Summary: Maekar is trying to provide a good life for his new wife by removing himself from her company and offering alternatives. He fails. Warnings: a bit of angst because of pining, a bit of smut.
The morning light cut through the high, narrow windows of Summerhall with a pale, wintry insistence, and Maekar Targaryen, prince of the Seven Kingdoms, found himself staring at the ceiling of a room that was not his own. It was decorated with painted vines, a delicate feminine touch he had never bothered to notice before. The bed linens smelled of lavender and something else, something sweet and warm. The weight on his arm was the source of the latter.
You were curled against him like a dormouse seeking warmth, both your hands wrapped around the corded muscle of his forearm as if he were a lifeline in a storm. Your cheek was pressed to his shoulder, lips slightly parted in the ease of deep, trusting sleep. A strand of your hair had escaped your night braid and lay across his tunic.
Maekar did not move.
He was a prince, a warrior, a man who had crushed rebellions beneath his mace and watched men die without flinching. But this, the soft, contented curve of your mouth, the way your breath puffed in tiny, even waves against his sleeve, paralyzed him. He cast his mind back, desperately trying to remember when exactly his careful, honorable plan had crumbled to dust. It was the previous night. It had been a fool's errand, a mission of pure and unparalleled idiocy disguised as magnanimity.
For months, he had constructed a cage for you, gilded and sprawling, and called it a marriage. After the death of his first wife, the mother of his children, the very concept of a new bride had felt like a betrayal, a picking at a wound that had barely scarred over after years. His brother, King Aerys, had insisted. The match was politically sound. You were from a fine lineage, a daughter of a loyal house, and your dowry was a collection of trade agreements and land rights that made the court accountants rub their hands with joy.
And you. You were a pretty thing: young, sweet, blinking up at him at the Sept with your big eyes, he had noted absently, and a slight pout on your mouth. He recognized that pout now, not as petulance, but as a sign of deep concentration, an unconscious expression you wore when you were trying very, very hard to be brave.
At the wedding feast, you had tried to engage him in conversation, your voice a soft, hopeful melody against the droning noise of the hall. He had grunted in response, complaining about the seasoning on the boar. You had blinked, then smiled, a small, tentative thing, and said, "Perhaps the kitchens will do better with the lemon cakes, my prince. Would you like me to ask them to bring some?" Deflecting his rudeness with a kindness so artless and sweet it had made his teeth ache.
He had taken you to Summerhall, the seat of his power and the monument to his own complicated legacy. He gave you servants who curtsied low, spacious rooms filled with sunlight and tapestries you seemed to admire, and a generous allowance that could have purchased a small fleet of ships. He had daughters, Daella and Rhae, who were delighted with you, finding in you a new playmate, a doll who could speak and laugh and teach them new embroidery stitches. His sons were a different matter. Aerion was a burning star of chaos somewhere in Essos, Aemon was at the Citadel, chaining himself to books, and Daeron…Daeron was usually never counted. The thought of his eldest, a dissipated dreamer, brought a familiar, leaden weariness to his gut. But the girls were happy, and you were occupied.
He thought he had it all handled.
Everything was provided, he had reasoned, watching you from across the courtyard one afternoon as you and Rhae chased a butterfly. You were a young maiden. His idea of a comfortable existence was good service, a sturdy roof, a well-stocked armory, and a couple of silent, efficient friends with whom to share a flask of strongwine. He had assumed, in his colossal, self-absorbed ignorance, that your needs were the same.
Until he started to see it. The quiet sigh you suppressed when he answered your sweet inquiry about his wellbeing with a noncommittal grunt at the dinner table. The way your eyes, those big, expressive eyes, would track a young knight in the yard as he laughed with his comrades, not with lust, but with a kind of wistful, academic curiosity. You were studying a creature you had never encountered. Daella, his sweet daughter, was already starting to enter that phase of mooning over singers and sighing at sunsets, a phase he dreaded with every fiber of his being. And you, his wife, a lively girl not much older than his own children, were saddled with a grumpy man whose range of communication with her was limited to tactical assessments of mutton and grunts about the weather. You were drowning in comfort and starved of life.
He could commission solutions. Jewelry? A cascade of sapphires appeared on your vanity. New dresses? Bolts of lace and silks in hues of deep green and amethyst filled your wardrobes. Rare books? He had a first-edition history of the Rhoynar, bound in pale leather, delivered to your solar. You had been effusive in your thanks, your pout melting into a radiant smile, but the smile never quite reached your eyes. The problem, he realized with a cold, hard jolt, was not resources.
The problem was romance. He couldn't morph himself into a handsome young knight with a carefree disposition and light humor, the kind of man who would compose a song for you, who would bring you a wildflower he’d picked on a reckless morning ride, who would whisper sweet, foolish nothings in your ear. He was Maekar Targaryen, a blunt instrument, a man of duty and gristle and a simmering, constant irritation at the world.
His poor wife. You were left to smile and giggle quietly at his dry, caustic remarks about a visiting lord’s speech. And you seemed genuinely amused by them, your laughter a soft, surprised ripple of sound that made him pause, mid-chew, in confusion. You were so deprived of pleasant company that you took what you could get from him, poor sweet thing. The realization had made him want to kick himself.
So, he had formed a plan, a scheme that, at the time, had seemed the pinnacle of rational, self-sacrificing genius. He went through his guards the next day under the guise of a brutal, unforgiving drill. He had them running siege patterns, sparring until their padded armor was dark with sweat, watching them like a hawk. He found the one he was looking for: Ser Elyas, a bastard from the Reach. He was honorable, sharp as a blade, and handsome in that sun-kissed, broad-shouldered way that maidens were supposed to swoon over. His laugh was easy, his temperament unruffled.
"Ser Elyas," Maekar had rumbled, his voice a low thunder. "You are being reassigned. You are now the personal guard to my wife, the princess. You will see to her safety at all times. You will accompany her on walks, attend her in the gardens, and ensure no harm befalls her."
He had made it clear to you on your wedding night that he had no intention of bedding you. It was a cold, blunt statement of fact, delivered not out of cruelty but out of a misguided sense of honesty. He had seen the flash of hurt in your eyes, quickly masked by a composed, brittle acceptance. So, naturally, he reasoned, after some time spent in the company of the charming Ser Elyas, you would come to love him. It was a natural, tragic story. A handsome knight and a neglected princess. He had practically gift-wrapped a discreet, passionate affair for you. It was the least he could give it to you, a substitute for the husband you had probably imagined, a way to satisfy that aching, youthful urge for romance that he, a man carved from stone, could never fulfill.
Yet, from what he observed over the following weeks, the plan had failed with spectacular precision. He would watch from a high balcony as Ser Elyas, in his gleaming plate, offered you his hand to help you over a damp patch of grass. You took it with polite, distant courtesy. You would exchange a few words, an occasional jest that made the knight chuckle, but your expression remained serene, unmoved. Maekar, a veteran of countless campaigns, knew the look of a soldier performing a duty. And your nights, as the quiet reports from your maids confirmed, were spent solely in your rooms. No secret knocks, no furtive shadows slipping from your door at dawn.
He was at his wits’ end. What did you want then? He had given you everything your station and age could desire. What would wipe off that pretty, unconscious pout off your face? Perhaps, he had finally conceded, if he talked to you. A novel concept for a marriage, he knew. He would go to you, and perhaps, in a moment of unguarded frustration, you would let your grievances slip.
The previous night, he had gone to your chamber. Your maid, a timid wisp of a girl, nearly dropped her mending box when she saw him at the threshold. "Leave us," he had commanded, and she fled. You had been seated by the fire, a book open on your lap, and you looked like a startled doe at his unexpected presence, your body going rigid, your eyes wide.
"My prince," you had said, your voice a breathless question.
He had felt like an intruder in his own wife's space. "I…I came to see how you were faring," he had managed, the words feeling foreign and clumsy on his tongue.
You recovered quickly, your innate grace taking over. You poured his wine yourself, and offered him a plate of fruit and honey cake. "I am well, my prince. Truly. The book you sent is fascinating. The accounts of the Rhoynish are almost unbelievable." You were making conversation. You were making it easy for him. And so you spoke for a while. It was surprisingly pleasant and easy.
He found himself relaxing into a chair, debating the tactical blunders of the Valyrian conquest of the Rhoyne, and you had listened with rapt attention, asking pointed, intelligent questions that surprised him. You had a mind, he realized with a start. A sharp, curious mind hidden beneath the pout and the big eyes.
But he didn’t catch any clues. No lamenting a lack of knights, no forlorn sighs about the gardens, no veiled complaints about his absence. Just you, being…pleasant. So, eventually, he rose to leave. "It is late. You should rest."
The change was instantaneous. The spark of animation in your eyes died, replaced by a stricken, hollow look, as if you were wondering what you had done wrong. Your fingers tightened imperceptibly on the spine of your book. "Of course, my prince. Thank you for your company."
He hesitated. He was a man of military precision, and the sudden, palpable drop in your mood was a tactical variable he hadn't accounted for. He was already in your bed chambers. What kind of husband left his wife's bed chamber right before going to bed himself? A churlish one. A neglectful one. The servants would talk, of that he was certain. The walls of Summerhall had ears and mouths. But he did not care what servants would see or say. Their gossip was the chaff of court life. The thought that stopped him cold, that made his feet feel nailed to the floor, was simpler. He owed you basic courtesy, did he not? He had denied you everything else. He could not deny you the simple, public dignity of a husband who shared your bed for a night.
Before he could overthink himself out of it, he gestured to the bed. "Move over, then."
Your eyes, if possible, grew even wider. "My prince?"
"I will not sleep in my boots," he said gruffly, sitting on the edge of a chaise and beginning to unlace them. "I will stay. Just to sleep." He made a promise to himself then, a sacred oath. He would lie down with you, and he would speak to you until you fell asleep, so you would not be insulted by a silent, rigid vigil. Then, he would leave. He had been insulting you for months by refusing to do his duties as a husband, and this small act of presence would at least be a temporary salve on a wound he had no intention of healing.
He lay down atop the covers, fully clothed in his tunic and breeches, a stiff, awkward pillar of a man. You slipped under the furs with a rustle of linen, lying rigidly on your back. The silence was deafening. Maekar cast about for something, anything, to say. "Tell me more about the Rhoynar," he commanded, his voice a little too loud in the quiet room.
And so you did, your voice soft and hesitant at first, then gaining strength. You spoke of the legends, the songs of the Mother Rhoyne, the giant turtles that were said to be gods. He listened, inserting a dry comment now and again that made you giggle, that beautiful, rippling sound he was growing dangerously accustomed to. He stayed, and continued speaking to you about the defensive layout of river cities, the logistical challenges of moving a legion through marshland, until your words began to slur, your breathing deepened, and your face went slack with peace. He had done it. He thought he would leave when he was sure you were deep in sleep. He would just wait one more minute. Just to be certain. The fire had burned down to embers. The room was warm. The scent of lavender was soporific. And that was the last thing he remembered.
Now, it was morning. The maid’s insistent knocking on the door was a relentless, chipper assault on his senses. He was still fully clothed, his tunic creased. And you were curled up next to him, clutching his arm as if it were the most natural, obvious thing in the world. The knocking roused you. You stirred, a small hum of contentment escaping your lips before your eyes fluttered open. Your gaze, hazy with sleep, traveled up his arm, over his chest, and settled on his face. The reaction was not one of surprise, or at least not the kind he expected. It was pleasure. A deep, luminous, bone-deep pleasure that transformed your features. You were smiling. A shy, pleased smile, as if you had just woken from a beautiful dream and found it still real.
"Good morning, my prince," you murmured, your voice thick and honeyed with sleep. There was a newfound confidence in it, a possessiveness that hadn't been there before. "Are you to have a busy day? I thought I might join you, if it were permitted. Perhaps I could assist you with your letters?"
Maekar found himself staring. The words were simple, but the meaning behind them was not. His plan, the handsome guard, the neglected lady, the grand affair, it all crashed down around his ears in a shower of broken, idiotic pottery. He realized his mistake with the force of a warhammer to the chest. You thought your husband was finally coming around. The gift, the miraculous, improbable gift you had wanted all along, was not a surrogate. It was him.
You wanted this. Him. His presence. His attention. His dry, sarcastic remarks. His tactical critiques of ancient river warfare. His grumpy, unyielding, solid self.
All this time, you had wanted him.
He felt a strange, tight sensation in his chest, a feeling he hadn't allowed himself to entertain for many, many years. It was a seed of warmth, cracking through the cold, hard stone he had meticulously built around his heart. He cleared his throat, his voice emerging as a low, rusty rumble.
"You can join me," he said, the words a surrender. "If you wish."
The pout was completely gone now. The smile that remained in its place was brilliant, a sun emerging from behind a lifetime of clouds. It was a smile just for him. And for the first time since he had been forced to take a new wife, Maekar Targaryen didn't feel saddled. He felt, with a terrifying, exhilarating certainty, that he was about to be completely, irrevocably unhorsed.
The days that followed that first, accidental night established a new rhythm in Summerhall, one Maekar found himself falling into with a disquieting ease he refused to examine too closely.
You had asked to assist him, and Maekar, a man who had never refused a direct request from a lady in his life out of sheer, blunt propriety, could find no reasonable grounds to deny you. You appeared in his solar the next morning, freshly dressed in a gown of pale yellow that made you look like a spring daffodil, and settled yourself in the chair across from his great oaken desk. He expected you to be a distraction. Instead, you proved infuriatingly useful. Your handwriting was elegant where his was a cramped, soldierly scrawl.
You sorted his correspondence into neat piles: urgent, routine, and the one you tactfully labeled "probably insincere flattery from lords who want something." He had let out a surprised bark of laughter at that, and you had beamed at him as if he'd just crowned you Queen of Love and Beauty.
This became your habit. Mornings in his solar, you with your neat piles and your quiet, intelligent questions about the running of the lands. Afternoons, you would walk with him along the battlements, your hand resting lightly on his arm as he pointed out the defensive improvements he was making to the eastern wall. You listened with genuine interest, asking about murder holes and arrow slits with a curiosity that was wholly unfeigned. Evenings, you dined together, and your sweet inquiries about his wellbeing were no longer met with grunts. He found himself actually answering you, describing the frustrations of a dispute between two minor landed knights or the irritating news from court. You would nod, your brow furrowed in thought, and offer observations that were often startlingly perceptive.
And every night, the same delicate, unspoken negotiation occurred.
The first time it happened outside of your own chambers, you had been in his rooms. It was late, the fire burning low, and you had been reading aloud to him from a treatise on dragonlore while he sharpened his dagger. Your voice had grown hoarse, and he noticed the way you rubbed at your eyes with the back of your hand. He could not, in good conscience, send you shuffling down cold corridors to your own chambers. The very idea was absurd. What kind of husband kicked his own wife out into the night like a stray cat?
"The hour is late," he had said, sheathing his dagger with a decisive click. "You will stay here."
You had looked at him with that expression again, the one that was half hope and half caution, as if you were afraid of misinterpreting his words. "Here, my prince?"
"In my bed," he clarified, the words coming out more gruffly than he intended. "I will take the chaise."
But you had looked so stricken at that suggestion, your face falling in that way he was growing to dread, that he had found himself amending the plan. "Or I will join you. The bed is large enough. It is not seemly for a prince to sleep on a chaise in his own chambers."
It was a flimsy justification, and he knew it. But the way your expression brightened, the shy, pleased smile that curved your lips, was worth the internal grumbling. He lay beside you that night, a careful distance between your bodies, and spoke to you about the properties of Valyrian steel until your breathing evened out into the soft rhythm of sleep. He awoke to find you pressed against his side, your head on his shoulder, one of your hands resting over his heart as if counting the beats.
This, too, became your habit. You clinging to him in sleep like a limpet to a rock, and Maekar waking each morning to the scent of your hair and the warm, trusting weight of your body against his. He told himself it was for your dignity. He told himself it was a small kindness, a basic courtesy. He told himself many things, and believed none of them.
Then there was the incident with the lamprey pie.
A lord from the coastal holdings had sent a gift of lampreys, and the kitchens had prepared them in a rich, heavily spiced pie. You had eaten only a small portion, politely complimenting the flavor, but within hours you were taken ill. Maekar was in the yard overseeing a drill when your maid came running, her face pale as milk.
"My prince, it is the princess. She is unwell. The maester says it is the lamprey, that it has irritated her stomach something fierce."
He did not remember crossing the castle. He only remembered the cold spike of fear that had lanced through him, the way his heart had hammered against his ribs with a violence that had nothing to do with exertion. He found you in your chambers, curled on your side in the great bed, your face waxen and beaded with sweat. The maester was there, a fussy old man who was doing far too much hand-wringing for Maekar's liking.
"She will recover, my prince. It is a mere gastric disturbance. But she must eat to keep her strength up, and she refuses. The princess will not touch the porridge."
Maekar looked at the tray on the bedside table. A bowl of plain, unappetizing porridge sat there, cooling and congealing. You were facing away from it, your eyes closed, your pout firmly in place.
"Leave us," Maekar commanded. The maester and the maids scurried out like mice before a dragon.
He sat on the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping under his weight. Your eyes fluttered open, and you looked at him with such a mix of misery and embarrassment that it made something twist painfully in his chest.
"I am sorry," you whispered, your voice thin and reedy. "I am being foolish. It will pass."
"You will eat," he said, reaching for the bowl.
"My prince, I cannot. The very thought..."
"You will eat," he repeated, and this time his voice was gentler, an unfamiliar softness creeping in despite his best efforts. He scooped a small portion of the porridge onto the spoon. "Open your mouth."
You stared at him, those big eyes glassy with discomfort, and for a moment he thought you would refuse him. But then you parted your lips, a tiny, obedient gesture, and he carefully slid the spoon into your mouth. You swallowed with visible effort, your face scrunching up, and he immediately had another spoonful ready.
"Good," he said, the praise awkward on his tongue. "Again."
He fed you the entire bowl that way, spoonful by painstaking spoonful, his large, calloused hands surprisingly steady. He did not rush you. He waited between each bite, murmuring gruff words of encouragement that felt foreign and strange, like a language he had never been taught. When the bowl was empty, he set it aside and reached for a cloth, dabbing gently at the corner of your mouth.
Your eyes were wet, but you were smiling. That smile. The one that made him feel like a hero from a song, when all he had done was feed you porridge.
"Thank you, Maekar," you breathed, using his name without his title for the first time. It hit him somewhere deep, a blow he had no armor for.
"Rest now," he ordered, his voice rougher than he intended. "I will stay."
He stayed. He lay beside you, fully clothed, and let you curl into his side. He stayed until your breathing steadied and the color slowly returned to your cheeks. He stayed even after that, watching the firelight play across the ceiling, feeling the steady rise and fall of your chest against his, and wondered what in the seven hells he was doing.
But still, still, he put off the matter of bedding you.
It was not that he did not want to. The realization had crept up on him with the slow, inevitable force of a rising tide. He wanted to. Gods help him, he wanted to. The sight of you in your thin nightdress, the way your hair spilled across the pillows, the warmth of your body pressed against his each morning, it was testing the limits of his resolve, which had never been particularly strong where matters of the heart were concerned. He had simply never had his heart involved before.
But to bed you would be to open a door he was not certain he could close again. He had built his life around duty, around the cold, hard certainties of obligation and honor. He had loved once, and loss had carved a hollow in him that he had believed was permanent. You were filling that hollow, day by day, smile by smile, and the sensation was as terrifying as it was intoxicating.
He was a coward. Maekar Targaryen, who had faced down rebel lords and laughed at the prospect of single combat, was a coward when it came to his own wife.
Then came the night of the kiss.
It was an evening like any other. You had spent the day in his solar, helping him draft responses to a particularly tedious batch of petitions. Dinner had been a quiet affair, just the two of you, and you had made him laugh, actually laugh, a deep, surprised rumble of sound, with a wicked impression of a pompous lord who had visited the previous week. You had retired to his chambers, as had become your custom, and he had told you about the Dragonknight's campaigns in Dorne until your eyes grew heavy.
"Goodnight, Maekar," you said, your voice soft and drowsy.
And then you kissed him.
It was not a forceful kiss, not a demand or an invitation. It was a brief, gentle press of your lips against his, as natural and unthinking as a breath. A goodbye. An act of simple, uncomplicated affection. You pulled back, your eyes already closing, and nestled into your pillow with a contented sigh, as if you had done nothing of any particular note.
Maekar lay frozen, staring at the canopy above him, his heart thundering in his ears.
You had kissed him.
This was his fault. The thought careened through his skull like a loose cannon on a ship's deck. This was entirely, unequivocally his fault. He had done this. He had planted this notion in your head, watered it with his attentions, and now it had bloomed into something he could no longer ignore.
A fortnight ago, you had been helping him remove his heavy outer tunic after a long day of inspections, your small fingers working deftly at the clasps. It had been such a wifely gesture, so intimate and so natural, that before he had known what he was doing, he had leaned down and pressed his lips to your brow. A brief, chaste kiss. A thank you. He had not even realized he had done it until he saw the way you had frozen, your eyes wide. He had cleared his throat and muttered something about the fire needing more wood, and the moment had passed.
But you had taken that kiss, that single, thoughtless gesture, and drawn a conclusion from it. You had decided, in your sweet, hopeful way, that your husband wanted you to initiate affection as well. That he was too reserved, too gruff, too locked within his own silences to ask for what he wanted. And so, with that gentle, trusting kiss, you had reached across the chasm he had placed between you and offered him a bridge.
Did he want you to? The question burned in his mind, insistent and demanding. Did he want you to kiss him goodnight, as if it were the most normal thing in the world? As if you were truly husband and wife in every sense?
He certainly was not complaining. The ghost of your lips still tingled on his, and his body was reacting in ways that were entirely inappropriate for a man who was supposed to be letting his wife sleep. He was not complaining at all. That was the problem.
He should be complaining. He should be panicking. Because this, this sweetness, this trust, this quiet, domestic intimacy, led inexorably to one conclusion. You would expect children now. The thought hit him like a splash of ice water. Of course you would expect children. A princess, a wife, a woman who had been raised to understand that the bearing of heirs was a fundamental part of her duty. And you would want them, he realized with a jolt. You would want his children. Not out of duty, but out of genuine desire. You would want a babe with his silver-gold hair and your eyes, a child you could hold and nurture and love.
Gods be good.
He turned his head on the pillow to look at you. You were already asleep, your face peaceful, your lips still curved in that small, contented smile. You had no idea of the earthquake you had just set off in his chest. You had kissed him and promptly fallen asleep, trusting him completely, utterly unaware of the crisis you had left in your wake.
Maekar stared at you for a long time, watching the steady rise and fall of your breath, the way your lashes cast delicate shadows on your cheeks. His mind was a whirlwind of duty and desire, fear and longing, the cold echoes of past grief and the warm, insistent pulse of something new.
He could not keep putting this off. The realization settled over him with the weight of inevitability. He could not keep lying beside you, night after night, pretending that this was a mere courtesy. He could not keep telling himself that he was doing this for your dignity, when in truth, your dignity was the last thing on his mind when he felt the press of your body against his in the dark.
But not tonight. Tonight, you were asleep, and he was a coward still. Tonight, he would lie here and listen to you breathe and feel the warmth of your kiss still burning on his lips.
Tomorrow, perhaps, he would be braver.
Or perhaps, he thought grimly, you would kiss him again, and the choice would be taken out of his hands entirely. The thought was not as unwelcome as it should have been.
The kisses continued.
Every night, without fail, you would bid him goodnight with that same gentle, fleeting press of your lips against his. It was never demanding, never lingering. It was a question posed in the softest possible terms, a door left slightly ajar, an invitation he could accept or decline as he saw fit. And every night, for the first several nights, Maekar accepted it the same way: by remaining perfectly, rigidly still, a statue of a man enduring a pleasant but bewildering assault.
He felt you withdraw each time, felt the tiny, almost imperceptible slump of your shoulders as you settled back onto your pillow. You never said anything. You never complained. But he knew. He was a dull rock, an unresponsive lump of granite, and he was hurting you with his passivity. The knowledge gnawed at him, a persistent, guilty ache that followed him through his days and haunted his waking hours.
The fifth night, something in him snapped. Simply, as you leaned in to press your customary kiss to his lips, he found himself moving. His hand came up, rough and calloused, to cup the back of your head. And he kissed you back.
It was not a passionate kiss. It was not the kiss of a man swept away by desire. It was a careful response, a returning of pressure, a silent acknowledgment. He felt your startled inhale against his mouth, the way your body went taut with surprise. When he pulled back, your eyes were wide, your lips parted, and there was a look on your face that made his chest constrict.
Expectation. Hope. A question that had been waiting, patient and trembling, for an answer.
Maekar looked at you, at your big eyes shining in the firelight, at your kiss-swollen mouth, at the delicate line of your collarbone visible above the lace of your nightdress. He thought of all the nights he had lain beside you, rigid with restraint. He thought of the way you smiled at him, the way you laughed at his dry remarks, the way you clung to his arm in sleep as if he were the only safe harbor in a storm.
He resigned himself. The decision came not with a sense of defeat, but with a strange, liberating clarity. He did not want to become the object of your resentment. He could not bear the thought of those eyes looking at him with bitterness, with the slow, corrosive realization that your husband was a man who denied you not only his affection but the most basic experiences of womanhood. You were young and full of life, and he had been keeping you in a gilded cage, feeding you porridge and kissing your forehead as if you were a child rather than a wife.
"You deserve pleasure," he said, his voice low and rough, the words feeling as if they were being dragged from some deep, hidden place within him. "I have been remiss in my duties."
Your breath caught. "Maekar..."
He moved before he could lose his nerve. His hands found your waist, and he lifted you as if you weighed nothing, settling you onto his lap with a decisive, careful motion. You were warm through the thin fabric of your nightdress, your body soft and pliant against the hard planes of his chest. He could feel the rapid flutter of your heart.
"I will not take what I have no right to claim," he said, the words a rough murmur against your temple. "But I can give you this. Let me give you this."
His fingers found the hem of your nightdress, and he pushed it up slowly, giving you time to object. You did not object. You only watched him with those enormous eyes, your hands resting on his shoulders as if you did not quite know what to do with them. He touched you gently, so gently, his battle-roughened hands moving with a delicacy that surprised even himself. He explored the soft skin of your thighs, the curve of your hip, the dip of your waist. He learned the shape of you by touch alone, his gaze fixed on your face, cataloguing every flicker of expression.
When his fingers found the center of your heat, you gasped, your head falling back, your fingers digging into his shoulders. He moved with slow, patient circles, learning what made you sigh, what made you shudder, what made your hips buck involuntarily against his hand. He was methodical in his attentions, as he was in all things, and he brought you to the peak with the same focused determination he might apply to a siege.
You shattered against him with a cry that was half surprise and half relief, your body arching, your hands fisting in the fabric of his tunic. He held you through it, his free arm wrapped securely around your waist, anchoring you against the storm of sensation. When the tremors subsided, you slumped against his chest, breathing hard, your face buried in the crook of his neck.
He gave you a moment. Then, with the same gentle efficiency, he rearranged your nightdress, lifted you from his lap, and placed you back onto the bed. He drew the furs up to your chin and pressed a kiss to your forehead.
"Sleep now," he commanded, his voice a low rumble.
You blinked up at him, your expression dazed and soft and so full of something that looked terrifyingly like adoration. "But you..."
"This was for you," he said, cutting you off with a firmness that brooked no argument. "Rest."
You slept. He did not. He lay beside you in the darkness, his body aching with unfulfilled need, and told himself that this was enough. He had done his duty. He had given you pleasure without complicating matters with his own involvement. It was a tidy solution, a clean, surgical strike. You were satisfied. There was no need to get himself fully involved.
This, too, became a habit.
Every few nights, when the expectant look in your eyes grew too pronounced to ignore, he would pull you onto his lap and touch you until you came apart in his arms. He learned the rhythms of your body. He knew the spot just below your ear that made you whimper when he pressed his lips to it. He knew the pace that made you clutch at him desperately, the slower, teasing touches that made you gasp his name like a prayer. He gave you pleasure as a general might distribute supplies to a besieged city: regularly, efficiently, and with a steadfast refusal to partake himself.
He thought you accepted this. He thought you understood the unspoken terms of this arrangement. He was a fool.
It was a quiet evening, the fire burning low in the hearth, the castle settling into the deep hush of night. He had just returned from a grueling inspection of the eastern watchtowers, his muscles aching, his mood as dark as the storm clouds gathering over the mountains. You were waiting for him in his chambers, a book open on your lap, a cup of warmed wine already poured and waiting on his desk.
You were always waiting for him now. The thought should not have warmed him as it did.
The night's ritual had been completed. You were nestled against him, your body still humming with the aftermath of pleasure, your breathing slowly returning to normal. He was preparing to settle you back onto your pillow, to pull up the furs and press his customary kiss to your forehead, when you spoke.
"Maekar." Your voice was soft, hesitant, but there was a thread of steel beneath it that he had learned to recognize. "May I ask you something?"
"You may," he said, his guard instinctively rising.
You were silent for a moment, your fingers tracing idle patterns on the fabric of his tunic. Then, you lifted your head to look at him, and the expression in your eyes made his heart stutter.
"Why do you not want anything for yourself?"
The question hung in the air between them, simple and devastating. He opened his mouth to deflect, to offer some gruff platitude about duty and obligation, but you did not give him the chance.
"Every night," you continued, your voice still soft but gaining strength, "you give me such pleasure. You are so gentle, so careful, so attentive. But you never…" You hesitated, a flush creeping up your cheeks, but you pressed on with the same determined courage you had shown since the day you arrived at Summerhall. "You never let me touch you. You never seek your own release. It is as if you believe you do not deserve it, or as if you think I am not capable of giving it."
"You are capable," he said, the words escaping before he could cage them.
"Then why?" Your pout was there, that unconscious, pretty pout that he had come to know so well. But it was accompanied by a look so loving, so open and earnest and full of desperate hope, that it struck him like a blow. "I could learn. I could learn how to please you, if you are willing to teach me. I am not afraid. I want to be a true wife to you, in every sense."
He felt something cracking inside him, the carefully constructed walls he had built around his heart beginning to crumble. "It is not a matter of teaching," he said, his voice strained. "There are…consequences. You are young. You should not be burdened with..."
"Children," you finished for him, and he was stunned into silence. "You are worried about children."
It was not the only thing, but it was the easiest to admit. He nodded stiffly.
You took a deep breath, and he watched as you gathered your courage, your hands clasping together in your lap. "If you do not wish for children," you said, your voice steady despite the tremor he could see in your fingers, "I can drink moon tea. We can postpone the idea. I have spoken to the maester, and he has assured me it is safe when used sparingly."
Maekar stared at you. You had spoken to the maester. You, his sweet wife, had gone to the old man and asked about moon tea. The image was so absurd, so unexpectedly bold, that he almost laughed.
But you were not finished. "I would like to have a child someday," you continued, and now your voice grew softer, more wistful. "One child of my own. No matter a boy or a girl. And I would raise it with the best of my ability, with all the love I have to give. But…" You reached out, your small hand coming to rest on his cheek, your thumb brushing the line of his jaw. "I would like to have a life first. A marriage. A husband who does not treat me like a delicate piece of glass that might shatter at his touch."
Your eyes were wet, but you were smiling. That smile. The one that had undone him from the very beginning.
"I want you, Maekar," you whispered. "I want my husband."
The walls crumbled. The last defenses fell. Maekar Targaryen, prince of Summerhall, breaker of rebellions and terror of his enemies, looked at his young wife and realized he was only a man. A man who had been fighting a losing battle against his own heart for longer than he cared to admit. A man who loved his wife.
He loved you The truth of it was a physical thing, a weight in his chest, a fire in his blood. He loved your laugh, your pout, your clever mind and your gentle hands and your infuriating, wonderful habit of clinging to him in sleep. He loved your courage, standing before him now and baring your soul with nothing but hope to shield you. He loved you.
"Gods be good," he breathed, and then he was moving.
His hands found your waist, and this time there was nothing careful or clinical about the touch. He pulled you against him, crushing you to his chest, and his mouth descended on yours in a kiss that was nothing like the chaste, hesitant presses of lips you had shared before. This was a surrender. A desperate, hungry admission of everything he had been too stubborn to say.
You gasped against his mouth, and then your arms were around his neck, your fingers tangling in his hair, and you were kissing him back with an enthusiasm that made his head spin. When he finally pulled back, you were both breathing hard, your faces inches apart.
"You foolish, stubborn man," you whispered, but your voice was thick with tears and joy. "I have been waiting for you to understand."
"I understand now," he said, his voice a low, wrecked rasp. "Forgive me. For all of it. For the neglect, for the distance, for the guard I foisted upon you like a fool..."
"You gave me Ser Elyas?" Your eyes widened, and then a surprised laugh bubbled up from your throat. "Oh, Maekar. I thought he was just a very attentive guard. I wondered why he kept trying to recite poetry at me."
Maekar groaned, dropping his forehead to yours. "I am an idiot."
"You are my idiot," you corrected, and the possessive warmth in your voice was his final undoing. "My husband. And I believe you owe me a proper wedding night."
He looked at you, at the mischievous glint in your eyes, at the loving curve of your smile, and he felt something he had not felt in many, many years. Hope. Joy. A future unfolding before him that was not merely duty and endurance, but something bright and warm and achingly beautiful.
"I owe you much more than that," he murmured, and he lowered his mouth to yours once more.
a/n: Liked the fic? You can donate on Ko-fi, your support helps me write more: https://ko-fi.com/catbayunthestoryteller <3
if you suffer for your art // papa's cheeseria!daeron // part 2
photographs by Joel Sternfeld
music by vegas water taxi - birkenstocks
series masterlist
previous part
a/n: i can't believe so many of you are down for this dumbass concept lmaoo lysm <33 i decided to have this be an x oc fic cause idk how to write x readers, but everything about the character's appearance i'll probably keep pretty vague
also read my fic in all but name!!
Maddy had expected the diner to be shitty. The sun-bleached paint on the walls, most likely filled with lead, and the cracked faux leather of the booths weren’t promising, to say the least.
She knew from the moment she stepped foot in this town that she would have to grow used to things like that. Stranded, the area was only approached by outsiders when oil companies poked about the barren lands around it, only to leave disappointed. She knew to drop the idea of luxuries cities offered as soon as she passed the welcome sign on her way in.
So, restaurants that hadn’t seen a change in menus since Westeros was a monarchy, she had expected.
A cute employee that looked straight out of an indie shoegaze band burning her sandwich and flirting with her, that was certainly a surprise. A welcome one or not, it was hard for her to say.
Sure, the butterflies she’d felt in the moment were undeniable and warm. It was the kind of interaction that would make someone smile to themselves like an idiot hours later, only to realize they’d been staring creepily at a stranger on the bus while replaying it in their head.
But she was embarrassed that night when she laid in bed, after rewinding the scene in her head for the fifth time. She berated herself for idealizing this random man, arguing that she wouldn’t have batted an eye to him were she still in Gulltown. It was the lack of people her age in this town that made her feel this way towards him. Kind of like coworker hot. Pull yourself together, girl, she said before turning on some white noise on her phone and going to sleep.
Daeron dreamt of her that night. It wasn’t unusual, given that she was the only interesting thing that had happened to him that day. He was surprised by how easily he’d fallen asleep given that he’d run out of melatonin a few weeks ago. Another thing on his drugstore shopping list, if only he’d remember to stop by.
He didn’t know if she had been as beautiful in real life as she was in his dream. He didn’t think it was possible. She was pretty in a way you can only be in an illusion. The shifting light around her, her hair flowing and changing with the sun, smiling up at it with her eyes closed.
Once her gaze landed on him, he realized he didn’t remember the color of her eyes. They were blue one second, it looked right, and brown the next, which made even more sense, then hazel, by which point dream him could not focus on anything else but the light that reflected in them. All of the colors crowded his field of vision, swallowing him whole.
He could swear he felt her touch when the light recast back into her shape, this time in a different scene. Weirdly enough, it was at his old apartment back in King’s Landing. He tried not to dwell on that fact too much, knowing it was just what his subconscious was used to. The sight of her sitting on his kitchen counter made him forget every bad memory that space carried, as well as all the girls that had sat there in actuality.
She touched his arm when he approached her, triggering his phone alarm apparently.
It wasn’t even the annoying sound of Hotel Highgarden by The Hawks, which he would consider one of the best songs of all time on any other occasion, that woke him up. It was his annoyance at its attempt. He quickly swiped the alarm away, turning over to try and fall back asleep.
He buried his face in his pillow and groaned, bordering on a scream, when the dream slipped away from him. Rolling to the edge of the bed, he reached for the sketchbook on the floor. He had always had weird dreams, resulting to using them for inspiration as a way to cope. He’d sketch what he remembered before he forgot it, and would maybe paint it later.
He scribbled a few lines on the paper, before shame caught up to him and he dropped the pen in a, What are you doing, motion.
When he peeled out of bed to go to the bathroom, his reflection in the cracked mirror was judging him. He tried to wash the feeling away with cold water. He’s not responsible for whatever his subconsciousness chose to cook up.
It was 7:16. He had to leave for work in fifteen minutes.
A part of him felt like he might run into her on his walk to work. He was being stupid. Let it go, he told himself, but still chose to bring his work shirt and change at Papa’s. He put on a nice outfit, something he might’ve worn to his Advanced Macro class back at uni. He cringed at the look of the collared shirt, feeling every bit like the rich asshole he was. Or used to be. Whatever.
He didn’t run into her.
He arrived at the diner at 7:50. Just early enough for Louie not to tell him off. The old man was crouching in front of the restaurant sign, writing today’s special with chalk.
“Good morning, son! Looking sharp,” he placed a chalky hand on Daeron’s shoulder, leaving a white handprint on the sage shirt.
“Morning, sir. Thank you,” the employee replied through gritted teeth.
“You paint, Darren, if I remember correctly,” Louie asked, obviously not as small talk, making Daeron hesitant.
“Yes?”
“Great! I was thinking,” he started, motioning towards the glass facade of the restaurant, “We could freshen this up a bit. Maybe you can draw something on the glass. Nice big mural. I got some paints in the back. It’d get more people to sit outside, don’t you think?”
Daeron wanted to scoff at the notion of someone wanting to eat next to the road, imagining the smell of exhaust gas on the sandwiches. He nodded instead, kind of excited at the notion of not having to stand behind the counter his entire shift.
“Yeah, great idea, sir,” he sucked up, “I’m down to do it.”
“Great!” Louie exclaimed, patting his shoulder once. “You can stay after your shift for as long as you need to finish it,” he said as he walked inside. Fuck me, Daeron thought.
He changed into the uniform, wiping at the chalk on his nice shirt, all while grumbling at the unpaid labor he was tricked into doing. Maybe he’d get the employee of the month this way. It wouldn’t be hard, given there were only two other ones. He’d have to endure them later today.
When he started working at Papa’s, he thought that Rudy and Scarlett would become his closest friends in this town. The couple were, in his eyes, really cool. Members of a ska-punk band for a decade now, he immediately gravitated towards them with his love for anything alternative.
It got too much for him when they started sharing complaints about how it was impossible to get a show these days, with dornish bands dominating the punk scene. Or “robbing regular bands”, as they had called it. Combined with not wanting to be in the middle of their many heated arguments, it was enough for Daeron to keep his distance.
They seemed to not be talking to one another today, which he hoped would ease him from a headache.
With consultation from Louie, they agreed on him painting a simple plate with a sandwich and fries, likely to avoid accusations of false advertisement.
“And change out of the uniform. I don’t want any paint stains on it,” Louie warned when he set the paints down in front of the window. Daeron didn’t want any stains on his nice shirt either, so he turned to painting shirtless, one of his all-time favourite activities.
The design shouldn’t take that long, and he wasn’t keen on giving it his all anyway. An hour and a half at the most.
He played some music while he worked, a playlist of blues rock and jazz. Scarlett had come outside once to tell him to turn that garbage off and put on some real music. He ignored her, causing the couple to turn on what he could only guess was their own music in an attempt to drown his out. That’s when he put in earbuds.
He had only the linework left when he nearly fell from the chair he was standing on, startled at a reflection appearing in the mirror.
Behind him, the girl from his dream yesterday laughed at his slight jump.
“You good?”
“Yea-yeah, sorry,” he tried concealing a voice crack with a chuckle. “You just startled me.”
“I’m sorry. I just wanted to see what you were up to,” she explained herself with a smile, turning to look at what he was painting.
Fuck, she can’t think this was his regular level of artistry. He stuttered through his words.
“Oh, this? Pfff, don’t even look at it. Like seriously, don’t. It sucks. Well it doesn’t suck suck. It’s just, you know. Not what I would usually paint. I didn’t choose this, is what I m—”
“You paint?” she interrupted, kind of giddy at the new knowledge of the stranger.
He felt himself blush embarrassingly at the tilt of her head, while she assessed if the hobby fit him.
“Yeah, I do,” he decided to reply with certainty to convey just how serious it was for him.
She eyed him for a moment longer, seeming to have decided her opinion. “You look like a painter.”
He blanked at the paintbrush and jar of old paint in his hand, as if to say duh. She chuckled and corrected herself.
“I mean, you look like the artsy type, you know what I mean?”
If only you knew, he wanted to say. “Thank you,” he replied, sounding way too grateful and earnest. When he didn’t say anything else, which he would attribute to the sun hitting the back of his head for an hour straight, she just nodded in an Alright motion, and reached for the door handle.
“I can show you some of my paintings, if you’d like,” he panicked, ”Some time.”
She smiled slowly at that, shrugging, “Sure.” It seemed like lip service to him. Like she was just saying that to be nice. He thought about how he should dig himself out of that proposal while she was getting her food inside. He adjusted his pants, suddenly very aware of his love handles peeking out.
Maddy, meanwhile, stumbled through her order, her thoughts rerunning the conversation in her head. He was not just shirtless, she screamed to herself internally like a teenage girl. Was that a date proposal? Or was he just an arrogant artist? Gods, she felt like such a loser. Surely flirting wasn’t this difficult before. Was he even flirting?
The worker currently at the register was attempting to make small talk with her, eliciting scoffs from the girl making her sandwich. Maddy figured out what was going on fairly quickly, even in her giddy state, and decided to reply as dryly as possible, not wanting to get poisoned today.
“You new around here?,” the guy with the mohawk continued, his eyes evaluating her up and down once, “I can show you ‘round.” The girl behind him just slammed the spatula she was holding down, leaving through the back door without a word. He raised his hands in annoyance, turning to her with a look that said, women, am I right, before picking up where she left off.
Maddy looked around the diner while waiting, her gaze accidentally falling back to the shirtless man at the window. From that distance, it took her a few seconds of ogling him to realise that he had been looking at her too. She instinctively brought up a hand in a little wave. Ewewew why did you just do that.
She saw him returning the wave with a confused smile before she turned back around. Aaahhh.
Once she’d picked up her order, she dreaded having to pass him on her way out. Should she say something? Or just a bye? Yeah that should work.
Daeron saw the girl approach, gathering any handsome arrogance he still had in him, hoping that his brain would come up with something to talk to her about. She got to the door quicker than he had hoped.
Maddy pretended to look for something in her purse on her way out as a defence mechanism. If he wanted to talk to her, it would give him enough time to do so, and she also appeared busy enough not to initiate. Perfect strategy.
“Sorry about burning your sandwich, by the way.” She smiled slightly at that. He cursed himself for that being the best he could do.
“Don’t worry about it. The sandwich was delicious.” The burnt bits were bitter as all hells, but he didn’t need to know that. He probably assumed.
He didn’t know what to say next, trying to think of something clever he could say about sandwiches. She wanted to stir the conversation away from that, still performatively digging through her bag.
“So you paint?”
“Yep.”
“Like what kinds of paintings?”
He chuckled slightly at that. Fuck, she was cute. She brought her arms up defensively.
“Well, I don’t know how to ask that! Like what do you paint? What brings you inspiration, other than cheese pulls and curly fries?”
He laughed louder at that, “What kinds of paintings,” he repeated. “I don’t know? Nice ones.”
She laughed at his joke, throwing her head back at his mocking of her question.
“I’d love to see them,” she gathered the courage to say. He blushed, looking down.
“I don’t have any photos of them.” A lie.
“Shame,” she tilted her head, moving a step further from him when she sensed the conversation dying down.
“You can see them in person, though,” he blurted out when he saw she was leaving, making her turn back around. He immediately retracted his words, “Fuck, sorry, no. That was weird, sorry.”
She smiled again, happy that he wasn’t being a genuine creep. Just an accidental one.
“Sorry, you don’t even know my name. That was creepy of me.”
“What is your name?” she asked in turn, sounding genuinely curious. He melted at the implications.
“I’m Daeron,” he stated, continuing to fill the millisecond of silence with his stuttering, “T—” he stopped himself. “Dayne. Daeron Dayne.”
She grinned up at him, not having caught his falter. “Nice to meet you Daeron Dayne,” her tone mocked the seriousness of him introducing himself with his full name. “I’m Maddy Stone.”
He sighed out, the weight of his lie seemingly heavy on his lungs, “Nice to meet you Maddy Stone.”
She decided to be brave upon sensing that she might be holding some cards.
“Well, Daeron,” she began with a coyness she didn’t know she had, “In the spirit of you not being creepy, how about I give you my number?” Daeron could swear his knees buckled. “And maybe you could send me some of your paintings?” There was an uncertainty in her last words.
He nodded way too quickly for his liking, immediately going to grab his phone from his back pocket as he got down from the chair.
“Yeah, of couse.”
He seemed to forget where the phone app was located for a second, clicking on his notepad instead. He cluckled at his mistake when he noticed she saw, before opening the right one and giving her the phone.
He turned his head to the side as she typed her number in, as if he wasn’t supposed to see it. It took her a minute to save her number under ‘burnt sandwich lady’ before texting her number a dot and giving him his phone back. He didn’t even register the name, pocketing the device immediately.
“Thank you. Um… I’m– I’ll text you,” he nodded, confirming his words to himself. “The paintings, I mean.”
“Okay,” she simply said, a shy smile on her face as she turned to leave. She gave him an identical wave to the one before, “See you.”
“See you, yeah,” he repeated mindlessly, barely raising his hand as she walked away.
She turned around once, curiosity working faster than her brain, to find him still looking at her, before she rounded the block. He sighed very loudly, all but falling to the chair next to him.
The quest to find the perfect paintings that night was long and intense. Granted, he had only made six full paintings while living here. Turns out supplies cost money. Who knew.
He flipped through drawings before scolding himself, because she asked for paintings. He picked out the best out of the six, but realised that the sun had gone down and the lighting was shit. He was never more grateful for backing up all the photos from his last phone as he swiped through some of his old work. He left some nice ones behind, he thought as he favourited the best ones.
Then he realised that these were on the internet, having been photographed at an art show he got to have at one of the galleries his grandma sponsored. Fuck, what if she puts them into reverse image search? Back to photographing the six ones he had.
He was setting up a lamp next to one of the paintings when he suddenly stopped, a realisation dawning on him. He face-palmed. Why the fuck would she want me to send her my fucking paintings? Idiot.
He abandoned the setup, focusing on what to text her. He thought about waiting a day or two, but the weekend was coming up, so she probably wouldn’t be stopping by the diner.
daeron from papas
heyy, it’s daeron
Yeah, that was fine.
burnt sandwich lady
hii daeron, whats up?
He paced around the room as he tried to come up with something interesting to say.
daeron from papas
not much
trying to be productive
burnt sandwich lady
is it working?
daeron from papas
not really haha
Why the haha, stupid.
burnt sandwich lady
can’t find painting inspo?
daeron from papas
can’t find inspo for anything
but mainly painting, yeah
burnt sandwich lady
damn, i wish i could help
You could very much help, he thought before slapping himself for it internally.
burnt sandwich lady
if only i knew what kind of paintings you made…
He smiled at that, fingers overlapping as he typed.
daeron from papas
i’d send you, but they just don’t look as good on camera :/
burnt sandwich lady
man that sucks
guess i’ll never know :(
She bit her lip on her end.
burnt sandwich lady
unless that creepy offer’s still up?
Now you sound creepy, she chastised herself. Idiot, why do you text like you’re ovulating 24/7?
Daeron was all but kicking his feet and giggling at the text, having had to sit down once he read it.
daeron from papas
it’s up if you’re down
Great, now you sound like Rudy. He tried to save himself.
daeron from papas
i’d love to hangout with you
you seem really cool
He got nervous when she didn’t start typing immediately when she read it, turning his screen off so he didn’t have to watch. Unbeknownst to him, she was screeching in her pillow. Embarrassing, she thought as she did it.
burnt sandwich lady
thank you <3 that sounds nice :)
He wanted to jump from excitement, channeling that energy into uncharacteristically punching the air instead.
burnt sandwich lady
i’m free all weekend
daeron from papas
i can do sunday
She liked the message.
daeron from papas
do you wanna meet up somewhere orrr?
burnt sandwich lady
yeah that’s fine
like at the square
and then we can take a walk from there
if that’s okay with you
daeron from papas
yeah sounds perfect :)
burnt sandwich lady
and then if it goes well you can show me some of your paintings
He felt air leave his lungs all at once, scrambling to reply something. He decided to just react to it, being at a loss for words. First he put a thumbs up, before deleting it and reacting with just a heart.
burnt sandwich lady
sunday at 2pm work for you?
daeron from papas
absolutely perfect
He replied way too quickly.
burnt sandwich lady
great, i’ll see you then :)
daeron from papas
see you :)
“Holy fuck,” he threw his phone down, breathing out as if he had just finished a run. He smiled widely, then tried to suppress it, before going back to smiling again. He lifted his phone to check if she’d said anything else. She hadn’t, so he set it down again. He melted back into the sofa, scanning the apartment that needed cleaning before Sunday. Hopefully it wouldn’t be futile.
She breathed out, setting her phone next to her bed and turning to hug her pillow. It was late, she would think about this tomorrow. She smiled.
Here I was thinking the gothic Maekar fic was going to take a while to brew, but then the main character came knocking in my noggin and now I’m nearly halfway through the first chapter.
Lady Ellena Locke née Stark has decided she wants to make her presence known. Who am I to prevent her from getting what she wants? We love a lady who goes for her goals. Maekar Targaryen won’t know what hit him.
*A reenactment of the moment Ellena decided to pop into my head while I was brainstorming*
If you’re wondering what gothic (and gothic adjacent) stories are inspiring my work:
Crimson Peak (obviously)
Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier and its 1970’s adaptation with Jeremy Brett as Maxim
The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (gothic adjacent)
The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery (gothic adjacent)
I just finished “The Little Stranger” by Sarah Waters, and it has confirmed one thing in me: I really want to write my gothic Maekar fic once I finish one of my other ones.
Would you guys be interested in a gothic romance story with Maekar?
Yay
Nay
I don’t know I just like clicking buttons. This also counts as yes.
Alrighty. Gothic Maekar it is. It might have to brew a bit like the Daeron one (Which is hard because that one requires a lot of nautical research which is why chapter 2 isn’t out yet). But I think I might be bringing it out within the next month. I love gothic fiction and I enjoy reading it so I hope I can make something you all enjoy.
GIF by @/cestpasfaux24601 / Dividers by @/saradika-graphics
↪︎ how you call to me directory
Summary: you were writing your thesis on men who couldn't say what they felt; he was, without meaning to, becoming your primary source
Pairing: Adam Dalgliesh x f!reader
Content warning(s): +18 MDNI, explicit sexual content, pinv sex, fingering, oral sex (f receiving), mutual pining, friends-to-lovers/slow burn payoff (we earned this shit), strong sexual tension, consent explicitly affirmed, aftercare, reader insert (no use of y/n), not beta'd (all my porn comes from the depths of my heart)
Chapter 7
He had said stay and you had said yes and neither of you had moved for a long moment, his forehead against yours, his hand still warm against your face, the poem on the table and the December dark at the window and the flat very quiet around you both.
Then he kissed you again.
This one was different from the first — less an arrival and more a declaration, longer and more certain, his hand sliding from your jaw into your hair. You turned toward him on the sofa, and his other hand found your waist and drew you across his lap with a deliberateness that was simply characteristic of him, one leg on either side of his body, nothing rushed, the same quality of complete and chosen attention applied now to this. To you. The focus of it was almost overwhelming.
You kissed him back with equal seriousness. His mouth was warm and unhurried and he made a quiet sound against you when you pressed closer, a sound that was mostly controlled and not entirely.
When you pulled back enough to breathe you were looking at the open collar of his shirt, the white fabric opening at his throat, and the decision was very simple. You pressed your lips to the side of his neck, just below the jaw, and felt him go still in the way he went still when something landed that he hadn't prepared for. His pulse was there, steady and slightly faster than usual, and you felt it against your mouth.
His hands tightened on your waist.
Not harshly — but with a new quality to them, a change in register from careful to something less managed. His fingers pressed into the fabric of your jumper and found the shape of you beneath it, and he turned his head and his mouth was against your temple, your hair, and the breath he exhaled was slow and deliberate in the way of someone exercising a restraint they could still, for the moment, maintain.
You kissed his neck again, lower, where the collar opened. His grip on your waist moved and his hands slid to the curve of your hips and then further, cupping your arse with a sureness that made you breathe in sharply against his skin. He held you there — not pulling, not demanding, simply the warm certainty of his hands learning the shape of you with that attentiveness he gave to everything — and then his fingers tightened, kneading you, and the sound you made was involuntary.
You leaned back and pulled your jumper over your head.
He looked at you.
The lamplight was warm and the room was cold at its edges and his eyes were as dark as the deep ocean. He looked the way a man looks when he has been practising composure for a long time and the practice has ceased to be available to him — not undone, not unravelling, but present in a way that required no management because there was nothing left to manage. The tiredness was still in his face and so was everything else: the attention, the intelligence, the feeling that had been accumulating in the margins of him for months, and all of it now directed at you without the usual careful mediation.
His hands moved to the latch of your bra at the back, found it without fumbling, and undid it.
He drew the straps from your shoulders slowly, following them with his hands, and when the fabric fell away his eyes moved over you with that complete and unhurried quality and he made a low sound in his chest — not performed, not deliberate, simply a sound that happened — and lowered his head.
His mouth on your breast was warm and precise and entirely focused. He used his tongue with the same attention he used for everything, learning what made you respond and returning to it without haste, and the cold air of the room against your skin sharpened the contrast of his warmth until you had one hand in his hair and were holding him there with a clarity of intent that surprised you somewhat.
You used your other hand on the buttons of his shirt.
There were four remaining — he'd had the top two undone since you arrived — and your fingers worked them with less patience than was perhaps dignified, and he lifted his head briefly and looked at you with something close to amusement and then returned his mouth to your breast and let you get on with it.
When the shirt was open you pushed it from his shoulders and put your hands on his chest.
He was lean in the way of someone whose body was incidental to his purposes, not constructed or tended but simply the physical fact of him — the long muscles of his chest, the warmth of his skin, the dark hair that crossed from breast to breast and narrowed to a line that disappeared into the waistband of his trousers. You traced it with your fingers and felt him exhale against your breast, felt the slight tension in his stomach muscles where your hand passed over them.
You moved your hand lower.
The fabric of his trousers was fine wool, soft under your palm, but what pressed against it was neither soft nor ambiguous. He made a sound against your breast that was entirely undisguised — the sound of someone abandoning a particular pretence — and you kept your palm there and felt him harden further under your touch, incrementally, unmistakably, and felt something move through your own body in direct response.
His mouth had stilled against you. His hands were on your hips and gripping, not gently.
You brought your lips to his ear. His hair was against your cheek and his breath was coming slightly unevenly and his whole body had the quality of something held just at the edge of its own containment.
"Let go," you said, "Adam."
For a fraction of a second nothing happened.
And then his hands moved to the backs of your thighs and he lifted you from the sofa in one movement, clean and certain, and you were against his chest with your legs around him and your arms around his shoulders and he was kissing you again — differently, now, with a depth that conceded what the last two months had not quite permitted either of you to say aloud. You kissed him back with equal fervour and his hands under your thighs were not careful at all.
He carried you as though it required no effort, which was in its own way tremendously distracting, and turned from the sitting room into the dark hallway, and through the second door.
The bedroom was dark except for the light coming through the open door behind you. He brought you to the edge of the bed and set you down on the mattress, and you looked up at him from it. He stepped back and shrugged the open shirt from his shoulders and dropped it, and reached for his belt with the unhurried efficiency of a man who had decided exactly what came next and was moving through it with purpose.
You looked at him.
The lamplight from the hallway caught the lines of him — the severity of his face resolved now into something else entirely, the composure burnt off or set aside, his eyes on you with a darkness and directness that you felt in several places simultaneously. He was beautiful in a way that was completely unselfconscious, the lean length of him, the particular quality of a man at absolute attention.
He came back to the bed and leaned over you and his hands found the waistband of your trousers, and here — here — the control made one final, brief reappearance and then gave way entirely: he pulled the fabric down with a fervour that bypassed careful entirely, a quick and frank impatience that you found more affecting than the deliberateness had been, because it meant the deliberateness had cost him something after all, and you were what he'd been holding it against.
Your underwear followed. And then his hands were on you — both of them, moving over your thighs, your hips, the plane of your stomach, with that attentiveness that was simply how he inhabited every action, and the cold air of the room was irrelevant because his hands were everywhere and warm.
One hand moved between your thighs and cupped you, and he went still when he found you wet with arousal. He looked at you. Something crossed his face — not surprise, something warmer than surprise, and more private.
He smiled.
It was not a common event, the smile, and this one was neither polished nor performed — it was the smile of someone in the presence of something they are genuinely glad of, simple and direct and brief. Then his fingers moved and the smile became irrelevant because two of them were inside you and his thumb was at your clit and the sound you made was thoroughly undignified and you found you had absolutely no concern about that.
He worked you with the same quality of focused intelligence he brought to everything. He watched your face and adjusted and returned to what made your breath catch, and he added his mouth — lowered his head between your thighs and used his tongue alongside his fingers, and the dual attention of it was almost more than you could accommodate. Your hands went to his hair. Your hips moved without your instruction.
The orgasm arrived like a long sentence reaching its final clause — everything that had been accumulating over two months and one evening and this dark bedroom, resolving at once into a shuddering, involuntary, complete release that you felt from your scalp to the soles of your feet, and you held his hair and said his name and he worked you through every moment of it without stopping.
After, you lay with your chest heaving and your hands loosening in his hair and he raised his head and looked at you.
He lifted his hand — the one that had been inside you — and held your gaze with absolute steadiness and put his fingers to his mouth. Slowly. The dark eyes on yours throughout, and the low hum he made in his chest was one of the more devastating things you had ever witnessed.
You reached for his trousers.
Your hands found the fly and undid it and he rose to his knees to help, pushing the fabric down and off, and his underwear followed, and he came back to you bare, kneeling above you, and you had a moment in which to see all of him clearly — lean and warm and entirely present — before your hand moved to his cock and closed around it.
He folded forward.
His forearms came down on either side of your head and his face was against your neck and he made a sound against your skin that was pulled from somewhere deep in him, rough and low and not controlled at all. You stroked him slowly, feeling the weight and warmth of him, and his hips moved fractionally, involuntarily, into your hand.
"If you—" he said, against your neck. His voice had changed. The precision was still there but the steadiness underneath it was gone. "If you continue — I will not—" He stopped. Pressed his mouth to your throat. "I won't last."
You kissed the side of his face in response, pressing a smile along with it. And gave him one last, slow, firm stroke.
He lifted his head and looked at you. His eyes were impossibly dark and his expression had that rawness you'd seen briefly in the sitting room, the layer of management absent, and underneath it: this. The full enormity of everything.
He positioned himself at your entrance and pushed forward slowly, watching your face throughout, and the feeling of him entering you — the stretch and warmth and fullness of it — made you exhale in a long, trembling breath that you hadn't known you'd been holding.
He stopped when he was fully inside you. His eyes were on yours.
"Look at me, love," he said. Quietly, with complete seriousness.
The word arrived simply. Not performed. Not announced. The most natural word in the world in his voice at this moment, and more affecting for that than anything elaborate would have been.
You looked at him.
He began to move.
Slow at first — deeply, deliberately, each movement chosen with the same care as everything else, drawing back and returning with a thoroughness that made you understand what he'd meant about compression, about the form that made something both possible and impossible simultaneously. Your hands were on his shoulders and the pleasure of it was building with the same accumulative quality as everything between you had built: gradually, specifically, with the sense of something enormous being approached by increments.
You moaned.
His rhythm faltered slightly at the sound. Recovered. You moaned again, because the angle of him was extraordinary and you had ceased to have any reason to be quiet about it, and this time the recovery took longer.
Your nails found his back.
Not deliberately — your hands had moved there without instruction and the pleasure was making thought somewhat approximate, and when he thrust particularly deeply your fingers contracted and drew lines across his skin and he groaned — a real groan, pulled from the chest, ungoverned — and whatever barrier had been holding him at the slow and deliberate pace came apart entirely.
He started fucking you in earnest.
The change was complete and immediate — the same man, the same hands, the same attention, but the restraint gone as though it had never existed, replaced by something that was all forward motion and depth and the unmediated fact of how much he wanted you. The headboard. The movement of the mattress. The sounds he made against your neck. You held on and moved with him and the pleasure was overwhelming and specific and built rapidly toward a second peak.
His back under your hands was warm and the muscles of it shifted with each movement and you felt the marks your nails had left and pressed them again, deliberately this time, and he made a sound against your ear that was both pain and its opposite.
After some time — you had genuinely lost track — he lifted his head. His face was flushed and his breath was entirely uneven and he looked like a man who was approaching the end of what was available to him.
"Do you—" he began. The sentence collapsed before it finished, his hips moving into you again and his eyes briefly losing focus. He tried again. "Should I—"
You moved your hand to the round of his arse and pressed his hips to yours, firmly and without ambiguity.
He looked at you. Understood completely.
He dropped his forehead to yours and his rhythm shortened and deepened and you felt him shudder — once, and then again — and the groan he made when he came was long and low and entirely unguarded, and he buried himself inside you and held there, his hands gripping you, his whole body a single sustained tremor of release.
You held him through it. Your arms around his back, your face against his neck, his weight on you warm and complete.
After, he didn't move immediately. He remained where he was, above you and half beside you, his face against your hair, his breathing slowly returning to something normal. His hand found your hip and stayed there, warm and still.
When he lifted himself away he did it carefully, disposing of practicalities without making a matter of them, and returned to you immediately — settled beside you and drew the blanket up over you both, and then lay still for a moment.
Then he turned on his side to face you.
He looked at you for a moment in the dim light, his expression quiet and serious and more open than you had ever seen it — not fragile, not uncertain, but open in the way that is only possible after the kind of exposure neither of you had been in any hurry to risk.
His hand came to your face. The same gesture as earlier in the evening, palm to jaw, but slower now. His thumb traced your cheekbone and the line of your brow and the corner of your mouth, attentively, without destination.
"Are you all right?" he asked almost in a whisper.
"Yes." You turned your face slightly into his hand. "Are you?"
He considered this with characteristic seriousness. "I'm not certain all right covers it," he murmured jokingly. "But yes."
You lay together in the quiet, his hands tracing vague, soft patterns across your skin while you hummed in pleasure from the contact. The December night pressed at the window and the flat held its warmth around you, and the lamp in the hallway threw its light through the open door, soft and indirect.
After a while he rose — quietly, without waking you, though you were not asleep — and came back with a glass of water for each of you. He sat on the edge of the bed and handed you the glass and waited while you drank, and then took it back and set both glasses on the bedside table.
He lay back down beside you.
"The spare blanket is in the wardrobe," he said. "If you're cold in the night."
In the night. Not if you stay. Simply an assumption, offered without pressure and without doubt, and you felt the carefulness of it — the way he had constructed the sentence to give you everything without asking for anything.
"Thank you," you said.
His arm came around you and you settled against him, your back to his chest, and his breath was slow and warm at the back of your neck. His hand lay flat against your sternum, relaxed and still, and after a moment you put your hand over it.
The same gesture as in the sitting room a week ago — your hand over his, quiet and voluntary — but the country it described was entirely different now.
He pressed his lips to the back of your head. Once, brief, sincere.
Outside, the dark continued its long work over the city, over the lamp-lit streets and the Kensington terrace and the third-floor flat where two people lay in the particular silence of those who have crossed a significant distance and arrived somewhere neither of them had quite admitted they were going.
On the table in the sitting room, the poem lay open, its last stanza facing upward.
Where your name sits, and will not be revised.
It was, you thought — half-asleep against the warmth of him, his hand under yours, his breathing evening into something like rest — entirely accurate.
A.N.: after all those chapters, i think we kinda deserved this one, huh? Bad news, next is the last chapter (apart from the epilogue). Good news, i have taken such liking to this story that i am starting to draft some spare continuations. Would you like to read those when the time comes?
Tags/Warnings: Nothing really, except a bad case of social ineptitude and horrible flirting. This is a meet-cute. Age Gap with Older Man/Younger Woman, though that is kind of par for the course for me. Daddy Issues.
Words: 1.6k (short and sweet and silly)
Everyday, you marvelled at the fact that Maekar Targaryen – the DILFiest DILF to ever DILF – had not laughed in your face and turned you down when you’d begged him for his number, stuttering around the words and growing beet-red beneath his brother’s amused gaze.
You’d been in a café with your friend – she’d discovered it recently, swore up and down they had the best pastries she’d ever tasted – when you’d seen them enter and sit down, their legs impossibly long in comparison to the plush seats.
Immediately, you’d started drooling over him. The blond one. His dark-haired brother was very handsome as well, but you could see the ring glinting on his finger, and besides, he looked much too put together, much too perfect for someone like you.
Maekar’s scowl, his nervous shifting, the glare he shot at the low table – having to bend so much troubled his back, you’d learn – it was catnip to you.
You watched them, watched him, from that day forth. They appeared to work nearby, dressed smartly for white collar jobs, though the width of their shoulders belied it. Every week they came. Same day, same time. Like clockwork.
And, like clockwork, you would go. Tanselle would accompany you sometimes, but most often you’d go in alone, sit down in a corner with your laptop and pretend to work while sneaking glances at a man old enough to be your father.
You would have never approached him, never would have done anything about your silly infatuation with a stranger, had it not been for Tanselle’s encouragement.
“If nothing else, he’ll be flattered,” she’d said around a smile. “You’re young and pretty.” The way she added the last part had you hear what she meant. And he is neither of those.
Not young – at least fourty, you thought, probably older. Not pretty. Even you could agree.
He was attractive, arresting, but not pretty. Pockmarks divoting his cheeks – scars that his beard could not hide. A long, severe nose. Frown lines. He was a map of his life and you desperately wanted to learn it.
You took the first step on a warm summer day. You’d arrived precisely five minutes before they would. It was pathetic that you knew their – his – schedule so well. Along with your own order, you asked the barista to make a cold brew, large, with added caramel. “For the blonde man who’ll come in in a few minutes.”
The young man at the counter shot you a queer look, an eyebrow raised. He knew who you were talking about. Really, him? The scowling old man? You shrugged helplessly. I like what I like.
Heart hammering inside your ribcage, you watched from your seat as he sat down with his colleague.
(His brother.)
When he made to order, the barista gave him his usual. “Already paid for,” he added, and pointed you out, to your horror. Somehow you had not thought about that.
You were a wreck beneath his gaze. Shaking hands, trembling lips, mouth gone dry as soon as his violet eyes fixed on you. What do you want, they said, so blunt that embarrassed tears almost stung along your lash line.
Instead of succumbing to them, your face bloomed red with the sudden violence of a wave crashing against the tide.
You waved awkwardly, not knowing what else to do and secretly wanting to die inside.
Socially inept. One of the nicer things you had been called in your life.
You felt Tanselle’s incredulous eyes on your nape. Your friend had certainly seen you struggle to interact with people, but not this much.
The dark-haired man at his side appeared to understand your clumsy attempt at flirtation better than its recipient did, smiling slightly and clapping his companion on his back with twinkling eyes.
“You have a little admirer, it seems,” you overheard him say. They probably didn’t think you could hear.
But you’d always had keen ears. To your detriment, mostly.
She’s so weird, isn’t she? Such a nerd. Don’t her parents love her enough?
“Fuck off.” It was not the first time you heard him speak, but to hear him now… your knees went weak. You were glad you were already sitting, or you would have stumbled like an idiot. “She looks Aerion’s age.”
“And?” There was a wicked half-smile on the dark-haired man’s – Baelor, you recalled – face. “You’re not eighty, Maekar, and Aerion is a grown man.”
He exhaled through his nose, huffing like an annoyed bull. You’d seen that look on him several times already. The man you were infatuated with – Maekar – was gruff and sulky.
Just like your fa–
Nope, don’t finish that sentence.
Tanselle’s dark hair fell into your vision as she leaned towards you. “Go to him.”
Hesitantly, you glanced back at her. Your breath was stuttering already, just thinking about it. Are you sure? She only made a shooing motion.
When you stood, your legs were unsteady, wobbly like your grandmother’s termite-bitten oak table. You counted the strides – seven, it was seven – it took you to walk over to their table, trying to think of what to say.
Was the order right? You knew it was. You’d watched him get this exact coffee for weeks. But you couldn’t say that.
Does it taste good? He hadn’t even taken a sip yet. And it must, if he returned to it every time.
Come here often? Even worse.
You were still undecided when you stopped short of running into the tabletop. You looked at him, at Maekar, at this man. You had never asked anyone out in your life. And now you were starting with someone so intimidating, so attractive that your tongue felt like lead inside your mouth.
“Number?” you blurted out, cringed and started again. Oh gods, fuck. “C-can I have your number?” you asked, wringing your hands. Do I seem weird? Oh gods, I’m a creep.
“You’re really handsome,” you added lamely.
There was a look of utter confusion on his face. He looked at you, your face, devoid of lines, youthful, sweet.
Then, your shirt, a graphic tee of the Fellowship of the Ring.
Fuck. You should’ve dressed prettier. Like a woman. Why had you chosen your decade-old comfort shirt? Well, because it’s your comfort shirt.
You loved Lord of the Rings, had been obsessed ever since you’d first seen it with your father. Just one more thing that had set you apart from other girls your age who liked things that girls liked. Always the nerd, you were. Always the odd one out.
(Later, you’d find out that he’d stared at the shirt not because it was strange, but because he loved those movies as well.)
“Me?” he said, not quite a question, not quite a statement. “You are asking for my number?”
You nodded, feeling like you were close to tears. Someone kill me.
“Because you think I’m handsome?” He sounded incredulous. Like he couldn’t believe it. You shifted on your feet, trying not to think of how Tanselle was watching you.
“Y-yeah.” You tilted your head, peering at him, at his brother who seemed to be trying very hard not to smile.
“Brother, if you don’t give this sweet girl your number, I will do it for you. This is just what you need.” The last part, the dark-haired man said more quietly.
Something seemed to occur to him and he stood abruptly. “Why don’t you take my seat? I’ve just remembered something urgent at the office. Have a nice break, Maekar.”
Maekar glared at him, but made no attempt to stop him. You knew that particular brand of defeat that he wore on his face – the look of a man who had been outplayed by someone who knew him far too well.
You hovered, unsure. “What are you waiting for?” he told you in a huff, exhaling roughly. “Baelor won’t let me hear the end of it if I botch this now.”
You stared blankly. “Sit down,” he murmured, softer. You glanced back at Tanselle, saw her wave you off, a silent go on, and sat down. “Would you like anything?” he asked.
“I really like the pastries here. And a hot chocolate would be nice. Coffee’s too bitter.”
You hoped your sweet tooth didn’t make you sound childish.
(It didn’t. Maekar had often thought the same, though he preferred not to let others know that the harsh Anvil despised coffee for being too bitter – something that was, with considerable frequency, muttered about him. Fucking fools.)
You sat with him and you talked – or rather, you rambled and he listened, occasionally throwing in a brusk comment – and when you looked at your watch, you saw that over an hour had passed.
When you tried to stand, to apologise for keeping him for so long, he–
Well, it looked like a smile.
“What’s the rush, hmm?” he said. “I haven’t given you my number, yet. That’s what you came here for in the first place, wasn’t it?”
He gave you his number. The first text he sent you was an invitation to lunch the next day.
Despite each and every one of your blunders, your nerdy rants about video games, about science fiction and fantasy, about things that were quite meaningless to him, you continued seeing each other.
Your fourth date was supposed to be dinner at a fancy restaurant.
You’d been so nervous you’d cried, and your eyes were still wet when you opened the door to see him standing there, in dark shirtsleeves, so handsome your heart seized.
He took one look at you, your red face, your sweet dress, your attempt at looking presentable.
He kissed you. Ravished you. As though the sight of you had awakened a beast inside of him.
And, well, you never did make it to that dinner.
Instead, he held you on his lap, tasting your mouth like the sweetest wine. Somehow both the most undone and the most patient you’d ever seen him, taking his time to reassure you, to make you melt into his touch.
With him, slowly but surely, you lost your fears, your nervousness. You did not change, not precisely. You simply... blossomed.
just can't get enough of these men ugh. also sorry for the format, i didn't know how to make it seem a proper chat conversation (any tips will be most welcome)
Includes: modern!Baelor x f!reader // modern!Maekar x f!reader
Warning(s): modernAU, +18 MDNI, sexting,
It started, as things with Baelor often did, with something entirely innocent.
He had texted you a photo of a page from a book — a passage he had found and thought you would find interesting, which he did occasionally now, with the easy frequency of someone who had stopped managing the impulse to share things with you — and you had responded and a conversation had started and it had been a perfectly normal Tuesday evening exchange about the historiography of late Byzantine administrative structures until—
Until you had not been able to help yourself.
I keep thinking about last week, you sent. Specifically the kitchen counter.
A pause.
Longer than his usual response time.
I think about it also, he sent back. Frequently.
You smiled at your phone.
How frequently, you sent.
Another pause.
More than is probably productive, he sent. I was in a meeting this afternoon and spent approximately ten minutes thinking about the sound you made when I— and then it stopped and you could see the three dots and then they disappeared and then appeared again and then: that was not a sentence I intended to finish in a text message.
Finish it, you sent.
That seems inadvisable, he sent.
Baelor, you sent.
A pause.
The sound you made, he sent, when I put my mouth on your throat. I have been thinking about that specifically.
You stared at your phone.
Just that? you sent.
No, he sent back, and the single word had a quality to it even in text. Not just that.
Tell me, you sent.
The three dots appeared and stayed for longer than usual this time, which meant he was writing something and reconsidering and rewriting, which was so Baelor that you smiled at the ceiling of your flat while you waited.
I think about the way you felt, he sent finally. Specifically the way you felt when I was inside you. The sounds you made. The way you said my name. A pause and then another message immediately after: I think about what you look like when you come. I have replayed that in considerable detail.
Your mouth had gone slightly dry.
Considerable detail, you sent.
I have a good memory, he sent. It is currently working against me.
How so, you sent.
I am sitting in my study, he sent, trying to read, and instead I am thinking about putting you on this desk.
You put your phone down and screeched.
Picked it up again.
Tell me what you'd do, you sent.
The three dots.
I would start, he sent, with your throat. Specifically the place where your neck meets your shoulder. I have been thinking about that place with a frequency that I find somewhat consuming. Another message: Then lower. I would take my time. I was not thorough enough last week and I intend to correct that.
Not thorough enough, you sent. Baelor you made me come twice.
I'm aware, he sent. I have specific intentions regarding three.
You made a sound in the privacy of your flat that you were glad no one could hear.
You can't just say that, you sent.
I just did, he sent, with a composure that translated remarkably well into text. You feel extraordinary, he sent, and the shift in tense — present, immediate — made something clench low in your stomach. I think about how you feel around me and I lose significant portions of whatever I was doing. This afternoon it was a budget meeting. I cannot tell you what was decided.
What were you thinking specifically, you sent.
Specifically, he sent, how tight you are. How wet you were. The sounds you make when I go deep. A pause. I think about your hands in my hair. I think about the marks you left on my throat. I think about the way you said my name when you came the second time. Another pause, shorter. I think about it and I am hard and I am sitting in my study trying to read Procopius and it is not going well.
Touch yourself, you sent.
A longer pause than any of the others.
That is, he sent, not something I have done while texting someone before.
First time for everything, you sent.
You are a terrible influence, he sent. And then, after a brief pause: I am touching myself. I want you to know that I find this situation faintly absurd and also that I cannot currently bring myself to stop.
You laughed and then immediately stopped laughing because the image of Baelor in his study with Procopius open on his desk and his hand in his lap because of your text messages was doing things to you that you needed to address.
Tell me what you're thinking, you sent.
You, he sent. Specifically you on this desk. Specifically the sounds you would make. A longer pause — you figured how difficult it'd be for him to reply while he was pumping his cock in his hand. Specifically what your face looks like when you come. Another long pause: I think about that most. Your face. The way you look at me. A longer pause and then: I think about the way you said my name. I think about it constantly. You have no idea what your voice does to me.
Baelor, you sent.
There, he sent immediately. Exactly that. God.
Are you close, you sent.
Yes, he sent. Tell me something.
I think about your hands, you sent. I think about how large they are. I think about the tattoo on your ribs. I think about the sounds you make and the fact that nobody else has ever heard them.
A pause.
Nobody else, he sent back, rough even in text, something stripped in it.
Nobody, you sent. They're mine.
The pause that followed was brief.
Yes, he sent. And then nothing for two minutes and then: that was somewhat more intense than I anticipated for a Tuesday evening.
You laughed properly this time while looking at your phone like an idiot.
Good? you sent.
Come over, he sent. Please.
Baelor it's eleven pm, you sent.
I'm aware, he sent. Come over anyway. A pause. I have specific intentions and a desk and considerably more patience than I demonstrated last week.
You were already looking for your keys.
I'll be there in twenty, you sent.
I'll make tea, he sent, and you could feel the composure returning in real time and found you did not mind because the composure was never really the point, the point was what was underneath it, and you had standing access to that now.
Baelor, you sent, at the door.
Yes, he sent.
The desk, you sent. Don't change your mind about the desk.
A pause.
I have a very good memory, he sent. I don't change my mind about things I've thought about in considerable detail.
You jumped in the place you stood a few times and locked your door behind you.
It started with a photo.
Not an explicit one. Just — you, at a friend's birthday, in a dress that you had purchased with complete innocence and had worn with complete innocence and had sent to Maekar because he had asked what you were doing that evening and you had said out, here's proof and attached the photo without thinking about it.
His response took four minutes.
When are you home
You stared at the message with the incipient smile of someone who had got exactly what they were looking for.
Why???, you decided to play oblivious.
When are you home, he sent again.
That's not an answer to my question, you sent.
Couple of hours tops, he sent. And keep that dress.
You looked at your phone with a full smile now.
What about the dress???, you sent.
Don't, he sent.
Don't what, you sent.
You know what, he sent.
You did know what. You smiled at your phone in the middle of your friend's birthday party and sent back: I genuinely don't know what you mean.
A pause that felt pointed even through a screen.
The dress, he sent, is a problem.
How so, you sent.
I've been looking at that photo, he sent, for four minutes.
And? you sent.
And I'm going to be thinking about taking it off you, he sent, for the next couple of hours.
You excused yourself from the conversation you had been having and went to find somewhere slightly more private. Daeron looked at you somewhat confused, but when he noticed the way you were biting your lip, he just rolled his eyes and laughed.
Just thinking about it? you sent.
For now, he sent.
Tell me more, you sent.
A pause.
You first, he sent.
You looked at that for a moment.
I think about your hands, you sent. Specifically how they feel on my hips.
The response came fast: yeah
I think about your mouth, you sent.
Where, he sent.
Everywhere, you sent. Specifically my throat.
I left a mark last time, he sent.
I know, you sent. I liked it.
A pause that felt like him recalibrating.
How much, he sent.
Enough that I wore my hair up the next day so people could see it, you sent.
The pause was longer this time.
Christ, he sent.
Your turn, you sent.
The dress, he sent. Specifically what's under it.
What do you think is under it, you sent.
Not my mouth, he sent, and the three words landed with the flat certainty of everything he said and did things to you that three words had no business doing.
Maekar, you sent.
Come home, he sent.
I'm at a party, you sent.
I know, he sent. Come home anyway.
That's very demanding, you sent.
Yes, he sent.
You laughed.
Tell me what you're going to do when I get there, you sent.
A pause.
The dress comes off first, he sent. Slowly. I'm going to take my time. And then immediately: Last time I didn't take enough time. Another message: I've been thinking about that.
What specifically, you sent.
Tasting you, he sent, four words, blunt and direct and landing like a physical thing. Properly. Without the wall and the edging. A pause. Just you on my bed and my mouth on your pussy and nowhere to be.
You were gripping your phone considerably harder than the situation strictly required.
That's very specific, you sent.
I think specifically, he sent.
What else, you sent.
You on top, he sent. Like last time. I keep thinking about that. A pause that felt like him deciding something. The way you looked. The sounds you made. I think about that when I'm trying to sleep.
Does it work? you sent. For sleeping?
No, he sent. The opposite.
Are you hard, you sent.
Yes, he sent, as if it were an obvious question. Have been since the photo.
Touch yourself, you sent.
A pause.
I'm not doing that over text, he sent.
Why not, you sent.
Because, he sent, when I come I want to feel your pussy around me. I'm not settling for my own hand when I can have you.
You stopped, put your phone down for a second, looked at the sky above you, took a deep breath and tried not to scream in public.
Maekar, you sent.
Come home, he sent. I'll be here.
I have to say goodbye to a few people, you sent.
Fine, he sent. And then: wear the dress.
You being you, decided to rile Maekar a bit more just because he hadn't comply with your request of touching himself. Also because it was terribly fun to imagine him fuming at home, hard and not able to reprimand you for now.
You attached another photograph, one that a friend had taken that same day of Daeron and you laughing together earlier that afternoon, his arm around your waist in a friendly manner.
Maekar didn't answer for a whole minute. Then:
Tell Daeron to move his hand, he sent.
You laughed. Why??? He's your son.
I know who the fuck he is, he sent. Tell him to move his hand.
We were just— you did not get time to finish the message.
You're mine. He knows that. Get your coat and come here.
You would have screamed if you remembered how to breathe, which you did not.
Already getting my coat, you sent.
Good, he sent. I am having some words with Daeron tomorrow.
A pause.
And then one more message, sent with the flat directness of a man who said what he meant and meant what he said:
I'm going to make you forget your own name.
You said goodbye to approximately four people simultaneously, Daeron included, and left.
Yeah, so maybe there's a bit of personal projection here. Can you blame me tho?
part 3 (2 here) of the modernAU drabble in which we jump these sexy men. if this isn't a disorder classified in psychology manuals, then there's nothing wrong with it. period.
Includes: modern!Baelor x f!reader // modern!Maekar x f!reader
Warning(s): modernAU, +18 MDNI, explicit sexual content, implied age gap, I gave them tattoos whoops. Baelor: kinda friends-to-lovers (?), mutual pining, praise kink, fingering, nipple play, PinV sex. Maekar: brat tamer Maekar, dom/sub undertones, edging, PinV sex.
The text exchange with Valarr took approximately four minutes and was, you felt, one of your better performances.
going over to yours to drop something off for your dad
His response came fast.
oh I'm out with kiera actually, won't be back til late. can it wait?
You looked at the book on your kitchen table. A first edition — not ancient, not priceless, but specific. The kind of specific that required knowing what someone was looking for, and you had known what Baelor was looking for since the bookshop three weeks ago when he had mentioned it in passing, the particular rueful tone of someone who had been searching for something for a while and had mostly made peace with the search.
You had found it in a secondhand shop two streets from your flat on a Tuesday and had stood in the aisle for approximately thirty seconds before buying it.
that's even better 🥴
The three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.
wait
are you
OH MY GOD
please tell me you're not about to
he's my DAD
You were already putting your coat on.
I don't know what you're talking about
I'm just dropping off a book
YOU BOUGHT HIM A BOOK
it's just a book Valarr
people don't just buy specific books for people they're JUST dropping books off for
I genuinely have no idea what you mean
I am begging you
have a good one with Kiera
You sent your final text, and turned your phone face down in your bag and left before he could respond.
Your phone buzzed four times on the tube.
You did not look at it.
Baelor answered the door in reading glasses.
Just one pair, which was almost worse — there was something about one pair of glasses that was considerably more devastating than two, something about the specificity of it, the domesticity of a man who had been sitting reading in his own house on a weekday evening and had answered the door without thinking to take them off. He was also in a dark grey jumper that was doing things it had no business doing and had clearly not been expecting anyone because the composed public quality was not fully assembled — just him, in his jumper and his glasses, looking at you on his doorstep with an expression that moved from surprised to warm in about two seconds.
"I found something," you said, and held out the book.
He looked at it.
You watched the recognition arrive — the specific title, the edition, the fact of it existing in your hand on his doorstep — move through his expression in stages. He took it with the careful automatic reverence he gave books he considered important and turned it over and looked at the back and then looked at you.
"Where did you find this," he said.
"Shop near mine. Tuesday." You shrugged. "You mentioned it at the bookshop."
"I mentioned it once."
"You mentioned it specifically," you said. "The 1987 Ashgate edition. You said it was difficult to find secondhand."
He looked at the book. Looked at you. Opened his mouth and appeared to reconsider what he had been going to say and said instead: "Come in. I'll make tea."
His kitchen was warm and slightly cluttered in the specific way of a house that was lived in thoroughly rather than managed for appearance — papers on the table, a second book open and face-down on the counter which made you want to say something about spines but you restrained yourself, a mug that had clearly been there long enough to be architectural.
He filled the kettle with the focused attention he brought to small tasks and you sat at the kitchen table and watched him and thought about what you were going to do and felt, underneath the planning of it, the warm uncomplicated fact of how much you liked being in this kitchen.
"The 1987 edition has the corrected footnotes," he said, to the kettle. "The original 1983 printing had an error in the bibliography that propagated through most of the secondary literature for about a decade before anyone caught it."
"That's genuinely horrifying," you said.
"It is." He turned around and leaned against the counter while the kettle worked and looked at you with the glasses and the jumper and the warm composure of a man in his own kitchen on a weekday evening. "How did you know which edition to look for?"
"You were very specific about it," you said.
"I wasn't trying to —" He stopped. "I didn't expect you to actually look."
"I wasn't not looking," you said.
A brief pause in which he appeared to process the grammar of that and arrive at the implication and choose, carefully, not to follow it all the way to its conclusion.
The kettle boiled.
He made tea.
You were on your second cup when you said it.
"Can I say something without it being weird," you said.
He looked at you over his mug. "Probably depends on the thing."
"I find it really attractive," you said, "when someone is genuinely obsessed with something. Like intellectually obsessed. The way you talked about Byzantine iconoclasm in the café — I find that really attractive."
The mug lowered slightly.
"Right," he said, in the tone of a man who was not sure where to file this information.
"History nerds specifically," you continued. "There's something about someone who cares that much about something that's just—" you let the sentence do its work without finishing it.
Baelor looked at you with the expression of a man who had received information he was attempting to process through several different frameworks simultaneously and was finding the process slower than usual.
"That's—" he started.
"And the glasses," you said.
He stopped.
"Men in glasses," you said. "I have a thing. I'm aware it's not a particularly original thing but it's a consistent thing."
His hand moved very slightly toward the glasses and then stopped, which was the best thing you had ever seen another person do, the specific gesture of a man who had momentarily considered taking them off and had caught himself and now needed somewhere to look that was not your face.
He looked at his tea.
"You should probably—" he started.
"You're very attractive," you said. "I've thought so for a while. Since before the café, actually."
The kitchen was very quiet.
Baelor set his mug down with the careful precision of a man performing an action slowly enough to buy time for his thoughts to catch up with the situation. He looked at the table. Then at you. Then at the table again.
"You're Valarr's friend," he said.
"I know."
"You're—" He stopped. Started again. "This is complicated."
"I know," you said. "I've thought about the complicated."
"And?"
"And I'm still sitting in your kitchen on a Tuesday evening having told you I find you attractive." You looked at him steadily. "So."
He looked at you.
The composure was there but it was doing less than usual — the edges of it uneven in the specific way you had first noticed in the bookshop aisle. His jaw moved once. He opened his mouth to say something.
You leaned across the table and kissed him.
Not tentatively. You had been thinking about this for three weeks and tentative had not featured in any version of the thinking. You kissed him with the clear intention of someone who had made a decision and was implementing it, and felt in the first half second the specific quality of his absolute stillness — the shock of it, the composure going offline all at once — and then in the second half second the moment he stopped being still.
He made a sound against your mouth.
Low and involuntary and nothing like the curator or the composed man in the doorway with his book. Just a sound, pulled out of him by the simple fact of your lips against his, and then his hand came up and caught the back of your neck and he kissed you back and every careful principled argument that had been assembling itself somewhere in his head simply didn't.
He pulled back after a moment. Breathing slightly uneven. Looking at you from very close with the glasses slightly displaced and an expression that was trying to locate the counterargument and finding nothing available.
"I was going to say—" he started.
"Was it a good reason?" you said.
A pause.
"I can't currently remember what it was," he said.
"That's probably fine then," you said, and kissed him again.
This time he did not pull back.
This time his hand slid from the back of your neck into your hair and he kissed you like a man who had found the counterargument and assessed it and decided it was insufficient, thorough and unhurried in the way he did everything, and you made a sound against his mouth that he swallowed and responded to immediately.
At some point the table stopped being between you.
There was a period of rearrangement that involved chairs and the brief navigation of the table's corner and his hands at your waist — and then you were against the kitchen counter and he was in front of you with his hands braced on either side and was looking at you with the glasses still on and the jumper and the expression of a man whose counterargument had not returned and did not appear to be coming back.
"On the counter," you said.
His brow furrowed slightly. "What about—"
You put your hands on his shoulders and pushed yourself up onto it. Something happened in his expression.
"Oh," he said quietly.
"Yes," you smiled and bit your lip.
He kissed you again and this time it was different — the composure fully gone, replaced by something more direct and more urgent and considerably less managed, his hands sliding from the counter to your thighs with a purposefulness that made your breath catch. You pulled at the jumper and he shifted to help you get it off and you pushed it up over his head and threw it somewhere and then—
You stopped.
His ribs. The left side. Dark ink against warm skin, the letters precise and deliberate and clearly old enough to have settled into him like they had always been there.
Γνῶθι σεαυτόν.
You stared at it for a moment. Then you looked up at him.
Something in his expression had shifted — a different quality of vulnerability, not the composure being stripped away but something more specific, the particular exposure of something private being seen for the first time by someone he had not planned to show it to and found he did not mind showing it to.
"How long have you had that," you said.
"Twenty years," he said. "Approximately."
"Know thyself," you said softly.
Something moved in his face. "You read Greek?"
"My grandmother," you said. "She had opinions about a lot of things."
He looked at you for a moment with that expression — the unguarded one, the one that kept arriving and staying longer each time — and then you reached out and traced the letters with your fingertips, following the curve of them against his ribs, and felt him exhale sharply at the contact.
You then pressed your lips to it.
The sound that left him was low and immediate and completely unmanaged, his hand flying into your hair, and you felt him shudder under your mouth and filed the knowledge away with the specific satisfaction of someone who had found something important and intended to return to it.
"You are going to be the end of me," he said roughly. To the ceiling.
"Not yet," you said, and pulled him back.
This time when he kissed you it was with the full unmanaged weight of someone who had stopped looking for the counterargument and had no intention of finding it. His hands worked at your shirt with a focus that was no longer patient in the unhurried sense but patient in the specific sense of a man doing something he intended to do thoroughly, and your shirt ended up somewhere and his hands were on your skin and he exhaled against your mouth like the contact had knocked something out of him.
"God," he said quietly. Not to you. To the situation. To the fact of his hands on your waist and yours on his chest and the kitchen warm around you.
"Still thinking about that counterargument?" you said.
"There is no such thing in my brain anymore," he said, and kissed your jaw and then your throat and you tipped your head back and felt his mouth open against your neck — warm and deliberate — and then he did something and you gasped and felt his teeth and his mouth and then the specific bloom of pressure that meant—
He pulled back. Looked at your neck, then looked at your face.
"I'm—" he started, the composure making one last valiant attempt to reassemble itself. "I didn't mean to — I should—"
You grabbed him by the back of the neck and pulled him down and bit his throat.
Not hard. But deliberate. Specific. In the exact register of what he had just done to you, your mouth open against the warm skin of his neck, your teeth grazing the muscle there, and you felt the full body shudder that went through him and heard the sound — low and rough and dragged from somewhere he had not given it permission to come from — and when you pulled back his expression had nothing of the apology left in it.
Just — gone. All of it. The composure, the apology, the counterargument, the curator.
"Right," he said. His voice was wrecked. "Alright."
The bra went somewhere. His hands cupped your breasts with a directness that made you arch into him immediately and he made a sound at that — low and immediate and specifically responsive, like your body's reactions were doing something to him that he had no management available for.
"You're—" he started.
"Tell me," you said.
Something shifted in his expression. The specific thing he had with praise that you suspected was right there, sitting just under the surface, and you had put your finger directly on it and he knew it and was not even slightly trying to deflect anymore.
"Beautiful," he said, rough and specific, his hands moving. "I've — since the café. Since the bookshop. I kept thinking about—" his mouth dropped to your collarbone and the sentence dissolved into the warm press of his lips against your skin— "this. Exactly this. Whether you'd—" he kissed across your chest— "whether you'd make sounds. What sounds you'd make."
"And?" you managed.
"Better," he said against your skin. "So much better than whatever I—"
He kissed your breast and his tongue found your nipple and the sound you made was immediate and unguarded and he groaned against you — a genuine moan, low and resonant, vibrating through his chest into yours — in direct and unmistakable response to the sound you had made, like your pleasure had a direct line to something in him that bypassed every system he had.
"There," he breathed. "God — there—"
"Baelor—"
"I know," he said. "I know, I—" another moan, lower, as you shifted against him— "you have no idea what you sound like. What you feel like. I've been — Fuck, I've been trying not to think about this for weeks and it's—"
His hands found your jeans.
He dealt with your jeans and your underwear with hands that were steady and purposeful and not entirely in his control — the steadiness of focus rather than composure, the focus of a man doing something he had thought about and intended to do properly. His fingers found your clit and you grabbed his shoulder and made a sound that echoed off the kitchen tiles and he moaned in response — low and broken and entirely involuntary, his forehead dropping to your shoulder.
"You're so wet," he said, rough. Wondering. Like the fact of it was doing something specific to him. "God. Already — I've barely—"
"The hickey helped," you said.
A sound that was almost a laugh and almost not. His fingers moved and your hips rolled forward and the almost-laugh dissolved into something lower and more wrecked. "I'll keep that in mind," he said, against your throat, and did it again — the deliberate press of his mouth to the mark he had already left, tongue tracing it — and the sound you made was embarrassingly immediate.
"Baelor," you said.
"Mm," he said, not stopping.
"If you keep doing that I'm going to—"
"I know," he said. Warm. Certain. His fingers working with the focused attentiveness of a man who had decided this was worth studying thoroughly. "That's the idea."
He learned you quickly and used what he learned without mercy — the specific pressure that made your hips roll, the rhythm that made your breathing go ragged, the precise application of his thumb that made you clench around his fingers and made him moan against your throat like your body's responses were the best thing he had ever encountered and he intended to catalogue every one.
"You feel—" he started.
"Tell me," you said again, because you had found the thing and you were not letting go of it.
His breath caught. "Perfect," he said, low and rough and deliberate. "You feel perfect. Every time you clench like that — every time you make that sound — I can't—" a low moan as you did it again— "I've been thinking about having you like this since — fuck, since before I should have been and I can't—"
"Don't stop," you said.
"I'm not stopping," he said.
He didn't stop.
You came with his fingers inside you and his mouth on the hickey he had left on your neck and his voice in your ear saying your name and then saying perfect, exactly that, god, you're— in a low broken stream that your brain was going to be replaying for a very long time, and he held you through every shudder of it with his free hand spanning your lower back, steady and certain, and the sounds he made while you came apart around his fingers suggested that your orgasm was doing as much to him as it was to you.
He was hard against your thigh and had been for a while and the specific evidence of it when you reached for him made him say your name in a way that had clearly been waiting to sound like that.
You got his boxers out of the way.
He made a sound that came from somewhere deep and his hips pressed forward into your hand involuntarily and he made another sound at that, lower, his forehead dropping to your shoulder while you wrapped your hand around his cock and felt him twitch and felt him breathe and felt the specific shudder that went through him when you moved your hand.
"Christ," he said.
"Good?" you teased.
"Don't be smug," he answered, voice completely destroyed.
"I'm not being smug," you said. "I'm asking."
"Yes," he said. "Obviously yes. You feel — your hand feels—" he made a sound that interrupted whatever he had been going to say and you filed the sound somewhere permanent. "I need to—" He stopped. Gathered himself with visible effort. "If you keep doing that this is going to be embarrassingly short and I have — I have specific intentions."
"Specific intentions," you repeated.
"I'm a thorough person," he said roughly.
You released him. He exhaled shakily.
Then he was between your thighs and positioned and looking at you with the glasses still on — crooked, both lenses catching the kitchen light — and the hickey you had left on his throat and the tattoo on his ribs and the completely dismantled expression of a man who had retired the counterargument and every system downstream of it.
He pushed inside.
The sound he made was—
Long. Low. Broken entirely open, dragged from somewhere below every layer of management he had ever built, arriving with the helpless totality of something that had been contained for too long and had finally, completely, stopped being contained. His head dropped forward to your chest. His jaw was working and his eyes were closed and he stayed there for a moment just — breathing, or attempting to, his chest rising and falling unevenly.
"Baelor," you said softly.
"Give me a moment," he said. His voice was unrecognisable as the café voice or the bookshop voice or any voice you had previously catalogued. "You feel — Christ, you feel — I need a moment or I'm going to—"
"Take your time," you said.
"I intend to," he said, and then he moved and you both made sounds simultaneously and the intentions became very clear.
He fucked you slowly at first, with the specific deliberateness of a man who had said he was thorough and intended to prove it, and made sounds that you were going to think about for the rest of your life — low and continuous and arriving one after another with complete disregard for composure or management or anything else he had previously used to keep himself contained. Every movement produced something from him. Every time you clenched around his cock he moaned — properly, openly, the sound resonating through his chest into yours.
"You feel—" he said, against your throat. A low moan interrupted him. "God. Every time you — when you do that — I can't — you're so—"
"Tell me," you said.
His breath caught.
"Perfect," rough and specific and chosen with the care of a man who selected words deliberately. "You feel perfect. Your pussy feels — god — every time you clench I can feel exactly—" another moan, longer this time, as you did it intentionally— "there. Exactly there. You have no idea — I've been trying not to think about this and it's so much — you're so much better than—"
"Than what," you managed.
"Anything I—" he started, and his hips found a rhythm that interrupted the sentence and made you grab his shoulder and hold on.
He fucked you on his kitchen counter with his hands on your hips and his glasses crooked and the Greek tattoo on his ribs catching the light and made sounds that belonged to nobody you had met before this evening — unguarded and unrestrained and arriving in response to everything, your sounds, your movements, your hands in his hair, every time you said his name which you did frequently and with purpose because of what it did to him.
"Say my name, please," he said at one point, breathlessly, against your jaw.
"Baelor," you said, deliberate.
The moan that left him at that was long and low and you felt it everywhere.
"God," he said. "Again."
You obliged.
"Fuck," he said, and his rhythm deepened and you stopped being able to say anything coherent for a while.
You came a second time somewhere in the middle of it, which you had not planned for but which arrived with the inevitability of something that had been building since the kitchen wall and the edging and the hickey and the tattoo and all of it, clenching around him with his name on your lips and your nails in his shoulder, and the sound he made at the feel of it—
Was the most undone thing you had ever heard from another person.
A long low broken moan that he pressed into your throat and that shook through his entire chest and that had absolutely nothing of the museum curator or the composed man on the doorstep in it — just Baelor, stripped entirely down, making sounds he had never made in front of another person because nobody had ever gotten past the composure far enough to find them.
"You feel so good," he said, rough and wrecked and honest. "When you come around my cock — fuck — I can feel everything — you feel so—"
"Baelor," you said, and pulled him closer.
He came shortly after with your name and then perfect and then something that was not quite a word pressed into your throat, shuddering through him completely, his hands holding you like you were the thing he was anchored to and he intended to stay anchored.
The kitchen was quiet after.
Both of you breathing.
His forehead against yours.
The glasses — still on, still crooked — catching the kitchen light in a way that made you feel something specific in your chest that you were choosing not to examine until you were in a better position to handle it.
You reached up and straightened them.
He looked at you.
The expression on his face was entirely, completely undone and entirely, completely unbothered about being undone, which was new from a man who had been managing his expression for as long as you had known him.
He reached up and touched the hickey on your neck. Lightly. Just his fingertips.
"I should probably—" he started.
"Don't apologise," you said.
He looked at you. You tilted your head and traced the one you had left on his throat. Something in his expression did something entirely unmanageable.
"Fair point," he laughed.
Your phone was in your bag. Valarr had sent approximately seventeen messages. You did not check your phone.
You traced the tattoo on his ribs instead and felt him exhale slowly against your hair.
Know thyself.
You thought, with the warm certainty of someone who had just watched a man find out something true about himself on his own kitchen counter, that he was getting there.
(i'm truly sorry i did not find a gif that vibed with the vibes)
Daeron was, by any reasonable metric, completely gone.
You had established this approximately forty five minutes ago when he had attempted to explain to you why the Fibonacci sequence was secretly a conspiracy and had made, briefly and alarmingly, a compelling case. Since then he had progressed through several distinct phases — philosophical, then mournful, then inexplicably delighted by a lamppost — and had arrived at the current phase which was primarily characterised by his inability to walk in a straight line and his arm around your shoulders being the only thing keeping him approximately vertical.
"You are," you told him, dragging him up the front path, "an absolute disaster."
"I am having," he said, with great dignity, "a very good evening."
"You can barely walk."
"I'm walking fine."
"Daeron. I am carrying you."
"That's very kind of you," he said, and attempted to pat your head and got your ear instead.
You rang the doorbell with your elbow.
The door opened after about thirty seconds and Maekar stood there in a dark t-shirt and jeans with the expression of a man who had been doing something else and had come to the door expecting approximately anything other than this specific situation.
He took in Daeron.
Daeron, to his credit, attempted to stand up straight. He managed about forty percent of upright before gravity reasserted itself and he leaned back onto your shoulder.
"Hi dad," he said.
The silence that followed had considerable weight.
"For the love of—" Maekar started, and then said several other things in rapid succession that were not appropriate for general audiences and that you were filing away for later because the specific combination and delivery was genuinely impressive.
"He's fine," you said. "Just drunk."
"He's absolutely hammered," Maekar said flatly.
"Okay he's absolutely hammered," you conceded. "But fine. He didn't do anything stupid, he just had about four drinks too many and started explaining mathematics to strangers."
Something moved through Maekar's expression that was exasperation and reluctant parental resignation in equal measure. He held the door open. "Get him in."
Getting Daeron up the stairs was a collaborative project.
You had his left side and Maekar had his right and Daeron contributed by providing commentary on the staircase, which he found architecturally interesting, and by stopping twice to make points about things that had not been raised.
"Dad," he said, at the second landing, with the abrupt subject change of the extremely drunk.
"What," said Maekar, in the tone of a man concentrating on a task.
"She thinks you're really sexy," Daeron said, conversationally, then turning his face to you. "That's the thing you said, right?"
You stopped walking.
"Keep moving," Maekar said, apparently to both of you.
"Like, really sexy," Daeron continued to you, with the relentless honesty of someone for whom the filter between brain and mouth had completely dissolved. "You told me. After the pipe thing. You were like Daeron— wait no that's me. You were like your dad is—"
"Daeron," you said, through your teeth.
"What? It's a compliment. I'm sure dad will take the compliment."
"I'm going to fucking kill you," you told him pleasantly.
"You're literally carrying me, you're not going to—"
"I will drop you on this landing."
"But you said—" Daeron started.
"He's fine," you said loudly, to Maekar, who was — you checked — focused entirely on navigating Daeron through the bedroom door with the focused efficiency of a man who was too irritated at his son to be processing anything else. His jaw was set in the specific way of someone managing several feelings at once and prioritising the most immediate one, which appeared to be get this man horizontal before he falls over.
Good.
Fine.
He had not heard. Or had heard and dismissed it because Daeron was drunk and Daeron said things and the more pressing concern was the logistics.
You were going with that.
You got Daeron onto his bed with the cooperative efficiency of two people who had identified a shared goal and were pursuing it without further conversation. He landed with the boneless satisfaction of someone whose relationship with gravity had become philosophical rather than practical, made a sound of profound contentment, and was asleep within approximately ninety seconds.
You both stood at the foot of his bed looking at him.
"He'll be fine," you said. "Water and paracetamol in the morning."
"I know," Maekar said, in the flat tone of a man who had done this before with various combinations of his six children. He reached down to pull the duvet up and his t-shirt rode up at the back—
You saw it.
Just the bottom edge of it — the tail, curling at the base of his spine, scales rendered in deep red and black with the fine detail of something that had taken serious time and serious money and serious commitment. The colour was extraordinary even in the low light of Daeron's bedroom, vivid and deliberate, and it disappeared back under the t-shirt when he straightened but it was too late.
You had seen it.
You were thinking about what was above it.
"Right," Maekar said, turning around and finding you with an expression that was still mostly parental irritation and some baseline tiredness and not whatever your face was currently doing. "Tea? Or I've got whisky if you need it after that."
"Whisky," you said immediately.
His kitchen was warm and quiet and he poured two glasses with the economical ease of someone who knew his own kitchen and did not need to perform anything in it, and you sat at the table and took the glass he set in front of you and felt the whisky do its immediate work and thought about the tail of a dragon at the base of his spine.
"He's an idiot," Maekar said, sitting across from you.
"He's your idiot," you said.
Something that was almost the almost-smile. "Unfortunately."
You drank your whisky. He drank his.
The kitchen was quiet in the specific way of two people who had just performed a task together and had not yet decided what happened next.
You were happy tipsy — the warm uncomplicated kind, the kind that made you feel slightly more yourself than usual rather than less — and the whisky was good and Maekar was sitting across from you in his t-shirt with the dragon underneath it and you had been thinking about this for weeks and Daeron had, drunk and disastrously, already said half of it anyway.
"He wasn't wrong, by the way," you said.
Maekar looked at you over his glass. "About what."
"What he said on the stairs."
A pause. The quality of Maekar's stillness shifted slightly — not the irritated-at-Daeron stillness, something more attentive than that.
"He said a lot of things on the stairs," Maekar said. "He said the banister was load-bearing in an interesting way."
"The other thing," you said. "I think you heard."
He looked at you, eyes doing that funny thing they do when they grow darker. You looked back.
"You're Daeron's age," he said.
You rolled your eyes. "You're not that old."
"I have six children."
"I know. I've met them. They're fine." You swirled the whisky. "That's not actually a reason not to."
"It's a context."
"Still not a reason, is it?."
His jaw tightened slightly. He set his glass down. "You should probably—"
"Probably what?" you said, and tilted your head, and watched him clock the tone and reassess.
There was a beat.
"Don't," he said. Flatly. The specific flat of a man who has identified a dynamic and is issuing an early warning.
"Don't what?" you said, with the complete innocence of someone who knew exactly what.
His eyes narrowed fractionally.
"You're being a brat," he said.
"I'm asking a question."
"You're being a brat," he said again, and this time it was not a warning exactly, it was something else — something that had arrived from a different place, lower and more specific — "and you know it."
You smiled at him over your glass.
Something shifted in Maekar's expression with the finality of a decision being made.
He stood up.
He crossed to your side of the table with the direct purposeful movement that characterised everything he did physically and you stood because sitting while he was standing felt suddenly like a tactical disadvantage and then you were both standing in his kitchen at a distance that was not a distance anymore and he was looking at you with those violet eyes that had stopped being the grumpy-at-everything eyes and had become something considerably more focused.
"Last chance," he said. Not a threat. Just — information, delivered with the flat certainty of a man who meant what he said.
"I don't buy it" you said staring directly at him.
He kissed you.
Not the way you had imagined it — you had imagined it various ways over various weeks — but harder than any of the imaginings, more immediate, with the specific quality of a man who had been holding something at arm's length for too long and had decided, definitively, to stop. His hand came up and caught your jaw and he kissed you like punctuation, like a full stop at the end of something, and you kissed him back with equal fervour and felt his other hand find your waist and pull you in and the size of him was—
There. Immediate. Real. His hands spanning you, his chest against yours, the specific overwhelming quality of being pulled against someone that much larger and feeling it in every nerve.
He broke the kiss and looked at you.
"Still being a brat?" he said, low.
"Oh, abso-fucking-lutely," you laughed.
His jaw moved. "Right."
His hands moved to your hips and walked you backward with a calm deliberateness that left you no input into the direction of travel, and your back met the kitchen wall with a solidity that was not rough but was very definite, and Maekar braced one hand beside your head and looked at you with the expression of a man who had made several decisions and was implementing them in order.
"Maekar—"
"You wanted to be a brat," he said. "Fine."
His other hand slid down your stomach and your breath caught.
"You can be a brat," he said, his mouth dropping to your throat, "and I'll teach you what happens."
His fingers found the waistband of your jeans and dealt with the button with one hand and the efficiency of someone who was not performing patience because he had the real thing, and then his hand was inside your underwear and finding your clit with a directness that made you grab his shoulder and make a sound that was embarrassingly immediate.
"There," he said, against your throat. Not pleased exactly — satisfied, in the specific way of someone whose assessment has been confirmed. "That's it."
His fingers moved and you stopped being able to think about much else.
He was — thorough. That was the word. In the way the garden spreadsheet had been thorough, in the way the pipeline had been thorough — focused and attentive and completely committed to the task with a patience that was somehow more intense than urgency would have been. He learned what made you gasp and returned to it. He learned what made your hips roll forward and used it deliberately. He paid attention with the same quality of attention he had given the raised bed and the isolation valve except directed entirely at your clit and it was — a lot. It was a frankly unreasonable amount.
"You're close," he said, low. Not a question.
"Yes," you managed. "Yes, keep—"
He stopped.
You made a sound.
"What—" you whined.
"Told you," he said, against your jaw. Calm. Completely, infuriatingly calm. "Brats don't get to come that easily."
"Maekar—"
"Mm."
"That's not—"
"Not what?" he said, and his fingers moved again, barely, just enough, and you grabbed his shirt with both hands.
"Not fair," you said.
"No," he agreed, and did it again — built you up with that focused relentless patience, got you to the edge with the specific efficiency of someone who knew exactly where the edge was and had decided to park you there indefinitely, and then stopped again.
The sound you made was not dignified.
He made a low noise against your throat that was the closest thing to satisfied you had heard from him and you were furious about how much you liked it.
"Maekar," you said, with feeling.
"When you're ready to stop being difficult," he said pleasantly.
"I am not being—"
"You walked into my kitchen at midnight and told me you knew exactly what you were doing," he said, pulling back enough to look at your face. His eyes were dark and completely focused and there was nothing grumpy-at-inanimate-objects about his expression now, just — direct, and certain, and very specifically aimed at you. "You were being difficult on purpose."
"Maybe," you managed.
"So." He tilted his head. The movement was so deliberate it made something in your stomach clench. "Consequences."
He edged you a third time against the kitchen wall.
By the end of it you were gripping his shirt with both fists and making sounds that had nothing to do with dignity and he was pressing his mouth to your temple and saying there, that's it, stay there in a low voice that was simultaneously the hottest thing you had ever heard and the most aggravating and when he stopped for the third time you actually whined.
"Please," you said when he removed his hand from your jeans entirely.
"Please what?" he said.
"Please, you absolute—"
He picked you up.
Not with ceremony, not with warning — simply put his hands under your thighs and lifted you off the floor with the casual ease of someone for whom this was not a significant physical undertaking and carried you out of the kitchen while you were still processing the fact that you were no longer on the ground.
"I hate you," you informed him.
"No you don't," he scoffed, and sat down on the sofa with you in his lap.
The living room was dark except for the light coming through from the hall and Maekar was solid and warm underneath you and you were straddling him and looking at each other and the aggravation had transmuted into something else entirely in the twenty seconds it had taken to get from the kitchen wall to here.
He kissed you again.
Slower this time. His hands on your hips, thumbs tracing small movements against the fabric, and you kissed him back and felt the kiss change as it went — finding its own depth, its own pace — and then you were pulling at his t-shirt and he lifted his arms and you got it over his head and threw it somewhere in the dark and—
You stopped.
The dragon covered his entire back. You could only see the front of him from where you sat but the tail curled around his ribs on the left side and there were scales at his collarbone and it was — in the living room dark with the hall light catching the colour — extraordinary. Deep red and black and the fine detail of something built over years, the kind of tattoo that had been added to incrementally, that had grown with him.
"How," you said.
"How what," he said.
"This." You traced the scales at his ribs. Felt him breathe in. "How does nobody know about this."
"People know," he said. "They just don't see it unless I—" he stopped, because you had leaned forward and pressed your mouth to the scales at his collarbone and his sentence dissolved.
"Unless you what?" you said against his skin.
"You're still being a brat," he said, low.
"Yes," you smiled, and kissed across his collarbone to the scales on his ribs and felt him exhale sharply, his hands tightening on your hips, and heard the low sound he made that was different from the gruff default and considerably better.
You pulled back and looked at him.
"Your turn," he said.
He dealt with your shirt with the same one-handed efficiency as before and unclipped your bra and looked at you with the direct thoroughness he brought to things he was assessing seriously, which should not have been as effective as it was.
You laughed at the way he was staring at you. "That look is getting dangerously close to a compliment."
"And you're getting dangerously close to being pleased about it," he said back, this time the smile almost coming fully to his face.
"Says the man who hasn't looked away from my tits."
"If I had looked away, we both know you'd be disappointed," he said, which was so flat and so Maekar that you laughed, and he watched you laugh with that fractional almost-smile and then pulled you in and kissed you and his hands were everywhere and you stopped laughing about anything.
Clothes ended up in various parts of the living room over the next several minutes — yours, his, everything — with the mutual efficiency of two people who had both been thinking about this and were done with the intermediary steps. His jeans went somewhere near the coffee table. Your underwear ended up on the arm of the sofa.
You were straddling him again, properly now, and he was looking up at you with those dark focused eyes and his hands were on your hips and the size of him was — there. Present. Impossible to be casual about.
"Well?" he said.
"Well what?" you mimicked.
"You wanted to be a brat," he said, low. The almost-smile at the corner of his mouth, barely there, completely deliberate. "Show me."
You held his gaze.
"You're a brat too, you know," you smirked.
"I know," he answered. "So show me."
You sank down onto him slowly and the sound he made was — long and low and entirely without the management of any of his usual composure, his head going back briefly, his jaw clenching, his hands gripping your hips with a pressure that was going to leave something and that you were entirely fine with.
"Fuck," he said. Rough. Genuine.
"That good?" you breathed, because turnabout was fair play and because you wanted to hear what he did with it.
His jaw tightened. His eyes, which had closed briefly, opened and found yours. "Don't push it."
"I'm just asking," you chirped sweetly, and moved, and the sound that left him then was—
Not managed at all.
You rode him with his hands on your hips and his eyes on your face and the low continuous sounds he was making against every instinct to contain them, and it was — the power of it, the specific pleasure of being the one setting the pace while he sat there and took it and made those sounds — was something you had not anticipated and intended to revisit extensively.
"You feel—" he started, low.
"Tell me," you said.
His jaw worked. His fingers dug into your hips. "You feel—" the words seemed to cost him, dragged out by the combination of the movement and something else, something more fundamental— "good. Christ, you feel—" he stopped. Made a sound. Started again. "Perfect. Exactly—" his hips rose to meet yours and you both made sounds simultaneously— "exactly what I—"
"What you what?" you said.
"Thought about," he managed roughly. "For weeks. Christ."
That was the most words you had ever heard Maekar say in a single emotional direction and you filed it somewhere permanent and moved again and felt his entire body respond.
One of his hands left your hip and found your clit.
"Oh—" you started.
"You're going to come," he stated, low and flat and completely certain. "And then you're going to come again. And we're going to see—" his thumb moved and you grabbed his shoulder— "how difficult you feel like being after that."
"Maekar—"
"Yeah," he said. The almost-smile. Devastating. "Yeah."
His thumb worked your clit with the same focused patience he had employed against the kitchen wall except now there was no stopping, no edging, just — direct and relentless and entirely committed, and you rode him and felt everything build simultaneously and heard his sounds and felt his hands and looked at the dragon scales on his ribs and came with his name in your mouth and your nails in his shoulder and everything clenching around him and the sound he made when you did—
Was the best thing you had ever heard from another person.
Low and rough and entirely wrecked, his head dropping back, his hands gripping you like you were the only fixed point available.
"Again," he said roughly. "You can—"
"I literally just—"
"Again," he insisted, and his thumb was still moving and you found out he was right.
You came a second time somewhere shortly after with less warning and more intensity and said something that you would have been embarrassed about if you had had any available capacity for embarrassment, which you did not, and Maekar said your name and then said there, exactly— and followed you over the edge with a roughness and a totality that shook through him completely and left you both in the specific stillness of people who have just dismantled something and are taking stock of the wreckage.
The living room was quiet. Your forehead was against his. His hands had moved from your hips to your back, large and warm and spanning you completely, holding rather than gripping.
"Still being a brat?" he teased.
His voice was completely wrecked.
"Ask me in a minute and we'll see," you said.
The almost-smile. Full this time. Real. Directed entirely at you in the dark living room with the dragon on his ribs and his hands on your back and the evidence of your underwear on the arm of the sofa somewhere to your left.
"Tea," he asked eventually.
"Yeah," you said.
"Then you're staying." Not a question. The flat certainty of a man making a reasonable determination.
"Feel like you'll need me again that much?" you teased.
He looked at you.
"Brat," he scoffed.
"You love it," you said.
He said nothing, but the almost-smile stayed.
The text came at half eleven the following morning.
You were in Maekar's kitchen drinking coffee while he read the paper with the focused attention of someone who had entirely recovered their composure and was pretending the living room situation had not occurred, which was belied only by the coffee he had made you without being asked and the way his hand had rested briefly on the small of your back when he passed.
Your phone lit up.
so daeron targaryen here
your best friend???
who you dragged home last night???
and who apparently passed out in his room while something was happening on his sofa????
i have no memory of the stairs but apparently i said some things
anyway
i need you to know that i heard you last night
specifically i heard you say [and then a direct quote of the thing you had said while riding his father that you were not going to repeat even internally]
i just want you to know that i will never recover
ever
are you okay? are you alive? do you need extraction?
You looked at the message for a moment.
You looked at Maekar, who was reading his paper with his coffee and his recovered composure and that fucking hot dragon underneath his t-shirt.
You typed back.
get used to it i'll pay for your therapist x
And then you added an emoji that left absolutely nothing to the imagination.
Daeron's response was a string of increasingly unhinged capitalisation followed by what appeared to be genuine laughter rendered in text.
i literally cannot believe you
okay fair enough
is he making you coffee tho
You looked at the coffee.
yes why
He waited a few seconds to reply.
good
he only makes coffee for people he likes. he made mum coffee every morning for fifteen years
daeron
I'm just saying
daeron
okay okay I'm going back to sleep my head is KILLING me
drink your water
Three dots. None. Three dots again.
yes mum
also oh my god I cannot believe you rode my
You turned your phone face down on the table. Maekar looked up from his paper.
"Daeron?"
"Daeron," you confirmed.
He looked at you for a moment with those violet eyes and the recovered composure and the almost-smile sitting at the very corner of his mouth.
"How bad?" he asked.
"He'll be fine," you said. "Mostly horrified."
"Good," Maekar said, and returned to his paper. "He should have kept his mouth shut on the stairs."
You laughed and picked up your coffee.
Outside the morning continued with its business entirely indifferent to the fact that you were sitting in Maekar Targaryen's kitchen the morning after, drinking coffee he had made without being asked, while he read his paper and pretended to be completely normal about it.
You were both completely normal about it.
You were both, underneath the completely normal, not even slightly normal about it.
A.N.: listen i had a very productive day and couldn't stop writing. also, there's a little ✨extra✨ coming tomorrow (if i can proofread it). how do y'all feel about sexting Baelor and Maekar???
GIF by @/cestpasfaux24601 / Dividers by @/saradika-graphics
↪︎ how you call to me directory
Summary: you were writing your thesis on men who couldn't say what they felt; he was, without meaning to, becoming your primary source
Pairing: Adam Dalgliesh x f!reader
Chapter 6
He had mentioned, the last time, that he knew someone at the Bodleian — an archivist who had handled the Hardy manuscripts for twenty years and who was, he said, occasionally persuadable toward access for serious doctoral research. He had offered to write a letter of introduction if you thought it useful.
You thought it useful. That was why you were here on a Wednesday evening in early December, which was true, and was also not the complete account of why you were here, and you had stopped examining that discrepancy some weeks ago on the grounds that examination was not making it any simpler.
His flat was warmer than last time. He'd been home long enough to have built the evening properly — lamps on, the radiator doing its work, a record playing at a volume low enough that you had registered it before identifying it: Schubert, one of the late piano sonatas, the D. 960, playing to itself in the background with the patience of something that didn't require an audience.
He poured wine without asking. You sat in the chair you had come to think of as yours — the one across from the sofa, angled toward the window — and he settled at the desk and wrote the letter of introduction in longhand, unhurried, while you drank your wine and looked at his bookshelves and did not think about the fact that you had been looking forward to this evening since Monday with an intensity that bore very little relation to the Bodleian.
His handwriting, you noticed, was very precise. Not ornate — nothing wasted — but each letter fully formed, the lines straight without the assistance of ruled paper. The handwriting of someone for whom precision was not effort but disposition.
He folded the letter into an envelope and brought it to you, and then sat on the sofa and picked up his own wine, and the conversation moved in its usual way — from the archivist to the manuscripts to a debate about whether the physical object of a manuscript changed the reading of the poem, and then to Keats's letters because they always seemed to arrive there eventually from any starting point, and from Keats to the question of whether a poet's biography was an indulgence or a necessity.
"A necessity for Hardy," you said. "You cannot read the Emma poems without it."
"And yet they function as poems regardless."
"They function as poems better with it. The biography is the pressure behind them. Without it they're formally accomplished and emotionally coherent. With it they're — " you searched for the word — "unbearable. In the best sense."
He was watching you over his wine glass. The lamp behind him made his expression harder to read than usual, casting the planes of his face into a relief that emphasised the severity and reduced the gentleness, though the gentleness was still present in his eyes.
"Do you think that's a problem?" he said. "That the poem requires external information to reach its full weight."
"I think a poem is allowed to be in conversation with its own context," you said. "The alternative is to insist it exist in a vacuum, which serves a critical principle but doesn't serve the poem."
"The poem is not a closed system."
"Nothing is," you said. "Hardy knew that better than anyone. His poems are full of what they're not saying."
He was quiet for a moment, looking at the glass in his hand.
Something had shifted in the room. You had felt it arriving for the past quarter of an hour — not a change in the conversation, which had continued with its usual ease and depth, but something underneath the conversation, a quality in the air that was different from previous evenings. A quality of approach.
He set his glass down. And then he was still in the way he was still when he had decided something and was in the final moment before acting on the decision — the stillness that was not relaxation but its opposite, the absolute composure of a man bringing everything to bear on a single point.
He rose and went to the desk.
From beneath the letter pad he withdrew two sheets of paper. Folded once, the fold soft with handling — the soft, worn crease of something folded and unfolded many times, in private, over a period of days or weeks. He stood with them for a moment with his back to you, and in that moment — the set of his shoulders, the stillness of his hands — you understood, with a certainty that arrived before you had any evidence for it, that whatever was on those pages was not a professional matter.
He turned.
"I'd value your opinion on something," he said. His voice was level. Precise. Giving nothing away except, to someone who had been listening to him carefully for months, the very faintest alteration in its quality — the register of a man maintaining composure over something that was making composure difficult. "Recent work. The argument in the last stanza — I'm not satisfied it resolves."
He crossed to you and held the pages out.
You looked at his hand for a fraction of a second before you took them. His fingers were perfectly steady, which told you, precisely, how much steadiness was costing him.
You took the pages and he returned to the sofa and sat down and picked up his wine glass and directed his gaze toward the window, and the quality of that — the deliberateness of it, the way he had positioned himself to not watch you read — landed in your chest before you had looked at a single word.
He was afraid.
Not of your literary opinion.
You looked down at the pages.
The poem was untitled. Four stanzas, five lines each, the handwriting the same precise and unornamented hand as the letter, though slightly less controlled here — not messier, but less managed. As though the letter had been written from the outside of him and this from somewhere further in. You read it once through quickly, the way you always read a poem first — for sound and movement, without stopping.
And then you sat very still and read it again.
I had prepared the room against return: the window latched, the hours folded in, each book replaced along its given spine, the silence tuned to what I'd grown to need — a well-appointed dark, and nothing more.
Your breath came in slowly.
The room he had prepared. The deliberate arrangement of absence. The silence tuned — not merely tolerated but actively maintained, cultivated, a choice made repeatedly over years. You understood immediately what the stanza was describing and the understanding arrived not as a literary observation but as something that pressed against your sternum from the inside.
He had been alone, and had made a discipline of it, and had believed the discipline was sufficient.
You did not ask to alter this. And yet the lamp sits differently now in the evening; the page I've set aside holds, in its margin, the angle of your reading — how you press one finger to the line, as though it might escape.
Your finger, which had been doing exactly that, tracking the line, stopped.
You read it again.
The angle of your reading. How you press one finger to the line.
He had written that down. He had watched you read — had sat across from you in lamplit rooms on how many evenings now and had watched the particular private way you moved through a page, a detail so small you hadn't known it existed, and he had taken it home and made it the centre of a stanza and the crease on the paper said he had read the stanza back to himself many times since.
Something moved through you that was not entirely comfortable. The warmth of it was not entirely comfortable. You were aware of your own heartbeat in a way that made concentration difficult and you concentrated anyway, because the alternative was to look up at him and you were not ready for that.
I know these cliffs. I've read the men who stood here — who felt the living face grow clear at last through grief's own lens, too late, on stones she'd walked before him in another life — the elegy that costs what it describes.
Hardy's cliffs. Emma's cliffs. His own.
Your eyes moved over the stanza and you understood what he was telling you and the understanding was quiet and enormous. He had read this story — had spent his life reading this story, in Hardy and in himself — and he knew its costs intimately, and he was telling you that he knew them, that he stood at the edge of this with his eyes open and his full understanding of what it had cost other men and what it had already cost him, and he was still here. Still standing at the edge. Unable to stand elsewhere.
What I had not prepared for: this. Not grief but what precedes it — the impossible warmth, the cold your absence makes more than itself, the footnote at the margin of the night where your name sits, and will not be revised.
Not grief but what precedes it.
You sat with that for a long time.
He was telling you he loved you. That was what the poem said, in the only language he had been able to bring himself to use — structured, controlled, the feeling shaped into form because formlessness was not available to him, because he needed the container in order to approach the thing at all, because without the meter and the stanza and the intellectual architecture of it he could not have said it, not yet, perhaps not for some time. But inside the architecture: this. Your name in the margin of his night, written there and found there and left there because removing it had stopped being possible.
He had been carrying this, you thought. He had been sitting with it long enough for the paper to soften at the fold.
You breathed carefully and looked up.
He was still looking at the window. His profile was composed in the lamplight with a completeness that was now, to you, entirely legible — the composure of someone who had done the most exposed thing they had done in years and was sitting with the consequences of it six feet away, with no ability to take it back and no clear knowledge of what came next.
You looked back down at the pages.
You had to say something. He had asked you, in the framing he had found available to him, for a reader's response, and underneath that framing he had asked you something else entirely, and you needed to answer both questions, except that one of them had no words yet and the other required words you were now finding it extremely difficult to assemble because your hands were not quite steady on the paper and your thoughts kept dissolving against the fact of where your name sits and will not be revised.
"The last stanza resolves," you said.
Your voice came out almost level. Not quite.
He turned his head.
"You said it didn't," you said. "but I think it does." You looked at the page. The words moved slightly and resettled. "The turn in the fourth line is where the argument completes. Everything after is consequence."
"You think the final line is consequence," he said. His voice was careful. He was listening to yours with the same quality of attention he gave everything, and you were aware that he could hear, in it, what you were working to contain.
"I think —" you began, and stopped. There was a version of this response that was literary criticism and you were trying to give it and you could not locate it because your mind kept dissolving into the impossible warmth and the angle of your reading and the worn crease on the paper that meant he had read this back to himself in the evenings, alone, before he had known what to do with it. "I think will not be revised is the whole argument. Everything before it is — it's the approach. The poem moves toward that line from the first stanza. Everything before it is the—"
You stopped.
The word you had been reaching for was permission. Everything before it was the permission he required to say the last line. The careful construction of the argument, the Hardy mirror, the acknowledgement of cost — all of it a way of earning the right to arrive at the only thing the poem had ever actually been about.
Where your name sits.
You looked up at him and found he was already looking at you and had been for some time.
"The poem isn't uncertain about what it's saying," you said. Your voice was quieter now and you had stopped trying to manage it. "It's uncertain about whether to say it. That's — those are different things."
He was very still.
"The second stanza," you said.
"Yes," he said. Immediately. Almost before you'd finished.
"The detail about the reading."
"Yes."
The room was so quiet. Outside the window the December dark pressed at the glass and the Schubert moved through a slow passage and neither of you looked away.
"You've been watching me with a great deal of care," you said.
"Yes." No deflection. No qualification. The word arrived simply and completely. "For some time."
You looked down at the poem in your lap. At the handwriting — the letters fully formed, the fold worn soft, the last stanza facing up at you with the patient quality of something that had waited a long time and was not surprised to still be waiting.
"The Hardy argument," you said, and your voice was not steady now and you had stopped pretending otherwise. "In the third stanza. Positioning yourself at the cliffs."
"Yes."
"You're telling me you understand the cost."
"I'm telling you," he said, "that I understand the cost and I am here regardless."
The words came out quietly, with the same precision he gave everything, except that underneath the precision was something you had never heard from him quite so plainly before — something unmediated, something that had dispensed with the careful management and was simply present, raw at its edges, entirely sincere.
You lifted your eyes to him.
He looked as he always looked — composed, austere, the tired quality around his eyes, the severity of his face in the lamplight — except that none of those things were what you saw first now. What you saw first was the exposure of him. The enormous, careful, terrified courage of a man who had put the thing he felt into the only container he trusted and placed it in your hands and was now sitting across from you with nowhere left to retreat to, waiting.
You rose from the chair.
The pages stayed in your hands — you were still holding them, you realised, and you set them on the table as you passed, gently, face up. You sat beside him on the sofa. Not in the armchair — the sofa, close enough that the line of your arm was against his, close enough that when he turned his head he would not need to look far.
He turned his head.
You were very close. The lamplight between you, the Schubert in the background, the December dark at the window. His face was all shadow and warmth and the expression on it was the most unguarded thing you had seen from him — not disordered, nothing crumbling, but open in the way that is only possible when someone has run out of reasons to protect themselves and has discovered, in the running out, a kind of relief.
"The poem is very good," you said softly. "That isn't what I want to say. But it is very good."
"What do you want to say?" he said. His voice was low.
You held his gaze and felt the full weight of his attention and let it be what it was without managing it.
"That I have been standing on those cliffs as well," you said. "For quite some time now."
Something moved through his face. Passed through it the way light passes through water, changing everything underneath.
He lifted his hand slowly — with that deliberateness that was the most intimate thing about him, the quality of nothing accidental, every movement chosen — and put it against your face. His palm to your jaw. His thumb at your cheekbone, just beneath the eye. The touch was warm and absolutely certain and he looked at you from inside it with the expression that had been accumulating since the bookshop and had simply, until this moment, had nowhere to arrive.
You placed your hand over his, against your own face.
He exhaled — not dramatically, not a performance of relief, simply the long and quiet release of something held very tightly for a very long time. The sound of a man setting something down.
His eyes moved once, briefly, to your mouth, and returned to yours.
"There is a great deal," he said, "that I want to say to you. And very little of it will —" he stopped. The precision failing him for once, the words not arriving in the right order because the feeling was larger than the available language. "I find I'm not able to —"
"You wrote it," you said. "That's enough. You wrote it and I read it and I know."
He looked at you. His thumb moved at your cheekbone, slow and careful, learning the geography of something he had wanted to touch for longer than he had admitted to himself. The tiredness in his eyes was still there, and the depth, and the grief that was always present somewhere in him, and alongside all of it now — rising through it, warmer than the rest — something that was simply and entirely glad.
"I've been standing at those cliffs," he said quietly, "since that Tuesday afternoon in October."
The bookshop. The amber lamplight. The two hands arriving at the same spine.
"I know," you said. "So have I."
He kissed you.
Softly, without urgency, with the quality of a man who has been moving toward something for long enough that the arrival is not a surprise but a completion — the relief of a word finally pronounced correctly after many silent attempts. His mouth was warm, and the hand on your face did not move, and the kiss lasted long enough to be unmistakable and ended before it was anything other than what it was: a declaration, tendered with the same seriousness he gave to true things.
He rested his forehead against yours.
His eyes were closed.
You stayed like that for a moment — his forehead against yours, his hand on your face, the poem on the table behind you with its last stanza facing upward — and the flat was very quiet and the December night pressed at the window and neither of you spoke because there was nothing that needed to be said that had not already been said, in one form or another, over two months of lamplit rooms and borrowed books and conversations that had always, always been about something more than what they appeared to be.
"Stay," he said. Barely above a murmur. "Not—," a pause. "Simply stay. For a while."
You turned your face so that your cheek was against his cheek, your hand still over his.
"Yes," you said.
Outside, the city continued its indifferent work. Inside the room the lamp held its warmth, and the Schubert found its way through to a quieter passage, and the poem lay where you had set it with the final line facing up toward the ceiling of a flat where the silence had been tuned, for years, to the frequency of one — and which, tonight, without announcement or drama, had become something else entirely.
Where your name sits, and will not be revised.
He had known, when he wrote it, what it meant.
So, now, did you.
A.N.: I had a lovely reader that described this work as watching a fragile flower being born and I think that is the most beautiful thing someone has ever said to me regarding what I write. We are close to finishing this story, next chapter will need an adjustment on the content warnings, just saying as a heads up (and as a teeny tiny spoiler).
WITNESS STATEMENTS & JEALOUSY — Jealous Adam Dalgliesh!
Summary: Jealous Adam Dalgliesh tries very hard to call it immaturity, but somehow still ends up watching you a little too closely and deciding Collins is suddenly “transfer material.”
The relationship had existed for eight months and six days. Not that Adam was counting. The fact that he knew the exact number would remain between himself and God.
No one at the Yard knew. No one in the squad suspected. The arrangement had begun with caution and continued with even greater caution, both of you understanding exactly how quickly gossip could spread through police stations. There were no stolen kisses in hallways, no lingering touches in public, no visible signs that the Commander and one of his detectives belonged to one another.
At work, you were simply colleagues. After work, you became everything else. Adam had thought the separation manageable.
Until recently.
Adam noticed it long before anyone else did.
The young detective had a habit of hovering near your desk. Not enough to attract comment, but enough that Adam's eyes found the interaction every time.
Adam had been watching it unfold long before he ever admitted it to himself, the easy way you spoke with the younger detective, the way laughter came more readily when you weren’t aware he was looking, the way Collins lingered near your desk under the harmless guise of work while Adam stood at a distance pretending it did not matter. Normal things, nothing was inappropriate. Nothing he could object to. Which made it worse.
He was standing by the office window when he heard your laugh float across the room.The kind you rarely gave, expect with him. When he turned, he found the detective leaning against your desk, speaking animatedly while you smiled up at him.
Something sharp settled beneath Adam's ribs. Possessiveness. An emotion he despised. He looked away immediately.
By lunch he had convinced himself it was nothing. By evening he had memorized every occasion the detective had touched your arm.
He stood beside the incident board while discussing witness timelines with the team. Around him, officers moved between desks carrying statements and photographs. The usual noise of a major investigation filled the room.
You were across the office, laughing. God you were laughing. Not at him. At Collins.
Adam continued speaking without interruption. "The victim was last seen leaving the restaurant at approximately twenty-two hundred—" Collins said something.
You laughed again. A proper laugh this time, the one that made your shoulders shake and your nose crinkle. Adam lost his place in the timeline. Though it was only for a second, none could have noticed it. Well, except him of course.
His gaze shifted briefly across the room.
Collins was leaning against your desk, grinning like an idiot. You were smiling up at him, you weren’t leaning towards Collins, but Collins was. The sensation that settled in Adam's chest was deeply unpleasant.
He ignored it, at least attempted to without his nerves brining him down.
"Sir?" Adam looked back at the detective waiting for an answer. "Sorry?" "The CCTV footage." He shook his head back in remembrance, "Yes." The briefing continued.
The briefing moved simply, each point was discussed throughly, with a precise direction and smooth flow that would have Adam’s attention fully. Yet every few moments his attention betrayed him.There you were, dressed in your button up suit, wearing those heels he loved. Talking to bloody Collins. He wanted to physically gag but his age reminded him of his need for maturity, in truth it was just to keep up appearances.
He averted his gaze, looking back at the witness statements.
Then five minutes later, he looked back. You were still talking to Collins. Ten minutes after that, Collins returned with two coffees. One for himself. One for you.
Adam found himself wondering whether you even liked the blend Collins usually bought. You preferred darker roasts. You always complained lighter coffees tasted watered down. The thought appeared so naturally that Adam nearly swore aloud. Because that wasn't the point.
The point was that he shouldn't care.
The point was that you were free to speak to whoever you pleased.
The point was that Collins had done absolutely nothing wrong.
The point was—"Commander?" Adam blinked. The room had gone quiet. Every detective was looking at him. Apparently he had stopped speaking mid-sentence.” Continue with the canvass," he said curtly.
The briefing ended moments later.
Everyone dispersed, shuffling into their steps. Everyone except you. You approached his desk carrying a folder. He looked up as he did, resisting the urge to pull you closer to him as you stood.
"Hi. Thought you'd want the updated witness statements." You smiled at him.
"Thank you."
You placed the folder down, n either of you moved. Months of practice, careful planning had made these moments easy to disguise. To everyone else it looked like an ordinary work exchange.
To Adam it felt unbearable. Because you were standing less than three feet away and he couldn't touch you. Couldn't kiss your forehead. Couldn't ask about your day. Couldn't tell you that he'd slept badly because you'd worked a double shift and hadn't come home until after midnight. Instead he simply opened the folder.
"You've missed three signatures."
Your eyebrow rose. "Have I?"
"Page seven." You leaned over the desk. Close enough for him to catch the familiar scent of your shampoo, close enough to recognize the sent of your favorite perfume, close enough to remind him exactly why this arrangement was becoming increasingly difficult.
Your shoulder brushed his, purely accidental yet Adam's pulse jumped. His ears began to redden and his jaw clenched. You noticed immediately.
Of course you did. A tiny smile threatened the corner of your mouth, then your eyes flicked briefly across the room.
Towards him.
Towards Collins.
And understanding dawned on you, the smile disappeared. Not because you were amused. Because you finally understood why Adam had spent the entire morning behaving like a man being slowly poisoned.
"Oh." The word escaped before you could stop it.
Adam's expression became dangerously neutral. A sure sign he was internally suffering.
You looked at Collins.
Then back at Adam.
Then at Collins again.
The pieces slid together with embarrassing ease, the interrupted briefing the short curt answers. The unusually cold demeanor. The fact that Adam had been staring holes through an innocent detective for the better part of four hours. Your lips twitched. "Don't." His voice was low. You bit the inside of your cheek.
"Adam—" "Not here." Which confirmed everything.
A laugh nearly escaped, you managed to suppress it, trying to protect his dignity. Adam closed the folder with precision. The movement alone told you exactly how agitated he was."Go finish your statements."
"Yes, Commander." The title was deliberate. His eyes narrowed.
You turned before your composure failed entirely. As you walked away, Collins waved from across the room. You waved back automatically.
The sound of a pen snapping echoed from Adam's desk.
The office had thinned and the work had stretched into the kind of late hour where fatigue softened everything except awareness, and Adam eventually stepped out of his office intending to close the day only to find you asleep on the sofa, not carefully or deliberately, but completely, as though exhaustion had simply taken what it needed without negotiation, your arm tucked beneath your head and a case file resting half-forgotten against your fingers.
Collins’s jacket lay over you.
Adam stopped.
There was no immediate reaction on his face, nothing that would have betrayed thought to anyone watching, but something in his chest tightened in a way that had very little patience for logic, because Collins had done nothing wrong, had simply noticed what anyone might have noticed and acted on it without hesitation, and that, more than anything, was what made the feeling so difficult to name without irritation.
Collins sat a few desks away, surrounded by witness statements and empty coffee cups. Every so often his attention drifted from the paperwork toward the sofa, checking on you before returning to whatever report he was working through.
When he noticed Adam, he straightened slightly.
"Sir."
"Still here, Collins?”
"Just finishing the Southwark summaries."
Adam glanced at the stack of papers beside him and gave a brief nod. It was a reasonable enough explanation. "Didn't want to wake them," Collins added, his gaze flicking toward the sofa.
A perfectly ordinary comment. Adam looked down at the file in his hands, though he couldn't have said what was written on the page. "You're off duty."
Collins hesitated. "Nearly done."
"Nevertheless."
The younger detective blinked, clearly weighing whether that was a suggestion or an order. Judging by the expression that followed, he wisely decided it was the latter. "Right." He began collecting his things. Files disappeared into a satchel. Pens followed. Adam remained where he was, watching the office through the calm detachment that years of command had made second nature. Eventually Collins slung the bag over one shoulder and reached for his coat.
Then stopped.
"Oh."His attention landed on the jacket draped over you. For some reason, that single syllable irritated Adam more than it had any right to.
"I should probably—"
"Leave it." The words came out before he could reconsider them. Collins looked surprised. Adam was not entirely pleased with himself either.
A brief silence stretched between them.
"The jacket," Adam clarified. "Right. Of course."
Another pause. "Goodnight, sir."
"Goodnight."
The detective left, the office door clicking shut behind him. The silence that followed seemed deeper than before. Adam remained standing for a moment, listening to the rain against the windows. His eyes drifted to the jacket abandoned over the back of the sofa. There was nothing remarkable about it.
Just a coat
Dark wool.
Sensible.
It had served its purpose. Still, his gaze lingered there longer than necessary before moving back to you. The thought that crossed his mind was not one he felt particularly proud of. He dismissed it.
He dismissed it. Unfortunately, dismissing a thought was not quite the same thing as getting rid of it. With a quiet sigh, he crossed the room. The file balanced on your lap looked moments away from sliding to the floor. He lifted it away first and placed it on a nearby table before looking down at you properly.
Even asleep, you looked tired. The strain he'd been seeing all week had finally eased from your face. A loose strand of hair had fallen across your forehead. Without thinking, he brushed it aside. You stirred slightly but didn't wake.
His attention drifted back to the jacket.
A practical gesture. Nothing more than that.
After a moment, he bent down and lifted it away, folding it neatly before placing it on the back of a nearby chair. Then he slipped off his own coat and draped it over you instead. The heavier fabric settled around your shoulders.
Almost immediately you shifted closer into the warmth. Adam looked away. "Hopeless," he muttered. The criticism lacked conviction. You made a faint noise in your sleep and settled further into the coat, apparently satisfied with the exchange.
Adam stood there a moment longer than necessary. Long enough to confirm you were comfortable. Long enough to realise he wasn't in any hurry to return to his office. In the end, he dragged a chair closer to the sofa and sat down beside you, telling himself it was to finish reviewing reports.
The fact that he didn't open a single one for the next ten minutes was a matter he chose not to examine too closely.
You surfaced from sleep slowly, awareness returning in fragments rather than all at once, the kind of gradual return that left you unsure where the dream ended and the office began until the rain against the windows, the faint ticking of a clock, and the weight of exhaustion finally anchored you back into reality.
And then you felt it. A hand on your shoulder.
“Come on,” Adam said quietly, his voice low enough that it barely disturbed the silence, and when you opened your eyes he was leaning over you, one hand still resting against your shoulder while the other held his glasses loosely, as though he had taken them off only moments ago to give himself a break he clearly wasn’t taking.
For a moment neither of you moved, and then his expression softened slightly when he realized you were awake.
“There you are.” You blinked up at him, still half caught in sleep. “What time is it?”
“Half three,” he replied. The answer made you groan immediately.
Adam’s mouth twitched. “An eloquent response.”
“I’m sleeping here,” you muttered, shifting slightly like that might somehow reinforce your argument.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
You closed your eyes again in stubborn protest, which turned out to be a mistake, because the sofa dipped immediately and your eyes snapped open again just in time to feel his arm slide behind your back and the other beneath your knees.
“Adam,” you warned weakly, though your voice lacked any real strength. His gaze met yours, calm in the way that usually meant he had already decided everything.
“You can barely keep your eyes open.”
“I can walk.”
“You fell asleep reading witness statements.”
“That’s irrelevant.”
“It is not.”
And before you could argue further, he lifted you fully into his arms. Effortlessly. Which, unfortunately, only confirmed what you already suspected about him. The fact that he had clearly made a decision about this several seconds before you woke up.
“You’re enjoying this,” you accused immediately, narrowing your eyes.
“I am carrying you,” he replied evenly as he adjusted his grip, “because you are exhausted and would otherwise attempt to walk into a wall.”
“That is a dramatic assumption.”
“It is an accurate one.” You huffed, but the sound dissolved into a small laugh as he turned toward the corridor, and his arm tightened slightly around you in response, not enough to feel restrictive, just enough that you noticed, which somehow made it worse.
The building was quiet at this hour, the kind of quiet that only came when even the most dedicated officers had finally surrendered to fatigue, so there was no urgency in his steps, no need for distance or restraint, and for once that fact seemed to sit comfortably between you rather than complicate it.
“You know,” you murmured after a moment, head resting against his shoulder, “I can actually walk.”
“So you’ve said,” he replied.
“You aren’t listening.”
“I am listening.”
“You just disagree.”
“Yes.”
That earned a faint, tired laugh from you, and you felt rather than saw the way his expression shifted slightly at the sound, the smallest softening around his eyes that never appeared in the presence of anyone else. After a moment, his thumb brushed lightly against your sleeve, almost absent-minded, like he hadn’t realized he’d done it until it was already over.
“I’ve hardly seen you this week,” he said quietly, and the admission sat between you both in a way that was unexpectedly honest. You looked up at him properly then, studying his face. “You could have said something.”
A faint, reluctant curve touched his mouth, something close to resignation and affection all at once. “I suspect that would not have changed the workload.”
“Probably not,” you admitted. He adjusted you slightly as he reached the lift, still not putting you down, still not even pretending he was considering it.
“And yet,” you added, watching him, “you’re carrying me anyway.”
His eyes met yours briefly as the doors opened. “I am correcting a situation,” he said simply, stepping inside, “that should have been corrected earlier.”
You smiled into his shoulder. “That sounds suspiciously like an excuse.”
“It is not.”
“It absolutely is.”
And for once, he didn’t argue further, which in itself felt like an answer, especially when his arm stayed firmly around you as the lift doors closed and the world outside narrowed to just the two of you, suspended somewhere between exhaustion and something neither of you needed to name out loud to understand.
The lift had barely begun its descent when you shifted in his arms, no longer asleep but still comfortably tucked against him in a way that suggested you had no intention of making his life easier, and Adam, for his part, seemed to have settled far too easily into the role of carrying you, as though the transition from urgent practicality to quiet inevitability had happened without his permission, especially now that his attention was fixed a little too carefully on the lift indicator above the doors rather than on you.
“Adam,” you said, tilting your head against his shoulder.
“Hm?” he answered, still not looking down.
“Why were you glaring at Collins all week?”
“I wasn’t,” he replied immediately, too immediately, adjusting his grip slightly as the lift slowed.
“You were.”
“I wasn’t.”
The doors opened, and he stepped out into the corridor with you still in his arms as though it were the most unremarkable thing in the world, while you let the silence sit between you for a moment, listening to his steady footsteps before adding, “Remember my cousin from Southwark?”
The question landed lightly enough, but his pace changed anyway, just enough for you to notice as his gaze finally dropped to you with faint suspicion.
“Your cousin,” he repeated.
“Yes,” you confirmed, far too casually.
A pause followed, one that visibly deepened as something in his expression shifted.
“Collins?” he asked. You nodded.
And for a moment he simply stopped walking altogether, standing there in the middle of the corridor while the realization took shape in stages, his mind clearly retracing every interaction, every glance, every carefully observed moment that had apparently meant something entirely different in hindsight, until finally—“Oh.”
It was quiet. But it carried a level of internal collapse that made you bite back a laugh immediately. “Adam,” you began, already failing to sound serious.
He closed his eyes briefly as if that might undo the last two weeks of assumptions.
“You could have mentioned that,” he said at last, still holding you as though his body had not yet decided what to do with this new information.
“I thought you remembered.”
“You never said Collins.”
“I’m fairly sure I did.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did.”
“You didn’t.”
The certainty in his tone only made it worse, and you lost the battle entirely, laughing as he resumed walking again, though now with a tension in his shoulders that hadn’t been there before. “You thought I was flirting with my cousin,” you managed between laughs, watching him carefully.
“He was always near your desk,” he replied, voice carefully neutral. “Because he’s my cousin.”
“He kept bringing you coffee.”
“He brings coffee to half the building.”
“You laughed at everything he said.”
“Adam,” you said, still smiling, “he’s my cousin.” That seemed to land harder than anything else, and for a brief moment he said nothing at all, just continued walking with the faintest tightening around his jaw before lifting a hand briefly to his forehead as though trying to physically reorganize the last fortnight of his life.
By the time you reached the car you were still laughing, and Adam looked like a man actively reconsidering several major life decisions, including some that clearly involved professional ethics and others that involved you, and when he finally set you down, you stepped forward immediately and wrapped your arms around him without hesitation, still grinning into his shoulder.
To your surprise, he didn’t pull away, only paused for a moment before his arms settled around you properly, steady and familiar, and when his forehead finally rested lightly against yours his voice came quieter than before, almost resigned. “You’re never going to let this go.”
“Not a chance,” you said, still smiling.
He closed his eyes for a moment, as if accepting a verdict he had no right to appeal. “That,” he murmured, “is exactly what I was afraid of.”
You know," you murmured against his shoulder, "the fact that you were jealous is actually quite sweet."
"It wasn't jealousy." The denial came automatically. You smiled, snorting into his shoulder. Adam sighed, resting his forehead lightly against yours.
"It was concern."
"Mm."
"For your judgment."
"Mm."
His eyes narrowed slightly. You laughed again. And when his expression finally softened into reluctant amusement, you reached up and brushed a hand through his hair.
"I love you too, Commander."
The look he gave you suggested he knew exactly what you'd done. Unfortunately for him, the corner of his mouth twitched anyway. And that was all the confirmation you needed.
— Another treat! I was fairly busy this week but now I’ve managed to clear up my schedule and finish one of my drafts. I hope you enjoyed this!
summary: daeron flees his home and family, trading the privilege of his surname for the anonymity of working a dead-end diner job. his carefully crafted isolation is broken when a pretty customer starts getting close enough to notice the parts of himself he's been trying to leave behind
or
daeron works at papa's cheeseria lmaooo enjoy chapter one
The smell of frying oil was making him sick. He looked over at the clock, which rushed ever so slightly. 12:24. Minus the three minutes it was ahead. He could go out for his break in 9 minutes. Great. Just in time to finish the order.
A kid’s head popped up through the pass.
“Hey, could we have some napkins?” the teen asked with little regard to the tone of his voice. Daeron held back an annoyed sigh.
“Right there on the counter,” he replied rigidly, pointing to the napkin holder right in front of the kid, who grabbed some and went back to his table without a word. The blond’s eye twitched.
He suddenly remembered every time that he too had, as an entitled teenager, disregarded service workers, or downright mistreated them. This was his payment for that, he supposed. He finished plating the sandwich and fries, placing them on the counter and ringing the bell.
Looking around, he saw that the woman at table 4 had no intentions of getting her food herself, so he begrudgingly took the plate and exited the kitchen. The door swinged closed behind him as he carried the order, careful so as to not spill any fries this time. He hoped his boss would hire another person soon. The previous server quit early into Daeron’s time at the diner, so he had been managing all the work in his shift for the past three months.
Not that it was that hard, with how little traffic Papa’s Cheeseria got these days. Probably because of the cancer-in-processed-cheese scare among Facebook moms a few years back. He recalled his aunt Jena cutting his cousins off from store-bought pizza because of it. Valarr’s 10th birthday had these cottage cheese concoctions their personal chef had cooked up.
He knocked on the ajar door of Louie’s office, where the old man was stationed. He was snoozing at his desk, but saw when Daeron popped his head in. He motioned to the pack of cigs in his hand. “Going for the break,” he mumbled.
His boss frowned for a moment, frustrated that he would have to take over the dead restaurant for twenty minutes. He looked at his watch, and upon seeing that it was time for his break, waved Daeron off in approval.
He redid his man bun while stepping over the scattered boxes of Summer Luau decorations in the back room. Those would for sure qualify as cultural appropriation, he thought as he opened the door with his elbow. Fresh air, finally.
Well, as fresh as you could get in the trashed, tire-stained parking lot. Better than the smell of dirty sunflower oil and cancer cheese, anyway.
Daeron Targaryen had never considered himself a prideful or spiteful person, but there were no other explanations for his behaviour. His father was one of the wealthiest men in Westeros, his surname the equivalent to a black card in any respected institution. He had a diploma from a top University, with a job at his uncle and father’s company lined up. And he was currently smoking through a bitter pack of Iron Lungs, probably imported illegally through the Ironman’s bay, deposited at a port in the middle of the night, to end up at the sketchy corner shop in the bumfuckville town he had drunkenly settled in almost six months ago. All because of a single fight with his father.
At least that was what Maekar would say.
The truth was, Daeron would take this greasy, dead-end job and a slightly moldy studio apartment in a drive-through part of the Reach over the alternative any day.
Call it rich boy entitlement, sure. On paper, he would always have money to fall back on, if he so decided. But that would involve begging his way back into his father’s good graces, and that’s where the aforementioned pride would come into play.
He had needed an escape. At twenty-four, Daeron felt none of the freedom adulthood had promised him. He had finished the business school his father had insisted on, albeit with two years of overstay, thanks to his drinking problem.
When he declared he would be enrolling in the art school after that, a prize his father had been dangling over his head at every intervention and family event, the father and son duo got into a fight.
Daeron found the email declining his acceptance letter in the sent part of his account by accident, and far too late. He packed his bag and left without a word, leaving his bugged phone behind.
A week later, he bought a YiTish Xiaomi Mi 6, and, after equipping it with a temporary sim card, texted his little brother Egg. He let the family know that he was fine, but needed to step away from everything for a while, and asked not to be sought out until he was ready. Ready to finally do his duty of joining the company, or ready to forgive his father, he himself did not know.
He was sure they knew where he was. His great-uncle was the CEO of the most renowned security company in Westeros, and the family had ears everywhere. It rendered his seclusion to this little town useless, but he tried not to dwell on things that were out of his control.
Upon careful consideration as to what he should do with the blood money on his account, as he called it, he got drunk one night and spent it all on random GoFundMes. Down to zero. Congrats to a Pete for getting his DnD prop business off the ground!
He was worried he would start drinking again once he ran away. It didn’t turn out to be that bad. It was social, he reassured himself, arguing that the only place to meet people in towns like these was the bar. He tried limiting himself to two nights a week. It worked for the most part.
He still kept his sobriety chip. Only because he had grown used to fidgeting with it in his pocket. The memory of the while-lid, luxury AA meeting room he was forced to be in once a week for the year prior held no nostalgia. Vodka tonic did.
He took a drag of the cheap cig, the warm wind blowing the smoke back in his face. His foot was tapping repeatedly, a habit he picked up during his road to sobriety. Payday was two days away, he calculated in his head. He had enough cash for one more pack, two if he sneaked some food out of the restaurant. Though he had no desire to eat the slop they sold here, after months of making it every day.
He felt stiff, like he had just woken up. He thought about going for a run tonight. The small river that ran through the town was actually nice. A bit polluted, but beggars can’t be choosers. Then he remembered the last time he went on the run at sunset there. The view was beautiful, but the mosquitos absolutely ate him up. He would have to pick up a repellent at the pharmacy beforehand, but then he wouldn’t have the money for another pack. He opened the one in his pocket, assessing if it would hold him over for two days.
His break was quickly over, and he was back in the kitchen. Louie was bent over a sandwich, grilling it to perfection while giving unsolicited life advice, as all old men loved to do.
“This is the most important part, Darren,” he nagged. “I hope you aren’t overcooking them. That would be terrible for business.”
What business, Daeron thought, but held it back and mumbled out a, “No sir.”
The boss filled the sizzling silence again.
“What do you do outside of work, son? You got yourself a girlfriend? Boyfriend?”
Daeron chuckled, “No, no girlfriend or boyfriend, sir.”
“No?” the man mused.
“Business first,” he imitated his father, unbeknownst to Louie.
“Well that’s no good,” he shook his head as he flipped the grilled cheese. “Love first, boy. Then everything else,” he scolded in good nature.
Daeron thought about ending the conversation there, but he found the old man’s advice very amusing. It reminded him of his own grandfather.
“Haven’t really met any girls in this town yet, if I’m being honest,” he confided in the man. “I feel like everyone’s either twelve or sixty four.”
True, towns like these had little to offer to young people. Teenagers usually left for university and never came back, leaving their mothers alone and sad. He felt it when he passed older ladies on his runs, the women smiling at him in surprise, happy to see a fine young man for the first time in a while.
Louie chuckled at his comment, “Of course there’s girls. You young people just have your faces glued to your phones, you walk right by each other!” Daeron rolled his eyes. Just as his boss finished the order he was making, he smiled under his mustache and pulled Daeron closer to the pass window.
“There’s a girl ‘round your age right there,” he pointed to the customer at table five waiting for her meal. “Go on,” he pushed, “Bring her her food, tell her she’s pretty. Boom, you got yourself a girlfriend!” He patted him on the back in encouragement and turned back to go to his office, leaving Daeron to deliver the food.
He wanted to scoff his brain out at the notion of flirting with a random girl who walked into the restaurant. It had the same energy as old people thinking you can just send an email to a CEO of a company and get a job there. Though he probably could, but that wasn’t the point.
The girl, he thought as he walked out with her sandwich, was far too pretty to even be eating in this shithole. He hadn’t seen her around before, and it was true that she was the only girl around his age he had seen thus far. The last thing she deserved was for him, greasy and sweaty, in his silly work uniform, to give her a side of unsolicited creepy compliments with her crappy food. He placed the plate on the table with a polite, “Enjoy your meal,” and let the thought go. She thanked him with the same practiced politeness and turned to her food. He went back into the kitchen.
That evening, he decided to fire up Tinder again. He hadn’t used it since his early days in uni. Who knows, maybe there were girls nearby and they were just hiding. Or they just didn’t congregate in the run-down diner.
He chose a few photos that would do. One selfie of him and Valarr, with the latter cut out. Sorry cuz. One photo of him painting Rhae took for a snap. He was shirtless, so what. He looked good. Though his abs weren’t that defined anymore. Three more generic photos of him, which revealed nothing about his previous way of life. He filled out the bio, going for a basic catchphrase, not much thought in it. The shirtless painting photo should speak a thousand words.
He prepared for swiping, hoping to find a date nearby. He had a free day to fill tomorrow. And, truth be told, he missed casual dating, not having done it in a while.
46 miles away, 70, 142, 64… There really are only children and old people in this town. He threw the phone to the coffee table and prepared for the run, skipping the bug repellant.
He spent his free day in the apartment he was renting, bedrotting and doomscrolling. He painted a little in the evening, accompanied by some wine. It was the first time he drank that week.
The next day, after running out to grab a pack with his delivered salary, he worked his usual tempo. One or two customers would come in an hour. Some chose their own ingredients, some asked for the daily special. Today it was the bird buster, as Louie had decided to call it. After making it once, with the help of the recipe of course, Daeron’s stomach decided that it was just what it needed to get over the slight hangover, so he decided to make it for himself when the restaurant seemed quiet.
He sat on the counter, feet dangling, probably breaking a few health regulations. Louie had gone out for the day, stating an emergency, so he could break a rule or two. It also meant no break out back, so he had to eat here.
Just as he was basking in the taste of chicken and ranch on his tongue, the door opened, snapping him out of his intimate makeout session with the sandwich. He hurried to get back down, placing the food on a napkin as the customer approached.
“Sorry, let me just-” he jittered, rounding to the door to get the order.
It was the girl from two days ago, he noticed once he took his position. He wiped the ranch he had slobbered around his mouth. Embarrassing.
“What can I get for you?” he looked at her finally, meeting her amused gaze.
“Hi, um, could I have a-” she ordered slowly, confirming his theory that she wasn’t a regular here. “Rosemary bread.” She seemed sure about that. “Swiss cheese, and sausage,” she ordered, almost as if she was asking him.
“Uhh, can you get more than one cheese?” she questioned.
“Sure,” he replied. You couldn’t.
“Okay, I’ll have swiss and gouda, sausage, tomato,” he wrote everything down, having time to scribble little drawings of the toppings with her delayed choosing. “And, um, jalapeños, with the onion sauce, please.” Fuck, that sounded good too.
“Fries?” he asked.
“No thank you. Make that to go.”
“Alrighty,” he got to work.
To his horror, she stood by the counter the entire time, essentially watching him prepare the food. He never worked well while being watched. Unbeknownst to him, she wasn’t waiting to catch an error in his sandwich-making, but was instead gathering her courage to start small talk.
He had to stand near her to add the sauce, an opportunity she took.
“Hey, um, so,” she started nervously, “I just moved here,” she paused when his eyes met hers as he worked, looking for any annoyance or judgement in them. When she didn’t find any, with a nod from him, she continued. “Are there any places you would recommend?" she asked finally.
Daeron tried not to butcher her sandwich, think of an answer for her, and not laugh at the question at the same time. The concrete wall by the creek, he wanted to joke. Instead, he tried to form a coherent sentence.
“Um, to be honest, I moved here recently as well,” he confessed. “Haven’t seen much. I’m pretty sure there’s not much to see anyway,” he chuckled, and met her eye when he felt the chuckle come off as cruel.
“Really?” she replied with genuine interest at their commonality. “What brings you here?”
His intrusive thoughts told him to stick his head into the fryer full of hot oil. Only a spoiled brat like him could complain about a pretty girl asking him questions about himself, especially after his failed attempt at Tinder. He had little time to come up with a lie, so he chose to be vague.
“I’m not really sure.” When he saw her raised brow, he decided to add, “Just always dreamed of working at a diner that only serves one type of food in a town of four thousand people, you know?”
She chuckled at that, the smile reaching her eyes. “I bet.”
He remembered small-talk etiquette, “How about you?”
“Yeah, same, for work,” she fidgeted with her keys, leaning on the counter. “I’m a teacher. English and History. Well, just English, but the school doesn’t really care about qualifications, so I got both. Fifth graders.”
Daeron pretended to shiver, thinking of all the kids from that school who would come to the diner. He made her laugh again.
“They’ve been fine so far,” she reassured, before going back to asking him about himself, feeling like she was talking about herself too much. “So, where are you from?”
He was leaning on the other side of the counter now, waiting for the sandwich to grill. He lied on instinct, though there was no reason to.
“Starfall.”
“Ooh, a Dornishman,” she mused, coming across as awfully flirty. He didn’t know if that was her intent, but he played aloof, shrugging his shoulders.
“My mum’s side, yeah,” the attention felt nice. Perhaps Louie was right in pushing him to talk to her. “You?”
“Oh, I’m from Gulltown. Not as exotic as Starfall.” He felt kinda bad for lying. “But hey, we’re both from mountainous coastal cities,” she offered. He smiled at her making comparisons, feeling his cheeks blush a little.
He didn’t know what to say next. He was usually good with women. There wasn’t an event during the past few years to which he didn’t have a date. From other students to fashion models, Daeron had definitely pulled.
But that was rich Daeron. Trust fund Daeron. Daeron who could afford to be a prick. He didn’t know how to impress a girl over a slimy counter while oil sizzled in the background. He was pretty sure there was no way to do it. That thought might’ve been influenced by his brother Aerion, who insisted that only men with money got girls. It felt right in the moment, as he stumbled over what to say.
“I’ve been so disoriented here. Everything is so… flat,” she complained, continuing to offer him opportunities to respond.
“Yeah, it’s like,” he tried to think of something clever to say, “a pancake for dinner,” fucking idiot.
“A pancake for dinner?” she repeated with a laugh at his weird comparison. He stood by his words.
“Yeah. After work, when you’ve only got pancake mix and tap water on hand. No syrup. No butter. Rawdogging them at 10pm while you reconsider your life choices.”
She continued to giggle at his words, leaning on the counter more in bewilderment. Shaking her head, she said, “That’s the stupidest analogy I’ve-,” she tried getting her words out through the laughter, “-ever heard.”
He broke into laughter softly at the sound of her own. Her giggles were infectious. “You’ve never done it?” he asked rhetorically, tilting his head. She only managed to shake her head, clutching her chest in an attempt to silence her laughter. It only worked to entertain him more, his own cackles growing louder. Laughing like two lunatics.
She wiped her eye, which had begun to water, calming herself a bit.
“Oh my gods. I’m sorry. It’s been a long day,” she explained her fit, though he did not mind at all. It was more than welcome. It’s been a while since a girl laughed at his jokes anyway. He confirmed that she was good, flipping the sandwich.
“But for the record,” she added, “I’ve never made bad pancakes.”
He raised a brow, “Yeah? I’d love to try them,” slipped out before he could think about it. Turns out his default setting with girls was to flirt. A nice little souvenir from his bar crawl days.
She smiled, that initial shyness returning. “I’m sure you make better pancakes than I do, though,” she motioned around him, pointing out his job. He raised his brows.
“Yeah, I don’t think making sandwiches at Papa’s translates to any culinary skills.”
“You shouldn’t talk down on your abilities,” she teased.
“You’re right. I’m above this. Went to the Culinary Institute of Sunspear for this shit.”
“Really?”
“No??”
They broke out into laughter again. Two insane strangers, for sure. It was nice.
He smelled something burning and jolted out of it.
“Shit!”
They looked at the sandwich he flipped onto a paper plate, the dark brown side staring at them. Her laugh slipped through her restraint in small snorts this time, until he comically pinched the bridge of his nose. Laughter again.
“I’ll make you a new one,” he assured.
“No, it’s fine!” “I’ve gotta.” “It’s fine, trust me.” “It’s completely burnt.” “I’m in a hurry.”
They bargained, and he searched for anything genuine in her eyes, skeptical that she would want to eat this.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, 100%” she said as she opened her wallet. He raised his hand as he placed the paper bag on the counter.
“It’s on the house.”
“No.”
“I am not letting you pay for that.”
She sighed, giving him a tight-lipped, but grateful smile. She placed a bill in the tip jar instead, which he wanted to argue against as well, but failed at the certainty in her eyes. He nodded at her as she turned to leave, at a loss for words.
“Enjoy your meal,” he replied as he did last time, not knowing what else to say. She repeated her thanks as well, this time with a smile. It was a pretty smile.
When the door closed, he let his head fall against the cold counter with a grunt. Fucking loser.
cw: modern au, mdni, 18+, f!reader, substance abuse (alcohol), hallucinations, mental health problems, obsession, darkish daeron
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๑ he is certainly mad, the town folk liked to say, utterly insane. they called him the dreamer and told their kids haunting stories about the lighthouse keeper, who moved to the coast, trying to run away from the visions
๑ some say he is from a wealthy family sent here as punishment, some say he is a fisherman's son, dutifully doing his job, some say he is a hopeless alcoholic, some say he is a real seer, connected to the old spirits
๑ no one knows enough, so every statement is just a speculation. the town sits around a harbor. a few miles away, on a rocky cliff that juts into the sea, stands the lighthouse. the lightkeeper lives in a cottage beside it. that was everything people had, which only fed the whispers of the supernatural
๑ what was certain is that he is a recluse. everyone in town knows that daeron doesn't need or want any sort of company besides his black newfoundland that barked and snarled at the mere sight of another human approaching
๑ the visions, the voices, the dreams have never left him, even here in this godforsaken place, they were torturing him, stealing any hope of peace. many mornings, he found himself lying in the sand, wet and shivering, even though he was sure to close his eyes in his bed before falling asleep
๑ though sleep was a generous word for the scraps of unconsciousness he was able to get. his days were cold, draped in a thick fog of agonising dread, while nights were hot, full of distant fire and pain, he never fully witnessed but felt deeply
๑ sometimes it was more than just dreams, sometimes nightmares leaked into daylight as voices calling his name somewhere far away, sometimes they came as visions, twisting his sanity into something barely recognisable
๑ daeron drank more at such days. much more. alcohol never fully helped, only dulling the gnawing never ending terror that lived in his mind, poisoning everything that was unfortunate enough to appear in his pathetic life. he could go days without showering, barely eating a thing, drowning all his feelings in brandy
๑ his days were repetitive and simple, barely differing at all. sometimes he felt like he was living one never ending day. not that it really matter. daeron treated his job seriously, because it was the only thing in his life he could keep under some sort of control. so he checked the weather, repaired railings, walked the cliffs with his dog, lighted the beacon and drank
๑ still it was better than in the city. it made sense, for him being here. even though, mostly because here he had you. his salvation. his ethereal curse. his safe place. his siren. the first time daeron saw you he was convinced you are one of his hallucinations, soaked wet from the rain, banging on his door
๑ once you appeared in his life, many things started to make sense. the only thing that didn’t make sense was how you found him and why you stayed. daeron didn’t dare to ask. he was simply grateful, no, more than that. he was in utter disbelief, praying to whatever gods he believed in for you not to vanish, not to be a trick of his ill mind
๑ you were always leaving in the morning and coming back in the evening, and it was the first time in his life that he had caught himself eagerly waiting for the day to end, just to see you again. no liquid could ever sedate him like your scent could. nothing ever could bring him the peace he felt when you were holding him close
๑ sometimes he woke you up in the middle of the night, babbling nonsense and drenched in sweat, calling your name and begging you to stay, not calming down until you pressed your lips against his, shushing his feverish mumbling with your tongue
๑ on good days, when the dread somewhat feels bearable, he is completely different: attentive, sweet, happy. daeron is so touch starved. ideally, he would keep you in his bed forever, spending hours between your thighs, listening to your moans and whimpers
๑ daeron is deeply affectionate. holds your hand constantly, lays his head in your lap, and nuzzles your neck, feeding you breakfast, pulling you into his lap whenever he can. boring days suddenly evolved into your personal version of heaven. he smells of sweat, salt, and the lingering sweetness of liquor, mixed with something uniquely him. something that you associate with happiness
๑ daeron is all raw emotions and insatiable desire. he is a deeply obsessive man, and he is starved. derranged and filthy, gross and perverted. in his eyes, you are still unreal, something ethereal, overworldly that he has a chance to put his greedy hands on.
๑ daeron doesn't just adore you, doesn't just worship you, he devours. devours the same way he empties the endless bottles of alcohol he drinks you in, fucking, kissing, sucking, licking until you physically can't take it anymore
๑ you are his magic pill to everything. his treat, his painkiller, his favourite meal that he can never get enough of. the more you spend time with him, the more daeron hates it when you leave, fueled by the fear of you never returning, vanishing, dissolving in the sand like another dream
๑ to him it's not just sex. it's a ritual. an overworldly way of showing his devotion, of letting go of his ache, at least for a few hours. it is a soul merging bonding that makes the horrors feel survivable and the life worth living
๑ sometimes he fucks you slow and tender, guiding your hips down on his throbbing length as hard rain drums against the windows. sometimes he is fucking you hard and fast, pressing you against the slick stone wall of the lighthouse, biting your lips until your saliva is filled with the coppery taste of blood. sometimes he is making you sit in his lap near the fireplace, toying with you, his fingers teasing the dampness between your thighs with agonizing slowness, pretending not to hear your pleading and begging. sometimes he is eating you out with your back against the hard shore cliff, hiking your leg up his shoulder, taking his time, savouring the moment of complete power he has over your pleasure
๑ he is certainly mad, the town folk liked to say. and perhaps he was. but it doesn't really matter when you are the one driving him mad, does it?
