up, until they met the soft ball of flesh that would surely make you lose your fucking mind.
Aerion buried his face in your neck, tongue licking over the exposed flesh as your hand found his cock and began to move. When he stopped, you stopped. You would not let him come away from having had more than you. You were determined to satisfy your earlier curiosity.
His fingers rubbed tight circles over your swollen flesh, faster and then slower. He rutted into your palm with hard thrusts, breath hissing in your ear as he approached his peak.
He was not the only one. You could feel your own fast approaching. For the first time, clarity began to clear your mind. You understood why Owen, why that girl, had gotten so caught up. Initially you had wanted to do this to experience what you felt you were missing out on, to be reckless as they had been. Now you felt the urge for control. The urge to prove that you were better than them.
Still you allowed Aerion’s fingers to rub you. There was no doubt that he knew what he was doing. His hips bumped yours as he fucked your hand, orgasm tearing through him in a way that made you dizzy and thirsty for your own.
You yelped when Aerion’s head bent down, nuzzling into the pillowy tops of your breasts before he bit down. Hard enough that you were sure he immediately drew blood. You whimpered and yanked at his hair, teetering on the edge of your own orgasm.
If I go over the edge, you thought, I do not know if I can come back.
With surprising strength, you shoved Aerion away. Your dress came tumbling back down and the whisper of fabric over your skin was enough to almost have you orgasming anyway. Unprepared, Aerion staggered before righting his stance.
His still hard cock was still peeking out of his breeches and you tore your eyes away before you abandoned all common sense. You could feel his seed on your hand, warm and sticky. There was blood smeared all over his mouth and when he snarled at you, you could see it in his teeth.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he barked. “You are not done here – we are not done here.”
You breathed heavily and swayed a little on your feet. You could see your own arousal on Aerion’s fingers, glittering in the moonlight. It looked rather pretty.
Aerion took a step forward and it shook you out of your reverie. Before he could say anything else (or use his fingers and command you to stay) you tore past him and ran inside. In some miracle, perhaps as reward for your restraint, you found your way back to your room in a matter of minutes. If Aerion called your name, you did not hear it.
The next morning was nothing memorable. You were beyond tired and still mildly irritated, but glad to be rid of the place. You had stayed up late cleaning your shoes and the conspicuous wet spot the prince had left on your dress. If the maids noticed anything as they packed your trunks, they did not say.
Your father was in a good mood. It was a good thing to spent time with the heir to the kingdom; it reflected well on the house. You smiled blandly as he and your brother Leon recounted their days, commenting on who had done well and the favourites.
The Targaryens had supposed to have been leaving early, but as you and your family made their way down, you discovered that they had not. You kept your gaze averted and curtsied when necessary, thanking Lord Ashford for his hospitality and Balor and his family for their company.
When you reached Aerion, you curtsied as before. Aerion surprised you by lifting your hand and pressing a soft kiss to your inner wrist. You felt his tongue on your skin and bit your lip, praying that your father would not notice.
Aerion pulled back and smiled. Your mouth dropped open. Your blood was still smeared across his lips and teeth.
Within days of arriving home, your father had contacted Lord Frey and told him the engagement was off. He was horrified by what you had reported. His poor darling girl, witness to such depravity!
As he had ranted and raved, you had subtly tugged at the high collar of your dress. You had taken to wearing such high collars and avoiding help from the maids since arriving home. The mark that Aerion had left on you was shocking. Blue and purple tinged with red. It was still sore and throbbed when touched firmly, which you did often.
You had managed to muster tears in your eyes and a tremble in your voice as you recounted the events of that evening. Perhaps you exaggerated a little. It did not matter; your father was thoroughly on your side.
Some days later, after some back and forth with Lord Frey, your father told you that Owen had left The Twins and was no doubted headed here, to your home. Your father had almost had an aneurysm at the sheer assumption of hospitality.
“Do not worry, father,” you had patted his hand, “perhaps he will come to apologise. I will hear him out, but I have no intentions of marrying him.”
“You are kind, daughter,” he nodded, “and wise. You deserve more than foolish young boys.”
Wise. You had nearly laughed. A week ago, you had been the stupidest person in the entire seven kingdoms. Stupider now, perhaps, since you did not regret it.
A week and a half after the tournament, you were sitting in the library when you heard the sound of a party arriving. You set your book down and straightened your spine before marching from the library and heading for the hall.
You paused outside, sharing a look with your ladies’ maid when you heard your father’s laughter from within. That was certainly not the reception you had envisioned for Owen Frey. Confused, you opened the door and stepped within, ready for an explanation.
Your father was stood there, arm in arm, with Maekar Targaryen. And to the left of him, tall and polished, was his son, Aerion.
You froze. For a moment you debated edging your way back out of the room but then your father caught sight of you.
“Ah!” he threw up his arms and came to grab your arm, pulling you further into the dragon’s nest. “My Princes, you remember my youngest daughter?”
“Certainly,” Aerion interjected before his father could speak. He dipped his head, mocking. “My Lady.”
You assumed you responded appropriately. You could not be sure. Maekar nodded stiffly, something like curiosity in his eyes as he looked you up and down. How much had Aerion told his father? Was he, in turn, going to tell your father?
“Why are you here?” you asked bluntly.
Your father said your name, surprised. “You did not know? I invited them here whilst we were all at the tourney.”
“Yes,” Aerion smiled, “I am here to hunt.”
The ground felt like it was dropping out from beneath you. Even the air felt thin. Whilst you swayed on your feet, vehemently regretting that night, your father chattered on to Maekar.
He had no fucking idea what he had agreed to. And, truthfully, neither did you.
Unwilling to leave your father and the princes alone, you found yourself getting ready for a hunt. You yanked on your riding dress and, once your front was covered, turned to allow your maid to lace up the back.
You did not know what Aerion had told Maekar, nor what his plans were with you father. You were worried that, at the first chance he had, Aerion would tell him of your indulgent and careless behaviour. Why else would he come all this way?
It seemed insane that he would do all this just to torment you. Or perhaps it would, if he were anyone else. Out of all the boys to fool around with. . .
You descend from your room and head for the stables. Yanking on your riding gloves, you find the stall of your horse, Silver. She was a precious thing and fickle with anyone other than you. You smoothed your hand over her mane and waited for the stable boy to arrive.
Aerion arrived first.
You scowled at the flash of silver hair you saw from the corner of your eye and did not bother greeting him. It was not him you feared; it was what he might tell you father. You should probably consider attempting to butter him up. Your lips thinned at the idea and you continued to ignore him.
Heat was radiating from his body as he stepped up bedside you, bumping your arm with his. Without asking, he reached out to pet Silver. You hoped she would bite him. Instead, she huffed and leaned down to nose at his palm. You frowned.
Distracted, you did not notice Aerion’s other hand creeping up toward the collar of your dress. You squeaked when you felt his fingers on the hem, yanking it down until the ugly spot he had left on your upper breast came into view.
The flesh was still unhealed. Whenever you looked closely in the mirror, you could still see the outline of Aerion’s teeth.
“Good,” he hummed, “yours has not healed either.”
He did not let go of your clothing, instead leaning closer as though he might bite again. Outraged, you slapped the prince across his face. Aerion let go at once, hand coming to rest on the quickly darkening flesh of his cheek.
Your chest was heaving, eyes wide and blinking furiously. You wanted to shout, to slap him again, to demand the real reason as to why he had come. You had finally been getting back to normalcy when he and his father had shown up.
You snarled still as Aerion reached out again, raising your hand as though you might strike him once more. This time he did not try to tear at your clothes. He tugged them back into the rightful position, brushing the wrinkles from your bosom as though his fingers were not leaving trails of fire behind as they went.
“I knew you had fire in you,” he finally said, brushing his fingers over your bared collarbones.
Before you could respond, there was the sound of someone clearing their throat. You whirled around, horrified to see Maekar waiting by the stable doors. Aerion did not seem alarmed. He met his fathers gaze and inclined his head before going to his own horse.
Maekar did not say anything. His gaze bounced from his son and then back to you, as though he was putting something together. He did not speak and seemed surprised. Had he seen you slap his son? It was nothing he had not deserve.
Markar must have agreed because he offered you a soft nod and then turned his attention to Aerion. You went back to Silver and pretended that neither of them were there. The two of them were having some kind of hushed conversation and you could not make out what they were saying.
Eventually your father and the stable boy arrived, and the hunt began.
Your father and Maekar rode ahead, crossbows hanging by their sides. It was the most serious you had seen your father. Neither of the men spoke, which you preferred.
Aerion rode at your side, which you did not prefer. He had his own crossbow but seemed to have little interest in it. His gaze was firmly fixed on the side of your head. Occasionally he would come close and kick softly at your calves, or reach out to pull your hair when he knew neither of your fathers were looking.
One particularly hard pull had you swearing and slapping at his hands. Aerion laughed quietly so as not to draw the attention of your fathers. Yours was particularly oblivious. Maekar, on the other hand, kept glancing over his shoulder, eyes sliding from Aerion to you. He seemed bewildered. Perhaps you were not the only one who did not know what Aerion was up to.
After several hours with no sign of game, you began to wish you had remained home. Let Aerion say what he would. It was not worth you distress.
Suddenly everyone seemed to still. You shivered at the sudden change. Even Aerion was silent. You peered out into the dense forest, trying to see whatever it was that had captured everyone’s attention. The only sign that anything was there was a slight rustling in the bush, and then a dull ‘thunk’ as Aerion fired from his crossbow quicker than you thought possible. Then a thud, as whatever it was hit the ground.
Aerion dismounted and disappeared into the brush, returning with an impressively large stag. Your brows raised at the clean shot. It was something even your brothers would have struggled with. Aerion held it up by the antlers and stared in your direction. You smoothed your expression and looked away as though you were bored. You did not want to encourage further ridiculousness.
You stayed on Silver as the men tied the poor creature between their horses and began to head home. Bloodlust satiated, Aerion mostly left you alone, and for that you were thankful.
At dinner, Aerion had the honor of the first serving. It had been divided into manageable chunks, cooked and seasoned in the preferred way of your guests. The scent of venison was thick on the air and you were hungry after the ride.
Your eldest brother Edwyn joined you at dinner. His lady wife was unwell and remained abed. If he was surprised by the royal visitors, he did not show it. He settled into pleasant conversation with your father and Maekar. To his credit, he attempted to include Aerion but the prince seemed determined to make him uncomfortable.
Rather than take the first cut for himself, Aerion slid it your way. All the men at the table went silent. Aware of the gaze of your father and brother, you smiled sweetly and acted surprised.
“For the lady,” Aerion said, smirking at your obvious discomfort.
The meat was rare and bloody. Not your favourite but you would manage. Aerion tucked in to his own with little fanfare, blatantly ignoring his fathers’ eyes. Greasy blood dripped over his lips and he chased the flavour with his tongue, never breaking eye contact with you.
Conversation resumed and you ate your own food whilst wishing for the ground to open up beneath you. Did Aerion even have to say anything? One look at him and your father would surely learn of your behaviour that night. Aerion was hardly subtle.
For the first time since they had arrived, you wondered about Owen. He had been on his way here, had he not? You cringed inwardly at the thought of Owen and Aerion interacting. Not that Aerion would care about Owen, but during the Ashford tournament, Owen had been practically tripping over himself trying to impress the Targaryen guests. You dreaded to think of enduring that behaviour within your own home.
Aerion chose that moment to kick you under the table. Your knee bounced against the underside, drawing the attention of everyone once more. You laughed uneasily and apologised, waving away your father’s concerns.
You waited until all attention was back on the food, and then you kicked Aerion right back.
The next few days went by in a similar fashion. Maekar continued to hunt with your father, returning empty handed most days, and Aerion remained at the castle with you.
Everywhere you went, he was there. More often than not, the pair of you ended up alone. The servants were scared of him and you could not blame them. You overheard him barking at them on several occasions, and he had even thrown something at one of the maids who had come to wake him one morning.
Miraculously, none of these incidents seemed to make their way back to either of your fathers. If the staff trembled when they refilled Aerion’s cup, they did not notice. Neither did Aerion, for his attention was usually fixated on you.
You kept waiting for that temper to turn on you but it never did. So, you continued to bite back, though not literally, and convinced yourself you were doing it on behalf of all the servants.
After several days, you realised that the only thing that seemed to genuinely irritate him was you ignoring him. So, naturally, that was exactly what you did.
No longer did you glance up when he entered the room. At mealtimes, you arranged yourself carefully in your chair so that his legs could not reach you. You had your ladies’ maid, Silena, wind your hair into intricate braids so that there was nothing he could easily pull.
Aerion’s fury built. You pretended not to notice when he sniped at the servants and scowled at your father. Maekar, eager to soothe over any tensions caused by his wild son, was always quick to distract your father with conversation.
One day, Aerion went out hunting with Maekar and your father. Once again, he presented you with the first cut of meat that he had caught. You thanked him politely and nibbled at it as though dissatisfied. Aerion jerked about in his chair as though he might jump up and start shouting.
Would that be enough to get your father to send him away? Probably not. You were beginning to understand that Targaryen princes got away with everything.
Four days trickled past, and there was still no sign of Owen. Not that you thought of him often. A raven had arrived from Lord Frey, asking if his son had arrived. It was odd and you had felt sorry for the man, worried for his son. No doubt he would turn up soon, but not so soon that you had to bear with him and Aerion under the same roof.
On the fifth day, you were thoroughly exhausted. You had begun to avoid Aerion as much as possible – and it mostly wasn’t. The man seemed to have eyes on you at all time.
He had spent most of the day with you in the library. When he wasn’t thumbing through books, he was digging his dagger into the table that had been in your family for generations. His blatant disrespect was unsurprising and you had snuggled further in your chair and tried to pretend like you were actually reading the words on the pages.
After an hour or two of the stifling silence, Aerion had got to his feet and torn the book from your hands. He had torn into it, throwing pages over you like confetti. You had been furious and ready to deliver another swift smack to his cheek. A servant had entered that time, saving you from breaking your silence, and you had both gone down for lunch.
Your father was not the most observant man, but even he could see that you were beyond taxed by the end of the day.
Rather than indulging in evening drinking and games, he suggested that you retire early and have a bath drawn by the staff. You were more than happy to do just that.
You lounged on your bed with a book you did not read as the servants prepared your tub. The water was steaming hot and inviting. Once it was full, they scattered petals into the water and added drops of some scented oil that had you relaxing almost instantly.
Your ladies’ maid waited to help you undress but, as you had every day since returning, you waved her off.
“I’d like some time to myself, Silena,” you smiled softly, “I’ll call for you once I am finished.”
You waited until the door was shut, and then several minutes more for good measure, before undressing. You tried to avoid looking at the bruise on the swell of your breast. Your eyes were drawn there automatically.
Pressing a hand over it, you hissed at the memory of pain and ignored the sparks it sent between your legs. Piling your hair on your head, you arranged it until you were satisfied it would not get wet. Once you were completely bare, you stepped into the tub and settled down, letting your head fall back against the high edge.
The water was verging on boiling, as you liked it. It was milky from the oils and soap. You grabbed a washcloth from the edge of the tub and began to run it over your shoulders and behind your ears.
You let your mind go blank as you cleansed yourself several times over until all you could smell was lavender and something almost smoky. Once more you sat back, content to relax until the water turned cold.
The sound of the door opening had you sighing and dipping lower into the water to hide your bruise. “Silena, I have no need of you yet –“
“But I have need of you.”
You shot up straight, sloshing water over the edge of the bath. Aerion let the door fall shut, reaching behind himself to click the lock into place. His eyes were dark as the fixed on you in the tub and you shivered, cold despite the hot water.
“I’ll scream,” you warned him.
“I’ll tell your father what we did together,” he countered.
He toed off his shoes as though these were his rooms and began to make his way towards you. You had no weapon, nothing with which you might fight him off with, and he seemed to know it.
You dared not take your eyes off of him. When he settled on his knees next to the tub, you became painfully aware of your naked state. It was strange; he had had his fingers on you, almost inside of you, and yet he had not seen you. Not really.
Aerion seemed to be thinking the same thing. He seemed displeased at the milky state of the water. It concealed you from him. You drew your knees up to your chest and waited for him to speak.
Aerion dipped his fingers into the water and hissed. “Hot.”
“I like it that way,” you defended. Then you shut your lips tightly, wishing you had not spoken at all.
Aerion smiled and touched your bare knee beneath the water. You tried to jerk away but he gripped you tight, nails biting into your softened flesh. “You’ve been avoiding me.”
“I am not here to entertain you, prince.”
“I thought that, too, at the tournament,” he said, “but then you were so wonderfully entertaining in the garden that night. I want more. Have wanted more, since then, and yet you deny what was once so freely given. Why?”
Your mouth felt dry. “I am a lady.”
“And yet,” he repeated, “you betrayed your betrothed that night, with me, didn’t you?”
You stilled, barely registering his words before they hit you full force. “He betrayed me first!” you snarled, sending a wave of water over the edge of the tub.
Aerion squeezed your knee tighter, ignoring the water creeping its way up his sleeve. It soaked into the golden embroidery that was pattered there, darkening the fabric until it looked like it had been flecked with blood.
“Betrayed you?” Aerion repeated. “Vengeful little thing.”
“He is no longer my betrothed,” you added weakly. “I told my father about what he did.”
“But he was coming here to see you regardless,” Aerion said, mostly to himself.
“How do you know about that?” you asked, finally tearing his hand from your knee. Blood welled from the indents he had left in your flesh with his nails. You shivered at the sting as the warm water washed over them.
Aerion’s eyes dropped low, searching for that mark he had left on your skin over two weeks ago. Then they dipped lower still, fixing on the tips of your breasts that were barely visible beneath the water.
He let out a muted groan, dragging his eyes upward until they were once again on your face. “I believe I said that we were not finished.”
It took you a moment to remember what he was talking about. “Aerion, no.”
“You think you know what you want,” he murmured, “and maybe you did, all those weeks ago. But your mind has become clouded. Allow me to clear it for you.”
You gasped when Aerion leaned over the tub, hands grasping your shoulders as he pulled you forward and arranged you to his liking. He had you with your back to him, against the tub, allowing him to peer over your shoulders and down your body.
You tried to move forward but he would not allow it. You stopped moving when you felt his teeth at your neck. If he left a mark there, it would be visible to everyone, including your father.
“Good girl,” he praised. “Let me finish what we started.”
Beneath the water, Aerion cupped your breasts with a firmness that had you whimpering. You could feel his warm breath puffing over the shell of your ear and you squirmed, searching yourself for your earlier reluctance. It was not there.
When Aerion rubbed his thumbs over your nipples, you nearly dissolved into the bath water. He kneaded them gentle, rolling the tips between his fingers in a way that had you gripping at his arms and shoving your face against his shoulder.
One hand abandoned your breast, instead snaking down and over the swell of your stomach, searching for the wetness between your legs. You let your thighs fall open without a second thought, eager for that feeling from those weeks ago.
Aerion sucked in a breath. “Sweet girl.”
He pressed a kiss to your cheek at the same time as his fingers made contact with your aching clit. This was dangerous, you tried to remind yourself, for this you might do anything.
Like before, Aerion’s fingers began to propel you toward orgasm quicker than you typically could alone. Your clit seemed more than eager for whatever he wanted to give and each touch felt devastatingly soft, as though he was punishing you for not allowing him to give you this back in the garden.
Distantly, you wondered if he was trying to prove something. You could not find it in you to care, so long as he kept doing whatever it was that he was doing.
You almost didn’t notice when his fingers began to slide lower until one was nudging at your entrance. It was not something you typically did alone. You were always too worried of spilling your own blood. You opened your mouth to protest but, before you could, Aerion had you spread apart on his fingers as he gently fucked you with his hand.
You choked on your breath. “Aerion, please – you can’t –“
“Shhh,” he whispered, surprisingly tender as he took you apart. “Do not worry. Just feel.”
All it took was one swipe of his thumb over your clit. You had to plaster your hands over your mouth to mask the sound that was spilling from your lips. Aerion did not stop and instead continued to stroke you through your orgasm, to the point of painful sensitivity. He did not stop until you physically pulled his hands from you, and even then he seemed reluctant.
You sagged against the tub, entirely breathless and shaken. Aerion grabbed your face with one hand, turning you this way and that, as though he were admiring his own work. You waited for some snarky comment.
Aerion hummed to himself, letting his hand drop until it was hovering over the bite mark. His bite mark. He did not touch it, instead he pulled back and got to his feet, stepping somewhat unsteadily away from the tub.
“I shall see you tomorrow,” he said. “Never ignore me again.”
With that, he unlocked the door and slipped out as though he was never there. The only sign that he had been was a churning in your stomach and an ache between your thighs.
Once you were sure he was gone, you dunked your head under the water and did not come up until your lungs were screaming for air.
Despite his words, you did not see Aerion the next day. Nor the one after that. You father, brother and Maekar also seemed to have disappeared. Uneasy, you assumed they had some official business that needed seeing to. Maybe the princes had even left.
No, you knew they hadn’t. It felt silly to say but you could feel Aerion, still lurking in your home, despite staying out of sight. Fire seemed to burn hotter with him in the building.
At night you found yourself sweaty and cross, abandoning your blankets and tossing and turning until you were able to pass out. You never slept for long.
On the second day, after hiding in the library and dining alone, you felt unusually anxious. All your clothes felt tight and ill fitting. Had Aerion told your father about the bath? It was all you could think about all day. You picked at your food and didn’t read a thing until it was time for bed, at which time you went up alone and dismissed Selina in favour of dressing yourself.
You tugged on a sleep gown, relishing the soft loose fabric in comparison to your day clothes. The fire in the grate was out and you felt too warm to fetch Silena so you left it alone, allowing the candles lit to guide the way to your bed.
You shoved all the sheets down until they were not touching you. Then you positioned yourself like an X, trying to cool down and banish the day’s anxieties from your brain. You had to stay in control. It would not do to let your guard down when Aerion was around.
Sleep would not come. Even when you trained yourself to stay perfectly still, taking even and deep breathes, it seemed to taunt you from the darkest corners of your room. Eventually the candles went out, leaving you in almost complete darkness.
The moon still shone in through your window. It allowed you to see vague shapes and the outline of your own body. You squeezed your eyes shut and begged the seven for sleep.
Just when you were ready to jump up and begin lighting candles, there was a noise. For a moment you did not recognise it for what it was. Your heart shot into your throat as you realised it was the sound of your door opening and shutting, then the lock falling into place.
You remained still, tense and silent as you peered into the darkness, heart hammering in your chest. It was not until the moonlight glinted off of something silver that you relaxed.
“What the fuck are you doing?” you breathed, sitting up as Aerion approached your bed. “You can’t be in here.”
“Scared?” he asked, settling himself on the edge of your bed.
“This is highly improper,” you warned, eyes bulging from your head as Aerion began to shed his clothes as though the room were his own.
He did not respond. He continued shucking his clothes until only his braies remained, the outline of his cock already half hard between his legs. You swallowed and commanded yourself not to stare. Eventually he shed those too.
“You can’t be in here,” you repeated weakly.
Aerion’s hand found your ankle in the darkness. You yelped as he yanked you, your back hitting the mattress as he dragged you further down the bed. You were near winded as he climbed on top of you, knees on either side of your hips as he rested his weight softly on your stomach.
It wasn’t until he began to snatch at your wrists that you remembered yourself and began to struggle. With a yell, you set your teeth to the first line of flesh you saw.
Your teeth sank into his bicep much like they had sank into his chest all those weeks ago. Blood trickled into your mouth and you bit harder.
Aerion’s hand came to cradle the back of your hand. “That’s it, just like that.”
Immediately you let go, hissing up at him with bloodied teeth. “There is nothing sweet about this. Now get off.”
Aerion leaned down and licked the blood from your mouth, moaning every time you nipped at him with already bloodied teeth. It was insanity, madness, and it was making you unbearably fucking wet.
“My turn,” Aerion said, and then his teeth were burying into your neck so deeply that you faintly wondered if you would scar.
Your hips bucked upward, driving his cock into your stomach as he sucked at your neck, teeth pinching and tongue soothing as he went. You were done. There was no way you could cover whatever mark he had left this time. Had this been his plan all along?
When Aerion pulled away, there was blood smeared across his face just like before. More of it, even. He ran his fingers over the mark you had left and hissed, fisting his cock with his other hand.
“Enough with waiting,” he muttered, “I have been a patient man.”
You did not protest as Aerion shoved your night dress up until it was bunched under your armpits. You nearly moaned when he parted your thighs, baring you to him fully for the first time.
He pressed his fingers to your entrance and groaned. “So fucking hot. Are you sure you are not blood of the dragon?”
He ran his fingers through your arousal and brought them to his lips, letting your slick mingle with the blood before licking his fingers clean. Your cunt throbbed with each pass of his tongue over his fingers and it took you a moment to realise you were whimpering aloud.
“No matter,” he said, “you’ll have a dragon inside you, one way or another.”
Placing one hand on your stomach, Aerion used his other to notch his cock at your entrance. The heat coming off him was intense. Sweat beaded on your hairline as you tried to focus on the consequence, on why you should not be doing this, but your mind refused to focus on anything but the thick feel of Aerion sliding into you.
There was a flash of pain as he nudged up against something inside you. He gave you no time to adjust, instead thrusting forward and taking your maidenhead with little compassion. You winced at the bite of pain.
Aerion kept your thighs pinned wide to accommodate him. His eyes darted from your face to the obscene sight between your legs. His hips began to shift as he thrust in earnest. All thoughts of pain fell away as you became accustomed to the thickness of him.
Aerion Brightflame was fucking you and you were letting him.
Everyt ime your eyes fell shut he would stop until you were focused back on him. The wet sound of your union had your ears burning as you mewled beneath him, greedily chasing every little feeling he was introducing you to.
You could feel yourself twitching around his length as his nails dug into the meat of your thighs. The scent of sweat and sex was a heady thing, heavy on your tongue as Aerion fucked you steadily with deep thrusts of his cock.
Your jaw dropped open when his hand dipped between your legs, collecting blood there and bringing it to his chest, smearing it there as he gazed darkly down at you.
You watched as he smeared the blood in a line over his lips, and then as he reached down and made the same motion over yours. You could taste the copper and sweat and felt almost dizzy with the arousal that hit you.
Aerion was not finished. His hand went down again, this time with his thumb finding your clit. He wasted no time. He began rubbing in the way he had learned that you liked, driving you toward orgasm faster than you could keep up with.
Your thighs clenched around his hips, trying to slow him down, but he was relentless. Between the quick passes of his thumb and the way he was fucking you, you were helpless. Your orgasm splintered through you like physical thing, wiping your mind blank until all that tied you to earth was the cock breaking you open and the hands gripping your face.
“Yes, yes,” Aerion chanted, hips driving into yours with vigor. “Come around me, wife.”
His words made no sense and yet – your orgasm washed over you, stronger than ever, until you were left writhing beneath him on the bed. You recognised your own voice, begging for a break as Aerion wrang every drop of relief from you.
It was only then that his hips began to lose rhythm. He leaned down to press a sloppy kiss to your lips, tongue chasing the combination of blood, sweat and arousal that coated both your lips. You felt him moan into your mouth, felt his hips stutter as he emptied himself inside you.
You were still aware enough to know that it was a bad thing. Visions of yourself, unwed and with child, threatened to break the bliss. You tried to push Aerion off but he was having none of it.
“Be still,” he grumbled, arranging you in his arms until he had you pinned to his chest, cock still inside you. He pinched your ass when you would not stop moving.
“Aerion,” you cried, pushing at his chest. “You – you have ruined me! I could be with child –“
“Good,” he yawned, fingers pinching, “it will reflect well on me when you are with child in less than a year after the wedding.”
You paused, remembering his earlier words. “Wedding? I am not getting married, Aerion.”
“Oh, but you are,” he grinned, all sharp and poision, fitting his teeth to the mark he had already made on your neck. “You are to be a dragon’s bride. My bride.”
“My father would not allow it,” you said weakly, disbelieving.
“He already has,” Aerion bit down, “he will tell you of your good fortune tomorrow morning.”
“My father would not make me –“
“Make you?” Aerion repeated, pulling back slightly so that he could see your face. The movement reminded you that his cock was still very much inside you. “Who is he to refuse a dragon?”
“Besides,” he continued, “you are well suited to me, wife.”
“Wife,” you said numbly, shivering when Aerion tilted his hips and rubbed his cock against a particularly inviting place inside you.
“What do you think I came all this way for?” he smiled wolfishly. “Look how you blossom beneath me. My wife. Call me husband. I demand it.”
a/n - when the cookie is so good he stalks you across Westeros and his father is so tired of him that he goes along with it
I worked so hard on this 😭 please let me know if you enjoyed it! Every like, reblog and comment is deeply appreciated
whipped like a motherf***er!: a slang used to describe a person, almost always a man, who is extremely submissive, obedient, or subservient to their romantic partner
Characters: Duncan the tall, Baelor Targaryen, Lyonel Baratheon, Maekar and Aerion Targaryen
Warnings/notes: Wife!Reader, establish marriage, f!Reader, Aerion part lowkey may give of dark or yandere lol, spelling errors probs sorry made a few changes last minute-
Dunk
Dunk doesn’t even realize he’s whipped.
He’s just… enthusiastically embarrassingly eager to help you
“Dunk, could you—”
“Yes.”
“But I didn’t finish—”
“Still yes.”
Half the time you weren’t even asking him to do anything and others times it would be easier if someone else handled it
It did not matter to him, for Dunk is already halfway through doing it.
Moving furniture twice his size, doing things a simple hedge knight has no business doing, climbing things he absolutely should not be climbing and nearly knocking himself over trying to help.
It was honestly a sight.
This seven-foot wall of muscle, famous for breaking men in tourneys, carrying half your belongings like a pack mule, gently holding the end of your cloak so it wouldn’t drag through the mud, hovering nearby like a very large, very anxious guard dog ready to jump at any command.
………………………………………………………………………………………..
The camp was quiet in the early morning.
Mist still clung to the grass, and the small fire crackled low while Dunk sat on a log pulling off his boots.
Across from him, Egg sat cross-legged, concentrating intensely on a small wooden ball-and-cup toy.
The very toy Dunk had said he was “certainly not getting because it was stupid and a waste of coin.”
They had spent the morning training the horses for the tourney and stopped by the market after. Now leaving the remaining of the day for rest and recovery.
Behind them, the tent rustled.
Dunk’s head snapped toward it instantly.
Egg didn’t even look up from his toy.
“…You do realize you react faster to that tent moving than you do to someone drawing a sword.”
Dunk frowned.
“That… that ain’t true.”
“It is,” Egg said, trying to land the ball in the cup again. “If you reacted that fast when Ser Addam charged you, you wouldn’t have had that limp for a week.”
“Shut up,” Dunk muttered. “Or I’ll throw that thing as far as I can.” There was no real bark in his threat.
The tent flap opened.
You stepped out, wrapped in Dunk’s oversized cloak, hair messy from sleep, eyes still half-closed.
Dunk shot to his feet so fast he nearly gave himself whiplash.
“G’morning,” he said immediately, wearing that big, goofy smile you loved so much.
You smiled softly.
“Good morning, Dunk. Good morning, Aegon.”
Dunk immediately fumbled through his pouch nearly spilling all its contents.
“Oh! I got us biscuits and gravy for breaking fast. Reckon we can use the leftover sausage from last night and well be making your favorite meal.”
Your smile widened.
“’ I’ll make us some strawberry milk for the meal that'll be a nice end of the week treat”
Then your face fell slightly.
You remembered.
You had used the last of the milk a few days ago when Dunk couldn’t sleep.
“It’s alright,” you said quickly, smiling again. “We can just have straw—”
You blinked.
Dunk was already sitting back down, pulling his boots on again.
“My love?”
“Start without me,” he said, tying the laces. “Shouldn’t be gone long.”
Egg’s head snapped up in disbelief as the seven-foot knight immediately began striding back toward the road that led to town that they just came from.
“…Ser.”
Dunk paused.
“You’re walking all the way back to the market… for milk.”
Dunk shrugged like it was the most obvious thing in the world and off he went.
Egg stared after him, completely stunned.
Some men might call that submissive.
But to Dunk?
It was simply devotion.
Baelor
Baelor is unaware that he is whipped.
Not because he is ashamed of it, nor because he does not understand what the phrase means. It is simply that, in his mind, everything he does for his wife is perfectly rational. Surely any good husband would do the same no?
But the truth is that his entire schedule bends around you.
For example he knows how much you dislike early mornings and how you tend to sleep in, because of that, Baelor quietly schedules most of his important meetings at dawn so that his evenings are free to spend with you. Of course, being the Crown Prince means it cannot always be that way but he does try.
And if you personally ask him to do something together?
Baelor rearranges his entire day as though that had been the plan all along.
He prioritizes you more than he realizes. If the realm is not actively burning, nine times out of ten he will tend to your wishes first before anything else…..even duty.
“My prince,” a lord began, “now we must discuss—”
The door opened and you stepped inside
“Baelor?” your voice soft and uncertain
The quill stopped and he looks up immediately, tension leaving his body and his features softened
“Yes, my heart?”
“Oh- i apologize i had thought the meeting was over” you turn to leave but he stops you asking what you needed
“I had only wished to break fast with you but you are still busy so it is fine.” you smile genuinely not upset
Yet Baelor pushed the report back to the lord who'd just given it to him
“It is over” he says rising
“My- My prince?” the lord stammers shocked
“Yes yes I shall get to them after i break fast with my wife” he says as you wrap your hand around his forearm leaving the room
Baelor is still the composed prince and treats everyone with respect and kindness. However, that kindness should never be mistaken for weakness. He has no trouble telling nobles, lords, or even members of his own family no.
The council chamber hummed with quiet discussion as parchment shuffled across the long table. Several lords had gathered to review the Crown’s upcoming calendar. Important meetings, visiting envoys, and the various festivals and observances across the realm.
It was, for once, a relatively simple and uneventful meeting.
Baelor Targaryen had already noted it would end soon. He had even arranged for dinner to be served early, hoping that later you and his sons might spend the evening in a friendly game of cards and cyvasse. For now, however, he listened patiently as the maester read from his list.
“Next month will see the usual observances,” the maester said, scanning the parchment. “The King’s Day feast, the summer market in the city, and the Riverlands tourney.”
A few lords nodded.
“Your Grace,” Lord Alester Tyrell began. (He was your cousin temporarily standing in your father’s place). “There is another celebration approaching, the Harvest Bloom. It is widely celebrated throughout the Reach.”
Maekar Targaryen, who had been only half-interested the entire meeting, let out a short snort.
“You mean the one where you dress up like flowers and act strange because of your ‘special plants’?” he mocked. “We do not do that bullshit in the capital.”
Baelor raised a hand, silencing his brother before the comment could go further.
“I am familiar with the festival,” he said politely. “But it is primarily regional.”
Alester inclined his head.
“It is, Your Grace but I am certain it would be a welcome celebration here, among both highborn and smallfolk. I assure you, my prince, it is meaningful and does not involve… indulgences.” His gaze flicked toward Maekar with a glare.
Maekar let out a humorless laugh.
Baelor considered the suggestion for a moment.
“Forgive my brother I do not doubt it is a respected holiday in the Reach, but—”
“If it is a matter of coin,” Alester added quickly, “your father-by-law, as Master of Coin, would have no objection.”
Baelor shook his head.
“Coin is not the issue, my lord,” Baelor replies, more than aware of your fathers constant eagerness to flex the Tyrell wealth.”It is more because the court calendar is already crowded. It would be wiser to allow the tradition to remain where it belongs, among those who have long celebrated it.”
His tone was calm, respectful but final.
Alester leaned back, accepting the answer, and the council moved on.
…..
Later that evening, the castle had gone quiet.
You sat at your vanity, braiding your hair for sleep, while Baelor rested in bed with a book. After a moment, his eyes flickered up and he caught your gaze in the mirror grinning at him.
He smiled.
“What do you want now?” he teased, no real annoyance in his voice.
You placed a hand over your chest in mock offense.
“What makes you think such a thing? I am merely admiring my husband’s beauty.”
He gave you a knowing look.
You laughed softly, climbing into bed beside him. He pulled you close without looking away from his book.
“Sooo,” you began casually, “there’s an annual festival in the Reach coming up. It’s called the Harvest Bloom—and oh, Baelor, it’s wonderful” You cuddle him more.” back home, we would hang lanterns in the gardens and dance until late into the night the whole castle would smell like flowers for days.” you reminisce.
Baelor slowly lowered his book.
You continued, completely unaware of the morning’s council discussion.
“I was thinking… Perhaps this year we could celebrate it here. I would love to show you how we used to do it.”
You looked up at him hopeful.
He could already see the wheels turning in your eyes, you were already picturing lanterns, music, the gardens lit in gold.
He could explain.
He could tell you he had already declined the idea that very morning.
But the words never came.
Instead, Baelor smiled softly and warm.
“That sounds like a lovely tradition, it would be a delightful addition to the Capital .”
Your face lit up instantly.
“Really?”
“Of course.”
You leaned over to kiss his cheek extremely grateful, before settling comfortably against him going on all about all the preparations that need to be put in place to which Baelor nods in agreement as if it had always been that way.
…
The following morning, the council gathered once more.
Baelor reviewed a few documents before speaking.
“My lords.”
The room fell silent.
“Upon further consideration, the Crown will formally recognize the Harvest Bloom celebration this year, preparations may begin at once.”
Lord Alester Tyrell blinked in surprise.
Across the table, Maekar Targaryen leaned back slowly in his chair, eyebrows knit in confusion because his brother did not change his mind overnight on matters of governance.
Unless—
His gaze looks out the door of the room and just faith would have it he finds you passing by wearing more flowers on your dress than you'd usually do and following close behind you some servants carrying some form of flower decor with them.
Maekar sighed and rubbed his temple.
“…Of course,” he muttered under his breath.
Maekar
Maekar is most certainly whipped for you but he denies it like a guilty man accused of a crime he absolutely committed.
He will grumble, complain, roll his eyes.
“You are being impossible.”
“That is unreasonable.”
“You should not interrupt me while I’m working for such petty things.”
And yet, despite the scowling and sharp words, he still ends up doing exactly what you asked and most, if not all the time he goes above and beyond what you wanted still complaining however
You took no offense to his insults or complaints. You knew far too well how tightly you had the prince wrapped around your pretty finger.
Sometimes you even teased that power, because you found it terribly amusing how fast the man who claimed he did not care folded for you.
He claims he’s far too busy at the moment and you’re distracting him? Fine you threaten to leave the room
“…Stay.” he says a bit too quickly, pulling your chair closer to him to prevent you from going.
…………………………………………………………………………………………..
The solar was quiet except for the scratch of Maekar’s quill and the occasional murmur from his advisor, Lord Beric.
You sat across from him with your arms folded, watching the prince stare at parchment as if the realm might collapse should he glance away.
Candlelight flickered across his sharp features, silver hair catching the glow.
His shoulders were hunched and tense again.
You had told him a hundred times not to sit like that.
After a long moment of silence you cleared your throat.
Nothing.
You tapped your fingers on the table.
Still no reaction from him.
Your husband continued writing as if the sounds you made were the mere wind passing by.
You narrowed your eyes.
“Maekar… it is night now.”
“Hm.”
That was it.
Just hm.
You leaned forward.
“You said we would walk the gardens before sunset.”
“I said we might,” he corrected without looking up.
You stared at him in disbelief.
“No. You said we would and I have been sitting here and waiting now would you look at that.”
You pointed dramatically toward the window where moonlight now poured in.
His quill stopped moving for a moment letting out a long sigh like a man plagued with nothing but trouble before he started writing again.
“Well, my dear wife,” he said dryly, extending a hand for another letter from Lord Beric, “ you may not be aware of this but the sun will rise again tomorrow. As it has for the past hundred years and will for a hundred more.” he responds with his eyes yet having to look properly at you.
You clench skirts in annoyance.
“You are impossible.”
“And you are insatiable.”
“Oh, I am insatiable?”
“You knew I had work.”
“You always have work.” You say with an eyeroll. “All I asked for was a simple walk with my husband and he cannot even keep that promise.”
His jaw shifted, eyes alas meeting yours, his dark violet eyes flash with annoyance.
“I did not promise I specifically remember saying we might.”
“You did.”
“I did not.”
“You did.” you slam the table for more emphasis
The irritation on his face only grew, almost anybody who saw that look would shrink and back down like poor Lord Beric who visibly shifted uncomfortably in his chair, wishing to be anywhere else, but you weren't anybody.
“I cannot simply abandon matters of the realm for a lovely stroll in gardens I have walked a thousand times, wife.” he says the word with no warmth.
“Right,” you said sharply. “Because staring at parchment is far more enjoyable than spending time with your wife!.”
“Y/n—” his patience was on thin ice now
You stood abruptly.
“No no it is fine.”
You abruptly stand and grab your cloak.
“Finish your very important letters. I’ll walk alone.”
You turned and strode out shutting the door before he could utter another word out.
Maekar glares at the door for a moment or two his grip on the quill so tight lord Beric thought it may snap at any moment.
“Stubborn woman… vexing woman…” Maekar muttered, continuing to write but the words became illegible with how tight his grip in the quill was.
…
…
…
You make it a few steps down the hallway when the solar door opens again.
“Why must you be so temperamental?”
Your husband’s voice sounds behind you.
You didn’t even turn around.
“Am I? I thought it best to leave you to your work because you think I'm such a nuisance."
Your heels clicked against the stone.
Heavy boots followed.
“Do not twist my words woman,” Maekar snapped. “I would never call you that” he said but a bit quieter and oddly softer
You kept walking and faster
The footsteps grew faster too
Quite a sight, truly.
The Anvil of the Realm follows behind his irritated wife.
“How do you expect us to walk if you remain ahead of me?” he grumbled.
You stopped.
So did he, you had not realize how close he was behind you nearly hitting him when your turned
Maekar stood behind you looking on edge enough to start a war, which in many ways was similar to one when it came to you.
“I thought you had letters to finish.” you say coolly crossing your arms.
“I do.”
“And yet here you are.”
The stubborn man, tough as iron, sharp-tongued hesitated
“I… suppose a short break will not collapse the realm.”
You stared at him, then you couldn't help the snort that escaped pass your lips.
Maekar looked offended.
“What?”
“You dropped everything to chase me down the hallway.”
“I did not chase you.”
You hum, grinning up at him “You most certainly chased me.”
“I walked quickly.”
“That is called chasing.”
He scowled.
“You walk very fast for someone of your stature.”
He stared at you for a moment longer.
He then finally stands beside you, body brushing yours a small concession and his fingers intertwining with yours around it like it had always belonged there.
“…Come along,” Maekar muttered, still trying to sound gruff.
The prince who had refused to abandon his work not five minutes earlier was now walking beside his wife toward the gardens.
Grumbling the entire way, yet refusing to let go of your hand.
Lyonel
Lyonel never thought he could be whipped but welcomes the idea with open arms when it comes to you
Lyonel Baratheon has the calmness of a thunderstorm. He is wild, loud, reckless, and unpredictable. He is already a great lord, which leaves a very small number of people who can “control” him, but truth be told, if it weren’t for hierarchy and titles, no one tells Lyonel what to do.
Except his wife.
Before meeting you, he never cared about marriage. His idea was getting a pretty, obedient, quiet, mouse-like wife who would give him an heir or three while he continued partying and doing whatever he pleased.
But you changed that in the best way.
Lyonel is a force and a danger to himself and others with his impulsive ideas that could get him hurt, so at times he really does need your firmness to knock both literal and metaphorical sense into him.
Despite your threatening and “bossy” nature, he finds it incredibly attractive the way you command him.
“If you leave one more antler lying on our bedchamber floor, I will stab you with it.”
“Mhm, you are very attractive when you threaten me with bodily harm,” he gazes at you fondly.
“Shut up and do as you’re told.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Others are shocked that a lady could ever speak to her lord husband that way, but Lyonel does not care and does not need saving. He is exactly where he wants to be.
The festivities had been going on for five days now.
What had been meant to be a simple, quiet hunting trip had turned into a feast, which had turned into a drinking competition, which then briefly turned into strip poker??? supposedly in celebration of the soon arrival of Lyonel's firstborn child.
But you should have known better.
With your husband nothing (especially with alcohol involved) was ever simple.
Inside the great hunting tent, noise pressed in from all sides. The air was thick with the smell of roasted meat and spilled wine. Tankards clanged as drunken laughter and terrible singing echoed far too loudly for the late hour.
At the center of it all sat Lord Lyonel Baratheon, long antler crown slightly crooked atop his dark, tousled curls, tankard raised high. His voice carried across the entire tent with the same subtlety as a thunderclap.
“And I told the man,” Lyonel declared loudly, slapping the table hard enough to make several cups jump, “if he thought he could outdrink me, he’d best start putting on his burial clothes!”
He let out a loud belch, laughing as the men around him erupted in cheers.
Across from him sat Dunk, who watched the display with wide eyes and the faint look of a man who did not belong here. He had not planned to stay in the Stormlands long; all he wished was to congratulate you both and be on his way, but Lyonel had a way of forcing people to do things they normally did not want to.
“Oy, half-man!” Lyonel suddenly pointed at Dunk. “Have I told you the story of how I killed my first man in battle?”
Dunk rubbed the back of his neck.
“Yes—you’ve told that story three times already, m’lord.”
Lyonel leaned forward, grinning like a mischievous green boy.
“Then you’ll enjoy hearing it again! This time with visuals!”
Lyonel grabbed Dunk, forcing the poor man to his feet as an unwilling volunteer. Dunk didn’t dare protest for whatever the laughing storm wanted, he got.
The tent exploded with laughter and cheers.
Tankards slammed on tables. Someone started chanting Lyonel’s name. A few of the younger knights began placing bets on how the “demonstration” would end.
Lyonel drunkenly looked around, trying to remember where he had placed his longsword, while Dunk silently prayed some god would intervene because he would very much like to leave Storm’s End in the same condition he came in.
Then the tent flap opened
Cold night air rushed inside
And with it—
Lady Baratheon
The change in the room was immediate.
The laughter quieted, conversations slowing as heads turned toward the entrance.
There you stood, your belly heavy with pregnancy beneath your gold and black cloak, your hair slightly disheveled from sleep, one hand resting against your lower back for support as you stepped inside.
But what truly silenced the room was the look on your face.
Angry.
No pissed.
Dunk felt the shift instantly
Lyonel looked up
His grin widened like he’d just received the best surprise of the night.
“Ah my lovely, beautiful wife has graced us with her presence,” he said cheerfully, clearly drunk out of his mind.
He walked to you, pulling you into a loose embrace and pressing a dozen quick kisses to your face. The smell of wine clung to him like armor.
You did not smile too exhausted and too angry to do so.
“I am certain they can hear this party all the way from King’s Landing.”
“Good,” Lyonel laughed. “Mayhaps they’ll come join us and bring more wine. I fear we may be running low.”
The men around the table snorted.
You were not amused.
“Bed. Now.”
Lyonel placed a dramatic hand over his heart.
“But I was just about to play out my best story!” he protested, punctuating the sentence with another drunken burp.
“Play out” his best story… you knew exactly what that meant. The last time he had attempted it, he’d nearly lost an ear and he’d been sober then.
“Lyonel—”
“Five more minutes,” he whined, words slurring together as he waved you off lazily. “I swear I’ll come join you.”
He said the same thing two hours ago, when you first tried to drag him away to bed.
He blinked slowly, swaying where he stood, before drunkenly scanning the room. His gaze wandered without purpose for a moment over the tables, the scattered plates, the poor servant trying to salvage what was left of a feast….until suddenly, he lit up.
“There you are,” he murmured to no one in particular, grinning like he’d just found buried treasure.
You followed his line of sight and felt your stomach drop.
His longsword.
It was lodged halfway inside a full roasted pig, the blade skewering straight through it killing the poor beast a second time. How it had gotten there he couldn't recall, he was just glad he found it. He took an unsteady step forward, entirely too pleased with himself, clearly intent on retrieving it and gods knew doing what next.
“Absolutely not,” you muttered under your breath.
Right before he could reach it, you stepped forward, catching him by the antler crown and yanking him back with far less gentleness than he deserved.
““Wow—!” Lyonel laughed, stumbling back as you yanked him towards you, his head tilting awkwardly as you began pulling him toward the tent exit.
“You are reckless,” you snapped, not loosening your grip for even a moment. “You drink too much, fight too hard and if you get yourself killed before this child is born, I will bring you back from the Seven Hells just to kill you again.”
Dunk’s eyes widened so much it looked like they might fall out.
The Lord of the Stormlands was one of the most intimidating men Dunk had ever met was now currently being dragged like a misbehaving dog.
You kept walking.
“My feet are swollen, my back is in pain and my breast are in sore-.”
Lyonel, still being dragged, looked up at you over with laziness, chewing on his bottom lip.
“And yet you still look so good.”
You yanked harder, causing him to yelp before letting out an amused chuckle.
“The last stressor I need is my husband losing a limb.”
“You’re so adorable when you worry for me.”
And just like that, the two of you were gone your threats and his fond, teasing replies fading into the night.
Dunk sat completely frozen.
“…Seven above,” he whispered under his breath, staring at the entrance for several seconds. “Should—should we help him?” he asked, genuinely concerned.
The lord across from him burst out laughing.
“Help him?”
He shook his head.
“Our lord is exactly where he wants to be.”
Aerion
Aerion Targaryen is utterly, hopelessly whipped…..but only in private.
In public, Aerion behaves as though the marriage is nothing more than a cold arrangement, a political contract with no warmth to it. He barely spares you a glance in court, his gaze distant and glacial, his words short and sharp, his presence deliberately detached.
But the moment the doors shut? He’s entirely a different man
Behind closed doors, he craves your touch like a man starved, like a flame reaching for air. His head on your lap, your fingers threading through his short silver hair, a gentle hand cupping his cheek, hells even your shoulders merely touching. He takes anything, everything, so long as he can feel you. Your warmth grounds him the only thing that can calm the restless dragon. The instant you pull away, even for a heartbeat, he grumbles low in his throat like a displeased cat, catching your hand and guiding it back as if he might wither without it.
Aerion is the most whipped of them all, the most undone by his wife of them all, though he buries it beneath layers of pride in public. In truth, he reveres you, worships you as one the seven themselves (though in his eyes you surpass them). He wants to breathe the same air, exist in the same space…..hells, if it were possible, he would fuse your very souls together just to ensure you could never be parted.
When you are upset with him, that ego he carries shatters. He becomes restless, unsteady, almost frantic, because your attention is not just wanted but vital.
Separate him from you for more than a day he becomes loses it, irritated, upset, impulsive more than usual which is why annoyingly so? You nearly accompany him everywhere a demand sent by the crown though you have suspicions it may have been Maekar who sent it, to control and calm his son.
And yet, despite this quiet obsession, Aerion maintains his facade, his pride unyielding. He would sooner choke on his own fire than allow the court to see the truth….
that behind closed doors, the dragon kneels,
and you are the one who holds the reins.
………………………………………………………………………………………………
It had started as something petty but it angered you all the same.
It was a small dinner, a few lords and wives, cups still overflowing, bellies full, the night slowly dying. One of them a Frey made a distasteful joke about a young serving girl who had just passed.
You were irritated but calmly and gracefully shut the joke down.
He spat back, turning the joke toward you.
That alone, you could have endured.
But Aerion, your husband, had done nothing-
Worse, he had added to it.
Somehow making the joke ever more humiliating.
But no….according to him, it was only a joke, a playfully drunk night and you should not be so soft.
The silence had lasted three days.
Three unbearable days….. for him
You moved through the chambers as if Aerion did not exist.
When he spoke, you answered with polite, short replies or not at all. When he entered a room, you continued whatever you were doing without so much as a glance, some evenings feeling bold you simply left.
You didn’t even spare a thought to Lord Brynden Frey, the one who started this whole thing sudden disappearance from court due to an injury from hunting?
Your anger and annoyance remained fixed on your husband.
At first, Aerion scoffed.
“Petty,” he muttered the first night. “You will tire of this soon enough.”
By the second day, he was following you from room to room not engaging but his eyes burning into you and following your every movement similar to how a predator would to its prey
By the third, you decided you would sleep in your own bedchamber.
You had not done so since the first week of your marriage.
That was when he broke
….
You sat by the window that morning, embroidering quietly in your own chambers when he entered without knocking.
You did not look up.
Aerion stood there for a moment, with a look in his eyes that could kill.
“Are you finished with this foolishness?” he asked sharply.
No response.
Your needle moved calmly through the fabric.
His jaw tightened.
He crossed the room, stopping directly in front of you, blocking the light from the window.
You could barely see now, likely ruining the pattern, but your hand did not stop.
“Acknowledge me,” he demanded, sounding more like a petulant child than a prince.
A soft knock interrupted him.
Before he could tell them to fuck off, you spoke.
“Enter.”
One of your handmaids stepped inside.
“Ah, Lysara,” you said, handing her a folded list. “These are the items I want moved from my husband’s chambers into mine. I would appreciate it be done by the morrow.”
She took the parchment and bowed. “Yes, princess.”
The door closed quietly behind her.
Something inside him shattered.
You had never slept apart not in two years. No matter how fierce the argument, you had always returned to him.
“Seven hells,” he muttered.
Then, suddenly, he dropped to his knees beside you.
The movement startled the embroidery from your hands, but you did not reach for it. Instead, you stared blankly out the window he had just blocked.
His deep violet eyes searched your face, filled with frustration and something close to desperation.
“Look at me.”
You didn’t.
His hands hesitated before slowly reaching for the folds of your skirt.
“Y/n,” he whispered, head lowering in defeat.
Then, with none of the dignity he carried in court, he leaned forward, trying to climb not onto the cushioned seat beside you but on you.
His head nudged against your stomach.
“Stop ignoring me.”
You tried halfheartedly to push him away, but he only made a frustrated sound and shifted closer, half kneeling, half leaning into you, his hands clutching your skirts.
“Aerion—” you grunted, more annoyed than anything at the weight.
Aerion’s voice broke into something that could not be mistaken for anything other than a whine.
“Please.”He pressed his forehead more into your lap, his hands clutching on your skirts tighter “please stop ignoring me.”
After what felt like eternity to him you finally let out a defeated sigh
Aerion stilled instantly, hope flooding through him.
Slowly, you lifted a hand and combed your fingers through his short silver hair.
He melted.
Relaxing against you like a man collapsing after a long, brutal war finally allowed to rest.
“Do you hate me?” he asked, voice muffled against your skirts.
“I should.”
He tensed.
“But I do not hate you, Aerion.”
The tension left him all at once.
He pressed even closer like trying to merge your bodies into one, clinging and refusing refusing to let go.
The terrifying dragon prince who delighted in cruelty, who made the realm tremble closed his eyes and held onto you as if your silence had nearly killed him.
SUMMARY: aerion, against all better judgment, has allowed himself to grow accustomed to you, so when you disappear without warning, he's flung into a blind (desperate) rage. when he learns that this is an annual occurrence in preparation for the anniversary of your exile, he becomes determined to learn the truth of what happened back then.
WARNINGS: fem!reader, reader comes from valyrian lineage but no physical traits are mentioned/described, tw aerion pov (unhinged as ever) brief mentions of slavery in Volantis, brief mention of child death, aphrodisiacs, reader slaps aerion, dubcon-ish (he makes her take more of the aphrodisiac because she doesn't seem as affected as he is, brief oral (f!receiving), the high valyrian is not properly translated because we don’t know the words for the words I needed so bear with me LOL, switch!reader, switch!aerion
AUTHOR'S NOTES: PART FOURRRR I actually had a lot of fun with this installment. It's a bit heavier, because reader is going through it during the anniversary of her exile, REST ASSURED the next part they get back to their regularly scheduled games and taunting, but I felt like two installments highlighting the emotional progression of their relationship was very necessary because the two of them are rapidly falling for one another in spite of Aerion's many insistences that he hates her, and I thought it would be neat to center it around reader and the reasons behind her exile. Anyway, comments and reblogs always appreciated! I hope you guys enjoy!
READ: SAUDADE
You are avoiding him again.
Aerion paces the length of his solar irritably, waiting for Magister Vyrano to arrive. He has worn a groove into the mosaic floor these past three days, stalking from balcony to hearth and back again like a caged beast. The torches along the wall gutter in the late afternoon light, their flames bending in the draft from the open arches.
One moon.
One entire moon of relative peace.
A month of wild laughter and biting kisses, of stolen afternoons on sun-warmed rocks and nights tangled in silk and sweat, of games that have begun to feel less like battles and more like something dangerously close to companionship. He had almost grown accustomed to it—your voice at his shoulder, arms around his waist, fingers threaded through his hair, the infuriating smile when you won whatever invisible contest you’d devised for the day and the softer one when you think he’s not looking.
He had almost grown accustomed to you.
And now, you are gone. Again.
You did not attend the feast at Magister Aeripharos Stassah’s manse two nights ago, despite the fact that you’ve been attending most all recent ones just to walk in on his arm, so he was left alone to make conversation about the seasonal spices and the troupe from Braavos that has recently arrived in Lys for a show. The First Magister claims you have taken ill, but refuses to let him visit you in his manse. Your whores claim not to have seen you, and he thinks they are being honest this time. The harbor brats flee whenever he approaches.
Aerion knows the truth: you are avoiding him. Again.
His knuckles whiten against the railing of the balcony, staring out at the pale domes of Lys, anger flaring hot and fast. He had done nothing wrong—not this time. He had not driven you off. He knows it. There were no beachside declarations of independence or grand speeches about how dragons belong to no one.
He has been tolerable. More than tolerable—more than you deserve, since you’re clearly ungrateful. He lets you curl against him in Vyrano’s gardens while musicians play softly and lanternlight paints gold across your skin. He indulges your games and chases and hunts, and your smug little smiles while you slip between tongues mid-sentence just to watch him react to your High Valyrian. He walks beside you through the central market like some common lord escorting his betrothed, ignoring the looks the two of you received. He wears the steel you gifted him openly at his throat, letting people look, and whisper, and make assumptions.
And now, you are gone. Again.
He had thought it another one of your hunts at first when he’d woken up to a cool bed and you nowhere to be found. He wandered down to the square like a fool with mild irritation and the faintest hint of anticipation, expecting to feel your eyes on him from some rooftop perch, expecting a harbor boy to scatter too quickly or a courtesan to smirk too knowingly. But he was met with nothing—no trails, no whispers, no glimpse of silk vanishing around the corner.
By midday, he was seriously irritated, and by evening, it had curdled into something darker, but he told himself still that it was just one of your games, even as he returned to Vyrano’s manse alone. He expected you in his chambers, lounging in his bed with a maddening smile, pleased with yourself for having outmaneuvered him.
But you were not there, and when the next morning came, you were still gone.
Now, on the third day, this game no longer feels clever, and no longer feels fun. The irritation and anticipation have shifted into something vile and churning, and he is aching with a need to release his frustration onto something.
If you think you can vanish at whim—if you think you can toy with him like one of your silk boys, he thinks furiously, then you seriously forget who you are dealing with.
The doors creak open at last. Aerion will not accept evasions and half-answers this time.
“My prince,” Magister Vyrano begins cautiously as he enters the solar, rings glinting in the torchlight. “You requested—”
“Where is she?” Aerion cuts in without turning.
Silence stretches.
“I am not certain to whom you refer,” Vyrano says smoothly.
Aerion pivots sharply, violet eyes burning. “Do not insult me.”
The magister inclines his head faintly. “I would never insult a prince of the blood.”
“You insult me every time you lie.”
The magister’s smile tightens. “My prince, Lys is full of women.”
“There is only one who concerns me.”
Vyrano studies him, calculating. He hates the way the man measures him—he is always measuring him—looking for cracks and leverage, wondering if there’s something between you and Aerion that he can use against him. He forces his shoulders to settle, temper leashed by sheer will. He hates this fucking island of snakes and hyenas; he almost forgot how agonizing it was dealing with these people during the past moon he’s spent with you. It’s all so much more bearable with you at his side.
“She has not been seen at courtly functions,” Vyrano says what Aerion already knows, and his eye twitches. “Her household claims she is indisposed.”
“Indisposed,” Aerion repeats mockingly.
“A seasonal fever, perhaps.”
Aerion hates Lys.
“If she is ill,” Aerion replies, voice cold, smile poisonous, “then the First Magister would have sent for the finest physicians. Yet no such summons has been issued.”
The magister does not reply, and Aerion’s skin itches as the silence draws on.
“Is she being sent away?” Aerion demands abruptly, and he hates that he feels as though there’s a lump in his throat, an ache in his chest just at the thought. Damn you, he should’ve just fucking killed you and been done with it. He doesn’t like whatever this is that has him feeling so bothered by your absence. He should not care—he should go find a whore to fuck and bide his time until you return, not pace his solar agitatedly for days on end. “Well?”
Vyrano frowns. “Sent away?”
“Back to Volantis?”
The words taste bitter in his mouth.
“I have heard no such arrangements,” Vyrano replies, only partially putting him at ease, because if you haven’t been brought back home, that means you really are avoiding him, and Aerion is at a loss as to why. “If the Old Blood intended her return, the harbor would not be quiet about it.”
His teeth grind together. Aerion turns his back on the magister, facing the balcony again, mind assembling all of the possibilities whether he wishes it to or not: Volantis recalled you and word has not spread yet, you’ve left for a new Free City to spend your exile in, you grew bored of him and you found a better dragon to toy with. The last thought sends heat surging through him so violently that he nearly laughs—impossible, there is no other dragon, only him, he’s the only one enough for you.
And yet, it is not enough to quell the uncertainty that suddenly spreads through him, mind tracking back to the last few days he spent with you before you disappeared. Searching for some careless word he might’ve said, or some shift in your expression that he might’ve missed. You had seemed more restless than usual, gaze tracking out toward the east whenever conversation lulled, but it was nothing out of the ordinary. You laughed at something trivial in Vyrano’s garden three nights ago as you lay between his legs, and you argued with him over nothing the day before that, insisting that ghost grass has begun to spread across the Dothraki Sea and is soon to consume the world, so it’s good that the two of you are confined to this island—so earnest that Aerion had started to believe you until you burst into laughter. Nothing out of the usual, nothing that might have indicated you were tiring of him.
“You may go,” he says abruptly, dismissing Vyrano in his own manse, but the man does not move, and Aerion gives him an irritated look over his shoulder.
“My prince,” Vyrano says after a moment, clearing his throat. “It is not… unusual for her to disappear this time of year. I am sure she will return soon.”
Aerion’s head snaps around. “What does that mean?” he demands, furious that the man didn’t lead with this.
Vyrano exhales through his nose, as though weighing how much to say, and Aerion has half a mind to put a blade against his throat just to show him the consequences of lying to and stringing along a prince of the blood. He refrains, if only barely.
“Five years ago, to the day, she arrived in Lys,” Vyrano says after a moment, and Aerion blinks once, “on a ship that did not fly Volantene colors, though every magister in this city knew precisely whose daughter stepped onto our docks.” His gaze flicks briefly to the Valyrian steel resting at Aerion’s throat before returning to his face. “She has never attended a feast during this week, but she always returns on the seventh day as though nothing occurred. You need not fret.”
“I am not fretting,” Aerion scoffs, teeth grinding together, ignoring the curious looks Vyrano directs toward him. He then prods, tone clipped, “She isolates herself?”
“She withdraws,” Vyrano corrects. “She dismisses her attendants. Refuses visitors. Even the First Magister does not intrude.” A pause. “It is… understood.”
As though it were a ritual. As though the entire city knew to let the Volantene dragonling lick her wounds in private. It does not suit you. It does not suit you at all, and it makes him furious.
Aerion bristles at the implication. “She does not seem so burdened as to need to withdraw.”
He thinks of you lounging on the sun-warmed rock. He thinks of you curled at his side. He thinks of your taunting smiles and antagonizing laughs, the way you provoke him like it’s sport, have him hunt you through the day and chase you through the night, and kiss him like you can’t decide if you want to fuck him or kill him. It does not suit you. The idea of you needing to withdraw, of the whole island being aware of this weakness. Aerion hates it. Aerion hates you.
“Appearances,” Vyrano says mildly, “are a specialty of hers.”
His eye twitches, and then he asks clipped, “Why was she exiled?”
Vyrano presses his lips together. “That, my prince, is not my story to tell.”
Aerion scoffs, turning away again, teeth grinding together as he tries to process what he’s just been told. He does the calculation without meaning to—five years ago, you would’ve been seven and ten, a year younger than he is now. Young and freshly furious, he imagines. Not yet polished into the languid creature who lounges on velvet cushions and laughs at princes.
He imagines you stepping onto the docks—alone, angry, proud enough not to show it. He imagines the whispers that must have followed you, the same way they do him. The calculation and the measuring and magisters trying to pawn off sons and brothers. He imagines you alone in a foreign manse, on the first night, with no one to mock and no one to spar with; the bored expression on your face as you let a magister’s son kiss you and courtesans paw at you just to pass the time.
He thinks of the day in the market when the merchant tried to slip him poison under the guise of flattery, and the way you diverted his lapse of temper on a holy day so he could avoid the consequences of it, and he wonders if you had someone to look after you in your early years of exile, or if you had to sharpen your own claws through trial and error.
“She was seven and ten when she arrived,” the magister adds, as though to appease his curiosity. “Whatever occurred in Volantis, it was not a trivial matter. Even we only know whispers and rumors, they have been careful to keep the story within their walls. The Old Blood does not cast out daughters lightly, especially ones of her standing.”
Aerion presses his tongue to the back of his teeth, curiosity eating him alive. What could you have done? Why is it so under wraps? Aerion is pretty sure the whole world must know why he was exiled—certainly all of Westeros, and certainly all of Lys—but Aerion hadn’t even heard whispers of a Volantene noble being exiled from the Black Walls. His first instinct would be to assume that it’s because you’re not a high-standing noble, but he knows very well that’s not the case.
Still, he fishes for more information with: “Her standing?”
For a second, Aerion thinks that Vyrano will only hit him with another evasive answer, but the man finally sighs and says, “Her father is one of the Triarchs.”
———————
The manse had not yielded easily.
The First Magister’s guards had attempted civility first—polite refusals and bowed heads as they told him that you were not receiving visitors. Aerion had dispensed with civility after the third repetition. Steel speaks more cleanly than Lysene riddles, and he learned, valuably, that the Lyseni have been instructed not to draw their weapons on him, which will be useful in the future.
Now, the doors to your chamber hang open behind him, one hinge cracked from the force of his irritation over this whole situation. Aerion stands in the threshold, chest rising and falling rapidly, the last of his temper still burning hot in his veins.
You know he’s there—he was not subtle in nearly bringing down your door—but you keep your back to him, looking out over the balcony to the east. To Volantis, he recognizes after a moment, lips thinned as he presses them together. He figures you’re not going to say something until he does, but he assumed that you would speak first, angry that he’d interrupted your isolation, that he’d fought past guards and servants to get to you when you do not want to be seen.
Instead, you are just silent, and he is left uncertain, words forming on his tongue and falling away because he isn’t quite sure what to say.
Look at me.
This is unbefitting of you.
Why didn’t you tell me?
The last one tastes sour, feels too desperate, so he shuts it down with a more vile: you look pathetic, on his tongue, but you speak before he can let it loose.
“Do you know how the Volantene execute traitors?” you suddenly ask from the balcony, back still facing him. Aerion stares at you once, blinking, but you continue before he’s even processed the question. “It is considered the most grievous crime in Volantis—to betray the old blood. Worse than murder. Worse than rape. Those crimes stain a single life. Treason stains a lineage.”
Aerion is not sure if he likes the direction of this. “No,” he answers after a moment, voice level and wary. “I do not make a habit of studying Volantene punishments.”
“The Triarchs do not soil themselves with the blade,” you continue as though he hadn’t spoken at all. “Execution by sword is too clean. Too quick. It leaves the traitor with dignity in death. Instead, they are brought to the Ivory Yard, before the assembled houses. The family stands present on the dais and does not intervene. The blood must witness its own correction.”
Aerion does not move. “And then?”
“They bind the traitor to the ground. Ankles and wrists shackled with chains thick as a man’s arm. Each limb is fastened to a separate elephant. The beasts are goaded,” you continue, voice steady in a way that unsettles him more than if it trembled. “Slowly at first. They strain. The chains pull taut. The body resists, until it can’t anymore.”
Aerion’s fingers curl at his sides.
“It is considered fitting,” you finish quietly. “The body is divided, as their loyalty was. I watched it happen for the first time when I was ten. The man—boy—was seventeen, from a rival house. He refused an arranged marriage because he fell in love with a slave girl. She was with child, and he wished to marry her.” There’s something wry in your voice as you continue. “Sullying the blood—a very grievous form of treason. They killed the girl in front of him before they forced him to his knees in the Ivory Yard. The elephants walked for so long that the boy’s blood and entrails stained the marble for a mile.”
You exhale, and then you turn to look at him. There’s a smile on your face, but it is much like the ones you cast toward courtesans and magisters’ sons when you are indulging their attention, when you wish to be anywhere but. His stomach inexplicably flips, tongue pressing to the back of his teeth.
He finds that he dislikes it when it is directed toward him.
“Magister Lorento is hosting a revel,” you say. “Let’s attend.”
Aerion blinks, half wondering if he misheard you. “What?” he asks flatly. “But—”
“Let’s attend,” you say again, making your way over to him. Aerion only stares at you as you grab his bicep, pulling him along with you out of your chambers. “It’ll be fun. I think this is the first one the island has had since you arrived. You ought not miss it.”
Aerion does not move, brows furrowing, because you must have some play right now, and he can’t figure out what it is. Why were you prattling about Volantene execution methods for traitors, and now you’re talking about going to a revel? Gods, you don’t ever make any sense, and Aerion is always struggling to keep up with you, but he has a feeling he’s made a mistake somehow; he just doesn’t know how or what.
“Aerion,” you say when he doesn’t seem keen on joining you, and he almost startles at the sound of his given name on your tongue—not a teasing prince or little dragon. He thinks this is the first time you’ve said it, and he would like the sound of it rolling off your tongue were it not for the severity behind it. “Let’s attend.”
His teeth grind together as his gaze meets yours, and he lets out a sharp breath through his nose.
“Fine,” he agrees. “Let’s attend.”
———————
He was separated from you soon after your arrival at the revel.
Bitterly, he realizes that must have been your plan—you were cornered in your chambers, had nowhere to go but to answer to him, so you manufactured a situation where you’d be able to escape him. He doubts you’re even still here; you probably slipped away from Lorento’s manse as soon as the two of you were separated.
He swats a hand off his bicep as he makes his way to the back of the manse, doing one final sweep to find you, just to make sure, before he storms back to the First Magister’s manse in a fit of righteous fury.
This whole place reeks, and Aerion can hardly push through the crowds of intoxicated nobles and courtesans to move around. Incense hangs thick enough in the air to make him dizzy, clinging to the back of his throat with every breath. Even when he steps out of the building into the night air, he cannot seem to find fresh air.
Where the fuck are you?
His gaze scans the back of his manse. Men lounge on low cushions strewn across mosaic floors, bracelets chiming as they reach for grapes and skin, and courtesans draped in gold and feathers drift between rooms like fucking peacocks, jewels glittering at their temples, their throats, between their breasts. He has half a mind to rip them off and shove them down their throats. They laugh loud as they press goblets to noble lips, fingers trailing deliberately over silk sleeves and rings heavy with gemstones, and it gives him a headache.
It is fucking suffocating, and Aerion feels eyes on him everywhere he turns, agitated and on the verge of losing his temper. The only thing that stops him is that they can all see him losing control.
The eyes on him feel like blades poking at his skin, cold water to his face, even as something hotter coiled in his chest—humiliation, maybe. He is hyperaware of the tightness in his jaw and the jittery feeling spreading through his body. Aerion does not lose control, but he can hear their whispers now, wondering how long it’ll take for him to snap, each one wishing to be the one to send word back to his father. They’re all waiting for the famed temper, waiting for the mad dragon to bare his teeth and give him a story to send back across the Narrow Sea. He will not give them the satisfaction.
He hates them, he hates Lys, he hates—
Paranoia flares hot and bright; his gaze sweeps around again, inexplicably seeking you out. It enrages him.
He hates you. He hates you. He hates you.
He desperately needs to settle down, but his thoughts are plagued with the thought of you. How dare you bring him here just to leave? How dare you make him grow accustomed to you and then disappear as though he were nothing more than another toy to be set aside when you tire of it? How dare you make him feel as though he isn’t alone on this perfumed prison, only to abandon him in a room full of enemies?
He hates himself most of all, because why did he ever allow himself to grow comfortable? Why did he let the edge dull? He knew what you were from the first day—quick and restless, a bird that refused to be caged. He should’ve kept you at arm’s length, should have treated you as he treats everything else, useless and amusing, but most of all, disposable.
Instead, knowing what you are, he still grabbed your face and told you that you were his.
Instead, somewhere between hunts and chases, nights tangled in silk sheets and bodies pressed together, he had let you close enough to matter.
Fuck, he thinks furiously. If it’s distance you want, he should give it to you—give you distance so vast it chokes, so vast that when you come crawling back at last, there’s nothing left.
His teeth grind so hard his jaw aches, and he has to force himself to stay still. A prince does not stalk like a jilted lover. A prince does not allow a woman to make him look foolish before a hall full of silk-clad vipers waiting to stick their venom into him. A prince is above it all—above you. A prince can bed a woman and walk away untouched. A prince can laugh and drink and indulge and never feel the weight of it after. He had done so before. He could do so again. He could.
If you think you can ruin him with a disappearance—if you think he will rage and roar and tear down half of Lys because you slipped through his fingers—you misjudge him.
But gods, he wants to, and he hates that most of all.
He swats another feathered hand from his arm, irritation simmering dangerously close to the surface. He lied—he hates the fucking feathers most of all. He wishes to pluck them and stick the quills into their eyes. He hates Lys. He hates you.
“I have no interest,” he says sharply when a woman with gold dust brushed across her cheek attempts to loop herself around his waist.
“Let me please you, my prince,” the woman insists, and Aerion’s eye twitches as her fingers slide down his abdomen. This would never happen in Westeros. No one touched him unless he gave his express permission. “You seem tense.”
For a heartbeat, he considers snapping the offending digits—just to remind this perfumed court that he is not one of their silk-draped ornaments, that he is a dragon and should not be pawed at as though he’s anything less, but he refrains and opts instead to grab her wrist hard enough that her laughter cuts off abruptly.
“I said I have no interest,” he says, voice low and edged with something that makes her smile falter at last. He releases her with a shove that sends her stumbling back into a cluster of giggling companions. They whisper as he turns away, but none reach for him again.
He pushes deeper into the rear of the manse, past the open archways and trailing silks, past the last ring of musicians whose drums thud heavy and slow. The incense thins the farther he goes, replaced by night air, and Aerion can finally breathe again, temper cooling at last. He rolls his shoulders once, jaw unclenching as the suffocating press of bodies finally loosens its grip.
Where the fuck are you?
Why is he still seeking you out?
He makes his way into the garden, following the paths between tall hedges, sandals crunching over fallen leaves and white petals that release a faint sweetness beneath his feet. The noise of the revel dies behind him, swallowed by the hedges' height, and the garden shifts as he moves deeper—the paths narrow, and the cypress grow taller, the lanterns cast long, distorted shadows that make the carved marble nymphs almost look alive.
He realizes once he comes to a split in the path that this is no open garden—it is a maze.
His eyes slide shut in irritation, and he bites back a heavy sigh. He will find you at the center of it. He knows that for certain. You and your fucking games. He should turn and leave, shouldn’t give you what you want, shouldn’t chase, but his feet move before he can turn in the opposite direction. He doesn’t hesitate long at the split, turning left and not giving himself the chance to second-guess his decision. The air is cooler here, at least, damp with watered earth and flowers from Yi Ti that only bloom in the night.
It doesn’t take long for him to find where the maze opens, and he considers whether it’s just a simple maze, sheer luck, or if he’d been drawn to where you were waiting. He doesn’t like the idea of relying on luck, but he knows Magister Lorento well enough to know that nothing about this man and his manse is simple, and he likes the idea of being instinctively drawn to you even less.
You are there at the center, as he expects.
Aerion pauses at the threshold, gaze trailing over where you’re lying against the marble, fingers tracing through the pool of water on your left. You look beautiful beneath the moonlight, and something catches in the back of Aerion’s throat the longer he stares at you, anger slipping away. Your head falls to the side when you hear his arrival, and your lips curl up as though you expected him.
Of course, you did, he thinks bitterly, half-inclined to storm back the way he came, knowing he won’t.
“Took you long enough, dragon prince,” you say after a moment, voice distinctly lacking the playful tease he’s become used to. “Come.”
“Do you think it’s amusing to leave me to suffer through that alone?” he asks, voice tight, making his way over to you. His temper should still be blazing, he thinks, furious at the betrayal—it had been, moments ago, hot and vicious and clean, but now it feels muddled, tangled up with something far more infuriating.
“I think,” you say, turning your head back up to look at the night sky, “that you look particularly murderous when surrounded by feathers. That amuses me. I have never seen a man with such a strong aversion to them.”
A faint twitch at the corner of his mouth betrays him before he can suppress it.
He hates you.
“This place is suffocating,” he mutters, coming to sit near you, back against one of the marble statues decorating the small pavilion, an arm draped over his knee, head tilted to the side as he looks down at you. “Why did you run off?”
You don’t answer right away. Then, instead of answering his question, you ask, “Why did you come to find me when everyone told you I wished to be alone?” He stares down at you for a moment. Your gaze finally shifts over to him. “To mock?”
He doesn’t like the way his stomach inexplicably twists at the accusation.
“You think I came to mock you for it?” he scoffs. He’s not sure why the idea of you thinking that bothers him so much, but he shoves it away.
“You enjoy provoking me,” you say at last. “I thought perhaps you wished to see what I look like without teeth.”
“You are the one who provokes. I did not come for games,” he mutters. “I came because you were gone.”
“And?” you prompt softly.
His pride rears, furious at the trap he’s walked into, but he does not retreat.
“And I did not like it,” he finishes, blunt and unpolished.
You exhale, as though considering his words, and you turn your gaze back up to the night sky. After a moment, you admit, “I do not like being seen when I am… less.”
Aerion scoffs again, harsher this time. “You are not less. You are as infuriating as you are any other day.”
You laugh at that, and Aerion hates most of all the way it makes the tension bleed from his shoulders. You’re looking at him again, an unreadable expression on your face, and then you hold your hand out to him. You say quietly, “Come closer.”
“I am already close,” he mutters, but he shifts anyway, drawn in despite himself until his legs are brushing yours.
A part of himself rears in disgust at the casual touch, at how easily his body answers to yours. He is accustomed to proximity only when it serves a purpose—when it ends in teeth and kisses and silk twisted in fists. This feels much like that night you brought him out to that cove in the storm, knee-to-knee beneath the moon, skin pressed for no purpose other than closeness, and it feels much more dangerous, like a blade pressed to his throat, but not quite breaking skin but threatening to.
“Closer,” you say again, and he hesitates, staring at you, trying to determine what it is you want from him, but he can’t figure out what you’re plotting. He exhales through his nose and shifts closer still, watching as you reach out to him once he’s close enough, fingers wrapping around his wrist to pull him nearer still.
“What is it that you want? Haven’t you put me through enough torment tonight already?” he asks, a bit on edge as your hand slides up his arm to the back of his neck, dragging him until he’s half hovering over you. His gaze instinctively slips down to your lips when he feels your breath on his, and he notices that you’re smiling slightly—it still does not reach your eyes.
Your free hand moves over to the marble ledge at your side. He watches, suspicion flickering back to life as your fingers find a small carved dish half-hidden in shadow. White-gold powder rests within it, fine as sifted flour, faintly shimmering in the lanternlight.
“What are you doing?” he asks suspiciously, but he doesn’t pull away.
“Something very Lysene,” you reply.
“That inspires no confidence.” His gaze sharpens as you gather some of the powder on your fingers. “If this is an attempt at poisoning me, it is a poor one. I would be disappointed.”
“It is not poison,” you say mildly. “It is indulgence.”
He squints at you, unconvinced.
“It will make you warmer,” you elaborate. “Looser. Less inclined to bite.”
His brow arches. “I do not require assistance in that regard.”
“I beg to differ,” you say dryly, “but I digress. I require it tonight, and I would prefer not to take it alone.”
He exhales through his nose, but when his gaze meets yours again, he nods, and you lean up, one hand still cradling the back of his head, lifting the other with the fine powder scooped onto the tips of your fingers. You lift it to his mouth, and Aerion’s lips part; two fingers brush his lower lip as you press the powder to his tongue, and he closes his mouth around your fingers, tongue dragging against your skin, swirling around the digits, tasting the sickly sweetness of it, pointedly holding eye contact with you.
Your breath catches, and Aerion likes the way your eyes widen slightly, likes the way that the dullness in your eyes finally slips away. His lips curl up smugly around your fingers before he releases them, licking up the length of them one last time as he sits up again, looking down at you.
Your pupils are larger than they usually are as you look up at him, eyes glittering prettily beneath the moonlight, and Aerion’s chest feels tight. He blames it on whatever you just made him take, not on the way you’re looking at him.
“You are playing a dangerous game,” he murmurs.
“You always say that.”
“And you never listen.”
It’s already working its way through him—he didn’t anticipate that it would hit him so quickly. He can feel his shoulders loosening, the slowness of his heartbeat, the way his gaze involuntarily slips down to your body and the sheer chiffon you wear, lingering on your chest, your hips, the way the silks shift as you move closer to him. He can feel the warmth of your body through the fabric, and his fingers reach out before he can stop himself, recognizing the shape of your body before he’s even realized he’s moved, tracing up your thigh, palming the curve of your hip. His throat bobs as he swallows, fingers tightening, heat fogging his head.
“Is it dangerous,” you ask lightly, “to ask questions tonight?”
His brow furrows faintly. “That depends on the question.”
His gaze flicks up to you, calculating, watching as you hum lightly. You shift closer to him, and Aerion stiffens as you rest your shoulders and head in his lap, eyes sliding shut as you nuzzle close to his hip. He inhales sharply, jaw tightening as he tries to steady himself. His hand is still curved around your waist, fingers flexing involuntarily when you shift. He is far too aware of the warmth of you through the thin chiffon, of the slow drag of your breath against his skin.
The powder you gave him burns hot in his veins, aching, and he’s hardly breathing as you slide his silks to the side, letting them slip off his shoulders, kissing slowly up his toned abdomen until you’ve shifted so that you’re sitting in his lap, legs loose around his hips, arms draped around his shoulders. He shudders when you drag your tongue against his clavicle, hips rolling languidly over his stiff cock.
Shit, he thinks, breath already too ragged for his liking. Your skin feels like flame on his, hands sliding up and down his abdomen; his head lolls back instinctively to give you better access, lips parting as you graze your teeth over his pulse.
“How long?” you finally ask, lips brushing the crook of his neck. His lashes flutter, barely processing the question, too consumed by the fire rapidly spreading through his body, how his cock twitches in his pants.
“For what?” he asks after pausing a moment, blinking hard to try to focus. Irritably, he notices that you look much more present than he feels, and he wonders if you even took the powder you gave him, or if your excuse of needing it was just a trick to get him to take it.
“For this,” you say. “Lys. Your exile.”
His jaw tightens, anger flaring hot, tangling messily with desire. He hadn’t even realized his hand drifted up to your hair, but he grips it hard, pulling your head back to force you to look at him. He does not want to think about that—not his father, not his exile, not the Trial of the Seven. You are a conniving whore, he thinks furiously, drugging him with that powder so you can pry into something he would ordinarily not want to discuss.
He hisses, “That is not your concern.”
“How long?” you ask again, more insistently this time. “Humor me.”
Aerion’s nostrils flare as he inhales. “I was not given a number,” he says through his teeth. “I will return when it suits my father, when my absence has proven its point, and I am more useful at his side than discarded across the sea. Why does this matter now?”
Something flashes across your face that he can’t quite catch, lips pressed tight, gaze sliding to the side—disappointment? Gods, he doesn’t even know how you’re thinking right now—his body feels so wound tight and lax at the same time that he feels as though he’s going crazy. His attention flicks to the bowl on your left, accusingly.
“I was only curious,” you finally tell him. “It doesn’t matter.”
His gaze cuts back to you, assessing. You are lying—he can tell—but he doesn’t know why you’re lying, why you’re asking. Paranoia briefly takes hold again, wondering if you’re some sort of spy of his father’s, or worse, one of the Blackfyres’. He knows the bastards are still out there biding their time—are you in league with them? Trying to get more information on what’s happening in the inner workings of House Targaryen to report back to them?
Aerion isn’t accustomed to being wanted without motive. He has been desired, yes—coveted, chosen for advantage, and spectacle, and proximity to the Iron Throne. He was raised in a court where affection is currency, and loyalty shifts with the wind. Women have smiled at him because of his name, and men have bowed because of his blood, but this is not that. And it would make sense, he tells himself—the way you latched onto him, the way you do not flee when he bares his teeth. No one stays simply because they enjoy the heat of him; no one likes being burned. There is always something to be gained from standing near a dragon.
His heart is racing in his chest, and he’s not sure if it’s because of the way you’re kissing his neck and rolling your hips or if it’s the dawning realization that all of his initial suspicions about you might have been correct.
He hates you. He hates you. He wants you—
His breath catches, teeth clamping down on his bottom lip to bite back a moan that nearly rips from his lips when one of your hands slips beneath the waistband of his silks, fingers wrapping around his cock. His eyes roll back slightly when you run your thumb over his tip, stroking him slowly as you kiss under his jaw.
“You do not seem half as affected as I do,” he spits out, accusatory, pride and embarrassment and anger rearing when his hips jerk and he lets out a choked noise. He reaches haphazardly for the bowl, dipping his fingers in and holding it to your lips. “Suck.”
You only look amused. “I cannot take more,” you say. “I will—”
You choke when he shoves his fingers into your mouth, deep into the back of your throat. Your eyes prick with tears as he presses down hard on your tongue, making you gag slightly. Your hand comes up to his wrist, trying to pull out his fingers, but he holds you in place, raising his eyebrows, waiting for you to swallow.
After a few long moments, you do, and he finally releases you, fingers sliding from your mouth. Instantly, you slap him so hard that his head snaps to the side. He stares at the hedges, so stunned by the taste of his own blood in his mouth that he can’t even muster anger.
“Idiot,” you spit furiously. “I already took it.”
He is still staring at the hedge when your words register.
Slowly, he turns his head back toward you. You’re blinking rapidly now through a wrathful glare, chest rising and falling at an erratic pace. Your tongue darts out to wet your lips, throat spasming.
“I told you,” you hiss, “I required it. Not you.”
He sneers, still shocked. “You seemed perfectly clear-headed,” he bites back, pride still stinging more than his cheek. “Forgive me for assuming you meant to dull only me.”
“I have been taking it for five years,” you snarl. “I am more used to its effects than you. That does not mean I am less affected, only better in control of it.”
Aerion finds that there’s something fascinating in your anger. He should be indignant at the way you are speaking to him, furious at the fact that you dared to lay hands on a prince of the blood, but all he can manage is a slow, heated exhale.
Your chest is heaving, and your eyes are bright and full of rage, lips still slick with spit from how he’d shoved his fingers in. He has never seen you angry before—teasing, taunting, playful, bored, amused. You have been the bane of his existence wrapped in fine silks and dangerous smiles, but never angry. Aerion had almost thought you incapable of it, and yet, here you are.
His tongue presses to the inside of his cheek where you’d slapped him, and he finds himself almost—is he smiling?
He should remind you of who he is, who you just struck, but instead, he finally says slowly, “You struck me,” voice riddled with disbelief, tasting the truth of the words as though he still can’t believe it.
“Yes,” you snap, “and I would do it again.”
The heat in his blood surges, breath leaves his mouth in ragged pants. Aerion wants you—Aerion hates you. Aerion has never felt so strongly about anyone in his life; his fingers twitch for the dagger he keeps hidden on his forearm and for your body at the same time.
“You asked about my exile,” he forces out, defensively. “You drug me. You press. What would you have me think?”
“You are an idiot,” you spit again.
Before he can take insult, you press your lips to his, hands coming up to hold his cheeks, tilting his head back to deepen the kiss. Aerion lets out a low moan into your mouth, tasting the sweetness of the powder he forced you to consume before he bites down hard on your lower lip, drawing blood as you did to him. His hands find purchase on your hips as he drags you impossibly closer, until your chest is flush to his and your cunt slides against his cock.
Shit, he thinks, eyes snapping open when his tip slides between your soaked folds, thighs tensing, heat spreading through him so rapidly that he’s not sure if he’ll be able to stop himself from teetering over the edge.
One of his hands immediately flies to the base of his cock, squeezing hard. He breaks his lips from yours to look down, eyes wide and something too close to a whimper spilling from his lips before he can catch it when he sees that your cunt is dripping, slick leaking down your thighs, staining the silk of his pants.
“Fuck—” he breathes, gaze snapping up to meet yours, but you grab his wrist when he’s not expecting it, forcing his grip off his cock. A wave of panic hits him, “Stop, I’ll—”
Aerion’s voice breaks over a sob, abdomen spasming and shoulders curving inward. He presses his face into your chest, jaw agape as he finishes after barely having been touched. His cheeks burn with humiliation—he doesn’t even want to look up from where he’s hidden himself, but he feels your fingers knot in his hair, yanking his face from your chest.
He can’t hold your gaze. He doesn’t even want to know what he must look like—he can feel the blood and spit smeared on his lips, the heat in his cheeks, and they only burn hotter the longer you stare at him. Did he seriously just—
After a moment, you tilt his face down, forcing him to look down. He feels dizzy at the sight of his cum painted all over your cunt, dribbling down your thighs, and then—
Is he still hard?
His gaze flicks up to you, incomprehensive, and then slowly over to the bowl he spilt in his frantic attempt to force it down your throat. You grab his cheeks and make him look you in the eye.
“I had taken enough for it to wear off at the same time,” you say through gritted teeth. “I hope you are ready to put that vicious tongue of yours to work once it wears off for you, because I will not nearly be sated.”
Aerion doesn’t respond, still panting, still processing, and his mind goes blank when you press your lips to his again, not quite as violently this time. He sighs lightly into your mouth as you kiss him slowly, tongue dragging against his inner lip. His hands drag up your sides, fingers pressing into your skin as you finally sink down on his cock—you let out a breathy noise into his mouth, and Aerion’s jaw falls partially slack at the feeling of your tight heat wrapped around him.
You kiss him again, again, nipping at his bottom lip before kissing him deeper, you do it over and over and over again, until he’s dizzy from the taste of you, the feel of you, until that pleasant heat has him so fogged that he can’t even think. Your nails scratch lightly against his scalp, and he lets out a low moan against you as you start to roll your hips.
“Aōha orvorta iksin vēttan syt nyke,” he groans, eyes rolling back when he feels your walls flutter around him. “Sīr ȳrda—bāne—qrugh!”
Your cunt was made for me. So tight—warm—shit!
His hips jerk when you gasp abruptly into his mouth, back arching into him, thighs tensing, body trembling beneath his touch. Aerion is almost lightheaded at the feeling of you falling apart on his cock so quickly, grip tightening on your hips as he maneuvers you onto your back, forearms braced on the cool stone at either side of your head.
You stare up at him, whatever the powder is clearly in full effect now—sharp, playful eyes uncharacteristically hazy, unfocused as you trace along his face, chest rising and falling rapidly, saliva pooling at the corner of your lip. Aerion leans his weight on one arm so he can grab your cheeks, fingers biting into your skin, thumb pressing against your lower lip until your lips part for him. He slides it into your mouth, and Aerion thinks he might have finished a second time the moment your lips close around the digit, lashes fluttering and eyes rolling back as you swirl your tongue around his thumb.
He snaps his hips against you hard, breath ragged as he finally takes control of the pace. He can feel your thighs trembling around his waist, and the vibrations of the soft, helpless moans you let out around his thumb, and Aerion hates you—Aerion wants you, Aerion has you and it isn’t enough. It isn’t nearly enough. He needs this, needs you, needs it like he needs air to breathe, needs it like the fire in his veins and the steel around his throat.
“Emā pryjata nyke,” he accuses through hitched pants and moans. He means for it to come out sharp and angry, furious at how he reacted to your absence, furious at how you make him weak, furious at how he cannot be furious at you, but his voice is too pitched, too drawn, he’s drowning in the slaps of skin on skin, the sloppy sound of your cunt sucking him in deeper and deeper, the noises spilling from your lips. He says again, voice breaking over the words, “Emā pryjata nyke.”
You have ruined me.
He hates you, he thinks as he pulls his thumb from your mouth to kiss you, hips stuttering when he feels your cunt spasming around him again, wetness splattering against his thighs and pelvis.
He hates you, he thinks as he kisses you like he wants to consume you, as he fucks you like he can’t bury himself deep enough into you, as he hikes your leg up to his shoulder just so he can reach deeper inside of you.
He hates you, he thinks furiously as your back arches off the stone and his hand drops from your face to slide his arm beneath you, because he can’t get close enough to you, because his tongue in your mouth and his cock in your cunt isn’t enough, because he needs to feel you everywhere, your skin pressed to his, every part of him against every part of you, until he doesn't know where he ends and you begin.
He fucking hates you, he thinks as he lets a broken moan into your mouth, dizzy and hot and unable to think anything beyond want and need and your body and his, as he realizes that there’s no coming back from this, that if he had it his way, you would never leave his side again, because you are his—only his, always his, he will never be satisfied with anyone else, not as long as he lives, as long as his heart beats and his lungs breathe.
He hates you, he hates you, he hates—
Your hands cradle his face, and Aerion’s entire body feels numb and prickly, thighs aching with every thrust, dots spotting his vision. He kisses sloppily up your neck, breath ragged as he presses his lip against your ear, and his eyes roll back when he feels your nails drag from his scalp, down to the nape of his neck, across his shoulders, his back, and Aerion’s whole body gives out on him.
He chokes over something caught between a gasp and a moan, biceps trembling before he collapses, and his body weight drops onto yours. He buries his face into the crook of your neck, lips still parted into a silent moan, shuddering as he feels you writhing beneath him, clawing at his back, still trying to rock your hips, but Aerion only twitches, body heavy and lax, breathing hard against your skin, pulse still racing, sweat dripping from his temple. The powder settles from raging fire into a deep, molten warmth, spreading through his limbs, loosening every tense muscle. His thoughts blur at the edges, not with frenzy anymore, but with a dangerous, languid contentment.
The world beyond the maze feels impossibly far away—no revel, no politics, no feathered whores or jeweled vipers—just him and you, the warmth of your body and the sound of his heartbeat echoing in his ears.
His face remains buried at your throat, breath hot and uneven against your skin. He exhales long and slow, murmuring into your skin, “You are ruin.”
“And you are not done yet,” you spit at him, still worked up. Aerion groans into your skin, not wanting to move. His body still feels heavy and feverish, breath slowly starting to even out, the haze melting his thoughts and humming beneath his skin. You jerk your hips, and Aerion hisses, cock sensitive and twitching, softening inside of you. “Do not groan at me, dragon prince—this is of your own doing.”
He forces himself off of you, rolling onto his back, limbs heavy as he props himself up on one elbow. He lifts his hand to your face, fingers tracing over your cheek, and there’s something heavy in his chest as he watches your lashes flutter, seeking out his touch. Your skin is hot to the touch, lips swollen and slick with saliva and the blood he drew. He hates how his thoughts mellow, hates the way his chest physically tightens. He blames it on the powder, and he hates most of all that he knows he’s lying to himself.
“I do not like this,” he says quietly, fingers trailing down your chest and stomach, watching raptly as your body responds to his touch.
“This?” you echo, breath still shaky—he likes this at least, that he’s coming down from what you gave him while you’re still in the thick of it. Likes how responsive you are to his touch, likes that you can’t hide behind teasing grins and calculating eyes.
“This feeling,” he clarifies, “like I have been disarmed.”
“Hah—” you gasp, the back of your head pressing against the marble as Aerion’s fingers glide between your slick folds. His gaze slips down your body, nostrils flaring when he sees how much of his own cum he fucked deep into your cunt, enough that it dribbles out of you, pooling onto the white marble beneath you. His throat spasms as he gathers some with two of his fingers, smearing it as he slides his fingers through your cunt to your clit, circling the bud so slowly that you rock your hips against his hand to try to get him to move faster. “Iemnȳ!”
Inside!
Aerion has half a mind to deny you just to make a point, and he blames the way he immediately indulges you on the boneless feeling in his limbs and the pleasant warmth that makes his head dizzy and his chest fluttery. He keeps his thumb pressed to your clit as he sinks two fingers into you, hissing at the feeling of your heat wrapped tight around him, the stickiness of his cum stuffing your cunt. Your lips part into a silent moan, the whites of your eyes as your back arches off the marble, and Aerion watches raptly as one of your hands darts down to his wrist, nails digging into his skin, and the other fumbles for something to hold on to.
He blames the powder again for the way he immediately slides his fingers between yours, letting you cling to his hand as he slowly fucks his cum deeper into your cunt.
“Kesan dōrī jikagon lenton,” you gasp after a moment, and it takes a moment for the words to process. I will never go home. Aerion’s gaze drags back up to your face from where he’s watching his cum ring around the base of his fingers with each snap of his wrist, blinking away the haze when he sees the way you’re looking at him, gaze tracing his face with a type of desperation he’s never seen on you before. “Nyke jeldan naejot gīmigon skorkydoso bōsa eminna ao. Konir sagon skoro syt nyke eptan.”
I wanted to know how long I will have you. That is why I asked.
Aerion’s throat suddenly feels tight, pausing in the steady rolls of his wrist, only for you to hiss and tighten your grip on it, beckoning him to continue.
“Dōrī?” he echoes, voice hoarser than he intends.
Never?
“Dōrī,” you confirm, breath hitching, and Aerion’s mouth goes dry when you let out a low moan of his name and squeeze his fingers hard, a shiver running through his spine. “Lo jān lenton, kesan sagon ossēntan.”
Never. If I go home, I will be killed.
Aerion’s jaw tightens at your words, trying to focus on unraveling you again instead of the pit that forms in his stomach. He curls his fingers deep inside, lashes fluttering at the keening whine you let out as your hips stutter against his fingers. Your walls tighten and flutter around him, and he lets out a breath to steady himself when you stare up at the sky, chest heaving, gaze lidded, body limp on the stone.
“Skoro syt?” he finally asks.
Why?
Your gaze shifts to him, voice cutting despite the haziness in your eyes. “I thought I said I wanted your tongue.”
Aerion manages to bare his teeth at you through the pleasant haze. “You do not order me, wench,” he says coolly, but he shifts to kneel between your legs, pulling his hand free from yours and slipping his fingers out of you, gnawing at the inside of his cheek as he watches cum dribble from your hole and join the mess on the ground beneath you.
His gaze flicks up to the bench on your left, and he ignores the surprised yelp you let out when he hooks his arms under your knees and shoulders to move you onto it. Before you can kick out your leg to catch him in the shoulder, he presses his hands to your slick thighs to spread them, leaning in to drag his tongue between your folds.
He blames this on the powder, too, he decides—the fact that he’s on his knees, face buried in your cunt, your legs draped around his shoulders. Aerion would have to gouge out the eyes of anyone who saw him like this—might gouge out yours later just to make a point. He lets out a low groan into you as he sucks your clit lightly, toying with the bud with his tongue before lapping at the mess of his cum and yours between your legs.
“Did you know—” you start to say, voice pitched and breathy, fingers twisting in his silver hair as you rock your hips against his face. The sting at his scalp makes him hiss, offended, and he digs his nails into the skin of your thighs in response, but you don’t seem to care. His gaze flicks up to through pale lashes. You are not looking at him. Your chest rises and falls in quick breaths, your expression strangely distant as you stare past the hedges toward the slice of night sky above the maze. “—that from the top of the Black Walls, you can see Old Valyria?”
Aerion falters, eyes widening as he pulls back slightly to look up at you more directly, and you instantly glare down at him. He sneers at you out of sheer instinct, because he will not be cowed like some trembling Lyseni boy, but lowers his mouth again all the same, tongue dragging lazily through folds as though nothing has changed, teasing at your entrance as he waits for you to continue, listening far more intently now.
“On clear days, when the wind blows the smoke thin, you can see the black towers of the old city touching the sky,” you continue. Your hand begins to stroke through his hair now, absentminded, as if you have forgotten you are holding him there. Aerion should resent it. He should bare his teeth and remind you that he is not some pampered pet to be stroked while you speak of things that belong to his blood, but he’s too focused on your words to push away the pleasant feeling that rises in his chest—he blames that on the powder too. “I would spend hours sitting there staring at them, from dawn to dusk. It’s… a different type of cruelty to be so close and yet so far from everything that could’ve been. In that regard, I’m almost jealous of your house. At least you are not taunted by the ruins.”
Aerion doesn’t answer, though he thinks he would beg to differ.
He was raised on the stories all his life—the Doom, the Smoking Sea, the towers that once ruled the world. For most men, it is a myth, something distant, more legend than history. For him, it is an ancestry forever out of reach. For you, it had been something you could see from a wall.
He ignores the green feeling that curdles ugly in his chest, willingly leaning into the pleasant warmth still weighing him down instead. He relishes the way your breath hitches when his teeth graze your clit.
“When we were young, we would sail to the shores at the outskirts of Valyria,” you tell him after a moment. “It was a rite of passage, so to speak, for children of Tiger families. We would bribe a captain bold enough—or foolish enough—to take us out past the merchant routes, to the northern shores. Take a small rowing boat to the sand and wander along the shore, daring one another to go into the forest. None of us ever went very far. The trees there grow wrong—twisted, blackened things that creak even when there is no wind. They say there are creatures that live in the ruins that are neither human nor animal, scaled things that look like men but feast on flesh and bone.”
Aerion watches your face as you speak, the heat settling into something heavier as he rests his head on your inner thigh. This time, you don’t glare at him to put his mouth back on your cunt—he wonders if this is why you made him take the powder, to loosen yourself up enough to speak of this. His chest inexplicably tightens.
“I went farther than the others,” you say, giving him a smug smile that doesn’t quite reach your eyes. “I was always the one who went the farthest.”
Aerion snorts quietly. “Yes,” he says dryly. “You strike me as the sort who would.”
“Half a mile inland, there’s a ruined outpost off the shore, on one of the old dragonroads,” you tell him. “Half-collapsed, choked with vines, but I climbed through the stones because I wanted to see the carvings up close. That’s where I found this.”
Your hand lifts slightly, brushing the Valyrian steel you put around his throat a moon ago, fingers tracing the metal reverently. Aerion goes very still—this is not some relic passed through markets and merchants, hoarded in vaults like you led him to believe. You found it in the ruins of Valyria itself, amongst the broken stones of the old empire, pried from the bones of a city that once ruled the world. His fingers rise unconsciously to the metal at his throat, swallowing thickly as he looks up at you.
“I wasn’t allowed to bring any of the family heirlooms with me to Lys—my armor, sword, jewelry, they all went back into the vault. But since I found this, they couldn’t take it from me,” you say with a wry smile, lashes fluttering before you look away again. Why did you give him this? he wants to demand again, furious, indignant, a lump in his throat he can’t push away. You continue before he can spit out the words. “I wanted to go further. The forest beyond the tower was… it was strange. Too quiet. But my brother ruined the moment.”
“You have a brother?” Aerion asks, blinking, trying to remember if you ever mentioned it to him before, but he doesn’t think you have. He’s not sure why it catches him off guard so much.
“A twin,” you confirm. “When he realized how far I had gone, he started shouting from the beach—crying, screaming at me to come back before something in the forest came out to eat me. I laughed at him, but he sounded so scared that I turned back around. He wouldn’t stop crying until we were halfway back to Volantis.”
You exhale suddenly, looking away, a wistful expression on your face, but there’s a tightness in your jaw that wasn’t there before.
“It was a tradition,” you say after a moment, hands fisted in your lap. “Children of the Tiger families have done it for generations. It is known. Everyone in the East is aware; ask anyone here in Lys, and they will tell you. Before we come of age, we sail to the northern shores of Valyria and step onto the sand. It is meant to prove that the blood is still brave—that the blood remembers. Five years ago, nine of our children left to sail to the northern shores, and their heads were delivered to the Black Walls in sacks.”
Aerion stills. The warmth of the powder lingers in his limbs, heavy and slow, but the words cut clean through it. For a moment, he only watches you, waiting for the smirk that would turn it into one of your strange jokes, but it never comes.
“How would you respond if your enemies delivered the heads of Targaryen children to the Red Keep?” you ask him.
“I would burn their city,” he says without hesitation. “And when the fires died, I would find whoever thought to send such a gift and make certain the rest of the world understood what it cost them.”
Your lips curve up into another smile that doesn’t reach your eyes. “The Elephant families called for inaction. They said the matter should not escalate. That the loss of nine children was tragic, but a war would be worse. Trade must continue, alliances must remain stable, Volantis must appear… reasonable.”
“Reasonable,” Aerion echoes, voice riddled with disbelief. He almost laughs, thinking that this is one strung-out joke, but the expression on your face makes it die in his throat.
“I doubt they would have been so lackadaisical if it were Elephant children killed, but I digress,” you say with a bitter scoff. “The Tiger families didn’t agree with them, of course, but the Elephants have held majority power since the Century of Blood, and they declared that no military action will be taken against the offenders—that they will settle the dispute through gold, as if any amount of gold can replace the lives of sons and daughters.”
You shake your head, rubbing at the lower half of your face as you look away, and then you look down at Aerion again.
“So, the Tiger families decided to go through with it anyway, knowing that whoever led it would be branded traitor and dragged to the Ivory Yard,” you say. “My father is the Tiger Triarch—our family controlsl the military, so it had to be one of us who led the unsanctioned attack.”
“So it was you,” Aerion realizes. “This is why you were exiled.”
“It was supposed to be my brother,” you say with a wry smile, “because he was the spare, so my father could afford for him to be killed. Volantis follows the old Valyrian tradition of power over gender. Whoever is most fitting to rule will rule. My brother is… soft. Sensitive. He hates fighting and politics—all he wants is to drink and play music and read books, whereas combat and strategy and politics came to me more naturally. By the time I was five and ten, my father was preparing me for elections; he was supposed to step down when I turned twenty, and I was supposed to take over the Tiger party. My brother barely knew how to properly swing a damn sword, much less command an army—how the fuck was I supposed to let him march off to war, knowing that if by some fluke he managed to survive, I would have to watch him be ripped apart in the Ivory Yard?”
You exhale heavily, looking away, and Aerion does not know how to respond, does not have a quick remark or a comment that would feel appropriate, so he presses his lips together, waiting for you to continue.
“He and I—people cannot tell us apart when we have our hair styled similarly. Same build, same face, same voice. So, I took his armor, and I went myself,” you say, and then you give him a sidelong smile. “I had a similar idea of retribution to you, dragon prince. I told you way back when—birds of a feather, you and I.”
Aerion lets out a breath through his nose, eyes sliding shut when you reach out to brush his hair from his face.
“I was taken to the Ivory Yard and chained, and my father and the other Tiger families said that if I were executed, there would be a civil war. They never would have done the same for my brother, but because it was me, the matter suddenly became… complicated. They could not afford to let the Elephants make an example of someone who was supposed to be the face of the future of the Tiger party.”
“And so you are here,” Aerion drawls, but there is a tightness in his chest that he cannot quite push away.
He presses his lips together, trying to reconcile the languid creature he has known with the past you just described. He half expects you to laugh loudly and tease him for falling for your elaborate tale, but he knows in his gut that this is the truth, and he thinks that he has seen it all along.
You have longed for blood and steel on this island of pillows and silk just as he has—the boredom in your face when you are surrounded by whores and vipers is not the careful calculation of someone who enjoys decadence and gorge, it is the look of someone who is starving. The laughter, the flirting, the games you play across rooftops and through markets—the endless teasing smiles and practiced languor. It is distraction, because you are restless—violently, dangerously restless. The same as he is, just more skilled at hiding it.
“And now I am here,” you agree dryly, drawing him from his thoughts. “From future Triarch to a prince’s whore. How the mighty fall.”
You say the words carelessly, as you always do, but they land somewhere in his chest with a weight he does not expect. You’ve said this countless times before, deliberately to provoke him into one of his usual quick retorts, but this time, he cannot muster the energy for it, fingers brushing the steel on his neck, and the image of the wistful expression on your face as you told him of your past flashes through his mind.
He swiftly pushes it away and exhales, forcing his mouth into a sharp smile. “If that is what you are, then you chose your prince very poorly,” he says wryly. “I have no court, no favor, and no patience for the sort of arrangements Lys seems to enjoy.”
“Poorly?” you ask with an amused smile. You shift off the bench so that you can sit with him on the ground, and this time, when you kick his legs apart, he doesn’t protest as you settle between them, resting your back against his chest. “I believe that means we are quite perfect for one another.”
Aerion snorts, though the sound lacks its usual bite.
He tells himself the tightness in his chest is the powder.
The warmth spreading through his limbs is also the powder.
The way his arm slips around your waist, drawing you closer without thought—that is certainly the powder.
He rests his head back against the marble pillar behind him, looking up at the sky. The stars are bright here, and the music and laughter from the revel sounds far away. He breathes out through his nose and says after a moment, “Your city is full of fools.”
He feels your shoulders shake as you laugh lightly. You agree wryly, “That, it is.”
“Why do you remain here if you hate it so much?” he asks after a moment. “Surely, you are not confined to this singular city—”
“I do not hate it,” you interrupt. “I was quite content before you arrived.”
Aerion does not like the way his stomach flips at your words—he blames this on the powder, too, even if the warmth and boneless feeling have finally started to subside.
He forces a scoff. “You were bored.”
You scoff right back. “Boredom is survivable.”
“And I am not?”
You do not respond for a long while. Long enough for him to understand what your answer is without you having to say anything at all. For a fleeting moment, he tries to imagine the raven he will receive when his father inevitably summons him back home. One of Vyrano’s servants will send for him to return to the manse, and there will be a letter waiting on the table in his solar, sealed with the three-headed dragon in red wax. He pictures the ship waiting in the harbor, the sails unfurling as Lys fades into a smear of pale domes behind him. The revels, the markets, the coves and sea wind—gone, as though they had never been real at all.
And you.
You would be gone with it.
Unless—
“Tomorrow, we will pretend as though this conversation never happened,” you say after a moment, tilting your head back and to the side so that you can look at him directly, halting his train of thought before he can even properly consider it. You lift your hand to turn his face so that he’s looking at you—Aerion does not find himself protesting, even though he should. This is the powder’s fault as well. “We’ll return to your chambers once the revel begins to die down, and I will be gone by morning, and you will find me by midday, or I’ll have won the day’s game.”
He sneers. It feels forced. “You do not order me, wench.”
“I do as I please,” you reply a sharp curve of your lips, shifting around so that you’re facing him, leaning in to ghost your lips against his. If he shivers, he blames that on the powder too. Everything tonight is that wretched powder’s fault—your fault. Perhaps it is best to forget it happened at all. “And you have yet to satisfy me since you forced me to take double what you did. So what I please to do is you.”
Aerion grimaces slightly, still sensitive, but that only seems to delight you from the way you burst into laughter.
It was a foolish thought anyway—the fault of the powder, surely.
SUMMARY: as the days draw near to the fifth anniversary of your exile, you are left with an uncomfortable truth: aerion will not be here forever. one day, he will leave, and you will still be rotting in lys, and you wonder if you are only making things worse for yourself by indulging in him so carelessly. still, you cannot help yourself—you think it’s better to have known fire, even if only for a fleeting moment, than to spend the rest of your life wondering what it might have felt like to burn
WARNINGS: fem!reader, reader comes from valyrian lineage but no physical traits are mentioned/described, tw aerion, predator/prey dynamics, skinny dipping, jealous/possessive!aerion & jealous/possessive!reader, the high valyrian is not properly translated in this one because we don’t know the words for the words I needed so bear with me LOL, switch!reader, switch!aerion WC: 9.3k-ish
AUTHOR'S NOTES: OKAY ... so for this part we take a new look at our favorite exiles. This part is a bit more serious than the last two, but it was bound to happen, trust they will be back to their regularly scheduled antagonization and toxicity soon KISDUHFASUIHFSUADHF I actually had a whole different part written for this, but then I deleted it all and restarted because I thought it was important that we get to see reader a bit more serious, because naturally she has been there a long time, and she's never going to go home, and she knows one day that Aerion will but she's letting herself get used to him anyway. So her realizing this + the timing of her approaching her 5th anniversary of her exile was just a double whammy that led to her being a bit more mellow. She is still playful with Aerion and making his life difficult, but her narration is just more solemn. The next part is going to be Aerion's POV and it's a direct continuation of this part, so she will be a bit mellow in that one too because it's still addressing her exile, BUT THEN WE WILL GET BACK TO REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAM .... speaking of, if you guys have any tropes or ideas that you'd liked to see for the two of them, feel free to shoot the my way and I'll see what I can do with them. Comments and reblogs always appreciated!! Mwah mwah
READ: BEWITCHED
Dragons are territorial little things—creatures of possession and pride, quick to bare their teeth over what they believe is theirs, and everything is theirs, if they have anything to say about it. They do not share willingly, and they do not yield ground once they have decided something falls within their reach.
Dragons are also hunters—patient when it suits them, relentless when it does not, and clever enough to sit back and observe the patterns of what they pursue, learning their habits and the shape of their movements until the chase is no longer a chase at all, but a game they are set to win.
Exile has stripped Aerion Brightflame of many things, but it has clearly not stripped him of these instincts. It is a very, very dangerous combination, because he is never so motivated as he is when something that is beginning to feel like his dares to slip just beyond his grasp.
So naturally, that is how you find your fun with him.
The days in Lys finally settle into something predictable again after the weeks of chaos following his arrival. You wake half past dawn, as you always have, but with linen tangled around your legs and bite marks decorating your throat, a pleasant ache between your thighs that Aerion has been busy making sure has not faded since that night in Vyrano’s gardens. The sea breeze drifts in through open shutters, cool against skin still warm from sleep, and you stretch languidly, fingers tracing along the scratches left on his back the night before as the city slowly hums to life, kissing across his shoulder blades and up his neck before you make yourself scarce.
You leave before he wakes to do your rounds through the city: gossiping at the Perfumed Garden, fluttering between the manses of whichever magisters you decide worthy of your presence for the morning, trading gold for secrets with the harbor orphans to keep your network of child spies running.
It is important that you leave first—not because you’re trying to escape him, but because you enjoy being sought by him. Dragons are hunters, and they are territorial little things, so you make entertainment by denying him what he’s claimed, just for the thrill of it.
The first time he wakes to find the bed cool and you nowhere to be found, he doesn’t realize that this is a game of your own design. He searches clumsily—strides into places expecting you to be waiting there, irritation flaring hot when you are not. He questions servants too sharply, and he expects the world to yield answers simply because he demands them, but Lys does not work that way, and he finds himself sorely disappointed when he can’t bend it—or you—to his will.
You watch from balconies and tiled rooftops as he learns this, forcibly reining in his temper every time he is redirected or subtly denied. When he returns to Vyrano’s manse in the evening after having searched relentlessly for you all day, only to find you lounging in his bed, silk sliding off your shoulders and amusement bright in your eyes, there is a long, charged pause in the doorway as he realizes that you’ve just drawn him into another one of your games.
The first few mornings after that, you make it easy for him, just to lull him into a false sense of security. You leave a visible trail or drop a rumor at the harbor that you tell the children to whisper to him, a courtesan instructed to sign dramatically when asked where you’ve gone and point in the right direction. He finds you quickly, then, expression smoothing into something smug and possessive, as though your absence had never unsettled him at all and it was a given that he would find you, because you are his, and there is nothing in the world that can stop him from finding and taking what he considers his.
The next week, you become bored with how quickly he finds you, and you change the game. You stop leaving trails and abandon routine entirely. One morning, you’re at the harbor, bargaining for a rumor, and the next, you’re perched above the central square, watching caravans unload dyed silks from Tyrosh. You move through servants’ passages instead of courtyards, and slip through private gardens rather than public promenades. You send the harbor boys in three different directions with three different stories and vanish somewhere else entirely.
The first time he fails to find you before midday, the entire city feels it—he is tense, and aggravated, and everyone is anxious, waiting for the final feather on the scale to tip his temper over the edge.
And you watch, intrigued, because Aerion doesn’t lash out the way everyone expects him to. The irritation that would have once erupted violently settles into something far more dangerous—stillness. From the rooftop above the square, you see the shift happen in real time. His gaze stops skimming crowds and starts studying them instead. He notes which servants glance toward the harbor too nervously and which children scatter a little too quickly. He doesn’t follow the loudest rumor—he waits until he’s heard three or four, and then follows the silence instead.
He begins to understand that you prefer high vantage points on clear days when the sun is brightest, that you avoid the busiest docks when foreign banners arrive to watch from tiled rooftops instead, and that you drift toward shade when the air grows hot and still. He notes which magisters you tolerate longest and which you abandon within minutes. He learns that when you disappear entirely, you are rarely far—merely above.
The first time he looks up instead of ahead and finds you watching him from a rooftop, there is something undeniably victorious in his expression. And you find that there’s something quite thrilling in watching the precise moment that realization hits him, the way his attention sharpens and locks onto you, as if the entire city has fallen away and only the line between hunter and hunted remains.
The game shifts that day—no longer about whether he can find you, but about how long it takes, and you discover that the most intoxicating part of this new form of entertainment isn’t the disappearing itself, it’s seeing how relentlessly he rises to meet whatever challenge you lay out for him.
You feel alive. He makes you feel alive. You do not waste your mornings away staring wistfully to the east, desperate for a glimpse of the walls you once called home across the Summer Sea, and you do not spend your nights wide awake, anxious to evade the familiar faces that haunt your dreams. You spend your mornings plotting out the day’s game you wish to play with your dragon prince, and you spend your nights draped against him, face nuzzled in his neck and leg hooked around his waist, too tired and sated from a day of chase to worry about what might wait for you when your eyes slide shut.
You think if this is exile, if this is what your future is meant to be, then maybe—just maybe—you might actually find peace on this wretched island.
—————————
“So,” Vaella begins, drawing her knees up beneath her as she settles against the cushions at your side, her voice lowered though her eyes gleam with mischief, “is it some manner of… courtship ritual?”
Rhalla lets out a stifled giggle from your other side, promptly hiding her face in her hands as her cheeks bloom pink.
“I ask in earnest,” Vaella insists, lifting her chin. “The whole of Lys has taken to whispering of it—your little chases across rooftops, the way he prowls after you as though the city were his hunting ground. If it is not part of your bedding, then what would you call it?”
Rhalla peeks through her fingers. “They say he looks half-mad when he cannot find you.”
Vaella nods quickly. “And half-devout when he does.” She hesitates, then adds more softly, “I am only curious.”
You snort as you tip back a goblet of wine, draining what’s left in one long gulp. Rhalla immediately leans forward to grab the decanter and refills your cup. Aerion should be somewhere on the west side of the island right now, looking for you among the harbor children until he realizes that you’ve not set foot near the docks all morning. He will be in a particularly foul mood tonight after being strung along by the nose all day—he never quite likes it when it’s thrown in his face that you’re still leagues above him when it comes to your games of cat-and-mouse, especially when you’ve allowed him to become so confident.
“Well—” you start to say, but then pause. No is on the tip of your tongue—it’s just a way for the two of you to entertain yourselves while stuck on this island, because there’s only so much fucking and alcohol and silk and incense that you can take before you start feeling tormented by monotony. But you suppose there is something a bit thrilling in the moments after he’s found you, heart racing in your chest and heat spreading through you when his lips tilt up into a smug, victorious smile as he makes his way over to you. You finally say, “Perhaps.”
Both girls laugh, and across the room, Caelyx snorts as he leaves the room where he was entertaining a YiTish spice merchant, sliding his silks around his shoulders to cover himself as he makes his way over to the three of you. He drops down onto the velvet cushions across from you, sighing heavily as he brushes his pale hair out of his face.
“If we are to speak of our resident dragon once more,” he drawls, reaching for the wine set between you, “you might at least grant me the courtesy of inclusion. I have laid a fair amount of coin upon the matter. If secrets are to be spilled, I should like to hear them first.”
You raise your eyebrows.
“Caelyx,” Rhalla scolds, flinging a velvet cushion in his direction, though there is little force behind it. He catches it easily and only grins.
“What?” he asks, unrepentant. “Do not look so scandalized. It is not only I. Half of Lys has taken to wagering on how long it takes the dragon to track her down each morning.” His smile turns sly as his gaze flicks toward you. “The other half wagers on how swiftly he spirits her away once he does.”
Rhalla’s eyes widen. “They do not.”
“They do,” he assures her smoothly. “And someone must be entrusted with the coin. I have been very civic-minded.”
You tilt your head, amused. “Have you now? And what are the odds?”
Caelyx studies you with exaggerated seriousness. “He has grown sharper of late,” he admits, lifting the cup to his lips. “But you have grown crueler.” A wink follows. “I always put my coin on you.”
“You’d be a fool if you didn’t,” you tell him with a smug smile as you lean back against the cushions with a sigh, tilting your head back to look up at the painted glass ceiling. You feel fingers brush your hair from your face, and your head falls to the side so that you can look at Vaella. “Hm?”
“You should share him with us one day,” Vaella says with a pretty smile, lashes fluttering in exaggerated innocence. “He never so much as glances our way when we seek his attention at feasts and celebrations. I’m curious to know what a dragon prince is like in bed.”
“Vaella!” Rhalla gasps, scandalized, though her eyes flick between you and the floor in a way that betrays her curiosity. “You ought not speak so boldly.”
“What?” Vaella pouts. “She’s always shared with us. There’s no harm in asking. I know you’re curious too, Rhalla, don’t play at innocence.”
Rhalla makes a strangled sound. “I am not—”
“You are,” Vaella insists, leaning over you to flick her arm. “You stare at him every time he walks into a room.”
Rhalla flushes red, pressing her face into her hands. “He’s handsome,” she cries. “You cannot blame me. How often do we have princes on the island?”
“Quite often,” Caelyx says with a snort, “just never ones so pretty. I would take that mad little dragon over those wrinkled Qartheen merchant princes any day.”
Rhalla lets out another mortified sound. “Caelyx!”
“What?” he replies, unbothered, lifting his cup. “Every soul in Lys thinks it. I merely have the courage to say so.”
Vaella beams. “Just so.”
Inexplicably, you do not like this conversation.
You do not like the way Rhalla’s voice became wistful when she called him handsome, and you do not like the way Vaella’s lashes flutter when she imagines him in her bed, and you especially do not like the casual certainty of Caelyx’s declaration that everyone is thinking it. The image flickers, uninvited—Aerion’s attention slipping, his focus shifting, that consuming intensity directed at someone other than you.
Sourness coils low in your gut, fingers a smidge too tight around the goblet in your hands, and you don’t know why you’re so bothered. Vaella is right—you’ve never minded sharing before. You’ve brought many sons and daughters of magisters with you to the Perfumed Garden, laughing as silk tangled and mouths wandered, incense loosening inhibitions until names and titles meant very little at all. It’s always been easy—detached and amusing, a way to pass time when you’re bored and lonely. You like watching Vaella and Caelyx unravel whatever poor boy or girl you’ve brought along with you, smiling lazy kisses into Rhalla’s mouth as eyes roll back and gasps ring through your ears.
But the image of Caelyx’s hands in Aerion’s hair, or Vaella’s laugh caught beneath his mouth, the idea of distracting yourself with Rhalla while hands slide against skin that you have bruised and scratched, does not amuse you, and does not feel easy. If anything, it irritates. The thought settles wrong, tastes all bitter and unwelcome, and something ugly and hot spreads through your chest when you think of anyone being able to have Aerion as you’ve had him—panting against your skin, face flushed and lips swollen, nails digging into thighs and hips as he clings to you. You are the only one allowed to unravel him.
Caelyx watches you closely, far more perceptive than he lets on. “Oh,” he breathes softly.
You snap your gaze to him. “Oh, what?”
He smirks into his wine. “Nothing.”
“So?” Vaella presses. “Can you convince him? I doubt he’ll entertain it unless it comes from you.”
You like that, at least. The idea that you’re the only one who would be able to convince him to do something, that the effect you have on him is known throughout Lys. He is yours, you decide—you have decided since the moment you met him—and now, you decide you will share everything, but not him. Aerion is not the only one with dragon blood, you reason, yours is as ancient and purer than his, so it’s understandable that you, too, are a territorial little thing when it comes to the things you decide are yours, even if they are far and few between.
“I don’t share dragons,” you say lightly, as though it’s a joke, but it is not a joke. You will not share Aerion, and if they know what’s good for them, they’ll drop the subject in earnest. You take a slow sip of wine, buying yourself a second to shove away that ugly feeling that surfaced a few moments ago. “They are temperamental creatures. You saw how he almost broke Valerion’s wrist a couple of weeks ago,” you continue smoothly, trying to play it off. “Best not to provoke him unnecessarily.”
Rhalla lowers her hands, peeking at you. “You mean he would get jealous?”
“I mean,” you correct, “he would set something alight for an imagined offense, and I should hate for it to be one of my favorite girls.”
Vaella and Rhalla laugh, delighted by the idea of you being protective over them, but Caelyx does not—he is not tricked by the lie that slips from your mouth too easily.
He watches you over the rim of his cup, assessing, as though he’s just recalculated the odds on something far more interesting than morning wagers. You squint your eyes at him, and he winks at you, far too knowing for his own good. Before you can change the subject, a familiar face barges into the Perfumed Garden, smeared with dirt and grime, small fingers quick as he swipes two coins off a nearby table.
“He’s coming!” your most dutiful little soldier, Malen, cries, gaze snapping to the berries on the table in front of you. “From the searoad!”
“Do not even think about it, you little rat,” Vaella says furiously, throwing herself off the couch to chase the child when he grabs the whole bowl of fruit. “Bring those back this instant!”
“Vaella, wait!” Rhalla cries as she chases after her older sister, leaving you and Caelyx alone in the sitting room. Silence settles in their wake, punctured only by Vaella’s indignant shriek echoing down the corridor and Malen’s triumphant laughter.
Caelyx studies you for a long moment, expression contemplative. “In the five years you have been here, you have never cared enough to keep anything from us before,” he notes absently, fingers tapping against the goblet of wine he poured for himself. “I did not think things between you and the dragon prince were so… serious.”
You scoff instinctively, looking away. “Do not make poetry of it. It is not serious,” you say immediately, gaze slipping over to the window as the sun begins its descent through the sky. “We amuse one another, that is all.”
“Is it?” Caelyx drawls, clearly doubting you, and you give him a flinty look in response. He only raises his brows innocently. “If it is no more than amusement, you would not object to another providing him with the same.”
Your gaze snaps back to him, lips pressed together, and he smiles faintly into his wine.
You rise in a rustle of silk, brushing imaginary dust from your skirts as though the matter bores you. You drop a handful of coins onto the table to replace the ones that Malen stole for himself. “You grow tedious.”
“So I have been told,” he replies mildly. When you turn to leave, he asks quietly, “Will you follow him?”
You pause, the question hanging heavy in the air, shoulders stiff and body tense. Follow him?
“When he is called back across the Narrow Sea,” Caelyx continues, voice softer now, and you are glad that your back is to him, because he can’t see the way your face immediately twists, “as he will be—sooner or later. When his father tires of punishing him. When Westeros demands its prince. Will you sail west with him?”
You blink once, lips parting as you glance over your shoulder to stare at him for a moment, suddenly feeling as though there’s a pit in your stomach.
When he goes back—
You scoff, too quickly. “That is none of your concern, Caelyx,” you say, though your voice sounds thinner than you intend. “You presume too much.”
He inclines his head, unoffended. “As you say, my lady. I speak only out of care.”
“I have no need of it,” you snap. “Keep your care for your ledgers and your wagers.”
Caelyx sighs and says something in response that you don’t quite catch as you leave the Perfumed Garden, heart suddenly lodged terribly in your throat.
—————————
Aerion doesn’t find you that day, and you are not waiting for him in his chambers when he returns to Vyrano’s manse. Instead, you spend the rest of the day at the cliff’s edge on the eastern tip of the island, staring out into the distant horizon, where you know Volantis lies.
What will you do when he goes back?
Realistically, you know that Aerion will eventually be going back to Westeros. You did not need Caelyx to remind you. You pried around after Aerion’s arrival in Lys to figure out what he did to get himself exiled. You learned about the Trial of the Seven and his uncle Baelor. Aerion was reckless and foolish, but he did not intentionally kill his uncle, nor did he mean for the gods to answer as they did—not really, at least.
From what you gathered in whispers traded for coin and kisses, the Trial had been meant as spectacle—anger erupting too violently, pride too wounded to let some hedge knight’s insult pass unchallenged. Aerion accused, the Crown Prince Baelor stood, steel clashed, blood spilt. The gods chose their victor, and in doing so, they left Aerion Brightflame with a corpse on his hands and a father who could not even bear to look at him.
It was reckless, and it was foolish, but recklessness and foolishness do not cause a prince of the blood to be permanently exiled. It causes distance, a father who will send his son away until tempers settle and whispers dull. Aerion is tenth in line, but he is still in line, still dragon-blood. His exile is humiliation, not disinheritance. One summons from King’s Landing and he will board a ship without hesitation, dressed in leathers instead of silk, sword at his hip, chin high as though he had never been cast aside at all.
Unlike you.
You are Old Blood of Volantis. Your exile is not humiliation; it is mercy, and it is permanent. You were not sent away to cool your temper, nor to be forgotten just long enough that the scandal attached to your name would dull. You were sent away because the only other option was execution.
In two weeks, you’ll have been here for five years. Five years of playing at indifference, at decadence, at being unbothered. Five years of telling yourself that exile is simply a different kind of freedom, that the island is gilded enough to distract from what you lost. You had almost become used to the dull monotony of your life when he showed up.
Aerion was never meant to be more than another distraction, and yet, he will become the worst punishment of all, you think bitterly.
You have never allowed yourself to want for permanence. You learned that lesson years ago, when your life was stolen in one fell swoop, when your world shifted from black walls and marble palaces, blood and blade and fire, a promised future of power and glory, to summer breeze and sands, incense and pillows and silk, boredom and tedium and a life of nothingness. If you get accustomed to something, it can be taken away from you, and this world will take it away from you, so it is best not to rely on anything.
So, you learned to want for moments instead—sharp, bright, fleeting things that could not be used against you. A kiss stolen in a garden. A secret traded for coin. A night that leaves scratches and bruises and no promises. Never promises, never a future.
Aerion was meant to be one of those things, and yet, you have allowed him to become a future you cannot stop imagining.
You hate that.
Because he will go back. Whether it is in a moon or a year or five, a prince of the blood will not rot in Lys forever. Westeros may spit on him and whisper mad behind his back, but it is still his home. His father will tire of proving a point, or a war will need him, or a marriage will be arranged.
Something will pull him west again.
And you—you will stay east.
You will wake half past dawn and wander rooftops and collect secrets and drink wine and let the island call you its precious Volantene jewel. You will build a life out of silk and rumors and carefully practiced indifference. And you will not have a dragon prince to chase you around the island, will not spend your nights in his bed, will not wake to a familiar ache between your thighs or his body pressed to yours.
His life will continue on—he will find a wife and forget all about the time he spent in Lys, look back on it as humiliation, as shame—and you will still be here. You will wake up every morning, and you will look east to Volantis, and you will look west to him; and you will evade sleep in fear of his face joining the ones that already haunt your dreams.
Your shoulders slump as you look down at the waves crashing against rocks below, feet dangling in open air.
You have always known that this would be how it ends, and yet, you cannot push away the heaviness that weighs on your chest now. A part of you wonders if you were better off not indulging at all, that maybe you’ve done this to yourself, and you were a fool for allowing yourself to become accustomed to someone who was never going to stay. You told yourself that you were not afraid of being burned, but now you fear whether you’ll survive him at all.
You stop yourself before your thoughts can spiral further, tilting your face up as the sea breeze whips through your hair. It is too late to change the past, and you don’t think you would even if you could.
After all, who wouldn’t prefer a taste of fire—even knowing it will one day soon burn out—to a lifetime of ash?
—————————
Hours later, your feet touch down on the wide balcony outside Aerion’s chambers without a sound. You lean over the stone railing just enough to confirm that none of Vyrano’s guards have noticed your climb, but they’ve retreated beneath canopies and broad leaves to escape the drizzle misting over the manse. A summer storm is nigh, but you have a mission to complete.
You slip through the curtain and into the room, carefully drawing it closed behind you. The stone floor is cool beneath your bare feet as you cross the room, moving instinctively through the darkness toward his bed.
He lies sprawled across the mattress, still in the silks he wore all day, as though exhaustion claimed him before pride could insist he undress. One arm is thrown above his head, and the other rests across his abdomen; the Valyrian steel at his throat gleams faintly in the light of the moon.
You sit on the edge of his bed, gaze tracing over his face.
He looks younger like this. Softer.
Silver hair spills across the pillow in disarray, long lashes brushing his cheeks. His mouth is slightly parted, breath slow and even—without the tension that perpetually coils beneath his skin, he appears almost at peace.
Your chest tightens unexpectedly, and before you can stop yourself, you lift your hand to trace your fingers lightly across his face—his eyebrows, beneath his eye, the slope of his nose, the shape of his lips. They twitch slightly beneath your touch as he stirs, lashes fluttering slightly.
“Aerion,” you say quietly, watching as he blinks blearily, amethyst clouded with sleep and confusion as he tries to place where he is, and then where you are. Just as recognition starts to slip onto his face, you lean in to brush your lips against his ear. “Catch me.”
He blinks up at you again once as your words register, and before they fully do, you push off the bed and race back toward the balcony. For half a second, he is still caught between sleep and waking, staring at you as though you’re something conjured from a dream.
Then, the words land.
Awareness sharpens his expression, confusion dissolving into focus in the span of a breath. His fingers flex against the sheets as he pushes himself into a sitting position, and by the time you reach the railing and swing one leg over, he is already on his feet.
“Do not dare—” he starts, voice still rough with sleep.
You grin at him. “Too slow,” you sing, and then drop to the lower ledge, landing lightly on the tiled roof.
The drizzle has turned the tiles slick, but you know this roof well—this isn’t the first time you’ve snuck across Magister Vyrano’s manse, much to the man’s displeasure, so you quickly make your way across the building.
Behind you, the curtain is flung aside, and Aerion appears on the balcony, barefoot and clothes askew, hair disheveled, silks rumpled, eyes blazing now with something far more awake than before. Excitement bubbles in your chest, heat in your stomach—you’ve never played at an open chase with him like this before.
You let out a wild laugh and run, ignoring the guards who stir below, unsure of what they just heard over the howling wind.
You dart across the curved tiles, over the archway that connects the wings of the manse, down the sloping roofline toward the garden wall. The rain kisses your skin, cool and pleasant, and your cheeks ache from smiling when you hear him land behind you, heavier, but no less sure-footed.
“You are insufferable,” he shouts after you, vaulting over the archway you danced over, trying to catch up to you. “It is the middle of the night, and the gods themselves rage above us. I will not be made a fool for your games.”
“You are already playing, prince! Admit defeat or catch me!” you shout back over the wind, leaping down the garden wall to the low outcropping on the opposite side, scrambling down the rocky incline that leads toward the western cliffs. Behind you, he swears viciously when he realizes you’re not doubling back toward the manse.
“You are going to break your neck,” he says, voice tighter now as he looks at the path ahead. You glance at him and grin when you see the pinched expression on his face as he looks down at the rapidly narrowing path, as though wondering how he managed to get himself in this situation.
“Worry about yourself,” you toss back, taking off down the half-hidden path.
The rain has made the stone treacherous, but you push yourself faster when you hear him gaining on you. You take the last turn too quickly, slipping slightly on wet stone, but you recover quickly. The path becomes more dangerous as it hugs the cliffside, carved by time into something only the reckless would attempt in the dark.
He stops short at the edge of the path you turned onto and says, “Absolutely not.”
“Do not be a coward,” you taunt, continuing down. “Or are you going to admit defeat, prince?”
Aerion bares his teeth at you furiously. “I yield to no one,” he says coldly—and then follows.
He shuffles along the narrow carve out in the cliff. You stay in place for a moment, letting him draw close enough so that you can hear the difference in his breathing, before you continue onward. He’s too focused on trying not to fall to the rocks below to make snide comments now.
“You are not invincible,” he snaps. “Slow your pace.”
“I will not,” you sing, unable to keep the laughter from your voice.
The wind gusts hard, spraying rain and seawater across your skin, and you let out another laugh as Aerion spits out another vile curse. Lightning flickers faintly somewhere far out at sea, illuminating the jagged outline of the cliffs before plunging you both back into shadow.
You reach the final drop, and the treacherous path widens into a smooth stretch of pale sand tucked between towering stone walls. You jump the last few feet, landing lightly and straightening as the world opens up around you. The cove is cradled by rock, and beyond the narrow mouth of it, the storm churns the open sea into a violent frenzy, waves crashing white against jagged stone, thunder rolling in the distance, but here within the shelter of the cliffs, the water lies calm and dark, rippling gently as though unaware of the chaos beyond it.
You turn as Aerion clears the drop behind you, hitting the sand harder than you did. He straightens slowly, taking in the sudden quiet, the way the sea seems to bow its head within the protection of the stone, rain blocked by the formation overhead, and his irritation falters.
“What in the seven hells was that about?” he demands, though his voice lowers. “Where have you brought me?”
“My favorite place,” you say simply, giving him a teasing smile, slipping off the silks you wear as you walk backwards toward the water. Aerion’s eyes widen, gaze slipping down to your body as you carelessly toss your clothes to the side, stepping back into the cool water. “I thought you were going to catch me.”
Aerion doesn’t move at first, standing at the edge of the sand, chest rising and falling, rain slicking his hair back from his face. His gaze drags slowly from your shoulders to your chest, your hips, as you wade deeper, the calm tide curling around your thighs, then your hips.
“You are shameless,” he says quietly. “Impudent.”
“And you are hesitating,” you reply lightly, taking another step backward. The water reaches your waist now. You tilt your head to the side with a teasing smile. “I thought you did not yield to anyone. Will you admit defeat?”
His jaw tightens slightly at that. “I will not.”
“Then why are you just standing there?”
He exhales once through his nose, then reaches for the laces at his throat. His movements are unhurried, gaze locked on yours as he loosens them before he pulls the damp silk over his head, revealing pale skin and toned muscle, and tosses it aside with yours. He does away with the rest of his clothes until he stands at the edge of the water, rain still sliding down his skin.
You raise your eyebrows at him, lips curving up, and he rolls his eyes before making his way to you, wading through the water, closing the distance swiftly. Your breath catches as he reaches out to grab your waist, pulling your body flush to his. Your blood still runs hot from the chase, and you slink your arms around his neck and press your lips to his, lips sliding together slowly, legs instinctively wrapping around his narrow hips.
“You delight in goading me,” he murmurs against your lips as his hands slide down to your thighs, holding you up with ease in the water.
“You have known that since the day we met,” you reply, sighing into his mouth as he rolls your bottom lip between his teeth. You think you could kiss him forever and never tire of it—his lips are soft and taste faintly of fresh berries and walnuts. His tongue drags against the roof of your mouth, and your eyes slide shut as your body shivers pleasantly.
“You avoided me all day today,” he notes—an accusation, even if not spoken as one. He nudges his nose against your jaw, beckoning you to bare your neck for him, and you do, humming as he begins to trail open-mouthed kisses down your neck.
“I did,” you confirm, and he’s not pleased with your answer from the way his teeth press against your skin in warning, threatening to bite down if you do not explain. “I was thinking.”
“I did not think you capable,” he says with a sharp smile, and you snort, kicking your heel into the small of his back, but the water softens the blow. “What occupied that treacherous mind of yours?”
You hesitate, gaze flicking up to the stone formation above that shields the cove from the rain outside. You don’t know if you want to tell him what was bothering you—no, that’s a lie, you know that you do not want to tell him what was bothering you. He doesn’t need to know that you have grown accustomed to him, doesn’t need to know you dread the day he leaves. It is easier if things stay as they have been.
He doesn't need to know anything, you decide.
“Nothing of consequence,” you reply after a moment, and Aerion pauses where he’s kissing down your throat, clearly catching the lie. Before he can accuse you of it, you run your fingers through his damp hair and pull his face from your neck, pressing your lips to his again briefly before brushing them to his ear. “Jaelan ao iemnȳ nyke, dārilaros.”
I want you inside me, prince.
Aerion shudders, and you catch the whites of his eyes as you drag your nails up his spine, rolling your hips slowly against his, water rippling around the two of you as his cock slides between your folds, tip pressing against your hole, but he doesn’t push in. You hum as you swipe your tongue along his lips teasingly before kissing down the line of his jaw.
“Gaomagon daor mazverdagon nyke umbagon,” you continue, teeth grazing his jaw before you nip gently.
Do not make me wait.
“Hae ao vēttan nyke umbagon mirre tubis?” he counters, raising his eyebrows slightly, turning his face toward you again, nose nudging yours, lips brushing as he speaks.
As you made me wait all day?
Your lips part, lashes fluttering when you feel his tip breach your entrance, but he pushes no deeper than that, and his grip on your waist is too tight for you to pull him in further.
He kisses you again, deeper this time, and you let out a soft moan into his mouth when he sinks in half an inch deeper, stretching your walls. The burn is pleasant and familiar, and your body aches for more. Your legs tighten around his waist, thighs tensing as you try to pull his hips flush to yours, but he’s stronger than you, holding you in place.
“Skori gōntan ao jiōragon sīr bēmagon?” you complain, breath shuddering against his lips as you nip at them once, twice, three times before sucking his bottom lip into your mouth.
When did you get so patient?
Too smugly, he replies, “Eman va moriot issare bēmagon.”
I have always been patient.
You huff against his lips, and when he lets his guard down, your hands drop down into the water to swipe his hands off your thighs. Unsuspecting of the sudden attack, he takes half a second too long to regain purchase on your thighs, and you take the opportunity to pull him deeper, until his tip presses so deep in your cunt that you see stars. The abrupt stretch and burn make you cry out, nails digging into his back, and he hisses, forehead dropping to your shoulder.
“Impudent,” he spits, but the word comes out too breathy, hitching against your skin as you roll your hips. “Mēre tubis, kesan bodmagho ao rigle.”
One day, I will teach you proper respect.
“Naenie emagon sylutan,” you purr, pulling his face from your shoulder just to see his eyes flash at your words.
Many have tried.
You lean in to kiss him again, slower, deeper, lashes fluttering shut. Your eyes knock back slightly as you begin to rock your hips at a steady pace, relishing in the drag of his length against your walls.
Something twists in your chest as he kisses you back, his fingers digging into your thighs, but only to help you move against him, fucking you slow on his cock. This is different from all the other many times the two of you have lain together—there is no blood or bruises, no fight for dominance, this is… intimate, you realize, letting out a shuddered breath into his mouth.
So intimate that it makes you dizzy, beneath the moonlight, in the peace of your cove, waist deep in the water, the sound of storm raging around you, unable to touch the two of you. You are only making this harder for yourself—you know that—but your legs tighten around him, and you let out a noise close to a whimper into his mouth before you pull back slightly to look at him.
He’s already looking at you, and your breath catches at the sight of him—the amethyst of his eyes are slivers around his wide pupils, half-glazed over, a flush high on his cheeks as his gaze traces your face, lips wet and swollen from your kisses. Inexplicably, your mind draws back to Vaella, and Rhalla, and Caelyx, and irrationally, you think you might kill anyone else who gets to see him like this.
“Ñuhon,” you murmur, hands sliding from where they’re tangled in his damp hair to cradle his face. He stares up at you, lips parted slightly, so uncharacteristically docile that it makes your chest twist painfully. You will lose him one day—any day—it could be tomorrow, a fortnight from now, a moon. This is borrowed time, and you feel it now more than ever. “Iksā ñuhon.”
Mine. You are mine.
Usually, it’s enough to snap him out of whatever pleasure-induced haze he’s put himself in, but this time, you only feel him shudder, cock twitching inside of you. You kiss him again. Again. Again. You move your hips faster, and you kiss him harder, desperate to fuck away all thoughts of losing him.
He is yours—whether he admits it or not, he wears proof of it around his neck, on his skin, in the way he looks at you and the way he touches you. You will lose him one day, but you’ve cemented your place in his memory with what he wears around his throat, and you will somehow have to find solace in that.
“Iksan aōhon. Iksā ñuhon,” you say against his lips, panting now, abdomen tensing, grip on his face tightening as familiar pinpricks spread through your body. You steal another kiss, breath hitching into something close to a whine as you fuck yourself faster on his cock. “Ivestragon ziry. Ivestragon ziry!”
I am yours. You are mine. Say it. Say it!
Aerion lets out a low moan into your mouth, jaw falling half slack, lashes fluttering, barely able to hold his eyes open. You squeeze his cheeks between your hands, forcing him to look at you.
“Say it,” you insist again, one hand sliding down to the Valyrian steel he wears around his throat.
You feel yourself on the edge, fighting tipping over each time his tip presses deep into that spongy spot inside of you. Dots dance in your vision, and your nails dig into his skin as you desperately try to ground yourself, not wanting to finish until you hear him say it.
“I—Iksan aōhon. Iksā ñuhon,” he rasps, lips seeking yours as his grip on your thighs tightens, pulling youdown faster, hips snapping up into you, fucking you impossibly deeper. He will deny it later, you know it, but now, he kisses you messily, half-panting into your mouth, nails biting your skin. The next noise that leaves him is closer to a whine as his teeth bite into your lower lip. He repeats, “Iksan aōhon. Iksā ñuhon.”
I am yours. You are mine.
“Hah—” you gasp, back arching into him, head tossed back as the words drive you right over the edge.
He holds you tight as you fall apart in his arms, on his cock, one hand pressed flat to the small of your back, keeping you arched against him, the other wrapped around your shoulders. He rests his forehead against your cheek as he lets out a choked moan, hips stuttering and stilling against yours, finishing deep inside you.
The two of you stay like that for a long while, wrapped around one another, panting, trembling, water rippling around you, and storm raging outside the cove. Your fingers drag through his hair absently, nails scratching his scalp, the nape of his neck, relishing in the way he shudders. He hums, kissing lazily up your neck.
“Bring me to the sand,” you sigh, pressing your face into his silver hair, eyes sliding shut as he wades out of the water with you latched to him. His grip on you tightens without the water to share your weight, biceps tensing as he sets you down into the sand, dropping to sit next to you.
Your gaze shifts over to him, watching as he looks out to the storm raging outside the cove. He asks dryly, “Was this your play this whole time then? Lure the exiled prince somewhere isolated. Distract him. Drown him in a hidden cove where no one would think to look.”
You laugh, lying back against the soft sand, turning your head to the side to look at him. He follows after you, an unreadable expression on his face as violet eyes study you carefully.
“Do you still think I’m plotting to kill you?” you ask, amused.
He considers it for a moment. “No,” he finally says. “If you wanted me dead, I would already be dead.”
“True,” you agree pleasantly, shifting closer to rest your head on his shoulder. He stiffens for a second, as he always does when you draw near after fucking, but then he slides his arm around you awkwardly. His grip is too tight, even when he’s trying to be gentle, but you prefer it this way. You find comfort in the sting of his nails and the dull press of his fingers into your skin, proof that he is solid and real and here, even if only for now. “Well, I did not bring you here to kill you.”
“Why then?” he asks after a moment, and you pause, smile slipping off your lips.
Why then?
Why bring him to the one place that’s ever felt like it belonged to you? Why taint one of the few places you have left that haven’t been permanently stained with the memory of him? Why, why, why? Why are you doing this to yourself?
“Why not?” you ask casually instead. You can feel his gaze on you, not convinced by your simple answer. So you hum, tracing your fingers along his abdomen, relishing in the way his stomach instinctively flexes beneath your touch. “I do not have a reason for most things I do. I just do them because I feel like it.”
“That is a lie,” he scoffs, nails digging crescents into your skin as he shifts to lay more comfortably. “You have a reason for everything you do. You are much more conniving than you let on.”
You laugh against his skin, but you don’t disagree. You say after a moment, voice deceptively even, “Some of the girls at the Perfumed Garden want you to come with me.”
Aerion pauses and then echoes, “Come with you?”
“They want me to share you,” you explain, tilting your face up to look at his, catching the pinched expression he wears. “They want to know what our resident dragon prince is like in bed.”
Aerion clicks his tongue. “I am not interested,” he says flatly.
Something warm settles in your chest. “Why not?” you press. “They’re good girls. They’d please you well.”
His gaze cuts down to you, irritated. “Must you make me repeat myself? I have no interest in being passed around like some Lyseni whore,” he says, voice sharp. And then his lips quirk up into a smirk. “Especially when I have my own personal one to service me whenever I please.”
“Ah, so I’ve gone from an island whore to the dragon prince’s very own personal one,” you snort. “How generous of you to elevate me so highly.”
“I am a generous prince,” he agrees. “You should be more appreciative.”
Your lips curl up into a smile that you hide against his chest. “Well, I tried my most ardently to convince you,” you sigh. “The girls will have to settle for disappointment.”
“I do not care about your girls,” he says dismissively. Then, he pauses, fingers stilling from where they were scratching lightly along your back. Aerion is always temperamental—prone to fickle mood swings and capricious behavior—but usually, he’s more docile after the two of you have fucked, so you don’t expect the sudden switch. His voice is tight as he asks, voice clipped, “You still go to them?”
“Hm?” you question, gaze flicking up, but he’s not looking at you now, staring above at the rock formation shielding the two of you from the rain. “What do you mean?”
“Do not play the fool,” he says, voice suddenly sharp. “You know what I am asking.”
You hesitate, searching his face, catching the tightness in his jaw and the way he stares pointedly above. He is jealous, you realize—bothered by the fact that you might still want whores while having him.
Territorial little thing, you think fondly.
You say honestly, “I have not gone to them since having you.”
“You expect me to believe that?” he scoffs. “You just admitted to—”
“I do not go to them for that,” you explain, sliding your palm up the flat planes of his stomach, soothingly. “For whispers and rumors, yes, but not for that.”
“Do not interrupt me, and do not pet me like some distressed beast,” he mutters petulantly, but you feel the tension ease from his body. You see him give you a careful look from the corner of his eye, as though evaluating your honesty. He finally lets out a “Hm,” and looks away.
“And you?” you press. “Do you still go to them?”
He sneers and asks, “Are you slow?”
“I’m only curious,” you hum, ghosting your lips against his chest before shooting an innocent expression up to him. His expression hardens, and you smile faintly. “Humor me.”
“No,” he says, voice cold and flat. You had expected as much, but hearing him say it out loud makes your chest warm. He doesn’t like admitting it, though, because you can feel him bristling. “As I said, I do not need to waste my time finding a whore who will please me when I already have one.” His hand slides up to your face, grabbing your cheeks to crane your neck up to him. You raise your eyebrows at him. “I told you. You are mine. Mine to claim, mine to keep, mine to fuck, mine to ruin, should I please. I do not need another woman—I have claimed you as mine. I need not look elsewhere.”
“The pinnacle of romance,” you say with an easy smile as his thumb rolls your bottom lip. You nip it, and then add, “And you are mine, or will you throw another tantrum at the prospect of it?”
Aerion scoffs. “I did not throw a tantrum,” he snaps, but there’s no heat in his eyes when he feels your fingers trace over the Valyrian steel you gifted him, back up his throat to his face. “I am a dragon. I belong to no one.”
“Naturally,” you say, but you’re smiling lightly because it sounds more obligatory than true. You agree blasely, “You are a dragon. You belong to no one.” He squints at you, waiting for the catch, and you wait long enough for him to let the suspicion leave his eyes before you add, “Besides your rider, of course.”
Aerion bares his teeth at you, snapping at your finger irritably when it lingers on his lip, and you laugh, delighted, trailing it over his throat, feeling it bob beneath your touch, before sliding back down to his chest.
“I only jest,” you complain.
“You and I both know you do not,” he hisses, but your lips curve up slightly when you see how his eyes droop as he lets out a deep breath—he is tired, though fighting it with sheer force of will and pride.
You lean up to brush your lips against his jaw before settling your head back on his shoulder, and his hand slides down to your waist, nails dragging lightly against your skin. You let your fingers drift lazily down to his chest again, tracing the faint lines of muscle there, feeling the steady rhythm beneath your palm. He watches the movement closely, eyes half-lidded now, exhaustion finally creeping past pride.
“You are tired,” you observe quietly.
“I am not.”
“You are.”
His lips press thin. “You dragged me across rooftops and down a cliff in a storm.”
“I did not drag you,” you protest, but you’re smiling. “You chased.”
“You provoked,” he counters, and then his body betrays him with a yawn. He repeats immediately, “I am not tired.”
“Naturally,” you say, amused, fingers tracing down to his abdomen, lower, lower, until his hand darts out to grab your wrist, giving you a withering look. You smile innocently, and he scowls.
“You presume too much,” he mutters half-heartedly. “I let you get away with far more than you deserve.”
“Oh? And what do I deserve?” you ask teasingly.
You hear him fighting another yawn as he murmurs, “Your tongue is too sharp. I might see it removed.”
“You have threatened that before,” you concede, “but now that you’ve witnessed its many talents firsthand, would you truly deprive yourself?”
His mouth twitches despite himself. “Do not be so vulgar.”
“You started it.”
“I threatened punishment,” he corrects dryly. “That is different.”
You hum. “And what other punishments does the dragon prince dispense when provoked?”
His fingers slide up and down the length of your body absently, nails scratching faint lines into your skin that disappear swiftly. You can hear the exhaustion in his voice as he speaks. “Confinement. Perhaps I would lock you somewhere high and out of reach until you learned to behave.”
“Thank goodness I’m a skilled climber.”
“Then I would chain you.”
“I might enjoy that.”
“You are intolerable.”
You laugh, eyes sliding shut as you sink into him, letting yourself rest too. After a moment, you ask quietly, “How long do you intend to keep me then?”
He sighs, unable to fight the yawn this time as he replies sluggishly. “However long I please.”
Until you leave? you want to ask, uncertainty spreading through you again as sleep draws near, but you can feel his breath evening out as he finally dozes off, and you decide against it. You lift your head from his shoulder to press your lips to his jaw again.
It is only once you’re certain he’s fallen asleep that you allow yourself to say softly, “Nyke zūgagon se tubis iksā laodigon hen nyke.”
SUMMARY: aerion is sick of lys, and aerion is sick of you. so, he does what any true dragon should do, and he puts you in your place. except when you actually do leave him alone, he finds that he doesn't feel quite as victorious as he should.
WARNINGS: Aerion POV (LOL), fem!reader, jealous/possessive!aerion, mentions of Targaryen madness but no actual display of it (in this part :P), reader comes from Valyrian lineage but no physical traits are mentioned/described, tw aerion, semi-public sex (don’t worry they’ll stop being open whores soon LOL), rough sex, blood play, gagging/minor choking, switch!reader (sub!leaning this time), switch!aerion (dom!leaning this time); WC: 10.5k-ish
AUTHOR'S NOTES: EHEHEHEHHEHEHE guys I'm having so much fun writing this fic. Eventually I'm going to make a masterlist for all of the parts to throw them together and I'm going to name it "How To Train Your Dragon" KADHFISHFUSADF LOLLLLLLLL or I might save that for a different fic, but it's too funny I have to use it. I actually rewrote this part a few times because I couldn't figure out where I wanted to go with it. Originally, I wanted Aerion to have like an actual display of Targaryen madness, but I think it would be better to save that for a later installment. I think the next installment whenever that may be (gonna take longer this time bc I have a lot of work to get done) is going to center around him figuring out why she was exiled and I'm excited to get into that because it's quite the story. Anyway — I hope you enjoy! comments and relogs are always appreciated, mwah mwah!
READ: INCANDESCENCE
Aerion hates Lys.
Between magisters angling to secure a dragon for a son-in-law and perfumed courtesans drifting through torchlit halls like painted ghosts, the city feels poisonous. Decadent. Drowned in silk and scented oils thick enough to choke on. He cannot breathe without tasting rosewater and myrrh. He cannot think without fury curdling his blood and indignation fogging all coherent thought.
He curls his hand around the goblet at his side until the thin Myrish glass cracks beneath his grip. They do not understand him here—no one understands him anywhere, but at the very least, Westeros is home. Westeros hates him—fears him, whispers about him, judges him—but it knows him. They look at him and see what he is—a dragon, fire and blood—they speak his name in the Seven Kingdoms with caution, and lower their eyes when he walks by.
These Lyseni look at him and see only opportunity. A displaced prince to take advantage of. A scandal dressed in silver hair and violet eyes to exploit. A dragon clipped of its wings and sent across the Narrow Sea to be made more palatable. Aerion sees all of their calculations when they think they’re being slick. He sees the way fathers present daughters in hopes of tying their line with a prince of the blood; in the way servants watch for signs of temper, eager to report whether the exile is manageable or monstrous.
He lifts the goblet and drains it in a single swallow. The wine is sweet—too sweet. Everything in Lys is sweet, and syrupy, and soft, and he’s sick of it. It coats the tongue and dulls the senses, trying to keep him weak and malleable. He wants something sharp enough to cut. He wants hard-packed earth and steel, not mosaic marble and silk.
He throws the goblet at the wall furiously, watching it shatter against the pale stone, ignoring how a servant girl flinches and scurries away as he rises to his feet and paces the solar, agitated.
He hadn’t even done anything wrong. He’d meant to teach a lesson, that was all. The puppet girl incited rebellion, the hedge knight overstepped, and the crowd dared to laugh.
What was he meant to do? Smile? Yield? Laugh along with them?
A dragon who endures mockery without response ceases to be a dragon at all. A dragon answers with fire and blood. He had done what he was meant to do, and they treated him as though he’s the villain of the tale. As though it was his hand that struck his uncle down, his arm that swung the mace. As though Baelor wasn’t the one who chose to stand against his own blood, with some fucking oaf who dared to lay hands on a prince of the blood.
The gods answered the Trial of Seven as they were meant to, and still, they blame him. As if divine judgment must bend itself to their comfort. Aerion might have withdrawn his accusation, but if the gods struck his uncle down on that field, perhaps it was not Aerion they judged. Except no one wishes to speak that truth aloud, because it’s easier to name him the monster and send him across the Narrow Sea to pretend the problem has been solved.
He swallows the bitter lump in his throat, chest tight with something that he refuses to name.
Lys will suit you, his father had said while Aerion was still tasting his own blood with every swallow. While his ribs still ached with every breath, and his face was still swollen and split from that brute of a hedge knight’s blows. He couldn’t rise from the bed to argue properly, wasn’t even given the chance to defend himself. Maekar had spoken the words and turned his back on him, treating him as though he were an inconvenience to be managed rather than a son to be defended.
His next exhale is shuddered—furious, betrayed, pained, he’s not sure. His hands wrap around the railing of the balcony, looking over Vyrano’s manse, over the glittering city and pale marble domes, knuckles white and fingers trembling. Music drifts upward to where he stands, lutes and soft laughter ringing incessantly in his ears.
He hates it.
———————
Aerion hates Lys, and Aerion hates you.
As if this wretched city of silk could get even worse, you had to come along with it. You laugh when he threatens, and lean closer when he snarls. You speak to him in the old tongue as if it’s your birthright, poured into your mouth with your mother’s milk; as if High Valyrian were not a privilege of fire and blood, but a toy to be rolled across your tongue for amusement. Aerion wants you dead, but he can’t even get people to answer questions about you, much less the opportunity to put his blade through your throat.
You are impudent, and disrespectful, and whorish, and you have left bruises up and down his throat, scratches along his abdomen, like a wild beast.
He stands before the polished silver, fingers tracing the marks you left on him, studying them with a deep frown—bruises bloom dark where your mouth lingered, lines sting across his body when he moves the wrong way. The haze of pleasure is long gone, and Aerion is enraged. The marks do not suit a prince of the blood—a dragon. He looks almost—
His jaw tightens, gaze flicking away.
He had not meant for it to happen that way. He meant to remind you of your place—to show you the edge of the blade you thought to play with and make you flinch, to teach you that dragons are not toys to be handled at whim. Instead, you had laughed and mocked him, drawing him into a guessing game of identity, and he had let you. You had straddled him like he was some perfumed boy from a pillow house, like he was yours to take, and he had let you.
Aerion hisses as he turns his back to his own reflection, pacing. He cannot sit. He cannot breathe. The memory of your mouth at his throat feels like flames beneath his flesh, and every time he thinks he has doused it, it flares again. The audacity you had to just leave, he thinks furiously. To rise from his lap, fix your dress, and leave him there—breathing heavy, cock softening inside silk, blood and spit smeared around his mouth like a maiden who’d just been kissed silly. You had strolled back into the festival with the ease of someone returning to their seat at supper, and he’d been left reeling, trying to pretend he wasn’t.
He drags a hand through his hair, nails catching on tangles—he needs to cut it again. He’s been trapped on this flowery prison for over a fortnight, and already he’s starting to look like one of the silk boys. His thoughts flash, sharp and ugly, when he catches sight of the bruises on his reflection as he whirls around again. He should have taken you with him that night. Should’ve hauled you down from that balcony by your hair and dared the magisters to stop him. Should have made you scream his name in the middle of their jeweled garden until the whole city remembered what it means to touch a dragon.
The doors to his solar creak open, and a servant hesitates in the threshold, bowing deeply.
“My prince,” the boy begins cautiously, “Magister Vyrano asks if you will attend supper—”
“Get out,” he says, not even turning to look at him, pacing back over to the balcony, knuckles white around the railing as he stares out to the west, where the Summer Sea gleams beneath the setting sun. Somewhere beyond it lies Westeros—packed dirt and steel, storm and smoke, not silk and perfume, not you.
The servant flees, as they always tend to when they realize he’s in a foul mood, and the doors fall shut with a muted thud that leaves the room too quiet.
He remains at the railing, breath coming hard through his nose—everything feels wrong. He can’t sit, can’t breathe, his skin feels too itchy, too tight, too hot, burning the same way it always does before waking dreams.
It’s just anger this time, he tells himself.
He’s not Daeron—not weak, not a mad man, no matter what everyone else says. He’s Aerion Brightflame, a dragon—in control, always. You just pissed him off enough that he cannot think straight, so he needs to handle this, handle you.
Still, he exhales deliberately—long, counting, forcing his breath to even out the way Daeron once taught him when they were kids, the first time he found Aerion screaming on the floor, nails bloody and ripping through the skin at his neck, before he turned to the bottle and forgot he was a brother. His pulse pounds at his temples, fingers flexing against the stone rail.
He forces his mind elsewhere, and to his frustration, he finds it drifting right back to you, but this time, a more pleasant feeling sweeps over him. Your laugh. Your mouth. Your hands on his skin, fingers brushing through his hair, tracing his jaw, lips caressing his.
His jaw tightens, equally incensed by the idea of feeling calmed by you as he is by the idea of feeling disrespected by you.
He still doesn’t know anything about you, he realizes furiously. Well—he knows some. He knows the sound you make when he presses his nail into your wrist and drags his tongue up your throat. He knows the shape of your hips beneath silk, and the taste of your blood.
But he doesn’t know your house. He doesn’t know where you’re from, or who your father is, or what banners would rise if he dragged you into the street and put a knife to your throat, or why nobody in this god-forsaken city will answer any of his questions about you. Why doors close when he asks, and smiles turn bland, and answers turn slippery, as though you’re the only thing in Lys that cannot be purchased, and he—Aerion Brightflame of the House Targaryen, dragon blood, prince of the Seven Kingdoms—must simply accept that.
He will not.
He cannot.
He slams his palms against the railing and paces away, agitated again, itching at his too-hot skin. He needs to do something about this.
Westeros would never have allowed this.
In Westeros, he would have dragged you into a chamber and barred the door. In Westeros, no magister would dare interfere. In Westeros, his name still carried weight enough to bend the room around it. In Westeros, he could’ve fucked you and then killed you, and nobody would’ve bat an eye.
Here, he must calculate. He must tread carefully and pretend to be agreeable while they measure him like livestock at auction, because for every slip of restraint that gets back to his father, he’ll be stuck here longer. The humiliation of it burns deeper than your scratches, and you are complicit in it—the primary enabler of it, even—with your treacherous games.
Aerion hates Lys, and Aerion hates you.
He just wants to go home.
———————
He finds you at dusk in the same place he first met you.
You’re sprawled on that same sun-warmed rock, red chiffon instead of purple clinging damply to your thighs, the edges of it drifting lazily in the Summer Sea. The sky bleeds gold and violet overhead, the horizon swallowing the sun in a slow descent. You look exactly as you had that first day—untouched by consequences, unbothered by the world and exile and him.
As though he has not spent the better part of three days unraveling over you.
He already finds himself irritated, and you haven’t even spoken a word yet. He stops several paces away at the edge of the water, boots sinking slightly into wet sand. He doesn’t announce himself, but you know he’s there—he can tell by the faint curl of your lips.
“You took your time,” you say lightly, not even opening your eyes.
His jaw tightens. He steps closer, close enough that the tide laps against the edge of his boots. The hem of his coat flutters in the salt wind. You finally open your eyes and tilt your head back to look at him, and Aerion finds his mouth drying, gaze slipping to the way you unintentionally—intentionally?—bare your throat to look at him, the way silk clings to your skin, the way you lie so lackadaisical as though you have no care in the world.
“You marked me like some beast claiming territory,” he accuses, voice low and sharp, watching as you roll onto your stomach, smiling lightly as your gaze wanders openly over him, lingering on the bruises marring his neck, on the scratches you know are hidden beneath his tunic. He thinks you have some nerve, some—
“Yes, you do look thoroughly mine, don’t you?” you say, and Aerion’s vision nearly goes red, teeth grinding so badly that it almost hurts. “Does that bother you?”
“Bother me?” he hisses, stepping into the shallows until the water darkens the leather of his boots. “You presume ownership of a dragon.”
He knows he isn’t going to like what you have to say before you even say it. You smile sharply. “Well, most who ride a dragon would be considered to have claimed it, don’t you think?”
He balks at your words, furious, and then he forces his expression to smooth. “You bit me.”
“You bit me back. In fact, you bit first, if I recall correctly.”
“You made me bleed.”
You smile wider at that. “Again, I was only returning the favor.”
“You marked me,” he repeats, enraged because he still can’t get past the audacity of you leaving marks along his skin where everyone can see, as though he’s some courtesan fresh from a patron’s bed.
The lingering looks have been unbearable—servants’ gazes dipping down to his neck with wide eyes, a magister’s daughter staring openly at the dark bloom along the curve of his neck and the length of his throat before lowering her lashes and making an excuse to leave. The only thing worse than the parasites of this city trying to pawn their daughters off to him is the way they’ve stopped trying because they think he belongs to you.
Your smile softens, just a little. You hum. “And you wear it well.”
The simplicity of it steals the next retort from his mouth, blinking once as he stares at you, thrown off by the lack of mockery in your tone. He doesn’t like the uncertain feeling that spreads through him, so he pushes it away, expression hardening, shutters slamming down behind violet eyes. He says coldly, “Do not speak as though I am yours. You mistake indulgence for possession.”
You don’t have a quick remark this time, studying him carefully, amusement fading and being replaced with something more attentive, as though realizing that he’s not as keen to indulge your whims today. He thinks he likes this less—the idea that you can, in fact, be serious, that you’re not all languid smiles and careless laughs. He feels far too seen right now—he’s too hot, he’s too fucking hot, too itchy, everything is wound too tight.
“I told you I tire of your games,” he continues, jaw set, “and you have exhausted my patience. I am done playing. You pushed too far with this—this mess. The way people look at this, at me—I am not claimed. Not by you or anyone in this wretched city. I belong to no one. You don’t get to behave as though you have some tether around my neck because you left bruises where others could see them. I am not yours, and I will not have Lys thinking otherwise.”
He is ranting. The words don’t come out as the sharp orders he wants them to be; the longer he speaks, the more his skin burns, and they end up coming out too fast and too hissed. For a long moment, you simply look at him. The soft sound of waves crashing against rock and sand, the warmth of water sinking into his leather boots. The last light of dusk is swallowed by the horizon, turning the water from gold to indigo. Something calculating flashes in your eyes briefly before your gaze finally flits away, dismissive—something about it makes him shift.
“I know,” you say at last, and the casualness of it catches him off guard. “I never said you were. You are not mine, and I am not yours. It was only some fun.”
The words don’t bring him the ease he expects, and he wants to snap that he’s not bothered, but he just stands there still as stone, staring at you, gaze trained on the side of your face as you look away from him. The sea breeze brushes your hair away from your neck, and his eyes land on the faint bruising he left beneath your ear, and he remembers the way your pulse fluttered when he pressed his mouth there, the feeling of your body against his, the soft moans and hitches of your breaths, your hands on his skin, gevie.
“Good,” he says, though the word feels strangely hollow in his mouth. “Then we understand each other.”
You hum lightly, looking out toward the sea again. “We do.”
He is unsettled. His fingers clench at his side, digging into his palms, and he has to force himself to unclench them before his nails break skin. He is unsettled, and he shouldn’t be unsettled—he got what he wanted. He drew the line, and you agreed; for once, not plaguing him with your disagreeable, disrespectful, impudent nature. He has won.
So, he’s not sure why he’s still standing, watching you from the shallows, the curve of your profile against the darkening horizon. You still look unbothered, as though nothing in this exchange cost you anything at all. He hadn’t realized he was waiting for resistance until it didn’t come.
He doesn’t like that realization, so he turns on his heel, stiff as he leaves the beach. He can’t help the part of himself that still waits for the teasing: ‘til next time, prince!
It does not come.
———————
Days pass.
He attends suppers he does not wish to attend. He listens to magisters drone about trade routes and alliances. Their daughters sit near him again, because they’ve resumed trying to woo him on their father’s behalf once they’ve realized he is not yours. The bruises on his throat have faded, and the scratches on his abdomen have healed.
And Aerion is bored.
He is so painfully, agonizingly bored that he writes up a vicious letter to send to his father, and then a more desperate one, wanting to come home. He sends neither, burns them in the fire in his room, and stares at the flames too long. He has been stuck on this perfumed prison for a moon, and no one has bothered to reach out to him, not to see if he’s been settled or to see how he’s doing. He won’t be the first to reach out if they can’t even bother to see if he’s alive.
He thinks about you incessantly.
He finds himself scanning rooms without meaning to and finding them severely lacking when he does not spot your familiar lazy smile; his eyes glaze over mid-conversation with whichever magister or daughter is trying to make small talk with him, nervous, walking on eggshells in a way you never did.
He goes to pillow houses to busy himself with at least keeping his cock warm, but he only leaves more incensed than he came. He lies back against velvet cushions while a girl with your hair color kisses along his throat, soft and reverent, and he feels nothing. She doesn’t even dare let her teeth graze his skin, afraid to leave a mark, afraid of him. He opens his eyes and stares at the ceiling instead, dismissing her with a flick of his fingers.
He attends feasts and various other gatherings, hoping that you’ll be there, but you never show, and he’s forced to listen to a magister’s daughter recite poetry in High Valyrian that makes his teeth ache with how butchered it sounds. He corrects her pronunciation once, disdainfully, and she flushes scarlet and falls silent. He does not bother speaking again, and he leaves early.
He ends each day with a ride at dusk, alone, circling the island without admitting to himself where his path drifts—the northern edge, the sun-warmed rock you like to bask yourself on like a lizard, but it’s empty every single time. He tries not to acknowledge how disappointed he is—every single time.
After a few days pass, Aerion realizes that he had expected you to push, to test the boundary he set, as you had been the past moon, no matter what venom he spat at you, but you have withdrawn completely. You don’t come to events, don’t wander the gardens, and when he idly asks the magisters about you, trying to feign indifference, nobody gives him a clear answer. He stops by the Perfumed Garden to see if you’re talking to your whores, but they deny even seeing you, and he can’t tell if it’s a practiced lie or the truth. It’s as though you’ve evaporated from Lys altogether.
He has won, he has to insist to himself. The dragon always wins—especially against some upstart island girl who thinks herself untouchable. You have simply learned what the world knows as truth: House Targaryen always comes out on top, Aerion always comes out on top.
So why in the seven hells does total victory feel like losing?
———————
You’re here.
Aerion knew it the moment he stepped into the room—before his eyes found you, before he had any proof beyond the way his hair was suddenly standing on end.
He wasn’t sure if you would be—you only seem to attend events hosted by the First Magister, and Aerion supposes it’s because you’re his guest, just as Aerion is Vyrano’s, but this debauchery Vyrano calls a feast seems to be in celebration of a holy day for Lys’s cat god. It would be disrespectful for you not to show up at a magister’s manse on a holy day, and you seem well enough liked by the nobility for him to assume you wouldn’t be openly disrespectful to them, even if you are to him.
The hall is drenched in gold and smoke, braziers burn along marble walls, and Aerion can’t help the way his gaze clings to the flames, forcibly looking away to the silk banners hanging from the vaulted ceiling, embroidered with the sleek, watchful shape of their cat god. The scent of incense coils thick in his lungs, heavier than usual, not the usual rose; there’s something sweeter threaded through it that clings. It curls low in his stomach and lingers there, seeping into him in a way that makes his muscles lax.
The laughter in the hall is different too, he notes absently—looser and slower, as though something warm and indulgent has slipped between their skin and softened the edges of restraint. Sharp laughter becomes languid murmurs, and casual touches become lingering caresses. Fingers trail more boldly over silk. Heads tip back a little too far. Mouths linger too close to ears. Even the magisters seem at ease, their eyes glassy as they gesture through negotiations they will not remember in the morning.
Aerion feels distinctly uncomfortable, his tongue pressing to the back of his teeth as he ignores the incense burning in his lungs, forcibly loosening his inhibitions. He accepts a goblet from a passing servant without looking at her, using the cool weight of it to anchor his focus before anyone can see even a flicker of weakness. His gaze moves across the room, as though disinterested, and then—
And then he sees you.
You look the same as you always have, draped in silk chiffon, lounging on cushions, surrounded by beautiful women and pretty boys who smile and charm and trace your skin like they have some right to your body. The sight of it makes his blood hot, and he’s furious because he won, so he should be the one at ease, not you. He doesn’t even know why he’s so angry.
You’re reclined in the center of it all, one arm thrown lazily over the cushions, fingers idly tangled in the golden curls of a girl kneeling at your side while a boy with kohl-lined eyes pours wine into your goblet, his other hand resting lightly at your waist as though it belongs there. The magister’s son you’re talking to, a pretty thing with golden hair and violet eyes, sits close to you with his own courtesans pawing at him. He snorts at something you say, and you—
You look bored.
Your gaze drifts over the hall with faint disinterest, lips curved in something that is not quite a smile. You let them touch you, let them drape themselves across your lap and shoulders and thighs, but you don’t look as though you’re enjoying it. Don’t look the way you did that night on the balcony, eyes bright and glittering, smile sharp and taunting.
Your attention lifts from the magister’s son and finds him across the room, as though drawn to him. Your expression doesn’t change, but you do tilt your head to the side, assessing him, and Aerion thinks he should look away, find something or someone else to distract himself with, but he can’t seem to draw his gaze from you, so he only lifts his chin, challenging. You raise your eyebrows at him, lips curved up in a small smile.
Inexplicably, he almost moves to make his way over to you, but pauses when he watches the magister’s son reach up, fingers brushing beneath your chin, guiding your face toward him as though he has earned the right, stealing your attention back to him.
Aerion stills.
The boy smiles lazily, wine-hazed and emboldened by incense and entitlement. He says something too low to carry, thumb stroking once along the lines of your jaw, where Aerion’s mouth traced greedily a few nights before, where your pulse had fluttered beneath his tongue, and something hot spreads through him—hot and green and very, very ugly.
You don’t pull away, and you don’t lean in, but you let him lean in, you let him press his mouth to yours, and you let him move closer.
And your eyes never leave Aerion’s.
The magister’s son deepens the kiss, encouraged by the fact that you don’t push him away, not noticing that you are barely meeting him either. Your mouth parts because his does, and your body shifts because his hand urges it. Your hands remain idle at your sides, lips moving just enough to feign interest.
And your eyes never leave Aerion’s.
Aerion wants you fucking dead.
What sort of fucking levels of disrespect is letting someone shove their tongue down your throat while holding eye contact with him?
He feels heat crawl up his spine, through his shoulders, into his throat—sheer disbelief, rage, he doesn’t even know what the ugly emotions spreading through him are. He can hear his own heartbeat, his own words, echoing through his head—I am not yours, I belong to no one, we understand each other. And he is not. He is not yours. Aerion belongs to no one. Aerion is a dragon, a prince—he is not shackled by a girl on an island of silk and perfume.
So why is he so fucking angry?
It’s the disrespect, he tells himself.
Your fucking impudence, the way you’re blatantly trying to goad a reaction out of him because he told you enough is enough. Aerion has never been so openly provoked before. Even that fucking hedge knight, he was trying to protect that puppet girl, not—he doesn’t even know what your goal is? Antagonizing him just for the love of the game? His face feels flushed, and his nails dig into his palms.
This is what it looks like when I don’t play with you, dragon prince, you taunt him without saying anything at all. This is what it looks like when I’m free to do as I please. I told you I would stop, didn’t I?
He hates you. He hates you, and he hates this city. He hates that he got what he wanted, and he still feels like he’s losing. He hates that his knuckles are white around his goblet while you’re lying languid on velvet cushions, kissing another man. He hates this—hates his father, hates his brothers, hates that oaf of a hedge knight that caused all of this. He hates that he’s been suffering indignity after indignity since he arrived at Lys, and he hates that he still is now, even after supposedly fixing the issue. He hates you.
The magister’s son pulls back slightly, murmuring something against your lips in that syrupy Lysene dialect that makes Aerion’s teeth grind. He brushes his nose along your cheek and says something that makes a few of the courtesans nearby laugh, but you only smile easily, gaze finally dragging away from Aerion to look at him.
He feels a courtesan at his side, fingers hovering above his arm, not daring to actually touch him. He hears a faint: “Might I please you, my prince?” in that soft and lilting Lysene dialect that grates Aerion’s ears now more than ever, because he can imagine whatever that boy is saying to you in the same form. All rounded vowels and syrupy consonants, High Valyrian dragged through silk and sugar until it lost its edge. Under any circumstances, Aerion would have despised the sound of it, but now it feels like blade scraping bone.
He hates it. He hates Lys. He hates the Lysene dialect. Hates the way it sounds now against the roar building in his ears. Hates the way it sanded the edges off a language meant for dragons. Hates the way they’re trying to do the same to him with silk and incense and pillows and sweetness. Hates feeling like this. Hates—
He is moving before he even knows what he’s doing.
The courtesan’s fingers never quite make contact; he steps forward, and they fall away, retreating instantly at the look on his face. The crowd parts for him, clearly sensing danger even in their incense-induced haze. His blood is roaring, something dangerous rearing in him that he cannot seem to control. He knows he’s making a mistake—he set the boundary, he was the one who shut you down, and if word gets back to his father that he’s acting like some unhinged beast on a Lysene holy day, he’ll only be stuck on this wretched prison island longer.
And yet, his world narrows to the line of your throat, the angle of your mouth, the boy’s fingers resting where they should not, and Aerion just cannot think straight.
The magister’s son looks up, mildly annoyed, as Aerion approaches the cushions, and Aerion thinks he has some nerve looking at a prince of the blood as though he’s a nuisance. This whole island is filled with impudent wretches, and you are the worst of them all.
“My prince,” he says, attempting an easy smile.
You are pointedly not looking at him now, attention resting on the boy at your side. You say something softly in the Lysene’s liquid dialect, and Aerion thinks it's disgusting hearing you speak this bastardized version of High Valyrian. His jaw tightens, and the boy laughs at whatever you’ve said and reaches for your hand as though to pull you closer.
Aerion’s hand comes down on his wrist before his fingers can brush your skin, grip so tight that the boy immediately winces, teeth grinding together, pain flashing across his face. Aerion squeezes tighter, enjoying the way his expression twists more.
“My prince?” he repeats, tone strained now as he looks up at Aerion through long, gold lashes—more indignant than fearful. Aerion hates Lys. Back in Westeros, any lord’s son would have fumbled out apologies and fled.
“You may leave,” Aerion says coldly.
The boy stiffens, pride flickering to the surface, and Aerion’s eye nearly twitches. “We were merely—”
“I am aware of what you were doing,” Aerion cuts in, speaking through his teeth now. “You may leave.”
His gaze flicks over to you, and you’re watching him again, but he can’t read the expression on your face. The boy attempts to tug his wrist free, but Aerion does not release him, twisting the angle to make it more painful.
“You must misunderstand,” the boy says lightly, though the laughter has left his voice. “She did not object.”
“No,” Aerion agrees, well aware that many eyes are trained on the tense conversation taking place. A few nearby courtesans and nobles fall silent entirely now, and the music continues, but it falters, watching eyes multiplying in the corners of the room. He’s making a spectacle of himself, he knows it, and he cannot fucking stop himself. He hates you—he hates you. “She did not.”
I do. I fucking object.
The boy’s jaw tightens. “Then I fail to see—”
“My patience wanes,” Aerion warns tightly, nails digging deep enough into his wrist to draw blood. “You do not want to see it exhausted.”
The magister’s son rips his hand back, and Aerion allows it this time, relishing in the way he cradles his wrist to his chest, desperately trying to smooth the pained expression into something dignified.
Your gaze is still trained on Aerion as you speak. “Go,” you say, leaving no room for argument. “It appears I have an ill-tempered dragon to tend to.”
The magister’s son inhales sharply, nostrils flaring, pride warring with prudence, but the blood welling at his wrist, and the way Aerion still looks as though he’s one wrong word away from worse violence, causes him to rise to his feet and leave without another word, desperately tending to his wounded pride. The courtesans flee with him, clearly with no desire to be near Aerion while he’s in such a foul mood.
“Well,” you say blithely after a moment when your area is mostly cleared. You look over him blandly. “You are in quite the state.”
Aerion’s tongue presses against the back of his teeth. He did not think so far ahead, and now that the magister’s son has left and the flames licking at his blood have started to subside, Aerion is hyperaware of the number of eyes not-so-subtly pinned on the two of you. He feels agitated, tongue darting out to wet his lips.
Mad Aerion, people would whisper back in Westeros, he knows it, even if they were all careful to never say it while he was in earshot. Mad Aerion, quick to temper, quick to violence, quick to cruelty.
Everyone here sees it now, too—you see it now, too—and it’s going to get back to his father, and he’s only going to be stuck here longer. The disgraced son, the unwanted prince.
Mad Aerion, the Brightflame, the prince who got his own uncle killed over an imagined slight, the unhinged exile who cannot govern himself in a room of silk and wine.
You seem to recognize the stiffness in his shoulders, because you sigh, looking away briefly before holding your hand up to him, beckoning him to help you to your feet. He does after a moment, fingers wrapping around your wrist, feeling the warmth of your skin, the flutter of your pulse—it reignites the flames beneath his skin, except not with rage this time. He hates it. Hates even more that a part of him relaxes when your skin is against his. He doesn’t let go right away, not until you raise your eyebrows at him.
“Walk me to the gardens,” you say, hand coming up to hold his bicep. Your gaze slides to the side to land on Vyrano, who watches Aerion warily. You tell him blandly, “The incense is quite strong tonight, magister. It’s making me feel agitated.”
Aerion’s eyes slide shut as soon as you say it—frustration and helplessness eating him alive, fury at himself, at Lys, at you. The incense isn’t bothering you at all, he thinks furiously. You’re handing him back a sliver of the dignity he destroyed. Giving him an excuse for his behavior, so his erraticness doesn’t get back to the wrong people. You understand the necessity of restraint better than most, he bets—birds of a feather, a fellow exile—any mistake can extend a sentence, a single lapse of temper and one year becomes ten.
You squeeze his bicep, beckoning him to play along. He inhales once, steadying himself and forcing his shoulders to lower by sheer will.
“The room is stifling,” he says coolly, letting just enough irritation lace his voice to make it believable, but not volatile. “We will take some air.”
Vyrano nods quickly, apologizing, relief plain on his face that this spectacle will not escalate further. The music resumes its earlier cadence, conversation slowly returning in your wake, but the watching eyes remain, tracking the two of you as you make your way out to the hall in the direction of the gardens.
“Mm, you know, you are quite fickle, prince,” you say lazily as soon as there are no unwanted ears listening in. “You indulge me. You fuck me. You entertain my little games. Three days later, you decide you are above it all and declare yourself done. And now—” your fingers trace idly over the sleeve of his shirt, “—now you’re throwing a tantrum when I behave exactly as you demanded.”
He doesn’t answer because answering requires admitting you are right, and he would sooner bite his own tongue off.
“You wanted distance,” you continue, “so I gave it to you. You wanted to be unclaimed, so I behaved as though you were. And suddenly, that is as intolerable as my games supposedly were. What am I to think, prince?”
He says, voice clipped, “I did not throw a tantrum.”
You hum, unconvinced. “You nearly snapped his wrist in half.”
“He was presumptuous.”
“I was allowing him to be presumptuous.”
“You were provoking me,” he hisses, grabbing your wrist and backing you into a marble pillar, angry again as he remembers how you held eye contact with him while you allowed that silk boy to touch you. His forearm presses against your chest to hold you in place, and you look as unbothered as ever—pleased, even. He hates Lys. He hates you. “Do not pretend as though it was anything else. It was just another game of yours.”
He almost expects you to deny it, but your lips curl up into an easy smile. “Everything is a game, zaldrītsos,” you murmur, looking up at him through your lashes. Little dragon. His throat bobs. “I was only curious as to how much you meant those worse on the beach.”
His teeth grind together. “So you meant to what? Humiliate me to figure it out?”
“I did not humiliate you. You did that all on your own, prince,” you say, and Aerion has half a mind to force you to your knees and put that insolent mouth of yours to better use, stitch up the pride he just shredded before half of the Lysene court. “For all of your concern about being seen as… claimed, you were the only one in that room who behaved as though you were.”
Aerion’s jaw tightens. His forearm presses more firmly against your chest, not enough to hurt—enough to remind you he could.
“You think this is amusing,” he says. “You think you can prod and poke and taunt me like some beast in a pit.”
“I never thought you a beast,” you murmur. “Beasts are simple. You are woefully complicated.”
“You said you would stop,” he reminds you.
“I did no such thing, I only agreed that you were not mine—yet.”
Aerion inhales sharply through his nose,
“So what? You vanish, and then came back with more games even more impudent than you were originally? Is that how this works?”
“I did not vanish. I was giving you time to cool off. It was a strategic retreat,” you say with a lazy smile. “You didn’t really think I would give up so easily, did you? I was just deciding on a new plan of attack, since I seemed to have thoroughly upset you with my first. I was, ah, reevaluating, so to speak—you’re quite the ill-tempered dragon, prince, it’ll be a challenge to make you heel, but rest assured, I enjoy a challenge.”
Aerion thinks he should put his blade through your neck. Wrap his fingers around your throat and squeeze until your eyes bulge and your pulse dies beneath his fingers. He’s never met a woman so fucking disrespectful before.
He presses his tongue to the back of his teeth to clam himself and seethes, “And you thought this would be a better ‘plan of attack’?“
“Actually, this was not part of my plan at all,” you say with a laugh so easy that it makes him startle. “I only meant to goad you into a conversation. I did not anticipate that you would get so jealous just from a kiss, prince.”
Aerion’s vision swims red. His arm leaves your chest to close his hand around your neck, pulling you close to him, and he hates how hard his pulse thrums against his skin, how his breath hitches when he touches you.
“I am not jealous,” he hisses. “Jealousy is for weak men. I am a dragon. Dragons take. They do not beg or pine or stand idle while others lay hands where they should not.” He leans in, breath ghosting over your mouth. “They claim—with fire and blood.”
Your pulse flutters wildly beneath his thumb. He feels it. He likes that he feels it. Likes that your breath catches, but you don’t look afraid of him, that your pupils are blown wide, but not in terror. This is not silk or perfume or the syrupy indulgence that Lys tries to drown him in.
This—this is sharp enough to cut, this is steel.
For a long moment, the world narrows to the heat between your bodies and the blood rushing through his ears.
He has been drowning since he set foot on this cursed island. Drowning in sweetness, and watchful eyes, and magisters measuring him like livestock, offering daughters to him like whores in expensive silk. Drowning in the humiliation of exile, and the knowledge that every laugh in a hall might be about him, and the fact that his own father would see him cast across the Narrow Sea as an inconvenience to be managed.
But this is not drowning. You are infuriating. You are impudent, and disrespectful, and whorish, and you bruise and scratch and treat him like an equal instead of a prince. He hates it, he hates you, and yet—it is fire, and steel, and blood. If he must suffer here—if he must endure silk and incense and fathers parading daughters before him and whores too afraid to properly touch him—then he needs something that will keep him sharp while Lys tries to sand down his edges and call it refinement.
He will have you, he decides, and Aerion always gets what he wants.
“And what,” you murmur, “exactly are you claiming?”
His grip shifts from your throat to the back of your neck, fingers threading into your hair to crane your neck back, baring your throat to him. He likes this too, itches to bend his head down and put his teeth into your neck, the same way you did to him.
“You,” he says simply. He adds immediately, “Do not misunderstand. Claiming you does not mean I belong to you. You are mine, and that’s the end of it. It’s not a bargain or mutual surrender. It simply is.”
Neither of you speaks. He’s close enough to feel the warmth of your breath on his lips, close enough to almost taste the wine on your tongue, close enough to see that your lips are still swollen slightly from that magister’s son’s kisses. His grip tightens in your hair instinctively, twisting, and you let out a breathless noise.
“Gods, you are something else,” you laugh. Aerion almost finds offense to the fact that you’re laughing at him, fingers bruising your hip, but he hesitates when he sees the way you’re looking at him: pleased, almost adoringly. He realizes that you, too, must be drowning—have been for much longer than him, even. He knew from the moment he met you that you weren’t cut from the same silk cloth and pillowed touches as the rest of this island. “Aerion Brightflame, I will never tire of you.”
You don’t give him the chance to say anything else, leaning in despite the fingers twisting your hair to press your lips against his, and Aerion lets out a low groan into your mouth, lashes fluttering shut. His hand tightens reflexively in your hair, angling your head to deepen the kiss.
It’s nothing like the way you let the magister’s son paw at you, lips barely moving against his, attention drawn elsewhere—you kiss him like you want to fight him, like you are fighting him, lips sliding messily and teeth threatening to break through skin when it seems like he might win. You slide your hands up his abdomen, slipping beneath his shirt, and Aerion fights a shudder, muscles tensing when you drag your nails against him, lips parting against yours as you roll his bottom lip between your teeth.
“You mistake one thing, though, zaldrīzes dārilaros,” you murmur against his lips, smiling. Aerion inhales sharply at the sound of your smooth High Valyrian, cock already aching in the silk he wears. Bitch, he thinks bitterly, furious at himself, because he couldn’t even get his cock working when he had two whores draped across his lap in a pillow house, but the moment your lips are against his, and you’re whispering in the old tongue, he’s almost spilling himself untouched. You’ve used black magic on him—he’s sure of it—and yet, all he does is roughly hike one of your legs up around his waist and press you back against the pillar again, muffling a grunt against your skin as his lips slide down to your jaw. “You will be mine.”
He bites down hard, and your breath hitches, a low moan of his name spilling from your lips. His mouth drags down your neck, open and wet, trying to distract himself from the heat that rapidly spreads through his abdomen. He slips his hand between your bodies to slide his fingers against your cunt, letting out a smug huff when he feels how slick you are.
“Līve,” he breathes out, hand slipping into his own pants to pull out his cock, hissing, so painfully hard that his hips instinctively jerk into his fist when he wraps his fingers around himself. “Nyke yenka ezīmagon ao drāmmagon va ñuha orvorta isse bona tistālion syt mirre hen lī turgon naejot ūndegon.”
Whore. I should split you open on my cock in that hall for all of those parasites to see.
You let out another breathless laugh, one hand sliding up his body to thread through silver hair, pulling his face from your neck. His breath hitches when your nails scrape against his scalp, and his jaw falls half ajar when he feels you drag your tongue up his neck before pressing your lips to his again, sucking lightly at his bottom lip.
Fuck, he thinks, throat bobbing as he squeezes hard at the base of his cock to stop himself from finishing before he even sinks himself inside of you. You’re going to be the fucking death of him.
“Skoros keligon ao, ñuha dārilaros?” you say, dragging your lips to his ear and sucking hard at the spot beneath it.
What’s stopping you, my prince?
My.
My.
Aerion’s grip on his cock tightens to the point it’s almost painful in a desperate effort to keep some semblance of pride, but there’s no hiding the choked noise that spills out of him.
“Ah, gaomagon ao hae bona?” you say, tongue flicking out to trace his ear. His forehead drops against the marble next to your head, desperately trying to use the coolness of the stone to anchor himself before he makes a fool out of himself. “Skori nyke brōzagon ao ñuhon?”
Ah, do you like that? When I call you mine?
Aerion might actually kill you—he wants to sink his cock into your cunt and his blade into your throat with equal fervor. Maybe both at the same time, if you’re lucky.
Later. For now, he just needs to focus on not spilling himself untouched.
“Hoskagon zaldrītdos,” you continue, mouthing at his neck, bruising him again, despite the painful grip he has on your thigh. He pants against your neck, barely biting back a noise closer to a whine than a moan. “Skoro syt gaomagon ao daor ivestragī aōla sagon ñuhon? Mazeman syze gaomagon hen skoros iksis ñuhon. Aōha orvorta lōz, aōha ēdrugan bāne—
Prideful little dragon. Why won’t you let yourself be mine? I take good care of what’s mine. Your cock wet, your bed warm—
Aerion hisses, letting go of your thigh and relishing in the way you yelp when your leg hits the ground. You blink, confused, and he grinds his teeth together before he grabs your hips and flips you around so that your chest is flush to the pillar. He kicks out one of his feet to hit your ankle, forcibly spreading your legs, and hardly gives you the time to orient yourself before he’s pulling your hips to him, thrusting into you to bury his cock deep into your cunt.
“Hah,” you gasp. “Fuck—”
Aerion relishes the expression on your face now, lips parted and swollen, eyes wide. His nails dig deep into your hips to keep you still, teeth grinding together as his abdomen tenses and cock twitches inside of you. He brings one hand up to slide your silks down your body, revealing the bare skin of your back, before settling it back on your hip. He dips his head down to lick up your spine, feeling the way your body shudders beneath him.
He likes this—you helpless on his cock, cunt spasming around him, wide-eyed and cockdrunk just from—
You let out another breathless laugh, halting his thoughts. “Mijessis ilinītsos zaldrītsos. Ozmijiō nyke. Nyke—”
Impatient little dragon. You’ve missed me. I—
One hand leaves your hip to slide up your body, grabbing your mouth roughly. You let out a surprised noise when he shoves two fingers in, pressing down hard on your tongue to silence you.
“Ao ydragon tolī olvie,” he hisses before sinking his teeth into your shoulder to muffle a moan as he rocks his hips hard against your ass.
You talk too much.
His hand slides around your body to press flush against your abdomen, holding you still as he fucks you hard. His eyes fall shut, tongue lapping at the blood he’s drawn at your shoulder, fighting moans as your walls spasm around his cock, sucking him in deeper with each thrust of his hips. You try to say something around his fingers, but he only presses down harder on your tongue, shoving his fingers deeper down, making you gag once before he lets up.
He drags his lips up to the crook of your neck, sucking and biting and marking you up the same way you had the nerve to do to him, drowning in the lewd sounds of his hips slapping against yours and the sloppiness of his cock plunging in and out of your cunt. He pulls you back so that your back is flush to his chest, your hands braced against the pillar, and he presses his lips to your ear.
He means it. He thinks he has never meant anything so earnestly except for when he was a child and swore he would be the one to bring dragons back. He would drain the royal coffers, take Casterly Rock by force, and drain its mines—if that’s what it took to match your price. He would have you. You would be his. No matter what it takes.
“Ivestragon nyke!”
Tell me!
The words tear out of him violently, desperately—he is not begging, he does not beg, but something drips from the words that makes him feel smaller, so he resorts to fucking you harder, fuck out any memory of him being weak, bury himself into your cunt, mold it around his cock so that you never even think of another man.
Dragons do not beg or plead; they take what is theirs, so he will take you. Fuck your price, your price won’t matter when the only cock that can please you is his. He slides his fingers out of your mouth, but covers it with the palm of his hand to yank your head back more, tilting it to him.
Your eyes are glassy, half rolled back, and he can feel the spit dribbling from the corner of your mouth against his palm, the wetness against his thighs that spatters every time his cock plunges inside of you. His hand over your mouth tightens, squeezing your cheeks, holding the back of your head against his shoulder, and each muffled, broken you let out against his hand makes his cock ache.
He kisses up your neck messily, leaving a trail of blood and bruises, and he presses his lips into your temple as he rasps, “Gevie. Ñuhon.”
Beautiful. Mine.
He chokes over a moan as you writhe against him, hips rocking and eyes rolling back when you cum on his cock. His hand slides down your abdomen to your cunt, finger dipping between your folds to rub your clit. You strain against him, head tossed back against his shoulders, kicking your heels back into his shins to try to push him away, but he only presses you back against the marble pillar, keeping you pinned between him and it as he snaps his hips up faster, determined to make you break.
He laughs breathlessly, licking up the tears that spill over your cheeks and mocks, “Ōdres, iksis ziry daor? Gaomā daor hae ziry gaomagon ao?”
Sensitive, isn’t it? You don’t like it, do you?
You sob out something muffled that sounds like his name, and Aerion hisses, hips stuttering and breath leaving his lungs in a gasp of yours as he buries his cock deep and cums inside of you, forehead pressing against the back of your head as his heart races, desperately trying to catch his breath. His hand drops from your mouth to slink around your waist, eyes sliding shut.
You, naturally, break the brief moment of peace to speak as soon as your mouth is free, because you can’t help yourself. His eyes slide shut in exasperation—impudent.
“Gods, it’s been ages since someone’s fucked me like that,” you sigh, and Aerion is pleased that a good fucking seems to be all it takes for you to drop your disrespectful behavior and show some proper gratitude. Then you add, “Does the prospect of being mine really bother you so much? We are both exiles, both alone, both bored, and we please each other well enough, don’t we? Why must you throw a tantrum over it?”
Aerion clicks his tongue, fighting a hiss as he pulls his softening cock from your cunt and fixes his trousers. You turn around to face him, leaning back against the pillar as you fix your dress. Aerion finds his lips curling up into a smug smile when he sees how thoroughly wrecked you look—lips swollen, blood and spit smeared across your lower face, chest still heaving as you try to catch your breath.
“I do not belong to anyone,” he repeats, ignoring how you roll your eyes. “I’m a dragon, not a common whore—and I did not throw a tantrum.”
“Most dragons were claimed,” you remind him, and he sneers at that. You tip your head back against the marble, looking up at the night sky. “Unfortunately for you, I am not a common whore either. I suppose that means I can’t be yours.”
Aerion presses his lips together and says, “You might be, for all I know. A well-connected, well-versed common whore who taught herself High Valyrian to charm her way into a dragon’s bed and poison him once he’s let his guard down.”
You hum as though amused, and then you say, “I brought you something.” Aerion flicks a curious look at you, watching as you loll your head to the side to look at him. He raises his eyebrows. “From home. This was my actual plan of attack before your tantrum, if you were wondering. A gift—and a hint, if you’ll indulge my games.”
Aerion clicks his tongue disdainfully, because of course you never intended on abandoning your loathsome game, although he can’t help the curiosity that pricks at him. He spits, “I don’t want anything from Westeros—and I did not throw a tantrum.”
You raise your eyebrows. “My home, not yours,” you correct with a mysterious smile, and he furrows his brows at you, watching as you pull something from your sleeve, dangling it in front of him.
At first glance, it only looks like jewelry, and Aerion is a split second from a snide comment about how you have some nerve gifting him a necklace as though he’s a common whore for you to woo with trinkets, but he pauses when he looks closer and sees the rubies embedded in the black metal and the ripple patterns that swirl around them. He takes half a step closer, lips parting, is that…
You dangle it out of reach when he tries to grab it, and he scowls at you, but his heart is beating rapidly, breath lodged in his throat.
Is that Valyrian steel?
His heart feels like it’s about to race out of his chest, blinking once at where you’re holding it—almost all of the Targaryen’s Valyrian steel heirlooms are gone. The bastard, Bittersteel, fled with the sword Blackfyre across the Narrow Sea, and Aegon’s crown rots in Dorne after King Daeron’s death, while the Dornish lie and claim ignorance. Aerion only recognizes the necklace for what it is because he’s seen Dark Sister in the Bloodraven’s hands in passing.
Bitterly, he thinks it’s typical. Everything of value in his house, everything that connects them to their ancestry—it all either ends up dead or in the hands of enemies or bastards. The dragons were killed off because of their idiotic ancestors, and the only thing left to connect them to the old blood was stolen or is in unworthy hands.
Except… he could have something. Him. Not his father, not his brothers, not his cousins. Him. And he deserves it anyway, doesn’t he? He’s the only one who actually bothers to learn about their ancestry; he’s the one who has spent hours poring over crumbling accounts of the Freehold, over sorcery and dragonlords and a people who did not kneel to gods or kings, while his brothers and cousins focused on the Conqueror and their recent history. He stares at the necklace you hold greedily, tongue darting out to wet his lips.
“How do you have that?” he rasps, throat bobbing, gaze snapping toward you, and then slipping back to the necklace. “Why would you give me this? If you are jesting—”
“I’m not jesting,” you say, and Aerion’s heart pounds, breath quickening. “Turn around.”
Aerion watches you for a moment, pride warring with hunger, and after a few long seconds, he turns his back to you, stiff, shoulders tense. He half expects you to leave while his back is turned, make him look like a fool by getting his hopes up and disappearing. But he hears you make your way over to him, feels the warmth of your body against his back, and then—his breath hitches when he feels the cool metal snug against his neck, when he feels your fingers brush his skin as you clip it on, and your lips press against the nape of his neck as you step away.
He clenches his fist once to stop his fingers from trembling as he lifts his hand to brush it against the metal, lashes fluttering shut. He swears he can feel the magic thrumming within it, hear the beat of wings in the air, and the warmth of flames against his skin. He turns to face you, throat tight and eyes sharp and accusatory.
“Why would you give me this?” he asks, voice low.
“Why not?” you counter, as lackadaisical as ever, as if you didn’t just place a piece of his ancestry—one that he never thought he’d have—against his throat. “It suits you.”
He hates that answer.
Hates how easily you say it. As though Valyrian steel were silk ribbon. As though dragonforged metal—older than kingdoms, folded in fire and blood and spells men no longer understand—were something to be chosen for aesthetic pleasure.
This is from your home, you said. Where in the world would have Valyrian steel in abundance that you would just casually give it away? Qohor? Maybe? But it doesn’t explain why the Lyseni treat you as though—
“Volantis,” he says, knowing it’s right as soon as the words leave his mouth. “You’re from Volantis.”
How had he not seen it sooner?
Volantis—the last city that still pretends the Doom was an interruption rather than the end of an empire, where the blood of Old Valyria runs thicker than anywhere else in the world. They say that within the Black Walls is the closest the world will ever come again to the Freehold—streets walked only by old blood, families who trace lineage back to dragonlords. There are even whispers that the Volantene old blood retain the secrets to Old Valyrian blood magick and pyromancy.
That’s where you come from—he knew it, not Lysene silk and softness. Fire and blood of your own right. No wonder he’s been so drawn to you; no wonder you are the way you are.
“Udrimmi dārilaros,” you murmur with an easy smile. Clever prince.
Who are you? He wants to demand again. Why were you exiled? Why would you give me this? Who are you?
Instead, he settles for: “Volantis does not give Valyrian steel away for free.”
What do you want in return?
“No,” you agree. “It hoards it. Sits on the relics of a dead empire and calls it heritage. You should see my family’s vault—you’d think it was common as copper.”
Something ugly and envious curls in his stomach, but he forces it away. At least everything is finally coming together—why you speak High Valyrian as though it’s your mother tongue, and why the Lysene tread so carefully around you, refusing to answer his questions. The Old Blood of Volantis are powerful, and the Targaryens no longer have dragons to keep themselves above the rest of the world. The only question left is why you were exiled from the Black Walls, but he has a feeling you won’t answer that.
“Why did you give me this?” he asks again, more subdued this time.
“Well, consider this a proper declaration,” you say easily. When he furrows his brows at you, you wink at him, lips curling up into a smug smile as you explain, “For courting, of course.”
Aerion’s face flushes red, balking at your words, but before he can say anything, you lean in close, lips brushing against his ear as you breathe out, “Also, it makes you look thoroughly mine.”
You nip at his ear playfully, before you skip back a few steps, and give him an easy smile.
Flustered, he snaps, “You—”
You turn on your heel to leave, making your way back to the hall. You wave over your shoulder and sing, “‘Til next time, prince!”
Aerion exhales, staring after you, lips parted, body wound tight, fingers still brushing the metal you laid against his neck. He can’t still the rapid pace his heart beats at, no matter how hard he tries.
He hates Lys, he really, truly does, but maybe—
No, he definitely hates you, too.
———————
reader: sure, we understand each other
Also reader: plotting to disappear off the face of earth for a week to make him miss her and then return with a gift that she knew he wouldn’t be able to refuse so he would have to parade around Lys wearing a collar everyone knows damn well is hers
Aerion: I do not belong to anyone
Also aerion: wears someone’s collar just because it’s Valyrian steel
If you guys couldn’t tell, I am so fascinated by Volantis and the Black Walls, so I’m excited to get the chance to use this little series of one-shots to expand on my image of it. I imagine that within the Black Walls is probably the closest the known world will ever come to knowing what Old Valyria was like. And I think it will be interesting to explore with Aerion as a love interest since he would be interested in knowing more about his heritage, also think he might be wildly jealous, which serves for interesting dynamics LOL
I also like the idea of certain cities hoarding old relics of Valyria. We know canonically in Westeros, there are only 227 Valyrian steel weapons, many of which are missing, but TWoIaF says there could be thousands in the rest of the known world/Essos. And it just makes me snort that these noble houses in Westeros prize their single heirloom, while people like the Volantene old bloods have entire vaults full of it LOLLLL
SUMMARY: you meet a dragon prince on the shores of lys, and after five years of colorless boredom, your world is suddenly filled with light again. Or, two exiles find entertainment with one another, and the world suffers for it.
WARNINGS: fem!reader, reader is implied to come from valyrian lineage but no physical traits are mentioned/described, reader is a bored shit stirrer who lives for the thrill and aerion is aerion (he's a warning on his own), reader has quite an uh colorful personality of her own, liberal use of whore, aerion is rude and reader lowkey gets off on antagonizing him (she wants him BAD, in her defense, she's been terribly bored for 5 years), public sex/exhibitionism/voyuerism, rough sex, blood play, switch!reader (dom!leaning), switch!aerion (sub!leaning), but both of them fight for control LOL. WC: 9.6k-ish
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Carina's great return to writing for asoiaf ....... nobody understands just how crazy this is to me, I had a 6 year fixation on asoiaf from 15 to 21, and now sitting here writing it again after so long ........... madness ....... BUT IT FEELS SO NICE EUHUHUUH, IT'S LIKE COMING HOME </33 anyway I had so much fun with this fic, and I probably will make it a series of connected one shots because I have a lot of ideas I want to write for this concept. I have a whole background already built for our girl reader that I really would like to explore, and would also like to delve into Aerion POV because I think it would be fun LOL. I think I made it pretty obvious where reader is from in her narration, but trust there is a STORY behind her exile. I feel like I had more to say but I can’t remember. Comments and reblogs always appreciated!! Mwah mwah
“You—girl. Are you a whore?”
You raise your eyebrows from where you’re splayed out on a rock on the shores of Lys, basking in the warm sun. You’re the only one who comes to this edge of the island, so you can only presume the bored voice is addressing you. You let your head loll backward over the side of the rock, the tips of your hair brushing the crystalline water sloshing against the shore.
A man stands at the edge of the water, frowning down at it when it comes too close to his expensive leather boots. He is pretty, you decide—you can tell that much even peering at him upside down the way you are—but most who live on Lys are, so he’s nothing special. Pale hair, pale skin, violet eyes—you could find dozens of him at any pillow house in the city.
“Do I look like a whore?” you hum, voice lilting with amusement when you see the way his expression twists in irritation.
“I did not ask for wit,” he says sharply. “I asked for an answer.”
You roll onto your side instead of replying at once, propping yourself up on one elbow. The setting sun glints off the water, catching in his silver hair. He’s younger than you first thought—likely around your age—but his clothes are what catch your eye. They are not the sheer chiffon and smooth silks you’re accustomed to seeing boys draped in, but dark, expensive leathers. A Westerosi, maybe? There’s a sigil on the pommel of his sword, but you can’t make it out from a distance.
His gaze drifts over you, curiosity plain in his expression before he masks it with indifference.
“You may come closer,” you say lazily, calling out his lapse. “If you wish to inspect me properly, that is.”
His eyes narrow, jaw tightening. “I have no wish to inspect you.”
“No?” you ask, kicking your feet idly as you tilt your head to the side. Your fingers drop to skim the warm waters of the Narrow Sea, flicking the water uselessly in his direction, even though you know it won’t reach him. He still looks incensed by the mere attempt. “Then why ask?”
His mouth curls—not prettily. “Because I’ve been taught in Lys one does not stumble upon a woman alone without discovering she belongs to someone else.”
“Oh?” you echo, entertained, realizing he’s trying to insult you. “To someone else?”
He tilts his head the same way you did, mocking. “Or to everyone,” he drawls, smile sharp. “I prefer to know the nature of what stands before me.”
“And who do you suppose I belong to? One or everyone?” you ask lightly instead of letting the insult land, which only seems to irritate him more from the way he sneers. “Do you wish to be the one? Is that why you ask?”
He falters, and your lips quirk up in amusement. He doesn’t look like a boy accustomed to being mocked; he looks like one accustomed to being obeyed. You wonder how far you can press before he snaps. You haven't had much for entertainment since you were cast out to this idyllic paradise, so you have to make your own.
You rise to your feet at last, purple chiffon tumbling around you. It drapes from shoulder to ankle, sheer but layered, the violet deep enough to obscure what men desire most—modest for Lys, considering it covers more than what most girls in the pillow houses bother with. The fabric clings where the sea has kissed it, outlining the curve of your hips and the length of your thighs.
His gaze drops before he can help himself—to the low V-cut of your neck, and lower still. Then, as though he catches himself, his gaze snaps back up to your face, furious. You smile lightly as you drop off the rock into the shallow water, gentle waves brushing your ankles. You lock your hands behind your back as you make your way over to him; as you draw near, you finally make out the sigil on the pommel of his sword.
A dragon prince, you realize, amused. So, the rumors you heard of a ship flying the banner of the three-headed dragon are true. You never thought you'd get the chance to play with a dragon—the prospect of being burned thrills you in a way that the soft, perfumed sons of Lys never have.
“You did not answer my question,” you note, leaning in just enough to let your breath ghost against his mouth. To his credit, he doesn’t react beyond his eyes narrowing and tongue darting out to wet his bottom lip. “Do you wish for me to belong to you? Is that why you ask?”
“You,” he says tightly, “are very bold for someone who could be bought.”
“Everything in Lys can be bought,” you agree easily, “but not everything wishes to be. Unfortunately for you, you can’t afford my price.”
His eyes flash with indignation, but you continue before he can say anything.
“Tell me, Dragon Prince,” you begin, reaching out without asking permission. His hand snaps up to grab your wrist hard, but you only raise your eyebrows at him, fingers brushing the silver strand of hair that has fallen across his brow. It is softer than you expected, and he is much more beautiful up close. If only there wasn’t something dangerous lurking behind those pretty violets. “Did you come to Lys for pleasure?”
He says through his teeth, “You dare try to touch me.”
No.
“For business, then?”
“Are you slow, whore?”
No.
“Then, for exile.”
The rage that crosses his face is answer enough.
You had a feeling that was the case. You recognize the look in his eyes very intimately—alone, uncertain, cornered, all veiled behind a wall of arrogance and steel so as to not allow the snakes that wander the Lysene gardens a chance to sink their fangs in. He's a Targaryen prince—if he were back home, he probably would've struck you or imprisoned you for taking such tone and proximity to him, but he's not home, and he's still gaining his footing here in Lys, so he can't afford to react how he normally would.
Well, at least you're not alone in this regard anymore, you suppose, but only time will tell whether he'll make for good company.
You smile lightly and step away, brushing his grip from your wrist.
“Next time,” you call, glancing over your shoulder at him with an easy smile, “try asking my name before you ask my price.”
——————
His name is Aerion Brightflame of the Royal House of Targaryen in Westeros—a second son of a fourth son, tenth in line to the Iron Throne of Westeros. Lys is a city of silk and secrets—nothing truly disappears here, so it’s not hard for you to get the information you want on him. Stories drift through the pillow houses and lavish gardens as easily as perfume. He is cruel and capricious, prone to bouts of anger and violence, according to the whispers you’ve heard, but careful to keep up a charismatic front when before the magisters; exiled after his fickle whims led to the death of his uncle, the crown prince.
The dragon prince arrived under polite pretense—a guest of Magister Vyrano Naeranar—but word spreads swiftly that his vacation to Lys is not one of his own choosing. He spends his days in Vyrano’s manse, reclining on cushioned couches beneath painted ceilings, letting serving girls drape themselves across the arms of his chair like ornaments—grapes pressed to his lips, wine poured without asking, musicians summoned to entertain his boredom.
Today, he has the central market on edge, prowling about disdainfully with a white-cloaked shadow that came with him from the west. You watch from the tiled roof of a nearby building. He hasn’t noticed you yet, but you think he can feel you looking, because his gaze periodically sweeps around the square, as though searching for something he knows is there but can’t spot.
It’s entertaining—almost. Spice merchants from Yi Ti bow low, and the fishwives temper their usual shouting. Lys has returned to the tense state it was in when you arrived five years ago, and the whole city holds its breath as it waits for its draconic guest to return back to his cave.
You tilt your head to the side with an amused smile, watching as Aerion pauses at a stall heavy with Myrish glass and lacquered casks. The merchant fumbles his greeting once his gaze settles on the prince's silver hair and violet eyes—no easy flattery of someone who has sold to nobles before, no honeyed cadence of a seasoned trader. His tongue catches. His eyes flick to Aerion's hair, his sword, the crowd, then settle on the white cloak behind him.
You squint.
He rushes too quickly to the back of the stall, foregoing all of the best goods he has on display.
You don’t recognize him, you note absently, sliding down off the roof and onto a stack of boxes before you realize what you’re doing. You hop down to the ground, easing through the crowds in the direction of the stall. Most merchants who come to Lys are repeat presences—regular ships, regular routes, regular loyalties. You recognize them by name and face now, laugh at jokes they’ve told you too many times, and tease them with sleight of hand before tossing coin in their direction.
This one is not, and unfamiliar never bodes well, especially when word has begun to spread about Lys’s new royal guest.
“Firewine from the finest vineyard in Myr,” you hear the man say with a too eager smile as you draw close. “Firewine for the Brightflame. Worthy of a prince of the blood.”
Aerion’s mouth curves faintly, and you almost roll your eyes—all men are fools, you think disdainfully, weak to shallow flattery. He reaches for the decanter, and the merchant's fingers tighten slightly around it before releasing it to the prince. He holds the glass up to the sun's light and tilting it slightly, admiring how the bright liquid clings to the crystal.
You pluck the wine from his hand before he can make a decision on whether or not he’d like to taste it, skipping out of reach as his gaze snaps toward you, outraged. This will be today's entertainment, you decide, pleased. Not a single day since the prince has gotten here has been dull, and you're finding yourself increasingly pleased with him. The white cloak behind him makes a move to apprehend you, but Aerion waves him off when he recognizes you, expression twisting with irritation.
“You again,” he says. “Plucking a gift straight from my hands—do you have a death wish?”
You give him an easy smile, tilting your head to the side. “Not me,” you reply, “but you, perhaps? Shouldn’t your royal training have taught you not to accept wine from strangers, prince? Many are fond of sweet death, you know?”
Aerion’s eyes flash, and his gaze slides from you to the merchant, who looks aghast as he stares at you. He fumbles out, “My lady jests—”
You swing around, one arm sliding around the man’s slim waist, the other lifting the decanter up to his lips. “Then, the good merchant wouldn’t mind tasting his own wine, would he?” you coo, smiling.
The merchant freezes. His mouth opens, then closes again, throat bobbing as you press the rim of the crystal against his lips, tilting it ever so slightly toward him. Aerion and his white cloak watch with sharp eyes. Your chest bubbles with excitement—god, the last five years have been dreadfully boring, and one week of this dragon prince has brought color and sharpness to this gray, pillowed world.
“You called it worthy of a prince of the blood,” you remind him sweetly. “Surely it’s worthy of your own.”
The market has gone still—all eyes on you, the dragon prince, the merchant who had the nerve to try to assassinate him. Your gaze flicks up to meet the burning violet of Aerion, who stares at the decanter in your hand with rising fury.
“My lady,” he wheezes, voice cracking, “it is strong, that is all—too strong for an empty stomach—”
“Drink,” Aerion finally says, voice cold and clipped. “Drink, or I’ll have you skinned and hung from the harbor walls for the gulls.”
The merchant’s legs give out entirely. He sags against you, sweat soaking through his tunic, the rim of the crystal trembling against his mouth.
“My prince, mercy—”
“Drink,” Aerion repeats.
The white cloak has already drawn steel. The blade rests so lightly against the merchant’s throat that it barely dents the skin—but everyone in the square can see how little pressure it would take.
You tilt the decanter again.
A dark ribbon of wine spills past the man’s lips. He chokes, sputtering, trying to twist away, but your grip at his waist tightens just enough to steady him.
“Careful,” you tease. “You’ll waste it.”
He yanks away from you and spits up the wine, making his answer clear. The white cloak immediately sheathes his sword and grabs the man by the neck, scruffing him like an unruly pup. You let the decanter drop carelessly to the ground, shattering against the stone, and you turn to leave, bored now that the excitement is over.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Aerion calls after you, put off by your unspoken dismissal.
“Here, there,” you say dismissively, tossing raised eyebrows over your shoulder. “Everywhere? Nowhere?”
Aerion looks seriously irritated by your disrespectful attitude. You only smile.
“Return with me to Vyrano’s manse,” he says firmly—an order, not a request. Unfortunately for him, you do not take orders from anyone, much less foreign princes. “You will explain to me how exactly you knew that was poison, or I will presume that you were in league with the assassin.”
“I would rather die,” you say, voice a sing-song, enjoying the way indignation crosses his face. “Til next time, prince.”
——————
“I thought you said you weren’t a whore,” a familiar voice drolls from the now undrawn curtains leading into the room you’re relaxing in a few days later.
You bite back a sigh—you had a feeling he was going to come looking for you sooner or later, but you didn’t anticipate it would be so soon. You suppose he’s just as bored as you are, stuck on this island with nowhere to go and no one to call your own. There's only so much wine you can consume and music to listen to before you drive yourself insane. Your gaze lifts to where he’s standing.
Aerion is dressed prettily today in red silks, but you have yet to see him go anywhere unarmed. The girls around you stiffen when they recognize the three-headed dragon on the pommel of his sword—they’ve become used to your presence and whims over the years, but the dragon prince is a new unknown that they don’t know how to deal with yet, so you wave them off, silently telling them to leave. They all scatter, but not before giving you concerned looks.
“I’m not,” you say easily, tilting your head to the side as Aerion steps into the lavish, perfumed room, “but it doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy their company. Men have loose lips when their cocks are wet. Sometimes friends in low places are much more useful than friends in high ones.”
“Is that so?” Aerion's gaze sweeps the room once, as though assessing for any threats. Once he determines that there are none, he makes his way over to you, boots silent on the rugs. He doesn’t sit immediately; instead, he stands over you. Red silk catches the lamplight, the violet of his eyes brimming with something you can’t name as he looks down at you. He looks every inch the Targaryen prince—ornamental and dangerous and terribly beautiful, fire and blood and all things in between. Your lips curl up slightly, which only serves to make him incensed. “You are impudent. Disrespectful. I should have your tongue removed.”
You give him a lazy smile, head half-lolled back against the cushions to look up at him with lidded eyes. “Ah, but my tongue can be so useful,” you murmur. “You wouldn’t deprive Lys of its many talents, would you?”
“You grow tiresome,” Aerion says through his teeth, though his irritation is edged with something hotter. “Do you even know who you speak to?”
“Prince Aerion Brightflame of House Targaryen,” you drawl. “Everyone on our little island knows who you are.”
“And yet, you toy with me as though I’m some Lyseni fool come to squander coin,” he replies, leaning down, one hand braced at the cushion beside your shoulder, coming so close that his nose nearly brushes yours. You tilt the lower half of your face up to brush your lips against his, just to see how he reacts, but his free hand comes to your throat, holding you in place. “Who are you?”
“No one,” you reply with a mysterious smile, and his fingers tighten slightly around your neck. You try again, amused, “Anyone you want me to be.”
“Your name, woman,” Aerion insists, voice low and dangerous, temper fraying. “Give me your name, or I’ll do much worse than take your tongue.”
You let out a huff of laughter, gaze flicking down to his lips for a long moment, watching the way they tighten in annoyance. You give him your name after a few seconds pass—only your first. He waits a moment for your family name, but when you don’t give it, he clicks his tongue in irritation, hand dropping from your throat to take a step back, falsely assuming you don’t have one.
“How did you know that the wine was poisoned?” he asks you coldly. “Were you in league with the assassin? Turned against him to try to gain the favor of a prince?”
You rest back against the cushions when he lets you go, and Aerion’s gaze slides down again to the silk draped loosely around your shoulders, the way it slips down your skin. He catches himself, glaring at you furiously as he waits for an answer.
“He was an unfamiliar face,” you say dismissively. “Merchants in Lys are all familiar. I was suspicious, considering word has surely begun to spread about our resident dragon prince, and he looked far too anxious. Luckily so, seeing as you would’ve drunk the Weeping Lady’s tears without a spare thought.”
Aerion’s lips curl up into a snarl. “I would not have been so foolish as to drink wine from some unknown merchant.”
“If you say so, prince,” you agree blithely, waving your hand. “Is this all you came for? If so, I was in the middle of an entertaining conversation. Unless you’d like to join us girls in our gossip, that is?”
“You do not dismiss me, whore,” Aerion spits. “Why intervene then? If not for gold or to curry favor?”
“Well, I would never say no to gold,” you answer easily, “but in truth, the island has become boring these past few years. You’ve entertained me in the week you’ve been here. I would hate to lose you so untimely.”
Aerion stares at you as though he didn’t hear you properly. “You would speak of me as though I’m a court jester?” he asks, voice low. Dangerous. Ah, things are getting fun—the spark of interest you felt before returns in a blaze, you’ve always enjoyed dancing on the razor’s edge. “As entertainment?”
Heat crawls up your spine. Your lips curl up. You correct, “An island jester, but to the same accord, I suppose.”
His hand darts out to wrap around your throat again. This time, he drags you to your feet, into his chest. His thin fingers dig into your skin, sharp nails biting crescents. You still only smile lightly, gaze not leaving his, watching as chips of amethyst burn into swirling pools of dragonfire—the same color as you imagine the flames Meraxes breathed over Dorne in the war of conquest your tutors forced you to read about.
You find yourself breathless just for a second, regretting your initial assessment of him. There are no dozens of him in the pillow houses of Lys—Lys houses boys of silk and perfume, with soft skin and syrupy voices, not boys whose blood is fire and breath is ash, not dragons.
You are not one to deny yourself what you desire—your wants are fickle and fleeting, and boredom is the most terrible punishment of all in the years you’ve spent trapped on Lys. You are quick to indulge and quicker to discard, because it’s all you have to do while you’re here.
You want him, you decide. You want the dragon prince, and you will have him, one way or another. Dragons have always existed to be tamed by the old blood, and you do not care if you burn in your attempts to make him heel.
“You mock me,” he breathes out, eyes wild as though a part of him still doesn’t believe you have the nerve. “The last person who dared mock me to my face, I put to the sword.”
You lean into his grip, lifting your own hand to cradle his cheek. He startles at your touch, grip tightening on your throat instinctively. You murmur, lips almost brushing his as you speak, “We are in Lys, prince. Even a prince of the blood has to obey the law of the magisters—and you will be hard pressed to find the conclave willing to indulge your violence over banter.”
His lip curls up into a snarl, a noise ripping from his lips, more dragon than man, and he lets go of you harshly, sending you sprawling back down on the cushions. You smile easily, tilting your head to the side as you look up at him, and he looks even more incensed by your lack of fear, that you’re treating his righteous fury like a joke.
“Who are you really?” he demands. “A spy for my father? Another assassin?”
“So paranoid, dragon prince,” you murmur, fingers sliding up against your throat, skin still warm where he touched you. “I’m just a girl who enjoys playing with fire, that’s all.”
Aerion bares his teeth. “Girls who play with fire get burned, whore,” he says, voice low and furious.
“That’s part of the fun, isn’t it?” you say flippantly with a pointed raise of your eyebrows, eyes glittering as you watch how he seethes.
“You think this is fun,” he asks slowly, pupils blown wide, violet slivers around black marbles. “You prattle about magisters and laws as though I’m some merchant who can be summoned and fined. I am not a merchant, I’m a dragon, and dragons are not bound by laws of cities built on pleasure and perfume. They answer only to blood and fire.”
Your pulse jumps, and you raise your chin, giddy.
“Well, dragons have always answered to the right hand, haven’t they?” you drawl, grinning when you see the rage and indignation that cross his face once the implication of your words hits him.
For a moment, you think he’ll draw his sword and cut you down where you lounge, consequences be damned—or maybe he won’t even bother sullying his sword with your blood. He’ll wrap his hands around your throat and squeeze, watching the life leave your eyes up close and personal, your pulse fluttering and dying beneath his fingers.
What an intimate way to die, you think with a wistful breath.
But he catches himself before he can do something that would end with him being thrown in the damp cells beneath the city, letting out an irritated hiss before he turns on his heel and storms out of the pillow house.
“‘Til next time, prince!” you call after him, barely catching the way he glares furiously over his shoulder at you as he turns the corner.
As soon as he’s gone, the girls you were chatting with creep back into the room, one of them curling at your side, hand coming up to brush the bruises already blooming where his fingers once were. Her touch is soft and warm, and you find that you prefer the harsh, scalding imprint he left behind. You brush her hand away gently before she can wash away the feeling of his touch.
“You must be more careful, my lady,” she says softly. “You provoke him too openly. He’s not like the others.”
“I know,” you answer easily, gaze still trained on where he left, replaying the moment in your head over and over again. His hand at your throat, his breath hot against your cheek, the restraint trembling beneath his skin like a tethered beast. “That’s exactly what entices me.”
——————
Aerion Brightflame asks about you incessantly after that.
He returns to your favorite pillow house and tries to threaten the girls into telling him more about you, but they prove loyal, misleading him with vague answers and directing him to the wrong people. It infuriates him, and he rages and threatens for hours, but the girls of the Perfumed Garden remain out of reach. The Maryls, in spite of their misgivings over the last century, remain one of the more powerful banking families in Lys, and Aerion, for all of his fury, at least knows better than to go making an enemy of them during his time in exile.
He tries the magisters next, but the magisters are even less inclined to indulge him. Smiling men with poisonous tongues—they bow to kings when it’s profitable and to coin when it’s safer. They will not choose between you and the dragon prince, because to take a side would be to make an enemy, and an exiled prince, tenth in line, with no army and no dragon, holds little weight on the scale when you’re sat on the opposite side. Your father might be cruel enough to keep you on a forced vacation at this little idyllic paradise for years on end, but he will not stand for disrespect.
Aerion’s wrath is apocalyptic when he realizes that the magisters are being as evasive as the whores, meeting his questions with riddles and half-answers. He leaves their manses with his temper fraying, red silk snapping like a banner behind him. He is not accustomed to doors closing in his face, and you find yourself too entertained when the magisters send a serving girl to find you and warn you that the dragon prince is poking around about you.
He has his white cloak follow you around some days—you see him trailing from the corner of your eye, and instead of making moves to lose him, you let him follow several paces behind, amused by the lengths Aerion is going to for answers. His white cloak only returns with reports of laughter and music, of you moving freely between pillow houses and manses alike as though you belong to none and all at once.
At last, he does what pride has resisted: he tries seeking you out again.
Unfortunately for him, you make a game of cat-and-mouse. The harbor children run to you the moment they see a flash of red silk and the dutiful white cloak following behind, warning you that the prince is out hunting again, and you’re quick to make yourself scarce from all of the places he would ordinarily be able to find you, lounging in the hidden coves of the island where the sun is brightest and the water is warmest.
You spend a week toying with him like this, watching from a distance as he becomes more and more incensed by his inability to find you, but all fun must come to an end, and you’re expected at the First Magister’s manse for a mid-summer festival, so you don your prettiest silks and make way to the manse you’ve been residing in the past five years.
The manse is ablaze with torches and lanterns before the sun has even fully set, hundreds of them, hung from archways and balconies, glass tilted in rose and amber so that the entire property glows like a living jewel. Musicians line the outer courtyards, flutes and lutes carrying through the warm night air, drums pulsing in time with the tide below.
You make your way to a partially secluded balcony of the manse, lounging back against velvet cushions, the scent of orange blossom and wine thick in the air. From here, you can see everything happening down below, and people can’t easily make their way to you for conversation. Making your appearance for all intents and purposes, in sight of all of the attendees below, as the First Magister asked of you, but distant enough not to be bothered. The perfect compromise, in your fair opinion.
The gardens are the picture of decadence—marble statues wound with garlands of fresh roses, silk canopies rippling overhead in the gentle breeze, servants refilling goblets before they’re empty and cooling flushed faces with fans of dyed peacock feathers.
It is obscene and glorious—it is Lys, and you are terribly bored.
You exhale, gaze flicking up to the night sky, stretching languidly against the cushions as a pretty boy from the Perfumed Garden settles at your side. He’s all silk skin and silver lashes, bracelets chiming softly at his wrists. He smells faintly of sweet wine and summer berries—looks like the dragon prince, you think blandly as your eyes trace amethyst eyes and lithe limbs, but without the fire that comes with. Without asking, he leans in, mouth brushing the hollow of your throat tentatively, waiting for you to send him away or accept him at your side.
You tilt your head obligingly in response, granting him better access, and he lets out a hum against your skin, to the irritation of the golden-haired girl already curled on your opposite side, pouting against your skin from where she’s nuzzling your wrist. They don’t like sharing—more likely one will be sent away in favor of the other, and it’s nicest up here with the view of the gardens, not having to deal with merchant lords and magisters pawing and groping.
The girl presses a soft kiss to the inside of your wrist, sucking gently at your pulse, and the boy at your throat grows bolder when you do not dismiss him, mouth traveling from your collarbone to the curve beneath your ear, teeth grazing lightly before he soothes the spot with his tongue.
You sigh, head lolling back against the cushions, gaze drifting upward to the lanterns swaying above the terrace before you allow your eyes to slide shut. You are bored—they are beautiful, and attentive, and they know exactly how to please you, but you’ve long grown weary of soft skin and pillowed touches. But you’re expected to be here until dawn, and there are still hours left until then, so you may as well use them as a way to pass the time.
Just as the boy’s hand starts to drift cautiously along your waist, testing the line between invitation and overstep, your hair stands on end, eyes reopening as your instincts warn you that you’re being watched. You're used to being watched in Lys—by curious nobles and idle voyeurs whose stares follow pleasure like sport—but this is not that. Your head falls to the side when both courtesans at your sides stiffen, gaze drifting over to the curtained entrance to the balcony you lounge on.
You hum when you recognize the figure standing there, half in shadow, lanternlight catching along the sharp line of his jaw and his silver hair. He doesn’t say anything, violet gaze flicking to the two at your side. You let out a long exhale through your nose, eyes flicking up in irritation.
“Go,” you tell the two courtesans, who immediately take the opportunity to scurry away from Aerion Brightflame’s imminent ire. Your gaze meets his again, and you say dryly, “Ao zūgagon qrīdrughagon ñuha līvi. Gaomagon ao kȳvanon naejot ropakagon zirȳ, zaldrīzes dārilaros?”
You scared away my whores. Do you intend to be their replacement, dragon prince?
Aerion tilts his head to the side slightly, gaze lidded, eyes sharp shards of amethyst. “First, you liken me to a jester, now a whore. It’s almost as though you are determined to see how far you may push before I remind you what I really am.”
“I am simply offering ways for you to recompense,” you reply lightly. “You frightened away my night's entertainment, after all.”
“I did not tell them to leave.”
“You did not have to.”
His mouth curls up faintly at that. “I am not here to replace anyone,” he says coolly.
“Pity,” you sigh. “You would be far more interesting.”
“You have been avoiding me,” Aerion says after a moment, changing the subject as he steps fully onto the balcony, staring down at you coldly.
“And you have been asking about me,” you drawl. “Sit with me, prince. My neck aches craning upward to look at you.”
Aerion’s lip curls up in distaste, gaze flicking to the cushions where the courtesans had just been sitting. He asks, “You expect me to sit where your whores were just pawing at you?”
“You expect me to continue craning my neck?” you counter lazily. “It’s terribly inconvenient.”
His jaw tightens, and for a moment, you think he’ll refuse you on principle, but then, with visible reluctance, he steps closer and lowers himself onto the far edge of the velvet cushions, lounging back against them and giving you a disdainful look. You curl onto your side to look at him through your lashes, smiling lightly.
“You mock me, you antagonize me, and you disappear for days,” he says, voice low. “Who are you? A real answer this time.”
“My name was not satisfactory?” you ask, teasing, purposely shifting a little closer, knee almost brushing his thigh. His eyes flick over you once, wary. “Well, what have you learned then, prince? From your many inquiries?”
His lips curl into a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. With a voice as thin as his smile, he says, “Nothing of import.”
You lean in a little closer, fingers dragging up the red silk of his sleeve, feeling the warmth of his skin beneath it, warmer than the summer night, than the wine still sweet on your tongue, fire burning under man. Your fingers itch to slip beneath the silk, to slide against his bare skin, feel the thrum of his pulse. His gaze snaps down to where you’re touching him, lip curling up in distaste, but not brushing you off. Your heart races in your chest, delighted, a smile touching the corner of your lips.
“But that tells you something of import in itself, does it not?” you hum, fingers sliding higher, grazing the seam at his shoulder, then down again in a slow, idle path, memorizing the shape of him through silk.
His breathing shifts—barely, but it does—and his eyes follow the trail you trace down his arm sharply. His attention pulls back up to your face, calculating your words. “You move between manses as though you belong to all of them,” he says, more to himself than to you. “The Perfumed Garden protects you. The magisters evade my questions. Even the harbor brats run interference on your behalf. That is not coincidence.”
You tilt your head, studying him.
“Perhaps they simply like me.”
“No one is liked that thoroughly without reason.”
“Indeed,” you agree, inching closer. Your knee presses against his thigh firmly now, head resting against the same velvet cushion that supports his shoulders. You can feel the tension in him through the thin barrier of silk. His face tilts toward yours, within a breath of one another—you can almost taste the wine on his mouth. You have to stop yourself from leaning in to drag your tongue against his bottom lip. “Why ever would the Lyseni insult a prince of the blood for a common whore?”
His gaze doesn’t leave yours, even as your fingers slip from the silk of his sleeve to his collar, tracing the edge where fabric parts to reveal pale skin beneath. You don’t quite touch him there, but you long to.
“You do not speak in the Lysene dialect—no common whore of Lys would speak fluent High Valyrian,” Aerion continues, voice low, picking up on the hint you dropped him earlier. Your gaze slips down to his lips as he speaks, and you have to force it back up to his eyes. “Nor would she openly antagonize and—” His hand darts up, lithe fingers wrapping around your wrist, tight enough to bruise when you start to trace down the embroidered patterns along his chest. “—freely touch a prince of the blood.”
You hum, pulse fluttering beneath his thumb. He feels it—you know he does. “And where does that leave your answer?”
Your breath catches in the back of your throat as he drags his nail down your inner wrist, sharp enough to draw blood if he chooses to press a little deeper. His gaze drifts from your face to your wrist, the edge of his nail pressing just enough to sting, and then deeper, a small bead of blood welling against your skin before he eases the pressure. He watches it rise and then shifts his thumb beneath it and rubs upward, smearing the blood against your pulse.
“You were quick to recognize what I was,” he says at last, voice quieter now. His thumb lingers at your pulse. “Quicker than most.”
“You did deny pleasure and business,” you remind him easily, lips curled up slightly.
“And yet, not many would immediately jump to exile,” Aerion murmurs, gaze sharper now. “Not unless they are well acquainted with it themselves.”
“Udrimmi dārilaros,” you purr—entertaining and intelligent, you think you’ll have fun with the dragon prince. Clever prince. “Birds of a feather, you and I.”
Aerion makes a noise in the back of his throat as though he doesn’t quite agree, but his eyes slide back up to your face, calculating. His tongue darts out to wet his lip, and your gaze fixes on it. He muses, “You’re no ordinary exile, if the Lyseni will insult a prince of the blood to retain your favor.”
You watch his eyes slip over your features, trying to put together all of the pieces, irritation swimming in violet when he can’t immediately do so. You can’t blame him—you suppose they don’t fit together too neatly. For the Lyseni to favor you over him, he would assume you would have to be royal yourself, probably initially leaning toward an imperial princess of Yi Ti or the daughter of a Qartheen merchant prince. But you speak fluent High Valyrian, and the YiTish and Qartheen people hold the Valyrian Freehold in high disdain—they do not teach its tongue in their court, much less prize it with the reverence you speak it in. That makes him lean toward the Free Cities, and yet—you do not speak in bastardized Valyrian. Your Valyrian is clean, as old and measured as it was when the Freehold ruled the world before the Doom.
Frustration flashes across his face, and he runs his tongue between his teeth, trying to put together the jagged pieces you’ve handed him. You watch the movement with open interest. He is thinking—calculating lineages and alliances, which houses of which cities might keep the old tongue unspoiled, who the Lyseni might favor more than the dragon. You can see the names forming and falling away behind his eyes, each failure leaving him more incensed.
His grip on your wrist loosens as he thinks, and you slide your hand down the length of his forearm, shifting closer. He does not stop you, too occupied with his thoughts. That’s when you lean in, mouth brushing against the hollow of his throat, the same way the pretty silk boy did to you when he curled up at your side before.
He stills, inhaling sharply the moment your lips touch his skin. You feel the warmth of his body, flames burning beneath skin, the faint thrum of his pulse. You let your lips linger before drawing back slightly, breath ghosting across the same place, waiting to see if he’ll push you away.
“I did not give you leave to touch me, whore,” he finally says, but he doesn’t move away, nor does he push you back.
“I thought we had established that I’m not a whore,” you murmur, and then press your luck by pressing your lips to his skin again, firmer this time. A third time along the ridge of his throat as it bobs beneath your mouth, a visible swallow that betrays him.
You feel the tension ripple through him—anger and desire warring with one another, braided too tightly to separate. His hand comes up fast, fingers tangling in your hair roughly. He doesn’t pull you away like you expect, and you can’t help the way the corners of your mouth curl upward slightly.
“You behave like one,” he hisses.
“A whore would not be so bold as to touch a prince of the blood without leave,” you echo his own words back at him. When he doesn’t shove you away and rise to his feet, you shift closer still, half into his lap, hands sliding against the smooth silk covering his abdomen, not slipping beneath yet. His fingers twist in your hair again—a warning—you do not heed it. “Iā līve daor ikson kostagon naejot kostilus ao isse aōha muña ēngos.”
A whore would not be able to please you in your mother tongue.
His breath hitches, grip on your hair tightening at the sound of High Valyrian spoken so cleanly against his throat. His pulse jumps beneath your mouth, and you flick your tongue out to circle it, sucking gently at his skin. He pulls your head back slightly, fingers tight in your hair. His pupils are blown wide again, violet slivers around black, except that last time he was fueled by rage, this time it’s something far more dangerous—his free hand slides up your thigh to your hip, thumb pressing hard into your skin. Your hips twitch, aching to grind against the thigh between your legs, but you catch yourself, waiting for him to speak.
“You presume much,” he says, voice low. “You enjoy seeing how far I will allow you to go.”
You smile lightly, gaze lidded. “I enjoy discovering where the line truly is.”
He twists your hair just enough to make it sting, nails carving crescents into the skin at your hip. “Do you really think the laws of this city will protect you from me?” he breathes out. “You think coin and courtesy mean anything if I decide otherwise?”
Your gaze drops to his lips as he speaks, and his fingers tighten in your hair, forcing your gaze up to his. “I am dragon-blood. Exile does not strip that from me. It does not make me tame. You play at this because you believe I will abide by Lyseni custom—that I will bow to their law. If I wished to make an example out of you, Lys would not stop me.” His lips curl faintly, eyes flicking briefly to your mouth, then back to your eyes. You feel his breath against your lips. “You provoke me in my own tongue. You touch me without leave. You grind against me like a bitch in heat and call it entertainment. And you think I’ll simply indulge you.”
His hand at your hip shifts, sliding slightly higher to yank you fully into his lap. You suck in a breath as your bodies align. You feel him pressed against your inner thigh, hard, aching as much as your cunt is, but his grip is iron at your waist, refusing to allow you grind down.
“I allow this,” he continues, nails dragging slowly against your scalp as he tilts your head another fraction, “because I choose to, and if I withdraw that choice, no law or magister in this pillowed city will save you from me.” His thumb presses deep into the small of your back, forcing your spine to arch subtly toward him. “If you want to please me, then please me like a good whore, but my patience wanes with your games, and you will not like the result if it’s exhausted.”
You lean in to latch your lips to his jaw, lashes fluttering as you press an open-mouthed kiss there, mapping the sharp lines, teeth teasing pale skin. He inhales sharply through his nose, hand tightening reflexively at your waist, but then he loosens his grip just enough for you to lower your hips so that his clothed cock is pressed against the damp silk covering your cunt.
He settles back against the cushions, violet eyes lidded as he stares down at you, and you drag your tongue up his throat, along the underside of his chin, to his lips. You bite back a noise that builds in the back of your throat when he parts his lips, tongue sliding against yours as you swipe along his bottom lip before he leans in to press his mouth firmly to yours, deepening the kiss on his own terms.
You let out a quiet moan into his mouth, fingers curling in the silk at his shoulders, heart racing as his tongue maps the inside of your mouth the way you’d mapped the line of his jaw. He tastes exactly how you expected—fire and ash, blood and steel, you want him. You haven’t wanted anyone or anything so badly in your entire life. Before you were cast from black walls and marble palaces, you were given everything you wanted on a silver platter, before you even knew you wanted it yourself; and after, your life became so dull and colorless that even your fleeting desires were shallow, monotonous things, passing and predictable, boring, never lasting for more than a few moments' time.
But this—the sting of his nails dragging against your skin, the taste of his tongue, the heat of his body, it’s different, it burns, consumes, and you want him. The exiled prince, the dragon—you’re sick of perfume and silk, you want blood and fire, claws that cut through skin and touches that burn, incandescence. Your hands slide from his shoulders to the back of his neck, fingers threading through silver strands, and his mouth falls half ajar against yours when you roll your hips and tug lightly at his hair. His hand slips from your waist to between your legs, and you gasp into his mouth, eyes sliding shut, forehead pressed to his, noses nudging when he slides his fingers against your clothed cunt.
“You say you’re not a whore, yet your cunt weeps like one,” Aerion breathes against your lips disdainfully before leaning in to drag his tongue up the length of your neck. Your lashes flutter, eyes rolling back slightly as his fingers dip beneath the silk, sliding between your wet folds.
“And you speak as though disgusted,” you reply, breath shuddering against his temple as his teeth bite deep into your pulse point, “yet your body disagrees.”
Aerion doesn’t even bother with a reply, pushing two fingers into your cunt and watching the way you arch against him as he drags them in and out of you. He tilts his head back against the cushions, lips wet and kiss-swollen, eyes lidded as he looks up at you. He says scornfully, “I thought you were to be the one to please me. It seems as though I’m the one doing the pleasing.”
“Shijetra nyke, dārilaros,” you murmur, relishing in the way his breath hitches and body visibly shudders when you speak High Valyrian to him. “Kesan mazverdagon ziry bē naejot ao.”
Forgive me, prince. I’ll make it up to you.
You lean in to press your lips against his again, gasping lightly into his mouth when he presses his thumb to your clit, before he slips his fingers out of you, looking up at you expectantly. You roll his bottom lip between your teeth, feeling his chest vibrate as he fights a groan, and you slide your hand from the nape of his neck down his chest, fingers slipping beneath the hem of his silk pants.
“I see Vyrano has you dressed like a proper silk boy,” you murmur into his mouth.
Aerion’s lips immediately curl into a snarl, teeth sinking into your bottom lip, as though to prove he’s a dragon and not one of the pretty boys you can find in the pillow houses. Iron floods your mouth, lip stinging painfully, and his lips part to snap out an insult, surely, but your hand dips into his pants before he can, fingers wrapping around his cock. Whatever words were on his tongue immediately die, jaw falling half-slack as your hand glides up and down his length.
You kiss him again, deeper this time, pushing the blood he drew into his mouth and swallowing the moan he lets out into you when you squeeze gently at the base of his cock, thumb sliding over his tip, smearing the precum leaking from his slit.
Anyone could see the two of you, you think distantly, a thrill running through your body as your gaze flicks over the balcony, where lanternlight spills gold across flowery decadence, and the drifting servants and laughing nobles below. Some are watching, you realize, noticing that several gazes are already flicking upward to where the two of you are entwined, sharing breath, kisses, touches.
This is Lys—it is not ordinarily scandalous. Lovers are displayed as often as jewels and tapestries. Half-hidden trysts on balconies are as common as wine spills on marble. Men and women press each other against pillars and cushions every festival night, and the city merely hums in approval, but this—
This is different.
You and the dragon prince are not some merchant’s bored heir and his purchased distraction, or a magister’s son and a painted courtesan. He is fire and blood, and you come from black walls and marble palaces. This is not scandalous, not if it were anyone else, but it is not anyone else.
You let out a breathless laugh, kissing him again, deeper this time—can’t get enough of the taste of him, the warmth of his lips against yours, the heat of his body. One hand still works his cock, quick snaps of your wrist that make his head loll, while the other slips beneath silk to flatten against his abdomen, nails raking gently against his skin. His eyes roll half-back, muscles tensing beneath your hand, hips stuttering, but before he can finish, you pull your hand from his pants.
Aerion hisses, eyes snapping open and violet flaring furiously as his hips jerk up against air, ruining his high just when he was on the precipice. He spits, “You dare—” but you press your lips against his before he can finish the sentence, pushing the silk down to his thighs, just enough so that you can sink down on his cock.
“Hah—” you gasp, head falling back slightly at the feeling of his cock stretching your walls. Your gaze blurs as you look up at the stars above, trying to give yourself a second to adjust, but Aerion’s hands drop down to your waist, nails digging into your skin as he snaps his hips up. Just for a second, you see stars—the tip of his cock forces itself so deep inside of you that you swear, just for a second, that you can feel him in your stomach. “Oh—”
Aerion pushes himself up from where he’s lying back against the cushions, sucking at the crook of your neck before he drags his tongue up to the spot behind your ear. He presses his lips against it as he breathes, “Ao ȳdragon hae iā līve se gaomagon hae iā līve, yn aōha orvorta iksis tolī ȳrda naejot sytilībagon naejot iā līve.”
You talk like a whore and act like a whore, but your cunt is too tight to belong to a whore.
His abdomen tenses as you answer him by scratching lines through his skin, and you guide him back against the cushions, leaning down to kiss bruises up his pale throat. You press your lips to his again as you finally start to rock your hips, the drag of his cock against your walls making you hot and dizzy. You force down a whimper when he sucks the blood from your bottom lip, where he sank his teeth in before. One of his hands comes up to hold the back of your head, tilting your head so that he can drag his tongue against the roof of your mouth.
He tastes like fire, you think again, licking the inside of his lip, fire and smoke and blood, everything you’ve ever wanted. The more you kiss him, the more heat spreads through you—like a dragon, breathing flames through his mouth into yours, spreading through your chest, your stomach, your whole body, you almost make yourself laugh, but a pointed thrust makes your eyes knock back.
Aerion lets out a low moan into your mouth, lashes fluttering, the violet of his eyes rolling back slightly when you pick up the pace of your hips. “Fuck,” he gasps. “Ao qogralbar hae iā līve.”
You fuck like a whore.
You laugh into his mouth, rolling his lip between your teeth and biting down hard, drawing blood as he did to you before. He hisses into your mouth, hips jerking, cock twitching inside of you; his pupils are blown wide as he stares up at you, caught between disbelief and desire—can’t believe you have the audacity to spill blood of the dragon, can’t believe the fact that you did almost made him cum.
Your hand slides behind his head to pull him up so that he’s sitting upright again, chest flush to yours, lips sliding together sloppily, a mess of blood and saliva. His nails dig into your thighs, body tensing briefly as though he plans to flip you onto your back, but before he can, your hands dart down to push his hands off of you, not letting him take control from you.
He snarls into your mouth immediately, furious, snapping down on your lip again like a—like a dragon, you think again, breathless. A dragon, yes—your dragon, or he will be. Dragons have always existed to be claimed by the old blood, you echo, and he will be yours, one way or another. Your thighs burn on either side of his narrow hips with each bounce on his cock. For the first time since you were cast out, you feel alive again. Your world has returned to fire and steel and incandescent light, and you’ll be damned before you let it go back to the colorless, pillowed world it's been for the last five years.
You kiss him deeper, fuck him faster, and he lets out a ragged, choked noise, breaking his lips from yours to tilt his face to the sky. Your blood and his is smeared across his lower face, lips pink and wet and swollen, a flush high on his cheeks.
“Gevie,” you breathe out, hands sliding back up his body to cradle his face, forcing him to look at you again. His violet eyes are partially glazed over when they meet yours.
Beautiful.
Aerion’s head falls forward, and his whole body seizes as he cums inside of you, and you tangle your fingers in his silver hair to crane his head back so that you can press your lips to his again, swallowing his moans. Your free hand slides between your bodies to rub circles over your clit, rolling your hips still, slower now, so you can feel every inch of his cock drag against your walls. His nails claw your thighs when you don’t ease up, teeth grinding together, pulling his lips from yours to toss his head back.
“Qogralbar aspo—qrugh—ōregon va—”
Fucking bitch—shit—hold on—
Your hips jerk, a gasp muffled into his mouth—the sting of his nails in your thighs, his softening cock twitching inside of you, the way his jaw is clenched and how the vein running down the side of his neck bulges as he strains to not let out a pitched whine, overstimulated. It’s all too much, one last roll of your hips as he spasms beneath you, cock head dragging up against that sweet spot inside of you, and your jaw falls slack against his mouth, a hitch and a whine as your hips stutter, finishing on his sensitive cock.
The two of you remain like that for a long while, the sound of music and chatter below, foreheads pressed together, sharing the same dizzying sliver of air. When that pleasant, boneless feeling in your limbs starts to subside, you finally roll off of him, onto the velvet cushions next to him, head lolling back so you can look up at the sky, trying to catch your breath, chest heaving, and eyes sliding shut briefly.
After a few moments pass, you stretch languidly and rise to your feet.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Aerion asks, voice low and gaze lidded as he watches you carefully.
“Down to the garden,” you say easily, fixing your dress. Aerion looks distinctly offended, pushing himself up onto his elbows. You explain, “I promised the First Magister I wouldn’t hide away up here all night, and now I feel, ah, properly energized to go socialize with these peacocks.”
His eye twitches, and he looks as though he wants to argue, but you turn to leave before he can, ignoring the aggravated puff of air he lets out.
“Tell me,” Aerion calls after you. “Where are you from? Why were you exiled here? Who are you really?”
You give him an easy smile over your shoulder. “I revealed enough secrets tonight, haven’t I?” you drawl as you push the curtain open to leave the balcony and head back down to make your official appearance at the festival. “It would ruin the fun if I revealed the mystery all at once.”
Aerion doesn’t respond, gaze dragging over you as he leans forward to pluck one of the grapes you left on the table between his fingers, rolling it once before popping it in his mouth. After a long moment, his lips curl up into a slow smirk, as though finally deciding to go along with this little game of yours. His eyes slide away, effectively dismissing you as though you weren’t already leaving.
It’s very hot when a man is clearly deranged about you but restraining himself to try to be normal… it’s like the opposite of whatever most men do where they fling out their sexual thoughts and urges with no self constraint
SUMMARY: one way or the other, the two of you always find your way back to each other. you think that it was always going to end this way, and you think that you wouldn't have had it any other way—you and him, from the beginning to the very end.
WARNINGS: fem!reader. canon compliant (MCD). i took some liberty with 1) zenin clan relationships and 2) cursed spiritenergy lore for reader’s technique. naoya is his own warning—he’s gonna give you a lot of whiplash. heavily implied abuse (naobito->naoya). toxic relationship (i stress, toxic relationship, the codependency is really highlighted in this part). misogyny (obviously). liberal use of bitch (naoya to reader). GRIEVING (reader goes through all five stages of grief and honestly has a whole mental break after naoya's death, identity crisis/full loss of purpose/suicidal thoughts & makes a decision at the end that's purposely left up to interpretation). as always with my fics, reader has personality & background. I think I’m missing some warnings, pls tell me if you catch anything I missed, there are a lot LOL
AUTHOR’S NOTE: AHHHHHHHHHHH THE LAST PART IS HERE ..... I hope you guys are excited, I rlly think I did this chapter justice (if I didn't, lie to me and say I did). I don't want to go too in depth here because I have a lot of notes at the end and most of what I want to say is a spoiler. SO ALL I HAVE TO SAY IS ENJOY!!!! all comments and reblogs always appreciated. And here is a post I made about reader’s cursed technique—it’s described in the fic as well, but if you’re interested to read!
SEE: MUTUALLY ASSURED DESTRUCTION series masterlist
2018 | READER, AGE 25; NAOYA, AGE 27
“So, um, one of my students has become Sukuna’s vessel,” Satoru says casually to you one day over the phone. You blink once, looking down at your phone, then back up at the wall. Naoya gives you a questioning look from where he’s lounging on your couch. “I already made sure the higher-ups can’t execute him just yet, but I’m sure they're going to call a meeting with all of the big sorcerer families about it soon. I thought you should hear it from me first. Anyway—”
“Don’t you dare hang up on me, Satoru,” you hiss furiously. “What the hell do you mean one of your students is the vessel for the King of Curses?”
Naoya’s eyes widen slightly across the room, and he puts his phone down before pushing himself to his feet, making his way over to you. He leans in so that his ear is against the back of your phone, trying to eavesdrop on what Satoru is saying to you. You scowl at him, pressing your hand against his face and pushing him away, much to his distinct displeasure.
“Well, I mean, I guess vessel is kind of a harsh word. They’re more like cohabiting the same body,” Satoru corrects, and like he can hear the disbelief just in the small puff of air you let out, he sighs. He continues, more seriously, “He ate one of Sukuna’s fingers to protect his friends and Megumi—which, before you yell at me, I agree, was extremely stupid, but it was also extremely brave.” He talks so casually that you can almost forget he’s talking about an ancient calamity wearing a teenager as a hoodie. “Mostly brave. I think I’m leaning more brave than stupid.”
“Satoru,” you say through gritted teeth. You exhale, trying to quell the panic that’s steadily rising in your chest as the weight of what he said to you starts to settle in. You knew something wasn’t right—knew it. You’ve had a bad feeling since the incident at the end of last year, but this— “Just, who is this boy?”
“The kid’s name is Itadori Yuji, fifteen years old. Physically gifted, absurd inclination for cursed energy, moral compass that’ll probably get him killed if I don’t interfere,” Satoru tells you. “The higher-ups want him dead. Immediately. Public execution wrapped up in a neat little bow, so no one has to think twice about it.”
“And what do you want?” you ask quietly, leaning against the wall and rubbing your hand against your face, suddenly very, very tired.
“To keep him alive,” Satoru replies simply. “Long enough to eat all twenty fingers.”
Which means Satoru probably has at least one of the twenty hidden away somewhere no one could ever hope to find. He wouldn’t push for an alternative that still ended in the boy’s execution. You exhale, gaze shifting up to the ceiling.
“You’re putting a lot on this kid, Satoru,” you say quietly.
“I know, but what am I supposed to do? Let the old bastards murder him?” Satoru asks quietly, sounding a bit tired himself. “Anyway, that’s why I’m gonna be staying right next to him. Like a very handsome, overpowered babysitter.”
You laugh despite yourself, shaking your head. “You’re an idiot,” you say. “I’ll come to the school to meet him before I attend the meeting.” You can see the smug smile on his face without even hearing him say anything. “I haven’t agreed to anything yet.”
“Oh, I know,” he replies easily, “but you are agreeing to look. Still a win.”
“I’ll be there tomorrow. Unannounced. Don’t tell them.”
“Please do—the kids love surprises. Builds character.”
“And if I decide this is a terrible idea, Satory? That the risk is too high?”
There’s a long pause on the other end. “Then you’ll say it to my face, and I’ll listen. Well, I’ll probably end up ignoring you, but I’ll listen at first, at least.”
You roll your eyes. “How generous.”
“I try,” Satoru answers, and you hang up the phone, turning to Naoya, who’s still disgruntled by the way you shoved him away.
“What the hell was that?” Naoya asks, and you stare at your phone a second longer than necessary before letting your arm drop to your side. “Hello?”
You let out a long exhale through your nose. “That,” you say slowly, already dreading the oncoming headache, “was Satoru informing me that the King of Curses is currently squatting inside a fifteen-year-old, and the higher-ups are going to be dragging us all to a meeting about it.”
Naoya stares at you. “And you’re… going to meet the vessel, instead of just letting it die?” he asks, voice a low drawl. “You know, I know you’re a woman, but you can’t seriously be this soft-hearted. We’re talking about Sukuna, the King of Curses, y’know?”
You give him a sharp look. “Watch it.”
“What?” he scoffs, folding his arms over his chest. “I’m not wrong. This ain’t some stray he found bleeding on the street. It’s the King of Curses wearing some kid like a skin.”
“I’m not arguing with you right now, Naoya,” you say flatly, shaking your head and turning away. “You—”
“There’s no argument at all. You’re not fuckin’ going to go talk to this kid, end of story,” Naoya says so firmly that it makes your eye twitch. “I’m serious.”
“You don’t get to order me around, Naoya,” you remind him, voice low. “Don’t piss me off right now, I already have a headache.”
“There’s no point,” he says dismissively, lips pinched. “You know damn well the clans ain’t gonna protect him. The moment Satoru-kun isn’t looking, they’re gonna push for an execution anyway. You’re gonna go there and talk to this thing, and it’s gonna be wearing the face of a kid, and you’re gonna get attached, and then you’re gonna be all upset when it’s inevitably killed. And I ain’t fuckin’ dealing with it, not when you knew better and went anyway.”
“It’s not your call to make.”
“No, but it’s going to be my fucking problem when this turns out exactly how we both know it’s going to.”
You scoff, looking away. “Fuck off,” you tell him. “You’d rather I sign off on the execution of a kid barely through junior high without even making an informed decision?”
“Yeah,” Naoya answers immediately, no hesitation. “That’s exactly what I’d rather.”
The two of you stare at each other for a long moment, and Naoya’s expression is tight in a way that you haven’t seen in a while, with frustration and irritation. He really doesn’t want you to see this kid, you realize, exhaling through your nose.
“I’ve seen curses wear human faces before,” Naoya continues through gritted teeth, and your gaze shifts to the side because you know exactly what he’s talking about, even if he doesn’t know you know. “They cry and beg and pretend, but it always ends the same. You know this. This ain’t fuckin’ you. You’re not this stupid—you’ve never let sentiment get in the way of making the right call like this before. You know I’m right. Don’t go see this kid.”
You tell him quietly. “It’s not your call to make, Naoya.”
Naoya lets out a sharp, breathless laugh, shaking his head. “Whatever. Go then. Just don’t come cryin’ to me when the kid is axed, yeah?”
————————
You meet Itadori Yuji the next day, alongside his two classmates: Nobara Kugisaki and Fushiguro Megumi. You’ve met Megumi plenty of times before through Satoru, but you can tell the boy is on edge this time, because you’re not here as someone who is friends with Satoru—you’re here as someone who will have a say in whether his friend lives or dies. His jaw is tight as you make your way over to the small group, and he greets you properly with an incline of his head, but you can see his fists are tight at his side. Nobara watches you like a hawk next to him, scrutinizing you with narrowed eyes and downturned lips.
Itadori Yuji is nothing like you expect. He’s painfully ordinary at first glance—just a boy, broad-shouldered, tall for age, athletic. You don’t immediately sense Sukuna’s presence within him; only when you really focus do you feel the pressure of him beneath the surface, a predator lying in wait, amused by the illusion of normalcy. Yuji doesn’t look angry or sad or frustrated, like you expect. He looks too alive, too present, grinning easily as if he hasn’t already been condemned by people who have never bothered to learn his name. The contrast is nauseating. A boy who smells of sweat and summer air, housing something that treats blood as an art form, and a world that simply does not care to distinguish them as different.
Your headache returns with a vengeance.
(“Introduce yourself,” you say, arms folded over your chest as you stare at the boy.
Yuji straightens, pressing his fist to his chest. “My name is Itadori Yuji. I like karaoke and watching TV, and all kinds of food, but my favorite is noodles. And rice bowls. I hate science—and before you ask, my hair is naturally this color.”)
He is just a boy.
They are just children.
(“Why the hell are you dating him?” Kugisaki demands, jutting her thumb in Satoru’s direction. Your eyes widen, partially at the audacity, and partially at the sheer idea. Also, because Naoya would have a fit if he knew Satoru’s students thought you were his girlfriend. “He sucks. You could do better. I hate seeing a woman waste her time.”
Your brain short-circuits for a half second, lips parting, but no words leave them. You lift your hands and wave them in front of you. “I—no—we are not—”
Satoru, naturally, chooses that moment to lean in, grin widening to an infuriating degree. “Wow,” he says, delighted. “Is that how it looks? Because I’m not against the rumor mill, per se—”
You drive your elbow back without looking; it lands solidly in his ribs. You repeat, “We are not dating, and Satoru should not be encouraging any rumors, because he knows I’ll be dealing with a very unhappy dog when I go back to Kyoto.”
Kugisaki tilts her head to the side suspiciously, and Megumi presses his face in his hands.
Yuji, on the other hand, lights up. “Oh! So you’re not dating Gojo-sensei?” he asks. “That’s good, I was worried for a second.”
“Why,” Satoru asks, wounded, “is everyone acting like that would be a tragedy?”
“Because it would be,” Kugisaki and Megumi say in perfect unison.
Satoru gapes, and Yuji laughs, easy and unburdened, and the sound catches you off guard. A normal kid, you think again—he sounds like a normal kid. A kid who should be arguing about movies or food, not facing a death sentence.
“So, who’s the unhappy dog?” Kugisaki asks with a grin, leaning forward. “You are dating someone then?”
“If you think I’m bad,” Satoru cuts in again with a snort, “you should see the guy she actually puts up with. Real charmer. Big personality. Loves tradition a little too much. Megumi-chan has met him, actually. Tell them about Zenin Naoya later, would you? Then maybe you’ll all stop acting like I’m the worst catch.”
Kugisaki and Yuji immediately start hounding Megumi for information, and your smile starts to drop once their attention is off you. You feel Satoru’s gaze heavy on you, even behind the blindfold, but he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to.)
They are just children.
He is just a boy.
The thought follows you as you leave, as you let Satoru keep talking, as Kugisaki’s voice fades into the background and Megumi’s wary attention lifts from your back. Yuji calls after you, shouting goodbye when he realizes you’re leaving, and there’s an ache in your chest that you can’t push away.
He is just a boy.
They are just children.
When the higher-ups call for a meeting with representatives from all of the major clans, Naobito sends Naoya to attend in his place. It’s on purpose, you bet, because although the man has stopped with the open meddling and trying to ruin your relationship with his son, he’ll still take any chance to drive a wedge between the two of you. When the higher-ups ask to hear opinions from the sorcerer families, the Zenins—Naoya—is the first to speak, expression bored, voice a low drawl:
Just kill it and be done with it. This shouldn’t even be a conversation. You’re wasting my time.
The meeting goes exactly how you and Satoru expect it to go. You stay silent for most of it, letting Satoru do the dirty work of essentially telling the rest of Jujutsu society to fuck off and try him, if they think they can take him in a fight. Still, you make your position clear, because although your eyes are closed and you’re leaning back against the wall, silent, face turned down, you’re still standing next to Satoru, and not Naoya.
Naoya doesn’t come back to your estate after the meeting. You don’t really expect him to, because he scoffs at you and raises his chin as he leaves the room, hardly sparing you more than a glance. Satoru grimaces and makes a comment about a lover’s spat, but you only roll your eyes and keep your gaze lowered, a heavy feeling in your heart because—
Because Naoya is right.
You know how this is going to end, but you went ahead and did this anyway. You’ve lived long enough in this world to understand its patterns, to recognize when fate has already chosen its shape and is simply waiting for everyone else to catch up. Children who carry curses do not get happy endings, not in a society built on blood and duty—you don’t need Naoya to tell you this. And you think, maybe, if it were anyone other than Satoru who asked you to meet him, to see the boy walking up the thirteen steps to the gallows before the knot is tied, you would’ve turned your back and let it happen, because why the hell would you put yourself through that?
But it wasn’t anyone else; it was Satoru, who stood before the higher-ups and argued on your behalf, similarly to how he does for Yuji now. Satoru, who didn’t let you sink when you lost Naoya for three years after the engagement fell apart ten years ago. Satoru, who stayed with you in the aftermath of you losing your family, forcibly kept you afloat when Naoya was sent away, and you were trying to drown. Satoru knows just how awful this world is, and he still chooses to defy it anyway—and you know he doesn’t expect anyone to stand with him, not even you, not really, but you also know what it costs him to stand alone in rooms like that, and how are you supposed to do that when he’s only ever stood at your side when you needed it?
You think that’s what pisses off Naoya the most.
You don’t mean for it to come across that way—that you’re choosing Satoru over him, because you’re not. When it comes down to it, it is Naoya, who you will always come home to. Naoya, who you always seek out. Naoya, who you see a future with and cannot see a future without. Naoya, who you need if you want to keep walking forward in this shitty world.
It is Naoya—it’s always Naoya, it has always been Naoya and it always will be him—and you think he knows that, deep down, but he is terribly prone to anger and jealousy, so he doesn’t take this slight well.
He doesn’t avoid you for too long. By the time Saturday comes along, he finally decides to answer your messages, quite crudely telling you to come over because “he’s sick of fucking his own fist.” You don’t dignify his text with a response, but you do make your way to the Zenin estate. You don’t apologize, and he doesn’t either—you don’t need to, you both understand what the other doesn’t say the moment your eyes meet.
(“Y’know you’re makin’ a mistake,” he murmurs, one arm draped around you as you settle into his lap. For all of his vulgarity, the only thing he seems intent on doing once you arrive at the Zenin estate is keeping you close, so you sink into him, eyes sliding shut as you rest your head against his shoulder. “Y’don’t need me tellin’ ya this.”
“I know,” you reply quietly. “So don’t.”
Naoya exhales hard through his nose, fingers tightening on your hip. “Whatever,” he mutters. “I don’t even know why I try, ya stubborn bitch. You piss me off so bad.” You smile, ghosting your lips against his jaw, down his neck. He clicks his tongue sharply, disapproving, even as he tilts his head to the side to give you better access. “Actin’ like a cockwhore when I’m pissed at ya as if it’s gonna change anything. I’m not in the mood. So fuckin’ irritating, don’t know why I put up with this shit.”
“You’re hard.”
“Shut the hell up!”)
Itadori Yuji dies, and despite Naoya’s insistence about how you better not come to him crying when he inevitably does, he lets you spend the night tucked under his arm, and doesn’t gloat or make any snide comments about how he told you this was going to happen. You don’t mourn, and you don’t cry—not really—you only knew him for a few weeks, the several Fridays you came down to Tokyo to train the new first years. But he was kind, and he was only a boy, and Satoru cared about him, so there’s a heaviness in your chest that you can’t easily push away.
Then he resurrects, and Naoya loses his mind. You think it’s less because he wanted the kid dead, and more because death would’ve ended it. Death would’ve been final, a wound that could scar over. He was there for you when you thought it was done, even though he told you he wouldn’t be, and now, it’s going to happen all over again.
And then, as though things can’t get worse, hell breaks loose at the Kyoto Sister School Goodwill event when a curtain drops over Tokyo High, and special grade spirit and a bunch of curse users attack the students.
You don’t like it—you don’t like any of it, and as the days pass, and Halloween approaches, the pit in your stomach only seems to get deeper.
————————
“You been actin’ weird for almost a month,” Naoya murmurs, and your eyes slide shut as he presses his lips to yours again, a long, lingering kiss that makes your chest warm. “What’s up your ass, hm?”
“It never fails to astound me how eloquent you are, Naoya,” you sigh, lashes fluttering as he rolls your bottom lip between his teeth, biting down slightly at the veiled insult. When he pulls back, you lean up to kiss him again, humming into his mouth when one arm slides beneath your back to pull your body closer to him. “I just have a bad feeling, that’s all.”
“Still?” he asks, raising his eyebrows, pulling back slightly to look at you. “How many times do I gotta tell you we’re gonna be fine? You’re gonna give yourself grays—what’s it you said back then? How ya don’t want me graying for our wedding portrait? Well—”
Naoya lets out an oof when you use your leg as leverage to flip the two of you over. He looks far too smug, leaning up on his elbows as he stares up at you, gaze dragging down your body. He lifts his hand to trail his fingers from your jaw to your neck, your collarbone, the valley between your breasts, down your abdomen, before they linger on your pelvis.
“Like seein’ ya all marked up like this,” he says, too satisfied with himself. “I should take a picture, make it my background on my phone.”
“No,” you say, before his gaze can even flick over to where his phone is lying haphazardly on the tatami mats a few feet away. He scowls. “You leave your phone around too much. You really want to chance Ogi getting a glimpse of it?”
He frowns at the thought. “Old fuck. Can’t get his wife to spread her legs for him anymore, probably’d get off to seeing ya,” he mutters disdainfully. Then he compromises, “I’ll make it my home screen, not lock screen.”
“Everyone and their mother knows your passcode is your birthday, Naoya,” you say dryly, leaning down to ghost your lips against his before he can get annoyed. He lets out a pleased hum against your lips, hands settling on your waist, thumbs pressing into your sides as you swipe your tongue against his bottom lip. He lets out a low groan when you suck it gently into your mouth, grip tightening on your body.
“Yeah? You go snoopin’ through my phone when I leave it around, ya crazy bitch?” he asks, lip curling up into a too-satisfied smile. Leave it to him to get smug instead of offended at the idea of you snooping through his shit.
You hum in agreement, dragging open-mouthed kisses down his throat, relishing in the way his breath hitches. “Installed a tracking app too. Your Reddit posts are riveting, by the way,” you tell him, smiling against his skin as he immediately tenses. “‘Is it normal to want my girl t—’”
You yelp when you feel him shove his hand over your mouth, effectively shutting you up. He flips the two of you over so that he’s hovering on top of you, face flushed and ears burning. He mutters, “Shut the hell up,” before moving his hand away, hardly looking you in the eye.
“It is, by the way,” you add, because you can’t help yourself. “We can try it, if you—”
“Enough,” he complains.
You laugh loudly, genuinely, despite the terrible feeling that’s been haunting you for months, because it’s always easy to laugh with Naoya. Your hand flies to your mouth to smother your giggles, but you only set yourself off into another fit when you see that Naoya is half-hiding his face in one of his hands. Your vision swims with tears, coughing as you try to calm yourself down.
By the time you settle down, Naoya is looking at you with an unusually mellow expression, gold eyes tracing your face, lips curved up only faintly. You blink up at him and ask, “What is it?”
“I got ya something,” he tells you after a moment, throat bobbing, gaze flicking somewhere off to the side.
“Oh yeah? You keep buying me things unprompted. I feel so special,” you tease, but you’re curious when you see his nostrils flare as he takes a deep breath. “What did you get me?”
His brows furrow as he reaches beneath his futon for something he must’ve hidden there. He talks as he rifles around.
“My family don’t really do shit like this,” he starts to say. “I mean, y’know how engagements go. But I know you and your brother spent a couple years in the west, and part of your mom’s family was from out there, too. And ya kept putting on those shitty western romcoms that always ended with one of those gaudy proposals, and I don’t know if that was your way of trying to clue me in or what—” Your brows furrow in confusion, not sure what he’s going on about, but you don’t interrupt because he seems to be on some sort of practiced spiel. “—and I ain’t gonna do somethin’ gaudy and embarrassing like that, but I don’t mind the idea of you walkin’ around with somethin’ on your finger so people know you’re taken.”
Oh, you think, lips parting as you start to realize where his ramblings are going. You hardly breathe as you stare up at him, when you see in his hand a glittering ring. Not overly garish, but pretty enough that it would catch a person’s eye easily. Something you could wear on missions without having to worry about it getting in the way, something very… you.
“So, you want it or not?” Naoya asks brusquely, still hardly looking at you. “It cost a pretty fuckin’ penny, so if ya don’t want it, I’m returning it.”
You snort, but your eyes are a bit misty. “You’re an idiot,” you murmur fondly. “Of course I want it.”
Naoya exhales through his nose, tension easing from his shoulders, and he reaches for your left hand, thumb grazing over your knuckles before he slides the ring onto your fourth finger. He stares down at it for a moment, and you stare up at him, watching the way his lips tighten and his throat bobs.
“Don’t get the wrong idea,” he scoffs after a moment—obligatory.
“I would never,” you say with an easy smile, and then you lift your hands to cradle his face between your palms.
His lashes flutter shut as he leans into your touch, and you let out a soft puff of air. You want to say something, but you can’t find the words to articulate how you feel right now, and you think he understands from the way his eyes slide back open to meet yours.
So instead, you lean up and press your lips against his again, and again, and again, until his body is flush against yours, hips slotted between your thighs, and arms wrapped tight around your body.
Being with him like this—in his arms, his bed, a new weight resting on your finger and a familiar one pressed on top of you, it’s easy to believe him when he says the two of you will be fine.
————————
OCTOBER 31, 2018
At 7:00 PM on Halloween, a curtain with a four-hundred-meter radius is cast over Shibuya. You are at your clan’s estate in Kyoto when it happens, and Naoya is in Hokkaido meeting with the higher-ups on his father’s behalf. You and Naobito go to Tokyo together when Tokyo High calls for reinforcements, and there is a sick feeling in your stomach the whole trip there. Naobito offers you sake to settle your nerves, and you almost throw it in his face, because neither of you should be drinking when you have no idea what’s happening in Shibuya.
You call Satoru before he goes into the curtain, and even though he tells you not to bother coming because he’ll have it handled before the two of you even get to the city, you can’t push away the way your stomach churns.
(“Just be careful, Satoru. Don’t let your guard down.”
“Who are you even talking to right now?”)
It doesn’t take long for news to reach Hokkaido. You’re sure that the higher-ups were made aware the moment that the curtain dropped, but Naoya, clearly, was not prioritized, because by the time he’s been told what’s happening, you’re already outside the barrier with Shoko.
(“Do not go anywhere near that barrier,” Naoya says before you’ve even brought your phone to your ears.
You stare at the barrier a few feet in front of you. “It’s a little too late for that.”
Shoko stands at your side, cigarette a nub between her fingers before she flicks it off to the side. She tells you, “I’m going to head back to the expressway. You fine on your own?”
“On your own?” Naoya hisses furiously. “Where is my father? Isn’t he in Shibuya too? Why aren’t you with him?”
You give Shoko a dirty look, but she only winks at you before waving lazily over her shoulder. You exhale, leaning against the wall behind you. “Your father is leading a different team. They’ve already gone in. The Kyoto students are meeting me here, and then we’re going into the veil. The transfigured humans have started butchering civilians, and Satoru hasn’t been in contact, I—”
“You think I give a damn about any of them?” Naoya asks with a scoff. “You only just came back from mandatory leave after what happened in Kyoto last year. You’re not cleared for this. You have no business throwing yourself into another disaster.”
Your eye twitches. “I’m cleared enough, and I’m already here.”
You hear Naoya let out a sharp breath on the opposite line, riddled with something caught between panic and fear that he’s probably desperately trying to suppress. You can see the way his lips are probably pinched, eyes teeming with frustration as he rubs at his lower face. “If you go in there—” he starts to say and cuts himself off. “If something happens to you—”
You can’t deal with this right now.
“I gotta go, Naoya,” you say when you see the Kyoto second and third year students round the corner—well, all of them except Todo Aoi, apparently. Your lips curve into a slight frown. Why does that boy always have to be so difficult?
“Don’t you dare fuckin’ hang up on me—”
“How about you go be a proper house husband, take the next flight back, so you can have dinner and a bath ready for me after I finish killing all the big, bad curses, yeah?”
“This isn’t a fucking joke—”
You hang up as the kids come to a stop in front of you. You greet pleasantly, “Mai-chan,” and then less pleasantly, “Kamo.” You don’t remember the rest of their names, so you ask instead, “Where’s Utahime?”
“She stopped at the expressway to speak to Yaga-san. She’ll be joining as soon as she’s able to,” Noritoshi explains. “We’re prepared to do what we can in the meantime.”
“Alright,” you tell them. Then tell them the same thing you told the Tokyo second years at Kyoto last year: “I’m not going to be babysitting you. Stick together, and stay in this general area if you can. If you get in trouble, run. We’re sorcerers, not heroes.”
You look down at your phone as Naoya calls you again, exhaling before you decline the call and shove your phone into your pocket, stepping into the veil.)
You don’t plan to use your technique the way you did in Kyoto when you enter the veil, because you can’t risk being put out of commission again. The Kyoto students dart off to engage the transfigured humans attacking civilians in the streets, and you’re left staring at the chaos alone. Screams are coming from every direction, the wet cracks of bodies breaking, and the scent of blood is so thick that it makes you nauseous—Satoru would never let it get to this point, not if he were here.
Something happened to him. You know it.
The thought feels sacrilegious almost because Satoru is Satoru. Gojo Satoru, the strongest, self-proclaimed honored one—he’s the last person you would ever expect to get caught up in a bad situation like this. He wouldn’t get himself hurt, or worse, k—you don’t even finish that thought. But you know Satoru, and he’s not some omnipotent god, he’s just a man, and this was clearly a trap for him if what you heard about all of the civilians saying his name and asking for him was true, so if something tricked him—
You send yourself into a spiral, and to put your nerves at ease, you tell yourself that you will only activate your maximum technique for a second, just enough to orient and pinpoint him, just to make sure he’s okay, and to stop you from spooking yourself. You anchor yourself in the center of the street, and you lift your right hand, pointer finger brushing your forehead and thumb resting on your lip, and the world detonates.
Cursed energy floods your senses all at once, a violent, blinding surge that makes you stagger as Shibuya peels itself open for you. The streets, buildings, and underground flatten into a board all around you, every square is occupied by something—you’ve never felt so much cursed energy in one place before. Your skull is screaming before you even fully extend your technique.
This isn’t a battlefield so much as it is a slaughterhouse, and you know where the most serious threats are, and you know where civilians are clustering, but you don’t know where Satoru is.
You don’t know where Satoru is.
Your nose starts bleeding before five minutes have passed, desperately searching even though you know you should’ve pinpointed him by now—he has always been a landmark in chaos, so overwhelming that it’s impossible to miss. But you can’t, he’s not here, and—and you can feel something faint, something familiar coming from the direction of Shibuya Station, but it can’t be him, it’s too weak, too still, too contained, not Satoru as you know him.
Something happened to him. You don’t—
(A hand on your shoulder draws you out of your technique. Kamo Noritoshi stands above you, lips curved down into a frown; you brush off his hand immediately. You didn’t even realize that you’d dropped to your knees. You wipe away the blood on your face and stand.
His lips part, then press together, and then he asks, “Should we bring you to Shoko-san?”
“No,” you say. “I’m going in further. To Shibuya Station. You’ll be okay watching over them?”
You think that there’s some irony that you’re here, standing with a Kamo of all people, as the world falls into chaos around you, and the smile that curls to your lips is bitter as you shake your head. Noritoshi falters slightly when he sees your reaction. He’s a child, you remind yourself—the sin of the parents is not the sin of the child, so all you say is, “You too,” before you make your way to the center of the veil.)
————————
Shibuya is hell.
Hell doesn’t even do it justice, really. Bodies are everywhere, too many, everywhere you look, twisted in ways that make your stomach churn. You wonder, absently, if this is what your estate looked like before the Zenins got there to clean up, if this is what you would’ve seen of your father, brothers, and the rest of your clan if you’d arrived before them. Civilians lie where they fell, some half melted into the ground, others collapsed in clusters like they tried to shield each other and failed. Sorcerers are scattered among them, bloodied uniforms unmistakable even when their bodies are broken past recognition.
You try not to look too long.
You can’t look too long.
You don’t stop to help. Sometimes, you divert just long enough to pull someone out of a curse’s path, to kill a transfigured human before it finishes tearing someone apart, to shove a screaming civilian toward an escape route that may or may not still exist, but you don’t stop. Because you are selfish, and if you had to choose between innocent civilians and the people you love, you would choose the people you love every time.
So, you leave countless people to die as you run toward Shibuya Station.
By the time you get there, your limbs feel heavy, and there is bile in the back of your throat. You wonder how many screams have silenced since you passed by, how many people died so that you could selfishly figure out what happened to Satoru.
The putrid scent of burnt flesh floods your nostrils before you can figure out where it’s coming from, and you almost don’t even recognize Naobito when you turn a corner and see a charred corpse on the ground. He’s burned so badly that for a second, your brain refuses to name what you’re looking at as a person, let alone someone you’ve known for twenty years. His clothes are fused into charred flesh, and his arm is missing—somehow, he is still breathing.
You think that you should leave him there.
You stare down at him. His eyes are open, glassy and unfocused, and you don’t know if he’s seeing you, if he knows what’s going on, or if his body just hasn’t realized it’s finished yet. His mouth moves slightly, a wet, broken sound escaping him that might be a breath or might be a word.
You could do it. You could just walk away.
You remember the way Naoya would stiffen as a kid whenever Naobito’s voice carried through the estate. You remember the bruises and the wounds that would litter his body whenever he came out of the disciplinary pit. You remember how he would mock you when he was drunk, and you were a child, and you had to stand there and smile through it or risk bringing shame to your father. You remember how he humiliated you by trying to arrange for Naoya to marry another woman right in front of you.
You need to find whatever that familiar energy was, anyway.
You need to figure out what happened to Satoru.
You should just go.
But he is also the man who stepped in when your family was wiped out, and you know that it wasn’t out of kindness, but he opened his doors anyway. He made sure you could fill your father’s shoes without drowning in the politics of a world and future you were never prepared for. He is—probably—the only reason why you’ve made it this far after the massacre. What type of karma would await you if you walk away from him now after everything he did for you?
Fuck.
Your jaw tightens, bile burning in the back of your throat.
Fuck.
“Fuck you, you old bastard,” you say through your teeth, and you crouch despite yourself.
Your hands hover for a second before you force them to move, assessing injuries you already know are catastrophic. The burns are too extensive, and his cursed energy is unstable. He should not be alive, and you don’t know if saving him is possible, but you’re not even sure you want to anyway.
Either way, you can’t bring yourself to walk away.
Frustrated, you look back in the direction of where you thought you felt something familiar, and your chest tightens as you look back down at Naobito. You don’t have fucking time for him—you don’t know what’s happening, don’t know what the situation is. Maki and Kugisaki are supposed to be with him, too, but you don’t see either of them anywhere.
Fuck.
“I hope this fucking hurts.”
————————
Satoru is gone.
The King of Curses was unleashed.
Shibuya is a crater, and anyone left in the city is likely dead.
You sit at the expressway, back to the wall, as people rush around you, trying to do whatever they can to save whoever they can. Megumi, Kugisaki, and Maki are here too, evidently having been brought before you arrived with Naobito. Megumi is unconscious, but alive. Maki is bandaged and burned almost as badly as Naobito, but she’s breathing, if only barely. Shoko thinks that she’ll pull through—she’s always been stronger and more stubborn than everyone else around her, you think fondly. Kugisaki, on the other hand—well, you don’t know what happened to her, and Shoko isn’t sure if she’s going to make it. She wasn’t breathing when she was brought to her.
Satoru is sealed. Satoru is gone. Satoru is—
You bury your face in your hands.
Fuck.
“Is it true, girl?” Naobito rasps from next to you. He is dying—there’s nothing more that Shoko can do for him—but he is not dying fast enough for your liking. “Is Gojo Satoru incapacitated? Sealed away?”
You almost bare your teeth at him, because what right does he have to ask about Satoru? What right does he have to say his name in that tone? What right does he have to sound so dismissive over what happened to him? How dare he? How dare he? Rage eats away at grief as you glare at him.
“Don’t look at me like that, girl. Answer the question.”
Fuck.
Your eyes slide shut as you will yourself the patience not to expedite the man’s imminent death. You mutter, “Fuck off. Why’s it taking you so long to die?”
Naobito barks out a harsh laugh that he certainly shouldn’t have the strength to let out. You roll your eyes. “Almost there, girl,” he tells you, voice rough as he stares up at the ceiling. He’s sprawled beside you on the concrete, chest hitching unevenly, breath rattling, burned to the bone, and he still finds the energy to sneer. “Bet you’re thrilled, aren’t you? I’ll finally be out of your way.”
You don’t answer him, staring down at the concrete, jaw tight, listening to the wet, broken sound of his breathing.
Satoru is gone.
Satoru, who you’ve known for fifteen years, since the two of you were stupid kids lounging in the inner courtyard of the Zenin estate. Satoru, who handed you back your future at fifteen when your father was going to marry you off to the next best suitor. Satoru, who grabbed your hand and dragged you along with him during the three years you and Naoya weren’t speaking, refusing to let you drown. Satoru, who collected an exorbitant amount of Tamagotchi and would light up whenever you brought him a new one. Satoru, who let you be yourself when so many people around you wanted to change. Satoru, who found you safe enough to actually be himself with you—not the strongest, not Gojo, just Satoru.
Satoru is gone. Satoru is—
Naobito keeps speaking, and you just want him to stop.
“No more old man meddling. No more obstacles. Must feel like freedom, hm?” His lips twitch. “You and my son can ruin each other freely, at last.” Naobito chuckles, though it turns into a cough halfway through. He sighs. “I suppose you’ve won. I’ll be dead soon enough.”
“Can’t you die silently?” you ask through gritted teeth.
All of his stupid Tamagotchi are going to die, you realize numbly. He has so many of them, how the hell are you supposed to take care of all of them? You want to cry. Satoru is—
“Hope you’ll be enough for him now,” he adds, letting out a long, scratchy exhale. “He’s going to need someone.”
“What does that mean?” you ask, stomach dropping as you finally force yourself to look at him. Naobito’s eyes flick sideways, just barely, toward the mat where Megumi is still unconscious. “Why are you looking at Megumi-chan? What are you talking about?”
“Gojo Satoru is incapacitated,” Naobito says, wetting his lips as his eyes begin to droop again. “The contract I made with that wayward nephew of mine will be upheld. Toji’s boy will become the twenty-seventh Zenin clan head. Funny how things work out, right?”
What?
Your ears are ringing, lips parted as you stare at Naobito, half in disbelief, half in shock. You’re almost waiting for him to laugh, to tell you it’s some sick joke, another drunken rambling, a cruelty meant to provoke reaction before he laughs and waves it away. But his eyes are slipping, lids heavy, breath uneven and shallow. There’s no room left in him for theatrics.
“What? How—How could you do that to him?” you breathe out, staring at the man as though he’ll answer, even though he’s slipped back into oblivion. “How could you—he’s spent his whole life—he’s—he’ll never—”
You think you’re having a panic attack.
You haven’t had one in years—not since the aftermath of losing your clan—but everything starts to hit you all at once, and you can’t seem to breathe. Satoru is gone, one of his kids is dead, Satoru is gone, another will have his death sentence reinstated soon, Satoru is gone, and Naoya—you’re going to lose Naoya, too.
You’re going to fucking lose Naoya.
You know it. You know it. You know it the same way you’ve known something bad was coming for months—you feel it in your bones, in your heart, in your soul. You’re going to lose him. You lost Satoru, and you’re going to lose Naoya. You press your hands into your eyes hard, desperately trying to calm yourself down as your breath comes too quickly and too shallow. Naoya—he’s centered everything, his entire existence, around being the next clan head. You’ve known this for years, you’ve known it since the moment you met him—it was the first understanding you ever came to about him, how everything began and now it’s how everything will end.
Because losing it—losing it—it’ll destroy him. It’ll destroy everything. It will hollow him out, leave nothing behind besides rage and denial. He’ll destroy himself, and he’ll destroy you; he’ll drag the entire Zenin clan, the whole world, down with him if that’s what it takes to prove that this was a mistake, to take back what’s rightfully his. He’s sacrificed too much for anything else. This will destroy him.
You’re going to lose him, you think again, you’re really going to fucking lose him.
Naobito is a cunt—hope you’ll be enough for him, he said, but you’ll never be enough for him, not after losing this. He knows that, you know that. Naoya will never wake up one day and decide it’s okay. He’ll never decide a life with you is enough to make up for what was taken from him. He will never look at you and say, I choose this instead—and if he isn’t able to get back what he was promised, he’ll die trying. He’ll spiral. He’ll find someone to blame. He’ll try to claw the title back through sheer force of will, and when that fails, he’ll turn to violence without hesitation, without mercy. And if he cannot take it back, he will die trying. There is no world where Naoya will survive having something like this taken from him; no future with you will change that. There is no coming back from this.
And Megumi—you can’t just sit back and let Naoya go after Megumi. Not one of Satoru’s kids, especially not now that Satoru is gone. You doubt he even knows—he hates this part of the Jujutsu world, hates the Zenin name. He would never want this anyway, but Naoya will see him as a thief, as the reason why everything was ripped away from him, as proof that everything he worked for was for nothing. He will kill him to take back what’s rightfully his. You know Naoya well enough to know this much.
And if you try to stop him, he will never forgive you for getting in his way.
Naoya will never choose you over his birthright. You’ve known it for a long, long time, but you thought you were past ever needing to worry about this. You just can’t compete with a loss like this.
Holy fuck, you think. You squeeze your eyes shut harder, vision flashing white. You taste bile in your throat. You’re going to throw up. Fuck you, you think again, cursing Naobito. You should’ve just left him to die there to rot. Only he would use his last few moments of strength to get one final cruelty in. You lost Satoru, and now you’re going to lose Naoya.
How the hell are you supposed to go back to Kyoto and look Naoya in the eye after this?
What the hell are you supposed to do?
————————
Tokyo is all but destroyed following the events of Halloween. You return to Kyoto the next morning with a dying Naobito, having to spend hours explaining to Ogi, Jinichi, and the Zenin clan elders exactly what happened in Shibuya. You don’t even have the energy to give them attitude about how they have no right ordering you around, dully explaining that Satoru has been sealed, the King of Curses was unleashed in the city, and what wasn’t annihilated during the incident is being destroyed by the millions of cursed spirits that “Geto Suguru” apparently unleashed onto the city.
Luckily, you manage to get away from the Zenin estate before Naoya returns from Hokkaido.
Unluckily, he decides to come right to you when he realizes you aren’t there.
(“What the hell? I figured you’d be waiting back at the estate. What happened?” Naoya demands as he enters your office. You can’t even lift your gaze to look at him. Naobito’s words echo through your head. You should tell him. He should know before he finds out at the will-reading. You should—Naoya gets fed up with you staring down at your desk, stepping around it to stand next to where you’re sitting, grabbing your chin between his fingers, and forcing you to look at him. “What happened? Those asshole wouldn’t tell me shit when I asked.”
“Your father is dying,” you tell him after a moment instead. “Doesn’t have more than a day or two left in him.”
“Good riddance,” Naoya scoffs, leaning on your desk, but his expression is all twisted as he looks away from you to the ground. He adds quietly, “It’s about fuckin’ time anyway.”
“You should probably be back at the estate,” you tell him after a moment, voice too rough for your liking. Naoya’s gaze snaps over to you, narrowed and suspicious. “You should be there when it happens, you’ll have to—”
“The hell? Are you sending me away?” Naoya asks, offended. “My father's dying, and you’re sending me away?”
“Don’t act like you care about Naobito,” you mutter spitefully.
“I don't give a damn about him, but it’s the principle!" Naoya snaps, glaring at you. “What’s up your ass, huh?”
You should tell him.
He should hear it from you—not at the will reading, not from a stranger, not in front of Ogi and Jinichi and whoever else is there to listen. Your gaze lifts to look up at him again, lips parting, and you watch as his brows furrow, studying your face when he realizes something is wrong. Just as you’re about to force it out: it’s not going to be you, Naoya, your father screwed you over.
Naoya bristles when his phone starts buzzing. He looks down at it, scowling, and you lose your bravado.
You lost Satoru, and you’re going to lose Naoya.
Maybe you’re wrong; you try to rationalize it because you cannot lose them both. There’s no world where you survive losing them both in one fell swoop. Maybe Naobito only said this to you so you would say something to him. He knows as well as you do that Naoya would lose his mind after hearing this, and maybe he wanted to try to put one last rift between the two of you before he croaked. He’s spiteful enough to use the last of his energy for it.
Fuck.)
Naobito stubbornly clings to life following the Shibuya Incident. Naoya is busy at the Zenin estate during that time, and you’re busy at yours, dealing with the fallout. Satoru is gone, and Jujutsu Headquarters has turned against him. The notice they sent out—the one claiming that Satoru was an accomplice in the Shibuya Incident, forbidding anyone from trying to unseal him with the threat of criminal penalties—sits right on your desk, glaring at you every time you sit down to get some work done.
You consider killing the higher-ups.
You could do it, probably. They’re all old and slow—most of them haven’t seen combat in decades. You could do it. You should do it. What right do they have to turn on Satoru after everything he’s done? Satoru is why the curses have been held at bay for so long. Satoru is the one who protects everyone. And the moment something happens to him, everyone turns their back on him? It’s sickening. You think that they deserve to die. You think you should kill them.
But you don’t—if only because you’re scared to leave your estate when Naobito is still alive, because any day he could die and everything can go to shit.
A part of you is glad that Naoya is too busy to come over.
He’s been blowing up your phone, aggravated as he deals with his cousins and uncles and prepares for succession, and you only respond sporadically, short, clipped replies that say nothing of substance, and you think it probably pisses him off more. He tells you to come over, and you tell him that you can’t. He complains and calls you a bitch, and you can’t respond because you can’t bring yourself to act normally with him, not knowing what you know.
It keeps crossing your mind—that you should tell him, that he should hear it from you, that you shouldn’t let him be blindsided—but every time you start to work up the nerve, you end up talking yourself out of it.
What if you’re wrong? What if Naobito only said this to drive one last wedge between the two of you? What if, what if, what if—
That’s how it goes for the next several days until Zenin Naobito finally kicks the bucket.
(“Where is she?” you hear Naoya shout from outside of your clan’s estate. Your heart sinks. “Where the hell is she? Bring her out here now!”
You lost Satoru. You’re about to lose Naoya, too.
Your attendant, standing at the gates with a nervous expression on her face, looks back at you with wide eyes, and you wave her off, telling her to go inside quietly before you pull open the gate to come face-to-face with a raging Naoya. You don’t even get the chance to say something before his fingers are curled around your jacket, and your back is pressed against the wall.
“You knew,” he accuses, voice low and venomous as he glares at you, gold eyes sharp with fury, denial—worse, betrayal. “You fucking knew. That’s why you’ve been acting so weird the last few days. Ya fuckin’ knew my father lined up that snivveling brat Megumi.”
You don’t respond—you can’t. Your throat locks up, words piling uselessly behind your teeth as you stare at him. He’s shaking, not much, not enough that anyone else would notice, but you do. You always do. His grip on your shirt is too tight, his knuckles white, and his teeth grind together terribly.
The silence is answer enough.
Naoya’s breath stutters, half a laugh, half a scoff. You wonder if he was hoping you’d tell him he’s being stupid—of course, you didn’t know, of course, you would’ve told him. “You’re not even gonna fuckin’ deny it. You knew. You fuckin’ knew, and you let me go around thinking—”
“I didn’t know for sure,” you finally force out. You hate that your voice shakes. “He was half delirious when he said it, dying, I thought maybe—”
You’re going to lose Naoya.
“Bullshit,” Naoya roars, fist slamming into the wall by your head. You don’t flinch, but he stares at the hole he made, how close it was to your head, with a twisted expression before he forces himself away from you. “Fuckin’ bullshit. You think I don’t know when you’re lying to me? How are you gonna stand here and lie to my face even now?”
You and Naoya have never apologized to one another before. You always know without having to say a word, just with a single glance, and yet now, you let out a wavering breath, the words on the tip of your tongue, because this is it. You knew it. You knew what would happen when he found out, and it should’ve been from you. It should’ve—
“I didn’t know how to,” you tell him, reaching out to grab his wrist. He tries to break free and turn away from you, but you tug him toward you. “How the fuck was I supposed to say, ‘Hey, Naoya, everything you’ve worked for since you were a kid just got handed to someone who doesn’t even want it?’ I tried, I didn’t—”
“I don’t care,” he interrupts, ripping his wrist from your hand. “I don’t fuckin’ care how you were supposed to say it. You should’ve just told me. You let me plan. You let me talk about what I was gonna do once it was official. You let me think—” His voice breaks, just barely, and he swallows hard before forcing it back into something harsh and cutting. “You let me think this was finally it. You should’ve told me. Not them, not at some fuckin’ will-reading where that loser Ogi and Jinichi could see me standing there like an idiot.”
You’re going to lose Naoya.
“I’m sorry,” you breathe out, reaching for him again, but he takes a step away, shaking his head. “Naoya—
“You have no idea what he put me through for this,” he breathes out. “You have no—”
His voice cuts off, and he steps away with another laugh, pressing his hand over his mouth as he tries to calm himself down.
“I do—”
“No, you don’t,” he interrupts, voice loud, echoing through your ears. Your eyes slide shut. “You don’t, because if ya did, you wouldn’t be here lookin’ at me like that—like I already fuckin’ lost.”
“Naoya—” you say, voice wavering, and his expression shifts, tightening, something wounded crossing his eyes, flashing hot and fast behind the anger.
You’re going to lose Naoya.
“So that’s it, huh,” he says, quieter now. “You don’t give a damn. Just expect me to accept it.”
“That’s not—”
“You really think I’m just gonna take it?” he continues over you, voice rising. “That I’m gonna roll over and let that brat walk in and take what’s mine?”
“Naoya, just—”
“I earned it,” he spits. “Every bruise, every time I stood there and let him humiliate me. Every fuckin’ thing he ever did to me, I took it because this was the end of it. This was the point. It was supposed to end with me there, all of ‘em having to admit that it’s me, it’s only ever been me, and you—you let them do it again. You let ‘em line me up and strip it away like I was a fuckin’ joke. Same shit, different room. Same looks, same whispers, and you knew. You knew it was coming and let me walk into it anyway, let ‘em blindside me like this.”
You’re going to lose Naoya.
You feel sick. “That’s not fair,” you breathe out.
“Isn’t it?” he fires back. “You know what it felt like? Standin’ there while Ogi and Jinichi looked at me like they finally got what they wanted, waitin’ years to see me brought down a peg.” His voice cracks, just for a second. He laughs and looks away. “Nah. Nah, it ain’t ending like this.”
He turns to leave without another word, not even a spare glance in your direction.
You chase after him. “Where are you going?”
“To Tokyo,” he spits, not even looking back at you. Your heart sinks.
“Why?” you demand. “Naoya, don’t walk away from me.”
“To kill Fushiguro Megumi and Itadori Yuji,” Naoya answers, finally looking at you over his shoulder, like he wants to see your reaction.
The words knock the air out of you. “What?” You knew this was what would happen. You knew it. “Naoya, you can’t—”
“Can’t?” he cuts in, incredulous. “You’ll find that I absolutely can. You gonna get in my way now? Is that how this goes? First, you keep it from me, let me walk into it blind, and now you’re gonna play hero and stop me?”
“They’re kids, Naoya,” you say desperately. “Megumi-chan doesn’t even want this. He—”
“I don’t give a fuck about what he wants,” Naoya shouts. “I give a fuck about what’s mine. So, are you gonna help me take it back, or are you gonna get in my way?”
You stare at him. You don’t answer—can’t answer. You don’t need to.
He sees everything in your face anyway.
He lets out a harsh laugh, shaking his head, but this one is strained, too forced. “Whatever,” he whispers. “I don’t fuckin’ need ya.”
He turns to leave again. You don’t follow this time.
“Naoya,” you call desperately.
“I never would’ve fuckin’ done this to you,” he tells you quietly as he leaves. “Never.”)
————————
You go to Tokyo anyway, despite your cousins' many protests.
You don’t know what you plan to do there, because you know there’s no talking him down from this, and if you try to stop him by force, then you’ll make things even worse. The two of you have never had an argument like this before—even a couple of years ago, that argument about labels and what the two of you were, it wasn’t this, wasn’t involving Naoya’s inheritance, the one thing he’ll always choose over you, and you don’t know what this means for the two of you. Don’t know if there’s any coming back from this.
You can’t lose him. Not him, too. Never him.
It’s not particularly hard to track him down, considering he has his phone with him, but he flits around the city like a goddamn hummingbird, trying to track down Megumi and Yuji. You eventually decide against following him, fed up with always getting somewhere after he’s already gone. A part of you wonders if he’s figured out that you’re following him, but you don’t think he has, partially because he’s probably too tunnel-visioned on finding the two boys to even notice he’s being trailed, but mostly because you guarantee that he would’ve stopped and told you to fuck off by now.
You’re sitting in a run-down, half-destroyed convenience store, sipping at a soda as you watch Naoya dart around the city. He never stays in one place for longer than a minute or two, and you find yourself gnawing at the inside of your cheek, because he’s been at this all day, no breaks, running himself ragged on rage and adrenaline. You exhale as his location blinks, vanishes, then reappears somewhere else entirely—closer to you this time, he’s in the Ginza area now.
You pause when you realize he’s stopped moving a mile and a half away. A minute passes, then two, then three, five, and you’re on your feet, moving in his direction. It takes you less than five minutes to get there, cutting through alleyways and half-collapsed buildings. You kill a lingering curse that lunges at you from around a corner, splitting it cleanly before it’s even registered what happened. You don’t slow down, gaze flicking down to your phone as you reach his general area, trying to pinpoint where exactly he is. You don’t see him in plain view, so—
The tunnel?
You drop down at the entrance without hesitation, boots skidding slightly as you land. You move fast, slipping through rubble as you make your way deeper into the dimly lit tunnel. There’s blood everywhere, you realize, unnerved—drenching the floor, staining the walls, what the hell happened?
“Sorry, but I can’t understand how you never loved your brothers,” an unfamiliar voice says from farther down the tunnel, and you break into a run.
You turn a bend, and Naoya is sprawled against concrete, blood pooling beneath him, breath shallow and ragged, barely holding himself up on his hands and knees. Your lips part in shock, a lump forming in your throat. A black-haired man is standing in front of him, left hand extended, posture relaxed. He hears you approach from the right, head snapping to the side, gaze sharpening as he tries to figure out whether or not you’re friend or foe. Naoya’s attention follows his, landing on you, and his eyes widen slightly when he recognizes you standing there.
“Blood manipulation,” Naoya forces out when he sees you, warning you just as the man seems to decide you’re an enemy, the attack he’d been building up for Naoya shooting in your direction instead.
Shit, you think, activating your technique in the nick of time so you can figure out where to dodge to. Whoever this guy is, he’s faster than you, on you before you even fully finish dodging his first attack, but luckily, you’re used to sparring with Naoya, who is much faster than he is. He comes from your left—low, at your abdomen, it would be an easy dodge right, cutting around him and driving your fist into the side of his neck. Too easy, almost. Your lashes flutter, cursed energy flaring outward as you activate your technique, trying to figure out what his play is. You watch as the blood from the floor spikes upward, piercing through the right side of your body.
You dodge right like he expects you to, so he doesn’t realize that you’ve figured out what he’s doing, and instead of going for a blow, you grab his left hand before he can finish the hand signs, twisting his wrist painfully, bringing your leg up to drive your foot into his forearm. You aren’t able to break it, because he’s more durable than you expect, but he does let out a hiss of pain, expression flashing with frustration as he realizes what happened. You put your other foot into his open side, sending him backward into the wall.
“Damn,” you say. “That would’ve been a good play.”
The black-haired man stands back up, grimacing, tilting his head to the side as he looks over you. “You read ahead,” he realizes, frowning. “That is your cursed technique?”
“Love me a man with a brain. Most people don’t figure it out so quick,” you say with an easy smile, gaze flicking over to Naoya. You need to get to him. “You should just save us both the trouble and give up already. You won’t be able to beat me. I know what moves you’re gonna make before you even know them. It’s checkmate.”
“I cannot,” the man says firmly. “I will not allow you two to go after my little brother.”
“Your little brother?” you ask dryly, tilting your head to the side. “He someone special, or something?”
“My brother, Itadori Yuji,” he confirms, and your eyes widen.
“You’re Yuji-chan’s brother?” you ask, smiling slightly, gaze flicking over him with renewed interest as your hands fall to your sides. “He didn’t tell me he had an older brother.”
The man blinks, brows furrowing in suspicion, lips curved down. “You are familiar with him?”
“Yeah. He’s one of Satoru’s brats. Annoying, loud, too kind for his own good. I used to come down to Tokyo on Fridays to train them,” you say easily, and the man seems to relax slightly when he realizes you are on good terms with Yuji. “You know—”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” you hear Naoya spit from a few feet away, drawing your attention from the man in front of you. “You—”
Naoya gags suddenly, and your attention snaps to the side when you see how his eyes bulge, blood flying from his mouth as he convulses, coughing hard enough that his hands slip out from under him. He collapses forward with a choked, broken sound, and you instinctively move to rush over to him, but freeze when the man in front of you tenses as though to stop you.
He watches you for a long moment, eyes dark and assessing. Then his gaze flicks over to Naoya again—bloodied and shaking, glaring up at both of you with unrepentant hatred.
“You are protecting him,” he says.
“I am,” you reply, jaw tight.
“Yet, you claim to know my brother,” he adds. “You speak of him fondly. Said you trained him.”
“I do, and I did.”
“This man came after my brother.”
“It’s complicated,” you say through gritted teeth. Your lashes flutter, gaze drawing back over to Naoya, who’s struggling to breathe properly, shoulders hitching as another wet cough wracks his body. Your chest tightens—you need to get him to Shoko, or—
Your gaze shifts to the side when you hear the splashing of footsteps from the left. The black-haired man whirls around, but before he even registers that someone is there, he’s crumpled on the ground. Your eyes flick up, and you only give yourself half a second to register that it’s Okkotsu Yuta standing there before you’re rushing over to Naoya.
You’re at his side in an instant, dropping to your knees in the blood, hands hovering uselessly for a heartbeat before you force them to move. He’s pale, lips tinged wrong, breath coming in short, uneven pulls that make your stomach twist.
“Naoya,” you breathe out, trying to help him up so he’s not lying face down in the blood. Blood slicks his chin and cheeks, smearing warm and sticky across your fingers as you tilt his head just enough so that your eyes meet his, his lashes flutter. He gags again, blood dribbling out of his mouth, weaker, and he takes in a wet, rattling breath that makes panic spike hard and fast in your chest. He tries to pull away from you, but ends up collapsing into you, face buried in the crook of your neck. “Easy. Don’t fight me right now. We can fight later.”
“Shouldn’t be here,” he still manages to force out, you feel blood dribbling down your neck to your collarbone. “Fuckin’ bitch, you always—”
“Senpai,” Yuta says, making his way over to the two of you. You look up, arms tightening slightly around Naoya, even though you’ve known Yuta for two years—the boy isn’t a threat, not to you, but you tense anyway with Naoya as weak as he is. He looks over the two of you with a concerned expression—it twists slightly on Naoya, because you’re sure Maki has told him all about her clan, but softens again when it lands on you. “Do you want me to heal him? My reversed cursed technique can heal other people, too.”
“Yes,” you say, lashes fluttering in relief. You weren’t sure how you were even going to get him to Shoko. Yuta crouches down in front of the two of you, hand extended, and you can feel Naoya bristling, but you pinch his side hard before he can make a snide comment. “Thank you, Yuta-chan.”
“Of course,” he says simply, giving you a kind smile as Naoya’s breathing begins to ease again. “Anything for you, senpai. Would… you and Zenin-san be willing to inform the higher-ups of Itadori-kun’s death, please?”
You stare up at him, confused for a moment, and then your eyes drift back to where Yuta had walked over to you from, and your lips part in shock when you see Yuji limp on the ground next to his brother. Your gaze snaps back to Yuta, eyes wide, heart thudding in your chest. You breathe out, “Yuta-ch—”
Yuta’s gaze flicks down to the ground, away from you. He glances at Naoya, as though making sure he’s still too preoccupied with regaining his bearings after being healed. “Senpai, please,” he insists, voice quiet, just for you. “The higher-ups need to believe that Itadori-kun is dead.”
Believe? Your gaze flicks between Yuta and Yuji, calculating, and then your eyes narrow on Yuta again. There’s a strained expression on his face, like he wants you to understand something he can’t say. Did he not kill Yuji? You can’t imagine that Yuta would kill one of Satoru’s other students; he’s always been too kind, too protective of the people he loves and the people whom the people he loves love. There’s something else going on here, but you can’t press, not with Naoya listening.
“I see,” you say quietly.
Naoya shifts weakly against you, still in a haze, trying to push himself into a sitting position. “The fuck are you two whisperin’ about—”
“You have to report Yuji-chan’s death to the higher-ups,” you tell him, and Naoya’s brows are furrowed. You look back up at Yuta. “We’ll handle it all, Yuta-chan. Don’t worry.”
Yuta exhales, shoulders easing just a fraction. “Thank you, senpai.”
You tighten your hold on Naoya as Yuta turns away, already moving to retrieve Yuji and his brother, disappearing down the tunnel quickly. Naoya finally manages to pull away from you, slumping against the wall beside you.
“Why’d ya come?” Naoya asks you quietly, voice bitter. “To stop me?”
“I don’t know,” you reply honestly, shoulder pressed to his, staring down at your lap. “Maybe. I just—I don’t know, Naoya. I’m sorry. I should’ve told you.”
Naoya exhales through his nose, looking away. “It doesn’t matter now,” he mutters. “Quit apologizing. It makes me wanna throw up. It’s done. I gotta go be messenger bird for that Okkotsu brat ‘cause of you now anyway.”
Your lips part to say something, but you’re not sure what you want to say. Naoya turns to look at you, gaze meeting yours, and you hate how dull the golds of his eyes are. You ask after a moment, “Are we going to be okay?”
He lets out a puff of air, gaze flicking down to your hand, and he reaches out for it, thumb brushing over the ring on your fourth finger. His fingers tighten around yours briefly before he lets go. “We’ll always be okay. How many times do I gotta tell you that, hm? You’re gettin’ slow in your old age, ain’t ya?”
You knock your shoulder against his with a huff of laughter. “Asshole.”
He pushes himself up to his feet, grimacing, hand dropping down to his abdomen. You stand with him, watching him carefully. He tells you, “I’ll get goin’ up to headquarters. You should head back to the estate. Stay away from all this shit, alright? It’s bad news.”
“Will you—” you start to ask, throat tightening, “—come back to mine when you’re done? Don’t go back after the kids, or back to the Zenin estate, come to me. We’ll get you what’s yours back. We’ll figure everything out together, okay? Like we always have.”
Naoya sighs, staring down at the ground instead of you. “We’ll see,” he replies before turning away to leave.
A terrible, terrible feeling settles in your gut. You call after him, “Naoya,” and he pauses, glancing at you over his shoulder. “I have a really bad feeling, okay?”
He gives you a wry smile. “Not this shit again,” he says. “You’re startin’ to sound like the girl who cried wolf, y’know?”
“Girl who cried—I’ve been right every time, Naoya,” you snap. “So, just—just come over, okay? Let’s wait for all this to settle down.”
He lets out a huff. You can’t tell if it’s a laugh or a scoff, but he turns back around briefly, reaching out to slide his hand around the back of your head to pull you close to him. Your hands instinctively come up to grab his kimono, eyes fluttering shut when he presses his lips against your forehead, uncharacteristically tender.
“You’re getting yourself worked up over nothing,” he dismisses, to your frustration. “Relax. Everything always works out for us, doesn’t it? There ain’t nothin’ to worry about. I’m gonna get back what’s mine, we’ll wait out all the bullshit happening, and then we’ll get married in the spring, and you’re gonna be my wife.” He gives you an easy smile and adds, “A proper one, maybe, considering how much you’ve started fussing over me.”
As a last-ditch effort to get him to drop all of this, you say quietly, “We don’t have to wait.”
“Hm?” he asks you, stilling slightly against you.
“We don’t have to wait until spring, or until things settle down. We can just—we can do it. Now. Tonight. Tomorrow. Whenever you get back from headquarters,” you rush out. “We don’t need to wait.”
“You’re the one who wanted to wait for the cherry blossoms,” he accuses, but his throat bobs. “Why—”
“I don’t care about the cherry blossoms,” your voice rises slightly. “Naoya, just come back to mine, and we’ll do it, alright? You’ve wanted it for years, haven’t you? Let’s just do it. No more waiting.”
Naoya exhales. “You’re messed up,” he mutters, “gettin’ all hysterical and sayin’ all this shit.” Your eyes slide shut in frustration as he steps back. “Let me handle everything I need to handle, and then we’ll talk about this. Properly.”
You want to scream at him. Every instinct you have is clawing at you, begging him not to walk away right now. Something bad is coming, worse than the incident on Halloween, worse than what happened at the Goodwill Event, worse than learning Yuji became Sukuna’s vessel—you know it, you know it.
If you let him walk away right now, you’ll never—
“Go home,” he tells you. “I’ll be fine. I’ll get shit handled, and then I’ll come to you, okay? Don’t I always come back to ya?”
You scoff and look away, closing your eyes when he takes a step closer to brush his lips against your temple. If you fight with him about this now, he’ll only dig his heels in more. You know him. There’s no winning this, not when you’re up against him taking back what he lost.
Please, you think desperately. Let me be wrong, just this once.
“Okay,” you finally say, and the word tastes like poison on your tongue. “Fine.”
“Relax,” he tells you, looking over his shoulder one last time with an easy smile. “Everything’ll be fine. I’ll see ya soon.”
————————
You wait, and you wait, and you wait.
Naoya does not come.
————————
NOVEMBER 12, 2018
You feel it the moment Naoya dies.
“My lady,” one of your attendants says, knocking briefly before stepping into your office. You stare down at your phone, at your last unanswered text message, waiting for Naoya to respond. It’s been three days since he came back from headquarters, and he is hardly answering your texts. When he does, it’s to bitch about Jinichi or Ogi, or to tell you to quit worrying so much because it’s giving him a headache. Every day that passes, you feel worse. “My lady!”
Your gaze snaps up from your phone: You’re seriously pissing me off, you texted him furiously, when he blandly responded to your request to know what’s going on with a nothing. You let out a soft breath when you see the concerned expression on the woman’s face. You lock your phone and give her your full attention.
“Sorry,” you say quietly. “What is it?”
Irrationally, you hope she’s here to tell you Naoya is waiting for you at the gate, even though you know that if he were here, he wouldn’t have waited to be announced. Your heart sinks—you don’t even know how there’s anywhere left for it to go, it’s been at your feet since you parted ways with him in Tokyo.
“Your uncle is looking for you. He’s in the inner courtyard,” she tells you, inclining her head respectfully as she speaks.
You exhale, shoulders slumping, disappointed even though you knew it wouldn’t be him. You push yourself to your feet, shoving your phone in your pocket before you make your way out of your office toward where your uncle is waiting for you, your attendant following behind dutifully.
You turn your head to the side to look at her as you ask, “Is it raining again today?”
“No, my lady,” she tells you. “It’s actually very nice out today. Warm, clear skies.”
“That’s good,” you say, quietly. “I’m sick of the rain.”
You push open the doors leading to the inner courtyard, raising your eyebrows when you see your uncle and your three older cousins waiting for you out there. Two of them are sitting on a rock, tossing pebbles at one another childishly, and the other is standing with your uncle, talking quietly. You hadn’t even realized they were all back at the estate since you’ve been in your office working for days.
You say dryly, “Why does this feel like an ambush?”
“It kind of is,” one of them tells you with an easy smile, hopping down from the rock, barely dodging a pebble, only for another to smack him in the temple. “You’ve been holed up in there for too long. Come spar with us. You’re gonna get rusty if you keep hiding in there.”
“I’m not hiding,” you reply automatically. “I’ve been working. I’m busy.”
Your oldest cousin snorts. “You’ve been brooding. You’re bringing the vibe of the whole estate down with all the storm clouds floating above your head.”
You roll your eyes before you give him a flat look, but your gaze flicks up to the sky. You thought you’d enjoy coming outside since you don’t have to deal with the ever-present rain that’s been coming down over Kyoto for almost a week now, but it feels all wrong. Clear skies should be comforting, but instead, they make the pit in your stomach churn.
This is all wrong, you think desperately. Everything is wrong.
You itch to pull your phone out of your pocket to see if Naoya responded, but you think that your cousins really will stage an intervention if they catch you looking at it again. You let out another heavy breath, shoulders slumping, because you don’t think they’ll let up until you give them what they want.
“Whatever,” you mutter. “Don’t start crying when I beat the shit out of you.”
You shrug off your jacket and make your way to the center of the inner courtyard, not even bothering to go over to the training grounds. You point at your oldest cousin, who immediately complains because sparring apparently wasn’t even his idea, but he steps forward to meet you, rolling his shoulders.
“Go on,” you say. The words come out flat, even though you mean for them to be taunting. “I’ll give you the first—”
The world shakes.
You barely steady yourself, eyes widening, and one of your cousins topples right off the rock he was still sitting on. You think, for a second, that it’s an earthquake—another foreboding omen—but you hesitate when you see your uncle staring behind you, eyes wide. You whip around, following his line of vision. For a second, you fear the worst: that maybe another cursed spirit got through the barrier around your estate, and you pull out your tanto knife, bracing yourself for a fight.
Instead, you find something much, much worse.
“Is that… Chojuro’s technique?” you breathe out, staring at the massive stone arms touching the distant sky. Miles to the west—the same direction as the Zenin estate. Something is… “That’s Chojuro’s technique. Why would he…”
Your uncle tells your cousin to get the car. You hear him vaguely as he snaps at him to get moving when he doesn’t immediately move, but he sounds like he’s underwater, distant, not a few feet away from you. Your ears are muffled and ringing. You blink twice, trying to understand what you’re looking at, because why would Chojuro use his technique like that? Why would—why is Jinichi using his technique? Your lips part when you see fists raining down from the sky above Chojuro’s stone arms, lungs burning, because you are not breathing.
What is happening at the Zenin estate? Something—something is—
You are running. You don’t even register that your legs are moving, or that you’re using your cursed energy to propel yourself forward—over the estate wall, through trees, you’re running. You won’t wait for the car; there’s no time. It’ll take half an hour to get there, the roads are windy and gravelly, and the fastest way is just straight through the forest. And you need to get there, because something—
Something is seriously wrong.
You distantly hear your uncle and cousins following, clearly not wanting you to rush off onto your own into a potentially dangerous situation—one of them calls for you, tells you to wait, not to be rash, but you ignore him. You knew something was up, you knew something bad was going to happen, and you knew—
There’s a sharp pain in your chest. You stumble, nearly tripping over a root that you missed as you gasp for air, hand flying to your heart, fingers digging into your shirt as if you can hold your heart in place by sheer force. You force yourself to keep moving forward, breath coming shallow, panicked pulls. You feel entirely destabilized, just for a split second, and the sensation is nauseating—like vertigo, like your soul slipping half a step out of alignment within your body, and not properly slipping back into place. You swallow hard, and you keep running, ignoring the calls of your name.
You get another couple of steps before a sharp pulse spears through your chest, worse this time. You choke on a breath, vision blurring at the edges, and you know—you know—with a clarity so vicious it borders on cruelty that something has happened to Naoya.
The world tilts violently, and you have to skid to a stop, boots dragging through the dirt as you brace yourself against a tree trunk, bark biting into your palm.
Keep moving, you tell yourself, biting back bile. It’s fear—stress. You’ve been wound up for days, waiting for the other shoe to drop, and now that something is actually happening, you’re spiraling. Naoya is fine. Naoya isn’t stupid. He’s one of the strongest sorcerers you’ve ever met—you don’t know anyone who can actually take him in a fight besides you and Satoru, and Satoru is—
You can’t think about that right now. Just keep moving.
You break into a run again, teeth clenched, cursed energy flaring hard enough that the ground cracks beneath your feet. Branches tear at your sleeves as you barrel through the forest, ignoring the sharp sting where bark scrapes skin, ignoring the way your lungs burn, ignoring the empty ache in your chest that suddenly will not go away. Naoya is—he’s annoying, and reckless, an asshole, but he’s never been weak, and he’s too fucking stubborn to—
Cursed energy? A cursed spirit? Coming straight at you?
You skid to a stop again, heels digging into the dirt as you sense something coming your way, bracing yourself for impact. It’s fast, too fast—you shout at your cousins and your uncle to stay back, activating your technique. You watch as the trees collapse inward from the rush of cursed energy coming in your direction, dirt flying, it slams into you and blood flies, and you won’t be able to move in time, it’s too fast, even seeing it happen, you won’t be able to get out of the way, and then—
The path you’re tracing dissolves, the straight line toward you snaps sideways, jerking violently to the southwest, away from you, before you can even catch sight of what it was.
What the hell?
You dart forward into the clearing where it should’ve emerged. The trees lie torn open in front of you, trunks slit through, bark shredded, several uprooted entirely from the force of the speed at which the cursed spirit was moving. The ground is gouged deep where it pivoted, carved straight toward the direction you were coming from until it abruptly veers, path cutting hard to the southwest, unnaturally sharp, like it slammed on a break and wrenched itself sideways at the last possible second. The trees there are obliterated, reduced to splinters and debris scattered in a wide arc. The air still thrums with residual cursed energy, dense enough that it prickles your skin.
Your pulse roars in your ears as you stare in the direction it turned, the destruction left in its wake as it cuts through the forest.
“What the hell was that?” one of your cousins demands, catching up to you finally. “It came from the direction of the Zenin estate. Should we go after it?”
It would’ve killed you, you think. Why the hell would it veer off like that? Why—
Your uncle says your name, voice rough. You shake your head, casting one last lingering look off in the direction it fled, and you say, “No. Our priority is the estate.” You don’t wait for any of them to respond before you’re moving again, pushing all lingering thoughts of the cursed spirit from your mind—Naoya is your priority. You need to get to the Zenin estate, you need to make sure that he’s—
That he’s okay.
Because he has to be—he promised. He promised you that everything would be okay, and you cannot lose Naoya. You’ve lost everything—your father, your brothers, Satoru, you can’t lose Naoya too. You won’t survive losing him and Satoru both. You won’t survive losing him. You run until your lungs burn and your legs feel like they’re filled with lead, until the forest thins and the world opens up in a way that makes your stomach drop.
The Zenin estate is in ruins.
You smell death before you see it.
You come to a stop so suddenly that one of your cousins almost slams right into your back.
“What the fuck?” he breathes out, staring at the destruction with the same horrified expression that must be on your face. “What the hell did this? How—”
You don’t think your brain fully makes sense of what you’re seeing.
For a second, you are not twenty-five, and you are not at the Zenin estate. You are twenty again, standing in the wreckage of your estate in the immediate aftermath of the massacre. Except this time, the Zenins did not arrive before you, and there is no one here to put together the bodies and place sheets over them, no one to lie to you about how bad it really is. They are not Zenin men butchered before you, but your father, your brothers, your clan.
Your cousin gags next to you, having the same visceral reaction that you are.
“We need—” you try to say. You blink once. Twice. You swallow bile, and you take in a deep breath. This is—this isn’t your clan, this isn’t your estate, this is the Zenins, and this is on you to handle this time. Just as Naobito did for you back then. “Cover the bodies, and—” You see a corpse with no head, but you would recognize Jinichi’s body anywhere. “—try to put them back together. For funerary rites. We—”
Naoya, your breath catches, losing your train of thought mid-sentence, tongue darting out to wet your lips. You taste the iron in the air, the copper-sweet tang of blood so thick it coats the back of your throat. Focus. Focus. You need to—you need to find Naoya. If he’s not out here, then he’s probably hurt, and you need to find him.
What could’ve done this?
You force yourself forward, forgetting you were even giving orders out, feet dragging against the leveled stone as you look for Naoya. The inner courtyard has been demolished, the garden is gone, and there are bodies as far as the eye can see. Most of the buildings are in shambles—roof shingles litter the ground, crunching underfoot with every step you take, and the immaculate symmetry the Zenins prized has been reduced to rubble. Walls that once stood straight and oppressive are split open, beams snapped clean through like matchsticks. Limbs stick out from splintered wood, and the stream that cuts through the estate runs red.
“Naoya,” you call.
You wonder, briefly, how a place that caused you so much stress and anxiety as a child could look so fucking small now. Just like anywhere else in the world—stone and wood and cooling corpses.
Just buildings. Just men.
A part of you that you bury beneath muted panic and disgust is almost satisfied.
“Naoya,” you repeat, louder this time.
Your gaze flicks over to where the main building used to stand, the engawa where you first met Naotaka. You remember his fingers brushing your cheek, the way he tilted up your head, how you could only stand there and hope that Naoya noticed. To the training grounds, where you would watch Naoya spar with his cousins and uncles, longing to join them, only to be dragged off to lessons in tea ceremony or homemaking. To the garden—what’s left of it—where you and Naoya would disappear to when you were sick of being watched and judged and insulted, treated like an object or livestock rather than a human.
“Naoya!”
This wasn’t a cursed spirit, you realize, as your gaze drags over a familiar corpse—one of Naoya’s older brothers, Naohiro, who has had his throat slashed cleanly. A blade, not claws. Jinichi’s headless corpse. Execution, not slaughter. All of the destruction and no residuals of cursed energy besides the Zenins themselves, all of the precise wounds on their bodies instead of carnage. Sorcerer killer, not curse.
But if it wasn’t a curse, then what was that thing that fled from the estate? Why did it turn away the way it did?
“Naoya!”
Your feet have brought you to one of the few buildings that are still standing, and your gaze drops to the step leading up to the engawa. There is blood dripping down it, smeared on the wood, like someone had dragged themselves into the building as they bled out. You blink once, gaze lingering on it for a moment before you step around it, following the bloody trail down the hall. You see handprints on the screens, a familiar shape, a familiar size—you blink again, eyes tracing along the hall, down to where one of the sliding doors has fallen inward.
You blink a third time. This time, your heart is in your throat as you say quietly, “Naoya?”
Your body doesn’t cooperate at first when you try to move forward. Your feet are rooted to the ground. The empty feeling in your chest, the one that hit you while you were running to the estate, returns with a vengeance. You are filled with dread in a way that’s hard to articulate—your tongue is heavy in your mouth, and your limbs are prickling, there is a pit in your stomach, wide and gaping.
You don’t want to go near that room.
You’ve known the truth since you were in the forest—since before that even, for days, since you parted ways with him in that tunnel. You’ve known, but you let him leave anyway. You let yourself believe that you were wrong, let yourself believe in his promise always to come back to you. You know what is waiting for you at that sliding door.
“Naoya?” you call anyway, soft. Your legs feel clunky and awkward as you force yourself step after step. The tip of your foot catches on wood, and you stumble. Five steps. Four. Three. Two. “Nao…”
You don’t recognize it as him at first. Can’t recognize it as him—crumpled on the ground, bloody, still. That’s not Naoya. Not your Naoya. You stand in front of the room, and you breathe. In, out, in, out, in—
“Naoya,” you say again like he’ll answer. “Get up. What are you doing?”
You don’t cross the threshold into the room.
You notice, distantly, that the back of the room is destroyed, leading out of the building; the wall surrounding the estate is split and crumbling, as if something had fled from this room, out of the estate, to the east, where you had come from.
Your gaze flits down to the woman half-slumped on Naoya’s back, her hand still loosely curled around the knife in his back. Ogi’s wife, you recognize her after a second, Maki and Mai’s mother. Why is she here? You haven’t seen any other women killed, you realize, staring down at her. Only men—the Kukuru, the Hei—but her throat is slit, one still hand pressed to the wound as though trying to stop the bleeding, even in death. Someone sought her out specifically.
But why would someone go after her? Who would go after her?
You finally step into the room. Another step. A third. A fourth. You blink, and you’re bending down without really knowing what you’re doing. You numbly drag Maki and Mai’s mother off of Naoya, numbly lay her down on the far side of the room, numbly grab a nearby tablecloth to set it over her cooling corpse to give her a modicum of decency, numb, numb, numb.
You return to Naoya’s side, standing over him for a moment. He is not sprawled the way he usually is, not careless or arrogant or loose. He is folded in on himself, one arm pinned beneath his body, face pressed into the floor, the other stretched uselessly forward, reaching for something. Not your Naoya. His face is turned slightly toward you, lashes long against his cheeks, mouth parted just enough that you can see red staining his teeth, pooling from the corner of his mouth. One eye is half-open, unfocused, gold dulled to something lifeless and wrong, the other hidden against the floor.
Your next breath is deeper, more ragged.
Your knees hit the tatami with a dull thud you barely register, and your hand hovers above him, shaking badly enough that you curl it into a fist just to steady it. You touch his shoulder first, tentative, and then you jostle him—just once—like it’s Sunday morning, and you’re bored because he’s sleeping in and you have nothing to do. The fabric beneath your palm is soaked through.
(“The fuck is the matter with you,?” he mutters, sleepy and aggravated, toppling you right over the side of your bed. You hit the ground with an ungraceful yelp, scowling. “Let me sleep, ya irritating bitch.”)
He doesn’t budge. When you let go of his shoulder, his body slides back to how it was, limp on the ground. Your cheeks are wet. Your lungs are burning.
“Naoya,” you repeat. “Naoya.”
You’re more frantic now as your hand slides to his neck, fingers trembling as you place them to his pulse point, where you’ve rested them countless times before without thinking, as though there’s still a chance you might find it thrumming beneath your touch. His skin is still warm, how you’ve always known it to be, and your heartbeat thuds terribly in your ears.
(“What’re ya doin’?” he asks with a yawn, shooting you a frown, and you tilt your head to the side curiously, unsure what he’s talking about.
He’s only been back from Tohoku for two weeks, your clan has only been dead for four months—you still don’t sleep well, so you tend to stay up and read while he sleeps in bed next to you. He looks pointedly down at your hand, where your fingers rest over his pulse, and you draw your hand back, a bit surprised with yourself. You hadn’t even noticed you’d reached out to touch him. Immediately, you’re unsettled, fingers twitching to press against the steady thrum, proof that there is someone left in this world you still have to count on.
He rolls his eyes and reaches out for your wrist, placing your fingers back to where they were. You are at ease again instantly. His lashes flutter shut as he starts to doze back off. “Go the hell to sleep, don’t want to deal with you bitchin’ in the morning that you’re tired.”)
Nothing.
Your chest tightens so hard that it hurts to breathe. You try again, pressing harder, as if pressure might fix this, like his heart might remember how to beat if you convince it that you’re here with him. Your own pulse thunders, frantic and mocking.
Nothing.
You gag, hand flying to your mouth as you retch over air, turning away from him. Fuck, you gasp—nothing comes up, you’ve hardly eaten in days because you’ve been so wound with anxiety. You double over, palms against the wood, still slick with his blood, and a sound crawls up your chest, small and broken. You choke it down hard, biting the inside of your cheek until you taste blood just to keep it contained. You squeeze your eyes shut, forehead dropping until it nearly touches the tatami, breath coming in sharp, uneven pulls that scrape your throat raw.
This isn’t happening.
Not him—not him too. Your mind is crashing. Please, you think over and over and over again, please, anyone but him. You don’t know who you’re begging, what you’re begging, nothing has ever listened, but you beg still.
“This isn’t fucking funny,” you rasp, angry suddenly. “This isn’t fucking funny, Naoya. This isn’t—”
Your voice breaks. You force your eyes back open. Your cheeks are wet. Your vision swims as you turn back to him, crawling the short distance on numb legs. You reach for him again, hesitant, like your body has learned something your mind is still rejecting. Your hands move to his jaw and shoulder, gently turning him so that he’s on his back, half in your lap, and you can’t bite back the wounded noise that builds in your chest, slipping from your lips when see that the right side of his face is shattered, eye swollen shut beneath blood and ruin, jaw broken, cheek caved in.
“Oh,” you finally whisper, thoughts coming to an abrupt halt, anger draining in an instant. It comes out small and stupid, but you don’t know what else to say. You brush his hair back from his forehead, avoiding the ruined side of his face, and then you slide your hand down to his cheek, thumb pressing slightly beneath his good eye, it is gold and dull and so lifeless and so wrong. “Oh, I—”
Your lashes flutter as you sink into the floor, into his blood. You pull him closer now, hand drifting down to his chest, palm flattening there instinctively, like you’ve done a hundred times when he’s pinned you beneath him, smug and irritating and alive. Your breath comes apart again, a strangled sound that you can’t swallow back, and then you’re crying in earnest, silent and wrecked, tears dropping onto his face, onto his collar, into blood that’s already drying.
Naoya is—
“Liar,” you sob, “you fucking liar. You promised me. You promised—”
Someone else is crying too—wailing, really, a terrible, wounded, broken sound that makes your ears bleed. You wonder if your cousins happened upon a survivor. You want to tell whoever it is to shut the fuck up. Irrationally, you think that they have no right to cry when you’ve just lost half of yourself.
It’s only when your cousin comes flying down the hall, panicked, looking for you, skidding to a stop in front of the broken sliding door that you realize it is you who is wailing.
You don’t lift your head to look at him, forehead dropping to Naoya’s shoulder—he’s cooler than he was a few moments ago. Your arms tighten around him, clinging to him desperately. You’re shaking violently now, sobs tearing out of you in harsh, broken sounds you don’t recognize as your own. Your throat burns. Your chest feels like it’s splitting open with every breath you drag in. You’ve never cried like this before—never—you’ve always just kept moving forward when bad things happened.
You got used to it, that’s what you did. That’s what you always did because you could never afford to stop moving; you shoved it all deep down so it could never resurface. Forward is survival. Forward is the only option. When everything around you kept changing, you moved forward and refused to let it make you stumble. When your clan died, you moved forward so that others could mourn. When the world demanded more of you than it had any right to, you moved forward because everyone else was relying on you to hold everything together. You locked away the grief, shouldered the weight, and you kept walking because there was no other option.
But you can’t move now.
There is nowhere to go. No direction that doesn’t feel wrong. No step forward that doesn’t feel like a betrayal to what’s lying cold and heavy in your arms. There is no tomorrow where Naoya doesn’t take up space in your life, doesn’t irritate you, doesn’t argue with you, doesn’t come back, no matter how badly everything goes wrong. There is no future without him. There is no world where you keep moving forward after half of your soul has been torn away.
Your cousin reaches out to touch your shoulder, and you slap his hand away hard. You breathe. In and out. Naoya’s skin is cold. In and out. The blood is drying. In and out. You can’t fucking do this. You can’t—
Focus on something else.
“We need to report this to the higher-ups,” you hear yourself say, breathing out shakily, lifting your head to stare blankly at the opposite side of the room, the splintered wood and the crumbling wall, the trees that have been barreled down by something large and fast. You can’t feel Naoya’s cursed energy—not even any residue. “I want you to listen to me very carefully.”
Your cousin says your name, quiet and wary, like he’s afraid speaking might set you off again. You don’t look at him. Naoya is—your gaze shifts over to Maki and Mai’s mother, onto the white cloth you draped over her. You can’t feel any of Naoya’s cursed energy. Not even residue. Naoya is—your fingers press against the cool hilt of the kitchen knife in his back. A kitchen knife, not a cursed tool, driven in by a non-sorcerer, with no cursed energy. There is no residue even around the wound to his face—sheer strength caved it in, no technique, no cursed energy. Naoya is—your gaze flicks over to the back of the room, the demolished walls, the path carved through the forest in the direction of your clan’s estate.
If he was not killed with jujutsu, then—
“A cursed spirit did this,” you say after a moment, voice empty to your own ears. Before your cousin can protest, you continue. “Report to the higher-ups that a cursed spirit did this. An unregistered special grade wiped out the Zenin clan, and I will be the one to hunt it down and exorcise it.”
He says your name louder this time, panicked. “You can’t—and that’s—there’s no way that cursed spirit was the one that did all of this. There’s no cursed energy residue anywhere, I mean, if I didn’t know any better—”
“Shut up,” you snap, voice sharp, because you know.
You know that cursed spirit wasn’t the one who did this. The person who did this used a cursed tool because they have no access to cursed energy, otherwise there would be more residue than just the Hei and the Kukuru. The person who did this did not mindlessly slaughter everyone; there are no children amongst the dead, only one woman, so they specifically targeted the Hei and the Kukuru. The person who did this specifically sought out Maki and Mai’s mother, indicaitng a personal vendetta.
There is only one person who fits that description.
(“I thought maybe you would understand,” Maki once said quietly, when she came to you about her desire to leave the Zenins and become a sorcerer, her dreams of one day returning as clan head. “And help me, maybe.”)
And you do—you do fucking understand. You bite back another sob that threatens to rip from you. You do. You understand what it means to grow up inside a cage that calls itself tradition; you were born luckier than most with an extraordinary technique and brothers who defied tradition, but you tasted what could’ve been every Sunday at the Zenin estate for ten fucking years. To be watched and weighed and assessed—perfect smile, perfect poise, perfect temperament, perfect, perfect, perfect. One misstep, and you’re cast aside and replaced, because you were born a woman and not a man. You don’t know what drove her to these lengths, but you understand. The Zenin clan has always been the epitome of everything wrong with Jujutsu society. You’ve known that from a very young age.
(The nail that sticks out gets hammered down. Polite, elegant, submissive. A woman must always watch that she does not overstep her husband. She must be beautiful and obedient. Public image is the most important quality of a woman, as it determines what rank of man would be willing to marry her. Once her image is soiled, she becomes worthless to her family. No man wants to marry a tainted or otherwise undesirable woman.)
And you just—you can’t turn her over to the higher-ups. Not a girl you’ve known since she was ten years old. A girl who would sneak away from her duties to watch you spar with Naoya, wide-eyed and wondrous at the sight of a female sorcerer. A girl who idolized you—looking up to you as a woman meant to become a Zenin-perfect wife for their prodigal son, and instead shattered the shackles, entering the ranks of the very men who tried to keep her down, first as a sorcerer, a grade that has traditionally only ever been given to Zenin men nonetheless, and then as a clan head.
You can’t do it.
This is just your fate, you realize—every loss you’ve ever experienced, you’ve never been able to avenge a single one because you’re too fucking weak. No closure, no revenge, just an aching, gaping hole where love once kept you warm.
You lean down to brush your lips against the crown of Naoya’s head.
His skin is cold.
(“I would’ve killed whatever did it,” he told you, “and everyone involved. Happy now? Are ya gonna let me fuckin’ sleep or d’ya have more dumb questions?”)
I’m sorry, you tell him, teeth grinding together. I’m sorry. I know you never would’ve done this to me.
Fuck, you almost choke over another sob, but you catch yourself before you can. You understand, you really do, you know the Zenins are awful, you know they’re everything wrong with traditional society, but you just—you hate that he had to go with it.
He’s just another Zenin to everyone else—the worst of them, even. The face of the clan, the heir, the embodiment of the Zenin name and the one who benefited most from this corrupted system, the loudest reminder of everything the Zenins valued and everything they cast aside. He wasn’t the man who argued with you over nothing, who stole your skincare and hair products, no matter how many times you told him to quit it, who promised you a future that you desperately needed if you wanted to keep moving forward. He was never the boy who grew up bruised and angry and desperate to prove he was worth something in a world that loved him only conditionally. He wasn’t just a Zenin to you. He was Naoya. Your Naoya. Shitty, insufferable Naoya, who you don’t know how to live without.
You want him back.
You want him back so bad that it makes you sick.
“I’m telling you what happened, and that is what you’re going to report to the higher-ups,” you finally say, pushing everything down for just a little longer. “A special grade cursed spirit massacred the Zenin clan, and I will be the one to hunt and exorcise it. Are we clear?”
“… Yeah,” your cousin finally says, voice quiet. “We’re clear, but—you’re not actually going to… go after that thing, are you?”
Your arms tighten around Naoya slightly. His skin is cold. His body is limp. Your lashes flutter slightly before you look back in the direction where the cursed spirit fled to, and your heart is heavy because you know. No one in the world knows Naoya like you do, and you know for a fact that if he was not killed with jujutsu, then he is spiteful and angry enough to come back, and if he has come back, then you have to be the one to exorcise the curse born from him so that he can rest.
You exhale, laying his body down, head in your lap. You cradle his face carefully between your hands, one palm cupping the unbroken side of his jaw, thumb brushing lightly beneath his good eye; the other hovers uselessly for a moment before you carefully settle it on the opposite cheek, fingers grazing the ruined skin. Your gaze slips away, back to the familiar line of his mouth, the arch of his brow, the face you know, the one that still looks like him if you don’t stare too hard.
You sigh softly as you lean down, pressing your lips against his forehead, gentle in the way the two of you so rarely were with one another. His skin is cold. His lashes don’t flutter at your touch. He does not give you a mocking smile or make a snide comment about how you’re getting sentimental with old age. A tear splashes against his cheek. You trail your lips down the slope of his nose, then lower still, to brush your mouth against his. His lips are cold too. They taste of blood and salt and a future that was taken away. Habit makes you pause, makes you expect the way his lips curve up into yours, makes you wait for the familiar pressure of his lips moving against yours and the way his hand slips around the back of your head.
“You’re so dramatic,” he would tell you, far too smug. “Lookit ya—cryin’ for me like this. I’d say it’s almost cute, but you’re an ugly crier.”
“Fuck you, asshole,” you would snap back.
Nothing happens.
Your breath shudders, tears rolling over your cheeks more steadily now. You linger a second longer than you should. Just long enough to memorize the feel of him one last time, and then you pull back, just enough.
You tell him quietly, “I would’ve chosen you. Every time. Even knowing how it ends.”
Your thumbs brush once more along his jaw, and then you look away. You ease back slowly, carefully laying him down against the ground, and then you rise to your feet, looking back out in the direction the cursed spirit fled to.
“I want him buried at our estate,” you tell your cousin quietly. “Not here. There’s nothing left for him here.”
Your cousin says your name quietly, and you look at him over your shoulder with a small smile.
“Relax,” you say. “Everything will be fine. I’ll see you soon.”
————————
You are six, and he is eight, and you have just met.
You have no idea how your life will change.
(You track the cursed spirit all the way down to the Kagoshima prefecture.
You stare up at the black curtain that has dropped over the area, and you think it’s deeply ironic that it fled here of all places. You exhale, eyes sliding shut as you turn your head away. You wonder what it means—does it remember what this place meant to you and him? That this is the place where you reunited so many years ago? Or is it just a coincidence?
You don’t know what to think, because if it remembers and it was drawn here, then it must have some semblance of Naoya’s consciousness, and you don’t know how to kill something that has Naoya’s consciousness, even if only a modicum of it.
You press your hands to your face, tired. You’ve been moving nonstop since you left the Zenin estate, haven't let yourself stop for a minute. If you stop, you will crash, and if you crash, you will never be able to come back from it, and you can’t let this thing born of Naoya’s cursed energy roam freely. Your chest aches, and you have to force yourself even to keep breathing—in, out, in, out.
He never makes anything easy for you, even now.
Only a little more, you tell yourself, then you can rest.)
You are seven, and he is nine, and you watch how he tenses when his father’s voice carries through the halls of the estate, slurred and loud. Something strange twists up your chest, and when he catches you frowning at him, he snaps at you to look away. You tell him that you don’t want to go to the kitchen anymore, you want to go to the garden, and he calls you annoying, but the two of you turn around and go in the opposite direction of where his father is floundering around drunk.
You never bring it up, and neither does he. Some understandings don’t need words, especially between the two of you—that’s how it’s always been, even as children.
(“Hi! I’m a Kogane! Inside this barrier, a lethal contest called the Culling Game has begun! Step inside, and you too become a player! Are you willing to enter?”
You stare at the floating shikigami, lips curved down, gaze flicking between it and the veil behind it. You ask, “What is the Culling Game?”
“A lethal contest,” the Kogane replies to your annoyance. “Would you like to consult the rules?”
You don’t have time for this, you think bitterly, glancing at the barrier again. “Sure. Tell me the rules.”
The Shikigami appears closer to you, its body shifting to reveal some sort of screen.
You inhale sharply before leaning in, eyes skimming across the rules of this Culling Game: awaken cursed technique… declare participation… technique removal… score points by ending the lives of other people, sorcerers worth five points, non-sorcerers worth one… new rule at one hundred points… score remains the same for nineteen days, subject to technique removal… access to information about other players. Your gaze lingers on that last one.
“I’m looking for someone,” you say after a moment. “Can you tell me if this person is in the Culling Game?”
“I cannot!” Your eye twitches. “You are not a player yet!”
You press your tongue to the back of your teeth, teeming with frustration. You look back at the barrier. The cursed spirit is in there. You know it is. You could try to use your maximum technique to confirm it, but you don’t know how this barrier will affect your technique if you use it from the outside, and you can’t risk draining yourself so quickly.
It’s in there.
You know it.
“Alright,” you say. “I’ll become a player. Let me in.”)
You are eight, and he is ten, and you remind him—mutually assured destruction—when he threatens to tell your father how awful you are. He scowls, sulks, kicks the back of your knees when you turn away, and you launch yourself at him without thinking, fists tangling in his hair as the two of you go down in the dirt, flattening a bed of flowers beneath you.
You’ll deny it later, but you’re laughing—helpless, breathless laughter that you cannot contain, the kind that only ever happens when the two of you are alone. You shove his face into the soil, and he grabs a fistful to smear across your mouth, trying to get you off of him. He’s laughing too, and he will deny it just as fiercely as you will, because the moment the two of you step out of the garden and back under the assessing gaze of his family, everything will have to return to how it should be, because you are not friends, cannot be friends, he is a boy, the Zenin heir, and you are just a girl.
(“Five points rewarded!” the kogane chirps next to where you’re crouched on the ground, hovering around your head like an irritating fly. You try to swat at it, but it only disappears and reappears on the opposite side of your head. “Five points rewarded!”
“I know,” you say. “Be quiet.”
You can’t track down the cursed spirit. It’s in here—you know it is. As soon as you entered the barrier, you consulted the Kogane’s list of players and activated your maximum technique to pinpoint where it might be, casting your cursed energy thinly across the whole arena. There are hundreds of cursed energy signatures—well, two less now—but only one that you are intimately familiar with. You hate how similar it is. Not him—not quite—but close enough that it makes your chest seize when you first recognize it in the arena. An echo warped by death and hatred, but him in a way that’s impossible to deny.
A few hours ago, it was lingering in the same area as that abandoned building the two of you were sent to a few years ago to exorcise that special grade curse. You hate that too, because you hate what it means—that it might remember, might be drawn there because it vaguely recalls Naoya’s history with you, or, at the very least, knows enough to know it was an important place.
By the time you got there, it was gone—halfway across Kagoshima, moving quickly in the opposite direction—leaving you to deal with two sorcerers who had clearly sensed its presence and were looking to score some points for themselves. And you hate the idea of something born of Naoya’s cursed energy being hunted and exorcised by some garbage sorcerers, so when they turn their attention on you, you don’t hesitate.
You flip Naoya’s tanto knife casually in your hand, wiping the blood off on your sleeve, staring down at the engraving along its hilt. You run your thumb over the ridges before sighing, rising to your feet, and lifting your right hand, pointer finger brushing your forehead, thumb brushing your lip.
Time to try again.)
You are nine, and he is eleven, and you hate his brothers. You hate how they look down on him, you hate how they treat him, and you hate the way they make him feel uncomfortable. You tell yourself that it’s because they have no right to do so since they are weaker than him, but that doesn’t explain why you are frustrated to tears when you can only stand and watch as they needle him into something small and unrecognizable. It also doesn’t explain the glee you feel when Naotaka’s expression shifts in surprise when you take Naoya’s side after finally being given the opportunity to speak—they want him alone and vulnerable, you realize, more prone to making mistakes.
You decide—out of spite, of course—that you will make sure he never is, even if you do hate him. The two of you are enemies, but you’re attached to him as his betrothed, so if he loses standing, then so do you. But it was never spite, and it was never hatred; he was never your enemy, no matter how much you insisted otherwise. He was always just yours, and you would be damned before you let his useless brothers—or anyone—hurt him the way they were trying.
He is eleven, and you are nine, and Naoya falls in love with you for the first, but certainly not the last, time. You do not know this—you will never know this—but he does, and it is this that he thinks of when he is trying to claw his way back to the estate, trying to get to his phone, get to you before it’s too late. He has loved you for longer than he’s ever been willing to admit, he has loved you through years of distance and terrible fights, he has loved you since you were an annoying girl who didn’t know her place and he was a bratty boy who thought himself better than everyone. He has always loved you, he thinks as the knife plunges through his back, always, always, always, but always was not long enough—not for him.
(You think the cursed spirit is hiding from you. Every time you track it down to where it should be lurking, it disappears halfway across the city. It’s like an awful game of cat and mouse, and you realize that if that cursed spirit retained Naoya’s technique, you’ll never catch up to it while it’s playing with you like this. You can’t keep using your technique to track it down either—every time you use it, it puts more strain on your body, and there are too many sorcerers in this arena to put yourself at risk like that.
You also don’t know what that means about the cursed spirit, either. You don’t think it’s actively avoiding all sorcerers, because you’ve stumbled upon areas it was in after it left and found the corpses it left behind. It specifically seems to be avoiding you, and it’s eating you alive.
Could the cursed spirit have really retained Naoya’s consciousness? It came here to Kagoshima and went specifically to the building where the two of you reunited, and it seems to be actively avoiding you and no one else. Is it just primal instincts? Lingering remnants of Naoya influencing it to go where places that he might’ve gone, warning it that you might be a danger to it because of your technique? Or is it something else?
You don’t have time to think about it.
“Kogane,” you bark, waiting for it to manifest. “How many points do I have?”
“Twenty-five points!” the Kogane tells you.
“If I kill a player with more than five points, will I obtain their points?” you ask.
“You will not!”
Your lip curls up in frustration, looking out over the city from the rooftop you’re perched on. You can’t sustain your technique long enough to hunt it down without killing yourself, so the only option left is to try to get a rule implemented that allows you to track down other players.
Which means you have to start hunting.
How tiresome, you think. Why does he always have to make things so difficult for you?)
You are ten, and he is twelve, and you miss him. For the first time in four years, Sunday comes and goes without an invitation to the Zenin estate. Your father is angry at you, and your brothers find it all too funny, but there is a lump in your throat that you can’t explain, and an inexplicable emptiness in your chest where there should only be happiness, because you hate going to the Zenin estate. You convince yourself that you are only annoyed that this is all falling on you when it wasn’t your fault.
You are lying—you are always lying. You wonder now why you lied to yourself so much back then, and you wonder, maybe, if the two of you might’ve had more time together if you didn’t.
He is twelve, and you are ten, and Naoya hurts in a way that’s hard to explain—he is embarrassed, he is frustrated, and he is in pain from many nights in the disciplinary pit, because it is his fault that you’ve gone to Gojo Satoru. More than that, he is inexplicably sad, and he cannot bring himself to walk anywhere near the garden anymore, and he refuses to try to understand why that is.
He is twelve, and you are ten, and Naoya thinks for the first time that he might love you. It is a fleeting thought, but he’s unsure what else the tightness in his chest might be when you stand in his bedroom after sneaking out of your clan’s estate, hiking fifteen miles through the forest to get to the Zenin estate, just so you can stand in front of him and ask him if the two of you are still engaged.
He is twelve, and you are ten, and Naoya realizes you are the first, and only, person who has ever wanted him—chosen him—without him having to prove he earned it first.
(“Five points rewarded! Five points rewarded! You are now at fifty-five points!”
“Wait, wait, wait!” the sorcerer gasps as he scrambles away from you, nails scraping against the concrete, leaving bloody tracks. You stare down at him, head tilted to the side, waiting for him to speak. “I only just came back, I don’t want to die again, I—”
“Again?” you ask, brows furrowing. “What are you talking about?”
The man’s eyes widen, and yours narrow.
Does it have something to do with this Culling Game? Came back? Die again? Is the Culling Game bringing people back to life? Irrationally, hope begins to bloom in your chest—could you bring Naoya back? If a cursed spirit born of his energy is darting around the arena, is there a way you could bring him back as he was? You shouldn’t get your hopes up—you shouldn’t, you know that—but you want him back so bad that it makes you physically ill.
“I’ll explain, if you promise not to kill me,” the sorcerer nods, eyes wide and searching as he stares up at you.
You don’t have the time or energy to play these games.
“Sure,” you agree. “Explain.”
The man swallows hard, hands shaking as he props himself up on one elbow, blood slicking the concrete beneath him. “I’m—” he pants, eyes darting like you might change your mind any second. “I’m not from this era. Not originally. I died hundreds of years ago.” Your heart thuds in your ears. “The—the one who started this, he made contracts with us before we died. Our souls were preserved and sealed into cursed objects, and when this game began, we were incarnated into modern bodies.”
Contracts before death. Souls preserved. The words ring through your head painfully loud. You knew this was going to be the case—there is no bringing someone back from the dead, not really—but you are still flooded with such a bitter feeling that it makes you sick. Why do these people get a second chance? And why does their second chance come at the cost of so much to you? Satoru, Naoya—everything that’s happened the past two weeks, is it really all to bring back some dead sorcerers? Why? Why? You don’t understand. You don’t fucking understand. What did they do to deserve a second chance? Why did they take Satoru and Naoya? You miss them, you miss him, you miss him so bad that you can’t breathe, that—
“So, you’re telling me that this all began because a bunch of washed up sorcerers who couldn’t survive in their eras think they have some right to the modern one?” you ask, lips trembling. Rage, grief, indignation at the sheer unfairness of it all. Fuck, you think furiously, what the fuck? “Who the hell do you think you are?”
“We—it’s not like that,” he disagrees. “We were strong in our era, and—”
“Five points rewarded!”
You stare down at the sorcerer as blood pools around his head, seeping from his cut throat.
“Kogane. Show me the information of all of the reincarnated sorcerers in this arena.”)
You are eleven, and he is thirteen, and you learn that he can’t hold your gaze when he tells a lie. You learn a lot of things about him that year—the way his eyes shift the moment he goes from feeling angry to cornered, the difference in how he holds himself when he’s in a good mood versus a bad mood, how when he thinks people aren’t looking, his shoulders slump a little, uncertainty slipping into the curve of his lips as he observes the men around him, trying to figure out how he should act—but this is your favorite, even as silly as it is. You don’t use it against him, not usually at least. You keep it to yourself, something small and private that belongs only to you.
Once, you ask him, do you think I’m pretty, Nao-chan? and he snaps at you, tells you to stop calling him that stupid nickname, and then calls you hideous. His gaze flits away as he says it, and you find yourself smiling, which only makes him even more annoyed, but there is a skip in your step as you follow him to the garden.
(You miss him.
You choke on air as something warm and wet splatters across your face. Your vision is blurry, and there is a terrible ache in your chest that won’t go away. Not now, you tell yourself again, not now, you can’t crash now.
“Five points rewarded! You are now at seventy points!”
Your eyes slide shut as you force away the tears that suddenly prick at your eyes. You can see the sun breaching the horizon, and you are angry, you are grieving, because how dare the dawn always insist on coming when your world ends. How dare it be warm, how dare it be bright, how dare it pretend that anything is still moving forward when you are standing in knee-deep blood that isn’t his. The corpse at your feet twitches once before going still, eyes glassy and unfocused, mouth slack.
For a second, you blink, and you are back at the Zenin estate, and it is Naoya at your feet, his blood on your blade, his death on your hands. Bile burns the back of your throat, and you stumble away before you double to your hands and knees and hurl the small meal your cousins forced you to eat before you left.
How long has it been? You’re not sure. Everything bleeds together. You haven’t slept at all. It feels like an eternity since you held Naoya in your arms, and it feels like five seconds ago, all the same.
You miss him.
You miss him.
You just want him back.)
You are twelve, and he is fourteen, and he acts strange around you in a way that’s hard to articulate. It makes you angry, and even now, you’re not sure why it did, because he was being good to you. You suppose even as a kid, you hated the idea of things changing.
You don’t know that he covers for you whenever you slip up in front of the wrong people. You don’t know that he scoffs at his uncles when they mention off-handedly that you might not be fit to be a Zenin wife. You don’t know that whenever you’re not paying attention, he catches himself staring at you, a tight feeling in his chest that he smothers deep beneath pride and derision.
You don’t know a lot of things, and you will never know a lot of things. Maybe in the next life things will be different.
(Distantly, you understand that they do not deserve to die.
You are angry and grieving, and you cannot avenge Naoya the way you should, so you are unleashing your rage onto these sorcerers, who made the mistake of making a contract with the wrong person. They are not the ones who took him from you. They are not the ones who shattered your future and left you standing in the ruins with blood on your hands and nothing left to hold onto.
You cut them down all the same anyway.
“Five points rewarded! You are now at eighty-five points.”)
You are thirteen, and he is fifteen, and he is angry at you all the time now. You don’t understand why he’s angry because you only told him that he should do what you both want, and get his father to end the engagement. Now you know that was something he never wanted—I always wanted you, he tells you in the rain years later, even back when we were kids—and you realize that he had been under the mistaken belief that you had begun to want him back. But—
But he had no right to be angry, you think with tears in your eyes—he should’ve said something sooner. Then maybe—then maybe you wouldn’t have lost three years, then maybe you might be married, then maybe, then maybe, then maybe.
(Maybe you can bind it to you in the same way Orimoto Rika was bound to Okkotsu Yuta.
The thought bounces in your head, taunting, dangerous, entirely irrational, but you cannot push it away. If this cursed spirit has partially retained Naoya’s consciousness… If it understands enough to know who you are, if it understands enough to know the importance of Kagoshima and that abandoned building, then perhaps, it has retained enough of Naoya for you to cling to it. For you to convince yourself that he’s not gone.
The thought is reckless, you know that. And you know how dangerous it is. You have seen what that kind of attachment does. You know the cost. Orimoto Rika was not saved by love, she was damned by it, twisted into something monstrous because a boy couldn’t bear to let her go.
And yet.
If there is even a fragment of him left in it—if there is something there that remembers your voice, then maybe you can give it a shape that isn’t hatred incarnate. Maybe you can keep it from hurting anyone else. Maybe you can keep it from becoming something that would have disgusted him if he were alive to see it. Maybe you can keep him.
You would carry him with you always. You would feel him everywhere. You would never be alone again. You would not have to suffer to live through a world without him.
Maybe.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.)
You are fourteen, and he is sixteen, and you find yourself staring at him all too often—at the way his shoulders have started to broaden, at how his voice drops when he’s annoyed, at the sharpness of his profile when he watches you from the corner of his eye to see if you’re looking. You tell yourself that it’s nothing, that you’re only noticing the changes because you’ve known him forever, but your chest does something uncomfortable when he catches you looking and tosses you a smug smirk and a wink instead of getting mad.
You start to look away first, eyes wide and face hot, heart beating way too fast for no reason you’re willing to name, and he starts to watch you when you aren’t paying attention, gaze soft and lingering, and a tightness in his chest that he has long stopped denying—to himself, at least. You wish you had stopped denying it sooner, too.
(You trick yourself into thinking that you have already forgotten his face.
It is ridiculous, because it has not even been two days and you have known him your entire life, but you are exhausted, running on fumes and grief, and you haven’t slept because you are scared to see him waiting for you in your dreams, angry and accusing, demanding to know why you won’t avenge him. When your lashes flutter, and you cannot immediately picture his face before you found him that morning on the floor, without the blood and gore, partially caved in, you double over and throw up again, even though there is nothing left in you to give anymore.
You heave and sob, clutching at your chest, your mouth, nails digging into the palm of your hands so deep that blood drips between your knuckles to the concrete. Why can’t you picture him? Why can you only see him like that? Why do you see the golds of his eyes dull and lifeless, instead of dancing with amusement? Why is his expression slack and empty, instead of smug and infuriating?
Naoya, you sob, forehead pressed against the cold concrete—you miss him, you want him back, there is no place for you in this world anymore, not without him.)
You are fifteen, and he is seventeen, and you have lost him for the first, but not the last time. You don’t know at the time that it is only temporary, and you don’t know why it feels like the end of the world. You cannot explain to your brothers why you’re crying when they come to find you the first Sunday after the engagement is called off.
He is yours, you understand now that you knew it even back then. There’s no future for you without him in it, and that is why the end of your engagement—the most permanent type of loss in your innocent, childish mind—felt so wrong. You just couldn’t—wouldn’t—put it into words. He is yours, he is yours. He has always been yours, and you have always been his. The two of you are bonded in a way that no one can ever understand, and there is no world where you can lose him and move on with your life.
(“You are now at one hundred points! Do you want to spend them to add a new rule to the Culling Game?”
“Yes. I want to add an extension to Rule Nine. I want the real-time locations of all players to be disclosed, not just what colonies they’re a part of.”
“This is acceptable! The rule will be announced to all players immediately!”
You stare at the ground, heart thudding in your ears. You press your hands against your thighs, eyes sliding shut. It’s time now, you realize—you can go after the cursed spirit without having to use your technique. It will have to run out of cursed energy eventually, will have to stop running, and you will just keep hunting it down until it does. You don’t have to worry about frying your own brain with your technique now that you can just track it through the Kogane.
It’s time.
And yet—
“How many more reincarnated sorcerers are in this arena?” you ask the Kogane tightly.
“There are fifteen reincarnated sorcerers currently in the Sakurajima Colony!”
“Show me the location of the closest one.”)
You are sixteen, and he is eighteen now. Today is his birthday, and you are lying in bed alone, staring at your phone and a message that doesn’t go through: Happy birthday, asshole. Wanna go do something? Your throat swells with frustration as you look at it for a moment before you throw your phone at the wall, bitter and angry and lonely. You think, maybe, that you should take it as a sign, and you call up Satoru to see if he wants to go to a movie instead.
You tell yourself it’s fine, that you’ll get used to his absence in your life, but it was as impossible then as it is now.
He is eighteen, and you are sixteen, and it is his birthday. He sits in the garden alone, watching the naked branches of the cherry blossoms sway back and forth in the wind. His father comes looking for him, drunk, and he laughs as he slaps Naoya on the shoulder. Nearly dying because of that girl, only for her to run off with the Gojo boy. Stupid boy, this is what you get for attaching yourself to a woman. I hope you’ve learned your lesson. Naoya’s lips tighten into a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, and he wonders why he is never enough as is.
(It’s your fault.
“Five points rewarded!”
It’s your fault that he is dead.
“Five points rewarded!”
You knew this was going to happen. You knew something bad was coming. You knew that if he walked away from you in that tunnel, you would never see him again, and you let him walk away anyway. It’s your fault.
“Five points rewarded!”)
You are seventeen, and he is nineteen, and it’s been almost two years, but you still don’t go a day without him crossing your mind. Satoru tries to keep you distracted with training, and missions, and even helping you get promoted to Special Grade One as a slap in the face to the Zenin, whose men were traditionally the only ones allowed to bear that title, but your mind always goes back to him.
Everything always goes back to him.
He is nineteen, and you are seventeen, and all he ever hears about is you and Satoru. He has always vowed to keep far away from alcohol, having grown up with his father the way he did, but when whispers reach him about how it seems likely that you and Satoru will be married within the year, he cracks open a bottle of sake and drowns himself in his sorrows. He types up long, hateful, accusatory messages, blaming you for screwing everything up when things were good, for giving him hope when you always intended on turning your back on him, for convincing him that there was someone out there who wanted him for him and not his technique or his title, but he never sends them.
The line between love and hatred had always been terribly thin for the two of you, from the day you met him to the day you lost him, but he knows that this is real, deep-seated hatred. He can feel it in his blood, his bones, his soul. He has been humiliated so many times before, but never like this, never by you. He never wants to see you again, he decides, and he thinks he hates most of all that he knows he’s only lying to himself.
I wouldn’t have done this to you, he almost sends while drunk one night. I never would’ve fucking done this to you.
(“Next.”
“There are no more reincarnated sorcerers currently in the Sakurajima Colony!” the Kogane chirps.
“None?” you exhale, throat swelling immediately. If there are none left, then… “But—”
“That is correct! There are none left!”
Fuck, you think, letting out a shaky breath. What the hell are you supposed to do now?)
You are eighteen, and he is twenty, and for the first time in three years, you can breathe. You laugh freely, and it startles you how easily it comes, how natural it feels to be standing at his side again after so long apart. You fall into sync as though no time has passed at all, and you realize, distantly, that the tightness you’ve carried for years has vanished. You had been pushing through each passing day with Satoru at your side, dragging you along with him, but there was an inexplicable emptiness in you that could never be filled. You understand now that living—really living—only feels possible with him at your side.
(You are putting off what needs to be done.
You stumble off to a nearby convenience store, grabbing a bottle of liquor before curling up in the corner of the store. You try not to drink too much when you’re around Naoya, so it feels wrong having the bottle in your hands like this, the ring he gave you pressed against its neck, but Naoya is gone. Naoya is gone. Naoya is gone. The thought rings through your head over and over again. Naoya is gone, and you are alone. Naoya is gone, and he is a liar. Naoya is gone, and you could have stopped him. Naoya is gone, and it’s because of you.
You throw the bottle at the wall, and you scream.)
You are nineteen, and he is twenty-one, and everything is okay again.
It is enough. He is enough.
As long as you have him, it will always be enough.
(You wonder if you’ll be able to do it—exorcise a cursed spirit born of Naoya’s energy.
You lie in the middle of a roundabout at a park near a primary school, staring up at the sky. You flip Naoya’s tanto knife into the air above you, watching it spin and spin and spin until it begins to drop back down toward you. You catch the hilt as the tip grazes between your eyes.
It’s not Naoya, not really, you know that, no matter how much that thought of trying to bind it to you lingers. It wouldn’t be him. Not your Naoya. It wouldn’t laugh the way he did. It wouldn’t argue with you over nothing. It wouldn’t sulk when you won. It wouldn’t curl around you in its sleep and then get embarassed in the morning. It wouldn’t kiss you, wouldn’t hold you, wouldn’t smile smugly against your neck when you shiver.
It wouldn’t be him.
It wouldn’t be enough.)
You are twenty, and he is twenty-two, and you have lost everything, but never him, and that will always be enough for you to keep putting one foot in front of the other, even as the world tries to take more than it has any right to.
(You felt it the moment he died, you realize later.
In the forest, before you noticed the cursed spirit coming toward you. You stumbled, and your hand flew to your chest, an empty feeling spreading through you. You convinced yourself that it was nothing, just you spiraling from fear and stress after days of being wound up, but that must have been it. That was the moment he died, that was when the knife was plunged into his back, when he couldn’t muster enough cursed energy to protect himself.
He didn’t leave quietly—he never did anything quietly, you think, almost fondly. He tore a piece of you loose and dragged it with him, because the two of you had been too intertwined for any ending to be clean. This was always going to happen one way or another. There is no world where he dies, and you can just…
Your eyes slide shut.
Not yet—you can’t fall apart yet.)
You are twenty-one, and he is twenty-three, and you think that you’re losing him again. You’re choking on air as you leave the Zenin estate, desperately trying to hold yourself together. You cannot let yourself fall apart, not yet, but then he comes running, and he wants you, he’s always wanted you, he tells you, voice ragged, desperate for you to believe him. He is yours, and you are his—you have always been each other’s, and looking at him in front of you now, you wonder why you waited so long to admit this to one another.
He is twenty-three, and you are twenty-one, and he knows that he wants to spend the rest of his life with you. He does, but not as long as he had hoped for.
(You blame him.
He should’ve just come with you.
He should’ve listened to you.
He should’ve trusted you.
He should’ve, he should’ve, he should’ve.
“Five points rewarded!”)
You are twenty-two, and he is twenty-four, and things are easy, and you are happy.
You wish that this would last forever.
(You hate him.
A thick, purple substance splatters across your cheek as you kill a cursed spirit.
“Five points rewarded!”
You hate him.
You pull your knife out of another’s throat.
“Five points rewarded!”
You hate him.)
You are twenty-three, and he is twenty-five, and you are balanced on the edge of a life that almost makes sense, one hand in his as he pulls you forward and the other still brushing the past, loosened at last, finally starting to let go.
(“I don’t know how you did it,” you gasp to someone who isn’t listening, teeth grinding together. You press your fists to your eyes, fighting another sob. You want to scream again, but you can barely breathe. “I don’t know how you did it, Satoru. I’ll never be able to move on from this. You were right. It really is the most fucked up curse of all.”)
You are twenty-four, and he is twenty-six, and he wants to marry you, and you think that you want to marry him too. You have never liked the idea of you two being defined by words, so you test him, poking at his boundaries, trying to see just how far he’ll go to woo you into marriage. You learn quickly that there are no lengths he wouldn’t go to for you, no unreasonable request he wouldn’t fulfill, no pride he wouldn’t swallow if it meant keeping you happy. It is unwavering—he is unwavering—so when he brings you to watch the sunrise by the cherry blossoms, and he finally asks you what he’s been hinting at for months, you say yes without hesitation, and you never second-guess yourself once.
He is twenty-six, and you are twenty-four, and he almost lost you. He hides the fear behind anger, as he always tends to do, but he never forgets the way his stomach dropped when you hit the ground or how his fingers shook as he pulled you into his arms. He spits at you for being stupid and reckless, throws your own words right back in your face—you’re a sorcerer, not a hero—and makes cruel comments about how you’re not fit for combat just to get under your skin.
The two of you fight a lot during the month you’re bedridden, and Naoya only lets the anger drain to exhaustion when he’s sure you won’t see it. He sleeps curled around you like a guard dog, arm locked tight around your waist, breath shallow and uneven like he’s afraid that if he lets himself relax, you’ll disappear. When you stir, even just a little, his hold tightens instinctively, fingers pressing into your body. He wakes at every sound, every shift in your breathing, and you catch him more than once staring at you in the dark, eyes wide and unblinking, watching the rise and fall of your chest just to reassure himself that you’re still here.
He does not want to know a life without you, and luckily, he will never have to.
(“Show me the location of the cursed spirit created from the cursed energy of Zenin Naoya.”)
You are twenty-five, and he is twenty-seven, and he is dead. One day, you will be twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, and he will still be twenty-seven, and you think that is not something that you can live with.
You are twenty-five, and he will always be twenty-seven, and you realize that there is no world where Naoya dies and you remain alive.
————————
NOVEMBER 14, 2018
It’s wearing his face.
It’s wearing his face.
Your breath is labored as you stare at the cursed spirit from across the street. You’d thought, maybe, that the sorcerers killed it—you weren’t sure whether to be relieved or furious, grateful or bloodthirsty. You’ve been battling yourself since you got to Kagoshima, because you don’t know if you’ll be able to kill something born of Naoya’s cursed energy, something that potentially retained fragments of his consciousness, but you also know that it can only be you. You won’t let some random sorcerer put it down like a rabid dog—it is not Naoya, and it’s certainly not Naoya enough, but it’s still—
It’s wearing his face.
It hasn’t noticed you yet, thrown into a blind rage by the sorcerers who are attacking it. You don’t recognize two of them—older men who don’t seem to belong to this era. You have half a mind to spit at the Kogane for lying to you and saying there were no other reincarnated sorcerers, but you realize that they probably entered the colony after your hunt, and you have more pressing issues right now anyway.
You do recognize the other two—Zenin Maki and Kamo Noritoshi.
How fucking ironic.
You watch Maki push herself to her feet after taking a blow from the cursed spirit. You can’t muster the anger you want to feel, not toward her, not toward Noritoshi, not toward the two reincarnated sorcerers, not even toward the thing wearing Naoya’s face—you are just tired. The exhaustion sinks into your bones, heavier than fear, heavier than rage. You are tired; you just want to rest.
It moves wrong. Too feral. Too loose. Naoya’s movements were always sharp and precise when he was fighting, even when he was furious. This thing thrashes, overcommits, howls without words. It’s disgusting, and it has no right to wear his face the way it is. This is not Naoya, not enough, not even nearly.
You step off the curb before you fully realize you’ve come to a decision. Asphalt crunches under your boots, and the cursed spirit falters just as it brings its hands up to use a hand sign, head snapping in your direction, gold eyes locking onto yours with something like confusion. Recognition, maybe. Its hands falter mid-motion, fingers twitching as though it forgot what it was doing. It makes you sick. This is not Naoya, and it should not look at you like Naoya would.
“Yo,” you say, voice bland, empty to even your own ears. “I’ve been looking for you, asshole. Why do you keep running from me, hm?”
It doesn’t respond to you. It blinks once. Twice. The same way Naoya always would when he was trying not to have a visible reaction to something that caught him off guard. You hate it—that thing is not Naoya, and it should not be acting like Naoya would. The ring on your fourth finger weighs impossibly heavy. You are so tired.
Maki says your name, trying to get your attention, and you look at her over your shoulder. Whatever she sees in your face makes her falter. You say, “Stay out of this, Maki-chan. You and Kamo have done enough.”
Maki disagrees, shaking her head, “But—”
“Stay out of this,” you repeat, voice colder this time. “I won’t repeat myself again.” Maki’s nostrils flare as she inhales, preparing to disagree again, but Noritoshi grabs her arm, shaking his head. “Kogane, transfer all of my remaining points to Zenin Maki.”
“I cannot! There is no player called Zenin Maki participating in this game!”
Your eyes slide shut. You exhale and cast another dull look back at Noritoshi. “Kogane, transfer all of my remaining points to Kamo Noritoshi.”
How sick, you think. The words taste bitter on your tongue—giving everything you have left to a Kamo. How much more shame are you going to bring to the people you’ve lost?
The sins of the parent are not the sins of the child, you tell yourself again as the Kogane confirms the point transfer. You turn your attention back to the cursed spirit, and you hate that it’s still standing there. You hate that it’s frowning. You hate that its gaze is dragging between you and the other sorcerers like it's trying to understand what’s happening. Where did the rage go? The blind fury? The animal-like brutality? The hatred? The lust for vengeance? Why is it almost… docile right now? Why is it looking at you like this? Why is it looking at you like—
“I know you can speak,” you say. “Say something already.”
Its throat works once. Twice. When it finally speaks, the sound is wrong—rough and layered in a way that Naoya’s smooth timbre never was—but the cadence makes your stomach drop.
“... Took ya long enough.”
It shouldn’t sound like him. It doesn’t sound like him, but also—it does. It shouldn’t know how to give you that smug half-smile that drives you crazy, shouldn’t know how to drag the words out in the same way he always did when he was trying to piss you off. Your nails bite into your palms hard enough to hurt. You are so fucking tired.
“Hah?” you ask, swallowing down the lump that forms in your throat. “You were the one running from me like a little bitch. If anything, took you long enough to actually face me.”
You don’t even know why you’re indulging it in conversation. This is not Naoya. It does not matter if it’s wearing Naoya’s face. It does not matter if it has some strange mimicry of his voice. It does not matter that it has some of his mannerisms.
It is not Naoya. Not your Naoya.
But—
What if it really is Naoya enough?
No, it isn’t. It can’t be.
It tilts its head again, the same wrong imitation of a familiar gesture. Gold eyes flick over you, lingering in the same places Naoya’s would—your eyes, your lips, the wound on your left side. Its lips curl down at that last one.
“Still runnin’ around gettin’ yourself hurt,” it mutters, voice rough. “Thought I told you to stay away from all this shit. Lookit ya now, got yourself all hurt, all wound up. Was gonna come to you once I was ready. Shoulda just waited. Always so impatient.”
This is not Naoya.
This is a cursed spirit.
You hate that you're having to convince yourself of this. You shouldn't have given it the opportunity to talk. What were you thinking? Naoya told you this himself—curses that wear human faces lie and trick and beg and pretend. You grit your teeth, jaw aching from the effort to keep from reacting. You miss him. You want him back. But this isn’t him. It’s not him. It’ll never be enough. Not the way he was.
“Come to me?” you ask with a scoff, as though your heart isn’t in your throat, “And what did you expect, huh? That I would just accept some cheap imitation of Naoya with open arms? You’re not him. You’re just some half-baked cursed spirit wearing his face. Quit pretending you know me. Quit pretending to be him. You’re gonna make me hurl.”
You just want to rest. Why does he have to put you through this? Why couldn’t he just—
“... Pretend?” it echoes, and there’s something strange in its voice. You ignore it. “You think I’m fuckin’ pretending? It’s me. You know it’s me. You know it, y’fuckin’ bitch. Don’t stand there acting like you don’t recognize me. Are you serious right now?”
You don’t answer it this time. You keep Naoya’s tanto knife strapped to your forearm, hidden beneath your sleeve, and you pull out your own instead, leaning back on your heels before turning your attention back up to it. Naoya’s face stares back at you, something close to confusion slipping onto it when you pull out the knife—it’s not him, you know it’s not him, but how—how are you supposed to kill something that wears his face? When his face will be the one that twists in pain, shock, anger when you sink the knife in? How are you supposed to do that?
You’re so fucking tired. You’re so tired. You’re so tired.
You’ll have to use your technique, you force yourself to push down all of your treacherous thoughts. You only have to keep pushing a little more, then you can rest. With your technique activated, you’ll be able to see its movements without having to actually see it at all. All you’ll have to do is follow its cursed energy paths. You exhale through your nose deeply, lifting your hand up, and you watch as its eyes widen, and its face twists—fury, disbelief, worse, betrayal—as it realizes what exactly you’re here for.
“You traitor bitch,” it shrieks at you. It doesn’t sound like Naoya this time, not at all. Too inhuman, twisted with rage and hatred. Naoya has been angry with you millions of times before, but he’s never sounded like this, never so hateful. “I came back for you! I came back for you! And you’re going to side with them? You’re choosing them?! I’m gonna kill you, I’ll fuckin’ kill you—”
Your lips curl up into a small smile as your eyes slide shut. His rage lights up the paths ahead of you in jagged, violent arcs, fast and amateurish, all force and no restraint. Not Naoya. Your Naoya was never so sloppy.
You tell him quietly, “Not if I kill you first.”
He lunges, and you are already moving.
The first strike tears through the space where your head was going to be a breath ago. You pivot on your heel, slipping inside the gap your technique showed you, blade flashing up in a clean strike that cuts through its arm. It makes a noise as the blade clips it, more surprised than angry or wounded, as though it didn’t actually expect you to try to hurt it. You can picture the wide-eyed, betrayed expression Naoya would direct toward you, and it makes your stomach churn.
Focus.
You slip past the next blow just as easily, feet moving on instinct, body remembering a rhythm that you learned a long, long time ago. It’s not Naoya, not really, but it favors its left side, the same way Naoya always used to, and it strikes with its right hand first, just like he would. You can almost imagine that the two of you are back at your estate, sparring in the training grounds while your brothers watched, can almost imagine laughing as you dodge another quick blow, gaze catching his as you toss a smile at his scowl, can almost imagine that this is all just for fun, that you’ll end this sprawled on the ground, shoulder-to-shoulder, laughing the way you always do. You have to swallow back the lump that forms in your throat, ducking under a swing and driving your blade into its side.
The cursed spirit is faster than Naoya was, and you can hear it laughing as it moves away, a shrill sound that scrapes at your ears. “Lookit me!” it demands, voice pitching high and low all at once. You squeeze your eyes shut tighter, refusing. “I said, look at me! I’m stronger than I ever was—I’m better! Don’t get tired, don’t bleed, don’t need anyone, not even you, not even you!”
You pivot before the next strike even exists, something hot and wet tracks down your cheeks—you don’t know if it’s blood or tears, and you don’t want to know. Every second this fight drags on, the cursed spirit gets faster and faster, and you have to compensate by pushing your technique further, three steps to five, five to seven, seven to ten—you’ve never pushed past ten, and your head is pounding as you force yourself to.
“Why won’t you fucking look at me?” it snarls, furious, swinging again, wild and overextended, desperate for you to look at it—really look—like it’s waiting for praise, recognition, for you to tell it that it’s enough for you. Naoya would do this too, would linger around and wait for you to acknowledge him, but he was never so open about it. “Look at me, y’fucking bitch. I don’t need you! I never did, I never needed you, fucking look at me!”
You need to get it to stop moving—to cut off the stacks of Projection Sorcery before it ramps up the speed to something you can’t physically react to in time. It doesn’t matter how far you see ahead if it keeps accelerating beyond what your body can handle. You grit your teeth as it flees again, backing away to pick up momentum, and you watch a path start to form behind you, cutting through buildings, tearing up the street, and your jaw tightens. You drop down right as it speeds past the stop sign at the end of the street, grabbing a fistful of crushed asphalt and swinging it upward, flinging it into where his face will be in a few moments.
“Fuck—” it gasps, and you can’t help the way your eyes flutter open as it stumbles back, getting caught in one of its own frames for a split second. Shock flickers across its face before rage swallows it whole. “Cheap fuckin’ trick.”
“Same trick,” you correct quietly. “Naoya never would’ve fallen for it.”
You hesitate for a second too long, gaze lingering on its face—Naoya’s face, his stolen face—and suddenly you’re looking up at the sky, vision white for half a heartbeat. Pain blooms along your spine, and before you can roll away, a familiar shadow looms over you
“Knew I’d get ya back where ya belong,” it says with an ugly sneer. “Always preferred you like this—flat on your fuckin’ back, spread out, lookin’ up at me with that helpless look in your eyes.”
It bends over you, grabbing your face between its fingers, and you glare up at it hatefully. Its skin is cold. You blink, and for a second, the face above you is half-caved in, blood and gore, and you’re back in the Zenin estate, holding him in your arms, begging the world not to take him from you too.
Focus, you think, and you pray that the wetness on your cheeks is blood and not tears.
You grab the wrist of the hand holding your face as leverage, and you reach up, grabbing a fistful of its hair to yank it down to the ground with you. If you can keep it on the floor, it can’t dart around and regain momentum. It hits the pavement hard with a hiss of surprise, bodies colliding in an ugly sprawl. The impact rattles your teeth, and it snarls, flailing, trying to kick free, cursed energy spiking in erratic bursts as it tries to use Projection Sorcery to get off the ground, but you refuse to let go, pushing its face into the muddy asphalt like the two of you are eight and ten again, rolling around in the garden.
“Get off!” it shrieks, clawing at you, trying to buck you off, and you jab your knee hard into its side. It lets out a sharp and startled yelp, and for a split second, you remember the way he would let out obnoxious squeaks when the two of you were children and you got a good hit in, face flaming red as you make fun of him. You almost let a laugh slip out, but catch yourself. You think you are crying. “Get off!”
You can’t kill it with your bare hands, you know that, but your hands find its throat anyway. Your fingers tighten around it, nails digging in as if you can choke the rage out of it. Its blood isn’t even red—murky purple, disgusting beneath your nails. Not Naoya, not your Naoya. You shut your eyes again, you can’t look at it. It thrashes beneath you, clawing at your arms, dragging red lines through your biceps, but you stay there, knees planted around its waist, grip on its neck tightening, tears and blood alike spilling over your cheeks in hot, uncontrollable streams.
“Why—” you choke out, voice breaking as your grip tightens. “Why couldn’t you have just come over? Why couldn’t you have just listened? Just this once?”
“Get off!” it continues to shriek. You think that it could probably force you off if it really wanted to, but it doesn’t. It claws and screams and tries to roll you off of it to get the upperhand, and you wonder if whatever is left of Naoya in there has fallen back into memory, just like you: knees in the dirt, hands everywhere, neither of you willing to give an inch, breathless and furious and laughing despite yourselves, limbs tangled in the garden mud because neither of you ever knew how to stop. It’s all the same—nothing’s ever changed. You think it was always going to end this way, one way or another. “Get off, get off, get off!”
“Shut up!” you scream, the sound tearing out of you raw and ugly. You hold his throat tighter and shake furiously. “Shut up! Tell me why! Tell me why you had to run off like that! Why did you have to be so fucking stupid? Why did you have to leave? You were always enough for me, why wasn’t I ever enough for you, you fucking asshole?”
The cursed spirit bucks beneath you again, rage flaring, but there’s something else there too now—confusion, fury tangled with something like pain. It spits again, “I was gonna fix it. I was gonna come back. I did come back. I always fuckin’ come back, don’t I? I’m here—with you. I did it. I fuckin’ did it,” You can’t look at it, eyes still squeezed tight, “and I’m stronger now, faster, can’t you see? Why won’t you look at me? Look at me! Just fuckin’ look at me! Fuck!”
You do, finally, and Naoya stares up at you, gold eyes wild and unfocused, too bright, too sharp, burning with something that is not life. The face is his and it isn’t all at once. For a second—just a split second—you see it: the boy who kicked dirt at your ankles, the man who always came back to you, the idiot who loved you so fiercely that it curdled into something ugly when he didn’t know how to deal with it. Your chest aches, a shuddering breath spilling from your lips, and then—
Then it’s gone, swallowed by something feral and wrong.
It knocks you off of it in your moment of hesitation, and your back hits the asphalt hard, pain jolting up your spine as the breath punches out of your lungs. You skid across the street, shirt tearing, skin burning, ears ringing. You’re in so much pain, you are so tired, and you push yourself back up to your feet anyway. It’s gone already, back to using its technique, trying to pick up speed again. Your head feels heavy and tired as you lift your hand back to activate yours, brain throbbing as his path becomes visible again.
You won't be able to keep outmaneuvering it, you realize. You're running out of energy. Everything hurts. You are tired—so tired. You need to end this—you're the only one who can end this, because you won't let Naoya—this thing born of his energy—die by anyone else's hands, not again. You owe him that much, since you didn't properly avenge him.
You see it all before it happens—before you even come to the decision yourself—you see the angle of its approach, the way it comes at you head-on, the moment it expects you to dodge. It always expects you to dodge, so did Naoya, because you always do.
Except this time, you don’t—can’t—don’t. You don’t know for sure. Don’t know if it matters. Don’t care if it matters. You are tired—physically, mentally, and your limbs won’t cooperate with you either way. You need to end this, need to get close enough to reach the cursed spirit's core.
Its hand spears toward your chest, powered by its cursed energy—Naoya’s warped cursed energy—and pain detonates through you, blinding. The impact knocks the air from your lungs in a broken gasp as its hand drives clean through muscle and bone. Warmth floods your chest, and your knees almost buckle.
It freezes, like it’s unsure what just happened.
“What—” it breathes out. “You—why didn’t you—”
You grab its wrist for leverage and force yourself forward, deeper on its arm, before you sling your arms around its shoulders, a twisted mimicry of a hug. You flatten your palm against its upper back, right over the stab wound that killed your Naoya. Your face drops into the crook of its neck, and you say softly, “It’s here, isn’t it? The core?”
It doesn’t seem to register what you said. “Why didn’t you dodge?” it demands again. “Why didn’t you dodge, y’bitch? Why didn’t you dodge?!”
You exhale, blood bubbling at your lips, and you free Naoya’s tanto knife from where it’s hidden beneath your sleeve, and you muster all that’s left of your cursed energy to infuse it into the blade before you drive it into him.
It gasps—raw and startled and terribly familiar—the blade sinks in with sickening ease, plunging right into the cursed spirit’s core. It goes rigid in your arms, the hand buried in your chest trembles once, before it pulls it out, but it doesn’t push you away like you expect. Its breath tears out in a sound that is too close to your name, and it staggers, leaning into you, and for a moment, you’re pressed together in some grotesque parody of an embrace—blood slicking your clothes, face, hands, pooling beneath the two of you and staining the asphalt.
“Can’t believe the most romantic thing we’re ever gonna do is die together,” you murmur hoarsely, choking on what you think is a laugh. All of the anger and grief that has been plaguing you for days shifts into something closer to acceptance, eyes sliding shut briefly. This was always how it was going to happen, you think again—you and him dying together like this. One way or another, you always find your way back to each other, even now, even for this. Especially for this. You think, maybe, you wouldn’t have had it any other way. “Asshole, we could’ve gotten married if you weren’t so fucking stubborn.”
“You’re the fuckin’ stubborn one,” he rasps, and like you, all of the rage and malice that caused him to be reborn drains away into something far more human, forehead dropping against your shoulder. “Makin’ me wait for years, then finally agreein’ and wanting to wait even longer for the damn cherry blossoms.”
“All seems so dumb now,” you sigh, propping your chin on his shoulder, gaze lifting to the clear skies. “Could’ve had so much more time together.”
“I woulda waited longer,” he tells you quietly. “However long it took.”
Your knees finally buckle, and he eases you down to the ground before collapsing next to you. His body is disappearing slowly, the lower half first, creeping upward—a cursed spirit, not your Naoya, you remind yourself, but you don’t have it in you to keep making the distinction anymore. Naoya enough, just for a little bit. He’s so fucking stubborn, you think, almost fondly. Even as a cursed spirit, he’s clinging on to his form when most would’ve dissolved the moment the blade pierced its core.
“Let me go first this time, okay?” you breathe out, head dropping to rest on his shoulder, vision blurring a bit at the edges. You think you feel him reach for your hand, but your limbs are numb, and you don’t have the strength to look down and check. “It’s only fair.”
“Talkin’ about fairness when ya stabbed me in the back,” he mutters. “Y’got some nerve, y’know that?”
You laugh at that, blood bubbling slightly at your lips, eyes sliding shut. He laughs too. You can feel his shoulders shaking beneath your head
There’s a pause, and then you feel pressure on your fingers. You’re right, you realize, he is holding your hand, fingers entwined with yours, thumb brushing over the ring on your fourth finger. You try to squeeze, but the movement is small and clumsy, everything you have left.
After a moment, he tells you quietly, “I’m sorry. I thought—I didn’t—”
“Quit apologizing,” you mutter. “You’re gonna make me sick. I’m already dying, don’t make it more painful.”
He lets out a huff of air—a laugh, you think—and then asks, “Are we… okay?”
You smile, faint and tired, mind starting to slip. “Idiot, we’ll always be okay.”
“Next time, let’s not fuck around so much, yeah?” he exhales, long and shaky. “Let’s do it right.”
“Yeah, that… that sounds really nice.”
————————
NOVEMBER 25TH, 2018
Satoru asks about you a few days after he’s unsealed.
(“If she’s not here, then…” Maki grimaces and looks away at his words. Satoru lets out a sigh, an unreadable expression crossing his face as he stares ahead. “How did it happen?”
“It didn’t have to happen,” Maki replies, jaw tight and lips pinched. “If she had just let Kamo-kun and I handle Naoya—”
Satoru’s eyes widen. “Naoya killed her?” he asks, voice riddled with shock. “I was only sealed for three weeks, right?”
“Naoya came back as a cursed spirit after he died,” Maki says after a moment, and something close to understanding flashes through Satoru’s eyes as soon as he hears it, already having figured out where this is going. “She insisted on exorcising him herself. Wouldn’t accept help. She—I think she purposely—”
“Yeah, that sounds about right.” Satoru lets out a huff of air, gaze solemn as he turns it up toward the sky. “She was always stubborn as hell. Man, she picked the worst possible time to pull something like this, didn’t she? Her technique would’ve been game-changing for this fight.”
“You don’t sound surprised,” Maki murmurs quietly. “I know you two were really close, sensei. You should know, it was—”
He lifts a hand, stopping her without looking at her. “Don’t. I don’t need the details.” His gaze drops back down to the ground. “She made her choice, and I won’t disrespect her by pretending I don’t understand it.” He tosses Maki an easy, familiar smile, mask slipping back into place. “I did warn her. Guess I get to tell her ‘I told you so’ one day. C’mon. Let’s get back to work. No rest for the wicked, right?”)
————————
I actually contemplated so many different endings for this fic, but I feel as though this one was the most fitting for them. If you’re curious, my two big options were: 1) what I’m going to do for the alternate ending, where the Naoya still got caught up in the Zenin Massacre but he was alive when she got there, he was in a coma for a few months before he wakes up again, and 2) Naoya goes to her instead of going back to the Zenin estate. This was my initial idea for the ending, he would go to her, they would end up showing up to help for the Shinjuku showdown arc, and then they would die during the Sukuna fight instead. But then I figured if I was going to kill them anyway, I think it would be best leaving it for canon, and then I got the lovely idea of her having to exorcise curse!naoya and I just had to go with it.
I think the part I struggled most with this part of the fic was balancing her dislike of the Zenins. I think its pretty apparent through the first three parts of the fic that she really does not like the Zenins as a whole (lends to the huge part of our girl being a major hypocrite). She was miserable being there as a kid, even when she started looking forward to seeing Naoya, because they treated her so poorly compared to how she was treated at her own clan's estate. I think I probably could have done a better job of displaying that back in part 1, because it mostly came off in implications (the interactions with Naotaka, how she was always very tense when people other than naoya were around, etc) but I was just more focused on her developing relationship with Naoya. Even when she returns at 19 at Naoya's invite, they literally isolate her and pretend she's not there, AND EVEN AFTER HER CLAN IS KILLED AND SHE BCOMES CLAN HEAD, they are very cold to her. She HATED the Zenins, and that's partially why she couldn't hold what Maki did against her, even without knowing Mai's death was the immediate cause of the massacre. But I was struggling very hard with balancing that & her reasoning as to why she couldn't bring herself to go after Maki when Naoya is literally her whole world, but eventually I just decided that it just would not feel right of her to do that because 1) she literally watched Maki grow up idolizing her as being everything the Zenins hated and THRIVING while being it, and 2) she's still a kid, one of Satoru's kids, one of HER kids really, because she was the one who helped her by talking to Satoru, and I just could not see her going for revenge with all of that taken into consideration alongside how she feels about the Zenins.
I also think it added on to her complicated treatment of Noritoshi and how she felt as if she never got revenge and dishonored her family. Like every time she's lost someone, she's never been able to properly avenge them, and it just adds into the tragedy of it all.
So dfjhusuhfasfd I wasn’t actually sure how to go about handling vengeful cursed spirit Naoya. I think it was pretty obvious in the manga that he retained A LOT of his previous personality whe he was reborn as a curse, and I wasn’t sure how far to extend it with our girl. Hatred/resentment is easy to retain when being reborn as a curse since its a negative emotion, but we see with Rika that love is twisted into something awful, so I thought it would be more fitting if it was partially displayed in resentment toward his dependency on her + his insatiable need for validation from her. So he retained most of his love for her, but it was seriously twisted + he was more aggressive/erratic as a curse. I lowkey probably screwed up a lot of cursed spirit lore with this HDFAIUFHSD especially that ending bit, but I don’t care because it fits the narrative I was trying to create. Their last conversation at the end was meant to reflect the conversation Rika had with Yuta after the curse was severed.
Also probably screwed up the rest of the culling games by having her introduce a rule of her own, I don't even really know if the kogane would allow that rule, but you already know what I'm going to say: don't care since it builds the narrative I was trying to create KDAFHAIUHDFUASUHDF
Also to get one thing straight before I have people in my inbox annoyed: curse!naoya would have curb stomped her if he was actually taking it seriously. She can use her technique to read into future actions, so she would’ve lasted longer than most, but he eventually just would’ve been going too fast that it wouldn’t have mattered she could see ahead, because she just physically wouldn’t be able to react fast enough. That’s partially why she chose to just take the blow at the end, but I purposely left her reasonings up to interpretation so you could decide for yourself if she 1) let him kill her, 2) was too exhausted to keep fighting, or 3) did it for strategic purposes. Either way, curse!naoya was not taking the fight as seriously, because when he was reborn as a curse, it was partially in attachment to her, so he didn't want to intentionally hurt her, just like rika wouldn't want to intentially hurt yuta, even if it was very aggressive/angry at her. That’s also why it was so shocked at the end when she didn’t dodge.
I also think it’s so funny and we’re going to see this in the alternate ending I’m going to write, but I genuinely think if she’d been around for the Shinjuku showdown, things would’ve gone very differently SDKFJSIHFSUDFH I do need to reread it soon, and I have gojo mention it at the end, but her being able to trace paths however far ahead would have been game changing for the sole reason that she would’ve seen Sukuna’s world slash before it killed gojo when everyone assumed he won. All this to say, I’m a bit excited for the alternate ending because we’re going to get a cute (almost) everyone lives au
I can’t think of anything else but thank you guys so much for reading my fic and being so kind to me. I love you all it’s been so fun sharing this all with everyone. MWAH MWAH
For years you’ve envied Gojo’s strength. After a body swap curse strikes during a mission, you no longer have to.
CONTENT: 18+ body swap kink. afab jujutsu sorcerer reader, soft dom reader, canon universe, arguing as foreplay, one suicide joke in the second scene, frenemies, mutual masturbation, fingering and oral (gojo receiving in female body), riding, p in v sex, manhandling, unsafe sex, creampie, brief breeding kink mention, reader has very cheesy dirty talk. 13.3k wc.
MEL'S NOTE: criminally late but the final instalment of my kinktober is finally here! very proud to have finished it against all odds. this spiralled away from me bc who doesn't want the chance to dick this man down lmfao. req from the gorgeous @hisokamywaifu, i hope you enjoy lovely <3
‹‹ KINKTOBER 2025 | GENERAL M.LIST | READ ON AO3
How unfair it is, the strength written into each limb you now command. Jealousy bubbles in the back of your throat until you’re choking on it, and you twist your fist in the front of your uniform to snarl down at Gojo.
“This your fuckin’ fault,” you spit, hating the smug look he’s plastered on your face. You bare your teeth to communicate as much. “Always gotta taunt the fuckin’ curses, huh, tough guy? Well look at where it’s landed us now!”
Shoving Gojo away, you barely suppress the urge to scream. Instead you gesture down at his body which, by some sardonic twist of fate, you possess to emphasise the predicament the two of you are trapped in. Gojo, in your fucking body, stumbles back a few gratifying steps before finding his balance among the wreckage of a conflict, heated until mere moments ago. Right before the curse you were fighting decided to vanish in a plume of smoky rubble. Closing the distance, you stalk forward.
Rage is all you can taste.
“You gotta get us out of this mess, Gojo,” you say dangerously low, jabbing your finger into Gojo’s—your—soft chest. Fuck, you’re one moment away from snapping like a rubber band cooled too quickly. And you really don’t know what the consequences will be when you can feel Gojo's power hiding from you—Six Eyes tucked deep in the recesses of his body. You’re not keen to find out the damage a person can do when they wield the Gojo Clan power with all the training of a newborn baby. “What if the curse comes back, you imbecile?”
Gojo laughs, and the condescending peals of it ring high and shrill in the air.
Is that really what you sound like to other people?
“It won’t come back,” Gojo states with an air of finality which would have you strangling the man if he weren’t trapped inside your body.
“Oh yeah? Care to enlighten me? Your partner on this mission who could just, I don’t know… maybe, benefit from knowing such information,” you remind viciously, running anxiety-filled fingers through your hair—Gojo’s hair—fuck this is really messing with your head, and why is it so soft? You half-pictured him to use some 19-in-1 crap which surely wouldn’t achieve this silkiness. The attempt to ground yourself begins spiralling into panic. “I swear you fuckin' get off on being better than me or something, Gojo. Well, news flash! You are. Yet look where that genius brain of yours got us now. Nurture versus nature strikes again.”
Gojo narrows his eyes at you, lips thinning at your attitude. This argument is going to be ugly. You can already tell—feel the familiar stirring of it in your bones. Compelled by fury and determined to meet the nasty retort you know is coming head-on, you yank down the blindfold over your eyes without sparing a thought to the consequence.
A split second later you're on your knees. Accosted by walls of spasming lights and strange shapes, distorting and jumping through colours you don’t recognise, and screeching rivers of particles persist in all directions and you can see sound, how can you fucking see sound? The air waves curl in front of Gojo’s mouth but you can’t hear them, your brain existing somewhere beyond typical overstimulation as it’s confronted with information you simply cannot comprehend.
You curl up on the ground like a child and squeeze your eyes shut, no more than a decorated corpse. You are unaccompanied by even the presence of mind to pray your suffering will end soon. Only able to endure the atoms vibrating in your eyelids and the lights rotating past them, backlighting the infinite particles like a phantasmagoria designed for war torture.
Without warning, it dims considerably.
You inhale a rattling breath you weren't aware you’d been holding.
“—alright, it’s— Look at— Hey—”
Gojo’s voice reaches you in fragmented slices. It takes a lifetime for your heart to calm the war drum beat its imitating, and longer still for you to peel open your eyes. Gojo hovers on his haunches an arm's length from your trembling form, and stares down at you with your face. There’s a pinch in his eyebrows but that is the only, and likely unintentional, indicator to suggest he may be perturbed.
“Look at me,” Gojo says, uncharacteristically soft.
You wonder if the natural tone of your voice is deceiving you. There's no way he's actually worried. His ego has cursed you to this body, and while you always knew it would get him in deep shit one day, you simply weren't prepared to be dragged down with him.
You exhale, still curled up pathetically on the ground. “I am.”
It’s the truth. At some point during your panic, Gojo must have slipped the blindfold back over your eyes, rendering him unable to follow your gaze. His own tracks your expression. For a moment he's silent. Then, he's fishing your phone out of his pocket, unlocking it with your face identification, and tapping on it impatiently.
The rings of a call pierce the air and you vaguely recognise Ijichi's voice lilting across the line in your exhaustion. You can do no more than lay there and watch Gojo's lips move.
At the beep of a call hung up, Gojo turns to you resolutely. "I'll sort this out."
—
In the staff common room, you're currently hovering in an armchair and debating the likelihood of you reaching it before the year is out.
You see, Gojo's Limitless technique decided to activate as soon as you lugged your ass out of the transport vehicle when it dropped you back on campus. Now you're finding out you took sitting for granted as you float approximately a couple of inches atop the actual chair cushion. Sceptically, you eye the sight. Doubt about your ability to control the Six Eyes only increasing each second you remain suspended in the air.
“This fuckin’ sucks,” you complain, tipping your head back into, surprise, the air above the chair’s backrest. “Can’t sit down, can’t drink a fuckin’ coffee—which I’m desperate for by the way, can’t go for a—”
“Please shut up,” Yaga monotones, cutting you off and taking a pointed sip of what you know to be coffee in his mug. Bastard. “Complaining will not help your situation.”
“Oh and silence will?” you bite, glaring at the best principal decal printed on the ceramic instead of Yaga himself.
You may be mad but you're not suicidal.
“Maybe then I'll be able to have a productive thought about how to get us out of this mess,” Gojo pipes up in your light voice. Slouched on a wooden chair nearby, he’s mindlessly watching one of his manicured fingers trace shapes on the table. Like a baby captivated by a cheap, plastic galaxy spinning above its head. “A foreign concept for you, I’m aware.”
You scoff, flipping his back your middle finger. Childish? Sure. But it’s not like you can actually hit him in your current predicament so you have to settle for the small win.
“How long are we gonna be stuck like this?” you press, ignoring both their requests for silence. “I keep tripping over your lanky fuckin’ legs, Gojo, stumbling like a new born deer or some shit, and this blindfold is makin’ me feel claustrophobic, and I kind of have to pee but I also really do not want to face that right now,” you ramble, leg bouncing with anxiety. “And if I have to touch your dick I might just kill myself to save everyone the trouble.”
You blow out a breath when the words stop their mad dash from your mouth. Noticing the barely-there smile Yaga is hiding behind his mug, and the way Gojo is snickering into the palm of his hand, a frustrated sound rips itself from your throat. Soon you’re going to blow a fuse and then they’ll really be sorry.
“I’m serious!” you yell. “I do not want to touch your dick, Gojo!”
“Alright, alright,” Gojo laughs, palms lifted in surrender. “I get it… though I would love to be a fly on the wall. Watch you figure out how to piss with a cock.”
“Satoru,” Yaga warns, shooting Gojo a reproachful look.
“Stop acting like it’s some revered skill,” you snap, curling your lip up at the crudeness of his statement. “It’s a fuckin’ dick, Gojo, not rocket science.” You run a hand back through your short hair, tugging slightly at the strands in frustration. “God, you are genuinely insufferable. Yaga, please, let me go home! If I spend anymore time with this moron I’m going to lose braincells and it won’t be me who suffers the consequences considering who’s fuckin’ body I’m trapped in!”
“You know I can’t do that,” Yaga counters mildly, fingers flexing around his mug.
“I am going to kill him,” you emphasise, waving a frantic hand through the air in the vague direction of Gojo. “And he’s in my body!”
Yaga opens his mouth to reply but Gojo stands and cuts him off with an infurating whistled tune, as though he's jumped straight from a fourties cartoon. You mime a gag and Gojo's sharp eyes slide to you scornfully.
It's all you can do to not appear too pleased by the reaction.
And as it turns out, Gojo has that covered for you also; next to Yaga, your body looks much shorter than it feels when you’re in it. The height difference only highlighted from your foreign perspective.
Bristling at the wound to your ego, you sniff and turn away from the sight. You never noticed the corner of the staffroom has cobwebs.
“Why don’t I go back with her?” Gojo asks Yaga. When you flash them a brief glance, inevitably unable to keep your gaze from the bane of your existence for long, Gojo is looking up at the principal, yet somehow still managing to carry a general air of superiority that defies your stature. You fight back the urge to jam your fingers into your eyesockets. “I can keep an eye on her until Shoko gets back from Okinawa tomorrow, and then I can bring her in and we’ll reevaluate if long-term adjustments need to be made.”
“I’m not a fuckin’ dog, you prick,” you mutter, jaw tense. “‘Bring her in,’ who the fuck do you think you are?”
“Language,” Yaga chides, though you know by now it's more habit than formality. He ponders the idea for a moment and you shoot Gojo a nasty look while Yaga is distracted. Gojo sticks his tongue out at you back. Child, you think spitefully. “That could work,” Yaga agrees eventually. “There’s nothing more we can do without Shoko, unfortunately, but we also can’t afford to split the two of you at the moment with the danger of Six Eyes on a slack leash.”
“Perfect! So it’s settled then,” Gojo chirps, an awful grin on his face. Time slows to a stop as he claps his hands and beckons you forward in one sharp motion. “Heel.”
Your jaw drops.
“But,” Yaga interrupts pointedly, waving a placating hand in your direction and now you really do feel like a dog. Gojo’s glee may as well be written on his face with black permanent marker for how obvious it is. “You must teach her to control it, Satoru, as best she can,” Yaga continues, voice grave. You both stiffen and turn to listen to him carefully. “Worst case scenario, you’re both trapped for an undetermined length of time. We cannot risk anything.”
Nodding absently, you’re already distracted by the concept of being stuck in Gojo’s body indefinitely. It’s nasty talons latch onto your brain and hold tight. Bile rises into your throat. And you're pretty sure your racing heart may be an early sign of cardiac arrest.
Probably nothing to worry about right now.
Yet if you die in this body, what happens to you? Does your consciousness zip back into your own body like rebooting a troublesome computer? Or would it only trap Gojo in your body for the rest of its lifespan and you'd be left to face whatever the afterlife entails for people with morally grey compasses and high curse body counts, leaving Gojo to run wild while most everyone will believe it to be you?
God, what a horrible thought.
“Make sure the blindfold stays on at all times,” Yaga utters, and you can sense the dismissal.
Rising to your feet, you make sure to stare down the slope of your nose at Gojo disdainfully before snapping your head forward and striding out of the room. Like hell you’re going to let him lead. His quiet footfalls echo behind you, but mercifully he is silent—perhaps plagued by the same fear.
How long could you be trapped in this body?
—
“I wasn’t joking about havin’ to pee,” you grumble as you step through the threshold to your flat with Gojo in tow.
“I know you weren’t,” Gojo replies blandly, gaze sweeping the organised chaos you live in. You hear him kick the door closed behind you. “I needed a piss at the start of the mission. Real unfortunate timing, all things considered.”
Against the entrance walls, books are piled up haphazardly thanks to your bad habit of buying more novels than you’ll be able to read in ten lifetimes. You toe Gojo’s shoes off to join the stacks carelessly, not bothering to prompt Gojo to do the same before you round the corner into your kitchen.
Let him figure out the tiny buckles of your shoes by himself, you think sadistically. Serves him right.
But then you have to duck to get through the doorway and it's as though Gojo's miraculously cashed in his karma paycheck early. You kiss your teeth in irritation, feeling oversized in your cramped flat for the first time in all the years you've lived here.
Your annoyance only worsens when Gojo's Limitless doesn't allow you to grab the fridge handle. You freeze. Try to control your breathing. And ultimately fail when your stomach pangs with hunger.
“How the fuck did your parents manage?” you call out to Gojo, frustration melding into bafflement at the reality of your situation. “Surely they couldn’t touch you?”
A crash instantly followed by a yelp of pain rings out from the hallway, and you get your answer as Gojo pads around the corner in pantyhose-clad feet.
“My parents told me it used to activate randomly when I was a baby.” He doesn’t spare you a glance, breezing past to tug open the fridge like he hadn't just let out the most pathetic squeal you've ever heard. You can’t find the energy to stop him. “But most often when I was upset, or scared—when I was crying mainly, I guess. Must've been difficult for a baby to comprehend the entire universe and all. You know. You saw it. And they used to have servants check constantly if I’d released the technique so that they could feed me or hold me.”
You stew on the information, watching Gojo select a Yakult, peel off the foil lid, and drop it on your countertop like he owns the place.
On paper, he does anyway. And isn’t that a strange thought.
“Apparently I learnt to control it by 10 months. And by the time I was almost 2, I was consciously turning it on and off so that my parents couldn’t stop me from climbing on the furniture or put me to bed if I wanted to stay awake.” Gojo laughs, as though recalling memories he can’t possibly remember.
“So you were a nightmare child,” you surmise, raising an eyebrow.
“I’d argue I was pretty cute,” Gojo offers, tipping his head back to swallow the last drops. You eye the motion, still finding it jarring to be seeing your own mouth move every time Gojo’s words grate in the air. “And either way, you’re being shown up by that little 2 year old me, so you should probably be feeling more worried about that than what my parents had to deal with.”
Scowling, you swipe a hand through the air to dismiss the half-baked insult. In the safety of your home, you find yourself slightly lost as to what to do, standing uselessly in the middle of the kitchen as a result. You’re unable to touch anything and that means you can’t drink or eat or sit down. Where does that leave you? Cursed to isolation until this is fixed?
“C’mon,” Gojo murmurs, “a little curse and you lose all your fire? Lame.”
“‘A little curse?’” you repeat incredulously.
A grin splits Gojo's lips as though he was waiting for the precise reaction you just provided. Not for the first time, you wish you had the forethought to not retaliate to his provocations. But it's like he has an instruction manual detailing precisely how to push your buttons. There's no other rational explanation.
Gojo's head tilts. “Yep. And honestly… I don’t even think you could win a fight right now.”
You lean against the countertop behind you and drag your gaze down Gojo’s form. The familiar curves under your uniform, your tits, pressed together where Gojo is crossing his arms, and your face, grinning at you like a Cheshire cat. Gojo mimics you, leaning on the fridge and raking his eyes down your form in kind. You fight not to fidget under his gaze, though you don’t know why. It’s not like you feel self conscious or anything—this isn’t your body.
You hum, non-committal. “Probably not. Though you’re forgetting that you can’t use my technique either.”
“Ah, but I am quite positive yours will be easy to wrangle,” he replies, turning his hand to inspect your nails.
Something ugly unfurls in your chest at the jab. Everyone feels inadequate when confronted with the power Gojo holds—it’s a fact of life. But the notion still stings, wedged under your skin deep enough you cannot remove it, deep enough it bleeds into your words.
“Perhaps,” you concede, loathing coating the back of your teeth. “But what if we didn’t use our techniques?”
Gojo’s eyebrows furrow.
“I’m saying, what if it was a battle of pure strength?” you explain with a careless shrug.
On your best and your worst days, you despise acknowledging that Gojo can beat you in hand-to-hand combat. Now is no different, and you tuck your hands behind your back casually so you can dig your nails into your palms to ground yourself. You can feel the strong muscles lining your arms shift with the movement.
“I would win.”
“You’re in my body, though,” Gojo questions, looking at you like you’re stupid.
Anger simmers deep and low in your gut.
“So now semantics matter to you?” you ask, pushing yourself away from the countertop. “I thought you just claimed you’d beat me using my technique, Gojo.”
“And I would.”
“But you wouldn’t without,” you press, walking closer. Gojo watches you curiously until you stop a pace away from him. You could reach your arm out and touch him if his own Limitless wouldn’t stop you from doing so. “Admit it.”
Gojo frowns, staring up at you.
“Admit you couldn’t beat me,” you breathe, taking another step closer. You can see the specks dotting your eyes now. Gojo's blindfold and bright hair reflecting back at you like a funhouse mirror. The air thickens between you both, and you shove your hands in your pockets, feigning nonchalance. You feel wrong—out of place in his hulking body as you stare down at your own—but Gojo has no way of knowing this if you don't clue him into it. “Admit that I could have you how I wanted in a heartbeat.”
“Awfully presumptuous of you,” Gojo murmurs, eyes flicking between your own. Recognition sparks in his gaze and he seems to be debating whether to play along.
“Not really.” You itch to reach out. Knowing you physically can’t only makes the urge more irritating. “Haven’t you ever been curious, Gojo? About what it’s like to be a woman?”
“Hasn’t every man?” he retorts. Gojo tips his head back against the fridge and his eyes turn lidded, glued to yours. As though he knows where they are even through your blindfold. Perhaps he does. It’s his own eyes he’s seeking out, after all.
“Mhm. Not every man gets the opportunity to actually find out, though.”
The corner of Gojo’s mouth quirks up. “Lucky me.”
The reality of your situation falls back atop your shoulders. Sudden as a strike of lightning. When the thunder claps, you knock your forehead onto the fridge above him, or try to, at least. Instead, your face stops an inch away from the metal, close enough that you wonder if you might be making subconscious progress adapting to Gojo’s powers.
“I gotta pee.”
Gojo laughs.
—
This might be the pinnacle of humiliation you’ve experienced to date. Knowing that Gojo is just outside the bathroom and listening only makes it that much more excrutiating.
“Let me come in and help!” Gojo calls through the door.
“No! Just—” you growl, frustrated. “Give me a damn minute I can’t focus knowing you’re right outside.”
“You don’t want me to talk you through it?”
“Hell no!” you shout, pinching your nose bridge.
You exhale once, taking a moment to bolster your courage, before you tug Gojo’s zipper down in one smooth movement. You can see the light grey boxers he has on, and the vague outline of his soft cock underneath and you pull your hand away like you’ve been burnt.
“Be nice to him!” Gojo says, followed by a thunk that tells you he just put his forehead on the bathroom door.
“Freak,” you mutter under your breath, still staring down at your open fly.
“I heard that.”
“Stop listening!” you snap. “What the fuck, man!”
“I’m dying out here, pleaseeee can I come in?” he moans through the wood.
“No!”
“Pretty please.”
“Gojo…” you sigh.
“I can hold it for you.”
For a moment, you consider it. You could close your eyes, take the quickest piss of your life, and come out of the experience unscathed considering you won’t have touched Gojo’s dick. Then reality strikes.
“Limitless, dumbass,” you say.
“Oh shit.” Gojo’s muffled voice sounds surprised. “I forgot about that for a sec, wow! Very unlike me.”
“Close your ears.”
That’s all the warning both of you get before you grit your teeth, pull the waistband from your hips, and lift Gojo’s cock out with a limp, reluctant hand.
Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look.
And then you realise, how the fuck are you going to piss without looking?
You worry your lip as your eyes study the ceiling.
Maybe there’s muscle memory to this kind of thing? You really don’t want Gojo's piss all over your bathroom floor though…
“You’re awfully silent in there for someone who claimed that pissing with a dick wouldn’t be rocket science.”
“Fuck off, I’m gettin’ there!” you bite. “God, this is the worst.”
“You’re telling me. You’ve got a whole different view down here. I feel like I’m in Honey, I Shrunk The Kids.”
“Prick. I’m not that short!" You sigh before admitting, "I do love that movie though."
“It's a classic," Gojo offers. "And no you're not. I'm just stupidly tall."
That, at least, you can agree with. Stupidly arrogant, too.
Gojo continues. “You still haven’t pissed.”
“I don’t think I can,” you mumble pathetically, feeling the heavy weight of his soft dick in your hand and wanting to crawl out of your skin. “I might just wait until I piss myself. Is it too late to get a catheter?”
“You’re disgusting,” Gojo complains. You can practically hear the frown in his lips. “And you’re going to give me a UTI…”
“Wouldn’t be as bad as havin’ to touch your dick, I can tell you that much.”
“You wound me,” Gojo croons, and you can hear his back sliding down the door. Settling on the floor as though he knows you’ll both be here for a while. “Personally, I’m looking forward to going for a piss.”
Your face curls up in disgust and you whip your head to face the door as though Gojo will be able to feel you glaring through the wood.
“There’s something seriously wrong with you. That is so violating.”
“Sorry,” Gojo says, not sounding particularly sorry at all.
You huff, scrubbing an eye with the heel of your big hand.
You can do this.
—
Turns out, pissing with a dick was decidedly not rocket science once you got over the tiny, minor detail of who’s dick you were holding. Once you're finished, you don't stick around to offer moral support as Gojo shoulders past you into the bathroom. You try not to cringe when you think about him seeing the plain cotton panties you threw on this morning when you had to rush out of your flat, or the unruly bush you were due to trim this weekend.
It truly doesn’t matter. Not when you have bigger issues. Namely the whole stuck-possibly-for-the-rest-of-time-in-Gojo's-body situation.
You’re hovering on your couch again when Gojo returns a suspiciously long few minutes later. He has a small, pleased smile on his face and you scowl. Staring down at your knuckles rapping against your thigh, you urge yourself to not picture what he was doing in the bathroom to look so self-satisfied. Pervert.
“Right then,” Gojo sighs loudly, sinking into an armchair across from you. “I should probably teach you how to control Limitless now that you’ve mastered pissing. It’s the next logical step.”
You roll your eyes. “And Yaga’s order,” you tack on.
Gojo waves a hand through the air as though to dismiss the importance of your reminder.
“Six Eyes is innately active,” he starts immediately, not waiting for your attention. You wish you could ignore him, but the way you're still hovering in the air closes any well-worn paths to such petty vengeance. “Think of it like the sun. We can’t turn the sun off, can’t kill it, can’t cover it up. The best we can do is cover ourselves.” Gojo nods towards where it’s wrapped around your head. You hum your acknowledgement. “But Limitless is like a light bulb. I can turn it on and off whenever I want.”
Already bored, you kick your legs out in front of you and tap your foot on the air surrounding the corner of your low coffee table for something to do. Gojo ignores the soundless action, but you see the corner of his jaw twitch in annoyance.
“And Six Eyes is what enables Limitless. I can only manipulate what I can see.” He spreads his palms wide and swings them around the room. You squint at them, eyeing the veins pumping blood beneath your skin and the delicate woven fibres of your uniform cuff visible even through your blindfold. It's jarring, and invasive, and perhaps it's no wonder Gojo acts the way he does afterall. You might too if you could unveil a person's heart through no more than existing. “Do you see where I’m going with this?” Gojo questions expectantly.
You bite your lip in contemplation and drag time out while you pretend to think. Really, you’re just watching the tiny hairs on Gojo’s face sway in a breeze you can’t feel.
“Nope,” you reply after too long, popping the p sound carelessly.
“You have to look,” Gojo stresses, leaning forward in his chair towards you. “See the world around you, see the infinite space Limitless has created, and stitch the divide back together.”
“Well then, if it’s that easy,” you say sarcastically. “I’ll give it a shot.”
Halting the tapping of your foot, you cross your arms and stare down at your legs intently. You’re expecting the gap between your thighs and the sofa cushion to be highlighted or some bullshit, like an object in a video game the developers didn’t want you to miss. But there’s nothing. You can see what you think may be air particles, countless atoms continuously melding together, then you stare at them long enough that you start second guessing yourself.
“I see it!” you say instead, looking up at him excitedly.
Gojo’s eyebrows fly up to his hairline, and your mouth twists horribly as you try not to laugh. “Really?” he asks, equally thrilled.
“Obviously not, dumbass,” you scoff, resuming the tapping of your foot once more. Gojo’s face drops and then he scowls at you a beat later when you tack on, “You’re kind of a shitty teacher, just so you know.”
“Yeah, well, you’re a shitty student.”
“Ah,” you tut, shaking your head condescendingly at him. “A bad workman always blames his tools.”
“You’re definitely a tool, alright,” Gojo retorts, voice tight.
Despite yourself, you laugh. “This is a lost cause. Let’s just wait for Shoko’s opinion tomorrow, huh? Cut our losses while we still can.”
“As much as I would love to do that,” Gojo begins, tilting his head. You kiss your teeth at his lie, because Gojo would never abandon a chance to humiliate you. “I seem to recall someone saying ‘Yaga’s orders,’ earlier.”
Gojo’s expression is challenging, and every inch of his posture screams at you to bolt. You stay rooted to the air above your seat in defiance of your own instincts as you stare at the man currently captaining your body.
When you don’t reply, Gojo blows out a sharp, frustrated breath and crosses his legs. “Work with me here,” he pleads. “Just try. Properly. Don’t half-ass it.”
You open your mouth to retort, but the gentle shake of his foot stops you. It almost looks like a nervous tick, and as quickly as your eyes dart to it, does his foot still.
“Fine,” you concede. "Be quiet.”
Gojo merely purses his lips and gestures at you lazily as though to say go on, then.
Squinting as though it will help funnel Six Eyes, you focus all your attention on your foot still knocking into the air by the leg of your coffee table. It takes a few minutes to filter out Gojo’s disruptive presence. Even silent, he’s impossible to ignore. But, eventually, he begins drifting and you’re left with the shape of your foot, visible through the thousands of tiny cracks in Gojo’s leather shoes. You can see the air particles in your shoe—in between your toes, beneath the arch of Gojo’s foot.
The air undulates, disturbed in ripples where your foot shakes. Like a stone thrown into a pond. Your lips form a circle and you slowly breathe out, letting everything fall away from you. Only then, can you see it. It being the gap, for lack of a better word you can't currently find. The… space. Like a void, stretching almost imperceptibly between each atom, bonded or unbonded. And then infinity comes into view. Atoms around your foot warped in a way making it impossible for you to ever hit the table leg when you begin to near it.
The sound of your foot almost connecting with the coffee table is muffled, but you hear it still. Perhaps another feature of Gojo’s enhanced senses, or maybe a trick of the mind. It falls quiet again, and you sooth your heart and your mind and pinch the edges of infinity, drawing them together.
Then…
Tap.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
You glance up at Gojo in amazement, mouth spread into a wide smile. He returns one of his own, oddly sincere. You only consider how strange the feeling is, Gojo being almost… proud of you, for a fleeting moment before you release it and embrace the success.
“Holy shit,” you breathe quietly. “Holy shit.”
The rhythmic tapping echoes in your flat, sure and steady. You tip your head down and coax the infinity wrapped around you closed, sealing it like the folds of a letter. Your thighs touch the sofa. Then your back. You pat along the cushions disbelievingly and then laugh.
You did it. You fucking did it.
“Atta girl,” Gojo murmurs encouragingly. “I knew you had it in you.”
You truly have no idea how to unpack the tightness in your chest at his statement.
So you don't bother trying.
“Fuck yeah I do,” you grin instead. And if the tapping of your foot speeds up, well that’s no one's business bar your own. “Never doubted myself for a moment!”
Gojo scoffs, but it isn’t entirely mean. Not anymore. “History is rewriting itself right before my eyes. Is this how Winston Smith felt?”
You tilt your head back against the sofa, relaxing your body for the first time since you were both swapped. “Your Six Eyes has gotten way too much credit throughout history,” you say into the air.
“Yours,” Gojo replies lightly. “For the time being, at least.”
Totally not a daunting thought at all.
You swallow uneasily, the corners of your mouth curling at the reminder.
“Are you focusing on keeping it together?” Gojo asks.
You shake your head, still talking to the ceiling. “Nah. I don’t know how long it’ll last but I must’ve closed it enough for now.”
Gojo hums thoughtfully. “You might wanna close your legs while you’re at it too.”
“Huh?” You make a questioning noise in the back of your throat and tip your head back down. All at once, you can feel your face light on fire.
You’re hard.
Hard.
You’ve somehow made Gojo’s dick… hard.
Great. Perfect.
This is just what you wanted to immortalise this humiliating experience. And you don’t close your legs—can’t close your legs—as you stare despondently at the sight. Slowly piecing together the feeling of an erection to what you’re seeing.
“Uhhhh—”
“I’m afraid I can’t teach you how to control that,” Gojo states, voice overflowing with mirth. He’s staring too, gaze darting between the stunned look on your face and the tent in your slacks. “There is one way to deal with it though…” he teases.
Groaning, you bury your face in your hands and slump further down on the sofa. Now that you’re aware of it, you can feel your crotch throbbing. The warm but unfamiliar pressure of arousal tingling in your core. When you shift, the folds of your slacks brush over your erection and you hiss.
“How long?”
Gojo understands what you’re indirectly asking.
You can almost hear it in his voice when he shrugs. “Long enough. Quicker if you think about something gross.”
Something gross. Okay. You can do something gross. The smacking sound of people chewing with their mouths wide open. Bug carcasses squished into the pavement. Wet socks. Gojo. His gross personality. The stupid, condescending cadence of his voice. His cock, filling out between your thighs. Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
You peek out from between your fingers. Gojo shifts in his seat as he stares at your crotch, legs crossed tightly. If you didn’t know any better you’d say he was squirming.
Wait—
Narrowing your eyes, you can see his thighs tense and relax. Hips ever, ever so gently rocking back and forth. It’s so subtle you wouldn’t have spotted it if not for your Six Eyes. You can see the particles around him moving away in small ripples. You can see the blood thundering through his veins. And even without Six Eyes, you can see his dilated irises.
“You’re turned on,” you accuse, jailing your hands on your thighs so you won’t be tempted to touch. “Why are you turned on?”
“Wow,” you spit. “You are such a fuckin’ pervert, oh my god.”
“Wow… that’s rich coming from you!” Gojo protests indignantly. “You are literally hard right now.”
“This could be a fluke!” you insist. “I wasn’t even turned on,” you lie. “Maybe it’s just because I released Limitless.”
“That’s not how it works,” Gojo replies, but he doesn’t argue any further.
“You have no excuse though,” you push, voice pitching higher and higher. “You’re so conceited it’s insane. Who gets turned on by themselves?!”
“Me, clearly!” Gojo shouts, throwing his arms up in the air helplessly.
“Yeah, fuckin’ clearly!”
Silence.
You’re both glaring at one another, locked in a battle of wills. Refusing to back down. Refusing to give in. Apparently, though, your brain doesn’t get the same memo.
“What does it feel like?”
It takes you a few long seconds to realise it was you who’d spoken—you who'd asked such an uncomfortably intimate question. You cringe at the perplexed expression Gojo has plastered on your face.
“What?” Gojo snaps.
“Is it different…” you start uneasily, confused as to why you’re so fixated on knowing the answer to what is objectively a pointless question. You know what it feels like. You've felt it first hand. Nothing in your life is going to change if you hear Gojo's answer but still you desire to hear it. “From the feeling. In your own body?”
“Being turned on?” he asks slowly.
You nod, careful, afraid to speak up again.
“Yeah,” he breathes after a moment. His face is grim, as though accepting his fate. “It’s… everywhere. Not only where’d you’d expect it. I guess. It's in my, uh, my stomach. My toes, too. And it's warm. Kinda tingly. Hot. I feel… overheated.”
You recall the feeling all too well.
“You?”
And this time it’s your face that pinches. You sigh, knowing you’re now morally obligated to answer.
“I can feel the, uh, the blood. Pulsing almost. Like a wound.” You swallow nervously. “It’s kind of uncomfortable,” you say, parting with the words reluctantly. “Expectant almost. Like right before a sneeze. When all that tension builds up.”
When you fall silent again, Gojo nods.
“I can teach you,” he says suddenly.
“You can… teach me?” you echo dumbly. Then, when he merely hums you repeat his words again in shock, "You can teach me."
Why are you considering it? Why are you considering it?
A small smirk crosses Gojo's face, a blink-and-you-miss it expression you unfortunately didn't miss.
This is wrong. Unethical, surely. It must cross countless lines that HR have carefully laid out for colleagues in Jujutsu Tech. Breach so many contracts it’s laughable. There’s truly no reason you should be giving his offer the time of day.
But then again the Jujutsu Tech contract only stipulates interwork relationships. Ones where, presumably and logically, each party occupies their own body. While it has been a hot minute since you read through it, you don't recall anything discouraging such relations for colleagues who've had their bodies swapped.
Someone has to set the precedent.
“Okay,” you agree.
Gojo’s lips quirk up, as though he’s privy to the internal battle you just lost. “Okay,” he repeats.
Neither of you move.
Your foot speeds up. A rapid, thumping, tap tap tap tap tap filling the space between you.
“You first,” you nod at him.
Gojo’s expression morphs into confusion. “Me first?”
“I’ll…” Your sentence trails off before it’s even properly begun. You swallow and try again. “I’ll teach you. Too.”
“Will you now?” he asks coyly.
You huff, the familiarity of such teasing relaxing you, even though you’re near positive that wasn’t his intention. “I will,” you affirm, calmer now.
“Well then, Sensei. Take it away.”
Biting your lip, you gesture at his legs—your legs—before speaking. “Pantyhose off.”
Gojo doesn’t hesitate, but his actions are clumsy and unpractised. He tucks his fingers under the waist band of your skirt and tries to awkwardly roll the pantyhose down under the fabric until he can’t wedge his forearm any further. Huffing, he yanks his arm back and shoves it under your skirt, grabbing the bunched up material and pulling it down to his knees. You hear the painful sound of your tights ripping and wince.
“Those were new, asshole…” you grumble, already mourning your recent purchase and the future one you now have to make.
“Don’t care,” Gojo replies, clearly distracted as he tries to free one foot from the material, then the other, before throwing them straight at you. They land on your face and drop into your lap. You brush them aside. “They should invent pantyhose that aren’t impossible to get off.”
You hum dismissively, focused on your bare legs and the cotton panties you can see peaking out from beneath your skirt, slightly rucked up from his efforts. It’s beyond bizarre to see yourself from this angle. To see what previous hook-ups have seen.
No wonder you can’t seem to shake them off afterwards.
You look good.
“You need patience to… get off, as a woman.” Adjusting yourself awkwardly, you try to ignore the throbbing in your crotch. Gojo’s fingers twitch impatiently where they’re resting on the arms of his chair. “Not everything feels good. It’s… experimental, I guess? It can take a long time to learn what your body likes.”
“It’s a good job that I have an experienced teacher, then,” Gojo murmurs.
You tilt your head once in agreement. “I suppose it is.”
This is so weird. So fucking weird. But you can’t seem to tame the part of you that is deathly curious to see how far you both will take it.
“You can start by. Uh, touching. Yourself. Over the fabric.”
Gojo’s smaller fingers come to rest over the skirt and press the fabric down, until folds of it are gathered in his crotch. He rubs them experimentally, before shooting you a mild glare. “I can’t feel anything.”
Meanwhile, you’re busy trying to muffle a laugh into your shoulder. “No—” You fail, a chuckle falling into the air. Gojo bristles, though you can tell the action isn’t wholly serious. You try again. “You— over your underwear.”
Your underwear.
Even when the words leave your mouth—as though your panties are truly Gojo’s, and your body is truly his—they don’t feel wrong. Not like they did earlier. When every action Gojo had taken in your body, inconsequential or not, felt like a premeditated, personal attack.
A look of understanding dawns on Gojo’s face. “Right!”
Yanking the hem of your skirt up until it bunches around his waist, he slumps further down in the chair. You’re only allowed a second to gawk at his lack of embarrassment before he’s lifting a foot up onto the sofa beneath his ass, dropping his other knee further to the side, and cautiously running his middle finger up your panties.
“Uhh—” you start unthinkingly, before snapping your mouth shut when you realise you can’t remember what you wanted to say.
Gojo only spares you a glance at the sound and then he’s looking back down at his fingers, drawing a strange path down to your perineum and circling there. You watch his nostrils flare and his eyebrows scrunch in concentration. Then, his thumb brushes up and you can almost feel the phantom sensation when it catches on his clit. He exhales sharply, and immediately zeroes in on it, dragging his thumb back and forth in short, quick swipes.
“This is so weird,” Gojo breathes.
“Yeah.” You can’t look away. “Yeah, it is.”
As though his strings have been cut, Gojo falls limp against the back of the armchair and slings his propped up foot over the armrest, clearly trying to get a better angle.
“Little circles feel good,” you offer quietly.
You watch as he obediently brings his pointer and middle finger up to start rolling them in small circles around his clit, and you definitely watch as he gasps at the feeling, jaw clenching.
“Your turn now,” Gojo says, pleasure twisting your voice into a strange, wobbly thing. Like mist drifting by on an early morning.
In all honesty, you forgot this was the deal. You really didn't expect Gojo getting off in your own body to be so captivating, but here you are. Drinking in every little minute reaction your body has like you’ve never seen them before.
The way your toes twitch.
The slight tremble in your bottom lip.
The stuttered rise and fall of your chest.
You can’t tell what is thanks to Gojo and what can be attributed to your own body, but at this point it doesn’t matter. Not when you can feel yourself achingly hard at each sight all the same.
Wordlessly, you unbutton Gojo’s pants and yank the zipper down, unwillingly to let your gaze leave the man in front of you. Your big, warm palm lands on your crotch and you grasp the length of him. Feeling along it curiously. Only then do you look down, confirming what you were too afraid to do in the bathroom earlier.
He’s big.
Gojo laughs breathlessly across from you. Your neck snaps up to shoot him a glare and you find him already staring at you.
“Stroke the tip.”
Spreading your legs further, you dip your fingers down to fondle his balls curiously, feeling the dull sparks of pleasure. You drag your touch up his cock. Mapping out the path before gently bringing down your thumb to brush over the head of his cock as instructed.
“Oh—” You repeat the motion, breath catching in your chest.
“What did you tell me?” Gojo asks, and when you look at him dumbly in question, he doesn’t bother waiting before answering himself. “Little circles.”
You press harder at the confirmation your touch feels good, and start rubbing your thumb over the head repetitively. It’s only a matter of seconds before your shoulders tense and your mouth drops open. It feels good. Really good, in fact. And you can see arousal slowly darkening the light grey of his underwear in response. You can feel yourself leaking. So different from the sensation you are used to. You gasp.
It’s hard to remember why you were so disgusted earlier. Not when you can feel his dick twitching under your touch, nor when you’re reaping the benefits—swimming in hot pleasure.
“This is so much— easier— what the fuck—”
Gojo merely hums, and then you hear a rustle. He lifts both legs up into the air and drags your panties off in one smooth motion. He brings the material up to his nose and breathes in deeply. You wrinkle your own nose.
“Gross.”
“I'm so wet,” he says in wonder.
Gojo drops the panties on his chest and splays his legs back out, fingers quickly dipping into your arousal as though to emphasise his words.
“Surprised?” you ask. “Don’t tell me this is your first time getting a girl wet, Gojo.”
“Shut up,” he snarks, but the hitch in his breath as his fingers come back up to circle your clit, wet with arousal, betrays him. “God.”
You roll your eyes, and tug his boxers down to release his cock uncaringly. It bounces on your stomach and leaves a sticky mark on his uniform. You give yourself a few dry tugs before Gojo is speaking up again.
“Spit in your hand.”
You do, and the slide is so smooth you grunt in surprise. Pleasure zapping up your spine.
Gojo hardly hesitates as he sinks two fingers inside him, and you can tell from the twinge in his jaw it must sting.
“Let yourself adjust first," you offer, "Then try scissoring them."
Gojo waits a few beats, and the slick sound of your hand jerking Gojo's cock fills the space. It feels too good to muster up any embarassment you should realistically be feeling.
Before long, Gojo bites his lip impatiently and decides he's had enough time to adjust. While you can’t see what he’s doing inside himself, his wrist and forearm flex rhythmically and you gather Gojo must be following your instructions.
You stare, transfixed, at your smaller fingers hidden inside your body. The best you’ve done is get off in front of a mirror, and that experience pales in comparison to the real thing before you.
“Ow,” Gojo grunts, eyebrows furrowing in displeasure. “What the fuck?”
“Usually I start with one,” you say, unsympathetic. “You gotta relax, Gojo.”
“I’m trying, but it’s kinda difficult with something shoved inside me. I thought this was supposed to feel good. You guys sure make it look like it does anyway.”
You scoff, slick hand working over your cock. “You’re doing it wrong.”
“You’re supposed to be teaching me! If I’m doing it wrong, it’s your fault.”
“And I’m telling you, you gotta relax more. Nothing feels good when you’re tensed up like that,” you say, nodding to the taut line of his body. “That's why foreplay exists, dumbass.”
“What are you, a fucking sex guru?” Gojo asks incredulously.
“If you’re that blown away by the necessity of foreplay, I feel very sorry for your previous escapades,” you answer primly.
Instead of snapping back at you, Gojo falls silent, his face twisted into what looks like self-consciousness. Maybe chagrin. You can’t quite place it. And all of a sudden, your stomach swoops as you start piecing the puzzle of this evening together.
“Don’t tell me…” you whisper.
Gojo’s eyes scrunch closed, and the still fingers inside himself get pulled out unceremoniously. “You sure know how to kill the mood,” he attempts to joke, but it falls flat when you don’t drop your suspicions.
“You’re kidding, right?” you ask quietly, the hand on your dick stilling in shock. “Like you’re actually joking. You cannot be serious.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he declares, opening his eyes to meet your baffled gaze.
“I think you do,” you reply.
Gojo claimed you killed the mood, but when your eyes flick to his wet fingers, and the arousal still slowly dripping from him like honey, it’s difficult to believe.
“Please don’t tell me you’re a virgin,” you say carefully, scared to hear the truth.
“Surprise,” he says lightly, attempting an awkward smile.
You lean back, gaze trained on him. “Wow.”
“Happy now?”
“Oh, quite.” You glance back down to his wet cunt and think for a moment, but that’s truly all it takes for an idea to take root. You never stood a chance. Not with Gojo like this before you. “If you want, I can show you a good time."
“You can—” he starts, disbelievingly. “—show me a… good… time? What are you, a fucking uni student still? Who says that kinda shit anymore.”
But you can see his cunt clench in the cool air, and Gojo clearly doesn’t realise as such. You stand abruptly and walk over to where he’s splayed out in the chair. His head tips back as you approach and he watches you cautiously, tracking your movements.
You dip down into a kneel. “Trust me.”
Forcing yourself between his thighs, you grab one of Gojo's legs with a big, warm hand before slinging it over your shoulder. Gojo makes a startled sound. He tries to dislodge your hold. You stop the motion—tightening your grip and using your free hand to pin his other leg against the chair's armrest.
Like this, Gojo's wide open for you, one knee by his ear, the other knee shucked over your shoulder.
“What the fuck—” he gasps, scrabbling in an attempt to sit up and close his legs. He stares up at you with wide eyes.
“Stop,” you murmur, flexing your fingers on the soft flesh of his thighs where you pin them in place. “Relax…”
Glancing down, you study how his cunt flutters each time you dig your fingers into him. Interesting. As though testing a theory, you turn your head to the leg over your shoulder, breath ghosting over his knee. Then, keeping an eye on his cunt, you lean forward. Coercing his leg back against his body, opening him up to you even more.
Gojo keens, a strangled sound in the back of his throat telling of the strain, and his cunt clenches, arousal weeping at the motion. You barely fight back a groan.
Covering his face with both hands, Gojo’s breaths are short and sharp, embarrassment lining every muscle in his body. It’s gratifying. And you don’t really care if he wants to hide, especially with what you’re about to do.
Without warning, you dip your head forward to blow on his cunt.
“Oh my god— wait—” Gojo gasps, hips jumping.
You haven’t even touched him yet.
“Wait, wait, wait—”
You blow again and grin when his cunt clenches once more.
“Hold on—”
Experimentally, you dip your head to lick a broad stripe up his pussy. Gojo’s thighs tense under your hold. When he tries to speak, you repeat the action, before trailing your tongue down to the source of his arousal. Slurping it into your mouth and moaning as you can taste it on your tongue. The words die in his throat and Gojo whines instead, hips bucking up into your mouth.
“This is—”
Pleased with the control you have over him, you bully your tongue inside him.
“—so—”
Thrusting it in and out.
“—wrong.”
Scraping your teeth gently on his perineum.
“I know,” you reply into his cunt, voice muffled and wet.
You kiss your way up his pussy and trace his clit with your tongue before sucking on it. You pulse your mouth around it until Gojo starts spasming under you. A small hand comes to tangle in your hair and when he pulls in panic, you moan into him. Gojo keens at the vibration against his clit.
“Oh my god, please don’t stop,” Gojo chokes, his free hand coming to rest over yours, still pinning his leg against the chair's armrest.
You don’t reply, but you squeeze your hand and dip back down to lick into him, nose bumping his clit with every thrust of your tongue. It’s a challenge, to force your tongue inside so far, but you’re determined to taste yourself as you smush your face deep into his cunt, burying yourself there.
“Ah, fuck— just there— don’t move!”
You couldn’t even if you wanted to, Gojo’s grip is fast in your hair and it forces your face impossibly deeper into his cunt. Of course, if you really wanted to you could be out of his hold within a split second. It’s kind of nice though, to let him have his fun for once. Let him play house as the big, strong sorcerer he isn’t even the whisper of anymore.
“Yes, yes, yes, yes—”
You flick your tongue back up to his clit, and Gojo either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care when you slip a finger inside him, immediately curling it. He does, however, notice the second, moaning aloud as you start pumping them in tandem, curling them on every thrust to try and find his g-spot.
He writhes on the armchair under your hulking body, undulating like a fish out of water. It’s a strange picture. The sorcerer who’s usually so restrained. Who’s only expressive when it suits him—when it’s a means to an end of manipulating someone into doing something for him.
“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon— please, just— nghh— right there—”
It hurts when he comes.
Not him of course, a high, sharp keen reverberating in the air as he trembles through his first orgasm as a woman. Wave after wave wracking through his body.
But you.
Gojo’s grip in your hair turns punishing, too much so to be enjoyable anymore. And his other hand scrabbles on your forearm, scraping harsh pink lines into the exposed skin where your jacket sleeve has ridden up, a painful sting emanating where skin breaks under his nails. You can’t help but wonder if this is a trait of Gojo, or a trait of Gojo in your body.
“Ahh… oh my— god,” the man in question finally gasps, twitching in overstimulation where you’re still lazily dragging your tongue through his cunt, fingers unmoving inside him. “Stop. Enough.”
You comply, mostly just to lessen his assault on the body you’re currently inhabiting. You remove your mouth and fingers. Settle back onto your haunches as Gojo pants like he’s just run a marathon.
Any lingering weirdness of your situation is well and truly lost on you in the face of Gojo's little body trembling through the aftershocks of his orgasm.
Your thumbs subconsciously soothe over his skin but you don't release his legs.
Sticky and wet.
That’s how you feel. In more ways than one you suspect, if Gojo's widening eyes are anything to go by as he takes in the full mess he's made of his face.
Your face.
“You look…” Gojo begins, but you never get to find out. Instead, his gaze flicks between your eyes as he contemplates something, and then he’s blurting out one quick string of words, “Canyoufuckme?”
You raise a mocking eyebrow. “Come again?”
Gojo closes his eyes and sighs through his nose. “I said, can you fuck me?”
Fighting to control your expression, you don’t realise until a beat later how your fingers tighten around his legs painfully.
“Just— When’s the next chance we’ll get to do something like this?” Gojo reasons, trying to pull his legs closer to his body self-consciously. He can’t get far with them still trapped by you. “It’s not like I want you to fuck me, I just want to know what it’s like to get fucked by me.”
“Narcissistic much?” you scoff, peering down at him and feeling less and less enthusiastic about it as each long second ticks by. “And I think you’re lying.”
“No.”
You place one hand on his stomach and press it down slightly. “You don’t just wanna feel what it’s like to be full? To feel like someone’s dick is in your throat? To feel every thought melt out your ears with a good fuck?”
Gojo swallows uneasily before brandishing a shining smile. “Nope. Self-performance review purposes only.”
“Mhm,” you hum, unconvinced. “Well I suppose I can help. I won’t be able to emulate your technique without any prior knowledge though,” you sigh. “So I guess you’ll just have to review the product itself.”
“Gross. What the fuck are you on about?” Gojo asks, lips curling at your crude phrasing.
You don’t answer. Instead, you slide his leg from your shoulder, tuck it around your body, and heft him up with you by the waist as you stand. Gojo instinctively wraps his legs around you, afraid to fall.
“Hey! Stop fuckin’ manhandling me...” But he sounds breathless, and hardly annoyed about it in fact.
You don’t like that he’s so easy to carry—and you’re honestly not sure whether that’s thanks to his strength or your stature. You reach the sofa and sit down, tugging him onto your lap. Gojo doesn’t settle though, awkwardly hovering above your legs and staring down at you, once hand fisted in the sofa's backrest behind you.
“Take it away,” you murmur.
“The fuck do you mean, ‘take it away’?” he utters incredulously. “I asked you to fuck me.”
“I’ve already put in a good shift today. Can’t I cash in my payment? You’ve got my strong legs, Gojo." You pat his thigh with a firm palm. "It’ll be a breeze.”
The sorcerer looks at you strangely, as though scrutinising the truth of your statement. “You’ve done this before to know that?”
You scoff. “Obviously.”
“Okay. Well… Alright then. Put it in,” he finishes lamely.
“I’ll let you do the honours,” you reply, laughter melting your tone into something warmer than you were intending.
Gojo huffs as though greatly inconvenienced and rolls his eyes. He rises up onto his knees, takes a hold of your cock. You hiss and Gojo’s eyes flicker up to yours curiously.
“You won’t last long,” he states plainly, mirth dancing across his expression.
“Probably not,” you agree. “Longer than you will, though.”
“Infamously and statistically untrue.”
You strain upwards to speak into his ear, voice honey-smooth. “You’re in my body, Gojo. You don’t think I know what’s going to make you tick?”
He makes a dismissive sound, lowers himself slightly, and brushes the head of your cock through the arousal slicking his cunt. You exhale through your nose.
“Thought you said I gotta do the work?” he reminds you.
“I did." You sigh when the head of your cock slips inside him for a moment. “Maybe I’ll be nice if you behave though.”
Gojo remains suspiciously silent in response, and when you dare a look up at his face, his expression is twisted as though tasting something particularly sour. “Your dirty talk isn’t doing what you think it is,” he finally huffs.
Wrapping your hands around his waist, you test your grip and startle when your fingers brush each other on the small of his back. You blink and ask, “No?”
“Nope.” Gojo shakes his head, letting your cock catch on his rim once more.
Every cell in your body is screaming at you to tug the sorcerer down to the hilt of you.
You pitch your voice down teasingly, “You don’t want to be good for me?”
“Not particularly,” he replies distractedly, dipping down a scarce few centimeters and back up again with a wince.
You’re alert at once, perking up like a dog having a treat dangled in front of them. With the intent to soothe, you rub your thumbs across his stomach though it doesn’t seem to do anything but throw Gojo off his concentration, who makes an annoyed noise in the back of his throat.
“Relax dude,” you insist, using your hold to pull him down an inch.
“‘Dude’?” he asks disbelievingly, not appearing to notice how you’re sinking into him. “You’re kidding me. Such a fucking uni student I swear, you used to sleeping with younger people or what? Is that who you’re picking up your dirty talk from? A bunch of students who imitate bad porn?”
Fighting back a laugh, you kick up into his cunt and tug him down to meet your pelvis simultaneously. Gojo releases a high, breathy moan. His fingers clutch onto the meat of your shoulder and the short hair on your nape as he's knocked forward by the motion.
“What was that?” you ask, voice similarly windswept at the tight heat engulfing your cock. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing before. No wonder guys think with their dicks. Perhaps you would too if this is what it feels like.
“Oh my god—” Gojo breathes unsteadily, head hanging so that all you can see is the crown of his head. “That was… really underhanded.”
Encouragingly, you coax Gojo's waist towards you and smile when he gasps. “You gonna move, then?”
“Gimme a second,” Gojo snaps, sharp nails pressing into your nape in warning. “So impatient to get your dick wet.”
“Yeah.” You ignore his request though, still moving his waist back and forth, enough so that Gojo’s mouth drops open silently as he tries to adjust to both the intrusion and the new sensation of your dick brushing his walls. “Is it weird that this isn’t weird?”
“Kind of,” he chokes out, starting to move with your touch cautiously as though doesn't want you to realise that he’s ready yet. “I think we might’ve passed weird when you had your tongue in me, though.”
“Or earlier,” you add thoughtfully, and slide your palms down to his hips to tilt them forward so his clit catches on the thatch of hair at the base of your dick with each gentle rock. Gojo exhales a pitiful noise and chases the sensation, gliding back and forth with a new fervour. “When you offered to teach me how to jack off.”
“Maybe then,” he agrees mindlessly, clearly only half listening to you as he slides both hands to collar your trapezius muscles.
You can hardly be annoyed when the touch has you light headed, static creeping from the corners and lowering your inhibitions even further. He’s too warm inside, and while his movements feel good, you know they won’t be enough to get you off anytime soon.
You don’t think you can wait longer than soon, impatience buzzing under your skin.
“C’mon, Gojo,” you murmur, lifting your hips up to knock your cock into him. He whines. Whines. And you are possessed by the noise to repeat the action, kicking into him in short, aborted thrusts where he’s still heavy on your lap. “Thought you wanted to— ah— test me out?”
“Just keep doing that,” he demands instead, and you can see the side of his expression scrunching up every time you move. Gojo's face is still tucked between your bodies, reluctant to meet your eyes.
Wanting what you were promised, you fall still, lean back, remove your hands from his soft body and interlace your fingers behind your head in an action so irritatingly lofty that even you can admit the way Gojo immediately bristles is utterly warranted.
“Fine,” Gojo scoffs, lifting his head to glare at you. “I’ll get off how I was before then. Doesn’t bother me.”
As though to punctuate his claim, Gojo starts rolling his hips again.
“No you won’t.” You don’t move to stop him but he stills all the same as if you had. “Just try it properly.”
Gojo grumbles, seemingly debating something for a moment as the words he wants to speak sit on the tip of his tongue, but then he swallows them back and pivots his strategy. You furrow your eyebrows. “Whatever, if you’re that desperate for it…”
Gojo rises onto his knees and you can feel the cool air hit your dick, already too accustomed to the warmth of him.
At once, there’s an itch behind your teeth to seat yourself back inside Gojo, so strong you feel it could bowl you straight off your feet if you were stood up. Gojo's expression is wary, but then he slides back down your length and it melts away, replaced with surprise.
“That’s it,” you murmur. He rushes to lift himself back up, using the grip he has on the junction of your neck to aid himself before sinking back down. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”
“Really good—” he grunts, dropping back to your lap.
You can feel pleasure licking up your body, warming your mind, but somehow the sight in front of you is even better. Gojo’s face—your face—slack as he finds his rhythm, bobbing on your cock eagerly; Gojo panting, each laboured breath hitting your forehead, your nose, your chin as he moves; Gojo all-but drooling, lips slick with it.
You glance down and you nearly come there and then at the sight of you two joined. There's a sticky rim of arousal and pre-come foaming around the base of your cock which you ache to drag your fingers through.
Then, you suddenly remember you have free will, and waste no time as you drop your hands from behind your head and finger the connection. Spreading the mess on Gojo's thighs, across his clit as he whines at the touch, through the thatch of pale hair above your dick. It should be gross really, but your head spins with arousal and you dip a thumb into the mixture before swiping it on his clit once again.
Gojo doesn’t disappoint. He keens, a sweet animalistic sound, and his thighs shake with no abandon.
“Do that– hah— do that again.”
Wordlessly, you repeat the action, clumsily following his clit as he bounces on your cock. You’re positive it's barely enough consistent pressure to get him off, but his moans crawl higher and higher each time you manage to catch his clit.
“Doing so well,” you pant. “Bouncing on my cock like you were made for it.”
Gojo moans, but when he responds he sounds mildly repulsed, as though his mind and body are at odds over how he's supposed to feel about your words. “I’m in your body!”
You shake your head, disagreeingly. “This is all you.”
“Idiot,” Gojo breathes, pace becoming sloppy, each rise becoming slower, each drop becoming harder.
“Have you ever felt like this though?”
“Stop talking, I can’t fucking think!” he snarls, shaking thighs lifting him up your cock once more.
“I bet you haven't,” you speak for him. “Besides, you don’t need to think. Just chase the feeling Gojo. Start thinking and you’ll be on my cock forever. I told you it’s more difficult for women.”
Gojo groans, half-frustrated half-aroused. “Don’t tell me— shit— not to think when you’re making me— do all the work.”
Suddenly realising his annoyance, a laugh bubbles out of you, drenched in glee. “Mr. Control Freak doesn’t like being in charge, huh? Need me to dick you down? Quiet that big smart brain of yours?”
“I swear to god,” he warns, eyes darting to yours dangerously. “Talk to me like that again…”
“Fine,” you acquiesce, pouting. But you can’t help but throw a bit of fuel on the fire when you murmur, “Baby.”
“I’m done,” he proclaims abruptly, lifting himself fully off your dick so quick he stumbles back from you when he stands. Your shock lasts for all of a few seconds before you’re distracted by the sight of his puffy cunt, glistening with arousal in the low light of your living room, his skirt in a pool around his ankles. “This isn’t worth it, you’re actually intolerable.” You force your gaze up to his eyes but they get stuck on the sight of his lips first, brain clouded with lust. “I’m just going to jack off, on your bed by the way,” he emphasises, as though that would bother you. As though Gojo’s pre-come isn’t dripping onto your sofa right now. “And we’re never going to speak of this again unless you want to die.”
When you don’t say anything, Gojo exhales an irritated breath and storms past the edge of the sofa in the direction of your bedroom. Before you can think about what you’re doing, you dart a hand out to grab his wrist and pull him awkwardly over the sofa's armrest before he can get any further.
For a brief moment you're surprised by your own strength. You’d only meant to stop him but now he’s bent over the arm of the sofa like he's on display.
“Get off me,” he snaps, an embarrassed flush tinting his features as he tries and fails to pry his wrist from your grip.
“Thought you wanted me to fuck you?” you ask sincerely.
Gojo drops his gaze to the sofa a few inches from his face. “A momentary lapse in judgement.”
“That's it, yeah?”
“Mhm, now lemme go raid your bedside table. I know you've got some freaky shit in there and I'm gonna take it for a spin.”
“Alright,” you pretend to agree. “Let me check something, first though.”
Gojo sighs, but doesn’t argue. You place a hand on his shoulder blades and press him down onto the sofa, feigning using him to stand. In two quick steps you circle the sofa and fit another hand to the base of his spine where you stop behind him. Gojo realises that he’s been tricked and quickly tries to shove himself upright. You hold him in place easily.
“No, no no no— this is so degrading, we’re not— we’re not doing this.”
“Degrading? Seriously? Way to be progressive Gojo, jeez. There’s nothing degrading about playing a part in the miracle of life.”
And that really seems to make him panic. Gojo starts to press his hands into the sofa beneath him before giving up and kicking a leg back at you blindly. You bully forward to stop his flailing, until your clothed thighs are touching his, your hard cock sat snug in atop his bare ass.
“I wanna eat you out again,” you murmur, eyeing the spread of his cunt where his hips are hooked over the armrest, his tiptoes barely touching the floor. “But another time. I wanna fuck you first. Properly fuck you. Make you nice and quiet like you were askin’ for. How ‘bout it, Gojo?”
Gojo covers his face with his hands and buries it into the sofa, soft trembles wracking his body. Whether from nerves or arousal or fear, you truly haven't a clue.
“C’mon.” Sensing that he’s not going to move, you lift the hand from his lower back to your cock and swipe it through his wet cunt, a silent promise. “I’ll make you feel good.”
Without waiting for his reply, you slip your cock into Gojo's cunt. Sliding back into his warmth so easily it's as if you've already carved out a home for yourself deep inside him.
Gojo keens into the sofa cushions, a foot lifting to wrap around the back of your calf subconsciously. You test your weight on his shoulder blades, letting him take it until he’s forced to turn his face to the side and heave in a stilted breath.
You cant your hips back before snapping them forward. Immediately you start up a harsh rhythm, following your instincts as you try to ignore the pleasure fizzling through your own body and instead focus on giving Gojo the best fuck of his stupid life.
Gojo curses, and it tangles in a moan until you can't even tell what he was trying to say.
You angle your hips differently each thrust, aiming for the spot inside your cunt that you know from personal experience causes your brain to leak from your ears. It takes you many clumsy thrusts—not that Gojo seems to think as much by the way his back arches, startled whines slipping out his mouth as though he can’t even try to contain them—until you finally find it.
Gojo cries like he’s been shot. Body locking up, drool leaking from his wide open mouth, toes curling against the floor and the back of your calf.
You grin.
Jack-rabbiting back into that spot over and over, until you can see his hands scrabbling on the sofa as he fights the last remaining dregs of his pride. A particularly hard press on his shoulder blades later and he’s thawing, going limp against the sofa like a puppet with their strings cut.
“No thinking now, huh?” you pant, leering over his back to get a better look at the fucked out expression he’s plastered on your face.
You expected to fixate on the sight of what you look like in this position, but you only find yourself wondering how the real Gojo would look.
How his pale skin would flush; how his white hair would be plastered to his sweaty skin; how his own deep voice would rise higher and higher as you fuck into him with the strap you keep tucked away under your bed for your particularly adventurous partners.
Gojo makes a noise, perhaps trying to oppose your meaningless statement. You laugh, slightly cruel. Still warm. And brace both hands along his spine, leaning the bulk of your weight on him like a blanket. He only melts further beneath you, and your breath catches in your throat at the sight. At the quiet behind his eyes.
Gojo’s high whines have tapered off into low, chopped keens at each sharp thrust, as though his brain has run out of capacity to react as it should. You can see his fingers weakly holding onto the sofa, his legs all but dangling from the edge of the armrest, his heaving chest.
And without warning, he comes. Body trembling like a leaf in the wind, voice lodged in this throat as his mouth opens on a soundless moan. His eyes squeeze closed and his back arches impossibly further. The sight of the curve so alluring you can’t help but lick along the sweaty skin, mouthing at him like an animal.
“There you go,” you speak against him, voice rough and jagged. “You're so good, Gojo. Knew you were made for this.”
He doesn’t even complain when you continue thrusting into him, though you are at least kind enough to stop targeting his g-spot, chasing your own ignored high.
So much for you coming first.
Far away, you can hear your own gravelled moans as you fuck into him like a dog in heat, laving your tongue along the ridges in his spine, listening to his quiet keens of overstimulated pleasure. And all it takes is a blissed out brush of his foot on your ankle for you to come too, the pressure exploding as you shoot thick ropes of come inside his cunt, shallowly rocking into him until the pleasure fizzles out into a mild pain. Not enough to stop you, but you still anyway, thinking about how different that was from your usual orgasms.
A very good different.
“Shit,” you breathe, slowly coming back to yourself. “That was crazy.”
You tilt your head on Gojo’s back to peer down at him.
He’s gone.
Floating.
Drifting somewhere that isn’t this room you’re both in. The realisation that you’ve done this to him has pride simmering in your gut, arousal coating the edges of it. Slowly, you peel yourself from his back and pull out cautiously, conscious of how unpleasant the sensation can be. Gojo barely reacts bar a barely there scrunch of his nose.
“You okay, Gojo?” you ask quietly, brushing some of your hair away from his sweaty face.
He hums tiredly, expression content, and his eyes lazily flicker to yours for a second before flickering away again like there’s something more important to look at in the silence of his mind.
“I really did a number on you, wow…” you murmur, rising to your full height to take in all of him.
Gojo doesn’t move. Doesn’t say anything.
But he does whine when you drag your fingers through the come dripping out of his cunt, scooping it up and fucking it back into him gently. There’s a hitch in his breath that rings out in the quiet of the living room. You curl your fingers, searching for that spot once more.
“You can come one more time, right?”
—
In the afterglow, clean and satiated, you share an order of chinese food on the floor of your living room. A film plays in the background. It’s not one you know—an older film, one Gojo had picked out when flipping through the channels on your TV while you called the restaurant. You’re barely watching it, only flicking your eyes to the flash of a new scene before your gaze inevitably lands on the sorcerer beside you once more. But the noise is kind of nice; comforting, if you were to put a word to it.
“If you tell anyone about this,” Gojo begins around a mouthful of noodles, oddly relaxed for the threat he goes on to say, “I will air out all of the blackmail I’ve been collecting these past few years.”
“Oh, really?” You raise an eyebrow, leaning your back against the seat of the sofa. “Like what?”
“Like how you when you use other people’s mugs in the staffroom you only rinse them before putting them back in the cupboard.”
You shrug, unphased.
“And, how you gave Ijichi the wrong number two months ago so now Ino keeps getting sent on what are supposed to be your errands.”
At that you laugh, surprised Gojo even knew about that little stunt you’ve managed to pull off. It won’t be long before another sorcerer, probably Nanami knowing your luck, clocks on and actually does something about it. But you’ve been enjoying the reprieve from doing grunt work in the meantime.
“And, how you are really, really bad at dirty talk.”
You smile, aimlessly stirring your boxed chicken around with your chopsticks. “You goin’ to tell everyone that?”
“I might,” Gojo replies haughtily, giving you a meaningful look. “But only if you tell first.”
“Well then,” you start, voice laced with amusement. “Guess I better keep my mouth shut.”
Gojo nods, before he mimes zipping his mouth closed and flicking the key towards your TV. You mimic the action, lean over to steal a bite of noodles from the container he’s holding, and chuckle when he squawks indignantly.
—
A week later, you’re back in your own body.
It’s strange to find yourself disappointed by what should be a cause for great celebration.
But then Gojo is following you home to pick his belongings up and his mouth is on yours the minute you both pass through your front door and you find it remarkably hard to care at all. Not when he’s bending you over the armrest of your traumatised sofa in revenge. Not when he’s sliding into you like he’s coming home. And definitely not when he’s promising in that stupidly titillating voice of his how there won’t be space for a thought left in your head once he’s finished with you.
As such, you ought to remove your rose tinted glasses soon. It isn’t healthy to live in the past after all, but your memories in Gojo’s body are too sweet to resist, even with his warm hulking body plastered to your back.
Sue you.
Reminiscing never killed anybody.
‹‹ KINKTOBER 2025 | GENERAL M.LIST | READ ON AO3
psst. thank you for reading !!! if you enjoyed this please consider leaving a comment, reblogging, or saying hi and letting me know in my inbox <3
SUMMARY: everything changes after what happens to your clan, even things between you and naoya start to shift as more time passes, and it makes you anxious. but you come to learn that not all change is bad, and sometimes, it comes alongside the promise of a future that doesn't seem quite as bleak as you feared.
WARNINGS: fem!reader. canon compliant (MCD accordingly, not in this part tho). i took some liberty with 1) zenin clan relationships and 2) cursed energy lore for reader’s technique. naoya is his own warning—he’s gonna give you a lot of whiplash. heavily implied abuse (naobito->naoya). toxic relationship (i stress, toxic relationship). misogyny (obviously). moments of misandry from reader. liberal use of bitch (naoya to reader). asshole 4 asshole (naoya sucks, so does reader—the crux of their relationship is that they’re both so intolerable they can only tolerate each other). as always with my fics, reader has personality & background. still some grieving on reader's end. a bit of angst in the beginning because they're both idiots -> emotionally unintelligent people trying to have emotionally intimate conversations LOL, BUT I THINK I DID THEM JUSTICE IN IT, EVEN THOUGH THESE TYPES OF CONVOS ARE LIKE ....... FOR THEM all this to say they will infuriate you, as always
SMUT WARNINGS: switch!reader (sub-leaning this time), switch!naoya (dom-leaning this time), oral (m!receiving), degradation (m->f, not actually too harsh), naoya has a filthy mouth, improper use of projection sorcery, choking kind of (?), overstimulation, slight dumbification, mention of oral (f!receiving)
AUTHOR’S NOTES: YAYAYAYAY AGE 21-24 so I did get a part out today, for the small price of extending this series by another part LOLLL, sorry guys, please tune in for part 4 (final!! For real) next Tuesday (hopefully), this chapter just got so long that it needed to be split. You guys need to know that age 21 kicked my fucking ASS, I have 20k words of deleted scenes just from that year because I kept scrapping and rewriting. It was some necessary emotional intimacy/talks that they needed to get through before getting back to their regularly scheduled program ANYWAY, some notes about this chapter, I have a lot to say about this one, slight spoilers if you want to come back at the end: we start a bit rough with age 21 and a bunch of drama there, but I feel like it was necessary (and my goddd was it so difficult trying to make Naoya’s two big dialogue scenes—you’ll know what I’m talking about when you read—come across as in character). Naoya is Naoya, and he’s obviously been raised with the traditional mindset of one day having/needing a wife, and that is one that that just is not going to change, so it was always going to get to this boiling point of him needing this thing they have to be solidified, and then the obviously explosion when she is not so fond of the idea because of #trauma. I actually played back and forth with whether or not I wanted reader to eventually agree to it or not, I always intended on it coming full circle and them coming to the realization, “damn after all the shit we put each other through as kids, we’re really here 20 years later wanting to get married” but I was conflicted as to how/when I wanted reader to come to this realization. I was stuck between leaving them unlabeled up until right before canon, and just letting it all happen at age 21, and I realized that it’s not so much the labels that are the issue, so much as it is her not wanting anything to change, so I decided to go with age 21 because this is the perfect point for her to realize that. And I think it’s funny because as you read through the years, they both DO change, they mellow out with one another (to an extent), become more physically affectionate, and it just makes me snort because this whole blow-up argument at age 21 was for nothing in the long run JDFHUSIDFSFU (as it happens in irl many times as well). I also think it’s nice because we got a couple years of domescity with them before the beloathed arrival of canon. And omg another note, I had this idea for her maximum technique, and I just HAD to implement it, I think it’s so cool and it fits so well. I hope you guys like it too HAHAH ENJOY!! Here is a post I made about reader’s cursed technique—it’s described in the fic as well, but if you’re interested to read! (with the addition of the new maximum technique) All comments and reblogs are always appreciated!!
SEE: MUTUALLY ASSURED DESTRUCTION series masterlist
2014 | READER, AGE 21; NAOYA, AGE 23
Nothing is the same after that year.
Things settle, and life returns to a dull routine of meetings and more meetings and even more meetings than that. You go to the Zenin estate to talk to Naobito twice a week because he is the one to keep your head above the turbulent waters of jujutsu politics—he does this for his own selfish reasons, but he does it nonetheless, and so you are grateful, even if it does make you feel dangerously indebted to him. You sit across from Kamo Norhide at a table once a month when all of the major clan heads meet, and you have to pretend you are not itching to put your knife through his throat. You have made no progress in proving that the Kamos were behind the slaughter; each day that passes leaves the hole in your chest wider and wider, and not even Naoya is enough to fill it anymore. You have to deal with the higher-ups regularly now, and instead of having to hear about their dislike of you secondhand, you to take it face-to-face, bitter and angry and resentful, because this was never supposed to be your burden.
You are extraordinarily tired, and there is no end in sight.
Worse, you still see your brothers and your father everywhere you look.
You leave their rooms untouched, and you had a terrible fit when one of your new attendants tried to open the door to your father’s bedroom to dust it. You still wake up at six in the morning on the dot for morning tea, half-expecting your brothers to barrel into the room after you, scolded by your father for being late, because you were the only one ever on time. Sometimes, you still set their dishes up as though they will arrive, and you’ll prepare the tea the way they like it, even though you dislike any flavor of tea besides your favorite. You wear your brother’s watch after you had it fixed—it’s too big and too clunky, but you refuse to go a day without it. You had a meltdown a few weeks ago when you thought you lost it, and you and Naoya spent an entire day searching for it. He catches you staring out into the training yard where your brothers first taught you how to hold a knife more times than you can count. He used to interrupt you, drag you off somewhere else, because he was unsettled by the silence and wanted to snap you out of the funk you got yourself into, but he has started to just sit next to you, shoulders brushing, thighs pressed together.
Nothing is the same.
Even your relationship with Naoya has begun to shift, and it’s making you anxious—is it your fault things are changing? Is this just another result of your grief?
You just want it all to end. You’re so tired.
It’s nothing serious, but any change at all now is enough to start setting off alarm bells in the back of your head. The two of you still bicker and fight the same way you always have—colorful insults flying back and forth, arguments flaring and dying out in the same breath—but he’s started… pulling his punches, so to speak. His insults lose their edge, and he pauses before saying something cruel, jaw tightening like he’s swallowing it back. When you argue, he lets you finish. Lets you say the ugly things, the irrational things, the things that come out all wrong because your grief still has fangs, and he doesn’t bite back the way he usually would. He is more gentle with you—his touches linger, and he goes out of his way to brush his fingers or body against yours even when he doesn’t have to, and you just don’t know what to think about any of it.
It unsettles you because you’ve always counted on Naoya’s consistency—your relationship with him is the one thing in your life that has never changed, and yet, here it is, changing, and change has never treated you well.
You try to convince yourself that you’re imagining it, but you, evidently, are not the only one who has noticed.
(“So, are you two together now or something?” Satoru asks, tilting his head to the side. You blink. “Finally past the whole friends with benefits situationship thing?”
“Uh, no—”
“Yeah—”
What? Your gaze snaps to the side, focusing on Naoya, and Naoya stares ahead, lips curling down into a frown as your words process. Your heart is racing—why is it racing? What is he talking about?
“Oh,” Satoru says with a laugh and then a grimace as you and Naoya look at one another. “Yikes. Well, uh, that’s awkward. I’m just gonna—”
Satoru is gone before he even completes the sentence, leaving the two of you in a tense silence. There’s something close to panic flooding your system, because you’re not dating Naoya. He’s your—you guess you’re not really sure what he is, but when has that ever mattered? Why would you need to put a name to it now? Putting a label on it would make it feel too real, too tangible—something that can be named is something that has a start, and something that can be named is something that can also have an end. You know better than most how quickly things can fall apart once they’re given shape, and the thought of that happening with you and Naoya after everything that’s happened over the last year…
There’s a loaded comment on the tip of your tongue, an insult about how Naoya is being an idiot, because what the hell is he talking about? But you hesitate when you see the expression on his face as he stares down at you. His jaw is tight, and there’s a look in his eyes that makes you uncomfortable. He blinks once as though he’s confused, and he doesn’t respond for a moment too long, so you say something to break the silence.
“Um—I—what?” you finally start to say, making an effort to lose the attitude before you speak up. Your voice comes out all clumsy because of it. You pause to collect yourself before you ask him, “What do you mean? We’re not… I mean, it’s the same as it’s always been.”
Right? you think, desperately wanting him to say yes. It’s the same. Everything is the same. It has to be the same.
His mouth opens, then closes again, and he stares at you with furrowed brows. He scoffs, but it comes out too late and too forced. “What do you think I mean?” he snaps, like you’re the one being difficult. “We fuck, I buy ya nice things, we’re always together. Everyone already assumes it.” He clicks his tongue, annoyed, but his throat bobs—is he nervous? “Didn’t think I needed to spell it out for ya.”
“That’s not how it works, Naoya,” you tell him, voice riddled with disbelief, nails digging into your palms. “You can’t just—”
“Well, why not?” he demands, becoming more incensed with each passing second. “I’m not some idiot makin’ moves on someone who’s not interested. You want me. You could’ve shut this down a long time ago.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“I’m doing you a favor, y’know?” he cuts in, voice rising slightly, irritation flashing hot across his face. You see it in his eyes the moment he starts to feel cornered, gold flicking uneasily and words shifting from a rushed defense to a cruel offense. Why the hell is he getting so wound up about this? Why can’t he just drop it? Why does anything have to change? “You’re rude, ya don’t listen, and you gotta mouth on you that scares off anyone with half a brain. There’s a reason you couldn’t hold down a man for more than a couple days. No one would ever put up with that shit.”
You let out a huff of disbelief. “You were the one who—”
“But I do. I put up with it,” he presses on insistently before you can finish your accusation, fists tight at his sides, “so, yeah, I’m doin’ ya a favor. You can’t really think some guy’s gonna wine and dine you when you talk back the way you do. Ya don’t know how to behave, and ya don’t act like a woman.” He scoffs again. “I let you get away with shit that’d have anyone else running.”
“Naoya, enough,” you say through your teeth. “Can you just shut up and list—”
“Don’t tell me to stop,” he snaps back, too fast and too loud. He drags a hand through his hair, then drops it, jaw tightening when his voice wavers and he has to force it steady. “Actin’ like you wouldn’t be lost without someone willin’ to deal with you. What a load of shit.”
He doesn’t quite look you in the eye when he keeps going, and at this point, you’re too baffled to interrupt, unsure why he’s so worked up.
“No one else is gonna step in and put up with your attitude,” he tells you again, words piling on top of each other now, rushed and defensive. “Always talkin’ back, actin’ like you’re on equal footing—most guys wouldn’t last a week.” He lets out a laugh, but it rings hollow. “They’d get sick of ya real fast.”
His fingers curl into his palm, knuckles whitening.
“But I don’t mind it. I don’t get sick of it,” he insists, too quick, eyes flicking back to yours like he wants to see if you believe him. “I can handle it. I want—” He cuts himself off, pauses, then he doubles down, voice turning harsher to cover the slip. “So yeah, I’m doin’ ya a favor.” He scoffs again, but it doesn’t land right this time. “Stop complaining. You got it good. You just don’t like hearin’ it said out loud.”
The silence that follows is suffocating. Naoya stands rigid across from you, like braced for the impact of whatever you’re about to say. You exhale slowly—you feel just as trapped as he looks. You don’t want—well, you don’t even know what you want, and that’s the problem. The last year and a half has taken too much already, and the thought of anything changing with Naoya makes your stomach churn.
Because if something changes, it can go wrong, and if it goes wrong, you won’t be able to handle losing him on top of everything else—you know it. You’ve been there before. The last time the two of you technically had labels, they were imposed on you, a formality neither of you had a say in, and when it fell apart, it almost took everything you had with him with it. Three years passed without a word between you. You don’t think you’d survive that again, not after everything that’s happened. There’s no reason for this. No reason to fix something that isn’t broken.
“I don’t want anything to change,” you tell him after a moment. “I don’t want labels. Not with you. We don’t need th—”
Naoya’s expression shifts immediately, indignation flaring so fast it almost looks like hurt before it hardens into anger. “What? That’s bullshit,” he snaps. “You didn’t have a problem with labels when you were runnin’ around with guys before me.”
“It’s not the same—”
“Why not?” he demands. “You were willing to go on dates with guys who didn’t know a damn thing about ya, but suddenly I’m the problem?” His jaw tightens, tongue darting out to wet his lips before he lets out a harsh laugh. “You let them date you, but won’t let me? I’m the one who’s always been here. I’m the one ya keep coming back to. And you’re gonna sit here and lie to me, saying ya don’t do labels? Fuck off.”
“Will you let me finish a—”
“Fuck you,” he says louder, stepping back. He forces a laugh again, hand pressing to his mouth. “Fuck you. I’m good enough to fuck, good enough to stick around when things get hard, good enough to buy ya whatever you want, but not good enough to be official?” His throat bobs again; his face is red, and you can’t tell if it’s anger or embarrassment anymore. “You really expect me to be okay with that? Fuck you. Fuck off. I don’t need ya. You’re the one who needs me.”
He shoves his hands in his pockets, and he’s gone before you can even say his name, leaving you standing in the middle of the room all by yourself, a sick feeling clawing at your stomach that you can’t push away.
You think you’ve just made a terrible mistake.)
Naoya doesn’t speak to you after that.
One week turns into two, two into three, and each passing day leaves you with a heavier heart and a guiltier conscience. You tell yourself that the two of you have had worse fights and moved past them, but something about this one felt different, felt final. Naoya was mad—no, not mad, upset—in a way you’ve never really seen him before. You didn’t want things to change, and yet, you might’ve ruined them entirely in your efforts to prevent it.
On the Sunday of the fourth week of no contact, his father invites you to the Zenin estate to make sure the two of you are aligned in preparation for a meeting with the higher-ups. You go, of course, because as much as you don’t want to run into Naoya, Naobito’s the only reason you’ve been keeping your head above the water since you became clan head.
You shouldn’t have.
————————
“My lady, Naoya-sama specifically told us not to let you in,” the young girl at the gates says, unable to meet your eyes. “I don’t want to get in trouble.”
You press your fingers to your forehead, trying to will yourself not to lose your temper, but you had a shitty drive to the estate, and it’s raining, and it’s hot and muggy, and each moment you’re left out here being told Naoya doesn’t want to see you is testing the limits of your patience.
“Naobito invited me over for tea,” you say through your teeth. “If you leave me out here in the rain for another second, I’ll blow a fucking hole through the wall, and you can try explaining that to him.”
The girl stares at you with wide eyes through the crack in the gate, lips parting to respond, but before she can, someone grabs her attention from within the estate. You exhale irritability when the gates slam shut as she whirls around to address whoever approached her. Your gaze flicks up to the night sky, watching as lightning splits the clouds overhead, thunder shaking the ground beneath your feet.
After what feels like an eternity, the gates creak open, and instead of staring at one girl, you’re staring at three. Naoya’s kid cousin, Maki, stands in front of the two of them, hands fisted at her side, while her twin sister, Mai, hovers behind her with the girl who was working at the gate.
“Yo, Maki-chan, Mai-chan,” you greet, irritation draining at the sight of the twelve-year-olds. “How’ve you been?” Maki glares at you, crossing her arms over her chest. You raise your eyebrows at her, tilting your head slightly to the side. How cute, you think. You ask with a small smile, “Is Maki-chan mad at me?”
“He’s been awful,” Maki hisses, and you exhale, gaze flitting to the side. Maki immediately shifts so that she’s standing in your line of sight, and Mai grabs for the back of the other girl’s kimono, trying to hold her in place. “He’s always awful, but he’s been even worse. He made Mai cry for hours yesterday because he kept insulting her.”
“Onee-chan,” Mai complains quietly, gaze lowered.
“It’s your fault, isn’t it?” Maki demands. “He told everyone not to let you in. Specifically, you.”
You sigh and rub your hand against your mouth—you’ll try to find him after you talk to Naobito. You planned to already, but hearing Maki’s complaints, you realize it’s probably a more urgent situation than you thought it was if he’s still so worked up about it. Shit. Why the hell does this mean so much to him?
“I’m not here for him. Naobito invited me. Are you gonna let me in or what?”
Maki nods shortly after a moment’s hesitation, stepping aside to let you in. The two of them lead you through the estate to the main house, and you swallow thickly. Ever since Naobito invited you over, you’ve been going back and forth trying to figure out what the hell you’re going to say to Naoya. You’ve had almost a month to think about the argument—about what he wants—and you still don’t know where you stand on it, really.
Dating, love, boyfriend, and girlfriend—they’re all so… well, pedestrian. It doesn’t feel like you and Naoya, and you worry that boxing what you are into these terms will change things between you fundamentally. It’s always been the two of you moving sideways around each other, never straight on, never naming anything because naming it would make it solid and vulnerable to being pulled apart. Whatever this is has survived precisely because it stays undefined, sharp-edged and messy, held together because neither of you want to know what the hell the two of you really are to one another, because that’ll open up a can of worms that can’t be closed.
But—but it’s you and Naoya, and whatever the two of you are, it’s never been fragile. It’s survived too much to be undone by a word. Years of friction and distance, worse arguments than this one, stretches where neither of you should’ve come back and did anyway. If it were going to break, it would have done so already. A label shouldn’t be enough to destroy this, and if Naoya wants it this badly, why are you so adamant on denying him?
Shit, you think again, rubbing your lips absently. What a pain.
You duck into the building, absently thanking a servant who passes you a towel, rubbing your hair dry briefly before draping it around your shoulders. You see Maki and Mai exchange looks with one another as they lead you to the tea room, like they want to say something but don’t know if they should. You give them a suspicious look, but they both lower their eyes.
Something is wrong.
Your gaze lingers on them for a second too long before Mai shifts to slide open the door to the tea room. You start speaking before you look into the room. “Y’know, if you’re going to invite me over, you could at least make sure your… What is going on?”
The tea room is crowded.
There’s a lump in your throat that you can’t seem to swallow away, and you hear your pulse roaring in your ears, dimly registering that Naobito is apologizing for his attendant. He sits at the head of the low table, a teacup that you’re sure is filled with sake in front of him, and there’s a man you vaguely recognize sitting across from him. Naoya is here too, lounging back against the far wall, legs spread obnoxiously wide like he’s purposely trying to take up as much space as possible.
There’s a woman next to him. A girl your age, maybe a little younger—silk sleeves, perfect posture, eyes lowered just enough to be polite. Breathe, you tell yourself, don’t react. You’ve dealt with ambushes your whole life; you know the importance of not letting your emotions show on your face. It’s just been… a long time since you’ve had to throw up this mask at the Zenin estate.
What is happening?
“This is Takaoka Hide, head of the Takaoka clan,” Naobito greets, eyes calculating as he watches you. This is a test, you realize. For you, for Naoya, maybe, but definitely for you. “We plan to finalize the arrangements between his daughter, Aiko, and Naoya soon. I wanted to bring you into the loop, since our clans are aligned for the time being. I thought you would appreciate the transparency.”
What the fuck?
You think you might be sick.
You can’t even bring yourself to look at Naoya.
The older gentleman rises to his feet, inclining his head to you. “I was sorry to hear about what happened to your family. Such a terrible tragedy.”
You stare at him for a moment. “Yeah,” you agree flatly after a moment. “A terrible tragedy.”
Not an appropriate response by any means. Naobito clocks it from the way his lips curl up slightly. Why is he doing this? Just to be cruel? The man has always been callous and unfair—you’ve seen it firsthand many times—but this is… Why? You haven’t done anything to piss him off, and you’ve been working with him as best as you can in meetings with the higher-ups, acting as a bridge between the Zenins and the Gojos when they’re aligned on certain policies. You want to look at Naoya, just to see if he’s in on whatever cruel setup this is, or if you’ll find some kind of support—a roll of his eyes to let you know that this was an ambush for him too—but you’re scared to, because you don’t want to know if the answer isn’t what you want it to be.
Naoya would’ve said something by now if he wasn’t in on this.
This is—you don’t know what this is—is he trying to punish you because you didn’t give him the label he wanted? Or does he not even care anymore? Did he move on when he realized he wouldn’t get what he wanted from you? No, he wouldn’t have, not like this, not with you.
Right?
Your gaze flicks back over to the girl instead. She sits a proper distance from Naoya, keeps her head bowed, her hands in her lap, and her knees folded beneath her. It makes you nauseous; your stomach flips, and it’s an effort to keep your breath steady and your expression blank. And it shouldn’t be—it really shouldn’t be. This is the life Naoya was always supposed to have. A wife who will never challenge him, never crowd him, never stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him, and never speak out of turn.
Zenin-perfect—as he’s been trained to be and trained to want.
You’ve known this since you were a child. Naoya has shoved it in your face for as long as you can remember, complained about how you were the opposite of a perfect Zenin wife, compared you to various different animals, and whined about being stuck with you. He was never subtle when it came to reminding you, and you became used to it, rolling your eyes and kicking the back of his knees when the two of you were alone, rolling around in the dirt until you were both sporting blood and bruises.
You’ve known this.
So, why are you struggling to keep your composure right now?
Naoya would’ve said something by now if he wasn’t in on this.
“Is this seriously why you brought me here and left me out in the rain for ten minutes?” you finally ask, grateful that your voice isn’t as shaky as your hands are, and especially grateful that you can hide your hands in your pockets. “This could’ve been done over a call.”
The girl’s gaze flicks up for the first time, taken aback by your tone and attitude, but she quickly lowers it again—pretty and polite, not intruding in the conversations of men, exactly the type of woman Naoya lauds as the perfect wife. You hate her. You hate her. And you hate yourself, because she hasn’t done anything wrong. She’s sitting where she’s been placed, performing the role she was raised to perform, and you doubt she wants to marry Naoya. Who the fuck would want to marry Naoya? Naoya sucks; he’s a douchebag, and he’ll probably treat her like shit. She’s probably fighting tears right now, the same way you are, except for a wildly different reason, but you can’t stop the bile from curling in your stomach as you realize what’s being taken from you, how it’s being taken from you.
You hate Naoya, you realize instead. You fucking hate Naoya. You’ve always treaded the thin line of love and hatred with him, but this, you know, is hatred, deep-seated, you can feel it in your blood, in your bones, your soul. This is humiliating—you’ve been humiliated before, so many times, but never like this, not by him, not like this.
Naobito hums, amused. “I thought it would be more… respectful to do this in person.”
“Right,” you agree dryly. “Respectful.”
Takaoka Hide clears his throat, visibly uncomfortable. “If this meeting is inconvenient, perhaps—”
“No,” you cut in, tone polite and flat, eyes never leaving Naobito. You force your shoulders to relax, your posture to loosen, like this is nothing more than a mild irritation rather than someone crushing your heart between their fingers. “It’s fine. I appreciate the… consideration. Truly.”
Naobito watches you over the rim of his teacup. “I knew you would.”
“I’ve always known how to properly express gratitude to goodwill,” you say, and then add, voice lower, “and deal with insults in kind.”
Naoya snorts from the wall—you don’t know what it means. If he’s amused by what you said, or just the situation. If it’s his way of showing he’s on your side, or if it’s just further humiliation. You ignore him.
“So,” you continue, tilting your head to the side, “this is a courtesy meeting. Consider me informed. Is that all?”
Naobito sets his cup down. “You don’t have questions?”
“Why would I?” you ask dryly.
Naoya would’ve said something by now if he wasn’t in on this.
Takaoka shifts again, glancing at his daughter. “Aiko is well-suited to the role,” he offers, tentative, when he notices that you keep glancing at her. It makes you want to hurl even more. “She’s obedient, soft-spoken. She understands what’s expected of her. And any ally of the Zenins we’ll be treated as our own, you’ll have our support in meetings with the higher-ups.”
“Wonderful,” you say, tongue pressed to the back of your teeth as you turn away. “I’ll take my leave then.” You spare a glance at Naoya just long enough for him to know you’re addressing him, not long enough for you to see the expression on his face. “Congratulations. You finally got what you’ve always wanted.”
You don’t wait to hear his response or see how he reacts, making your way out of the tea room, out of the estate. The twins are waiting there still, eyes wide, guilty expressions on their faces. Well, Mai looks guilty, Maki keeps her gaze trained to the ground, very unlike her, so you think that’s her version of guilt.
“You brats could’ve warned me,” you say. Your voice cracks over the words now that you’re not in the presence of people who will feast on your weakness like vultures. “That was messed up.”
“I wanted to,” Mai replies softly, fisting the sleeves of her kimono. “Naobito-sama specifically told us not to.”
“Of course he did,” you scoff, looking away as you make your way out of the estate. What the fuck did you even do to him? Or is he just being an asshole for the love of the game? “Fucking bastard.”
Rain meets you again in the inner courtyard, and you’re grateful you didn’t stay much longer, because you would’ve been pissed if your clothes dried only for you to get soaked again. You cut across the stones, boots splashing through shallow puddles. You need to leave, get out of this wretched fucking estate before you collapse in on yourself. You don’t know how much longer you’re going to be able to hold yourself together.
He’s a fucking asshole, you think, jaw tight. He’s a fucking asshole, both of them, father and son. They can both go fuck off and die, making you stand there through that. Naobito’s stupid, smug expression, Naoya’s silence. Screw them both.
Fuck, why are you so upset? You want to rip out your hair. You’ve known your whole life Naoya was destined for this—it’s just, you’ve gotten used to how things were. He’s yours, he’s been yours for two years, longer than that, he’s been yours for as long as you’ve known him, and you’ve been his the same. Even when the two of you were brawling in dirt and giving each other bloody lips and black eyes, he was yours and you were his, and you don’t need fucking labels to know that. So why does he? Why did he take this so seriously that he went to these lengths? Unless—unless you’ve misunderstood everything this whole time. No, you couldn’t have, that’s not possible.
He is yours. He’s shitty and insufferable, unbearably arrogant and casually cruel, a terrible person all around—he really doesn’t have many redeeming traits at all, when you think about it—but he is still yours, and you don’t want to share him. Not with anybody.
Someone shouts your name from the engawa.
You keep walking.
“What the hell was that? You didn’t even—you didn’t even look at me. Hey! I’m talkin’ to you. Don’t fuckin’ walk away from me. Would you just—fuckin’ wait a second—”
You don’t.
“Hey—don’t just—” Footsteps come fast behind you, splashing unevenly. “Please, fuck.”
That word is what finally makes you stop. You let out a heavy breath and turn around, rain sliding down your face. He halts a few steps away, chest heaving, hair plastered to his forehead, rain darkening his clothes. He looks wrong like this—confused, uncomposed, stripped of the arrogance he usually wears like armor.
“What do you want, Zenin?” you ask flatly.
Naoya’s face tightens instantly. He opens his mouth like he’s about to snap back, then stops himself. Whatever he was going to say died the moment he registered how you addressed him.
“I—” He swallows hard. “Don’t call me that, the hell?”
“Thought it appropriate,” you say distantly. “What do you want?”
“I didn’t know he was gonna invite you,” he finally tells you, dragging a hand through his wet hair. “I didn’t—fuck—I didn’t even know this was happenin’. He just fuckin’ told me to come see him, and they were there, and then you were there, and I just—I didn’t know, okay?”
You hate that it doesn’t even make you feel better. It should. He didn’t know, it wasn’t a scheme, but your heart is still in your throat because—because what does it matter? His father is still going to go through with this. You know how this is going to go; you’ve played these games with him yourself before. The same way Naoya never went to his father to end the engagement with you when the two of you were kids, he won’t now. It’s over. Naobito only threw it in your face now because the deed is done.
“Okay.”
The word comes out flat and dismissive, and it drives him insane.
“Don’t—don’t do that,” he snaps. “Don’t act like you don’t care, like I did it on purpose.”
“Didn’t you?” Your jaw tightens, anger blooming suddenly in your chest because what right does he have to be mad right now? “That was humiliating. That was fucking humiliating, and you didn’t know, whatever, but you just sat there and let it happen. What was that? Supposed to be some sort of punishment because I didn’t give you what you wanted? Fuck you, Naoya. Fuck you—I don’t care how mad I am at you, I never would’ve fucking done this to you. Never.”
“No,” he says, louder this time, teeth gritted. “That’s not—that’s not what it was. It wasn’t… punishment, the fuck? I just—”
“Then what was it?” you demand. Rain runs down your cheeks, your eyes sting. “Because from where I was standing, it looked a hell of a lot like you letting them parade your future in front of me, daring me to say something, knowing that I can’t.”
“That’s not—” he starts, then stops, blinking twice. “That’s not what that was. Don’t put that on me, the hell? You think I enjoyed that? That I liked watchin’ that happen?”
“No? You didn’t? You get mad at me, and tell me that you don’t need me, don’t talk to me for a month, and then I’m called to the Zenin estate so your father can give me a heads up that you’re getting fucking engaged to someone?” Your voice breaks. You inhale deeply to calm yourself down. “You’re telling me that’s not you being spiteful and angry? Purposely trying to hurt me?”
Naoya exhales hard through his nose. “Alright,” he says stiffly. “It looks bad, but that’s not what it was—”
“Then why the hell did you just sit there?” you ask furiously. “You could’ve said something, could’ve spoken up, but you just sat there and let him fucking humiliate me.”
He opens his mouth, then closes it again, jaw working like he’s trying to force the right words out and keeps failing. You should walk away—you don’t know why you haven’t yet.
“I didn’t sit there because I was tryna hurt you,” he says, voice rough. “I didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t make shit worse.”
“Bullshit, you—”
“I thought you’d say somethin’,” he interrupts. Of course he’s blaming you, you think furiously. Always your fault somehow. He can never accept responsibility for anything. “You always do. I figured—” His jaw clenches. “I figured I could shut it down after. Instead, ya just acted like you didn’t care and left. Didn’t even fuckin’ look at me.”
You let out a bitter laugh. “So it’s my fault. You wanted me to save you.”
“That’s not what I said,” he snaps. “Don’t twist it.”
“Fuck you, Naoya,” you say again, tired this time. “I never would’ve done this to you. Never. Just leave me the fuck alone. I’m done with this.”
“Wait—come on,” he says, strained as he realizes how serious you are. “Ya don’t have to go. I didn’t know this was happening. We can—fuck, we can figure it out, alright? I didn’t—”
“Figure what out?” you ask with a scoff. “You already did on your own. Have a happy marriage.”
“That’s not fair,” he argues, anger and defensiveness draining into something rawer. “I didn’t—I didn’t choose this. I swear I didn’t. I told you, I didn’t even know that was happening.” He catches himself slipping up and throws up the walls again, voice sharpening, expression twisting. “And—and what the fuck do you care so much for anyway? You said you didn’t want me, you said—”
You start turning away mid-sentence. You don’t want to hear this, don’t care for whatever twisted narrative he’s using to justify what he did. You just want to go home—you want to—you don’t even know what you want anymore. Frustration builds in your chest, and that awful lump is forming in your throat again. You need to go. You need—
Naoya grabs your wrist to stop you from leaving, and you whirl around, open palm striking his cheek so hard that his head snaps to the side. He could’ve dodged it easily, but he doesn’t. He blinks, stunned, cheek blooming red, rain sliding down his jaw, your arm still extended. Your vision is blurry, and you blame it on the rain instead of tears.
“... Okay,” he says, jaw tight as he stares off to the side, exhaling sharply. “You can—y’can hit me again, if ya want. Just… just listen to what I have to say, fuck.”
Your hand drops, fingers curling in on themselves as the sting finally catches up with you. The rain is coming down harder now, drowning out your voices to any unwelcome ears. You don’t answer him, so he speaks up again, desperately trying to get you to listen to him
“I didn’t know what to do,” he says, hands fisted at his side. “You—I waited a month. You didn’t say anything or come to see me. I thought you were done. For real this time. I—”
“Why the fuck is that on me?” you demand. “You could’ve said something, could’ve come to see me. You were the one who said you didn’t need me, told me to go fuck myself.”
“You said you didn’t want me first,” Naoya fires back, loud and frustrated. “You said you didn’t want me, and my old man started talkin’ about alliances and heirs and responsibilities, and I—I can’t just fuckin’ wait around for someone who doesn’t want me—what was I supposed to do? Say something in there, just for you to—” He cuts himself off, shaking his head and looking away. His hand loosens around your wrist, but doesn’t let go, fingers trembling now that the anger’s burned out of him. “I was scared,” he admits, face twisting like the words taste bad in his mouth. “There. Ya happy? I didn’t know if you were waitin’ for me to fight or if you were already gone—I was waiting for you to clue me in on where we stand, so I didn’t fuck up everything more than it already was.”
“I never fucking said that, Naoya,” you say, scoffing. “You always fucking do this—take shit and run with it with some warped story that fits your narrative. I never said I didn’t want you. You didn’t even let me finish talking back then. It was never about not wanting you. Why the fuck do labels matter so much to you?”
“Because it matters,” he hisses, then stops himself, jaw clenching. “Not to you, apparently, but it does to me.”
“Why, though?” you ask him. “Tell me why.”
“Because I don’t do things halfway,” he says through his teeth, “and I don’t like not knowing where I stand. You don’t get to keep things just vague enough so that you can walk whenever you feel like it.”
“You can’t actually think that’s why,” you say with an incredulous laugh. “Naoya—”
“Then why fight me on this?” he interrupts, voice rising, strained. “Why the fuck fight me on this unless you’re just keeping me around until something better shows up?”
Your lips part in shock. “Naoya, what—?”
“Don’t pretend that’s not what it is,” he spits defensively. “You get what you want from now—company, money, whatever the fuck it is you want—and then one day you’re gonna wake up and decide it’s time to marry someone else. I’m not stupid, I know how this works. You don’t get to string me along, good enough to stay as long as nothing’s real, so you can walk free when another person comes along. So, I gotta do what I gotta do, I’m gonna be clan head, and if you’re just leadin’ me on, not serious about this, I need—”
Oh.
The words hit harder than you expect, drowning out the rest of whatever he’s saying. You’ve heard this fear before, dressed up differently, buried under arrogance and cruelty, but it’s the same wound you’ve watched him carry since you were kids. The tight jaw, the way his nails dig into his palms enough to draw blood, the insecurity he’s desperately trying to hide beneath pride and anger. This has nothing to do with labels or relationships or even you. You think you should’ve realized it sooner than this; you spent over ten years dealing with the Zenins, and you know better than anyone that Naoya learned early that he’s only valuable so long as he performs perfectly, and the moment he falters, someone else is waiting to try to take his place.
It clicks suddenly why labels matter to him so much—why ambiguity feels like a threat instead of freedom, and why he can’t stand the idea of something so important to him being undefined, one bad day from being replaced. Unnamed things don’t last; they get tossed aside the second they stop being useful, he has learned that firsthand time and time again. He’s centered his whole identity around a title that his father can take away on a whim, and has threatened to do time and time again if he doesn’t live up to his impossible standards. Now he feels secure in his title, and he was trying to center his future around you, but he was thrown back into the same limbo he endured his entire childhood.
You’re an idiot, you think, gaze shifting up to the stormy skies, but so is he. You two really are made for each other.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Naoya scoffs, looking away from you, crossing his arms over his chest. “Don’t fuckin’ psychoanalyze me. That’s not what this is.”
“Naoya,” you say, and he uncharacteristically goes quiet, watching you from the corner of his eye, body tense. “I didn’t want the labels because I didn’t want to mess things up with them. I didn’t want to lose you. I didn’t—” You cut yourself off from what you’re about to say, sighing and looking away. It sounds silly when you say it out loud. “I didn’t think I could handle that. Losing you on top of everything else. So I just wanted to keep things as they’ve always been. I didn’t want anything to change.”
“That’s twisted,” he tells you quietly after a moment, jaw tight, not meeting your gaze. “The fuck is a label gonna change? S’just a word.”
You swallow and scoff lightly.
“Well,” you add, “guess it doesn’t matter now anyway, does it?”
“It does matter,” he argues. “It still matters. We can—I’ll fix it.”
You let out a breath that almost sounds like a laugh, shaking your head slightly as you look away.
“I mean it,” he insists. “I’ll talk to my old man. I’ll call it off. I don’t give a shit what he says—I’ll make it stop. I don’t want her, I don’t want anyone—I want you. I’ve always wanted you, even back when we were kids, alright? Shit, can't believe you'remakin’ me admit this. I—”
“Naoya—”
“I’m serious,” he continues before you can tell him to stop. “I’m serious, okay? I didn’t really understand it back then, but it’s true. You were fuckin’ awful, and you were everything I was taught to hate, but I couldn’t stop wanting you anyway. You were loud and aggressive, and y’never did what you were supposed to, and—and you were always there. Every time I hesitated, every time my father tore into me, every time I fucked something up and didn’t know how to fix it. You were an asshole about it. You mocked me, and called me an idiot, and kicked the back of my knees when no one was lookin’, but you were there. And I kept telling myself I hated you, and you were a problem I couldn’t shake, but I never went to my old man to tell him I didn’t want the arrangement. I could’ve, and I knew ya wanted me to. I had so many chances—he asked me after all of your visits, and every time, I told him that it was fine. I always wanted you, and it scared the shit outta me, because you never needed this place or the Zenin name, and you didn’t want the rules and all the expectations, and you didn’t need or want me, but I—” His eyes slide shut as he forces out the last bit. “—I needed you… I still need ya.”
You swallow hard, arms wrapped around your torso as you stare at him. He lets out a breathless laugh, looking down at the ground before he turns his gaze up to the sky.
“Fuck,” he says, pressing his hands to his face. “Fuck, look at how you’ve got me actin’. This is so fuckin’ embarrassing.”
He drops his hands, limp at his side, and he looks at you again, eyes red and unfocused in a way that makes your chest ache.
“Say somethin’ already,” he mutters.
You can’t. Your throat’s tight, lungs burning like you forgot how to breathe somewhere between his confession and the way he’s looking at you right now. You don’t know what to say right now that won’t lead to you right back into his arms, his bedroom, his bed, and you can’t—not until this is all worked out. Not until you know he’s yours again, only yours. You won’t settle for anything less.
“You’re an asshole,” you finally tell him, letting out a sharp breath and looking away. You nod your chin over to the main house, and then look him in the eye. “You figure things out here and then come find me.”
Naoya blinks at you, like he’s not sure he heard you right.
“…That’s it?” he asks hoarsely. “That’s all you’ve gotta say to me after all that?”
“Yeah,” you tell him, turning away from him. “I don’t have anything else to say to you right now. Get things handled here, then maybe I’ll have more to say.”
“You’re really somethin’ else, y’know that?” he says bitterly. “Don’t you have a heart? I just poured mine out to you, and that’s all you’re gonna give me? Every time I think you can’t be more of a bitch, you prove me wrong.”
You flip him off over your shoulder as you walk away.
“Can’t you—” he starts to ask, aggravated, but then he sighs. “At least tell me I’m not doin’ this for nothing. I’ll go in there and burn it all down, if that’s what ya want me to do, but you can’t—ya can’t just drop me and go runnin’ off with someone else when you get the first chance. It’s us, alright, you and me—no more one foot in shit.”
You look at him over your shoulder, a small smile curving at your lips. “Naoya, you’re an idiot if you ever thought it was anyone else. It’s always been you and me.”
————————
Two weeks later, Naoya shows up at your doorstep. It’s raining again, and when you open the door, he stands there with an uncharacteristically dull look in his eyes, circles beneath them. He looks… wrecked. His hair is matted to his forehead, and there’s a faint bruise along his jaw, yellowed like it’s days old. He’s dressed simply in a dark jacket and a plain shirt, none of the traditional wear he usually dons. His throat bobs when his gaze meets yours.
For a moment, neither of you says anything.
“Hey,” he says after a moment, voice subdued.
“Hi,” you reply.
He pauses, nostrils flaring slightly as he inhales, gaze flicking past you into your apartment, and then back to you. His lips part, tongue darting out to wet them as he tells you quietly, “You… said to come find you after I handled everything.”
“I did.”
“Well,” he mutters, eyes shifting up to the ceiling. You think the conversation with his father must not have gone well, because he seems too exhausted to even put up the pretense of pride. “Here I am.”
You stare at him for a moment. He looks anywhere but your face—behind you, above you, at the sweatshirt you’re wearing and the socks on your feet. His gaze doesn’t lift to your face until you step out of the way, pushing the door open a little wider.
“Are you gonna keep dripping in the hallway, or are you gonna come in?” you ask him, and Naoya exhales in relief.
He slips off his shoes and steps inside, hanging his jacket up next to yours, and you shut the door behind him. He stands awkwardly in the middle of your apartment, like he isn’t quite sure what to do with himself. He turns to look at you again, as though he’s waiting for you to say something, and you raise your eyebrows at him briefly, becoming more and more concerned with each passing second.
To try to lessen the awkwardness, you give him a half-smile and tell him, “You look like shit,” and the tension in his shoulders eases. He lets out a breathless laugh, gaze lifting to meet yours, the gold still swimming with uncertainty. You glance back toward your bedroom and say, “Wait here.”
You feel his gaze trailing after you as you disappear down the short hallway, and you dart over to your dresser, pulling out a pair of his sweats and a t-shirt for him to change into. When you come back out, he’s standing exactly where you left him, rainwater pooling faintly at his feet. He looks up when you reappear, startled, like he’d been lost in his own head.
You hold the clothes out to him. “Change. Maybe go take a hot shower, too. It’s freezing out there, and you’re soaked.”
He blinks at the fabric in your hand, a conflicted expression on his face, and when he reaches out to curl his fingers around the clothes, he glances up at you. Quieter than you’ve ever heard him, he asks, “Y’sure?”
You can still send me away, he says, without saying anything at all.
Quit it with the woe is me bullshit, you answer instead when you raise your eyebrows at him and say, “Yeah, I’m sure.”
“... Right.” He hesitates, then adds, awkwardly, “Okay.”
You busy yourself in the kitchen when he goes down the hall to your bedroom. You put a kettle on, wipe down a counter that’s already clean, anything to keep from sitting here agonizing over what happened between him and his father, wondering why he looks so exhausted, stripped of his usual arrogance and venom. The sound of the shower starts, muffled through the walls, and you let out a heavy breath, eyes sliding shut as you lean against the counter.
Shit, you think.
When he finally comes back out, he looks less awkward, but no less tired. The sweatpants hang low on his hips, and the t-shirt you gave him drapes over his shoulders in a way that makes him look… younger. It’s… terribly domestic, you think, as he shifts, barefoot in your kitchen, hair damp and pushed back from his face, and instead of the panic that usually swells in your chest when you think of a life with Naoya beyond what you already have, something warm settles in your chest.
“So?” you finally ask him, pouring him a cup of tea and making your way over to the couch.
You sit cross-legged on it, waiting for him to join you, and he does, very slowly, hands resting on his knees, posture unusually stiff. You press your lips together and offer him the tea. His fingers brush yours as he takes it from you, lifting it to his lips.
“You still make awful fuckin’ tea,” he mutters, which you take as a good sign, so you roll your eyes and kick your foot out to hit his thigh. His hand darts down to grab your ankle before you can pull it back, dragging your calf over his lap. Your throat feels tight as he rests his hand there, thumb gliding along your bare skin. “I talked to him.”
“I figured,” you say quietly. “What happened?”
“He didn’t like it,” Naoya says after a moment, staring down at the surface of the tea, “but it’s done. Told him I wouldn’t go through with it. He threw a fit, said I was embarrassing the clan, thinkin’ with my dick. Threatened to disinherit me.”
Your eyes widen slightly, heart sinking. It’s exactly what you feared, you—
“He didn’t,” Naoya continues quickly when he sees your reaction. You only relax marginally, brows furrowing as you watch him. “I called him on the bluff. Told him to do it, said he wouldn’t. He got real pissed.”
Oh, you think, lips parting in disbelief.
You… did not anticipate that Naoya would call him on his bluff like that. A part of you was trying to brace yourself for the end of… well, whatever this is, because Naoya never went to his father back when you were kids to try to get the arrangement canceled. Though he claims now that it was because he didn’t want it to end, you still have your doubts, because Naoya, until recently, has always been quite reluctant to get on his father’s bad side. And ending an engagement and destroying an alliance between the Zenins and another clan would certainly be enough to make Naobito apocalyptic—you know Naoya well enough to know that he’ll put his inheritance over everything, even you.
Except, clearly you were wrong in every regard in those assumptions. Even if he was confident that Naobito wouldn’t really disinherit him, so there was no risk there, the fact that he was even willing to go to that length… You don’t know what to think about that, and you hate how it makes your chest feel tight.
Shit.
You shift closer before you can stop yourself, lifting your hand up to cradle his jaw in your palm. You run your thumb along his bruised skin. His eyes slide shut as he leans into your touch, breath trembling as he exhales. You ask quietly, “He hit you?”
Naoya snorts lightly, but doesn’t reopen his eyes. “Tried. Got one good shot in before the old bastard realized I’m not a kid anymore.” His lashes flutter as he looks up at you, gold horribly soft as his gaze traces your face. “He’s not gonna keep pushing. Told him if he ever tried to pull shit like that again with me that I’d walk.” Your breath catches, eyes widening slightly. “He didn’t think I meant it at first, but he realized real quick I did. Told you, ya didn’t believe me a couple years ago, but he can’t afford to lose me now. None of my trash brothers are cut out to take over the clan. Everything’ll be fine. I’ll just… stay here ‘til he calms down. ‘Til I feel like going back… If you’ll have me.”
“Idiot,” you murmur fondly, fingers sliding from his jaw to the back of his head, threading loosely with his damp hair. “As if I’d turn you away.”
Naoya’s throat bobs as his eyes search your face—you don’t know what he’s looking for, but you’re not sure if he finds it, because his lips press together briefly before he swallows thickly, gaze flicking away.
“I want you,” he tells you. “I know you don’t want labels, and we don’t need ‘em right now, if it’s still what ya want, but I want you. This. Us. I don’t want anyone or anything else, and I don’t want this to just be some vague thing we won’t name ‘cause we’re scared it’ll break if we look at it too hard. ‘Cause it won’t.” He exhales, gaze shifting up to the ceiling like he’s trying to will himself the strength to say whatever he wants to say next. He continues, voice quiet, “I want to call you mine. I’m not tryna fuckin’ cage you, or box whatever mess this is into something, if that’s what you’re thinkin’. I just—I wanna know what this is. I don’t wanna be trapped in some weird limbo, not with you.”
You don’t respond right away, because his jaw tightens like he still has more to say, but your heart is racing in your chest, and you’re gnawing on the inside of your cheek. You knew this—you knew this is what he’s wanted, and you’ve had ample time to prepare yourself for this, but it’s still different hearing him say it out loud.
Different when you don’t feel the rush of panic you first felt when he ambushed you with this a month and a half ago.
Different when you think, maybe, that you might want this too.
It was never really about the labels for you. You just don’t want anything to change, but it’s you and Naoya—and you won’t admit out loud that he’s right, but he is, because what the hell is a word going to change? You’re his, and he’s yours—he’s still the same douchebag he was fifteen years ago, and you’re still the same as you were. You’ve never been able to imagine your life without him, so who the fuck cares what the two of you are called as long as you get him in your apartment, barefoot, damp hair, curled up with you on your couch in sweats?
“And one day,” he finally adds, softer now, gold eyes drifting back over to you as you lean your head against the back of the couch, watching him carefully, “I want ya to be my wife.”
You inhale sharply through your nose, lips parting, and Naoya rushes to continue, face flaming up. “Not now, I mean—one day. I don’t—I don’t need another woman in my life, you’re too much as it is,” he spits, that familiar defensiveness creeping back in when he realizes exactly what he just admitted to you. He sighs after a moment, shoulders slumping, voice more serious as he continues, “I just—I don’t want anyone else standin’ there. Never have. When I picture my life—really picture it—you’re there. Every time. And I’m sick of us dancing around that, so y’need to know that this is real for me. It’s always been real.”
Is it real for you? he asks you without asking anything at all.
His shoulders are tense, like he’s bracing himself for rejection, and his fingers curl slightly around your calf, twitching, as though he doesn’t really know what to do with his hands. His eyes keep flicking back over to you, waiting for you to say something, and you let out a soft sigh, sitting up a little straighter, shifting closer. Your hand slips from the back of his head to his cheek again, thumb brushing lightly along the corner of his mouth.
And then, you laugh.
You don’t mean to laugh, and Naoya doesn’t even register you’re laughing at first, brows furrowing, but when you try to stop, you only find yourself laughing harder, leaning your forehead against his shoulder as you try to calm yourself down, but hysteria bubbles in your chest and tears pool in your eyes.
“The fuck?” Naoya demands, furious. “The hell is the matter with you? Are you seriously laughing at me right now?”
“No,” you try to say, but devolve into another fit of giggles. “I promise, I promise. Just—gimme a second, okay?”
“Sure fuckin’ sounds like it,” Naoya hisses, but he pointedly doesn’t shove you away like he usually would when you piss him off, and he’s incredibly tense, so you try to force yourself to settle down. “You’re so unbelievable, y’know that? Heartless bitch. I can’t stand you.’
“It’s just—” you try to say, letting out another snort, eyes sliding shut as you will yourself to stop laughing. “I just could not imagine telling our younger selves that we’re sitting here, telling each other we want to spend the rest of our lives together after all the shit we put each other through.”
You finally manage to get the laughter under control, wiping at the corner of your eyes with the heel of your hand. Your forehead stays pressed to his shoulder for a second longer than necessary, and Naoya is still rigid beneath you, waiting for you to properly respond to what he said, one wrong word from bolting.
You rest your chin on his shoulder, lean in to brush your lips against his jaw, and the tension finally slips away. He sighs, sinking back into the couch, turning his head slightly to the side so he can look at you properly.
“It’s funny, admit it,” you say with a small smile. He rolls his eyes. “If I told six-year-old me that I’d be sitting on a couch with you, listening to you talk about wanting to marry me, I would’ve assumed you’d finally lost your mind.”
He lets out a huff that you think is laughter.
“And if you told eight-year-old you that you’d be saying all this to me, he’d probably punch you in the face for being embarrassing,” you add, amused, “and then call you a liar.”
Naoya’s lips finally curl up into a half-smile. “... Yeah, you’re probably right.”
“I won’t be the wife you want, y’know?” you remind him quietly, more serious now, watching his face carefully. “If we get there one day, things aren’t gonna magically change. I’m not going to magically change. I’m still gonna argue with you, and insult you, and I’m not going to stay home and be safe—I’m a sorcerer, and I have my own clan to worry about, too, now. I don’t fit into the Zenin’s idea of what a perfect wife looks like, and I know that’s what you’ve wanted since, well, forever.”
Naoya gives you a long look and a tired smile. “I’ve known you for fifteen years. Ya think I don’t know what I’m gettin’ myself into?” he counters, shifting so that he can face you. He lifts his hand up to cradle your cheek in the palm of your hand, and you let out a shaky breath that you didn’t even realize you were holding. You’re not sure why your eyes suddenly feel a bit wet, and you’re doubly unsure why your throat feels swollen—maybe because you’re not used to this kind of intimacy with him. “You fucked up everything I thought I wanted the moment you stepped into my life and punched me in the face. I want you exactly like this—arguin’ with me, callin’ me out, kickin’ the back of my knees when I deserve it. ” He winks at you, lips curling up into a faint smirk. “Keeps me honest.”
You let out a breathless laugh, leaning slightly into his touch. “It’s not going to be easy,” you warn him. Your lashes flutter when his thumb brushes over your bottom lip. “It’s really not going to be easy. Your father and the rest of your clan will be pissed… and the higher-ups hate me, so they’ll hate that the Zenin heir is—”
“Who cares?” he interrupts. “They can all go to hell. I’m going to be the next clan head, so none of what any of ‘em say matters.”
You sigh and shake your head. You say again, “I’m serious, Naoya, it’s not gonna be easy, we—”
“I’m serious, too,” he cuts you off, frowning as he forces you to look at him again. “I’m serious. Who the fuck cares what they have to say? What the hell can they do to us?”
You stare at him, chest suddenly tight for a whole other reason, because you know very well what the higher-ups are capable of when they decide they don’t like something and want it out of the way. Naoya seems to realize what you’re getting at, because he lets out a puff of air and glances away briefly.
“We’ll figure it out,” he tells you. “Everything always works out for us, doesn’t it?”
You roll your eyes. “It never fails to astound me how you act like the world just exists to give you everything you want.”
“Well, it gave me you, didn’t it?”
The two of you look at each other, pausing briefly, and then you both burst into laughter. You press your hand into his face and push him away, wheezing as you say, “Enough, that was too corny even for me. Get out of here. I can’t stand you.”
He lets himself be shoved, flopping back against the cushions and tossing his arm over his face. “Shit, almost made myself sick,” he mutters, and then props himself up on his elbow to look at you with a sharp grin. “Y’know, most women would be properly romanced with a line like that, y’ungrateful bitch.”
“Most women don’t know you,” you counter.
“Tragic for them.”
You snort, knocking your fist against his thigh. “They should be counting their blessings, actually.”
He grins and then reaches out to snatch your wrist before you can pull back. He pulls you closer to him so that you’re straddling his hips, one arm slinking around your waist as he pushes himself into a sitting position. You lift your hand to cradle the back of his head, fingers threading through his blonde hair, and then you lean in to press your lips against his. Naoya lets out a soft breath into your mouth, arm tightening around your waist, one hand coming up to cup your cheek. Most of your kisses are rough and messy, but this one is chaste, unhurried, savoring in each other’s presence. Naoya hums softly against your mouth, something pleased and content, and when you pull back just enough to breathe, his forehead tips forward to rest against yours, eyes slide shut.
“It’s us,” he says quietly, exhaling as he presses his face into the crook of your neck. “You and me. No more one foot in shit.”
You let out a huff of laughter, leaning down to press your lips to the top of his head. “It’s always been us, dumbass.”
————————
2015 | READER, AGE 22; NAOYA, AGE 24
Naoya stays at your place more often than not that year, and you learn, very quickly, that he is a terrible roommate.
It starts small. You find his jacket draped over the back of a chair instead of hung up. His shoes are kicked off haphazardly by the door of your apartment. Cups migrate from the kitchen to the living room to the bedroom, and never make the return trip. You try to be patient—you really do—but not only is he completely useless in a shared space, he also doesn’t care to even put up a front of trying to be helpful.
(You tilt your head to the side, watching him leave an empty mug on the counter, turning away like the problem has simply ceased to exist once it's served its use. You clear your throat pointedly, and he pauses, giving you a questioning look. You look down at the mug, then back up to his face, raising your eyebrows.
“... What?”
“Are you just going to leave that there?”
Naoya blinks. “Yeah?”
You stare at him. He stares back.
“... It’s empty,” he adds, like that explains everything.
“So, clean it,” you say slowly.
“... Why?”
“Did you just ask why?” you ask, voice riddled with disbelief. “Who the fuck do you think is going to clean it?”
He pauses like he’s genuinely considering the question. “Well—I don’t know, actually. They’ve just been disappearing when I leave them around.”
Your eyes slide shut, willing yourself the patience not to strangle him. “Clean the mug, or so help me, I will put Nair in your shampoo.”)
He doesn’t do laundry. Doesn’t know how the trash system works. Stares at the dishwasher like it might attack him if he presses the wrong button. He uses all of your hair products and skin care, no matter how many times you tell him not to touch your shit. The first time you asked him to help clean, he stood in the middle of the apartment with a sponge in one hand and a bottle of cleaner in the other, scowling as though you’d personally offended him by even putting these things in his general vicinity.
Living with Naoya, you think, is the most infuriating experience of your life. He has no sense of maintenance. If something is clean, it is because it has always been clean, not because someone cleaned it after he dirtied it, and if something is dirty, it’s because it has become dirty, through no fault of his own, of course, so he shouldn’t have to lower himself to clean it. This is, apparently, how his world works, and it astounds you, because you don’t even think your brothers were this bad, and they had the same silver spoon treatment as Naoya.
(“The hell am I supposed to do with this?” he demands.
“Wipe things, smart one,” you say dryly, trying to figure out how the hell he managed to get the sink clogged.
“Where?”
You gesture behind you vaguely. “Surfaces, Naoya. My fucking god, do you need someone to tell you how to wipe your ass, too?”
Through gritted teeth, he demands, “Why can’t ya just bring one of your attendants from the estate to your apartment? Better yet, I’ll bring one of our servants to—”
“Wipe the fucking counter, Naoya!”)
Still, you find yourself enjoying the months of Naoya’s rebellion, because, as infuriating as he is to deal with, you have fun forcing him to do things around the apartment with you. There’s always a running commentary of complaints and insults, saying it’s inefficient and beneath him, and if anyone back at the Zenin estate ever saw him scrubbing a countertop, his reputation would be thoroughly ruined—to which you naturally echo his words about how ‘none of what any of them say matters anyway,’ much to his distinct displeasure—but it’s entertaining, at least, and you get some good pictures of him doing housework out of it.
It almost becomes a strange sort of ritual for the two of you. Music playing low from your phone, you leaning back against the counter, watching him do things badly on purpose just to prove a point. Despite all the noise he makes, there’s something easy about it. Domestic in a way that creeps up on you. You start to notice that Naoya complains less when you’re doing it together. He’ll still talk shit, but he won’t get bored and wander off, and he’ll start asking where things go instead of leaving them wherever they land. He still, naturally, throws a hissy fit if you point any of this out, but you can’t help yourself from teasing him.
It’s nice, you decide, even if Naoya is a pain to live with, and you allow yourself to become used to it when you know you shouldn’t have, because it was never going to last.
(“You’re starting to make a decent house husband,” you tell him one day, slinking your arms around his waist from behind as you peek over his shoulder to look at the mug he cleaned without your prompting. “It’s cute.”
Naoya turns to look at you over his shoulder so slowly that you think he must be trying to convince himself he didn’t hear properly what you just said. He tells you, “If ya ever say such disgusting shit t’me ever again, I’ll make ya regret it. House husband. The fuck is the matter with ya?”
He scowls as he storms away from the sink, and you laugh as you follow after him. “I’m just saying, you went on and on about making a proper wife out of me, and I’m making more progress in three months than you made in ten years.”
“Bitch.”)
When summer rolls around, you’re not back at your apartment too often anymore, so the time you share there becomes briefer and more sporadic—weekends, if you’re lucky, but hardly ever during the week. You have matters to attend to at your clan’s estate that you can’t delegate to your uncle or cousins, and it’s a busy summer with curses that popped up from the winter. Naoya used to come with you to your estate, but after a bad run-in with Naobito, when the man stopped by unannounced to talk about an upcoming meeting with representatives of the higher-ups, Naoya didn't ask to come along again.
(“Still off playing house, are you, boy?” Naobito asks dryly when he sees Naoya standing beside you, gaze flicking over him, unimpressed. “When are you going to tire of this little rebellion? It’s getting boring.”
Naoya’s lip curls up in annoyance. “Why are you here?” he asks flatly. “Don’t ya got better things to do than hang around another clan’s estate? And you wonder why we got so many problems to deal with.”
Naobito’s gaze drifts back over to you, openly dismissing Naoya, as though his own son and heir isn’t even worth his own time. Naoya scoffs, rolling his eyes, and Naobito tells you, “Come. There are logistics to go over before Wednesday's meeting. We should be on the same page.”
You exchange a long look with Naoya before nodding and making your way to the tea room.
Naoya is gone before the meeting is over.)
You never learn exactly what went down between Naoya and his father.
You don’t press when he makes it clear he doesn’t want to say anymore than what he did that day he showed up on your doorstep, but whatever happened, you think it irreversibly changed their relationship. Naoya still goes to meetings, and trains the Hei, and prepares for his role as heir, but he no longer bends himself in knots trying to anticipate Naobito’s moods or approval. You suppose he hasn’t for years, but it’s different now, more apathetic in how he goes about it. When his phone lights up with his father’s name, he lets it ring or silences it. Once, he deletes the missed call without comment and goes back to trying to figure out how to put together your new bookshelf after you insisted that he’d never be able to, tricking him into doing it for you.
You think this was always bound to happen. Naobito held power over Naoya for a long, long time, but it was never sustainable. Naoya was raised on hierarchy and obedience, yes, but more than that, he was raised on entitlement—the unshakable belief that he was meant to stand at the top, not bow his head indefinitely. Fear gave his father power when he was younger, when Naobito’s shadow was still big enough to blot out the horizon of the future Naoya was promised, and Naoya still equated a night in the discipline pit with pain and humiliation and loss of standing. But fear as a leash only works for so long, and Naobito only held that leash so long as Naoya believed his future could still be taken from him.
Whatever happened that day cracked the illusion clean in half. Just like how his fury toward his brothers and their scheming shifted into bored amusement, Naoya’s fear of his father becomes casual indifference.
(“Why did you do it?” you ask Naobito one day as the two of you make your way out of Jujutsu Headquarters in Hokkaido. The man raises his eyebrows as he walks down the steps to the car waiting for the two of you, beckoning you to elaborate. “You ended me and Naoya’s engagement for no reason, and then the moment you thought there was a rift between us, you rushed him into another one and then brought me there to humiliate me. Do you really hate me that much?”
Naobito casts you a side-long glance as the driver steps out of the car to open the door for the two of you. Naobito slides into the back seat, and you scoff before sitting with him, barely withholding a roll of your eyes as you angle yourself to the window. Naobito settles back against the leather and tips his head back against the headrest, eyes sliding shut. The driver closes the door, and it’s only once the car starts to pull away from the curb that he finally speaks.
“That boy has never been the ideal son or heir,” Naobito says firmly after a moment. “He is arrogant and impulsive and too easily distracted by his own whims and things that don’t serve the clan. If I had any other acceptable sons, I would have replaced him years ago. Unfortunately, he’s the only one who inherited a proper technique.”
“You say that as if he isn’t exactly what you raised him to be,” you say with a huff of laughter, though you’re not particularly amused, folding your arms over your chest. “What did you expect? I knew from our first meeting that he was an insufferable pick, and he’d grow up to be an even more insufferable prick. You raise a kid to think the world bends to everything he wants, and then you’re surprised he acts like it does? Come on.”
“Watch your tongue, girl,” Naobito warns you, gaze cutting to the side. “You’ve become far too casual with me.”
“I don’t care about your relationship with Naoya,” you say, and it’s a lie, but you care more about figuring out what the hell his problem is with you. “Why do you have to drag me into it? How are we supposed to work together at these meetings with the higher-ups and the other clans when you’re actively trying to humiliate me behind closed doors?”
“Because he has never been so irrational and out of control as he is when it comes to you,” Naobito scoffs. “He was never supposed to listen forever, a clan head does not take orders from anyone, even his own father, but especially not an outsider, and a woman at that. You became an issue the moment he let you start distracting him. I thought that removing you from the picture by ending the engagement would eliminate the issue, but I hadn’t realized how deeply your claws had already sunk in.”
You roll your eyes. “My claws sunk in,” you echo mockingly. “You act like I’m some sort of demon, or something. That’s ridiculous. So you want me gone, is that it?”
“Did I say that, girl?” Naobito asks, irritated. “Your clan is a valuable ally. What I want is for that stupid boy to understand that you are not his wife, nor will you ever be, and he needs to get that through his thick skull before he ruins himself for something that was never his to begin with. And if you cared about him half as much as you appear to, you would take a step back and let him do what he needs to do instead of hovering around muddying the picture. If he can’t get his head on straight and make decisions that are best for the clan, instead of chasing the skirts—” his gaze flicks over you with distaste, and he corrects, “—pants of some woman, then perhaps he’s not fit the role at all.”
Your gaze snaps over to him, assessing. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Naobito raises his eyebrows slightly, not even sparing you a glance.
“Did he ever tell you why he failed his first promotion to Special Grade One?” Naobito asks, suddenly so amused that it makes your skin crawl.
Your lips part. It was so long ago, but you remember that day vividly—getting to the Zenin estate early, watching Naoya get belittled by Naobito in front of them all. You recall being angry—at him, at Naobito, at the situation.
“He said that it was his partner’s fault,” you say after a moment, and you know as soon as the words are spoken aloud that it’s a lie. You went through the promotion process, too, now, so you know that he wouldn’t have had a partner for that final mission. You add reluctantly, “He lied.”
“Mm,” Naobito hums in agreement. “Stupid boy tried to lie to me, too. Unfortunately for him, I was given the mission report by the two supervising sorcerers. For a grade one, the curse was fairly weak—a low ball, so the Zenin heir could obtain his promotion without issue. It was a parasitic type of curse, relied on hallucinations. Annoying, but trivial for someone of his skill; very low raw output, cursed energy-wise, but sneaky. Very sneaky.”
Your heart sinks as you stare at the older man, taking in a shallow breath. Hallucinations. Parasitic. Your gut knows where this is going before Naobito even tells you. You remember the way Naoya struggled to look at you after, how defeated he was, the way he got so angry when you brought it up during your reunion four years ago. You vaguely remember what he said: blaming a partner he didn’t actually have, a woman who wasn’t actually there, and the snide comment about emotions and how it wasn’t his fault. Your eyes slide shut, and you hear the smile in Naobito’s voice as he continues.
“Clever girl. You understand now, don’t you?” he drawls. Your jaw tightens, fingernails digging into the fabric of your pants. “It mimicked you perfectly. Your voice, mannerisms, appearance. Drew it right from him—”
“Bullshit,” you interrupt, exhaling harshly as you turn to look at him, accusing. “Naoya isn’t stupid. He would’ve figured it out instantly.”
“He did,” Naobito scoffs. “Immediately. He identified it as the curse within seconds, and then he went to exorcise it, could’ve ended it in one clean motion, and the idiot boy got stuck in one of his own frames instead, nearly got himself killed because of it. Projection Sorcery demands commitment—perfect timing and perfect decisiveness. You hesitate even for a fraction of a second, and the technique punishes you for it. He knows that, and he hesitated anyway, because it had your face and spoke with your voice.”
You feel sick, lashes fluttering as you look away from Naobito, turning your gaze to the passing trees outside the car window. You try to steady your breath, ignore the ringing in your ears, but it’s impossible.
“That is why I ended the engagement seven years ago, and that is why I took advantage of the rift between the two of you to try to sever whatever… this is completely,” Naobito finishes. “Attachment is a liability, and a clan head cannot afford a hesitation that costs him his life. I will not have the future head of Zenin frozen in place by a woman. Do you understand now? If you were half as smart as I like to believe you are, you would realize that whatever it is the two of you are—it’s going to get both of you killed one day.”)
————————
“Oh wow,” you say, gaze sliding around your apartment. There are no dishes in the sink, there’s no trash overflowing from the garbage bin, and there’s even food on the stove. “Did you… clean? And cook? Am I, like, in the twilight zone or something?”
Naoya sneers at you from where he’s lounging on the couch, scrolling on his phone. “Don’t mention it, alright? Got bored, and all the shit layin’ around was annoying me. Didn’t think you were gonna be home for another two days, otherwise I woulda left it for you to deal with.”
Your lips curl up into an amused smile as you shrug off your jacket, hanging it up before you make your way over to him. His gaze flicks up to you, setting his phone on the table as you approach him, a slow smirk creeping onto his lips. He tips his head back to look up at you, eyes half-lidded as you settle on his lap, hands finding your hips.
“Don’t mention it? And here I was gonna reward you for being so good to me,” you say, lifting your hand to cradle the back of his head, brushing your lips against his. “Guess I won’t then.”
Naoya hums, lazy and content as he leans in to press his lips against yours more firmly. You let out a soft breath into his mouth, his arm sliding around your waist to pull you closer. His lips part against yours, and you tilt your head to meet him, fingers curling at the nap of his neck as his tongue traces along your inner lip.
“Alright, y’can mention it,” he says, lips ghosting yours as he speaks, an easy smile on his lips. “Just don’t tell anyone, yeah? I’ve gotta reputation.”
“I wouldn’t dare,” you say dryly, but your lips are curved up as you mouth at the underside of his jaw, relishing in the way he lets out a pleased sigh. You trail down the side of his neck, teeth grazing his pulse, fingers working at the buttons of his shirt.
“This ain’t really just ‘cause I did a few things around the place, is it?” Naoya asks suspiciously, breath catching as you run your hands down his bare torso, kissing down to his collarbone and sucking lightly at his clavicle, dragging wet kisses down his abdomen. “Ah, shit, you’re seriously—”
He cuts himself off, throat bobbing, lashes fluttering as your fingers slip beneath the waistband of his pants. You don’t want to talk about what Naobito said to you earlier, so you divert the question instead. Your gaze flicks up to him, and you counter with, “You didn’t clean and cook just because you were bored, did you?”
Naoya gives you a smile that’s a bit too tired to be as sharp as he tries to make it as he says, “I asked ya first.”
“No,” you say, tapping his thigh, signaling for him to lift his hips so you can slide down his pants. “It’s not just because you did a few things around here, but a bit of positive reinforcement is good for dog training—” Naoya gapes at you furiously, but you continue before he can throw a fit, “—are you gonna make me keep talking, or can I suck your cock, Naoya?”
The next smile Naoya gives you is much more smug. “Go ahead,” he drawls. “Ya got a filthy fuckin’ mouth, y’know? I should do somethin’ about it.”
“Oh yeah? Like what?” you hum absentmindedly, leaning in to press your lips against the vein running along the side of his cock, sucking at it gently. Naoya hisses, hips jerking slightly. “Tell me what’s going on. If you’re spending your time acting like a proper house husband, it must not be anything good.”
Naoya gives you a flinty look, and you can hear the insult about to fly off his tongue, but before he can, you drag your tongue across the underside of his cock, watching as his breath catches, jaw tight, and gaze flicking up to the ceiling. You rest your head on his inner thigh as you trail lazy, open-mouthed kisses along his length. His eyes slide shut, trying to regain some semblance of control over himself, and your lips curl up into a pleased smile before you take his tip into your mouth.
“Hah—shit—” he gasps, thighs tense beneath your palms as you swipe your tongue over his slit, already weeping with precum, dribbling down his length. His knuckles are white around the cushion of your couch, and you let out a soft grunt of surprise when his right hand darts out to slide around the back of your head, not quite pushing you down, but heavy enough that you can’t pull off him. You give him an irritated look and let out a muffled noise of complaint, but Naoya already looks half out of it, lips wet and parted, eyes blown wide as he stares down at you. “So fuckin’ pretty like this, y’know? Pisses me off sometimes that you gotta be so difficult. This is where ya belong—on your knees, lips wrapped around my cock—shit—”
You ignore Naoya’s babbles, bobbing your head up and down his length slowly, swirling your tongue around his tip before taking him all the way down. You flatten your tongue as he knocks against the back of your throat, cock twitching and abdomen flexing as he tries not to finish so soon. Naoya chokes over a groan, hand instinctively tightening in your hair to hold you down, nose flush to his pelvis, and your eyes are wet with tears as you will yourself not to gag around him.
“Fuck,” he breathes, voice pitched now, and head pressed back against the wall. His hips jerk up slightly, forcing himself impossibly deeper, and your nails dig into his upper thighs, drawing blood as you try to ground yourself. You let him roll his hips against your face, fucking himself deep down your throat each time. “Take me so fuckin’ well, s’like you were made for me.”
Naoya’s voice breaks over a moan of your name, but instead of holding your head down so he can thrust up, cumming deep down your throat, his grip tightens in your hair and he pulls you off of him, chest heaving and breath ragged. You sit back on your heels, giving him a confused look, but he only pulls you back up onto the couch with him, laying you back against the cushions.
“Wanna finish inside you,” he rasps, fingers trailing over your body, lingering on your stomach, before he drags them between your slick folds. Your breath hitches, hips jerking up. His lips curve up into a smirk. “This drenched just from sucking my cock—fuckin’ slut. Don’t even need to prep ya, do I?”
You rock your hips up impatiently. “Quit fucking around,” you tell him, voice far more breathy than you’d like, lashes fluttering as he presses the tip of his finger against your hole, tracing around it but never pushing in. His free hand slides up your body, cradling the side of your face before he slips his thumb into your mouth, pressing down slightly on your tongue. “Naoya—”
“Maybe I should make ya beg properly,” he says absently, and you expect him to lean over you, caging your body between his like he usually does when he’s the one taking the reins, but instead he sits back on his heels, grabbing your waist to drag the lower half of your body into his lap. “If you’re tryna reward me, that’d be a good way to do it. Wanna hear those pretty lips of yours beg me for my cock. Can ya do that for me?”
You tilt your head to the side, craning your neck a little so that you can scowl at him, but he only tosses you a lazy smile, waiting.
“Sucking you off wasn’t enough, was it?” you ask snidely, clicking your tongue, but your breath hitches when you feel him slide the tip of his cock through your cunt, grinding slowly between your folds. “Naoya—”
“Consider me greedy,” he drawls. “Was a lotta effort today, y’know, making sure this place was ready for you so ya didn’t have another bitch fit when you got back. Thank me properly. Say ‘please, Naoya,’ and I’ll consider fuckin’ ya real good.”
You exhale, head dropping back against the cushions. Your heart is racing in your chest, and you can feel your own wetness smeared between your thighs, dripping down onto his pants, abdomen tight and cunt aching every time Naoya presses the tip of his cock against your hole but doesn’t push in.
Usually, he is not this patient.
“Please,” you finally say through your teeth, lashes fluttering shut. You think, for a second, that might be enough, because your breath catches, back arching up slightly when Naoya sinks the tip of his cock inside of you, but then he stops before he pushes in any deeper.
“Please what?” he asks, unbearably amused, as though you don’t hear the breathlessness in his voice and feel the way his fingers are bruising your waist as he tries to keep himself still. “C’mon, y’can do better than that for me. Don’t make me deny her any longer, she’s achin’ for me. She’s got me feelin’ bad.”
Naoya doesn’t sound like he feels bad at all. In fact, you can hear the huff of laughter in his voice as he slides one of his hands across your abdomen, dragging it down so that he can thumb slow, agonizing circles over your clit. You choke over a moan, hips jerking, but he holds you in place, refusing to let his cock sink inside you deeper than the tip, and you have to bite your bottom lip to stop yourself from letting out a frustrated sob.
When the fuck did he get so patient?
“You’re so mean to her, y’know?” he murmurs absently, and you hate how intently he’s watching the way your cunt spasms around him as he toys with your clit. “Makin’ her go out there and do all that dirty work, all she wants to do is stay at home, safe and full of cock—my cock—ain’t that right?”
“Naoya,” you warn, shooting him a flinty look when he starts to broach this subject.
You knew back when you had this conversation with him that it wouldn’t be the end of his attempts to get you to retire from being a sorcerer. He brings it up every now and then, and to his credit, he does drop it when you start bristling, but he never quits trying to push his agenda.
“I know, I know,” he soothes, and you choke on air when he finally, finally starts to push deeper inside you, cock stretching your walls, the slight burn adding to the heat that makes your skin feel all tingly and your abdomen tight. “‘m just sayin’, would it really be all that bad?”
You don’t even have it in you to respond, lashes fluttering as Naoya bottoms out inside you, tip of his cock pressing so deep that you swear you think you can feel him in your stomach from this angle. You struggle to breathe, just a bit, lips wet and parted as you stare up at the ceiling, trying to regain some control over yourself.
“Could have you like this, spread out on my cock, every day,” he continues, voice low and pleased as he watches the effect his cock has on your body, gaze trained on your stretched hole and the slick gushing around his cock. His hand presses down slightly on your pelvis, and your whole body shudders at the pressure he purposely puts on where his cock is buried inside you, choking on your own saliva. “I’ll take care of ya—buy ya everything ya want, keep this pretty cunt nice and full, I’ll make ya happy.”
“You already do all of that,” you hiss, but your voice slips into a whine when he grinds his hips slowly against yours—even deeper, fuck, how is he even deeper? “Naoya—”
“All of it?” he questions, gold eyes flicking up to your face at last.
“All of it,” you confirm after a moment, gaze meeting his.
Naoya exhales through his nose, shifting a bit so that he can get off his knees and hover over you instead. He positions one of your legs over his shoulder, hooking the other around his waist as he trails wet open-mouthed kisses up your neck, finally rocking his hips against yours.
“Hah—” you gasp, eyes rolling up slightly, one hand darting up to claw at his shoulder blade, while the other reaches for his. Naoya indulges you, entwining your fingers in a way that’s terribly romantic as he starts to pick up the pace of his thrusts, each one knocking the air from your lungs. “Naoya—”
“So fuckin’ pretty like this,” he says again, breath hot as pants against your skin, forehead pressed to your collarbone. Your eyes half roll back into your head—in, out, in, out, it’s too fast, you think, hardly able to breathe, each thrust feels deeper, faster than the last. “Made to take my fuckin’ cock, ain’t ya?”
You can’t—you can’t breathe. Your heel digs into the small of his back, and your vision spots with black dots, and you would almost think his hand is around your throat, except one is holding yours and the other is up by your head, keeping him propped up. He’s just—fast, too fast, faster than usual, faster than your mind can keep up with much less your body, before you can even get a proper breath in before the next thrust knocks it right out of your lungs.
“Na—ah, f—I—” You can’t even get a word out, can’t lift your head to look down at where his cock is fucking in and out of you, can’t think, can’t breathe, you still can’t breathe, can’t—
“Shit, you cummin’ already?” Naoya lets out a breathless laugh, tipping his head down slightly to look at where his cock is plunging in and out of your cunt—are you? What the hell? You try to say something again but your voice breaks over a noise caught between a sob and a moan, body trembling beneath his. “Damn, if I’d known this’d fuck you up this bad I woulda tried it ages ago.”
What—what is he talking about? You can’t even figure out what he’s saying, desperately trying to blink away the spots in your vision and the blurriness in your eyes, head heavy and lolling back limply against the cushions as Naoya only seems to pick up the pace more. How—
He drags his free hand to your lips, and then wipes away something at the corner of them, a wild smile on his face.
“Lookit ya droolin’, and you have the nerve to call me the dog,” he drawls, and you think, absently, that you should snap at him back, but you can only part your lips, staring up at him, another pitched noise escaping your lips at a particularly harsh thrust. “Aw, don’t look at me with those big, dumb eyes like that—s’gonna make me cum, I’m not tryna cum yet.”
You think you cum again, because one second, you’re looking up at Naoya, and the next your vision is hazy and your face is half-pressed into the cushions, back arched, fingers tight around Naoya’s, and Naoya is letting out a choked moan, hips stuttering as your walls tighten around him. Did you pass out? Seriously? Your head feels all fuzzy, vision swimming. Are you still cumming? Have you even stopped? You can hardly figure out what’s happening—he’s never fucked you like this before, you can’t even figure out what he’s doing.
“Fuck,” he gasps. “Fuck I’m gonna—”
Naoya’s free hand tangles in your hair, pulling your face where you’ve buried it in the cushions, half-sobbing as you try to get air into your burning lungs, so that he can press his lips against your slack ones, moaning into your mouth as he finishes deep inside you. Your whole body trembles beneath him, cheeks wet with tears and nails still digging deep into the back of his hand and his shoulder blade. He lets out a heavy sigh against your lips, dragging them to the corner of your mouth, absentmindedly down your neck as he grinds his hips into you while you settle down.
“Wh—what the hell?” Is the first thing you’re able to say, voice shaky, still clinging to him. “What the hell was that? What—”
You feel him smiling against your neck, too smug. “Just tried somethin’ new,” he says easily. “Y’like it?” You blink stupidly up at the ceiling, still reeling. He coos, “Aw, did I fuck ya dumb?”
“Shut up,” you snap, but even that sounds terribly wobbly. You shift beneath him, breath hitching slightly since his cock is still lodged deep inside you. Naoya drags his lips from your neck to your cheek before he hovers above you again, very pleased with himself. You tongue feels heavy and your body is still trembling as you continue, “I… you—”
“Love it when you’re like this,” he murmurs, pressing his nose into your cheek and sucking lightly at your jaw. You don’t even have the energy to tell him not to leave marks. “Did ya like it? Answer me.”
“Compliment fishing,” you mutter more to yourself than him, but he lets out a huff of laughter against your skin. You blink, rapidly, still a bit dazed. “Were you using…”
Projection Sorcery?
“There she is,” Naoya grins as you ease out of your stupified state, confirming your suspicions. “Was good, wasn’t it?”
You exhale, laughing lightly, the sound coming out softer than you expect. “You’re so annoying,” you murmur, limbs heavy in a pleasant, boneless way that makes it hard to care that Naoya is going to be incredibly insufferable over this.
Naoya’s grin widens, delighted. “Wasn’t a no.”
“That’s cheating,” you mutter petulantly, but the arm still draped around his shoulders tugs at him, pulling him down so that his weight settles fully on top of you, warm and familiar.
“Cheating?” he echoes, mock-offended as he noses into the crook of your neck. “Please. I was enhancing the experience. Should be thankin’ me for fucking that brain right outta your skull.”
You roll your eyes, hand sliding up to the back of his hair to absently play with the blonde strands. You notice, absently, that he never pulled back his other hand from where it’s entwined with yours, and you squeeze it lightly, chest a bit tight. He squeezes it back, letting out a soft sigh.
“Tell me what this was all about,” you murmur, now that the haziness is finally dissipating. “Don’t think I forgot.”
You feel his lips curve down into a frown against your skin. “Didn’t fuck ya good enough then.”
You roll your eyes. “Naoya.”
“I’m gonna head back to the estate soon, I think,” he admits, breath hot as he lets out a heavy exhale. “It’s becomin’ a pain goin’ back and forth, and that brat Ranta was just promoted to semi-grade one, so I’m gonna have to take over his training so he’s ready to join the Hei.”
“Mkay,” you agree, absently running your fingers through his hair.
Naoya bristles. “Here I thought ya’d be more upset,” he mutters. “Shouldn’t have gone through all the effort then.”
You laugh, leaning down to brush your lips against the top of his head. “I will be so sad that you’re not here to eat all my food and use all of my skin care and hair products while I’m gone,” you say lightly. You add more seriously, “I figured it was coming.” And then you say, “Ranta isn’t a brat. He’s a decent kid. That’s rare in your family.”
Naoya lets out an irritated puff of air. “He’s a little shit. Too fuckin’ earnest. Always smilin’, always askin’ questions, always offerin’ to help like he’s got somethin to prove.”
You smile into his hair. “That’s because he does.”
Naoya snorts. “Yeah. To me. So he shouldn’t be so fuckin’ annoying.”
“Mhm,” you agree, “and you could try not being an ass about it.”
He shifts just enough to look up at you, brows knit together. “You takin’ his side now?”
“I’m saying there are much worse members of your clan than Ranta,” you say dryly, “and you should take your blessings where you’ve got them. Could you imagine having to train a mini you?”
“Bitch,” he mutters, glaring at you as he settles back down against you, resting his head against your chest. “I’d be a fuckin’ pleasure to train. Wouldn’t even have to do much work since I’d already know what I’m doin’. Perfect instincts. Perfect technique. Woulda been easy.”
You snort, fingers carding absently through his hair. “Modesty is a virtue, you know.”
“In women, you arrogant hag, take your own advice,” Naoya scowls, and you roll your eyes. “What happened with you, hm? S’not like you to come home and get on your knees for me. Or did it finally hit ya how lucky you are to have me?”
Your smile drops slightly as you remember the conversation you had with his father, taking in a deep breath. You don’t want to bring that up—Naoya won’t take it well that you know the reason why he wasn’t promoted on the first try, and you don’t want to ruin this rare bit of peace. Naoya seems to sense something is wrong, because he tilts his head up to look at you, brows furrowed in suspicion.
“I had to spend two days with your father in meetings with the higher-ups,” you say dryly after a moment, “isn’t that reason enough to come home feeling abundantly pleased that I got the better Zenin?” Before Naoya can preen, you add, “Not that it’s a high bar.”
“Bitch,” he mutters, but his lips curve down into a frown after a moment as he gives you a flinty look. “You’re lyin’ to me.”
You sigh and say, “Yeah, I am. Let me?”
The flinty look becomes a bit more curious as he furrows his brows and tries to decide whether or not he wants to push the subject. Evidently, he decides against it because he rolls his eyes and settles back down against your chest. “Whatever, I don’t care that much anyway, s’long as it means you’re gonna be sucking my cock more often.”
“I don’t even know why I put up with you.”
“Well, ‘cause I can fuck your brains out, for one.”
“You’re so fucking annoying, my god.”
————————
2016 | READER, AGE 23; NAOYA AGE 25
Things go back to how they were after that, for the most part. Naoya returns to the Zenin estate and continues in his efforts to terrorize the rest of his clan. You hear about it secondhand at first—a cousin complaining that Naoya tore up his proposal for the Hei before he even finished explaining it, and one of his older brothers shooting you a scowl and making a bitter comment about how you should’ve just ‘kept him away.’ It makes you snort every time, because he really never changes.
Naoya, for his part, seems perfectly content.
The two of you don’t see each other as often anymore since you’re both busy and no longer sharing your apartment, but the Zenin estate is only a half hour from your clan’s, and he takes any excuse to come over. Your attendants have stopped announcing when he arrives, because he starts causing trouble whenever he has to wait longer than a couple minutes for them to get ahold of you, so he just lets himself in like he owns the place, sometimes lounging around waiting for you to come back from a meeting, scrolling on his phone boredly after having your attendants go get him the last of your favorite snacks so he could eat them.
He complains about his father and clan politics, elders who won’t stop posturing, and how Ranta “pisses him off more and more each day,” because he apparently “flutters around Naoya” like he doesn’t know what to do with himself. You tell him to stop being a douchebag because Ranta is just trying to help, and Naoya throws a fit about you “taking his side” and sulks about it until you make a snide comment that sets him off.
It’s easy—nice, even—you’ll lounge around, feet kicked over his legs, as you listen to him complain. Insult him when he’s being annoying and mock him when he’s being dramatic, just as you always have. Sometimes he doesn’t want to talk at all, frustrated after a day of meetings with his father and the elders, and he’ll come over just so he can bury his face between your thighs or his cock into your cunt instead.
Or, most usually, it’s both at the same time.
(“Shit pisses me off,” he says, somehow still going, even as he drags his lips up your inner thigh. You roll your eyes, staring up at the ceiling. “Can you believe that? What right does garbage have to sit around and question me? They don’t even do shit, just sit around barking orders at—”
“My fucking god, Naoya, do you ever shut up?” you interrupt, head falling back against the pillows. “I swear to god, I’ve never seen a man talk so much when between a woman’s thighs, it’s almost like—”
You yelp, foot kicking into his back when he rolls your clit between his teeth, giving you an irritated look, and then he pointedly hikes your thighs over his shoulders, pulling you even closer to him. He mutters petulantly, “Can multitask.”
“Yeah, well, don’t.”)
You are not as content.
Not because you don’t enjoy how things are with Naoya, because you do—it’s easy, it’s nice, it’s you and Naoya, in a way that you’ve always been able to count on, and you feel silly for the argument two years ago, because labels don’t change anything between the two of you. It’s because you’re becoming more and more frustrated with the fact that you haven’t been able to make any progress on finding proof that the Kamos were involved with what happened to your clan. It’s driving you fucking crazy. Each passing day leaves you more and more on edge; every time you have to sit across from Kamo Norihide at a meeting, you think that maybe you’re better off just killing him and accepting whatever consequences there are for it, because at least it means your father and brothers and everyone else was butchered that day will finally be able to rest peacefully.
You and Naoya frequently argue about it.
(“Why can’t you just let it go?” he shouts, slamming his hands against the table as he rises to his feet. Your attendants look away awkwardly, unsure what to do as the argument between the two of you escalates. You motion for them to leave, jaw tight. “I don’t fuckin’ get it. You’re burnin’ your whole fuckin’ life down chasing ghosts, and I—”
“You don’t get it?” you ask, voice low and mocking, staring up at him. “You don’t get why I’m not going to let go of the fact that my family was fucking butchered, Naoya? They’re not fucking ghosts to me. They’re my father, my brothers, my clan. Just because you have a shitty relationship with yours doesn’t mean that I did.”
“Yeah, I don’t fuckin’ get it,” he doubles down, unrepentant. “You don’t even know it was the Kamos—”
“It has to be them,” you interrupt loudly, rising to your own feet now as you glare at him.
“No, it doesn’t,” Naoya hisses. “You want it to be them, and I can’t fuckin’ understand why. What if it really was an accident, huh? A fault in the barrier that nobody clocked in time? That happens, ya know it does. Why are you so fuckin’ adamant that it has to be them?”
“Because it has to be them,” you repeat, voice shriller now. “It has to be them, because if it wasn’t some plot to take out my family and purposely done when I wasn’t there, then it’s only bad luck. And if it was only bad luck, then I could’ve been there—should’ve been there. How the fuck am I supposed let it go?”
Naoya exhales through his nose, jaw flexing as he stares at you. “And what if you’re wrong, huh? What if you push this, and you’re wrong, and you start something you can’t finish?”
“Then I’ll live with it,” you say.
“That’s bullshit,” Naoya replies, voice hoarse. “You won’t. You’ll fuckin’ die with it.”)
You start to give up.
It doesn’t happen all at once; there’s not a single moment where you decide to stop trying to avenge them, and the anger is still there—it’s always there, always eating at you—but your energy begins to thin. Each dead end leaves you more tired than the last, a little less willing to believe that the next lead will finally be the one you need to prove you right. You start telling yourself that patience is a strategy, and waiting doesn’t mean losing. You sit through meetings with the Kamos and keep your face carefully neutral, let Norihide’s polite smiles slide past you without reacting. You tell yourself you’re being smart, that restraint is strength, and you’re honoring your family by surviving, but some nights, when the estate is too quiet, and your thoughts get loud, it feels less like strategy and more like consolation.
Eventually, you start to wonder if maybe Naoya is right. Maybe it was the perfect storm of wrong place, wrong time, wrong curse, and you just—you weren’t there. You could’ve been there, but you weren’t. There was no plot to make sure you were away from the estate… You just happened not to be there when your family needed you most, because you were out drinking at a club, partying while your brothers and father were butchered in their sleep.
(“I should’ve been there,” you say one day to Satoru. “I would’ve felt it coming. My cursed energy—my technique—I could’ve—”
“Or you could’ve been asleep, and you could’ve died too,” Satoru adds when you don’t finish your sentence, arm slipping around your shoulders to pull you into his side. “You can’t keep torturing yourself with this.”
“What else am I supposed to do?” you ask with a huff that’s supposed to be laughter but comes out more as a sob as you bury your face into his shoulder. “I can’t find any proof that there was any foul play, and my cousin—he’s been out there hunting down this cursed spirit for three years and he can’t fucking find it. How does an unregistered special grade just disappear like that? It’s not some run of the mill curse. You knew my father, my brothers, they were strong, really strong. I don’t—I don’t know what to do. Naoya wants me to let it go, but it’s all I can think about. I don’t have anything else to–”
“Come teach,” Satoru interrupts, nudging your shoulder. You give him a dubious look. “I’m serious. Come to Tokyo High with me. You can take over classes I don’t feel like teaching when you’re not busy with clan stuff.”
You shake your head. “The higher-ups will never ap—”
“Do you even know who you’re talking to?” Satoru asks dryly, grinning. “It’ll be fun, I promise.”
“You only want to slack off,” you mutter, no heat behind the words, eyes sliding shut as Satoru obnoxiously leans on top of you.
“It’s true!”)
So, you start to join him at Tokyo Jujutsu High on Fridays. You half-think that he’s going to drop his kids on you when you get there and leave to go shop or something, but it’s actually not too bad. He makes Fridays combat training days, and you get to spend the whole day knocking his brats around the training grounds of the school.
The students don’t tiptoe around you—they don’t know enough to, they see a capable sorcerer step onto the field and immediately try to test you, and Satoru, traitor that he is, lets them. You’re forced to be present, to read bodies and cursed energy and intent instead of spiraling inward. When one of them overextends, you knock them flat, and there’s no time to think about what you should’ve done years ago. Satoru watches from the sidelines, offering commentary that’s half useless and entirely infuriating, but he’s notably more at ease now that you have something to do with your time instead of sitting alone with your thoughts.
He starts training with you again too when the students are taking breaks. You become adamant on figuring out how to expand your technique. You first try by seeing if you can visualize more than a few moves ahead: three has always been your limit, but with Satoru’s help, you push it to five, seven, ten, but never past ten. You become frustrated, because you know this can’t be the limit of your technique, and after a couple days of theorizing with him, trying to figure out what aspect of your technique can still improve, he says: what if ten is your limit for visualizing future movements, but you can expand the area of effect to more than just your immediate surroundings?
Maki approaches you one day when you’re visiting Naoya at the Zenin estate.
(“Is it true you’re working at the Tokyo school?” she asks, standing behind you, fists tight at her side. Mai isn’t anywhere in sight, and you glance around once, because although your presence is less of a scandal now that you’re clan head and have frequent business with Naobito, most of the Zenins still aren’t fans of you, and you doubt they’ll like Maki talking to you so openly. “Well?”
“Only on Fridays to help with combat,” you tell her, tilting your head to the side. “Why?”
Maki’s jaw tightens, gaze flicking down to the ground briefly. She lets out a sharp breath before she looks back up at you. “I want to be a sorcerer,” she says firmly. You raise your eyebrows because, as far as you’re aware, the girl doesn’t have any cursed energy. “Don’t give me that look. There are cursed tools that can help me see curses. And I don’t need cursed energy to fight. I’m strong. Really strong. I want training—real training—I want to go to one of the sorcerer schools.”
“Okay,” you say with a shrug. “I think that’s great, but why the hell are you telling me this?”
Maki falters. “I don’t—” She hesitates, gaze flicking away with sudden uncertainty. “I thought maybe you would understand. And help me, maybe. I know that Gojo Satoru works at the Tokyo school now, and he’s not a fan of anyone with the Zenin name, but I… don’t want to be in Kyoto. Not so close to the estate.”
You raise your eyebrows. “You’re tryna leave for real, then,” you say with a grin. “Damn, Maki-chan, I didn’t know you had it in you.”
Maki flushes, looking away. “I’ll be back one day,” she says firmly, “and when I am, I’m going to become clan head.”
You burst into laughter for the first time in weeks, and Maki’s face is terribly red with embarrassment as she watches you. You feel bad, so you reach out to squeeze her shoulder.
“I’ll be rooting for you then,” you say with a genuine grin. “I’d much rather be working side-by-side with another woman than that old fuck Naobito, or Naoya’s bitch ass. Maybe you can take over, and I’ll make him my house husband for real.”
Maki snorts, covering the lower half of her face as she holds back her own laughter. Once she calms herself down, she looks up at you, gaze a bit hopeful. “So, will you help?”
“I’ll talk to Satoru for you,” you promise, “but you better make sure this is what you wanna do. There’s no take-backs once you piss off Naobito like this, y’know?”
“I know,” she replies firmly. “I know. I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. This is what I want.”
“Alright then,” you agree. “Let’s do it.”)
And for a while, everything is okay.
You settle into a routine. You spend the week dealing with clan business. You’re trying to get one of your younger cousins set up to go to one of the sorcerer schools, since there’s no one around to train him full-time on how to properly utilize his technique. You and Satoru are trying to ease the higher-ups’ disdain for one of his new students. You and Naobito are trying to box out the Kamos from pushing for the higher-ups to enact a new regulation mandating technique documentation and reporting. On Fridays, when you can, you head to Tokyo to help Satoru with his new students, and on Saturdays and Sundays, you find Naoya, and you spend most of the day laid up in his bed or yours unless the two of you feel like sparring and working the frustration of the week out that way.
It’s mundane in a way that almost startles you.
Meetings blur together, you start to look forward to Fridays and the weekends, and you begin to wonder if, maybe, things will be okay like this. The anger doesn’t vanish, but it stops driving every decision, and the more time you spend distracted from it, the more you realize how exhausted it makes you. You’re tired of being angry, and you’re tired of not making any progress. You’re tired of arguing with Naoya, who is tired of watching you burn yourself out on a mission for justice that’s ever out of reach.
And you think, maybe, that you don’t have to keep fighting, that things are enough like this—for now, at least.
————————
2017 | READER, AGE 24; NAOYA, 26
Naoya wants to marry you.
He doesn’t say it in so many words, but he doesn’t really need to. You knew something was up the first time you woke up to one of your attendants saying that a package arrived for you, even though you knew very well you hadn’t ordered anything recently. It was small and unassuming, and you were half asleep when you opened it, but it still took your breath away as you traced the necklace embedded with diamond and sapphire. You wracked your brain trying to figure out what might’ve triggered Naoya to get you this, but he hadn’t done anything to piss you off recently, and you certainly didn’t ask for it, so your brain came up frustratingly blank.
(“What was this for?” you ask the next time you visit the Zenin estate. “Never took you to be so generous.”
Naoya sneers at you, gaze lifting from where he’s scrolling on his phone, but his expression shifts when he sees that the necklace he bought you sitting pretty on your neck. He blinks once, gaze flicking up to your face, then back down to the necklace. His lips part like he’s going to say something, and then he pauses, brows furrowing and lips pressing together. You narrow your eyes suspiciously, and he finally scoffs, looking away.
“I’ve always been generous, buyin’ ya everything ya want. It’s about time you acknowledge it,” he mutters, crossing his arms over his chest. Then he gives you a crude smirk and says, “Y’should suck me off if you’re so grateful.”
“You’re so obnoxious,” you reply, rolling your eyes as you make your way over to him. Naoya sets his phone off to the side so that you can settle in his lap, arm slinking around your waist to hold you close, fingers slipping beneath the hem of your shirt so that his palm is flat against your bare skin. “You gonna tell me the truth?”
“Nah,” Naoya answers, free hand sliding up to toy with the necklace. You catch a brief, pensive expression on his face as he stares down at him, before he looks back up at you and gives you another lazy smile. “So? Head?”
“In your dreams.”)
He only becomes stranger after that. It starts small, too small to call out without sounding paranoid, and you don’t feel like hearing him go on another tirade about how women are paranoid and emotional, as though he isn’t both of those things far more often than you are, so you don’t mention it. It’s a lot like how he was acting a couple of years ago, actually, just to a much more intense level, and just as you were unsettled then, you’re unsettled now—not because you’re feeling flighty this time, but because Naoya has a tendency to decide things before you’re on the same page as him, and then he gets pissy when you’re indeed not on the same page as him, and it escalates into an argument that you just don’t want to deal with.
He starts scheduling you—or, well, when you talk to Shoko about it, she snorts and says that she’s pretty sure this is Naoya’s way of taking you on dates—but it seriously pisses you off. He never comes up to you and asks that you go with him somewhere, but your calendar is suddenly full of dinners you didn’t agree to and day trips to various places you offhandedly mentioned wanting to go to, but can never find the time because of your unending meetings and obligations. When you push back even lightly about how you have work to do, his irritation spikes as though you’ve just committed some heinous crime against him, so you tend to let it go.
(“Since when do ya hate spendin’ time with me?” he asks once, tone sharp but eyes unreadable as he frowns at you. Clearly, you did not sound excited enough when he told you the plans he has for the two of you tomorrow in Osaka.
“That is not what I said, Naoya.”
“Sounds like it.”)
He’s… nicer than he usually is, too, and that irritates you more than anything, because when you make a snide comment expecting him to snap back at you, he only hums absently, unbothered, eyes flicking over you with a distracted smile that throws you off more than any insult. You think he enjoys how it seems to take you aback, and he only seems to get annoyed when you call him out on it, scowling at you and giving you attitude for the rest of the day because god forbid, he’s “in a good mood.”
On top of that, you think he tries to… show off around you? You don’t even know how to explain it, really. He’s just constantly seeking your approval in even the silliest of things. If he’s training and you’re in the area, he looks around to make sure you’re watching. If he joins you and his father for a meeting, and he has an idea, he says it, and then looks at you to see what your reaction is (which you’re sure infuriates Naobito, so it makes you laugh). If he does something new with his hair or gets a new piercing, he pointedly waits for you to notice it and say something, and gets seriously insulted if you don’t.
It’s fucking odd—it’s so un-Naoya-like that you end up bringing it up to Shoko and Satoru one day.
(“It’s just so weird,” you say one day to Shoko and Satoru when the two of you are drinking. “It’s weird to you guys, too, right?”
“Eh,” they both say simultaneously, and you bristle, offended that they’re not taking your side. They exchange a look with one another, and then Shoko adds, “It’s like his mating dance. You know, like with birds? How male peacocks show off their feathers to female peacocks. It’s like that, except Zenin’s version of it.”
You gape as Satoru bursts into laughter at the comparison.
“Excuse me?” you demand, baffled. “What does that even mean?”
Shoko doesn’t answer, and Satoru covers his mouth to smother another giggle, glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose so he can look at you directly. He grins and says, “Man, as much as I can’t stand the guy, sometimes I really do feel bad for him. You’re so dense sometimes.”
“What does that even mean?” you demand again. “We—we’re already together, there’s no need for a—” You give Shoko an accusing look, and she snorts, looking down, because you can’t even say the word out loud. “—there’s no need for all of that.”
“Yeah, you’re together, I guess,” Satoru agrees, “but you know Zenin. How long was just being together going to be enough for him?”)
It’s only then that you realize why Naoya’s acting like this: and one day, I want ya to be my wife, he told you three years ago. Well, one day is clearly here, and Naoya is trying to… well, you don’t know what he’s trying to do. You think maybe he’s purposely going out of his way to be good to you, so you bring it up on your own, and that’s why he has inexplicable explosions of frustration whenever he does something, and it doesn’t lead to you being wooed and asking him when he’ll finally marry you.
But now that you have an idea of what his game is, you decide to test its limits.
You start by asking him to play the piano for you while teh two of you are lounging around with him at the Zenin estate, waiting for his father to finish up on a call. He’s always refused when you asked in the past, rolling his eyes and saying that he’s not going to waste more of his time with frivolous shit like that, especially not for you. So when you ask him this time, you half expect the same results, not getting your hopes up.
(Naoya barely looks up from his phone. “Why?”
“‘Cause I want you to, why not?” you ask, leaning your chin on your hand as you observe him. He lifts his gaze slowly, eyes narrowing as they search your face, like he’s trying to figure out what angle you’re playing. You raise your eyebrows at him. “Well?”
“You’re annoying as hell,” he mutters, and your eyes widen slightly when he stands, hands sliding into his pockets as he makes his way over to the piano in the corner of the room, untouched, more decorative than functional—another symbol of status rather than enjoyment. You know he was taught to play as a kid, something about enhancing his timing with his technique, you’re not sure really, but you know as soon as he learned, he never touched it again, discarded it like it was worthless.
He adds an obligatory, “Ya piss me off,” before he sits at the bench and defies all your expectations by actually playing a song for you.
You blink, surprised—he looks seriously annoyed as he plays, jaw tight and brows drawn together, but he plays. His shoulders loosen as the piece goes on, fingers flying across the keys without hesitation, muscle memory taking over in spite of years without honing the skill. It kind of annoys you how easy everything comes to him, but the thought is only fleeting, because you find yourself enjoying the way he plays more than you expect.
When he finishes, the last note lingering in the air, there’s a long moment of silence.
Then, he asks stiffly, “Happy?”
“Yeah,” you say honestly. “That was… really good, actually.”
Naoya pauses, fingers curling slightly at the edge of the bench, lips parting at your words. Then he scoffs and stands up abruptly. “Obviously,” he replies, as though the tips of his ears aren’t red. “I’m good at everything I do. You should know that by now.”
“Right,” you agree sarcastically, and then press your luck. “Play me another.”
“Do I look like your personal fuckin’ entertainer?” he snaps, glaring down at you like you’ve just asked him to debase himself.
“Do you really want me to answer that?” you ask with an unapologetic grin.
“Screw off,” he scoffs, and then, inexplicably, sits back down.)
From that point on, you make a habit of it—asking for small, unreasonable things that don’t benefit him and he used to refuse on principle. You tell him you want to walk instead of taking a car, even though the estate roads are long and gravely and he clearly hates the dust getting on his shoes. He complains the entire time, but he slows his pace to match yours without you asking, grumbling under his breath when you stop to look at something unimportant. When it’s his turn to pick a movie, you tell him you want to watch something else, and he’ll throw a fit about how he’s supposed to be picking, but then he puts on the one you want. If you have a long day of meetings, and you know he’s back at your estate waiting for you, you ask him to have a bath ready for you when you get back, and he goes apocalyptic because he’s “not some fuckin’ servant,” and yet, still has it ready for you by the time you return.
The more he gives, the more his patience wanes. You can see it in the way his temper spikes unpredictably, like he’s furious at himself, or you, maybe. He’s torn between wanting you to notice it and bring it up on your own, and just coming out and saying plainly that he wants you to be his wife.
It’s almost sweet, because as time passes, you start to think that he’s trying to prove he can be what you claim a husband is supposed to be. You vaguely remember an argument that the two of you got into when you were kids—he was, as always, pissy that you weren’t acting the way a wife is supposed to, and you made a comment about how you’d start acting like a proper wife when he started acting like a proper husband. He got even more pissy because he didn’t know what the hell you were talking about, and he laughed in your face when you said that a proper husband is supposed to love and take care of his wife, but you don’t think he ever forgot it, because here he is, almost twenty years later, watching him try to be one for you.
It’s clumsy and terribly unromantic, as things always are with the two of you, because he makes sure you eat, but he phrases it like an insult, which usually leads to an argument, and he positions himself between you and anything even mildly threatening without thinking about it, but it pisses you off because he knows you can handle yourself, and that usually leads to an argument too. But also—when you’re tired, he slips an arm around you and lets you sleep against him, even if he does bitch about his arm falling asleep and his neck hurting from having to stay in the same position for hours, and he indulges all of your stupid, unreasonable requests, no matter how outlandish they get.
You almost feel bad for playing this game with him, but you’re curious now to see how far he’ll go.
By the time the end of winter rolls around, months of this have worn him down, and he starts to get visibly fed up with the lack of progress. He starts making comments, trying to guide you to the right question, in the worst possible way.
(“Aren’t ya getting old?” Naoya asks bluntly one day, when you’re sitting around, while the two of you lounge around at your clan’s estate. You look at him slowly, unsure you heard him properly. “Just sayin’, most women your age are married with kids by now. You should be thinkin’ about that.”
You stare at him for a long second, blinking twice.
“What the fuck?”
“Don’t look at me like that,” he accuses. “You’re at the age where people start makin’ decisions like that. You should be thinkin’ about it, that’s all.”
“I’m twenty-four, you gross, disgusting, entitled pig. what the hell is your problem?” you shout at him, grabbing a nearby pillow and slamming it into his head. Naoya lets out a string of curses, lifting his hands to guard his face. “What is wrong with you? Seriously, every time I think you might be decent—”
“Oi—stop!” Naoya snaps, trying to wrestle the pillow out of your hands. “I’m being serious!”
“That makes it worse,” you say, furious. “What the hell is the matter with you? Who the fuck says that to a woman? You’re a fucking incel, you should be counting your blessings that you have me, otherwise you’d die alone and miserable.”
“Why the hell are you being such a bitch?” he demands. “I didn’t say anything bad, I was just pointing out—”
“Shut up, Naoya!”)
You think that it’s only a matter of time before his patience snaps for real, and you’re correct.
————————
“Get up,” you vaguely hear Naoya say as you sleep soundly in his futon. You stayed the night at the Zenin estate because you and Naobito were up late discussing an issue that needs to be addressed at the next meeting with the higher-ups, and you didn’t feel like calling for your driver at two in the morning. You let out a noise of complaint when you feel him roll you onto your stomach with his foot. “Get up, ya lazy bitch.”
“Shut up,” you mutter, pulling his pillow over your head. “S’early. Go away.”
“If ya don’t get up on your own, I’m gonna force you to,” he threatens, but you only exhale, already dozing back again. Naoya clicks his tongue. “You serious?”
You yelp, blinking sleepily when you feel him jam his arm beneath your stomach, alarm spreading through you as you start to say, “What are—” before you’re suddenly dangling in the air. You kick out your feet, one drives into his hip, and the other grazes his thigh. He only grunts, tightening his grip automatically as your weight shifts.
“Watch it,” he snaps, like you’re the unreasonable one here. “You’re heavier than ya look.”
“Put me down!” you hiss, half-awake and suddenly furious, flailing as he hoists you higher like a sack of rice. Your hands scramble for his sleeves, trying to find something to hold onto. “What is wrong with you?”
He adjusts his hold, slinging you over his shoulder easily. Blood rushes to your head; the world is upside down and extremely undignified. You realize that he’s walking out of his bedroom, in the direction of the inner courtyard of the estate, and your eyes widen.
“Naoya, bring me back to your room, I’m not dressed, you prick,” you hiss, trying to wiggle free again. You don’t need Ogi seeing you draped over Naoya’s shoulder in pajamas that qualify more as lingerie than sleepwear. “Naoya, what the fuck?”
“It’s fine,” he says dismissively, making no move to bring you back to his room. “No one’s out at this time anyway.”
You blink at his words, gaze flicking up when the two of you get into the inner courtyard, and you’re doubly furious when you realize that it’s still dark out. You kick at him again, but he grabs your ankle with his free hand before you can make contact this time. You demand, “The sun’s not even up, what the hell is your problem? I’m tired, you asshole.”
“Just shut up,” he mutters, unusually subdued. You can’t see his expression from the way he has you slung over his shoulder, but you can picture the frown on his face, and you don’t miss the way his shoulders tense when you keep struggling.
So, you still, sighing heavily as he carries you through the inner courtyard and into the garden. The air is cold enough that it bites at your bare legs and arms, and you huff irritably, arms crossing beneath you as best you can manage from your humiliating position. He doesn’t say anything—instead, he finally stops walking and bends just enough to set you back on your feet. You stumble slightly, steadying yourself against his arm, and Naoya slides off his outer robe to drape it over your shoulders.
You look up at him, catching the pinched and pensive expression on his face, and your lips part to ask him what it is that he wants before you catch sight of the soft pink of the cherry blossom trees from the corner of your eye. Your breath catches as you turn to look, watching as the dawn casts its first light across the garden. The cherry blossoms glow faintly, petals dusted with the morning light, some drifting loose and spinning lazily through the air with the morning breeze.
“Oh,” you breathe out. “The cherry blossoms are in bloom.”
You’ve never seen them at sunrise like this.
Naoya watches you instead of the view—you can feel the weight of his attention on the side of your face. His robe hangs loose around your shoulders, still warm from his body, and when a breeze cuts through the garden, he steps closer without thinking, blocking it with his back.
“Late this year,” he says quietly. “Not a good sign, is it?”
You don’t answer, gaze still trained upward as the sun creeps higher, light catching on the petals of the rows of cherry blossoms.
God, you hate the Zenin estate—no matter how many years pass, you can never fully push away the weight of the ten you spent dealing with the eyes and commentary of the Zenin men as a potential Zenin wife.
Ten years of perfect posture and perfect poise, of keeping your chin up and your smile light while men twice, three times, your age felt entitled to comment on your body, your temperament, and your future. Ten years of being assessed like you’re some object that might be useful if handled correctly. Even when your alliance with Naoya shifted into friendship, and Sundays became something you stopped dreading, even when he invited you here on his own years later, and you were no longer bound by the same rules and expectations that used to shadow you everywhere—it never fully went away, never will probably.
But the garden is different.
The Zenin men never walked through it, so it was a place where you could hide away from all of their eyes. You think there are probably still marks around the place from where you and Naoya started to brawl and break things. You exhale softly, wrapping his robe around your body, dropping your nose into the collar to breathe him in.
“You used to disappear out here all the time,” he says quietly. “Used to have to cover for you, ‘cause you weren’t supposed to run off unless I was with you. I didn’t get it. Thought you were avoidin’ me or something. Or tryna make me look bad.”
That explains why he was always so aggravated when he came looking for you, you realize amused. You huff softly and say, “Sometimes I was—avoiding you, that is. I wasn’t trying to make you look bad.”
“Tch. Figures.”
“But mostly, it was everyone else,” you say quietly. “I… really hated coming here, but the garden—well, it was different. We were the only ones who ever really came here. It was… nice.”
The breeze shifts, stirring the branches overhead, and for a moment, the only sound is the soft flutter of petals hitting stone. His gaze drifts around the garden once before it settles back onto you, an uncharacteristically soft expression on his face.
“... Yeah,” he finally says. “It was.”
He rubs a hand over the back of his neck, eyes sliding shut briefly as he tries to figure out how exactly he wants to phrase what he wants to say to you. You have a feeling you know what it is, but you wait anyway, gaze searching as your eyes finally meet his.
“I ain’t good at sayin’ things the way people want,” he finally says, gaze sliding past you to the trees. “I say the wrong shit, push when I should wait, and then I get pissed when ya can’t read my mind.”
You snort. “You don’t say.”
He shoots you a look and then huffs, “Shut it.” He continues, quieter, “I’ve been tryin’, though. All this—” he gestures vaguely between the two of you and then sighs, looking up at the sky, “—I’ve been tryin’. I know we said ‘one day,’ but I don’t wanna keep waiting anymore. I can be what ya need, what ya want. I can take care of you—properly—and I can—” he falters, lips parting, lashes lowering, and then finishes, “I can love you properly too. I do love ya… I think.”
You know what he means, the hesitance in calling it love—whatever this is between the two of you, it’s never fit neatly into any word people can use to describe relationships. And it’s not that the feeling isn’t there—you don’t think there’s anyone in the world who could really understand what it is you feel for Naoya, except for Naoya himself, it’s too intense and too inexplicable.
Love doesn’t do it justice; you think that's what the problem is, but it might be the closest word there is to it.
“I want you,” he says plainly. “I want you as my wife. I don’t wanna keep waiting.”
You stare at him for a second, catching the uncertainty in his expression, and you let out a soft puff of air. You’ve had almost a year to brace yourself for this conversation, you’ve known it was coming, but it still makes your throat feel a bit tight as you look up at him.
“Yeah,” you say. “Okay. Let’s get married. You’re getting old anyway, don’t need you with gray hairs in our wedding portrait.”
Naoya stares at you, a little lost, a confused look on his face as though he thought this was going to be more of an argument. He doesn’t even look insulted by the comment, lips parting as he stares at you.
“You serious?” he asks, quieter than you’ve ever heard him.
“Wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t,” you tell him. “I mean, Naoya, we’re not gonna be—”
Oh. Your lashes flutter shut as Naoya steps forward to close the distance between the two of you, one hand sliding around the back of your head, and the other around your waist as he dips down to press his mouth to yours. His lips are soft and familiar, and they taste faintly of sake. He doesn’t ever drink usually, not after growing up with Naobito, but you wonder if he had a glass for some liquid courage before he came to drag you out of bed. You let out a soft noise into his mouth as he moves his lips against yours, hands coming up curl around his shirt. His fingers tighten in your hair, and after a moment, he tips his forehead against yours, lips parting, breath mingling.
“We’re not going to be married tomorrow, Naoya,” you tell him quietly, knocking your nose gently against his as he leans in to ghost his lips against yours again. “I’m serious. The logistics of this are going to be a lot. It’s gonna take a year, probably two realistically, and—”
“—and you’ll be my wife,” he cuts in, too smugly, fingers pressing into your lower back as he pulls you impossibly closer. He kisses you again, slower this time, deeper—it feels different from other kisses you’ve shared with him, and your hands slide up to loop around his neck, fingers curling into his blonde hair. He murmurs against your lips, “We should celebrate, yeah? No one’s awake yet—let’s have some fun.”
“You’re so annoying,” you tell him, but you’re smiling as he walks you backward until you’re against a tree trunk. His hands slide down to your thighs, and before you can protest, he lifts you up, fingers digging into your skin as he presses you back against the tree. Your legs hook around his hips on instinct, and he makes a low, pleased sound against your mouth. “I’m serious, Naoya. This isn’t going to happen quickly, and it’s not going to be easy.”
“Nothing’s ever easy with you,” he murmurs, and then his lips curl up into a crude smile against yours. “Well, except—”
“I would advise you to quit while you’re already behind, Naoya.”
————————
On December 24th, a thousand curses are unleashed in Shinjuku and Kyoto by the special grade curse user, Geto Suguru. Your clan, along with the rest of the sorcerer families residing in the Kyoto area, is deployed to the city alongside the Kyoto High students and faculty, and the Tokyo High second-year students. You were against the students taking part in the conflict once you learned that curse users aligned with Geto would be participating, but Satoru waved off your concerns, telling you they’ll be fine, and then also telling you that you better not let his students die before disappearing back to Tokyo to prepare.
He’s all smiles in a way that unsettles you deeply. Satoru never spoke about Geto Suguru with you, but you know enough to understand that neither he nor Shoko can possibly be taking this well—you know better to push when the conflict is imminent, but you can’t help the uncertainty that curdles low in your stomach every time your mind drifts to them.
You arrive the evening of the incident alongside Naoya and the Hei, the city already humming with an uneasy tension that makes your skin crawl the moment you step out of the vehicle. The streets are too empty, too quiet, and the air is thick with cursed energy before any curses even start amassing. The Hei fan out quickly to position themselves along the north side of the city, and the Tokyo second years who had come with you look to you for instruction.
(“Go. I’m not gonna babysit you. Don’t get yourselves killed. I don’t want to deal with Satoru,” you say, waving them off. “If you get in trouble, just run. We’re sorcerers, not heroes.”
“You gottit, senpai,” Hakari agrees with a grin and a wink, before saluting and heading off to his assigned position with a whoop and something about ‘pumping up the fever’. Kirara gives you a thumbs up and chases after him.
“Senpai?” Naoya drawls next to you, arms crossed over his chest. “Shouldn’t it be sensei, if you’re teaching them?”
You roll your eyes. “Don’t get me started,” you mutter. “Fuckin’ Satoru insists that they should call me senpai since I was technically his ‘first student’. They won’t listen to me when I tell them to quit it.”
Naoya snorts. Then he says with a frown, “I don’t like the way he looked at ya.”
“Don’t start with dumb shit,” you say flatly. You exhale as you glance down at your phone. You really need to get into position. “I should get going.”
Naoya hesitates. “You’ll be good?” he asks, jaw tight. “They don’t need me here, I can—”
“I’ll be fine, Naoya. You’re head of Hei—you need to stay with the Hei. I’ll call for you if I need you,” you say, waving at him over your shoulder as you walk away. “Focus on not dying, yeah?”
“Hah? You focus on not dying, y’bitch, I’ll be fine.”
You flip him off over your shoulder with a grin.)
Your position is at the center of the city.
It was a long and arduous conversation with the higher-ups, who still find your existence quite tiresome, but with Naobito endorsing the plan and growing irritated with their fickle disagreements, you became the linchpin of Kyoto’s defense against Geto Suguru’s attack. Your technique has always been about reading—cursed energy and intent, patterns and instincts, and you’ve been steadily expanding it, one move ahead to three moves ahead to five to ten.
With Satoru’s help, you’ve figured out your technique’s pinnacle: Maximum: Center Game. You anchor your cursed energy to a center point, and then you expand it outward—you stop reading local signatures and claim the whole board for yourself. Within that range, every cursed energy source becomes visible to you at once—what it is, where it is, how strong it is, how it’s moving, how it’s about to move. You’ve never used it over a battlefield of this size, and you’re not really sure how long you’ll be able to last before your brain starts bleeding from the stress of information overload, but you don’t tell Naoya that, because if he knew the risks, he would lose his mind, and you want to make sure that there are as few casualties as possible during this incident.
Between Momo Nishimiya’s eyes in the sky, and your technique, nothing will move in Kyoto without you knowing, and if you know, you can make sure that everyone in the area can prepare. This is the best way—with the small risk that you’ll be slowly dying and virtually defenseless since your cursed energy will be spread thin across the entire city.
In the best case scenario, the curse users aligned with Geto Suguru won’t figure out your position, and in the worst, you’re fucked.
Unfortunately, you’ve always been unlucky.
(Your eyes are bleeding from the strain of your technique.
You don’t know how long it's been since the battle began, but it’s been too long. Each second that passes feels like eternity, but you force yourself to keep directing information to the sorcerers scattered around the city: pull back from Nishiki Market, do not engage the cluster by Kyoto station, there’s a special grade is lying in wait by the Imperial Palace, a hoard of twelve cursed spirits are approaching Tofuku-ji Temple. You don’t explain—there’s no time, and they don’t need to understand why, only that when you speak, the odds tilt in their favor.
Your temples throb, a pressure building behind your eyes like your skull is too small for what you’re holding inside it. You taste copper and swallow it down, refusing to break concentration. Thousands of points of energy scatter across Kyoto—you see pathways forming where cursed energy flows strongest, concentrations where battles are about to erupt, and where they already are. Future lines overlay the present—not certainties, countless probabilities and branching outcomes that you have to decipher in real time to figure out which one is most likely to become reality. If this unit advances here, casualties spike. If that curse turns left, three students die. If Naoya pushes too far east, he survives, but someone else doesn’t.
Chess, you think wryly, remembering what you named your technique after, except it’s no game, and hundreds of lives count on you correctly figuring out how the board is shifting, what the enemy’s next set of moves will be.
You don’t know how Satoru does it, dealing with the constant inflow of information—you think the Six Eyes must be a curse as much as they are a blessing.
You understand the moment that you’ve been figured out. A dozen signatures—the curse users aligned with Geto, who you’ve been keeping careful track of—turn their attention to the center of the city, cutting through the streets, over buildings, in your direction at top speed. They’ve realized that if they take you out, they’ll cripple Kyoto’s defenses—the board you’ve curated will collapse, everything will become reactive, people will die.
“Naoya,” you gasp over the intercoms when you realize they’re coming for you. “I need you.”
Naoya is moving before you even finish saying his name. You watch his familiar signature pivot, carving a path straight through the city in your direction. The curse users are fast, but Naoya is faster, keeping his technique constantly active to get to you as fast as possible. You continue updating the sorcerers battling across Tokyo, trusting that Naoya will arrive before the curse users get to you.
When the first one breaches your immediate perimeter, there is a victorious expression on his face: checkmate, he tells you, cursed blade extended as he prepares to slice through your neck.
Not quite, you don’t reply as Naoya hits the field.
The curse user is dead before he even knows what happens, and the concrete splits next to you as Naoya skids to an abrupt stop, tanto-knife extended and dripping with the blood of the throat he just slit. There’s a livid expression on his face as he directs his attention to the other curse users who had approached you, hesitating now that they realize the Zenin heir is here, but it disappears when he looks down at you and sees the blood streaming from your eyes and nose, the way you’re barely conscious.
“You’ve done enough,” he says, voice tight. “End your technique.”
“Not yet,” you tell him, and he’s forced back into combat before he can argue with you.)
After the incident, you’re out of commission for two weeks.
You find out later through Hakari that Naoya lost his mind when you collapsed—even worse, when the representatives of the higher-ups decided that there were “more pressing” injuries to be treated before the few medics in Kyoto could see to you. Hakari ended up getting himself suspended when he spoke up in your defense, only to get insulted by one of the more conservative members of the higher-ups, which caused him to quite promptly beat the shit out of the man. But Naoya blew up, calling them all useless garbage before gathering you up in his arms and making his way across the country, leaving far too much destruction in his wake in his efforts to get you to a doctor who would prioritize you. He made it to Shinjuku in less than an hour through constant chains of Projection Sorcery, pushing himself to the same limits he was furious at you for testing, collapsing the moment he got you in front of Shoko.
Both of you were bedridden for a month, and since Shoko thought it fitting to keep you in the same room, and you were only unconscious for half of that month, you were forced to endure two weeks of him bitching at you for nearly getting yourself killed, “and before ya fuckin’ married me. The fuck is the matter with ya?”
But every time Shoko comes in to check on you and finds the two of you bickering, that dull look in her eyes that has been ever-present since the incident fades a little bit, so you suppose you can suffer Naoya’s bitching and moaning as long as it distracts her a little from her friend’s death.
You don’t hear from Satoru at all during that month. When you ask Shoko about him, she only averts her gaze and shakes her head—you don’t know what that means, but you assume it’s nothing good. You try reaching out to him, but all of your calls go to voicemail, and your texts go unanswered.
Two months after the incident, he shows up at your estate, all easy smiles and casual confidence, as you’ve always known him to be, but there’s something brittle about it that makes you feel uneasy.
Are you okay, Satoru? you ask, and the smile freezes, and the mask shatters all at once.
(“How did you do it?” he asks you, voice quiet as he leans into you.
He presses his nose into the crook of your neck, much like a child seeking comfort after a nightmare, and you lift your hand to his hair, fingers absently carding through the white locks. You send your attendants away. You and Satoru have always had a mutual understanding with one another that you’ll see each other beyond the fronts jujutsu society demands you put up, but you know he wouldn’t want anyone else to see him like this, even your attendants.
You’ve heard through the grapevine that he’s been throwing himself at mission after mission since the end of the incident, not allowing himself time to breathe, much less think. You also hear through the grapevine that Satoru was the one who ended Geto Suguru—his own hand crushing his own heart. You figure that this is the first time he’s allowed himself to stop, and it all hits at once.
“Do what?” you ask him quietly.
“Live,” he mutters. “After.”
He presses closer, body slumping a bit, forehead knocking lightly against your collarbone before he forces himself to look up at you. There’s a lost look in his eyes that you’ve never seen before, and it makes your chest ache.
“I didn’t,” you say honestly. “Not really. You remember how I was after.”
“I don’t know what to do,” he admits, fingers curling into the fabric of your shirt. “I don’t know how to move on—not from this. I can’t—I can’t even look in the mirror, I can’t—” His voice breaks, he lets out a terribly shaky breath against your skin, body shuddering. He lets out a noise that almost sounds like a laugh. “Love really is the most fucked up curse, isn’t it?”)
The months following the incident—the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons, the higher-ups are naming it—are foreboding in a way that’s hard for you to articulate. There’s a serious influx of curses in all prefectures of Japan, and sorcerers are spread thin trying to contain it. You are on mandated leave after your bedrest—at least eight months, Shoko tells you, and Naoya is quite pleased with the order, to your irritation, but you are terribly bored, endlessly wandering around your estate trying to find something to do. Naoya keeps you company when he’s around, but the Hei are frequently deployed around Kyoto to take care of the cursed spirits that keep popping up.
The ominous feeling you have never quite disappears, no matter how much time passes.
(“I have a bad feeling,” you admit to Naoya a few weeks after the two of you are okay’d to leave Shoko’s care, one arm draped around his waist, leg tucked between his as the two of you lay up in your bed after he returns from a mission.
His arm tightens slightly around you, fingers pressing into your side as he pulls you a little closer. You sigh, eyes sliding shut as you nudge your nose into his collarbone. He asks, “A bad feeling about what?”
“Just everything,” you tell him. “I feel like this is only the beginning.”
“Ya worried?”
“A little.”
“Don’t be,” he says. “We’ll be fine. We always are. Everything always works out for us.”
You don’t know how to tell him that you’re not convinced this time will be the same, so you don’t.)
