You know the parable about how the foolish man built his house upon sand and the wise man built his house upon rock and it’s always about having a sturdy foundation well there is also the fact of location which is that the sand probably used to be rock except it’s been eroded to sediment because it’s a FUCKING FLOODPLAIN
flood Plain perfec t size for put town in to b\uild! inside very Soft and Comfort town safe happy put town in Floodplain. Put Town In Floodplain. no problems ever in flloodplain because good Shape and Support for town roads weak of big town citizens. Afloodplain yes a place for a town put town in floodplain can trust floodplain for giveing good place for town. friend flood
Pairing: Maekar Targaryen x f!lady in waiting!reader
WC: 9.9k
Warning(s): +18 MDNI, Explicit sexual content, oral sex (giving and receiving), P in V sex, AFAB reader, power imbalance, touch-starved, mutual pining, argument to lovers, emotional vulnerability, size difference, praise kink (light, reader to character), rough sex (consensual, explicitly negotiated), scar worship, dirty talk (mild), male restraint / loss of control, confident reader, oblivious/avoidant pining, second person / reader insert (no use of y/n), no beta we die like Viserys
The hour had grown shamefully late by the time you decided you were done waiting.
Three weeks. Three weeks of turned backs and engineered absences and the particular cruelty of a man who could fill a room with his presence even while pretending to be entirely unreachable within it. Three weeks of watching Prince Maekar Targaryen look straight through you with those violet eyes and finding nothing in them that acknowledged what had been building between you for months.
You found him at dusk.
The armoury sat quiet at that hour, the training yard beyond it emptied of squires and knights alike, nothing remaining but the last copper light bleeding through narrow windows and the distant sounds of the castle settling into evening. Torches guttered softly along the walls, catching the dull gleam of hanging steel and leather.
Maekar stood at the far end with his back to the door, methodically checking the edge of a blade with the focused attention of a man determined to be unreachable.
He had been unreachable for weeks.
“You have been avoiding me,” you said. The words landed flat in the quiet. Maekar did not turn around.
“I have been occupied.”
“You walked out of a room yesterday because I entered it.”
“I had somewhere to be.”
“Maekar.” His name left you with enough weight that his shoulders stiffened visibly. “Look at me.”
He set the blade down with deliberate care and turned. His expression was exactly what you had expected — closed, guarded, wearing that particular blankness he deployed when he wanted to be mistaken for someone who did not feel things.
You knew better. You had always known better when it came to him.
“Whatever you believe you need to say,” he said flatly, “I would ask you to reconsider.”
“I have reconsidered for three weeks.” You closed the door and stepped further into the room. “I am done reconsidering.”
“Then be brief.”
“Why are you pulling away?”
“I am not pulling away. I am exactly where I have always been.”
“You are a liar.”
Something dangerous flickered in his violet eyes. “Mind yourself.”
“Or what?” You crossed your arms. “You will glare at me? You have been doing that for months and I am still here.”
“Clearly.” The word came out clipped, almost cruel. A deliberate blade.
You refused to flinch from it. “Something happened. Three weeks ago you were—” You stopped, steadied yourself. “And then suddenly you were gone. Present in body and completely absent in everything else. I want to know why.”
“Nothing happened.”
“You are lying again.”
“I am not accustomed,” he said with cold precision, “to being called a liar repeatedly.”
“And I am not accustomed to being deliberately shut out by someone who—” You stopped again.
Maekar’s eyes sharpened immediately. “Someone who what?”
The silence stretched taut between you.
“Someone who matters to me,” you finished quietly.
Something moved across his face so quickly you almost missed it. Pain, naked and immediate, there and gone before he could fully suppress it. His gaze dropped briefly to the floor.
“You should not say that.”
“Why not? It is true.”
“It is—” He stopped. Started again. “Unwise.”
“Unwise.” You stared at him. “That is what you have for me.”
“It is the honest answer.”
“No.” You took another step closer and watched him resist the instinct to step back. “It is the coward’s answer, and you are not a coward. Try again.”
Fury crossed his face instantly, the way it always did when he felt cornered. “You presume too much.”
“Then correct me.”
“I am correcting you by telling you this conversation is finished.”
“It is not finished.”
“I say it is.”
“And I say you are running away and dressing it up as dignity.” Your voice had risen now, heat climbing through your chest. “For weeks, Maekar. Weeks of barely a word, barely a look, and you cannot even give me the courtesy of an honest reason—”
“The honest reason,” he said sharply, “is that this—” his hand moved between you, a short furious gesture— “should not continue.”
“What should not continue? We have done nothing—”
“Exactly.” The word came out ragged at the edges. He turned away from you immediately, a hand pressed hard against the nearest table. “Exactly nothing. And it should remain that way.”
You stared at the rigid line of his back.
“Why?” you asked quietly.
“Because I am not—” He stopped.
“Say it.”
“Leave it alone.”
“Say it, Maekar.”
“Because I am not built for this.” The words came out low and furious and slightly broken at once. “Is that what you wanted to hear? I am the fourth son. I have been trained since birth to be useful, to be the sword, to stand behind better men and serve the family’s purpose. That is what I am for.” His shoulders had drawn up tight beneath his doublet. “Not—” A rough breath. “Not this.”
The silence that followed was enormous.
You stood inside it and felt something build in your chest that you did not immediately have a name for. Hot and painful and expanding outward until your hands had begun to shake with it.
“Not this,” you repeated softly.
“No.”
“You are not built for being cared for.”
“I am not built for—”
“You are not enough.” The words came out barely above a whisper. “That is what you mean. That is what you actually believe.”
Maekar said nothing. Which was its own answer.
And that was when it happened.
Something white and furious ignited behind your ribs entirely without permission. Not sadness. Not heartbreak. Pure blazing rage on his behalf, at every person who had ever let him believe that, at every comparison and every dismissal and every moment that had carved this particular damage so deep into him that he recited it now like scripture.
You crossed the distance between you before thought intervened.
Your hands hit his chest and pushed.
Maekar’s back met the stone wall with a dull impact, his eyes flying wide with pure shock — not at the force, though that seemed to surprise him too — but at you. At the fact that you had done it at all. That the person standing before him with their hands fisted in his doublet and fury written plainly across every feature was you, someone half his size, someone he could have moved aside with one arm—
He did not move at all.
“Do not,” you said. Your voice shook with it. “Don't you dare say that to me.”
“I—”
“No.” Your hands tightened against the fabric of his doublet, knuckles pressing hard against the solid warmth of his chest beneath it. “You do not get to stand there and tell me you are not enough. You do not get to decide that. You do not get to spend weeks pulling away from me because some ancient cruelty convinced you that you were made only for function and nothing else—”
“You do not understand—”
“I understand perfectly.” Your eyes were burning now. Furiously. “I have watched you for months. I have seen what you are when you stop performing severity for long enough to simply exist. And you are—” Your voice cracked slightly. You pushed through it. “Maekar, you are extraordinary. Not despite what you are. Not in comparison to anyone. Yourself. And the fact that you cannot see it—”
“Stop.” His voice had gone rough. Unsteady.
“The fact that you have been standing in this family your entire life believing yourself a sword and nothing more—”
“I said stop.” Rougher now.
“It makes me want to—”
“Stop.”
He kissed you.
Not gently. Nothing like gently. His hands came up and caught your face and his mouth found yours with the sudden desperate urgency of a man who had simply run out of other options — who had used every deflection available to him and found you still standing there, furious and certain and refusing to let him be small, and had no idea what to do with that except this.
It lasted one stunned breathless second.
Then he pulled back.
His hands still cradled your face. His breathing had gone ragged. Those violet eyes searched yours with something almost panicked in them — the expression of a man who had just done something irreversible and was only now calculating the consequences.
“I should not have—” he began roughly.
You kissed him back.
Not as apology. Not gently either. You pulled him down by the front of his doublet and kissed him with the full force of everything you had just said and everything you had been holding quietly for months and felt the exact moment the last resistance went out of him completely.
Maekar made a sound against your mouth that you felt in your spine.
His hands slid from your face into your hair, tilting your head back, and suddenly he was kissing you like a man discovering water after a drought — not with careful reverence but with something rawer and more desperate beneath it, like he could not quite believe this was allowed and intended to have all of it before someone told him otherwise.
He broke the kiss with a ragged breath, forehead dropping against yours. His hands were shaking. You could feel it where they cradled your head.
“I have been—” His voice was wrecked completely. “Gods. I have been trying—”
“I know,” you breathed.
“You should have let it be.”
“No.” Your hands slid up his chest, feeling the hard planes of him beneath the fabric, the rapid thumping of his heart betraying every bit of composure his expression had ever pretended to. “I should not and I will not.”
A rough sound escaped him.
His eyes searched your face in the torchlight — violet and open and utterly unguarded in a way you had never seen from him in any council chamber or training yard or castle corridor. The severity was gone. The careful blankness gone. Just a man, terrified and wanting and finally, catastrophically out of excuses.
“You mean this,” he said quietly. Not quite a question.
“I have meant it,” you said, “for a very long time.”
Something in his expression broke entirely open.
His mouth found yours again, slower this time, deeper — and gods, the difference of it. Still hungry but the panic beneath it easing now into something that felt dangerously close to wonder. His hands moved through your hair with a care that contradicted every rough and prickly thing he had ever said or done, like beneath all of it, beneath the sword and the severity and the practiced distance, there had always been this.
Someone who simply needed to be told he was allowed.
“Maekar,” you murmured against his mouth.
A shudder moved through him at his own name spoken like that.
“Gods help me,” he said roughly. “I do not know how to—” He stopped. The admission visibly cost him. “I do not know how to do this.”
Your heart turned over completely.
“Yes, you do,” you whispered. Your hands found his face, thumbs brushing the line of his beard, the old scars beneath it. He exhaled shakily at the contact, eyes falling briefly closed. “You already are.”
That alone seemed to cost him — you could feel it in the rigid tension held through his entire body, in the way his hands remained carefully at his sides where he had lowered them despite the kiss deepening between you. Like he had given himself permission for this much and was terrified of reaching for more in case it proved too much to ask.
So, you decided for him. You took his hands. He went completely still as you lifted them from his sides and placed them — slowly, deliberately, holding his gaze the entire time — against your waist.
Maekar stared at you like you had done something incomprehensible.
“You are allowed,” you assured quietly.
His throat moved. His fingers remained motionless against your waist for one suspended moment, barely making contact, as though the fabric between his hands and your skin was the only thing keeping him tethered to composure.
Then, haltingly, his grip tightened.
Just slightly. Just enough to feel the warmth and solidity of his hands spanning your waist, large enough that his fingers nearly met at the small of your back.
The breath that left him was unsteady.
You rose onto your toes and kissed the corner of his jaw. Felt the muscle there jump immediately beneath your lips. His hands tightened further at your waist, involuntary, like his body was responding entirely without his permission.
You kissed along the sharp line of his jaw toward his ear, unhurried, feeling the roughness of his beard against your lips and the warmth of his skin beneath it.
“You are—” His voice had dropped to almost nothing. “You should not—”
“Maekar.” You pulled back just enough to look at him. His face was flushed, violet eyes dark, every line of him radiating the strain of holding himself still. “Stop telling me what I should not do.”
His jaw tightened. But he said nothing.
You kissed his cheekbone. The high plane of it, just above the beard, where the old pox scars tracked faintly beneath your lips. He made a sound so quiet you almost missed it. Something helpless and involuntary swallowed almost before it could exist.
Your hands moved to the front of his doublet, working the fastenings with steady fingers while his breathing deepened above you. Each button gave way and Maekar stood and let it happen, stood and watched your face with those dark eyes like a man waiting for the dream to end.
You pushed the doublet from his shoulders. It fell in the narrow space between his back and the wall, behind him. Beneath it, linen stretched across broad shoulders and a chest that rose and fell with increasing unevenness. You spread your palms flat against it and felt his heart hammering beneath them, rapid and entirely beyond his control.
Something deeply fond moved through you at that.
“Still with me?” you murmured.
“I think so,” he said roughly.
You laughed softly and felt him exhale shakily in response, his hands sliding fractionally further around your waist like they were making decisions independently of him.
You kissed his throat then. Open mouthed, slow, just below his jaw where his pulse beat rapidly against your lips. Maekar’s head tipped back slightly, an involuntary concession, his fingers pressing harder against your waist.
You kissed lower. The rough scrape of his beard gave way to the warm skin of his neck, and you felt the shudder that moved through him at the contact, felt his grip on you tighten to something that was no longer gentle—
You bit him.
Not hard. Not cruelly. A deliberate scrape of teeth against the curve where his neck met his shoulder, your lips pressing warm against it immediately afterward.
The sound that left Maekar was nothing like anything you had heard from him before. Low and rough and dragged from somewhere entirely beyond his composure. His entire body went rigid for one suspended second—
Then it was like watching a dam break down.
His hands moved.
Suddenly, completely, with a decisiveness that stole the breath from your lungs. One arm swept around your waist and hauled you flush against him with a sureness that made the floor feel uncertain beneath your feet, the other hand sliding into your hair and tilting your head back, and then his mouth was on yours and gods—
Gods.
Nothing hesitant in it. Nothing careful. He kissed you like the last three weeks of distance had been a physical pressure he had been holding back with both hands and your teeth against his skin had finally, catastrophically, released it all at once.
You made a startled sound against his mouth. Maekar just swallowed it and kissed you harder.
He walked you backward through the armoury with complete certainty, steering you through the low torchlight without breaking the kiss, one hand spread wide and immovable at the small of your back and the other still tangled in your hair. The back of your thighs met the edge of the long wooden workbench, and he lifted you onto it without apparent effort — large hands spanning your waist and depositing you there like you weighed nothing of consequence — and stepped immediately between your knees.
The new height brought you almost level with him and he took immediate advantage, cupping your face in both hands and kissing you with a thoroughness that made rational thought extremely difficult.
“Maekar—” you managed between kisses.
“No.” The word came out low and absolute. “You had your turn to talk.”
You laughed and he caught the sound with his mouth and made a rough noise against your lips that sent heat rushing straight through you.
His hands left your face and began moving — not hesitantly now, not waiting for guidance. Large and warm and entirely purposeful, sliding from your jaw down your throat, tracing your collarbones with a focus that suggested he intended to learn every inch of you and had decided to begin immediately.
When his fingers found the lacing at the back of your gown he paused for just a moment, just long enough to pull back and find your eyes. The question was there without words. Still him beneath the urgency. Still that fundamental core of a man who needed to know he was not taking something without being allowed to.
“Yes,” you said before he could ask it.
Something moved across his face. Raw and unguarded and painfully honest.
Then his hands resumed with steady, certain fingers, unlacing slowly at first, then faster as the fastenings gave way.
“You have no idea,” he said roughly against your temple, voice low enough to vibrate through you, “what you have done to me.”
“Tell me,” you breathed funnily.
His hands stilled briefly at your back. “Months.” The word came out almost pained. “I have spent months trying to—” He exhaled roughly. “And you simply—” A sound of frustration. “You walked into a room and I forgot how to be sensible.”
The confession hit somewhere directly behind your sternum.
“Good,” you whispered.
A rough laugh escaped him. Short and startled and entirely real. You felt it against your cheek and stored it somewhere permanent.
His hands resumed their work.
“You are,” he muttered, the lacing finally giving way entirely, “the most inconvenient thing that has ever happened to me.”
You pulled back to look at him. The torchlight caught the flush beneath his beard, the dark intensity of his eyes, the silver threaded through pale hair falling slightly over his forehead. He looked thoroughly undone and absolutely furious about it and so devastatingly his that your chest ached with it.
“Likewise,” you said softly. The look he gave you afterward nearly stopped your heart.
Because beneath the urgency and the feral edge of finally having broken loose — there it was. What lived underneath all of it. What had been living underneath all of it for months in training yards and castle corridors and cold battlements at dusk.
Not just wanting. Something far more dangerous than that.
His forehead dropped against yours.
“I do not know,” he said quietly, the roughness in his voice now carrying something almost bewildered beneath it, “how to be careful with you.”
Your hands rose to his chest. “Then don’t be.”
The breath that left him was long and shaking.
“I may not be able to stop,” he warned lowly.
“Maekar.” You held his gaze. “Do not make me bite you again.”
He stared at you for one moment.
Then something shifted in his expression — the last fragment of restraint dissolving into something that was equal parts exasperated and consumed and desperately fond — and he kissed you again with the full and undivided attention of a man who had just been given permission to stop pretending he wanted anything else.
The lacing gave way beneath his hands with gratifying speed.
Maekar worked with focused single-mindedness, fingers steady now where they had mildly trembled earlier, the fabric loosening incrementally as the fastenings came undone. You sat on the edge of the workbench and let him, your hands resting against his chest, feeling the heat radiating through the linen still covering him and the rapid thumping of his heart beneath it.
The gown loosened around your torso.
Maekar’s hands moved to your shoulders, sliding beneath the fabric to push it downward, and then his patience — which had already survived considerably more than it was built for tonight — ran completely out.
The sound of tearing fabric split the quiet armoury like a small thunderclap.
Maekar went absolutely still.
You bit the inside of your cheek against the laugh trying to escape you.
A beat of silence.
“I—” he began.
“Don’t,” you said.
“The seam—”
“Maekar.”
He looked at you. The expression on his face was genuinely extraordinary — caught somewhere between mortification and the barely contained urgency of a man who had not actually stopped wanting what he had been reaching for, the two things warring openly across his features in the torchlight.
“I will have it mended,” he said roughly.
“I am sure you will,” you agreed pleasantly.
His eyes narrowed slightly at your tone. Then the fabric shifted and his gaze dropped and every coherent thought visibly left his head at once.
You were bare beneath it.
Completely. Deliberately. The torn gown pooled at your waist, the torchlight warm and gold across your skin, and there was absolutely no question that this had not been accidental.
Maekar stared. The silence stretched long enough to become something else entirely.
“You,” he said. His voice had dropped to something low and rough and barely functional. “You planned this.”
“I have absolutely no idea what you mean,” you said serenely.
His eyes dragged slowly back up to your face with an expression that suggested he was reconsidering everything he thought he knew about you and finding the revision both alarming and catastrophic in equal measure.
“You came here tonight,” he said slowly, “without—”
“Maekar.”
“Deliberately.”
“The armoury can get quite warm,” you offered.
Something shifted in his expression then. The mortification burned away entirely, replaced by something darker and more focused, and the look he gave you was nothing like anything you had seen from him before. Not the prickly severity. Not the careful blankness. Something that had been living underneath all of that for months, patient and hungry and entirely done waiting.
“You,” he said quietly, “are going to be the absolute death of me.”
Then his hands were on you.
No hesitation this time. None. Large and warm and completely certain, sliding up from your waist and cupping your breasts with a directness that dragged a sharp breath from your throat. His thumbs moved and your head fell back immediately, a sound escaping you that echoed faintly off the stone walls.
Maekar made a low rough noise in response.
“Gods,” he breathed. The word came out reverent and wrecked at once, his eyes moving over you in the torchlight with an intensity that felt almost tangible. His hands moved with growing urgency, learning the weight and warmth of you, and you could feel in every touch the months of restraint finally broken loose — not gentle, not careful, just present and consuming and entirely focused on you.
His head bent.
His mouth found the curve of your breast and your fingers flew immediately into his hair, loosening whatever order remained in it and sending pale silver-threaded strands falling forward as he pressed an open mouthed kiss against your skin.
The groan that left you was embarrassingly immediate.
Maekar responded to it like a man receiving confirmation of something he had suspected and filed carefully away — his mouth moving with sudden purposefulness, tongue warm against your nipple while his hands held you steady against him.
Your grip tightened in his hair.
He groaned against your skin and the vibration of it shot straight through you.
“There,” he murmured roughly against your breast, the word low and satisfied in a way that was entirely new from him. Like he had discovered a language he had not known he spoke. “I want to hear that again.”
You gave him exactly what he asked for.
His mouth moved across your chest with growing confidence, learning what made you gasp and returning to it with focused intent, his large hands spanning your ribs and holding you exactly where he wanted you with an ease that made you feel impossibly, wonderfully small against him.
At some point his mouth travelled upward again, kissing the curve of your throat, the line of your jaw, finding your mouth with sudden renewed urgency while his hands remained occupied and his thumbs moved in ways that made coherent thought genuinely difficult.
You broke the kiss with a rough breath. His forehead dropped against yours, both of you breathing unevenly in the warm torchlit dark.
“The dress,” you managed. “You owe me a dress.”
A sound escaped him. Short and low and startled — that real unguarded laugh again, the one you had been collecting like something rare.
“Add it to my debts,” he said roughly against your mouth.
“Your debts are mounting, my prince.”
His right index and thumb pinched the sensible mount of your breast and stole whatever you had been planning to say next directly from your throat.
“Then,” he murmured, low and certain and devastating, “allow me to begin repaying them.”
Your hands found the hem of his linen shirt. Maekar pulled back slightly at the contact, just enough to look down at your hands, then back up at your face. Something flickered briefly in his expression — that old reflex, the instinct to stop this before it became something he did not know how to carry.
You held his gaze and pulled the shirt upward.
He let you. Lifted his arms without being asked, a concession so simple and so enormous from him that something ached sweetly in your chest at the sight of it. The linen cleared his head and you dropped it somewhere behind him without ceremony.
Then you looked at him and forgot, momentarily, what you had been about to say.
The torchlight caught him gold and shadow — broad shoulders, the hard planes of a chest dusted with pale hair, the evidence of years of training written into every line of him. A scar crossed his left side, old and long-healed, another at his shoulder. Marks accumulated quietly over years, worn without comment, without complaint.
Your hands rose before thought intervened.
You pressed your palms flat against his chest the way you had through the fabric earlier, except now there was nothing between your skin and his and the warmth of him nearly stole your breath.
Maekar went very still beneath your hands. You felt his heartbeat. Rapid and entirely beyond his control, hammering against your palm with a candour the rest of him would never willingly allow.
“You are—” He stopped. Something worked in his jaw. “You should not look at me like that.”
You dragged your gaze up to his face. “Like what?”
“Like—” The words seemed to cost him. “Like you find something worth looking at.”
The ache behind your ribs sharpened immediately into something almost painful.
“Maekar.” Your hands slid slowly upward across his chest, feeling the warmth of him, the solid reality of all that restrained strength beneath your palms. “I have found something worth looking at since the first time you glared at me on a battlement.”
His throat moved.
“That was not—” He stopped again.
“You are breathtaking,” you said quietly, a faint smile accompanying your words.
Something shifted in his face. The vulnerability flickering through before the familiar impulse to suppress it could fully engage. Your fingers traced slowly across his shoulder, following the line of the old scar there with deliberate gentleness. Maekar’s breath caught.
“Does it bother you?” you asked softly. “When I touch them?”
A long pause.
“No,” he said roughly. Then, quieter, “That is the problem.”
Your heart turned completely over. You leaned forward and pressed your lips against the scar at his shoulder. Felt the sharp intake of breath above you, felt the hands at your waist tighten convulsively.
Then you kissed across his collarbone. His chest. The old, healed line at his ribs, your lips warm and unhurried against each mark while Maekar stood and endured it with the expression of a man being quietly and thoroughly dismantled and lacking any remaining means of defence.
“You are doing it again,” he said. Strained.
“What?”
“Being—” A rough exhale. “Kind. About things that do not require kindness.”
You looked up at him from where your lips rested against his ribs. “They require it from me.”
The flush that climbed his face was immediate and violent, spreading beneath his beard and straight to the tips of his ears. He looked furious about it in the way he always did when caught feeling something he had not prepared for.
You rose back up at the workbench’s edge and kissed the line of his jaw, his cheekbone, the corner of his mouth.
His hands slid up your bare back, warm and spanning and pulling you closer against the heat of his chest, your skin against his now with nothing between you and the contact stole a soft sound from you both simultaneously.
Maekar pressed his mouth against your temple.
“You are going to ruin me,” he said quietly. Not an accusation. Something far more honest than that.
Your arms wound around his neck.
“I think I already did,” you murmured against his jaw. Then you found his throat again — the place you had bitten before, still faintly marked — and pressed your tongue there deliberately.
The sound that left him resonated through his entire chest as his arms tightened around you completely.
“Again,” he said. Low and immediate and entirely without shame this time. The commanding quality back in full force, the vulnerability of a moment ago folded back underneath it — except now you knew it was there, now you had seen it, and no amount of authority in his voice could fully conceal it from you anymore.
You smiled against his throat and obliged.
His hands had been moving through your hair, your mouth still warm against his throat, when you leaned back from him and slid slowly, deliberately, from the edge of the workbench.
You felt the exact moment he realised what you intended when he looked down and saw how your knees met the stone floor.
The expression that crossed his face was unlike anything you had ever seen from him. Not the flush of embarrassment. Not the guarded severity. Something rawer than open shock, moving through every feature while his hands remained suspended where they had been, hovering uselessly in the air where your hair had been a moment ago.
“What are you—” His voice came out entirely wrong. Rough and halting and stripped of every trace of the commanding certainty of moments ago. “You do not have to—”
“I know,” you said simply.
Your fingers found the laces of his trousers.
“I want to,” you added, and looked up at him while you said it, held those violet eyes deliberately while your fingers worked the fastenings loose, and watched the words land somewhere so deep inside him that his jaw tightened against whatever sound tried to escape.
“You—” He stopped. Tried again. Failed again.
The laces gave way.
Maekar inhaled sharply through his nose, a sound so controlled it betrayed exactly how much effort the control was costing him. His hands had found your shoulders now — not pushing, not guiding, simply resting there as though he needed something to hold onto and you were the only solid thing available.
You freed him slowly.
The rough sound that left him at that alone nearly undid you entirely.
He was already hard — he must have been for some time, you suspected, given the considerable evidence — and warm and heavy and when you wrapped your hand around him and simply held for a moment, looking up at his face, the expression you found there stopped your breath completely.
Wrecked did not cover it.
Maekar looked like a man who had been struck. Colour high beneath his beard, eyes dark and blown wide, chest heaving with the effort of breathing evenly. His hands on your shoulders had tightened to something that might leave marks and you found you did not mind that even slightly.
But beneath all of that — beneath the hunger and the shock and the barely contained urgency —
Something bewildered. Something terribly, painfully young. Like he was genuinely unable to comprehend that you were here, on your knees, looking up at him like this. Like the image of it did not fit inside any version of himself he had ever been allowed to imagine.
“You do not—” he tried again, jaw working. “I am not—”
“Maekar.” Your thumb moved over the tip of his cock and his entire sentence dissolved instantly. “Let me.”
A shaking breath left him.
You held his gaze one moment longer. Making sure he saw it — the intention in your eyes, the complete and utter absence of reluctance, the certainty that this was chosen and deliberate and wanted.
Then you leaned forward and took him into your mouth.
The sound he made was immediate and violent and nothing like anything that had left him all evening. His head fell back against the shelving behind him with a dull impact he seemed entirely unaware of, a rough broken noise tearing free from his chest as his hands flew from your shoulders into your hair — not gripping, not guiding, just holding, fingers tangled and shaking against your scalp like he needed the contact to confirm this was real.
You took your time. Deliberately. Thoroughly. The way you had kissed his scars earlier — with a focused attention that communicated unmistakably that this was not obligation, not performance. That you were here because you wanted to be here, on these cold stone floors, with this impossible prickly furious man coming completely apart above you.
“Gods—” The word came out shattered. “Gods—”
His hips shifted forward fractionally, involuntary, immediately arrested as though he had caught himself. Still trying to restrain even now. Still terrified of taking too much.
You took him deeper in direct response.
“Seven hells—” The curse left him in a rough exhale, every muscle in the hand tangled in your hair tensing simultaneously. “You— I cannot— gods, you have to—”
He did not finish the sentence. Could not, apparently. You looked up at him through your lashes and that was what finished it.
Meeting his eyes from where you knelt — watching the full devastating wreckage of his composure written openly across his face, the flush and the parted lips and the shaking jaw and the violet eyes looking down at you with an expression that contained hunger and wonder and something so much larger than either that it had no clean name—
Maekar made a sound that came from somewhere entirely beyond dignity.
“Please,” he said roughly. Barely audible. The word seemingly startling him as much as you, like it had escaped without permission — Prince Maekar Targaryen, the sword of the family, the prickly unmovable fourth son, pleading to the ceiling of an armoury with his hands shaking in your hair.
Something triumphant and tender and desperately fond moved through you simultaneously.
You gave him everything.
He lasted considerably less time than his pride would probably prefer, which you found entirely endearing. The hands in your hair tightened with sudden urgency, a rough warning that was also half a question, and you answered it by staying exactly where you were and he broke apart above you with your name leaving his mouth like something torn free from the centre of him.
Not gods. Not a curse. Not a prayer. Your name. Just your name, rough and wrecked and reverent all at once.
The silence that followed was enormous.
Maekar stood against the shelving breathing like he had run a considerable distance, chest heaving, one hand still tangled loosely in your hair and the other against the wall, almost as if he needed it to keep balance. You rose slowly from the floor, brushing stone dust from your knees with the composure of someone who had absolutely planned all of this, and looked up to find him staring at you.
The expression on his face nearly made your heart stop.
Not the satisfied blankness you might have expected. Not even the lingering hunger. Something bewildered and open and completely undefended, sitting raw across every feature in the torchlight. Like what had just happened had rearranged something fundamental inside him and he was still taking inventory of the damage.
His mouth opened. Closed.
“You,” he said finally. His voice was completely destroyed. “You are—” He stopped. Seemed to genuinely lose the words.
His hans moved to your face, slowly, cupping your jaw with fingers that still trembled slightly. His thumb traced once beneath your cheekbone.
“I did not know,” he said quietly, “that someone would—” He stopped again. Jaw tight. “That I could—”
“You can,” you said softly.
His eyes closed briefly. You rose onto your toes and kissed the corner of his mouth. Maekar exhaled shakily against your cheek.
Then his hands found your waist with renewed purpose and he walked you backward toward the workbench again. The look in his eyes when he pulled back to find yours was nothing like the bewildered wreckage of a moment ago.
Certain. Focused. Warm beneath the hunger in a way that was entirely new from him.
“Your turn,” he said quietly.
He lifted you back onto the workbench like you weighed nothing.
The ease of it still sent heat rushing through you — the casual certainty of those large hands spanning your waist, the complete absence of effort, the way he stepped immediately between your knees and looked at you in the torchlight with that focused unhurried attention that had migrated from training yards and council disputes and settled here, on you, with its full undivided weight.
“Maekar—”
“No,” he said. Quiet and absolute. “You had your turn.”
“You said that already.”
“And I meant it both times.”
His hands found the fabric pooled at your waist — the ruins of your gown, the torn seam still hanging where his impatience had destroyed it — and pushed it further down your hips with steady purposeful fingers. You lifted slightly to allow it and the fabric fell away entirely, leaving you in nothing but the torchlight and his gaze.
Maekar looked at you.
Slowly. Completely. With the focused thoroughness he gave everything — as though you were something that deserved to be properly examined before anything else could proceed.
The flush climbed your own face this time.
“You seem to be gaping, my prince,” you said conceitedly.
"Perhaps," he said lowering his mouth again to your sternum and upwards. "Or perhaps I am simply wondering how you manage to be so insufferably, distractingly beautiful," he murmured against your lips and closed the distance again.
His kisses were slower than before. Deeper. With the particular quality of a man who has just had something enormous confirmed and is no longer in any hurry to pretend otherwise. His hands moved across your bare skin with a thoroughness that suggested he intended to learn every inch of you and considered this a reasonable allocation of his evening.
His mouth left yours and travelled downward yet again.
Your throat. Your collarbone. The curve of your breast where he had been earlier, returning with renewed focus, and the sound you made when his mouth found your nipple again was immediate and entirely undignified.
Maekar made a low satisfied noise against your skin.
“There,” he murmured. The word vibrated warm against you. “I have been thinking about that sound.”
“You—” Coherence was becoming genuinely difficult. “You have?”
There was no response to your question, him being entirely focused on savouring your breasts to a point where you thought he would devour them entirely,
“Maekar—” you pressed whining.
“Mm.” Not really listening. Occupied.
His hands slid down your sides, your waist, the curve of your hips, with an attentiveness that made your skin feel oversensitive everywhere he had not touched yet. He took his time. Deliberately. Like he was paying something back with interest and intended to be thorough about it.
His mouth followed the same path downward, pressing open kisses across your stomach while you sat on the edge of the workbench and tried to remember how breathing worked.
When he lowered himself to his knees in front of you the sound that escaped you was involuntary and immediate.
Maekar looked up.
The sight of him there — this enormous severe prickly man, on his knees, violet eyes finding yours from below with an expression of complete and utter focus — nearly stopped your heart entirely.
“Consider it returned,” he said quietly.
Then he pulled your thighs over his shoulders and lowered his head to tour core, and every coherent thought you possessed simply ceased to exist.
He was not tentative. Not uncertain. Maekar approached this the way he approached everything — with complete commitment and zero interest in half measures — and the wet, filthy sounds filling the quiet armoury within moments were yours and entirely beyond your control.
His hands held your hips with firm certainty, keeping you exactly where he wanted you with an ease that made you feel helplessly, wonderfully at his mercy. His mouth and tongue moved with focused intent, learning what made your breath catch and returning to it immediately, cataloguing every reaction with the same attentiveness he gave a training yard or a tactical problem.
“Gods—” Your hands flew into his hair, fingers tangling in the pale silver-threaded strands. “Maekar—”
He made a sound against you that vibrated through your entire body. Your grip tightened. He did not seem to mind even slightly.
“Look at me,” he said against your inner thigh, pulling back just enough to speak. His voice had dropped to something rough and low that resonated somewhere in the base of your spine. “I want—” A brief pause. Something working in his jaw. “I want to see you.”
You looked down and found his eyes already waiting.
He held your gaze and resumed and the combination of it — those violet eyes watching your face with naked focused intensity while his mouth worked with devastating thoroughness — unravelled the last remnants of your composure completely.
The tension coiled so tight it became almost unbearable.
“Maekar—” His name came out broken. “Please—”
Something moved in his eyes at that.
He pressed closer, arms wrapping around your middle and pulling you against his mouth with sudden decisive urgency, and the tension snapped apart all at once. You came with his name on your lips and your hands fisted in his hair and your entire body shaking with it, and Maekar held you through every tremor with steady certain hands like he had always been built for exactly this.
Like he had been built for you specifically and simply not known it yet.
The silence afterward was soft and golden and full of your uneven breathing. Maekar rose slowly from his knees.
He stood before you in the torchlight, flushed and thoroughly dishevelled, pale hair falling loose around his face, and looked at you with an expression so open and unguarded that it nearly made your eyes sting.
Not the bewilderment of earlier. Something that had moved past bewilderment into something quieter and more settled. Like a man who has just understood something he had been refusing to look at directly for a very long time.
You reached for him.
He came without hesitation — no flinching, no deflection — and let you pull him in until his forehead rested against yours and his hands settled at your waist and the warmth of him surrounded you entirely.
“Still think,” you murmured softly, “that you are not built for this?”
A long pause.
“No,” he said roughly. The word came out almost wondering. Like the answer had surprised him.
Your hands found his face. Thumbs tracing the line of his now wetted beard, the scars beneath it, the high flush still colouring his cheekbones. He closed his eyes briefly the way he always did when you touched him there.
“Good,” you whispered.
His hands tightened at your waist.
“We are not finished,” he said. Lower now. The commanding quality returning beneath the softness, threading through it rather than replacing it.
Heat rushed through you immediately.
“I thought so,” you agreed.
He pulled back to look at you, something certain and hungry and devastatingly focused sitting in those violet eyes. He had you on your back against the workbench before you had fully processed the movement.
One moment upright, the next flat against the worn wood with Maekar’s hands braced on either side of your head and the full commanding weight of his attention pinning you as effectively as anything physical could have managed.
The torchlight caught him from above — flushed, breathing hard, pale hair falling forward around his face, every trace of the prickly guarded prince burned away entirely — and gods, the sight of him like this did something catastrophic to your ability to think clearly.
His forehead dropped briefly against yours.
“I want—” He stopped. Something working visibly in his jaw. “I need you to tell me.” His voice came out rough and strained and carefully controlled. “If I—”
“Maekar.”
“I am not—” Another stop. The flush deepening. “I do not want to hurt you.”
The vulnerability beneath the urgency hit somewhere directly behind your sternum. You reached up and took his face in both hands.
“You will not hurt me,” you said clearly.
“You do not know that.” His eyes searched yours with an intensity that had nothing to do with desire and everything to do with that bedrock quality of him — the thing that made him reposition himself between danger and others without thinking, that made him remember injuries, that made him protect fiercely everything he considered his. “I am—” A rough exhale. “It has been some time. And I—” He stopped completely. The flush had reached his ears. “I do not do things gently when I—”
“Good,” you said. He blinked. “I do not want gentle,” you said. Plainly. Clearly. Holding his gaze so he could see every word landing true. “I want you. All of it.” Your thumb traced his jaw and felt the muscle jump beneath it. “Do you understand what I am telling you?”
Maekar stared at you.
“You are—” The words seemed to fail him entirely.
“I am certain,” you said. “I am telling you I want it rough. I am telling you I have been waiting weeks for this and I am done waiting.” A beat. “I am also telling you that I am considerably less fragile than you seem determined to believe.”
Something shifted in his expression so completely it was almost visible as a physical thing — the last protective restraint dissolving, replaced by something dark and focused and entirely done being reasonable.
“You are certain,” he repeated. Not a question this time.
“Maekar.” You held his gaze. “I came here tonight practically naked.”
A sound escaped him that was almost a laugh and almost something else entirely. Then his mouth found yours and whatever he had been about to say disappeared completely.
He kissed you with the full pent up force of weeks of deliberate distance, of every turned back and every carefully engineered absence and every moment he had spent convincing himself he was not allowed — and you felt every single day of it in the urgency behind it, in the hands sliding beneath your thighs and repositioning you against the edge of the workbench with sudden decisive purpose.
He settled between your thighs and you felt him — all of him — and the sharp breath that left you was immediate and involuntary.
Maekar stilled.
“Still—”
“Yes,” you said firmly.
His jaw tightened. His hands gripped your hips. And he pushed forward slowly, carefully despite everything, a concession to that bedrock protectiveness that apparently even weeks of pent up wanting could not fully override—
The sound you both made simultaneously when his cock went smoothly into your dripping cunt echoed off the stone walls.
“Gods,” he breathed. Barely audible. The word stripped of everything except pure involuntary honesty. His forehead dropped to your chest, both hands gripping your hips hard enough to anchor you both to reality, every muscle in his body held in rigid check while he gave you a moment to adjust.
You felt— full. Completely. Wonderfully overwhelmingly full, the stretch of him settling into something that sat on the precise edge between too much and exactly right.
“Maekar.” You wrapped your legs around him. “Move.”
Something in him simply let go.
He drew back and thrust forward and the workbench scraped against the stone floor with the force of it and you cried out into the quiet armoury with absolutely zero remaining concern for who might hear.
Maekar groaned low against your throat.
“Again,” you managed.
He obliged.
And again. And again. The careful deliberateness of moments ago burning away entirely as the rhythm built — deep and certain and relentless. The workbench protested steadily beneath you while his hands held your hips exactly where he wanted them with a grip that would leave the memory of his fingers on your skin for days and you found you wanted that. Wanted the evidence of it. Wanted to carry it back to Queen Myriah’s chambers tomorrow like a secret pressed beneath your skin.
Maekar was not quiet about it.
That surprised you — this man who guarded every reaction, who suppressed every sound, who had spent a lifetime performing composure — coming apart above you with rough broken noises pressed against your throat that he seemed entirely beyond managing. Low and urgent and devastatingly real, dragged free by every movement, every sound you made in response, every time your hands gripped the back of his neck and pulled him closer.
Like he had been holding all of it for so long that now the dam had broken there was simply nothing left to hold with.
“You feel—” His voice came out wrecked and wondering against your jaw. “Gods, you feel—”
“Don’t stop,” you breathed.
A rough sound. “I could not.” Said with complete and utter certainty. “I physically could not.”
Your back arched off the workbench.
His hand slid beneath it immediately — that same instinct, even now, even like this — supporting you, keeping you from the hard edge of the wood while the other gripped your hip and his rhythm deepened into something that stole rational thought entirely.
“Look at me,” he said roughly.
You found his eyes.
Violet and dark and completely unguarded, holding yours with an intensity that had nowhere left to hide — every wall down, every practiced blankness burned away, just Maekar looking at you like you were the only solid thing in the room and he was holding on accordingly.
The expression on his face finished you.
Not the hunger, though that was there, overwhelming and undeniable. But underneath it — wonder. Still wonder. Even now. Like he still could not entirely believe this was real and had decided to look at you directly until it became impossible to doubt.
“I see you,” you whispered. His rhythm faltered for one broken moment.
Then his mouth found yours and he kissed you with everything he had left and the hand at your hip tightened, the workbench scraped and you stopped thinking in words entirely.
The tension had been coiling for weeks — through every turned back and every engineered absence and every moment of deliberate distance — and when it finally broke it broke completely, your whole body arching against him while his name tore free from your throat in a way that would absolutely echo and you found you did not care even slightly.
Maekar followed you over the edge moments later, his cock throbbing inside you and filling you up so deliciously.
Your name again. Just your name, the same as before — rough and broken and said like it was the only word he had ever been certain of.
The silence afterward was vast and golden and full of ragged breathing.
He did not move immediately. Simply rested his forehead against yours, both hands gentling from their grip to something that was almost cradling, chest heaving against yours while the torchlight flickered its slow indifferent commentary across the walls.
You lay on a workbench in an armoury with a discarded torn dress and a thoroughly dishevelled prince and the distant sounds of the castle carrying on entirely without you.
“Maekar,” you said eventually. Soft, nails gently caressing his scalp.
“Mm.” Not fully returned yet.
“The workbench survived.” A long pause.
Then that laugh. Low and startled and utterly real, resonating through his chest and into yours where you were still pressed together.
“Barely,” he said.
You smiled into his shoulder. "Think this thing is sturdy enough for a second assault?"
His laugh deepened against your throat where his face had finally landed. His arms tightened around you once — brief, fierce, communicating something he did not yet have words for — before he pulled back enough to look at your face with that new expression. The one that had moved past bewilderment into something quieter and more permanent.
“You are—” He stopped. Looked almost frustrated by his own inability to finish the sentence.
“I know,” you said gently.
He looked at you for a long moment.
“No,” he said quietly. “You do not.” His thumb traced once across your cheekbone. “But I find myself— wanting to explain it to you.” A pause in which he seemed to surprise himself. “Eventually.”
Your heart turned completely over.
“I am not going anywhere,” you said.
Something settled in his face at that. Deep and slow like a foundation finding solid ground.
“No,” he agreed. “You certainly are not.”
The next morning, you had managed the dress. Barely.
The torn seam had required creative pinning in places that would not have survived close examination, which meant you had changed entirely before dawn and disposed of the evidence with the focused efficiency of someone who had absolutely thought this through.
You had not, however, thought about what your face could tell.
Queen Myriah’s chambers sat warm and bright in the morning light, the fire already built up against the early chill, and her grace herself sat composed and unhurried before her mirror while you worked through the familiar ritual of her morning hair with hands that were almost entirely steady.
Almost.
You had been telling yourself for the better part of an hour that you were perfectly fine. That nothing in your bearing communicated anything unusual. That you were a consummate lady in waiting with complete command of your own expression and the events of last night were entirely invisible on your person.
You were doing very well at believing this.
Until the door opened and Maekar stepped into the room.
He had managed himself considerably better than you — composed, dressed, every trace of last night’s dishevelment erased, only the faintest shadow beneath his eyes suggesting the hour at which he had eventually sought his own chambers. His gaze found you immediately, the way it always did now, and something shifted briefly in his expression before the careful blankness reasserted itself.
Your hands stilled in Myriah’s hair for exactly one betraying second. Heat climbed your face with the subtlety of a siege engine.
You resumed immediately. Smoothly. Professionally.
In the mirror, Queen Myriah’s eyes moved from her son’s face to yours. Then back to her son’s. Then back to yours.
The silence lasted approximately four seconds.
“Maekar,” she said pleasantly. “How unexpected. You rarely visit before council.”
“I had correspondence to discuss.” His voice was admirably even. “If you have a moment.”
“Of course.” Myriah’s eyes returned to her own reflection, her expression settling into something that was almost serenity and was in fact the most dangerous thing you had ever seen on a human face. “Though you look tired, my son. Did you sleep poorly?”
A beat.
“I slept adequately.”
“Mm.” Her grace examined her reflection with great interest. “And you—” this to you, in the same pleasant tone— “you look rather flushed this morning. Are you well, my child?”
“Perfectly well, your grace,” you said. With tremendous composure. “The fire is just warm.”
“It is, isn’t it.” A pause. “Maekar, does she not look remarkably well this morning?”
The silence that followed was catastrophic.
You did not look up from her hair. You focused on it with the complete and total dedication of someone whose life depended on a particular arrangement of pins.
“She looks—” Maekar stopped. Cleared his throat. “Fine.”
“Fine,” Myriah repeated thoughtfully.
You could feel her smiling in the mirror without looking at it. The specific quality of it radiating outward like heat from a particularly self-satisfied fire.
“Your correspondence,” you said to her reflection. Firmly. “Shall I fetch it after I have finished your hair, your grace?”
“There is no hurry.” Her grace was the picture of morning leisure. “Maekar, sit. You are making the room feel crowded standing in the doorway like a man who wishes to be somewhere else.”
He sat. With the expression of someone accepting a siege they know they cannot win.
You finished the final pin with hands that were absolutely trying not to shake.
“There,” you said. “Your grace.”
Myriah examined her reflection. Turned her head slightly left. Then right. The gesture of a woman entirely satisfied with her hair and entirely unconcerned with that being the subject under discussion.
Then she looked at you directly in the mirror.
“You may take a moment as well,” she said pleasantly. “You have been standing since dawn.”
“I am perfectly—”
“It was not a suggestion, my dear girl.”
So you sat.
The three of you existed in the warm morning quiet of the solar for one extraordinary moment — Queen Myriah composed and radiant, you studying the middle distance with tremendous focus, and Maekar to your left apparently finding the grain of the table deeply fascinating.
“Well,” said Myriah eventually. In the tone of a woman setting down a winning hand at cards. “This is very pleasant, is it not?.”
Maekar’s ears went red. You became very interested in your own hands.
Her grace looked between you both with the expression of a woman who had navigated the politics of two great houses, raised four sons, and survived the court of King Daeron with her dignity entirely intact — a woman, in short, who had seen absolutely everything and could not currently be less surprised by any of it.
The smile she was not quite suppressing was the most Dornish thing you had ever witnessed.
“I always did think,” she said lightly, returning to her own reflection and touching one pin with a satisfied air, “that the armoury at dusk was terribly romantic.”
The silence that followed had texture.
“Mother—” Maekar began.
“The correspondence can wait,” said Myriah serenely, already rising from her seat and making for the door. “Enjoy your morning, children.”
I just had to make Maekar's version more reader-domineering, I could not resist myself. So, what are your thoughts on this one??
Tags: readers first makeout🫶 fingering F reviving, Handjob, cuddling, fucking on the floor👏, arranged marriage, Maekar doesn’t want a 2nd wife (what else is new), near drowning incident, PnV sex, unprotected sex, losing virginity, brief mention of blood, Maekar experiencing guilt (and reflecting on it *shocker*)
Summary: you’ve married Maekar but the only people who have really welcomed you to Summerhall are his youngest three children. When you risk your own life to protect them Maekar finally has to admit that you do have a place here!
word count: 6.1 k
A/N: I loveeee grumpy Maekar but am shit at writing those snappy quips so that’s why he’s always troubling enamored so quickly by the reader in my fics 🙈
“Don’t-“ you were so winded when you grabbed Aegon’s arm that you needed to breath for a solid moment before continuing on. “Don’t run off like that.” You scold him bending a bit so you two were eye to eye.
You’d been lucky to not need to do much scolding of your husbands children. Which had benefitted you greatly while navigating the complexities of running a hall that had been devoid of a lady, a mother for some time. The little ones probably liked you because of the attention you gave them, because of how you enjoyed playing their silly games when their father had no time…or patience for it.
Though with the cold weather their temperaments changed. They never seemed to have enough avenues to exert their energy since their playing was all stuck inside.
The cold did not feel as suffocating to you. It was just apart of life in the north and the storm land hardly got as frozen and bitter as things got back home. Which was why you had decided to bundle the younger ones all up and take them for a walk. You thought they might like to see the frozen leaves, perhaps look for one of the robins that’s feather became easy to spot again the white forest floor.
Maekar had not looked up from his papers when you suggested it at break of fast. The only way you knew he had even heard your proposal was the warning he grumbled out to Egg, Daella and Rhae to behave for you.
Perhaps you should have then them each out individually because the three of them together just led to far to much energy.
“There pond is around here somewhere and the last thing you need is to wind up under broken ice!” You warned him. It was serious, you did not want to see them injured….and it was your responsibility to see to them.
Maekar had made that clear. You knew before the wedding that he had not sought you out. You’d just been conveniently there when the topic of him taking a second wife came up. It was all rather flattering, the Queen herself suggested you to Maekar. She’d seen you knelt down in the gardens helping his children catch little red lady bugs and worms. His mother had convinced him of the value a maternal figure might bring to his household…that additional stability from another an adult could temper issues before they began.
You’d been so excited, foolishly so, but he was a prince it made sense that you were flattered and thrilled by it all. You’d even found yourself remarking on his serious but striking apperence, on the deep tome of his voice…you’d told your lady maids, with flushed cheeks, that you were looking forward to your wedding night.
You hadn’t been looking forward to the bedding ceremony…being grabbed at by random men and touched. Though when he deny the event at the end of the feast you had known something was off right away. He had not asked you of your feelings in the matter so it did not come across like he was doing you some great kindness by avoiding it.
He denied it for himself. You found that out the moment you entered his chambers and he handed you a cup of wine. He did not sit with you on the edge of the bed…did not even look up when you got down to your chemise and chewed your lip eagerly waiting for him to make some sort of advance. You knew what happened in a marriage bed but not enough of the specifics to initiate anything yourself. He stay in the chair by the fireplace that entire night. Not moving as he told you he had taken your hand for his children, so they could have another person looking after them, he told you he wanted no more children, did not need companionship and had no desire to bed you.
Maekar was many things but he was not a liar. All those things he had made painfully clear to you on the wedding night had remained true. You were not here for him, just them.
“Look mother! There’s a red feather!” Rhae exclaimed. She and Aegon had each slipped and called you that. It always made you feel quite important but you were truthfully worried about Maekar hearing it. What would he think? Had you been to involved with them? Should you correct them?
Slowly you let go of Aegon’s arm after giving him one more warning look and then you followed Rhae towards the tree that had a vibrant feather laid on one of the branches. You were mid lifting her up so she could try and grab it when you heard a piercing shriek.
It was so loud, in an otherwise quiet woods, that every bird suddenly flew up out of the trees just as started as you were.
Rhae looked around, gripping onto your shoulders. “What was that?” She whispered her legs winding around your midsection as you began to move in the direction of the sound.
“Daella?!” You called. It sounded like her shout.
When there was no answer to your call you began to run in the direction of the sound. Dropping Rhae down the moment you saw the pond.
Gods, oh gods. You were here to look after them.
Before your eyes Maekars oldest daughter was grasping at the edge of broken ice, her upper body was above the water but everything below her hips was submerged. The air infront of you was clouded white from how quickly you were breathing, your lungs burning a bit from brining in so much of the cold air.
“help!” She cried and you instantly started out onto the pond. It wasn’t nearly cold enough here for the ice to get so thick that it could safely support a person. You should have been watching them better.
“Rhae, go back to the hall, tell the first person you come across about this.” She urged the child and heard her little feet pad against the frozen ground back up to the keep.
You bent down, basically crawling out to her, knowing you needed to distribute your weight so the ice would give out under you as well.
“I’ve got you, just-“ you grabbed her wrists trying to pull her towards you. “Can you kick your legs?” Her skirts were waterlogged and that made them very heavy.
“Come on Daella!” You grunted as you got closer and grabbed her under the arms hoisting her up over the jagged edge of of the hole and she landed right over you. Both of you panting, Rhaella shaking and her teeth chattering loudly.
“Breathe, I’ve got you.” You were holding the back of her head, squeezing her against you as your adrenaline came down. “I’ve got you.” You kissed her head and started to try and sit you both up.
“Egg…” she whimpered. Her teeth were rattling so much it was hard for her to speak. “Egg fell in.” She eventually got out and you scurried out from under her quickly looking at the hole and freezing water.
“Go to the bank!” You directed her sternly and knelt over the edge gasping as you reached your arms down into the water feeling for him. The fact that there was no thrashing around made you uneasy. Had he sunk down to the bottom? Did he breathe in the water?
You took in the largest breath you possibly could and willed yourself right down into the water. The air was pushed out of your lungs almost Instantly from the shock but you attempted to keep moving as much as you could.
It would destroy this family…another loss. Especially rambunctious but loving egg!
Your long dark hair swirled around your face in the water making it hard to see but your foot bumped Into something and you grabbed at it. The only warmth, as mild as it was, in the blinding cold. The pond was not that deep, and so on your tip toes your hands could breach the surface. You shoved Aegon on and somehow dragged your own self up onto the ice.
“no…no wake up.” You started to shake at the little boy a bit and when you saw his hands and lips were purple you found the strength to lift him up into your arms. His feet dragged as you carried him through the woods but it was the most you could manage. Daella shaking, terrified and dazed from it all held to your stiff heavy skirts as you went. He had to get inside, needed to be warmed and see the maester. He was coughing into your chest now, water heaving from his lungs.
You were one of sorts yourself from being submerged and althought you heard shouting you did not actually see anybody coming your way. Not until suddenly Aegon was being lifted off of you and Daella was snatched up as well.
“get her inside!” Maekar, who had been informed after the first guard had been alerted to the issue at the pond, managed to barrel ahead of any other person heading down toward the forests edge. At the time all that was known was that Daella had been on the pond and the ice cream as broken. That was more than enough to put him in this state. The knight would get there, but not as quickly as he would.
The prince was sprinting up the pathway to the keep and you started right after him before any guard reached you to assist. Aegon looked limp in his father’s arms and you were so terrified that you just continued through the hall after the three of them despite maids urging you to stop.
“get off of me!” You warned pushing their hands away and successfully getting into the maesters work room. Aegon was already stripped and being covered in blankets and warmed stone and you saw Rhaella shaking in one of her septa’s arms as she was brought away to be changed and looked over. She seemed, scared and if that was all than she was quite lucky because her brother had still not opened his eyes.
“I told them to stay away from the pond-“ you began trying to squeeze your way closer to the bed the little prince was laid out it. “H-he was coughing when I pulled him out, there was water in-in his lungs.” You managed to shared with the maester, dark eyes wild and frantic as you spoke.
“Get her out of this bloody gown” Maekar directed the comment towards a young women stood near the door, clearly unsure what she should be doing in the mist of this chaos. “now!” He barked snapping his hand against the side table to jostle the maid from her stagnant position. He had pulled his hand off of its spot on his sons head, he’d been stroking the light silver hair back since getting him into this bed.
“I’m quite a-a-alright.” You told the maid quickly, teeth were clattering so much that it took you so long to get that sentence out that the use of ‘alright’ was quite unbelievable.
Maekar could feel the chill that was emanating off your body behind him and suddenly he turned at once, wide shoulders clearing his way as he grabbed the soaked fabric around your waist and backed you up towards the bathing chambers.
“m’lord-Aegon needs you.” You start but are quickly turned around. You supposed it made sense that he could move you and your heavy waterlogged dress so easily, his strength during the rebellion had resulted in songs after all!
“Fucks sake”
You gasp when his fingers sink between the little spaces in the lacing down your back and he pulls the fabric and strings apart. All the grommets would be torn, it was completly wrecked. it was also handing down at your feet now, some relief did come from no longer being squeezed in by such cold fabric.
“He needs you to still be breathing when he wakes…” Maekar muttered out grabbing your chemise and tearing that fabric as if it was nothing more than a single piece of parchment.
He wasn’t wrong, staying dressed like this would have you catching your death. Had you been less panicked you would have likely attempted to get some of the layers off of you down by the pond but the adrenaline had not allowed for proper thinking.
“Your grace,” the maester called from the other room. There was alot of coughing and voices of people telling Aegon to lay back down. You shivered in front of him, back still turned away and your arms had wrapped around yourself half for warmth and half for shielding. You’d never been undressed with him present.
Your eyes facing forward was a gift to the prince because it gave him a moment to take in the sounds of life that were obvious in the other room. His son was alive. He wasn’t losing somebody else, he had not failed again. His chest deflated a bit as his eyes closed and he took in the coughing. They opened again when the maester called once more and he pressed his hands down against your shoulders.
The touch warmed you so much you whimpered a bit, his palms did not retract at the noise right away but when he heard your teeth begin to clatter together again he gave you a squeeze before letting go.
“Get in the bath.” He demanded, there was not alternative option that could even be thought of in your mind when you heard his tone. Instantly the maid came towards with warmed buckets of water and began filling the soaking tub that you had obediently stepped into.
He closed the door on his way out and as the warmth engulfed you your eyes began to close, the feeling of being okay mixed with the combination of your adrenaline crashing left you utterly exhausted.
The next thing you felt was a rumbling against your cheek. Which made you groan and shift about some.
“Give me that,” Maekar sighed pulling the blanket from the maids hands, his forhead had not relaxed for one second since the knight had entered his study two hours prior and told him what his youngest had been shouting as she came up towards the stables.
You leaned towards the sound and your arms, which finally felt less stiff, wrapped around your husbands neck as he lifted you from the now room tempature bath. The towel was draped over you but he was holding you to his chest so you were getting him quite wet.
“Have broth be brought to my chambers.” He directed and carried you from the maesters quarters through the keep. You hadn’t fully smarted to the concept that your husband, you husband who had not even kissed you on the lips when you married was holding you…letting you nuzzled your face against his warm neck. He knew you were seeking more heat.
Gradually, when he set you down in his bed, tucking the towel around the front of you now, you realized Maekar had been the one taking you from the bath. He did not like how red your cheeks still were of that your fingers were still slightly blue.
He’d had a conversation with Daella, an interrogation was more correct of a name for it thought because Maekar demanded to know exactly what had happened. How this, possibly deadly, mess came to be. He’d waited until she was in her thickest dress, wrapped in a fur and being given her favorite tea before he started but he had not given her any time to rest, he needed to know it all as soon as possible. He did not like having to use his imagination to fill in the blanks.
You grabbed the ends of the towel and pulled the fabric around you tighter brining your feet up as well so your knees were tucked into your chest. You’d never been in his chambers. It felt odd…almost intimate.
“you jumped into the water?” He was laying a dark fur across a chair near the fireplace.
“is he alright?” You finally spoke, voice a bit horse from all the shouting earlier.
“Do Starks believe they cannot freeze?” He glanced over his shoulder at you.
“no more than Targaryen think they cannot burn.” You exhale and straighten your shoulders. “Is Aegon well?” You insist to know. Surely he would not be speaking to you if the boy was dead, right?
Maekar shoulders raised a bit, like he had chuckled at your attempt to demand something from him but the sound did not quite reach your ears.
“he is already telling stories of fish frozen in place in the water.” He informed you, finally looking back at you and seeing the relief flood through you.
You smiled, a bright real thing and you chuckled a bit. He was as such a clown of a little boy, it was charming to you even if it came with some wreckless behavior.
“I think he was the only frozen thing in that pond.” You remark shaking your head a bit.
“I think my son is alive because you went down in that water to save him.”
The comment stopped your giggling instantly. It was serious and honest and…this was more sensitive than you had ever known him be. The intensity of his eyes on you, the shock witnessing his forehead ease, it made your skin tingle and every hair on your rise.
“you could have died attempting to rescue them from something that I know they have been warned about.”
You swallowed looking down gripping a bit tighter to the damp towel and you took a moment to figure out what it was that you should say…what you wanted to say.
“I love them Maekar, I could not just watch it happen.” You looked back up to him finding that he had made his way from in front of the fire back to the bedside, that he had taken his cloak off and had as currently undoing the laces that kept his tunic on.
“Thank you.”
You blinked, he’d not thanked you for anything in the 7 moons that had come to pass since you wed. It was obvious that he was not the type to lean to flattery in conversation. That did not bother you, not as much it might some other lady, it wasn’t as if people in the north were exceptionally warm.
Actually when you thought about it they were quite kind, deeply loyal and unmistakably dedicated to people…if they deserved it. If they had good reason to value the person infront of them.
Maekar was not much different. He did. Or bother with unwarranted flattery. You could appreciate that.
“You can go see them later, once you’re warm enough.” He assured you when it seemed like your attention drifted to the door.
“I will dress, I’m warm enough.” You made to stand but his hand was back on your shoulder again, stopping you in your tracks.
“I will deem when you are warm enough wife.”
His jaw tightening gave away that your surpised reaction to the title made him feel bad. Had he truly never used the term once? Was denying you any affection for his first wife’s sake or was it just him being cruel. He’d always told himself he was distance out of respect for Dyanna’s memory. What would she thinking about the women caring for her children never being thanked? Never being welcomed as she should have been into their family?
You watched his light eyes water and stayed still and silent. She must have been very kind…very beautiful. You had heard from the staff of the hall how deeply he had loved her, how he laughed with her.
When he cleared his throat and looked back down at you there was some new found understand of himself in his eyes. He’d hated you, simply because he resented that the longer you were around the more he noticed how attractive you were and worse…that he felt genuinely drawn to your personality. But What favor was he doing Dyanna, or his family by becoming more cold and bitter simply because he wanted to deny anything that brought him joy while she was not beside him?
When your shoulders shook twice, the shiver impossible to suppress Maekar came back to the moment. Back to you.
He motioned for you to stand up and finally undid the last tie that kept his chest covered.
“Clothes and a blanket would do.” You assured him, but your eyes were looking at the expanse of his chest..the pink skin there that you knew would be so warm.
“Body heat is best, I thought you’d know that. What did they teach you in Winterfell woman?” He raised a brow while you got up on your feet. Once you were up he touched your side, grunting at the damp towel that was wrapped there and he pulled it away, quickly pulling you in front of the fire. He sat down first in the chair and then looked to his lap. When you hesitated he sighed. The exasperation that you were used to seeing from him flaring up.
“you are my wife, it is not indecent to sit down.” He rolled his eyes a bit and his hand touched your bare back urging you down to his lap. Pulling the fur that had been warming in front of the flame over you at once. He felt your freezing fingers nervously grabbing at the fur, brushing against his stomach in the process. Quickly Maekar gathered them in one hand and brought them up to his neck cupping them there in that hot region.
You kept your eyes on him, waiting for his feeling for change, for him to suddenly decide again being so close to you. Especially in this state of undress. When he lifted your fingers up to his mouth and cupped them against his lips so he could blow warm air onto the icy digits you realized belatedly that he was not likely to push you away. You relaxed some as that understanding sunk into your mind, and you allowed yourself to sink back against him. Back naturally bent instead of all rigid to keep your figure away from his.
“your warm.” You breath out eyes closing as your cheek rested against one side of hai chest.
“Aye” he grunted in agreement. He would not of been sat beneath you if he wasn’t, he of found something warmer.
He could feel your legs curl up a bit so that your knees pressed to his side. He quickly brought a hand under the fur and wrapped it across your back and around your waist. Hand rubbing over your side pushing the chill off of you.
You savored the heat he offered and eventually you pulled your hands from his palm and held his shoulders rubbing slightly as you gained feeling back. It let him have use of his other hand to rub down the length of your leg and give your feet a few squeezes to ensure blood was flowing there as well.
His hand settled at your hip rubbing the join firmly as he looked down at you. His breathing had gotten a bit deeper, his nostrils flared some when he exhaled and you found that despite your mind telling you to look away from him your eyes were trapped on his. Your hands slowly sliding down from his muscular shoulders to his chest under the blanket and you trailed your fingertips over his pectoral muscles. Straightening some of the hair there as you went.
“I thought of this, before today.” He gripped you hip a bit harder and you pushed yourself instinctually against him more, chest to chest. He could feel how hard and cold your nipples were as they dragged across his chest. He knew how to warm those. It made his mouth salivate a bit.
“of what m’lord?” You blinked once before he slumped his head and down sought out your lips with his. Somehow that part of you was pink and warm and now he craved more contact there. Quickly raising his hand to hold your jaw up towards him so he could devour you in a kiss.
Your lips were clumsy and deeply unsure of what they should be doing but when he felt your soft tongue suddenly slip against his he groaned. You wanted him. He’d been to blind on the wedding night by his own mourning and guilt to notice that that nerves you were showing were those of uncertainty…and excitement. Not anxiety and disinterest. He felt even more guilty for his coldness now knowing that you would of been open to advances over that past many moons.
He groaned when you sat up some more to try and reach his mouth better, you’d been putting quite a bit of weight right over his lap…right over the growing bulge he had and now that that contact was lifted he could suddenly feel that aching need!
You moaned at his calloused hands drifting to your back, warm and thick fingers trailing against either side of your spine and you straighten up a bit which let the fur slip off of your shoulders, letting him see you better. The way her looked you up and down made you feel warmer than the bloody bath did.
When Maekar’s eyes raised back, finally, to meet your own after cataloging every inch of you he smiled, small, but it was unmistakably affection.
You lurched forward and kissed at the corner of his mouth where his lips at tilted up and you grinned the moment his hands found your bottom, callouses from his hilt feeling rough against that delicate pale skin.
You let your head fall back between your shoulders when his beard tickled your neck and his lips pressed pecks until he reached your collar bone and began to lay wet hungry kisses there. Your hand dropped from his chest and shoulder and one hand kept you stead in this position by holding his firm stomach, the other found its way to his breeches. Looking briefly up at him for assurance.
He groaned, deep and throat rattling and it was so assuring to you that you sunk your hand right down into the cloth and felt for him. He was hard and pulsing and extraordinarily erect so your fingers simply needed to fan out to feel him.
“it’s so hard…” you breath out, the earnestness of your surprise had his head spinning and pratically all of his blood rushing down to his cock.
“I am old, but not so old that my prick remains soft.” He lectured and you giggled a bit at the feeling of his hand squeezing your bum as a warning. Acknowledging your innocence, that he had denied you the understanding of how husband and wives function was to much for him to address internally at the moment so he’d decided to pretend you had been taunting him. That was easier for him!
“harder-“ he grunted hand sliding up your side looking for the handhold he wanted while your small fist wrapped around his shaft. “You can grip me tighter than that.” He breathed out nodding as you instantly corrected. “Good, that’s a good girl.” His four fingers settled wrapping against your ribs and his thumb splayed out under your breast lifting it up slightly and he puffed his chest out some to feel your hard nipple slide over his scarred skin.
“like this?” You looked at him bitting your lip as you squeezed much harder at his pulsing length and brought your hand up and down. Your fingers glided easily, he was producing plenty of lubricant himself. when his eyes closed while trying to reign in a moan and you leaned forward kissing the tension away. He held it in lines at the top of his noses bridge.
“I don’t deserve you.” He lowered his head when you kissed his forhead and his mouth dragged against the tops of your chest. It seemed like he was finding the perfect spot before settling in but when he did you gasped at the feeling of his tongue streching out to graze over one of your nipples.
“no…” you breathed out nodding a bit as you stroked him faster. “You don’t.” Your voice was breathy from how nice his mouth felt on your skin. How his nose nuzzled into the soft meat of your tits and he consumed as much of you as he could fit between his lips.
“Easy.” He warned you while his hand let go of your arse and he slipped his hand under your thigh finding your spot instantly because that part of you was radiating heat. You were wet as well, enough that he could feel that the raven black hair on your cunny was slicked into a mess.
When your hand faltered in its motion and your breath hitched at the suddenly presence of his fingertip dipping between you, breaching into your body, Maekar felt the shiver. Unsure if it was genuine chill or nerves he kissed your jaw and lifted you up with him as he got off the chair and then was over you on the fur rug infront of the fire.
“it’ll hurt-won’t it?” He could feel you tensing, feel your core squeezing at just the first bit of his finger entering. It was the princes turn to kiss you worry away, to stroke your cheek and hush you.
“it will hardly be worse than a frozen pond.” It was the truth, he wouldn’t offer you lies, and for that you were glad.
You breathed slowly, to calm yourself and soaked in the feeling of his hand on your hip, his weight leaned strategically against you, how he panted into your neck while slowly working two fingers into your core.
“Ahh!” You gasped at how filling they felt, at how odd…and electrifying it was to be able to feel him moving within you.
“Seven save me-“ he grunted kissing your lips and rubbing soothing with his thumb against your pearl. You realized quickly when an inner warmth began to bloom in your belly, that you would benefit greatly from his experience. He knew how to please a women. You suppose a man did not end up with as many children as he had without his wife wanting him in her bed!
He recognized the expression right away, the parting of your lips…the scrunching of your brows and how the column of your neck hallowed out a bit from how you tensed.
Your climax rolled through you before he could even comment on it. One moment you were getting stiff and tense under him, your knees rising up to push against into his sides and then next you were panting and as soft as dough under him.
Maekar pulled his soaked fingers from you and nodded at your whinny breathing. For a moment when you had clearly reached your release he considered ending it there. Letting you simply enjoy what had just happened. Though that whimpered strained noise you man when his hand was removed from you had the last good sense in him dissolving. You wanted more of him, wanted to feel him there between your legs.
“while you’re still calmed,” he pushed your hair back and then planted his bent elbow beside your head “I’ll- fuck me” he groaned his hand pulling his straining cock free from his breeches and instantly it slapped down against your swollen lips.
“please…” you mewd hands splayed out over your stomach where you had felt the intensity just moments ago.
Between your soft begs and the fact that he her not felt a women, in this way, for years Maekar could not resist a moment more. His eyes closed as he fed himself into your fluttering core. Pratically growling at how the warm squishy sensation of you hugged his prick so deliciously. His hand was fisted at your side, helping to keep him hovered above you some so he would not be fully engulfed by your sweet pussy.
“Oh gods” your teeth were clenched and your fingers dug in a bit to your stomach as it felt like his length began to displace things within you. He seemed large, it felt quite giant to you. Maekar’s hand suddenly went back to your hair the moment he saw your eyes fly shut and felt a warmth flood within you.
“That’s?” He picked up on the unease in your tone and saw how a little tear squeezed its way out of your shut eye. His hips stopped pushing ahead instantly. Actually he pulled out of you an inch or so. Glancing down to see the ring of blood around his shaft.
“it’s just blood…same as a cut.” He assured you, fingers flowing through your raven hair trying to bring you comfort. He wasn’t an overly affectionate or gentle man, and from what he saw you northern women did not want coddling. It made it easier for him to give you some small comforting remarks, ease that worry because this had been the first time he ever sense anxiety within you.
You breathed a bit slowly as the hand he had at your side rubbed under your clenched fingers to ease the tension in your lower belly. You opened you eyes now looking up at him, he was sweating some…the end sod his hair glued to his temple and the stern line between his brows was back. That worry was there for you, his concern and attention was on you in this moment, not the papers in his study, or a mess bis children created.
“it doesn’t really hurt.” You finally told him, it hadn’t ever really hurt, it was just pressure and a feeling you hadn’t anticipated.
“such a strong women.” He murmured. The affectionate tilt to his voice was not covered up at all by some put on huffing and puffing that you imagine he had not actually meant to say it outloud.
You looked down to see half of his cock was out of you and his body was being held up away from you. You wanted all of him-not just half!
“you are meant to be keeping me warm m’prince” Shivering for good measure before wrapping your feet up over him trying to weigh his back down so he would sink down against you.
He grinned some, hand shifting from your stomach to the small of your back and lifting you up towards him a bit more.
“Very well, wife.”
Finally Maekar pushed into you completely, in the manner that had started to haunt his mind over the past few moons when you were near him. He’d begun to have distasteful daydreams of pinning you to the break of fast table in his solar, stoping you on your walk to to rookery and pressing himself to you u til your back was flush against the stone wall. All of these imaginary scenarios ended the same.
His cock pressed fully into you. Tip twitching against your cervix and his stones slapping against you as he rocked in and out of you.
His mind has let him conjure up details about these various situation and still not one had come close to capturing how wonderful you felt beneath him, how dizzying the feeling of his cock engulfed fully within you left him!
“mmmm fucking hells” you swore when he continually bottomed out within you. The cursing made him kiss your jaw. He liked that you had a mouth on you, that you weren’t some sensitive flustered lady. Perhaps this pairing had been made with more thought, on his parents part, than just political strengthening?
“I can finish in my hand-“ your eyes searched for his instantly when he said that. “If you wish me too” he added after seeing the wave of worry in your eyes.
“n-no, I need-please keep going Maekar.” If not for a babe than at least for the orgasm that was building up in you so heavily that the tops of your ears felt heated.
Maekar kissed you, for a moment on the lips and then he pressed one to your temple, hand brushing down your hair and keeping your body pressed down towards his pelvis so your body took each thrust he gave, instead of getting bumped back and forth against the rug.
He felt how your hands squeezed at his sides, they were trembling a bit so he knew you were quite close to another peak. Finally you felt him start to lose his restraint, his weight was heavier over you, his hips rutting more than fully thrusting in and out. But you enjoyed that motion because it provide lovely contact for your clit against his pelvis. It had you moaning quite loudly-your eyes closing because you needed to focus on the intense wave building within you.
“ugh-“ he came with a low grunt, so deep that it came out muddled by vibrations and you gasped. Feeling him come appart, feeling his warm seed squish within you, it made you see stars.
Both of you were breathing heavily though your youth allowed you to revived before him.
Victoria asking trinity about her dates and hookups and trinity thinks its so sweet that she has a friend so interested in her messy love life until she finds an ao3 account w fics that feel way too familiar.
She sends victoria a screenshot of the account with “bitch ????” And gets blocked for two days.
Then she gives victoria first hand experience to help w her writing
alright I've got to do some quick math to explain attitudes towards AI to my boss.
we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)
please rb for larger sample size!
Question 1/3
What is your age, and do you feel AI is a net positive or net negative in our lives today?
I feel like I need to share this because idk if Europeans are familiar with the presence of Aldi in the US, but at least especially in my area they’ve been growing a lot recently. Like Aldi bought out some local failing grocery chains where I live (Louisiana) and have opened Aldis in all these somewhat rural communities and small towns, which for the record I’m fine with
But as a result of this they are advertising a lot more in my area and also in many cases, the people in these areas have never been confronted with Aldi or any European grocery store. So the ads that Aldi is pushing out to its new US customer base feature a cowboy shopping at Aldi who is explaining to new Aldi customers how Aldi works. Like this cowboy is explaining you gotta put a quarter in the shopping cart and why there are very little name brands. A cowboy is how they want to reach their American customer base. They gave us a cowboy
Hi yes hello it’s me the local wizard, and I- Ok well “evil” feels like a strong word but yes, that’s me. Anyway, I need your help. I know I stole away the kingdoms 12 princesses, that’s my bad. Listen, I didn’t think this through. It didn’t occur to me that having a dozen angry young women from early teen to early 20s and giving them giant powerful wings would be a bad idea.
I know I’m the one who cast the curse but it can still only be broken with true love. I’m begging you, somebody, please come and fall in love with these girls and make them leave, I can’t take it anymore, it sucks so bad. I can’t keep getting viciously bullied by one of the largest living species of waterfowl anymore. I’ve tried running away but they can fly so they just find me. I’m getting nothing done.
I’ll pay you, I’ll grant you wishes, I don’t care, please just come and fall in love with the mean angry women who live in my yard and hate me so bad
we gotta get back to torrent distribution, i just watched someone eat eight grand in bandwidth charges because they ran a direct-download piracy site with local file hosting through cloudflare. torrents were invented literally for this exact reason
i have a file or folder on my pc that i want to share with other people. let's call it gayshit.mp3
unfortunately gayshit.mp3 is 750mb and im not paying for discord nitro so i need another way to send it
i put it into qbittorrent and it makes a torrent file. this is essentially a very small file that points to gayshit.mp3 so other computers can find it. kinda like a treasure map
i send this tiny file to my friend, who loads it into qbittorrent. their computer takes a moment to find mine over the vast expanse of cyberspace and then (as long as my pc is running and the file is still where it should be), it gets copied from my hard drive to theirs
this is the cool part: if somebody else loads that tiny file, they can download it from both of us. if i'm offline but my friend is on, the third person can still get it. this also means that if two people have separate halves of the file, they can download the other half from each other. as long as some combination of people have the pieces between them, they can all have the whole thing.
crucially this does not require a server!!! you can just upload the file to a few people and as long as they keep it, it's still accessible. as long as somebody, somewhere is still connected, it's available forever. the only way it goes away is if everybody disconnects from it.
snowghoul
tangentwithtanner
dededos
2087
theartofmadeline
baratheonpilled
turnnoffyourmind
