Hello all! Here’s part 2 yay. Thank you all for the lovely messages and comments on part 1. I didn’t think these scenes were gonna be so detailed so definitely more action(and smut hopefully) will be in part 3. Didn’t think this was gonna be so slow burn damn.
Hope you like it! Luvs ya xx
2.9k words
Warnings: Swearing I think idk
Summary- Daryl is pissed after the argument, you look the bomb.com and get flirted with
~~~~~
The party had barely started and already half the men in Alexandria looked confused.
Rick stood near one of the tables outside, nursing a drink while watching groups of people gather beneath the string lights.
The women had completely taken over. Everywhere he looked there was laughter.
Carol was wearing lipstick. Rosita looked like she’d declared war on every eligible man within a ten-mile radius. Even Michonne had done something different with her hair.
It was strange…But nice. For once.
“You seein’ this?” Abraham asked, appearing beside him with a grin.
Rick huffed out a laugh.
“Hard not to.”
Abraham gestured vaguely toward the crowd.
“Whole damn town got ambushed by hairspray.” Abraham snorted. “Seriously though. They look happy.”
Rick nodded. They did.
Glenn was beside him, smiling as Maggie showed him her freshly painted nails for what had to be the fifth time.
“They still look nice,” Glenn assured her.
“You didn’t even look.”
“I did.”
“You absolutely didn’t.”
Rick couldn’t help smiling. Maggie left to get another drink.
“I think Rosita threatened Eugene with eyeliner.” aaron said replacing her spot.
“That sounds right,” Glenn laughed.
Eugene immediately pointed across the party.
“For the record, I was not threatened. I was aggressively encouraged.”
“Same thing,” Aaron said.“I walked into Carol’s house earlier and got kicked out because apparently I wasn’t allowed to see the ‘final reveal.’”
Glenn snorted.
“Yeah that's carol for ya.”
The conversation drifted naturally toward the topic everybody had been talking about all evening.
You.
Aaron shook his head.
“She really found all that stuff?” Aaron asked.
“Yep,” Glenn replied.
“Whole drug store.”
“Damn.”
Rick shook his head.
“Wasn’t exactly thrilled she went alone.”
“No kidding,” Abraham muttered. “But do the ladies look HOT!”.
A few chuckles followed.
The conversation might’ve stayed there.
Except Aaron suddenly looked past Rick.
Toward the opposite side of the street.
A grin appeared on his face.
“Oh.”
Rick followed his gaze.
Then Glenn.
Then Abraham.
Almost immediately, all four men started smirking.
Because there was Daryl. Sitting by himself.Again.
He was leaning against a porch railing with a beer in one hand, looking thoroughly miserable.
“Uh oh …He’s still sulking.”
“Ain’t sulking.”
Daryl hadn’t even looked up.
Glenn exchanged a glance with Maggie.
“Sure.”
“Ain’t.”
Aaron folded his arms.
“You’ve been sittin’ there all night.”
“Ain’t been all night.”
“It’s been an hour.”
“Same thing.”
Glenn bit back a smile. Daryl shot him a warning look. Traitor.
Rick took a sip of his drink. “Heard what happened at the gate.”
Immediately Daryl’s jaw tightened.
“Don’t.”
“Just saying.”
“Don’t.”
Rick ignored him.
“She scared the hell outta everybody.”
“Exactly.”
“But that ain’t no excuse for how you talked to her .” Silence.
Daryl stared at the ground. The music from the party drifted through the air. Laughter echoed from somewhere down the street.
Finally he muttered,
“I know.”
The answer came so quietly that Glenn almost missed it. Aaron’s eyebrows lifted.
“You know,” Aaron said carefully, “most people apologize after callin’ somebody a slut.”
Abraham winced at the abruptness of the Conversation. Daryl looked like he’d rather let the walkers have at him,
“Ain’t need a damn lecture.”
“Didn’t say ya did.”
“Then shut your damn mouth.”
Rick sighed.
“Daryl.”
The archer scrubbed a hand over his face. Already irritated. Already tired. Mostly because they weren’t wrong.
Maggie appeared beside Glenn carrying two drinks. One look at Daryl told her exactly what was happening.
“Oh good,” she said dryly. “We’re still doing this.”
Daryl groaned.
Maggie ignored him. “You really hurt her.”
His shoulders tensed.
“Know that too.”
The answer surprised everybody.
Including him.
Because there wasn’t even any fight left in it.
Just guilt.
Maggie’s expression softened slightly.
Only slightly.
“She did all that for us.”
Daryl didn’t answer.
“Not for attention.”
Still nothing.
“Not for men.”
His jaw tightened. Because that’s exactly what you’d said. Word for word. And hearing it repeated made him feel worse.
The silence stretched.
“Look,” Glenn said carefully, “she was trying to do something nice.”
Daryl rubbed a hand across his face.
“I know.”
“Then why’d ya say it?”
The question landed hard because Daryl didn’t actually have an answer.
Not one that sounded sane.
Because saying:
Because I thought she’d gotten herself killed.
Because every time she leaves the gates I can’t breathe right until she comes back.
Because seeing those bags made me realize she almost died for something I didn’t understand.
…wasn’t exactly an option.
So instead he grunted.
Everybody immediately knew he wasn’t going to answer.
“That’s what I thought,” Abraham muttered.
Daryl wasn’t paying attention to whatever they were saying anymore.
The words had turned into background noise. None of it registered.
Because you’d just walked out of the house.
For a second, Daryl genuinely forgot how to breathe. The porch suddenly felt too small. Too hot. Too crowded.
You stood at the top of the steps laughing at something Rosita said. The dress Carol had bullied you into wearing fit like it had been made for you. Your hair fell in soft curls around your shoulders. Even from across the street, Daryl could see the effort that had gone into it. The makeup wasn’t heavy. Wasn’t dramatic.
Just enough.
Enough to make you look like the woman you’d been before the world ended. Or maybe the woman you’d always been. Daryl wasn’t sure.
What he was sure about was that he couldn’t stop staring.
“Wow.” Aaron’s voice broke through the fog.
Daryl ignored him. Your smile widened at something Rosita said.
And there it was. That smile.
The one he’d spent all day wishing he’d never taken away.
Something twisted painfully in his chest. Because you looked happy. And he hadn’t been the reason for it.
For once, You looked completely free of him. No arguments. No bickering. No eye rolls. No yelling.
Just happy.
The realization hit harder than he expected.
“You should probably close your mouth.”
Daryl immediately snapped his jaw shut.
Aaron grinned.
“Thought so.”
“Shut up.”
Aaron laughed into his drink.
Across the street, Carol appeared beside you and immediately started fussing with your hair. You swatted her hands away. Carol ignored you and fixed it anyway.
The sight made something unexpected tug at the corner of Daryl’s mouth.
For years he’d watched you fight with everybody who tried taking care of you.
Carol.
Rick.
Maggie.
Him.
Especially him.
Stubborn as hell. Always had been.
You said something that made Rosita throw her head back laughing. Then you laughed too. Daryl felt the sound all the way from where he stood.
And God help him, you looked beautiful. Not because of the dress. Not because of the makeup.
Because for the first time in a long time…
You looked alive.
The thought hit him like a punch.
Suddenly he was back at the gate. Back to seeing those bags. Back to hearing your voice shaking with anger.
‘I didn’t do this for men.’
Back to watching tears gather in your eyes.
‘I’m tired of surviving like I’m already dead.’
Daryl swallowed hard.
Because now he understood. Looking at you standing there surrounded by people who cared about you…
He understood exactly why you’d done it. And somehow that made him feel even worse.
As if sensing it, your eyes lifted.
Across the crowd. Across the street. Straight to him.
Everything in Daryl’s body locked up. For one stupid second he thought maybe you’d smile.
Maybe wave. Maybe something. Instead your expression cooled instantly.
Like he was any other person at the party.
Then you looked away and kept walking.
The smile returned the second rosita said something else.
Somehow being yelled at would’ve hurt less. At least then you’d still be looking at him.
The moment you stepped outside, the noise hit you all at once.
Music. Laughter. Voices overlapping under the glow of string lights stretched between old houses.
Alexandria looked… different tonight.
Warmer, somehow.
Or maybe that was just what everyone was pretending.
You adjusted the dress Carol had insisted on helping you into, suddenly hyper-aware of how it sat on your body. Not uncomfortable. Just unfamiliar.
Like you were wearing a version of yourself you hadn’t met in a long time.
Rosita was talking beside you, but you only caught half of it.
Something about “not letting men ruin a good eyeliner moment.”
You laughed anyway.
It felt easier than thinking too hard.
Carol reached over and fixed a strand of your hair that had already fallen out of place.
“You’re gonna undo all my work,” she said softly.
“I didn’t ask for this much effort,” you replied, swatting her hand away.
But you didn’t really mean it. Not fully.
You felt people watching you as you moved down the steps.
Not in a bad way.
Just… aware.
Like you’d stepped into a version of yourself that existed before everything got sharp and loud and covered in blood.
For a second, your chest tightened.
Then Rosita bumped your shoulder.
“Relax,” she said. “You look good.”
You rolled your eyes.
“I look like I survived a makeover apocalypse.”
“That’s basically what happened,” she shot back.
You laughed again.
Easier. Lighter.
Like you could almost forget the way your hands still remembered holding weapons better than anything else.
Across the street, you saw him.
Daryl.
You didn’t mean to look.
It just happened.
He was sitting with the others, half in shadow, beer in hand.
Not moving much. Just watching.
You couldn’t read his expression from here. You weren’t sure you wanted to. Your stomach tightened anyway.
The memory of the gate flashed through your mind before you could stop it.
His voice.
Your voice.
The word.
You swallowed and looked away too quickly, pretending Rosita had said something funny again.
She hadn’t.
But you laughed anyway.
Because it was easier than letting your mind go back there.
You told yourself not to think about him.
Not tonight.
Not now.
Not when everything was supposed to feel normal.
“You’re doing that thing,” Maggie said, joining you.
“What thing?”
“Thinking too hard.”
You scoffed.
“I’m not.”
Maggie just smiled like she didn’t believe you.
You followed her gaze without meaning to.
And there he was again.
Still watching.
Still not doing anything.
You couldn’t tell what you were supposed to feel about that.
Anger? Relief? Nothing?
You settled on nothing.
Nothing was safer.
So you turned back to Rosita mid-sentence and forced yourself to laugh again.
But your awareness of him didn’t leave.
It just stayed there. Quiet.
At the edge of everything.
Like a door you weren’t ready to open.
Someone stepped into your space. Not close enough to be rude. But close enough that you noticed immediately.
Spencer Monroe. Of course.
He had that easy, practiced smile on his face,like the world hadn’t ended and he was still allowed to be confident in it.
“Hey,” he said.
You blinked, slightly thrown off. “Hey.”
Rosita’s expression shifted instantly beside you, like she was already bracing for entertainment. Maggie, a little further back, raised an eyebrow.
Spencer ignored them both. Or tried to.
“I don’t think I’ve seen you like this before,” he said.
You glanced down at your dress automatically.
“Oh. Yeah. That’s probably because I usually look like I’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards.”
Rosita snorted. Spencer smiled wider.
“I was gonna say… you clean up pretty well.” There it was. The compliment.
Simple. Harmless.
Still made something weird tighten in your chest.
You weren’t used to that kind of attention anymore. Not soft attention. Not normal attention.
You shifted your weight slightly.
“Thanks.”
A pause.
You suddenly became aware of how many people were nearby.
How many eyes were not-so-subtly drifting this way.
Including his.
You didn’t look. You didn’t need to.
Spencer tilted his head slightly.
“You’re the one who went out for all this stuff, right?”
You hesitated.
“Yeah.”
“That was… pretty impressive.”
You gave a small shrug like it didn’t matter.
“It was just a run.”
“It wasn’t ‘just’ anything,” he said.
That made you pause. Because it sounded like he actually meant it. Not in a flirty way. Not exactly. Just… genuine.
Rosita leaned in toward Maggie behind you, whispering something that made Maggie try not to smile.
You ignored them.
Spencer shifted a little closer—not invading, just settling into conversation.
“So,” he said, “you going to enjoy the party you basically saved, or are you gonna stand here pretending you don’t like being told you did something good?”
That made you laugh. A real one this time..
“Did I save the party now?”
“I mean,” he said lightly, “you brought back civilization in a bottle. So yeah, kinda.”
You rolled your eyes, but your mouth was still curved.
“Civilization in a bottle. That’s dramatic.”
“I’m a Monroe. We do dramatic.”
That got another laugh out of you.
Easier again.
You didn’t notice the shift at first. The way Spencer’s tone softened slightly. The way he stayed where he was instead of stepping away. The way he was looking at you like you were something interesting, not just someone surviving.
You felt it across the street before you saw it. That pressure. That awareness.
Like someone had gone very still.
You didn’t turn. Not yet.
Spencer continued talking, saying something about how Alexandria had needed this kind of night for a long time. You nodded occasionally. Half listening, Half aware of something tightening in your stomach that had nothing to do with him.
Then he offered you a drink. You took it without thinking too hard.
“Thanks.”
And that was when you finally looked up. Not at Spencer. Past him. Across the street.
Daryl.Still on the porch. Still watching. Completely still now.
The expression on his face was unreadable from here. But something about the way his shoulders sat made your chest tighten anyway. Like he’d gone quieter. Not angry. Not even annoyed. Just… gone inward.
You held his gaze for half a second too long. Something flickered there. You couldn’t name it. Then your expression shifted on instinct.
You didn’t smile.
Didn’t wave.
Didn’t soften.
You just… turned away. Back to Spencer.
Like it meant nothing.
Like it was easy.
Spencer was still talking, unaware of the shift. You laughed again at something he said. It sounded normal. It felt normal.
But your attention wasn’t fully here anymore. It was split now.
Between the conversation in front of you…
And the silence you could feel across the street.
Daryl should’ve left.
The second he saw you walk into the party, he should’ve gotten on his bike and disappeared for the night. Instead, he made the mistake of staying. Now he was miserable.
He leaned against the porch railing with his beer, staring stubbornly into the distance. Absolutely not looking at you. Not even once. Not at all.
“You’re starin’.”
Daryl didn’t look away from the street.
“Ain’t.”
Aaron appeared beside him, following his gaze directly to where you stood laughing with rosita.
“Mhm.”
Daryl took a long drink.
“Ain’t starin’.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.”
Aaron’s grin widened.
Daryl hated him a little.
Then daryls hunter eyes saw spencer monroe making a bee line for you.
“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Aaron muttered.
Daryl watched him stop beside you.
Watched you laugh at something he said. Watched Spencer smile. Then smile again. Then lean a little closer.
The beer bottle creaked in Daryl’s grip.
Aaron noticed Immediately.
“Uh oh.”
“Ain’t nothin’.”
“Daryl.”
“Ain’t nothin’.”
Aaron looked delighted. “You know Spencer’s flirting with her, right?”
Daryl’s jaw tightened. “No he ain’t.”
“He definitely is.”
“He talks like that to everybody.”
“He really doesn’t.”
Spencer laughed at something you’d said.
You laughed back.
Daryl looked like he wanted to fight God.
Aaron barely held it together. “Oh my God.”
“Shut up.”
“You are jealous.”
Daryl nearly choked on his beer. “The hell I am.”
“You absolutely are.”
“Ain’t.”
“Look at your face.”
“My face always looks like this.”
“That is unfortunately true.”
Daryl glared at him.
Aaron grinned.
Then things got worse. Much worse. Spencer offered you a drink. You accepted.
Daryl straightened immediately.
Aaron noticed that too.
“Wow.”
Daryl ignored him.
Spencer said something else.
You laughed again.
The sound carried across the street.
And somehow that annoyed Daryl most of all.
Because after everything that happened today…
After the fight.
After the yelling.
After seeing you cry.
Some asshole in a button-up shirt was getting more smiles out of you in five minutes than Daryl had managed all week.
The realization sat heavy in his chest.
Before he could stop himself, he pushed away from the railing.
Aaron blinked.
“Where are you going?”
“Need another drink.”
“There are drinks literally behind you.”
Daryl stopped , Thought about it. Then sat right back down.
Aaron burst out laughing. “You were gonna go over there.”
“No.”
“You absolutely were.”
“No.”
“Daryl.”
“Shut up.”
By now Glenn had wandered over.
“What’d I miss?”
Aaron pointed toward Spencer.
“Daryls not feeling this party”
He mouthed very discreetly the word “jealous” to Glenn and he understood instantly.
His smile grew.
“Oh.”
“Don’t.”
Glenn failed spectacularly at hiding his amusement.
Maggie arrived a few moments later carrying another drink.
One look at Daryl.
One look at Spencer.
One look at you.
And she immediately groaned.
“Oh, he’s even worse than I thought.”
“Thank you,” Aaron said.
“Shut up, both of ya.”
Maggie folded her arms.
“You know she’s doing that on purpose.”
Daryl frowned.
“What?”
Across the party, your eyes briefly flicked toward him.
Just for a second.
Then away again.
Back to Spencer.
Back to smiling.
Maggie’s grin widened.
“Oh, yeah.”
Daryl’s stomach dropped.
Because suddenly he wasn’t so sure Spencer was the one in control of that conversation.
Warnings!!: slowburn, Reader is an adult!!, mentions of death, gore, injury detail, hurt/comfort, angst, mentions of blood, mature themes, strong language.
Summary:
(You are hit with yet another problem in the prison. Could anything ever be easy in a world gone bad? The answer to that is no, absolutely not.)
A/N: Oh you guys just wait for the next chapter hehehe. I HOPE YOU ENJOY!
For the first time in months, you finally felt like maybe you’d gotten somewhere with Daryl, not anywhere particularly far but enough to know that he wasn’t all as bad as you’d originally thought.
The lighter, you thought maybe it was his way of apologising for being such a prick after your injury.
Maybe you were getting too far over your head. Maybe.
It was sunnier outside today; the yard felt fuller than it usually did. You didn’t mind the people this time. Seemed like your tolerance for people was broadening.
You spotted Rick and Carl in the pigpen, feeding the pigs.
You still hadn’t asked Rick about the whole thing about sending Daryl after you in the woods.
You didn’t really feel like it was the right time when everyone looked so…happy.
“Nice day today,” you said, leaning over the wooden fence boards. “You want me doing anything other than fence duty, Rick?”
Rick chuckled to himself, turning away and chucking some worms onto the dirt.
“You can stay on fence duty for now.”
You pressed your lips into a thin line. You’d expected that answer, but there wasn’t any harm in asking.
“Maybe she can help with the pigs?” Carl's eyes flickered from you and then towards Rick. “Can she, Dad?”
“Pigs already been helped,” Rick said, plopping the tin bucket onto the soil. “Maybe tomorrow.”
You shrugged.
“Right, okay then,” you sighed, pulling yourself back from the fence. “I’ll get back to it.”
Rick glanced at you.
“Yeah. You do that.”
He was feigning seriousness, but you could tell he was a fraud.
You rolled your eyes, backing away slowly, giving Rick a chance to change his mind.
The only thing that answered you was the sound of distant gunfire.
You froze, eyes panning towards the source of the sound.
Rick spun around, already moving towards the latch of the pen.
“Cell blocks?” Maggie yelled from the tower above.
“I don’t know!” Rick shouted back, already moving. “Carl, get in the tower with Maggie! Don’t argue. Go.”
Rick nudged you on the shoulder.
“You, with me, let’s go!”
You moved immediately, boots pounding against the gravel as you sprinted.
“What's going on?!” Your voice cracked from the sheer volume of your yell.
“Walkers in D!” Glenn shouted back, already running inside.
You didn’t speak; you just ran inside after him.
You were met with the sound of Walkers and the yelps of the other camp members.
This wasn’t a breach; it couldn’t have been.
You fired at a walker that was crawling after one of the children, pulling the boy to his feet immediately after the walker was down.
“You follow the others!” You shouted over the panic, shoving him towards the hoards of people running for safety. “Don’t stop running!”
He ran, an older man throwing him over his shoulder and darting with the rest.
Then you were back to killing the next walker that stumbled your way.
They were coming out of the cells; they were falling over the rails from above. The whole cell block had turned into a complete bloodbath.
The sound of gunfire surrounded you.
Then it went quiet.
“Are we clear down here?” Rick addressed everyone still standing. “We’re safe?”
“Yeah!” Sasha shouted back from the far corner of the cell.
Daryl was already moving up the staircase; you followed instinctively.
“Watch out.” He muttered to you, eyes scanning over the area, crossbow raised high.
You nodded, staying close behind, your bodies so close that you could practically feel the heat radiating off of him.
Dead bodies lined the floor. Blood splattered everywhere you looked.
It was a goddamn sight for sore eyes, that was for sure.
Glenn yelled by one of the cells, a walker pushing him against the wall.
“Get down!” Daryl shouted, releasing an arrow.
The walker dropped.
You rushed over; Daryl followed and yanked Glenn back up to his feet.
“You okay?” You panicked, hand instinctively moving to Glenn’s shoulder.
“I’m good,” he panted. “Thanks.”
You let out a sigh of relief.
Then you followed Rick and Daryl into the cell where the walker had emerged from.
“Oh, it’s Patrick.” Daryl uttered, eyes moving over the body.
“Shit.” You spoke quietly, wiping at the blood on your face with the back of your hand.
Daryl stepped back, leaning against the railing, looking out onto the floor below.
“That’s all of em.”
A beat.
Then everyone was moving to kill the ones that had been bitten. To kill the ones that had died.
You moved through the cells. You didn’t spot anyone until you made it to the last cell.
An older man, his face completely pale, purple veins painting the skin beneath his eyes.
You crouched down, pulling your knife from its sheath. You hesitated for a moment, and then silver buried itself into the older man’s skull.
The council soon gathered together for a meeting. You weren’t on the council, so you just went to your cell to get yourself cleaned up.
To clean the blood of your hands and your face.
You knew what’d happened. You overheard Rick talking to Hershel and Doctor S about it.
Patrick died because of a goddamn flu, and then he turned and went on a rampage.
A fucking flu managed to get that many people killed.
You had to stay away; that was the order. You’d been exposed, and nobody was taking risks of more people catching whatever this was.
The blood marked the dampened cloth as you scrubbed your face.
You scrubbed three more times, and then it was gone.
It wasn’t your own blood; that was the sickening part about it.
You threw the cloth onto the floor, pushing your head back against the wall and pulling the photograph out of your pocket.
It was a comfort thing, really, looking at how everything was before this, looking at your dog like he was still…here.
This cruel world had taken everything meaningful from under your grasp and chewed it whole.
Your finger skimmed over the material once, and then you folded it back up and pushed it deep inside your pocket next to the lighter Daryl had given you.
When you got back outside, more havoc had already started reeking.
One of the outer fences was caving completely. Shit.
You were supposed to be out there earlier. You were too busy being all sentimental in your room.
You sprinted over, joining the others in pushing the fence back.
It was much too heavy.
“Shit!” You heaved, gasping for air. “It’s too heavy!”
It bent further. Too overbearing. Too powerful.
“It’s gonna give!” Rick shouted.
Everyone pushed further, but it was no use. Your efforts were going nowhere.
“Everybody back!” Daryl pulled away from the fence. “Come on, back. Now.”
You jumped back, nearly tripping over a lone pebble on the ground. You composed yourself quickly.
A beat.
“Fence keeps bending in like that, walkers gonna come straight through it.” Sasha called out.
Rick sighed. He was contemplating something, you could tell.
“Daryl, get the truck. I know what to do.”
Daryl moved immediately. Your eyes followed him.
You didn’t expect a look back and you didn’t get one either.
You moved on, walking towards the half-dug graves.
Glenn followed. As did Maggie.
The sun was beating down ten times harder than usual, making it much harder to work efficiently.
You continued digging regardless.
One body went in, then another, a cross being stuck at the head of their graves.
These people were here this morning, and now they were six feet under.
You finished up, wiping away the sweat that beaded at your brow.
“You done?” Glenn asked, his voice slightly muffled under his mask.
You just nodded in response, placing your shovel onto the floor and leaving the scene abruptly.
Then your emotions came crashing down on you so hard that they almost gave you whiplash.
You went to the only place that you knew would be clear at this time of day: the tower.
You broke down when you got up there, sobbing hysterically. The tears rolled down your face, dampening your skin.
You were scared. You could finally admit that without being so stubborn now.
The camp was falling apart, and for all you knew, it could end up exactly like your old one.
Dead people.
You alone…again.
You lowered yourself down onto the cold metal deck, drawing your knees close to your chest and burying your head in your hands.
The tiredness consumed you whole. You were exhausted. You couldn’t stop your eyelids closing in on themselves.
You went out like a light.
Everything went quiet again.
Still.
“Ya sleepin’?” Daryl spoke gruffly.
Your eyes fluttered open slowly, landing on him.
You adjusted to the light again, realising that you’d let yourself fall asleep when you should’ve been working.
“Crap,” you let out an exasperated sigh, sitting up almost immediately. “How long have I been out?”
He shrugged.
“Don’t know. Ain’t been up here.”
You rubbed your eyes, clearing the sleep from your tear ducts before you picked yourself up and dusted over your pants.
“Anything happen?” Your eyes lifted to his. “Whilst I’ve been out?”
He didn’t respond at first, yet his eyes stayed on yours.
You knew that meant no good.
You raised your brow, waiting for his answer.
“Karen an’ David,” he started, eyes tearing away from yours briefly before they returned. “Somebody killed ‘em.”
Your eyes widened in disbelief.
“What…?”
“Tyreese is pretty cut up ‘bout it,” he added. “Started throwin’ punches at Rick.”
Your eyes flickered to the ground. You should’ve known you’d wake to more trouble.
A beat.
“Was lookin’ for ya to see if ya wanted t’come on a run.” he spoke finally, shifting the subject.
Your eyes shifted back towards his.
“Where you going?”
“Some veterinary college t’look for meds,” he breathed. “‘Bout fifty miles out.”
You hesitated.
He noticed that.
Then you realised that he’d come to you to ask for your help—he didn’t put it in those exact words, but you knew that’s what he was implying.
The quicker the antibiotics were obtained, the quicker these people would be back on the mend.
“I’ll go.” You spoke finally.
“C’mon then,” he spoke from the top step. “Go get yer gear.”
You nodded, pealing yourself off the railing and following him down the steps.
You didn’t walk particularly fast, nor did he.
You both shared the awkward silence like you both had split custody of it.
It was always the same. Just quiet.
“Ya been cryin’?” He asked quietly, his voice rough—that southern drawl was impossible to miss.
You didn’t expect him to talk. You didn’t even expect him to question it even though you knew he saw the dried tear tracks that had marked your face.
You looked at him.
This was the second time he’d found you crying: once at your old camp and now, he knew you’d been crying up on the tower.
“I was,” you sniffled, wiping at your cheek with the sleeve of your shirt. “Then I fell asleep.”
Daryl's eyes flicked over your face for half a second before he looked away again.
"Mm."
That was a typical Daryl response; you expected it.
But he still bothered to ask; that must’ve meant something. Well, at least it meant something to you.
Your eyes moved over the side of his face; you didn’t realise you were staring until Daryl cleared his throat.
Had he caught you staring? Shit.
Hopefully not.
“I’ll um…” you coughed, almost choking on your own embarrassment. “I’ll go get my gear.”
You didn’t wait for a response; you just went.
You should’ve known this never would’ve been a straightforward journey.
Walkers stormed the car, and you and the group had to make a run for it.
The walk nearly took you out; you were damn near exhausted.
Luckily, you’d managed to find an old garage on the side of the road.
Daryl stopped just by the side of it, scouting out something he’d spotted.
“You see something?” Bob questioned, stopping his tracks.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
He pushed through the overgrowth, the bottom half of his body disappearing behind it.
You waited.
“There’s a car.” He mumbled, pulling at the handle.
“Try the wires,” you said immediately.
Your dad had taught you how to Hotwire back when you were a kid.
You knew all too well how this worked.
Daryl yanked the car door open and crouched inside.
You, Bob, Tyreese, and Michonne pulled at the vines that covered the car's bonnet. They were stubborn, but they fell apart eventually.
“Anything?” You shouted out from the front of the car, hands settling on your hips.
“Nah,” Daryl sighed, emerging from the car. “We gotta find us a new battery.”
You huffed, moving around the building before anyone could follow you.
The way in was clear enough already. You gripped the vines and pulled at them.
“Hey!” Daryl protested, following you with the others behind him. “We don’t know what we’re dealin’ with.”
“Help me then.” Your voice was barely audible beneath your grunts.
Daryl’s eyes tracked over you once more, and then he joined you.
Then everyone else joined.
You pulled your knife out, chopping through the overgrowth aggressively; Tyreese was doing the exact same, beating down the lock on the steel door.
Aggressive. Overly so.
You were acting irrationally. You wanted out of this damn place so you could be back on the road to find those meds.
Daryl noticed, distracted, watching you with an unreadable expression on his face.
A walker shot out through the vines, gripping at the material of Daryl’s vest—he dealt with it almost immediately.
Michonne sliced through another walkers head that’d gotten too close to Bob.
You stabbed through the skull of another.
Then before you knew it, one was coming full force towards Tyreese. He didn’t let it go; in fact, he was dragging it out further.
“Tyreese let it go.” Michonne spoke from behind, sword still lifted.
He didn’t listen.
“Ty!” Daryl shouted.
The walker collapsed on top of him, pushing him to the ground.
You moved to help, but Daryl got there before you, yanking the walker back by the hem of its shirt.
Bob lifted his gun to shoot, but you took the kill rather, pushing your boot down hard into the walkers head, crushing it in one.
“Why didn’t you let go?” Michonne questioned Tyreese sternly.
No response.
Daryl’s eyes moved towards your own face, still catching his breath.
He wanted to say something, you could tell, but instead, he pushed a new arrow through his crossbow and moved with Bob towards the inside of the garage.
You knew that look didn’t mean any good.
You stayed back, helping Tyreese and Michonne pull the remaining vines from the car front.
They were bickering back and forth about what’d just happened with Tyreese back there.
You weren’t listening anyway, too busy with the task in hand.
“And you,” Michonne spoke, dragging your attention away from the car.
You looked at her, waiting for her to scold you too.
“The hell were you thinking walking over there like that without knowing what you were dealing with?”
“I was doing what needed to be done.” You spoke plainly.
Michonne sighed.
“You keep doing things like that and you’ll get yourself injured again.”
Her voice was calmer now, less stern.
You knew she was worried; she was worried about all of you.
You turned your attention back towards the car, dragging more growth out.
“I’m fine, Michonne.”
And that was that.
By the time Daryl and Bob got back with the battery, you were sat on the ground with your back against the wall.
Daryl didn’t even look at you.
He was probably thinking the exact same as what Michonne had spoke to you about.
You sighed.
He pulled a cigarette from his pocket and then finally faced you.
“Ya still got that light?”
You raised an eyebrow, confused as to why he was suddenly asking you for a lighter now.
“Where’s yours?”
He didn’t answer for a moment.
A beat.
“Lost it.”
You didn’t move for a moment, eyes just watching him closely.
Daryl losing his lighter? Not like him.
Then you reached into your pocket, fingers catching on the photograph before you pulled the lighter he’d given you out, throwing it towards him.
He caught it and flicked it on, covering the flame with his hand, smoke flying from the burning end.
He chucked the lighter back towards you. You caught it.
Your eyes moved from him then to Bob, then back to him.
“Any of you guys have a spare smoke?”
Daryl threw you a cigarette from his pocket; it was slightly bent but still usable.
“Thanks.”
You flickered the lighter on.
The smell of tobacco filled the air around you, a wisp of grey smoke brushing against your skin.
Nobody spoke for a minute.
Daryl flipped the car bonnet and got to work fitting the battery. Bob was leaning against the wall smoking.
Your eyes panned towards Daryl. The silence from him wasn’t the usual kind; it was driven by something.
“Are you mad at me now?” You muttered, eyes staying on the side of Daryl’s face.
He stilled; you could practically see the cogs turning in his brain, and then—
He turned his head towards you rather than the engine.
“Ain’t mad at you,” he spoke dryly, voice slightly muffled due to the cigarette hanging at the corner of his lips. “Just gotta stop doin’ stupid shit.”
You huffed, taking a drag from the stick.
“I wasn’t being stupid.”
“Ya were,” Daryl finalised. “Runnin’ off like that just then. That’s stupid.”
You rolled your eyes, looking towards the ground. You couldn’t argue with him; he was right. Michonne was right too.
Stupid.
Everything around you went quiet.
You could hear Bob and Daryl talking about something, but their voices were distant, far away.
You were ruminating.
Everyone seemed to always say the same thing about you: how you did things so rationally, how stubborn you were.
It was always the same.
The engine coming to life snapped you back to reality, dragging you away from your thoughts completely.
The veterinary college was no piece of cake; it was over run—as expected—but you still managed to find what you needed.
The car ride on the way back was the worst.
It was deafeningly silent.
The sun was falling, and outside was a setting doused in low exposure.
Daryl was pissed at Bob after he’d caught him lugging around a bottle of alcohol in his bag rather than filling up on meds.
You were in the passenger seat; Daryl was driving. Tyreese, Bob, and Michonne were in the back.
You pulled the glovebox open out of sheer attempts to distract yourself from the high tensions between all of you.
Whoever’s car this belonged to before sure had good music taste.
You pulled a CD out of its case, hand trailing over the graphic design on the front.
Daryl's eyes flickered towards you; you didn’t look at him, you were too busy scanning through the track list.
“Why don’t ya try it?” Daryl muttered, his voice still rough but slightly reigned in.
Your head spun towards him at that. He wasn’t even paying attention to the road ahead, just busy glancing between the CD and your…face.
“You think the stereo works?”
“Try it.” Daryl repeated gruffly, eyes tracking over your face once more before he turned away.
You pushed the CD into the stereo, pressing play.
The static answered you at first, loud and obnoxious. Your expression was riddled with one of disappointment.
“I guess no music today then.” Michonne chimed in.
And then, you could hear the bass filter through the speakers, then a voice.
“Holy shit!” You chuffed, turning the volume up.
Michonne chuckled from the back seat.
“Hell yeah.” Daryl nodded.
You hadn’t heard music in a hot minute; music was your life before the apocalypse, and hearing it now after so long just felt like a complete breath of fresh air.
You were smiling ear to ear, and an unusual feeling riddled you: happiness.
After everything, after everything that was to come, it finally felt like a break.
The sun dipped fully now, the darkness surrounding you at all angles, the only light visible being the one emitting from the moon.
You could see the gates of the prison just up ahead. The gate opened, and Daryl hit the gas pedal harder this time, a sense of urgency in the way he was driving now.
The respite you’d felt early soon fluttered away as soon as the car pulled up outside of the prison.
The fences were holding on for dear life, the wooden beams supporting them now lying prone on the ground.
There had been a breach whilst you’d been gone.
You pushed out, pulling your bag off your shoulders and giving it to Tyreese.
“Get in there. We got this,” Daryl urged Tyreese and Bob.
Daryl and Michonne rushed towards the left-side fences; you rushed towards the right side with Rick.
You pushed the wooden beams that had become sloppy back into stiff, secure position.
“Is everyone safe?” You spoke through breathlessness, struggling slightly as you pushed a beam upward.
“Everyone’s fine.” Rick replied.
“Carol? Carl? Maggie? Hershel?” Your eyes moved towards his face, pressing further. “Are they okay?”
“Carl, Maggie, and Hershel are fine.” Rick grunted, pushing the last beam into place.
“And…Carol?” You spoke quietly, stepping back from the fences.
He didn’t answer at first; he didn’t even look up at you.
You could feel the dread creeping into your gut.
“Rick…?”
A beat.
“She killed Karen and David.” He spoke finally, eyes meeting yours then. “I had to send her away.”
“What?” You nearly choked on your own breath.
He sighed.
“She’s got supplies. She’s got a car. She’ll be okay out there.”
“You just left her?” Your brows furrowed, and your heart was beating tenfold.
Carol may have done wrong, but she was still your friend.
A good friend.
“I couldn’t have her here.” Rick snapped, frustration almost bubbling over the surface.
You scoffed, stepping back slightly.
A walker groaned by the fence. You pulled your knife out and stabbed it clean through the eyes.
“You better get some rest.” He muttered.
You didn’t respond.
A beat.
Then he turned away and headed back towards the prison, leaving you outside alone with what had just been said.
Carol was gone. You wanted to go out there and find her, but that, again, was another irrational thought.
People needed you here.
“This part secure?” Michonne spoke from behind you.
“Yeah.” You uttered, wiping your blade on the material of your pants. “Clear.”
“You okay?” she questioned.
You turned.
They were both looking at you now.
Daryl and Michonne.
You hesitated, eyes flickering away from them and towards the gravel below your boots.
“Rick sent Carol away.”
Your eyes flickered to Daryl's. His jaw tightened almost instantly.
“What?”
His words came out rough, sharper than usual.
“…she killed Karen and David.”
A/N: I hope you enjoyed lovelies!
Please let me know if you’d like to be added to the Taglist!💋
Warnings!!: slow burn, reader is an adult!!, mentions of character death, gore, mentions of trauma, mature themes, strong language, angst, hurt/comfort, reader is extremely confused with her feelings😭
Summary:
(You had insisted that Daryl Dixon was, in fact, an asshole. But when it mattered most, it seemed he was always the first there—and that left your mind all over the damn place.)
A/N: listened to the tlou soundtrack whilst writing this and it was literally the perfect combination. I hope you enjoy lovelies!
The following morning was like a breath of fresh air, not in the literal sense of the phrase but in the sense that some of your restrictions had worn off.
No more standing still waiting for your healing to suffice. No more watching people risk themselves while you stood sweetly doing laundry or watching from the tower above.
Freedom.
If you could even class it as that.
“You gonna go on a run today?” Maggie fell into step beside you as you headed outside. “Daddy said he cleared you.”
You giggled, turning your head towards her as your steps fell in sync.
“Yeah,” you nodded, eyes scanning the lot. “Might go solo.”
Maggie looked at you as though you’d just said the worst thing you could’ve.
“Solo?”
“Mhm.”
“I don’t think Rick’ll be happy about that,” She scanned over your face; she was worried about you, you could tell. “With your leg an’ all.”
You were getting ticked off by the number of people questioning you.
Hershel cleared you. That was all there was to it.
Way to ruin the mood.
“Rick can’t stop me,” you finalised. “It’s not like he’s going to say no if I bring things back either.”
Maggie sighed.
“I can go with you…”
“No, Maggie,” you said, shaking your head and stilling your steps. “People only go on runs with others when they know they’ll run into something bad.”
Maggie’s eyes tracked over your face.
“I’m going on a short run as reinforced by your dad,” you said. “No need for backup when I’ve got my gun and two working legs.”
She went to speak, but she stopped herself at your stubbornness.
You knew what she would’ve said anyway.
“Plus,” you started. “I’m sure Glenn would want to tag along with you if you did come anyway and…I’m not about to be a third wheel on my first run back.”
She chuckled at that.
“Fine.”
You squinted your face at her jokingly.
“Gonna head to fence duty for a while.”
“Alright,” she nodded. “It’s really nice having you back out here.”
You shot her a smile before saying your goodbyes, turning on your heel and stalking your way up to the fence.
You got a few smiles on your way up there; it seemed like people really did miss having you out in the yard after your accident.
You took your usual spot on the fence away from prying eyes and lingering questions.
“What an ugly bastard—” you muttered, taking out the walker in question, wiping the remnants of its brain clean of your knife and onto your pants.
You took four more walkers out.
Four.
And then you spotted Rick talking with Daryl and Tyreese by the pigpen.
You may as well tell him you’d be going on a run now.
You made your way over, boots heavy against the floor, arms crossed over your chest.
“I’m going on a run today.” You interrupted their conversation—not on purpose; you just wanted to make your point clear as soon as you could.
Rick looked at you.
Then Tyreese.
Then Daryl.
You didn’t even look Daryl straight in the eye; you’d actually had time to have a deep think about his actions.
The avoidance, and then suddenly jumping to help you?
That pissed you off.
“You’re goin’ with these two, if you’re goin’ anywhere.” Rick stated.
“No, I’m not.” Your words came out fast. “I’m going on my own.”
“Ain’t safe out there.” Daryl uttered, eyes practically glued on yours.
“Yeah, well,” your eyes flickered to Daryl’s for a brief moment. “Did everything out there alone before I got here. I know how to handle myself.”
“Ain’t like that now.” Daryl spoke again, his voice rougher this time.
Tyreese didn’t speak a word.
Rick was already sighing, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose.
“What are you, hm?” You raised your brows at him, eyes fully on his now. “You my chaperone now or something? That’s funny, Daryl, because it’s not like you cared at all before.”
Daryl went to speak, but Rick cut him off instantly.
“Quit it.”
“No!” You raised your voice. “I’m sick of everyone treating me as though I’m some kind of fucking child!”
Rick looked at you properly then, brows furrowed and eyes narrowed.
“Nobody’s doing that.” Rick stressed.
You shook your head.
“You’re doing it right now.”
A beat.
“She’ll be fine Rick,” Tyreese finally cut in. “She’s a tracker. She knows the route and she’s got a gun.”
You nodded at Tyreese, thankful for his backup.
Rick sighed once more, already knowing nothing would be stopping you getting offsite.
“You better be back before night if you’re goin’.”
“I will.”
And then that was it; you didn’t even wait for another word; you just went.
You grabbed your gun from your cell, your satchel, extra ammo from storage, and a new silencer for your weapon.
“You going on a run?” Carl questioned as you made your way outside.
“Yeah,” you smiled at him, not slowing down.
You wanted out as soon as you could; you needed a break from everyone.
“Don’t die out there!” He shouted out from behind you, his voice carrying through the wind.
You chuckled to yourself.
“I won't, Carl! I won’t!”
The gates opened, and you were soon stalking your way toward the forest.
Glenn covered you from the tower as you walked, taking out the walkers that moved your way.
The leaves crunched beneath your boots, and the wind brushed through your hair.
You weren’t exactly tracking anything in particular; you just knew exactly where your feet were taking you.
Your old camp.
You knew there would still be supplies out there, and you were certain the walkers would’ve drifted elsewhere after they’d eaten their way through your old friends.
It was bittersweet, really.
You missed them.
A walker stumbled out of the brush, grumbling loudly; you took it out without even looking at it.
Then it felt like the whole world went silent.
That’s what you wanted. You wanted the peace, the solitude.
But the silence only meant bad.
You kept moving.
Your camp was a long way out, and if you wanted to get there and back by dusk, you had to be fast.
You just need to make a quick pit stop first.
A cabin sat just ahead of you; you’d seen it many times before, but you were much too weak to even attempt to search it.
Guess now was the time.
Your hand snaked around the handle, turning it slightly.
It opened with a creak.
You entered.
The smell was stale and pungent, attacking your senses all in one.
You pushed through anyway.
You flicked through the cabinets; most of it had already been picked over, but there were still a few tins stacked underneath the faucet.
You pushed them into your satchel and continued searching.
The rest of the place was empty; you’d gotten lucky finding those tins.
You moved towards the door you came in through, pushing it open whilst fiddling with the strap on your bag.
You didn’t even notice the walker stumbling towards you.
Too distracted.
It made a moaning noise, and that’s when your eyes finally picked up. You frantically drew your weapon to shoot, but before you could—
Somebody had taken it out clean through the eyeball for you.
You froze as the walker dropped in front of you, an arrow straight through its skull.
An arrow.
You knew whose arrow almost immediately.
You exhaled through your nose, eyes scanning the area.
“You following me now?” You shouted out.
No answer.
A beat.
“Just leave me alone, Daryl.” You rolled your eyes, stepping over the dropped body and continuing on your commute.
“Rick sent me.” He emerged from behind a tree, crossbow still raised.
You glanced at him for a minute before you turned again, keeping your distance from him.
“So you’ve been following me my whole time out here?”
“Ain’t followin’ you.” He grunted, trailing you slowly.
“So what are you doing then?” You faced him, eyes widening.
“M’followin’ Rick’s orders.”
“Bullshit.” You spat, hands gripping the sides of your pants so hard your knuckles turned white.
“It ain't.” He spoke back, jaw tightening.
You scoffed, turning away from him.
He still followed. Leaves crunching beneath his feet with every step he made.
“You know what's funny?” you called over your shoulder. “Nobody cared what I did before my injury.”
Daryl's expression darkened.
“That ain't true.”
“Really?”
You spun around again.
His eyes flickered away for half a second at that, but you caught it.
Another beat.
“And now you want to stand on some fucking moral high ground?” You raised your voice, words coming out sharp.
“The hell's that suppose’ to mean?” His own tone rose now, voice gruff.
“You know exactly what it means.”
“I ain’t on no damn moral high ground!” He seethed. “You don’t know what the hell yer talkin’ about!”
“Really?” you hissed.
His temper flared.
“Ain’t my fault ya got some suicide wish comin’ out here alone!”
You looked at him, brows furrowing; somewhere deep down, that statement hurt.
Hurt enough to knock the fight out of you.
“Just go back, Daryl.” You sighed, turning and making your way back through the leaves.
He waited a beat and then—
He was back on you like a damn fly.
You didn’t want to speak anymore. Neither did he.
You walked in utter silence for the rest of your journey, and then, you spotted it: your old camp.
The tents had dipped to the floor a long while ago, you could tell. The wood centered in the middle had gone completely black, the smell of ash flickering through the air.
You could feel your chest begin to ache seeing it all again.
You swallowed hard, forcing yourself forward; everything felt ten times harder being out here after you’d built the courage to finally come back.
It didn’t feel fair, you being here and them not.
Maybe it should’ve been you.
Your boots carried you further to what used to be your tent. Most of it had collapsed inward, the canvas rotted from the months of rain it had endured before finally giving up.
You crouched beside it anyway, fingers lifting the material up slightly to peer under.
Your hands brushed against everything, unsure of what they were looking for exactly.
Then they skimmed over a canvas.
A photograph of you and your dog from back home, back home when everything was okay.
You had carried it everywhere with you; you only lost it when your camp went downhill.
You stared at it, chest aching so violently that you could have thrown up.
Daryl noticed.
“'Ey.”
You didn't answer.
“'Ey.” He repeated, nudging your foot gently with the toe of his boot.
Your eyes never left the photograph.
The edges were worn soft from years of being folded and unfolded, carried from place to place.
“I found him when I was fifteen,” you murmured. “Someone left him half-starved on the damn side of the road.”
Daryl stayed quiet.
You weren't even sure why you were talking. You didn’t elaborate further.
The silence stretched.
The camp suddenly felt too small.
Empty.
Dead.
“They're all dead.” Your voice was hoarse as you tried to stop yourself from crying.
Daryl's gaze shifted from you to the collapsed tents.
“Ain’t on you.” His tone was calmer now, less aggravated than before.
You looked back down at the photograph, a lone tear splashing against the image.
Daryl pretended not to notice; you couldn’t tell if that was better or worse.
Probably better.
“C'mon.” He tapped you gently on your shoulder.
His touch was almost…grounding.
“What?” You sniffled, wiping your eyes with the back of your hand.
“We ain't gettin' back 'fore dark if ya sit here all day.”
You looked at him.
He looked back.
“Take the picture.”
You didn’t hesitate, folding the photograph carefully and slipping it into your pocket.
Then you stood, collecting yourself.
“Check the tents,” you started, wiping at your eyes again. “I’m sure there will be stuff still in them.”
His eyes tracked over yours for a moment before he nodded.
You ended up managing to find about a dozen unopened tins, some bandages that had survived the mold, and some unopened bottles of water.
Then—
You left.
Dusk had already started to fall, settling slowly over the trees.
You and Daryl walked in silence.
The argument from earlier had burnt itself out now, and the silence was simply because neither of you knew what to say.
It seemed you never knew what to say to him, and he, vice versa.
The photograph sat folded inside your pocket, fingers touching it through the material of your pants every so often to make sure it was still there.
Your foot stubbed against a fallen branch that you’d failed to see in the dark.
Your leg protested immediately.
Not enough to stop you but enough to remind you that you were still, in fact, injured.
Daryl's eyes flickered downward. You noticed.
“I'm fine.” You muttered.
“Ain't say nothin’.” He grunted.
“You were thinking it.”
“Nah.” He spoke, eyes glancing over towards you.
A lie; you could tell.
You rolled your eyes, focus returning towards the route ahead.
A few minutes passed before you spoke again.
“I forgot what this felt like.” You said quietly, the hoarseness still evident in your voice but less so than before.
“What?” He questioned, eyes moving to the side of your face.
“Being out here.”
Your eyes tracked over the woods around you.
“The quiet.”
A beat.
“Everything at the prison's so...” you started, trying to find the right word. “Loud.”
Daryl huffed softly through his nose, an agreement almost; at least, it sounded like one.
You glanced at him.
“You get it.”
“'Course I do.”
That was probably the most obvious thing he'd said all day.
You smiled despite yourself.
You spotted movement between the trees before Daryl did, hand instantly moving towards your gun.
A walker: It’s body half-rotted, a limp in its walk, and a groan coming from its mouth.
You drew your gun.
Before you could aim, Daryl's hand briefly caught your forearm.
The contact surprised both of you, his grip dropping almost immediately.
“I got it.” He whispered.
You blinked.
The walker barely had time to turn before Daryl’s knife buried itself in its skull. Its body dropped, hitting the forest floor with a thump.
Daryl wiped the blade against his pant leg, blood staining the material.
You stared at him.
“Whatcha starin’ at ?” His eyes raised from his knife to you.
You didn’t even know yourself why you were staring.
“Nothing.” You shook your head, moving without waiting for him.
A few steps later, he fell into pace beside you again, kicking at rocks that lay in his path.
You adjusted the strap of your satchel higher onto your shoulder.
After another minute, Daryl spoke.
“That picture.” He pointed lazily towards your pocket, eyes not bothering to look at you.
You blinked.
“What about it?”
“The dog.”
Your hand instinctively moved to your pocket; you hadn’t expected him to bring it up.
“What about him?”
Daryl shrugged.
“What was S’name?”
“Rocky.” Your voice broke slightly.
Daryl nodded once.
Your eyes lingered on the side of his face, brows furrowing slightly.
Confused.
Nobody had ever confused you as much as Daryl did.
Your eyes moved away after a moment, and when they did, they were met with the dark outlining of the prison tower and then the prison in whole.
Carl's voice echoed faintly through the distance. “They’re back!”
You laughed.
“Damn kid.” Daryl muttered under his breath at the pure loudness of Carl’s voice.
The gates opened slowly.
You entered, a whole hoard of people gathering around the gate like it was a ‘welcome home party.’
Maggie's eyes immediately dropped to your leg. “How's it feel?”
“It’s fine.”
Glenn moved over to take part of the supplies from your bag.
“Damn.” His eyebrows rose.
“Found my old camp.” You shrugged, words coming out flatter than you’d intended.
Glenn's smile faded slightly; Maggie’s did too, but neither of them pushed.
They understood that it was still raw for you.
Tyreese took a few of the tins. “Good haul.”
“Yeah.”
“Daryl helped—”
You cut yourself short realising Daryl wasn’t beside you anymore.
Your eyes panned to your left, then your right, looking for him, but—
He was already about twenty feet away from you now. His crossbow slung over his shoulder.
You just started.
Watched.
The yard slowly dispersed around you.
Carl lingered a second longer than everyone else.
“You didn’t die. That’s good.”
“Told you I wouldn’t.” You snorted.
His grin widened before he jogged away, probably to find his dad.
After that, you were left standing by the gate alone, gaze drifting over the darkened lot.
You huffed, making your way through the yard and towards your cell.
The days began flying by like clockwork after that night; everything just seemed to have fallen into place.
Except…
You still couldn’t make your mind up on Daryl. You’d been thinking about him a lot more than you would’ve liked to admit, and that freaked you out.
Were you civil or were you not?
Beth had made a tally chart, something about how many days camp had gone without an accident; you found it sweet, honestly. At least someone had hope in such dark times.
You woke later than you usually did that morning.
Clearly, you needed the rest.
You ran a hand over your face, groaning as you always did; the cell mattress really wasn’t doing any favours for your back, but you couldn’t complain.
Your eyes flickered over the cell. The photograph you’d retrieved from your old camp sat on a small, wooden, makeshift table. You picked it up and placed it straight into your back pocket.
You told Carol that you’d help her cook some deer meat that Daryl had caught on a run yesterday.
You stalked through the corridor, completely passing each cell.
Then, you stopped and turned around.
Beth’s cell.
You wanted to see what day you were on without an ‘accident.’
She was lying on her bed reading some kind of old magazine when you knocked against the metal bars.
“Hi Beth.” You smiled gently. “Just wanted to check in on what day we were on without an accident in camp.”
Her eyes flickered up from the magazine towards the tally chart.
“It’s been thirty days!” She couldn’t hold back her smile.
“Great.” You nodded. “See you around Beth.”
Then you were off again, making your way outside.
You rounded a corner, and the only smell that hit you was that damn deer meat.
Carol had started without you.
“Carol!” You groaned, hands situating themselves atop of your hips. “I was supposed to be helping you with that!”
She chuckled slightly, turning towards you.
“I didn’t want to wake you because I know you needed the sleep,” she started. “And Patrick’s been helping me.”
“You should’ve woken me up, Carol.”
You huffed.
“Too late.” She lengthened the words out, a hint of amusement in her tone.
You weren’t impressed.
You pulled a piece of meat off the bone and popped it into your mouth.
It was good.
Surprisingly so.
“Good.” You pressed your lips into a thin line, too stubborn to admit that the food was actually nice when you didn’t have a hand in cooking it.
Carol looked like she was about to scold you. Half serious, half not.
“What?” You raised a brow. “I said it’s good…”
“It’s your tone.” She spoke, amusement riddled in her voice.
You rolled your eyes, popping another piece of deer into your mouth before you rested against the edge of the wooden table.
“There supposed to be a run today?”
“Yeah, I think so.” Carol nodded. “You wanna go?”
“Wanted to.” Your eyes flickered away from carols and over the lot. “Also need a new lighter, might be one there.”
“Well, why don’t you ask Daryl?” She uttered, her voice barely audible now from the background chatter.
“Where is he right now?” You didn’t face Carol, distracted by the movement near the fence lines.
“Right there.” She muttered.
You turned almost immediately, and funnily enough, Daryl was standing right behind you, picking off pieces of meat from the tray.
He seemed to have a thing for staying as quiet as humanly possible when in your presence.
Why? You had no clue.
You were also certain Carol had picked up on your behaviour around one another. Maybe you were overthinking it.
“Ya wanna go on the run?” He lowered his head slightly, the gruffness in his voice evident.
He was there the whole damn time and didn’t even think to say a word.
“Yeah,” your eyes met his. “When are you leaving?”
“Soon.”
You studied him for a moment before you spoke.
“Gonna go get my stuff then.”
He grunted, turning back towards Carol.
“Uh,” you scratched the top of your head, eyes moving back towards Carol. “I’ll see you later, Carol.”
You didn’t want to intrude any further, so you just headed back inside to get your things.
You happened to be the last one out; it seemed like everyone was waiting on you.
“Shit,” you placed your rifle into the back of the truck, then your satchel. “Sorry.”
“You ready to go?” Sasha spoke, arm braced on the open door of one of the cars.
“Yeah.”
Then, you were on the road.
Bob was on your left; Michonne was on your right—she’d volunteered last minute to go on the run.
“Be careful this time,” Michonne uttered to you. “We don’t need you injured again.”
“I’ll be careful.” You smiled, hands drumming against your thighs.
You were stressed. Anxious. Paranoid: This was your first major run since the injury.
“Listen,” Michonne whispered, nudging you slightly on your arm. “You’ll be good out there. You always are.”
“She’s right.” Glenn added from the front seat.
“Thank you, guys,” you started. “But…please don’t get all soppy on me.”
That got a few chuckles.
You’d be fine. Hopefully.
The area looked mostly clear when you arrived. Sasha had lured the hoards away a few days early with a boombox.
This place looked like some kind of military setup: tents, flags, trucks.
Guess none of them were so lucky.
Daryl banged against the glass of the storefront.
“Jus’ give it a second.”
“Okay, I think I got it.” Zach chuffed, leaning against a brick wall.
You raised an eyebrow, confused as to what on earth he was talking about.
“Got what?” Michonne questioned.
“Oh, I’ve been trying to guess what Daryl did before the turn.” Zach turned, looking at Michonne for a second before sitting on the brick edge.
“He’s been tryin’ ta guess for like six weeks.” Daryl added.
You glanced briefly between Zach and Daryl and then Michonne, trying your hardest to remain composed.
“What’s your conclusion then, Zach?”
A beat.
“Well, the way you are at the prison,” Zach started. “You being on the council, you’re able to track, you’re helping people, but you’re still being kind of…”
Zach searched for the word.
“Surly.”
Surly was right.
You narrowed your eyes, falling into place beside Michonne, both of you waiting for what would be said next.
“Big swing here,” Zach continued. “Homicide cop.”
Michonne laughed at that.
Your eyes widened immediately, a smirk spreading over your lips. “Oh, I think you’ve got it spot on there, Zach.”
Sarcastic.
Daryl knew that tone in your voice all too well, and he shot you a glare in return, but it didn’t carry any malice.
“The man’s right.” Daryl nodded his head, eyes lingering on yours. “Undercover.”
“Come on, man,” Zach responded, completely oblivious to what was going on. “Really?”
“Yup,” Daryl’s eyes moved from yours and then towards the space ahead of him. “I don’t like ta talk about it ‘cause it was a lot of heavy shit, y’know.”
“Oh, I’m sure.” You shot out, lips pressing into a thin line.
You saw Daryl’s lips flicker into something more than the usual scold at that.
Then he composed himself and looked away.
“Dude, come on, really?” Zach pressed again, still unaware.
Daryl turned towards him, finally done with the questions.
That was all the answer that Zach needed to know that Daryl was a complete bullshitter.
“Okay.” Zach nodded to himself, clearly disappointed that he didn’t get it. “I’ll keep guessing, I guess.”
Daryl cleared his throat.
“Yeah, ya keep doin’ that.”
You chuckled to yourself, as did Michonne.
And then, as if the world had a strict agenda against laughing, a walker bashed against the window inside.
It almost made you jump. Almost.
Daryl stood up at that, crossbow tight in his grip.
“We’re gonna do this, detective?” Michonne joked, readying her sword.
“Let’s do it.”
Everyone filed through, taking out the walkers one by one; they never stood a chance against all of you.
You separated from the others, eyes scanning over the tills, looking for a new lighter, but to no avail.
Nothing.
Guess you’d have to wait for another run to find one.
You picked up a few things you thought useful and shoved them into your satchel.
You adjusted it.
Then a crash.
Your head rose immediately, jogging towards the source. A wine shelf had collapsed, trapping Bob underneath.
You rushed over, as did Daryl.
“Shit!” You yelped, crouching down.
“You cut or somethin’?” Daryl asked.
“No man!” Bob panicked. “But my foot is caught!”
The ceiling groaned above you; your head snapped towards it and then…
It caved.
A walker came through it, swinging on the metal structure after it had gotten caught on its own guts.
“We should probably go now!” Glenn spoke with urgency.
“Get Bob!” Daryl shouted, readying himself for the fallout, crossbow raised.
Then havoc broke out; several walkers piled through the ceiling, hitting the ground violently.
You fired immediately, as did everyone else.
One walker dropped.
Then another.
The ceiling groaned again, another pile of walkers collapsing through.
There were too many of them.
A walker fell straight on top of you from the roof above, trapping you under its body, knocking your weapon straight from your hands.
You pushed at its head, fingers sinking into the mushy flesh, but it didn’t give.
“Fuck,”
A blade sunk through its brains, the sharp end just mere inches from your face: Michonne.
“You okay?”
She pushed the walker from you, extending her arm out to pull you up.
“You get bit?”
“No—no, I’m fine.”
She yanked you up, stabbing another walker straight through the eyes after you were on your feet.
“Everyone move!” Sasha yelled.
“Get Bob!” Zach shouted, firing his gun.
Daryl threw his crossbow over his shoulder, grabbing the edge of the shelf.
Zach joined him. As did you.
You planted your boots, pain shooting up your closed wound; you ignored it completely.
The shelf shifted.
Daryl dragged Bob out, pushing him to his feet.
“Get out now!” Michonne shouted with urgency.
You ran, falling into place beside the others.
Zach didn’t move, a scream tearing through his throat.
You turned, eyes widening in horror, watching as a walker chomped straight through his leg.
Everything stilled around you, noise pitching out.
“Zach!” Glenn shouted.
You froze up completely.
“Go!” Daryl barked, grabbing your arm and hauling you out of the way.
The ceiling caved completely, dust spilling from whatever had fallen through it.
You moved fast, but your brain hadn’t caught up as quickly as your feet did.
Zach was there a minute ago, and now he was being mauled. You had all left him there to be turned into one of those…
Monsters.
The guilt crept into your stomach, knocking the air straight from your lungs.
You didn’t even register anything else until you were back at camp.
You gave your supplies to Glenn and moved in silence towards the fences.
You needed to keep your mind busy.
Your knife moved through the gaps messily. Not as professional as you usually were.
“You good?” A voice beckoned from behind you. Southern—flat.
You knew who it was: Daryl.
“Fine.” You lowered your knife, turning towards him. “You?”
He nodded in response. You could tell he wasn’t as ‘good’ as he claimed. You didn’t question it.
“I—uh,” you sighed, scratching the back of your neck. “I keep having to thank you for things, but I just wanted to say thanks…for pulling me out back there.”
Another nod.
“You gonna tell Beth?” You questioned.
“Yeah,” he grunted.
A beat.
Daryl reached into his vest pocket, pulling something out; you barely paid attention until he held the thing towards you.
A lighter.
He wiggled it impatiently.
“Take it.”
You stared at it before taking it from his hand, rolling the cogs to see if the gas still worked.
It ignited.
“Where'd you get this?” You questioned, hand tracing over the engravings over the casing.
“The store.”
You looked at him, really looked at him this time.
“You hear me speaking to Carol about it?” You tilted your head slightly.
He just looked at you. No response. No nod. No grunt.
That spoke words. He had heard you.
“Well, thank you, Daryl,” you spoke quietly. “Again.”
“Ain’t nothin’.”
You slipped the lighter into your pocket beside the photograph of your dog.
Somebody called you from in the distance, dragging your attention away from him.
A beat.
“I’ll see you later, Dixon.”
You didn’t even mean to call him by his second name; it just slipped out before you could even stop yourself.
He grunted.
That was goodbye enough.
A/N: I hope you guys enjoyed!!
Please let me know if you’d like to be added to the Taglist!!💋
Warnings!!: slow burn, Reader is an adult!!, Daryl being avoidant😀, mentions of injury, mentions of medical care, mature themes, strong language, heavy tension, angst, hurt/comfort.
Summary:
(Healing after your injury was supposed to be the easy part. Seems learning how to stay still—and figuring out Daryl Dixon—proves to be much harder.)
A/N: I hope you enjoy!!! I can’t wait to write the next chapter hehehehe
Useless.
You felt completely useless after being forced into light duties.
Rick told you no runs, and his word was always final.
So, in the meantime, until your leg had healed enough, you were assigned laundry duties.
You hated it.
It didn’t feel like you were doing enough.
You wanted to be back in the yard protecting the fences. You wanted to be back on the field, tracking and scavenging.
You had had enough.
You pushed through doors, your pace growing quicker with every step. It didn’t hurt to walk anymore; that was a good thing.
Then you were outside.
The sky was overcast, the usual blue skies hidden behind thick and haunting grey clouds.
Your eyes scanned the lot, searching for someone in particular.
Rick.
“Rick!”
You practically stormed over, hands swaying by your sides, feet scuffing against the dust-scattered concrete.
Rick's eyes flickered up from the pigpen, your name leaving his mouth almost as if he were confused to even see you out here.
“You can’t just keep me locked up in that damn laundry room,” you spoke quickly, arms crossing over one another. “I want to be back on fence duty or run duty.”
He dropped his shovel and turned towards you fully.
“I ain’t risking you getting an infection,” he pointed out towards where the wound was on your leg. “No.”
“Hershel said the cut was healing well.”
“Exactly,” he started, an authoritative tone in his voice. “It’s still healin’.”
A beat.
“You should let her out, Dad,” Carl cut in.
“Thanks, Carl.” You nodded once before turning back towards Rick, eyes narrowed.
Rick rubbed a hand over his face, already looking tired of the argument.
“Carl.”
“But she’s right,” Carl muttered, kicking lightly at the dirt. “She’s been stuck washing clothes for like a week.”
Rick sighed, eyes staring off into the distance.
He considered it and then turned back to you.
“You’re on tower duty.” He spoke finally, clearly regretting saying that as soon as the words left his mouth. “No runnin’ around. No sneakin’ off with people going on runs.”
You chirped up at that, a smile spreading across your lips. “Thank you.”
Then came the reiteration of his terms.
No running around. No sneaking out or you’d be straight back on laundry duty.
Sounded simple enough.
The view from the tower was like a whole new experience. The skies had cleared up, and you could see the line of walkers more clearly now. You could see the span of the forest just outside.
It would’ve been surreal if it were under different circumstances.
You pulled your rifle from your side, leaning over the edge, eye brought close to the scope.
Scanning.
Watching.
You fired once, taking out a walker that rattled against a blind spot in the fence.
It dropped.
You adjusted the rifle again, moving it slightly towards the right.
Then you heard the distant growling of an engine.
A motorcycle engine.
Daryl.
He’d been avoiding you completely after the accident and that stupid ‘thank you’ that you couldn’t stop yourself from saying.
He’d been off.
Radio silent.
With you at least.
You didn’t know what it was.
The rifle moved instinctively in your hands, eyes following him through the scope as he entered through the gates, his bike halting to a stop, gravel spattering under the tires.
He had a sack in his hand; he’d been hunting.
Your eyes stayed on him for a second longer.
Then they moved away.
You took out a walker that had gotten too close to the fence lines, gun smoke crackling in the wake of your fire.
“Nice shot.” A voice spoke from behind you, startling you completely.
You turned, eyes wide.
Carol.
“You scared me!” You chuckled, a sigh of relief escaping your lips.
A smile was on her lips as she joined you at your side, scanning the lot below.
“Ah, Daryl’s back.” She almost sounded rejoiced.
You didn’t speak; you just adjusted the rifle further.
She noticed the tension in your grip.
“Something wrong?” She questioned, brows furrowing.
“No,” you answered plainly.
“Is it Daryl?”
That had your body stilling, your grip on your rifle slackening.
Your mouth stayed glued shut.
A beat.
She knew it was Daryl.
“You know,” she started casually, fiddling with the sleeve of her cardigan, “he felt bad about what happened to you.”
You immediately stiffened. “Who?”
“Daryl.”
Your brows furrowed at that.
“Did he tell you that?” You questioned.
Daryl and Carol were close; if he were to say anything, it would be to her.
“No,” she turned away from you. “I can just tell.”
“Oh…” you spoke quietly, eyes moving towards the sun as it glowed a warm orange colour.
Maybe Carol was right.
“How are you feeling anyway?” She asked, shifting the subject quickly.
“I’m better.”
“Good.” She turned towards you. “It’ll be nice having you back outside.”
“Yeah.” You turned towards her with a smile. “…Just have to get the all-clear from Hershel, and then I’ll be back in full swing.”
She nodded.
“Good.”
The sun had fully dipped now; Carol had left a long while back, and you were still out here.
Watching.
Thinking.
You could feel the tiredness washing over you.
You slung your rifle over your shoulder, taking a last glance at the moon before you carried yourself down the metal steps, leaving the tower for whoever was taking the night shift.
By the time you got in, everyone was eating dinner; you weren’t hungry, so rather, you just headed straight to your cell instead.
You were cleaning your wound with some alcohol and a few rags that Maggie had left by your bed.
Then you heard footsteps.
You didn’t look straight away; you were busy sanitising.
“Carol told me t’bring ya this.”
Daryl.
Your eyes rose immediately, hand freezing against your flesh.
He still had that exhausted look on his face that’d become all too familiar when looking at him, hair falling over his eyes, dirt smeared over his skin.
He was holding a plate of food, canned beans on one side and whatever he’d caught from his hunt on the other.
“I’m not hungry.” Your eyes moved away from his, focusing once more on cleaning your leg.
He didn’t answer, just grunted.
Then he walked over and set the plate down beside you anyway.
The smell of cooked meat and canned beans filled the cell.
You swallowed hard.
“Carol made you bring this?”
He nodded, eyes on yours.
A beat.
“I’m not hungry.” You repeated yourself again.
You focused on your leg, wiping carefully along the healing cut.
You could see him through your peripheral vision, his eyes glancing between your leg and your face.
You acted as though you weren’t noticing—but you were.
The alcohol stung sharply, dragging a hiss from your lips.
Daryl shifted slightly at the sound.
“S’alright?”
Your fingers tightened around the rag.
“It’s fine.”
You adjusted awkwardly on the mattress, trying to ignore how painfully aware you were of him standing there.
Daryl rested one shoulder against the bars now, arms folded tightly across his chest.
Guarded.
But he still…stayed.
That was the confusing part.
If he really wanted to avoid you, he wouldn’t be here at all.
You fumbled the edge of the fresh bandage roll completely under the severity of his gaze.
He shouldn’t have made you so nervous.
But he did…and that was the worse part because you hated to acknowledge it.
The bandage loosened immediately.
“Shit.”
You tried catching it one-handed but failed miserably, watching as it tumbled straight to the floor.
Daryl pushed off the bars before you could lean down for it, fingers forming around the roll.
Your hand stopped midway.
“Thanks…” You muttered.
He handed it over carefully, fingers brushing over yours for barely a second.
Then he pulled back, resting against the bars again.
You cleared your throat.
“Rick let me do tower duty today.”
“Mhm.”
Awkward.
You looked back down at your leg, wrapping the bandage around your skin.
It wrapped unevenly.
Your hands felt clumsy under the weight of his silence.
You could tell he’d noticed.
Daryl noticed everything.
Slowly, he crouched down in front of you.
You stilled, body tensing up completely, eyes rising to meet his.
His hand lifted slightly, palm flat—asking permission without saying it.
You handed him the bandage wordlessly.
He wrapped it, hands rough against your skin.
You didn’t speak. Neither did he.
You watched the top of his head instead of his face, fingers digging into the mattress beneath you.
The entire room felt too small.
He tied the bandage off neatly and leaned back slightly to check it before he stood and stepped back.
“S’tighter now,” he muttered.
“Yeah…”
Silence.
You wanted to speak. You wanted to say something to break the quiet.
But your mind had gone blank.
Daryl glanced towards the untouched plate.
“Should eat.”
“I will.”
A nod.
Your eyes flickered towards the plate of food.
“What meat is it?” you asked softly.
“Rabbit.”
You blinked.
A beat.
“Should go.” He spoke lowly, eyes lingering on yours.
“Oh. Yeah.”
He gave a small nod, turning towards the hallway.
Then he left.
Your eyes stayed fixed on the doorway long after the sound of his boots disappeared down the hall.
The untouched plate sat beside you, a small trail of steam still curling faintly off the rabbit.
You sighed through your nose.
“…Fine,” you muttered to yourself.
You grabbed the fork, picking up a piece of meat and shovelling it into your mouth.
The next morning came quickly.
Too quickly.
Your eyes fluttered open; the sun shone through the windows on the opposite wall of your cell, and echoes filtered through the hallways.
You sat up swiftly, dragging a hand over your face.
You felt groggy.
Exhausted.
The plate Daryl had brought you still sat on the floor beside your bed.
You’d finished it all.
Your eyes flickered down towards your leg, the bandage still perfectly wrapped and in place.
The bandage that Daryl had wrapped for you.
You sighed.
Then you changed into some clean clothes and headed out.
Glenn was in the hallway, carrying some boxes—most likely supplies from runs he’d been on.
“You need some help, Glenn?” You raised an eyebrow, a faint smirk appearing on your lips as you noticed his slight struggling.
Glenn let out a dramatic sigh of relief the second he saw you.
“Yes,” he answered immediately, shifting one of the boxes higher against his chest before it slipped. “Please.”
You laughed softly and stepped forward, taking the top box from him with ease.
“What’s even in these?”
“Canned food. Ammo.” He adjusted his grip.
You nodded.
The two of you started down the hallway together toward storage.
“You’re walking better,” Glenn noted after a second.
“Yeah. Leg doesn’t really hurt anymore.”
“That’s good.” He smiled briefly.
“Rick put me on tower duty,” you added, pushing through the storage room. “Said that’s all I’m getting until I’m cleared.”
Glenn shrugged, placing the boxes in stacks on the floor.
“Towers not all that bad.”
“You say that because you spend all your time up there with Maggie.” You let out a chuckle, putting down the boxes beside the others.
Glenn immediately failed to hide his grin.
“Fair point.”
You shook your head, smiling faintly.
A beat passed before you dusted off your jeans.
“I best get going, Glenn.”
“Yeah,” he nodded once. “See you around.”
You headed back out into the hallway, adjusting the sleeve of your shirt absentmindedly as you walked.
You didn’t waste anytime making your way outside and up to the tower, securing your position before anybody could stop you.
Your eyes drifted across the yard again.
Carol was working on reinforcing the supports along the outer fence.
Carl was chasing after another escaped chicken, his complaints audible even from the tower.
You smiled faintly.
Then your gaze snagged on a familiar figure.
Daryl.
He was crouched beside his motorcycle near the outer fence, sleeves pushed up to his elbows as he worked on something near the engine.
He and Rick were talking about something—you couldn’t hear what they were talking about; they were too far.
His hands continued moving while Rick spoke, tightening something near the frame before wiping grease onto an already ruined rag.
Your eyes lingered for a second.
Then another.
You were watching because you were trying to figure him out, not because of anything else.
A week ago he'd barely looked at you, then he'd shown up in your cell with food. Wrapped your bandage for you. And stayed far longer than he needed to.
None of it made sense.
A walker slammed against the fence, catching your attention immediately.
You steadied your breathing and fired.
The walker dropped.
The crack echoed across the prison yard, causing several heads to lift.
You noticed Rick's and Daryl’s gazes first.
You lowered the rifle slightly.
“You okay up there?” he shouted.
You rolled your eyes.
“I'm fine.”
"Want ya to go see Hershel about that leg,” His expression hardened as he spoke. “Now.”
“Is this some excuse to put me back on laundry duty?” You groaned.
"No."
You narrowed your eyes suspiciously.
“Glen’ll take over for you until you get back.”
You raised a brow, your grip firm around the rifle—so firm that it almost hurt.
“And if Hershel says I’m okay to do my other duties…?”
“Then you’re okay to do your other duties.”
“Fine.” You huffed.
Rick gave you a look.
“Go on then.”
You grabbed your rifle, slinging it over your shoulder before starting down the metal stairs.
The prison halls were cooler than outside, echoes of voices carrying faintly through the corridors.
You made your way toward the small room that Hershel had turned into a medical space, knocking lightly against the frame before stepping in.
Hershel looked up immediately from where he sat organizing supplies.
“Rick send you?”
“Of course.” You sighed dramatically.
That earned a soft chuckle from him.
“sit.”
You moved over toward one of the chairs, propping your injured leg up onto another spare chair and pulling the leg of your pants up.
Hershel pulled his chair in closer, inspecting the stitching.
“How’s it feeling?” Hershel asked gently.
“Better,” you answered honestly. “Doesn’t really hurt anymore.”
“That’s good.”
He carefully started unwrapping the bandage around your leg, movements slow and patient.
“Bandage is wrapped nicely.” He spoke quietly, almost as if he were talking to himself rather than you.
You cleared your throat awkwardly remembering that it was Daryl who had wrapped that.
The cool air hit your skin as the last layer came loose.
Hershel inspected the cut carefully, fingers gentle as he checked around the healing skin.
“Any pain?”
“Not really.”
“Trouble walkin’?”
You shook your head, fingers tapping against your thigh.
He hummed quietly to himself before leaning back in his chair slightly.
“Well,” he finally said, “looks much better.”
“So I’m cleared?”
A beat.
“Not fully.” He spoke without making eye contact.
Your face fell immediately.
“But—”
“The cut's still healing,” he explained, cutting you off. “It’s healing well, however. No signs of infection. Swelling's gone down.”
Your shoulders straightened slightly.
“But,” he continued, lifting a finger, “that skin is still fresh.”
You groaned quietly.
“Hershel—”
“Listen.”
You closed your mouth, watching as he reached for the small scissors beside him.
“I'll clear you for fence duty.”
A smile immediately pulled at your lips.
“And tower shifts.”
The smile widened.
“Light runs.”
You blinked.
“Runs?”
“Light runs,” he repeated firmly. “Supply runs. Short distances. Nothing that'll have you sprintin' through the woods.”
You nearly laughed from relief.
“But,” he added firmly, pointing a finger at you before you could celebrate, “you are not overexertin’ that leg for another week.”
You sighed dramatically.
“A week?”
“Yes, a week.”
Hershel shook his head fondly before reaching over for the small scissors beside him.
He clipped the first stitch and then the next.
It tugged slightly but didn’t hurt.
Once the final stitch was removed, Hershel cleaned the area carefully before wrapping a fresh bandage around your leg.
“Much better.” He spoke softly, tying it neatly.
You pulled your leg off the chair after he was done, placing your shoe flat on the floor.
Hershel gave you a small smile before pulling his gloves off slowly.
“You start feeling pain again, you come straight back to me.” He spoke gently.
“I will.”
He nodded once, clearly satisfied with that answer before turning to place the supplies back where they belonged.
“Thank you, Hershel.” You spoke.
“You’re welcome,” he answered warmly.
You adjusted the leg of your jeans back over the fresh bandage and stood from the chair, grabbing your rifle from beside the wall.
You weren’t exactly free yet but…
Back on the fences. Back on runs.
Finally.
You didn’t feel as useless as you did a week ago anymore.
A/N: ahhhh the tension between them! I really do hope you enjoyed angels!
Please let me know if you’d like to be added to the Taglist!💋
HEY! so this is my first ever fan fic, I'm shit nervous so please be kind but criticism is welcome. I defo have plans for a smutty angsty part 2 (yum) so maybe you'll enjoy. Anyway, luvs ya xx
I also am very new to tumblr so bare with me. P.S i forgot which characters live in Alexandria so if i got things wrong SUE ME. let a bitch have some fun.
2.3k words
tw: swearing and mean!Daryl
summery: reader goes out for a run for beauty supplies and Daryl gets pissed.
Alexandria had been buzzing for days over Deanna’s stupid party idea. Most people were excited for it; a chance to pretend things were normal again. To wear fancy clothes. To laugh without checking over their shoulder every five seconds.
You thought it was ridiculous at first.
Then you remembered what it felt like to be a woman before the world ended.
Perfume. Lip gloss. Soft skin. Pretty dresses. The little things that used to make you feel human.
So you went on a run.
A dangerous one.
Alone.
You’d practically had to beg Rick to let you take one of the cars, swearing you’d stay close and be back before dark. The entire drive, you kept telling yourself it was stupid, risking your life for makeup and nail polish. But every time you found another unopened bottle of perfume or untouched makeup palette, you couldn’t stop smiling. For once, it wasn’t about survival. It was about feeling alive.
The gates of Alexandria groaned open just as the sun started dipping low.
The second your tires rolled through, you spotted Daryl storming across the street toward you.
Oh, great.
His crossbow hung over his shoulder, jaw tight enough to crack teeth. The second you climbed out of the car, he started yelling.
“Where the fuck ya been?” he snapped in that thick southern drawl. “Ya outta ya damn mind? Does Rick know ya went out there alone?”
You shuddered in hate.
You slammed the car door harder than necessary. “Jesus Christ, Daryl, shut up. S’none of your business where I went.”
“The hell it ain’t!”
“It’s handled, okay? I’m back alive.”
“Barely, probably.”
You rolled your eyes and reached into the backseat for the bags, but Daryl snatched one straight out of your hands before you could stop him.
“What the- give it back.”
He looked inside. His face darkened instantly.
Boxes of makeup. Fake lashes. Nail polish. Perfume bottles wrapped carefully in cloth.
For a second he just stared. Then started breathing heavy through his nose in fury.
Then he looked at you like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
“Are ya fuckin’ serious?” he barked. “Ya almost got yerself killed for this shit?”
You folded your arms defensively. “It matters to us.”
“To who?”
“To the women here! To me!”
Daryl scoffed, angry in the way he only got when he was scared.
“All this so ya can look pretty for some asshole at a party?”
Your expression hardened.
“Excuse me?”
He stepped closer, lowering his voice, rough and mean.
“Really are a stupid slut sometimes, y’know that? Riskin’ your neck just to get laid. For a dick to suck. Pathetic.”
The words hit harder than you expected. You have always butted heads with Daryl ever since Rick saw something in you and kept you safe at the prison. But this… Daryl took this too far this time.
For a second, you just stared at him.
Dumbfounded. The words knocked the air clean outta your lungs. Then your face twisted into something cold and furious and something in you snapped.
“A slut?” you repeated quietly.
Daryl’s jaw tightened, but you kept going before he could say anything else.
“You think that’s what this is about?” You laughed once — sharp and humorless. “Jesus Christ.”
The words came out venomous before you could stop them. “God forbid women wanna feel good about themselves just because we do. Maybe if someone actually touched your dick once in a while you wouldn’t be so damn miserable all the time.”
Something in Daryl’s expression hardened fast.
“Funny,” he said coldly. “Comin’ from someone so pathetic and desperate to be looked at, she’ll risk dyin’ for some lipstick.”
You ripped the bag from his hands so hard a bottle inside clinked loudly.
“You know what’s pathetic, Daryl? The fact that the world ends and somehow it’s still a man’s fucking world.”
His eyes like steel not backing down.
You stepped closer, voice shaking with anger now.
“You all get to keep yourselves. Rick gets to be a leader. You get to be the tracker, the hunter, the survivor.” You pointed toward the bag. “And the second women wanna feel like themselves again, it’s stupid? Dangerous? Slutty?”
“That ain’t what I—”
“No, that is exactly what you meant, asshole.” You shoved his chest in frustration. You knew he was stronger than you but he stumbled a step back anyway. Like he was weak.
Your eyes burned into his.
“We spend every damn day covered in blood and dirt, scared outta our minds, trying not to die. We don’t get mirrors. We don’t get softness. We don’t get to feel pretty or normal or human unless we fight for it.”
Daryl looked away for half a second, guilt creeping across his face, but you were too angry to stop now.
“I didn’t do this for men,” you spat. “I did it because I’m tired of surviving like I’m already dead.”
Silence settled heavy between you.
The wind shifted through the street.
“You know what?” you said quietly. “Fuck you, Daryl.”
You nudged his shoulder as you walked away with the bags.
And for once, Daryl Dixon had absolutely nothing to say.
You turned the corner fast, trying to outwalk the sting burning behind your eyes.
Your grip tightened around the bags in your arms hard enough to crinkle the plastic. The sound of the party preparations drifting through Alexandria suddenly felt ridiculous now — music, laughter, people pretending things were normal while your chest felt like it’d been ripped open.
“Hey!”
Maggie hurried after you, boots skidding on the pavement.
You didn’t stop walking.
“Hey, slow down,” she said softer this time, finally catching up beside you. “ you okay?”
You laughed bitterly under your breath. “Do I look okay?”
Maggie glanced back toward the street where Daryl still stood near the gate.
“Damn,” she muttered. “That looked intense.”
“That’s one word for it.”
You shoved open your garden gate harder than necessary, climbing the steps while Maggie followed close behind.
“He called me a slut, Maggie.”
Her face dropped instantly.
“He what?”
“All because I went out for this stuff.” You held the bags up angrily. “Like God forbid women wanna feel like themselves for five damn minutes without it bein’ about men.”
Maggie stayed quiet, letting you vent.
“He acts like wanting makeup or perfume is stupid because it doesn’t help you survive.” You scoffed, fumbling for your keys with shaking hands. “Like surviving’s the only thing we’re allowed to care about anymore.”
“What a douchebag?!” Maggie huffed.
She helped you with the bags and set them on the sofa.
Maggie blinked.
Inside were makeup palettes still sealed in plastic. Bottles of perfume. Hair products. Nail polish in every color you could find. Face masks. Lipsticks. Brushes.
For a second she just stared.
“Oh my God…”
You pulled another bag open.
Fake lashes. Jewelry. Skincare. A curling iron you prayed still worked with Alexandria’s power.
Maggie’s mouth actually fell open a little.
“You found all this?”
You shrugged, trying to stay angry instead of emotional. “Drug store outside Richmond. Most of it was untouched.”
Maggie carefully picked up a small bottle of perfume, turning it over in her hand like it was made of gold.
Then she laughed softly, completely stunned.
“Carol’s gonna freak.”
Despite yourself, the corner of your mouth twitched.
“She better.”
Maggie looked back into the bags again, eyes wide now as the reality hit her.
“You did all this for us?”
You swallowed.
“I just…” Your voice softened slightly. “I wanted one night where the women here could feel normal again. So I can feel me again” you admitted quietly. “Even if it is fake.”
Maggie’s expression softened immediately.
“It ain’t fake,” she said. “Wantin’ pieces of yourself back after everything? That’s human.”
Your eyes stung again at that.
“Ya know, I don’t think Daryl meant all that. Maybe you scared him.” she said rubbing your shoulder
“Well, he still said it.” you sighed. She knew there wasn't much she could say to comfort you so she gave up on the idea of trying.
Instead, she set the perfume down carefully and looked back up at you with a grin slowly spreading across her face.
“Well,” she said, already examining the products, “we are absolutely not wastin’ this.”
You finally let out a real laugh — small, exhausted, but real.
“Maggie.”
“Hm?”
“Rally the women.”
Her eyebrows lifted.
“All of ‘em?”
“All of ‘em,” you repeated. “Tell ‘em to come to my house before the party.”
Maggie’s grin widened instantly.
“Oh, this is gonna be chaos.”
“Exactly.”
Your house was loud for the first time since the world ended. Not panicked loud. Not screaming loud.
Happy loud.
Music crackled through the old boom box sitting on the kitchen counter, the cassette tape warbling every few seconds while laughter bounced off the walls. Somebody had found wine somewhere. Somebody else was already tipsy.
The entire downstairs smelled like hairspray, perfume, and burnt hair from the curling iron currently plugged into the bathroom outlet. And somehow the power actually held.
“Oh my God, hold still!” Rosita laughed, yanking Tara back toward a chair while trying to fix her eyeliner. “You move one more time and I’m makin’ you look possessed.”
“I already look possessed,” Tara snorted.
Carol sat near the couch with a tiny compact mirror in one hand and lipstick in the other, looking genuinely stunned.
“I forgot how weird this feels,” she admitted quietly.
Maggie appeared behind her immediately. “Good weird or bad weird?”
Carol smiled softly at her reflection.
“Good weird.”
Across the room, Sasha was helping braid Enid’s hair while Rosita argued loudly that everyone needed winged eyeliner “for morale.”
“You are not touchin’ my face with that tiny weapon,” Michonne warned from the armchair.
“You survived Terminus but eyeliner scares you?”
“Yes.”
You laughed from the bathroom doorway, curling iron in hand. The sound felt foreign coming out of you after the fight with Daryl. For a while, you’d almost forgotten about it.
Almost.
“Okay, who’s next?” you asked.
“Me!” Tara yelled instantly.
“No offense,” Rosita said, “but I’m going first. My hair is a hate crime right now.”
“RUDE.”
The room erupted into laughter again. Music played louder as someone turned the volume knob up. Maggie immediately grabbed your hand, dragging you toward the middle of the living room.
“Nope. Absolutely not. You are participating.”
“Maggie-”
“You started this.”
Before you could argue, she shoved a hairbrush into your hand while Carol held up a dress she’d found in your bedroom.
Your jaw dropped.
“Carol!”
“What?” she asked innocently. “You’re wearin’ it.”
“I can’t wear that.”
“You absolutely can,” Rosita cut in immediately.
“You’ll look hot,” Tara added helpfully.
Michonne looked up from painting her nails. “You kinda have to now. Democracy.”
You groaned while everybody started talking over each other. And for the first time in years, it felt less like surviving. More like a sleepover. Like being women again.
Daryl sat alone on the porch steps outside Aaron’s house, cigarette burning slowly between his fingers.
He hadn’t moved in almost an hour.
The sounds drifting across Alexandria made his jaw tighten every time another burst of laughter carried from your street
Women yelling over each other.
The warped sound of some old cassette tape.
Your laugh.
He stared out into the dark, expression hard.
Truth was, you and him had been fightin’ since the day you met. Back on the road, before Alexandria, before any of this almost-normal bullshit.
You thought he was an asshole.
He thought you were spoiled.
First argument happened because you complained about mud ruining your boots.
Second because he caught you trying to wash blood outta your hair with their last clean water.
Third because he nearly got bit dragging your stubborn ass outta a department store after you stopped to grab a stupid denim jacket.
And somehow after that… the bickering never stopped.
You mocked his grunting and his attitude.
He mocked your “princess bullshit.”
You stole his cigarettes once just to piss him off.
He replaced your favorite knife after you lost it and never admitted it was him.
Half the time, neither of you even remembered what the arguments were about.
But somewhere along the way, it stopped feeling like hate.
Which honestly just made it worse.
Because Daryl knew exactly when things changed.
It was the prison. You’d gotten sick.
Fever so bad you could barely stand, still trying to help clear walkers off the fence because you were too damn stubborn to rest.
He remembered screaming at you for it. You screamed back. Then passed out twenty minutes later.
After that, he started watching you without meaning to.
Fixing things around your cell block. Leaving extra food near your spot. Checking if you came back from runs. And every single time he almost admitted he gave a shit, you’d say something smartass and ruin it.
Or he would.
Probably both.
Daryl took another drag from the cigarette, jaw tightening.
"Maybe if someone actually touched your dick once in a while you wouldn’t be so damn miserable all the time."
He shut his eyes briefly.
Yeah.
That one stung.
But not half as much as seeing your face after he called you a slut.
Because he didn’t really think that.
Not even close.
Truth was, when he saw those bags full of makeup and perfume, all he could think was how you almost died.
Again.
Over something he didn’t understand.
And fear always came out mean with him. Always had.
From down the street, another wave of laughter drifted through Alexandria.
Then music.
Then your voice yelling something over everybody else.
Daryl’s mouth twitched despite himself.
Still loud as hell.
Still drivin’ him insane.
Still the first person he looked for every time a gate opened.
ꜱᴜᴍᴍᴀʀʏ › bucky moves into your spare room expecting nothing more than four walls and a place to sleep. instead, he finds floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, sticky note conversations, late-night takeout, and a girl who always puts herself last.
ᴘᴀɪʀɪɴɢ › roommate!bucky x female reader
ᴄᴏɴᴛᴇɴᴛ ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢꜱ › roommates trope, post tfatws, sticky note communication, friends to lovers, roommates to lovers, slow burn, domestic fluff, many many hot dog mentions, anxiety, work stress/burnout, author has mini geek speak moments, anthropology reader, emotional intimacy, quiet romance, self-doubt, mild emotional hurt/comfort, sticky note love language, reader insecurity, loneliness, not beta read we die like men.
ᴡᴏʀᴅ ᴄᴏᴜɴᴛ › 11.3k
ᴀᴜᴛʜᴏʀꜱ ɴᴏᴛᴇ › and they were roommates.... oh my god they were roommates
The number sits in his phone for three days before he uses it.
Three days of bad apartments and worse brokers. Places with paper-thin walls and windows that looked directly into brick. Places that smelled like mildew and old cigarettes. Places so expensive they made his jaw lock before the realtor even finished speaking.
He tells himself he's only looking because he has to. Not because he misses hearing another person in the next room. Not because going back to the apartment in Brooklyn every night feels too much like walking into a museum exhibit dedicated to a man he doesn't know how to be anymore.
Louisiana had almost made sense for a second.
He can still picture the dock at sunset, the water catching orange light, the sound of Sam's nephews shouting somewhere down the road. He can still hear Sam leaning against the kitchen counter, arms crossed, pretending not to look too concerned.
“You could stay here for a while,” Sam had said.
“No.”
“You don't even gotta stay with me. The VA's offering assistance out here now. They can help you get your own place.”
“No.”
Sam had looked at him for a long second then, the kind of look people get right before they decide whether or not to push.
“You know, accepting help doesn't mean you're weak.”
Bucky had laughed once under his breath, sharp and humorless. “Not taking charity.”
“It ain't charity.”
“Feels like it.”
Sam had sighed through his nose, digging through a kitchen drawer before pulling out a scrap of paper with a number scribbled across it.
“I know somebody in New York. Friend of mine has a spare room.”
Bucky remembers immediately opening his mouth to refuse, Sam had beaten him to it.
“You won't be coddled or given the sugar treatment,” he said. “You'll pay rent, keep your mess clean, same as anywhere else. I bet you'll like it too.”
That had been the only reason Bucky took the number at all.
Now, three days later, he stares at it again from the edge of a too-small hotel bed in Queens. The room hums around him. Old air conditioner rattling in the window. Pipes knocking somewhere in the walls. The smell of industrial detergent trapped in the sheets.
He types the message before he can talk himself out of it.
Sam Wilson gave me your number. He said you had a room for rent.
The response comes less than ten minutes later, not much text, no small talk. Just a picture. The room is simple. Bigger than he expected. A bed frame without a mattress, a dresser by the wall, a window overlooking the street below. Hardwood floors. Clean lines. Nothing flashy.
Underneath the picture is the address and rent amount. Reasonable, more than reasonable, honestly.
Then another message.
He told me you'd message. If you're interested, you can come look at it tomorrow. I work late tonight.
What would probably seem forward to others Bucky sees as efficient, Sam's recommendation is starting to make sense now. The building is in Brooklyn, far enough from the center of everything to be quiet but not isolated. The brick outside is old, the kind that has survived decades without anybody bothering to make it prettier.
There is a sticky note taped to the front door when he gets there.
Spare key is under the plant. Let yourself in.
He stares at the note for a second longer than he needs to. Something about it feels strangely normal. The kind of thing people do when they trust that the world isn't always waiting to hurt them.
The apartment is quiet when he steps inside, his shoes echoing off the walls. It's not empty per say, just still.
There are a pair of sneakers and loafers by the door lined up neatly on a tray. A light jacket tossed over the back of the couch, s mug sitting in the sink, a blanket folded over the armrest like somebody had smoothed it down before rushing out the door.
The place is nice. Not too fancy, not overly cluttered. There are soft colors everywhere. Cream walls. Warm wood floors. A kitchen with magnets on the fridge and a bowl of fruit on the counter. It feels lived in in small ways, like somebody exists here just hardly.
The bedroom at the end of the hall is bigger than he expected. Master bedroom with a bathroom attached, an amenity he hadn't lived with in too many years to count. Enough room for his duffel bags and the few boxes he still carries from place to place without unpacking.
But it isn't the room that makes him stop.
It's the hallway.
Bookshelves run from floor to ceiling along both sides of it, turning the narrow stretch between the living room and bedrooms into something else entirely. There are hundreds of books. Maybe more. Old hardcovers with cracked spines. Paperbacks with folded corners. New glossy editions wedged beside books that look older than he is.
His eyes catch on familiar titles. The Great Gatsby, A Farewell to Arms, The Hobbit. A worn copy of The Catcher in the Rye sits crooked on a shelf near the middle. Some of the older books have faded cloth covers, titles nearly rubbed away with time. He reaches out before he can stop himself, fingertips brushing the spine of one that looks like it has been opened a hundred times.
It reassures him in a way he can't explain. For the first time in weeks, maybe months, he can picture himself somewhere without immediately wanting to leave.
He pulls his phone out.
Nice place. I'll take it if it's still up for offer.
The reply comes before he even reaches the kitchen.
It's all yours. Lease is on the kitchen counter. Bring your stuff in whenever. I won't be back until late again.
He looks over at the stack of papers sitting beside the fruit bowl. A little strange and fast, maybe. But he isn't complaining. The lease is simple. Month to month, rent due on the first. No smoking inside, clean up after yourself. No coffee grounds down the drain.
That last one almost makes him smile.
He signs his name at the bottom then he goes back downstairs to start bringing his things in. Which, after a century of life, turns out to be less than he thought it'd be. It only takes him three days to move in.
Three days of hauling boxes up narrow stairs and carrying duffel bags that feel heavier than they should. Three days of unpacking only half of his things because there isn't much point in settling too deeply into anywhere anymore.
He never sees you once.
The first night, he hears the front door unlock sometime after midnight, quiet footsteps, the soft rustle of a jacket being hung up. Cabinet doors opening and closing in the kitchen. He stands frozen in the doorway of his room for a second, listening.
Then he hears the bathroom door shut down the hall and waits for some awkward introduction that never comes. By the time he wakes up the next morning, you're gone again.
There is a sticky note on the fridge.
Working late all week. Feel free to use anything in the kitchen except the leftover Chinese food. Learned that lesson already.
He pulls the note off the fridge after reading it, folding it once before sticking it in the pocket of his sweatshirt without really knowing why.
The second note comes two days later, left beside the coffee maker.
Heading upstate for work tomorrow. Back Friday night.
Then another on the kitchen counter.
If the sink in the kitchen makes that awful screeching noise again, jiggle the cold water handle.
It's strange, living with someone he has never met.
You exist in pieces to him. A mug left drying by the sink, a pair of shoes by the door one night and gone again by morning, a blanket folded on the couch in a different way than he remembers leaving it.
The faint smell of shampoo lingering in the hallway bathroom after he knows you've been home.
Sometimes he catches the sound of you moving around at night. The creak of floorboards in the hall. The soft thud of something being set on the kitchen counter. Once, half asleep, he hears quiet music drifting from somewhere in the apartment before it disappears again.
You are becoming something blurry around the edges, more presence than person, a ghost.
Not that he's one to complain. The arrangement works and for the first few weeks, he mostly keeps to his room anyway. He gets used to the attached bathroom. The way the pipes knock whenever somebody runs hot water. The patch of afternoon sun that lands across the floor by the window around three o'clock every day.
He unpacks slowly. One shirt at a time, one book at a time. He leaves most of his things in boxes because it feels safer that way. Temporary. Like if he has to leave suddenly, he can.
He still goes out most nights, he doesn't cook much.
The kitchen feels too personal somehow, like crossing into territory that belongs more to you than him. So he eats at diners, cheap takeout places, little delis with too-bright lights and menus that haven't changed in twenty years.
Eventually he starts stopping at the same hot dog stand three blocks from the apartment. The guy who runs it is older. Loud, talks too much, calls everyone sweetheart regardless of age or gender. The first time Bucky goes there, the guy takes one look at him and says, “You look like you need two hot dogs and a nap.”
By the third visit, he doesn't even have to order.
“Mustard, onions, no kraut,” the guy says, already reaching for the buns. “And a Coke.”
“You're getting too comfortable,” Bucky tells him.
“You keep showing up, that's on you.”
He reminds Bucky of Sam if Sam were louder and somehow even more annoying.
The guy asks questions constantly.
You got a girl? No. Job? Sort of. Why do you always look like somebody just kicked your dog?
Bucky never answers half of them, still, he keeps coming back. Mostly because the hot dogs are decent. Partly because it is nice, sometimes, to have somebody expect you to show up somewhere.
Back at the apartment, another sticky note waits for him on the kitchen counter.
Sorry for basically haunting the place. Work has been insane lately.
He stares at it for a second, then longer than that. A ghost with good handwriting, at least now he knows you know it too.
The first time he sees you, it feels a little like walking into the wrong apartment.
He comes back later than usual, the city already washed in blue evening light, a paper tray from the hot dog stand balanced in one hand and a soda in the other. The apartment door sticks a little when he pushes it open.
He hears your voice before he sees you. It's soft, firm yet an edge of exhaustion to it.
“You can tell them whatever you want, but I'm not driving six hours for a meeting that could've been an email.”
He stops just inside the doorway.
You're standing by the living room windows with your back to him, one arm folded across your middle, phone tucked between your ear and shoulder.
For a second, he just stares. Because he had almost forgotten, not completely, but enough. Enough that your existence had turned into sticky notes and moving shadows in the hallway. Coffee mugs in the sink. A coat that appeared on the hook by the door and disappeared again before morning.
He had built you into something abstract in his head.
Not a real person.
Certainly not a woman.
Not because Sam had said otherwise. Sam hadn't said much at all.
Just because there had been nothing obvious about you in the apartment. No perfume bottles cluttering the bathroom counter. No makeup bags. No floral blankets or pastel throw pillows or whatever other lazy stereotypes his brain had apparently reached for without him realizing it.
The place is sparse, practical. Books and soft lighting and a single plant by the window that looks one missed watering away from death. He mentally scolds himself for the assumptions.
You don't turn around right away, you're still talking and Bucky begins to wonder if he should walk out. Keep to the ghostly sticky notes and mugs in the sink.
“Yeah, well, that's not my problem,” you say into the phone, quieter now. “I sent everything over already.”
Then your eyes flick toward the entryway. Toward him.
You freeze.
It happens so quickly he almost misses it. The slight widening of your eyes. The way your mouth parts for a second before you catch yourself. It's clear you hadn't expected to see him either.
“Hold on,” you murmur into the phone.
For a second, neither of you says anything.
You are not what he expected either. You're standing barefoot on the hardwood floor with your heels kicked off next to you, hair a little messy like you've been running your hands through it all day and a suitskirt that's been smoothed down one too many times.
There are tired shadows under your eyes that make you look… real. Not like the blurry version of you he'd made up from scraps. He realizes, distantly, that this is probably the first time you've really seen him too. Not just the sound of boots in the hallway or the evidence of him in the sink.
The metal arm. The size of him. The way he takes up space without meaning to.
You recover first.
“Sorry,” you say, pulling the phone away from your mouth. “I didn't know you were coming home.”
“Yeah.”Brilliant move.
You blink at him once, then glance down at the hot dog tray in his hand. “Hope that's not dinner.”
He looks down too. “It was the plan.”
You huff a laugh through your nose, small and tired. “You eat like a divorced dad.”
He doesn't know why that almost makes him smile. Into the phone, you say, “I have to call you back,” before hanging up without waiting for an answer.
The apartment goes quiet, not awkward exactly. Well it's a little awkward but it's more unfamiliar than anything. Up close, he notices things he couldn't piece together from the notes. You look younger than he expected. Softer too, somehow. Not fragile, just... warm around the edges, like somebody people trust without thinking about it.
“Sorry about that,” you say, gesturing vaguely with your phone. “Work call, you know. I, uh... didn't expect it to go like this.”
There's something awkward in the air still, that strange lingering feeling of two people trying to fit reality over the outline they'd already made of each other.
“Don't worry about it.”
You shift your phone into one hand and hold the other out toward him.
“I don't think we've actually been properly introduced.” You say, offering your name. He looks down at your hand for a second before taking it carefully.
“No. I don't think we have.” His hand slips from yours after only a moment. “I'm Bucky.”
“I know. I suppose that's mainly my fault.” You give him a small apologetic smile. “I'm sorry. My job is very… time demanding and that won't really be changing anytime soon. But I'm glad to meet you, Bucky.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Good to meet you too.”
Silence settles between you again, not uncomfortable, just unsure. Then both of you speak at once.
“So what do you do?”
“How are you liking the place?”
You stop. He stops.
“Sorry,” he says, motioning for you to go first.
“I was just asking how you're liking the place.” Your arms fold loosely over yourself again. “Have you settled in well?”
“Oh, yeah.” He nods once. “Place is great. Thank you.”
And it is.
He likes the quiet. The neighborhood. The bookshelves. The fact that the apartment feels like somewhere a person could stay for a while without being swallowed by it.
You smile a little at his answer. “Good.”
More silence, then you clear your throat slightly.
“And you? Were gonna say...?”
“Oh.” He glances down for a second like he'd forgotten his own question. “I was just wondering what you do... that's so...” He makes a vague motion with one hand. “Time demanding.”
“Oh. Right.” You shift your weight against the windowsill. “I work in the anthropology division at the American Museum of Natural History.”
He blinks once. “Wow.”
You laugh softly at the look on his face.
“That sounds awesome.”
“It used to be,” you say with a wry little smile. “Now it's mostly a thousand phone calls and endless trips upstate to deal with the collections.”
He leans back slightly against the doorframe.
“If you work down there, why live in Brooklyn?” he asks. “Nasty commute.”
You glance around the apartment like you haven't looked at it properly in a while.
“I got this place before I got that job,” you say. “And I liked it.” Then, quieter, “Still like it.”
Your eyes move briefly toward the hallway. Toward the bookshelves, the kitchen, the little corners of the apartment that feel soft even when no one's in them.
“That's actually why I wanted a roommate,” you admit. “I love this place, and I want it to be loved, but...” You shrug one shoulder. “I just don't have the time to do that.”
Something in his chest shifts a little at that, because he understands. More than he wants to. What it feels like to care about something and still not know how to be present for it.
“Well,” he says, voice quieter now, “I'll... I'll do my best.”
You smile then, not the tired, polite kind you've been giving him all evening. Something warmer. Something that catches him off guard a little, like maybe you believe him.
“I'm sorry I've basically been living here like some weird cryptid,” you say. “Work's been insane.”
“You leave good notes.”
The second the words leave his mouth, he wants them back.
Your eyebrows lift. “That's maybe the weirdest compliment I've ever gotten.”
You open your mouth, like you're about to say something else, then your phone rings. The sound cuts through the room sharply. You look down at the screen and make a face.
“Sorry,” you say, already answering it. “I have to take this.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
You offer him one last apologetic smile before turning and disappearing down the hallway toward your bedroom.
A second later he hears your door close softly, then your voice again through the wall. Professional, calm and little tired. He stands in the entryway for another minute after that, hot dog gone cold in his hand. The apartment feels different now, smaller somehow. Not because there is less space. Just because now, finally, you are real.
The apartment feels different after he meets you.
Not immediately and nothing dramatic.
You still leave before sunrise some mornings, slipping out with your bag over your shoulder and your hair still damp from the shower. You still come home long after dark, moving quietly through the apartment like you're trying not to wake someone even when he isn't asleep.
But now there is shape to your absence. Before, the apartment had just been quiet, now it feels empty. Bucky notices things he shouldn't. Whether your shoes are by the door, whether the light under your bedroom door is on.
The difference between the sound of the upstairs neighbors moving furniture and the sound of you dropping your keys onto the kitchen counter.
He lingers in the kitchen longer now too. Sometimes with coffee growing cold in his hands while he leans against the counter pretending not to listen for the front door. Sometimes he catches himself glancing toward the hallway whenever the building creaks.
You still leave notes. One waits for him on the fridge Tuesday morning, tucked beneath a magnet shaped like a pear.
Upstate again. Back Thursday night. There's soup in the fridge if it hasn't gone bad.
He stares at it for a second, then longer than that. Before he can overthink it, he grabs a pen from the junk drawer and flips the note over.
Soup is still alive. I think.
He leaves it on the counter and immediately regrets it. Wondering if it's too weird, or too familiar. But when he gets back from a walk later that night, the note is gone.
Thursday comes, then Thursday night. He is standing in the kitchen making coffee he doesn't need when he hears the front door unlock. You walk in looking exhausted. Hair messy, tote bag slipping off your shoulder, coat half falling down your arms.
You stop when you see him.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
Your eyes land on the counter and you laugh. It's quiet, tired around the edges, but real.
“Soup still alive?” you ask.
“Barely.”
You drop your bag onto a chair.
“Well.” You glance toward the fridge. “Soup can't technically expire if you're brave enough.”
Bucky blinks, you smile a little wider and something warm settles low in his chest.
After that, the notes become something else. Not just reminders but conversations. You leave one on the coffee maker.
Radiator makes weird banging noises around midnight. Ignore it unless it sounds haunted.
He leaves one by the fruit bowl the next morning.
Upstairs neighbors were fighting at 2 a.m. Pretty sure someone threw a lamp.
Another day:
Please water the plant by the window before it starts holding a grudge.
He forgets. Two days later, there is another note waiting beside the drooping leaves.
You had one job.
Bucky snorts to himself, then digs out a pen.
Sorry. It does kinda look like one bad day away from death.
You leave back:
So do I.
He folds that note into the pocket of his jacket and carries it around for three days. Slowly, without either of you meaning for it to happen, the notes stop being practical.
One afternoon he comes home to find one waiting by the sink.
New coffee filters are under the sink. Also, if you ate my leftover pad thai I forgive you because it was probably bad anyway.
He smiles before he can stop himself, then writes back underneath it.
Didn't eat it. Thought about it though.
The next morning there is another note sitting beside the coffee pot.
I appreciate your honesty in this difficult time.
And just like that, the apartment doesn't feel quite so empty anymore.
As great as everything else is, Bucky gets tired of hot dogs eventually.
Not completely. He still goes to the stand a few times a week, still listens to the guy behind the cart talk too loud and ask too many questions, but after a while the thought of another hot dog starts to make him feel vaguely ill.
So one night he cooks, nothing complicated. Just pasta.
Too much of it, because he has never quite figured out how to cook for one person and because some part of him has started thinking in twos without permission.
The apartment smells different afterward, warmer. Like garlic and tomato sauce and something softer underneath it.
He leaves you a bowl in the fridge with a note stuck to the top.
Made too much. There's pasta in the fridge if you want it.
You don't come home until after midnight. He's already in bed when he hears the faint sounds of you moving around in the kitchen.
The fridge opening, a plate clinking against the counter. Silence. Then the microwave.
The next morning, he wakes up to a note sitting beside the coffee maker.
This is the first non-takeout meal I've had in two weeks. Marry me?
He stares at it for an embarrassing amount of time. Long enough that his coffee goes cold. Long enough that he folds the note once, then again, before sliding it into the drawer beside his bed with the others.
After that, you start seeing each other more. Not on purpose exactly. Just in the little spaces between everything else. Six in the morning in the kitchen while the city outside is still gray and quiet.
You standing in one of his sweatshirts that got mixed up in the laundry over leggings, blinking sleepily into your coffee cup while he leans against the counter waiting for toast to pop up.
Passing each other in the hallway at night. Your shoulder brushing his as you move around each other in the narrow space between the dining room and kitchen.
Once, on a rainy Thursday, you both end up home at the same time. You sit on opposite ends of the couch, you with your laptop balanced on your knees, him with a book open in his lap.
The television hums quietly in the background, something neither of you is actually watching. At some point, without looking up from your screen, you stretch your legs out until your socked feet bump lightly against his thigh.
You don't move them away. Neither does he and slowly, you become easier around each other. You stop apologizing every time you leave dishes in the sink. He stops retreating to his room the second he hears you come home.
One night he brings back burgers and fries from a diner down the street.
You appear in the kitchen halfway through, hair damp from the shower, looking at his takeout bag like it personally offended you that he didn't ask if you wanted anything.
“Rude,” you say.
“You weren't home yet.”
“You could've texted.”
He tears the bag open and slides the fries toward you. You grin immediately and steal three before he even sits down.
“You're lucky you're cute,” he mutters.
You freeze for half a second, then keep eating like you didn't hear him. He fixes the sink handle one weekend after it starts making that awful screeching noise every time you turn it.
You come home to find him under the sink with a wrench in one hand and his sleeves pushed up to his elbows.
“What are you doing?”
“Fixing it.”
You lean in the doorway watching him for a second. “You know, normal people usually just call maintenance.”
“Normal people don't have metal arms.”
That makes you laugh. “Fair point.”
Then one evening he comes home and finds you asleep on the couch. The apartment is dark except for the lamp in the corner, there are papers everywhere. Open folders spread across the coffee table. A legal pad on the floor. Your laptop still glowing beside you, your glasses sit crooked on your face, one hand is still wrapped loosely around a pen.
You look exhausted. Like you've simply run out of steam halfway through existing. He stands there for a second longer than he means to, then quietly sets his keys down.
He grabs the blanket folded over the arm of the couch and drapes it carefully over you.
You stir a little, brows furrowing, but you don't wake up. His hand lingers for half a second near your shoulder before he pulls it back. Then he turns off the kitchen light and disappears down the hallway.
The next morning, the blanket is folded neatly over the back of the couch again. And beside the coffee maker, there is a note.
Thanks for the blanket.
Below it, in smaller handwriting:
That was very disgustingly nice of you.
A few nights later, Bucky wakes up thirsty. The apartment is dark except for the light over the stove.
He can hear pages turning before he even reaches the kitchen.
You're sitting at the table in one of your giant sweatshirts, laptop open, papers spread out around you in messy little stacks. There are sticky notes stuck to the edge of your screen, a half-drunk cup of coffee by your elbow, and your glasses are slipping down your nose again.
You don't notice him at first. Your mouth is moving slightly while you read through something under your breath.
He leans against the doorway. “Do you ever sleep?”
You jump a little in your seat, then you look up at him and huff out a tired laugh.
“Sometimes.”
“You sure?”
“Not particularly.”
He moves farther into the kitchen, grabbing a glass from the cabinet. “You know it's two in the morning, right?”
You glance down at your laptop clock. “Oh.”
“You didn't know?”
“I thought it was maybe midnight.”
He shakes his head a little as he fills his glass. “What are you even doing?”
You look down at the folders spread around you and for a second, you seem like you're deciding whether or not to tell him. Then you let out a breath.
“I'm… up for a promotion.”
Bucky looks over at you. “What kind?”
“A curator position.”
He leans back against the counter. “At the museum?”
You nod.
“In the anthropology division.” Your fingers start absently straightening the edge of one of your papers. “If I got it, I'd oversee acquisitions, exhibits, research trips. Most of the collections work too.”
As you talk, something about you changes, your shoulders loosen and your face softens. There is something brighter in your voice than he's heard before. You look almost younger like this, less tired, more like the version of you that exists underneath all the stress and late nights and rushed mornings.
“That sounds...” He shakes his head once. “That sounds awesome.”
“It would be.” You smile a little, staring down at your notes. “I mean, it would be everything.”
You glance around at the papers spread across the table. “I've wanted it for years.”
Then, just as quickly, you pull back from it. You shrug one shoulder like it doesn't matter as much as it clearly does.
“But it's probably unrealistic anyway.”
Bucky frowns. “Why?”
You laugh softly to yourself.
“Because you don't just get the job to be a curator at the American Museum of Natural History,” you say. “It's something holy that gets bestowed upon you with the anointed oil they gave Queen Elizabeth II.”
That gets a surprised laugh out of him. You smile faintly, but it doesn't quite reach your eyes.
“It's just wishful thinking,” you say quietly. “Then you die trying.”
He hates how fast you do that. How quickly you take something you want and turn it into something impossible before anyone else can.
He sets his glass down on the counter. “That sounds like exactly the kind of job you'd be good at.”
You look up at him, really look at him. Like you're waiting for the joke, but there isn't one.
“You know that, right?” he says. “The way you talk about it.”
Your expression shifts a little, because most people do not usually say things to you that plainly. You look down at your hands.
“I don't know,” you say after a second.
“Yeah, you do.”
The kitchen goes quiet, the radiator knocks somewhere in the wall. You sit there with your hands wrapped around your coffee cup, staring at him like he has said something far more important than he meant to.
Then you smile. “Thanks, Buck.”
And for some reason, it feels like being handed something fragile.
A few days later, Bucky finds himself standing in the hallway again.
It happens more often now. He'll be on his way to the kitchen or coming back from the shower and suddenly stop in front of the bookshelves like he forgot where he was going.
The shelves are uneven in places.
Some rows are organized by author, others by size or color or absolutely no logic at all. There are books stacked sideways on top of other books, faded bookmarks sticking out between pages, cracked spines and bent corners and little slips of paper tucked into random places.
It feels lived in, it feels like you.
He stands there for a minute, eyes tracing over the titles. Then he grabs a sticky note from the kitchen and presses it onto the edge of one of the shelves.
You actually read all of these?
He forgets about it after that. Until later that night when he gets home and notices something tucked into the spine of a book halfway down the shelf.
He pulls it free.
Used to. A lot. Some are mine, some were my dad's, some I found secondhand. I used to collect old editions too before work swallowed my entire personality.
He reads it twice. Then, without really meaning to, he starts paying closer attention. Not just to the titles, to the books themselves.
There are old clothbound covers with gold lettering worn thin at the edges. Tiny notes scribbled in pencil in the margins. Bookstore stamps from places all over the city. One copy of a novel has a dried flower pressed between the pages.
Some of them are old enough that even he remembers when they were new. One night he pauses in front of a shelf near the living room and pulls out a familiar green book.
The cover is faded, the spine is worn soft from use. He turns it over in his hands, then glances down at the copyright page. 1942. He stares for a second, then reaches for another sticky note.
You have a 1942 copy of The Hobbit.
The response is waiting for him when he wakes up the next morning, tucked beneath his coffee mug.
I know. Found it in a shop upstate for twenty dollars because the owner didn't know what he had. Second greatest moment of my life.
He smiles despite himself, and there is another note beneath it.
You can read whatever you want, by the way. And if there are books you like, you can add them.
He stands there in the kitchen holding that note a little longer than he should. Because nobody has said something like that to him in a very long time. To make yourself at home, that there's room for you here. It's such a small thing, just books, just shelves.
But it feels like more than that. That night he pulls one of the older novels from the shelf and reads half of it sitting on the couch while rain taps softly against the windows.
A few days later, when he finishes it, he leaves it on the coffee table. When he comes back from a walk the next morning, there is a sticky note tucked inside the front cover.
Well?
He snorts quietly to himself and grabs a pen.
Liked it. Ending was more depressing than I remember.
The next day:
That's because you have bad taste and no appreciation for tragedy.
He leaves another book out after that, then another. And you start leaving notes inside all of them. Little questions in the margins. Favorite character? Did you cry? Be honest, did you skip the boring parts? And without really realizing it, the shelves stop feeling like just yours.
They start feeling like something the two of you are building together.
One evening Bucky comes back from a walk and stops in the hallway without meaning to. Something looks different. It takes him a second to realize what it is. Wedged between two thick hardcovers near the end of the second shelf is one of his books, old and worn.
A history book about the forties that he'd unpacked weeks ago and left sitting on the edge of the end table next to the couch because he never knew where to put it. Now it's there between the others like it has always belonged.
Like you made room for it without asking. He reaches out and pulls it from the shelf. Inside the front cover, there's a sticky note with your handwriting:
Thought this looked lonely.
Something in his chest aches a little. Because it's such a small thing, nobody has made space for him somewhere in a very long time, but it shifts something inside of him. Something warm and soft blooming beneath his ribs as he slides the book back onto the shelf.
After that, you start spending more actual time together. Not just in passing, not just in notes and hallway conversations. Real time. He brings home takeout and the two of you end up sitting cross-legged on the living room floor because neither of you feels like cleaning off the coffee table.
You steal pieces of chicken off his plate. He lets you. You start walking to get coffee together on mornings you're both free, slow and sleepy and still half wrapped in hoodies.
Sometimes you don't talk much, sometimes you talk about everything. The museum. His nightmares. Books. Childhoods. Things that happened too long ago and things that happened yesterday.
One afternoon he comes back from the hot dog stand carrying two paper trays instead of one. You're in the kitchen when he gets home.
“You got me one?”
“You looked tired.”
You smile at him in a way that feels dangerous.
The hot dog guy notices eventually.
“Where's the pretty museum girl?” he asks one day while handing Bucky his usual order.
Bucky frowns. “Who?”
“The roommate you said you have.” The guy grins. “I wanna meet her.”
“No. Not happening.”
The guy laughs. “Oh, so that's what we're doing now.”
Bucky grabs the food and leaves before he can say anything else. You notice his mood immediately when he gets back.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Mm.”
You take the hot dog from his hand. “You have a very specific face when you're annoyed, you know.”
He mutters something under his breath that makes you smile. That night the two of you are sitting on the floor in front of the couch, books spread around you, some old movie playing in the background.
Bucky glances over at the shelf. “You said finding that copy of The Hobbit was the second greatest moment of your life.”
You look up from your book. “Yeah.”
“So what was the first?”
You smile immediately.
“There was this used bookstore in Queens,” you say. “I was seventeen. They had this old locked case near the register and inside was the first book from a vintage set of The Canterbury Tales.”
He watches your face change as you talk.
“The cover was all cracked leather and gold leaf and completely falling apart. It was beautiful.”
You tuck your legs up closer to yourself.
“I used all the money I had to buy it.”
“And then?”
“And then I spent the next ten years trying to find the rest.” You laugh softly. “That was kind of it. That was the start of the whole problem.”
“You found all of them?”
“Almost.” You shake your head. “Never found the last one.”
There's something quietly sad in the way you say it. Like it's less about the book and more about what it meant to give up looking. Bucky watches the way your face slowly changes, something in the edge of your eyes shifting until you're looking at the floor. It hurts, and it makes him think that he would do anything to see you smile.
In a weak attempt he pushes the last of his fries to you, claiming they're too salty for him. You both know they're not but the small quirk of the corner of your mouth makes it worth it. The rest of the night passes in between condiements and bubbled laughter at the QVC channel, listening in to the televised conversations like they're the next hit reality show.
After a few days Bucky notices the calendar in the kitchen. Not because he is looking for anything in particular. Just because he is waiting for the coffee to finish brewing and his eyes drift to the wall.
The square for next Thursday is crowded with your handwriting.
Your own birthday is written last. Small enough that it almost disappears between everything else. Something about that sits badly in his chest. Because of course it does. Because even on your birthday, you have managed to make yourself the least important thing on the list.
He knows immediately you're going to forget it.
And you do. The morning of, you're rushing around the apartment before sunrise with one shoe on and your phone wedged between your ear and shoulder.
“I already sent the file,” you say into the phone, trying to shove your arm through the sleeve of your coat. “No, I know, but if they wanted changes they should've said that yesterday—”
Your bag slips off your shoulder and your keys hit the floor making you curse under your breath. Bucky is standing in the kitchen holding a mug of coffee when he says it.
“Happy birthday.”
You stop and blink at him.
“Oh,” you say after a second. “Right.”
You laugh softly, but it sounds tired. “I completely forgot.”
Then the person on the phone says your name and you hurry out the door with a quick apology before he can say anything else. It bothers him more than it should because birthdays are supposed to mean something. Yours especially.
So after you leave, he decides to do something about it. He remembers the bakery on the corner had a strawberry shortcake in the display case. Just something small, nothing flashy, whipped cream and strawberries layered across the top.
It reminds him of you somehow. Soft-looking and sweet to the core. He buys candles too. Then he spends the rest of the afternoon searching for the perfect gift. It takes him a few blocks of wandering around to think of what to get, but when it hits him he knew he found his mission.
He spends hours going from used bookstore to used bookstore. By the sixth one, he's almost ready to give up. Then, in a dusty little shop that smells like old paper and mildew, he finds it. Old leather cover, gold embossing faded at the edges a slight water stain on the back. Perfect.
That night, the apartment is dark except for the kitchen light. Bucky stands awkwardly by the counter with the cake in front of him, candles lit, the wrapped gift sitting beside it.
He has no idea what he's doing. But there's no going back now.
The front door opens a little after ten. You walk in looking exhausted, shoulders slumped, shoes dragging. Your hair falling out of whatever messy attempt you made to keep it back this morning. You stop dead when you see him. Then the cake lit with candles, the small box beside it.
Bucky shrugs one shoulder like he suddenly regrets all of it.
“You forgot your birthday,” he says.
You stare at him for a second too long. Nobody has done something like this for you in a very long time. Maybe ever. You don't look like you know what to do with being cared for.
“Bucky...” is all you manage.
He gets flustered immediately.
“It's not a big deal,” he says quickly, motioning vaguely toward the cake. “I just...” He looks down for a second. “Figured somebody should celebrate you.”
The look on your face almost undoes him. You set your bag down slowly and walk over.
“You got me a cake?”
“Yeah.”
“With candles?”
He glances at the little crooked row of them.
“That's usually how birthdays work.”
You laugh then. A little watery around the edges. You walk farther into the kitchen like you're afraid if you move too quickly the whole thing will disappear.
The candles flicker softly between you.
“You didn't have to do this,” you say quietly.
“I know.”
“But you did anyway. Why?”
He doesn't know what to say to that. So he just shrugs again.
You look down at the cake then back up at him.
“Okay,” you say softly. “Then I guess I should make a wish.”
You lean down and hover there for just a moment, the golden glow of the flames casting a light across your face that highlights features he doesn't think he's ever seen. A small beauty mark tucked under your eyebrow, a slight jagged silver scar down the bridge of your nose. He'll never not see them now, a gift of his own he thinks. You close your eyes and hum quietly to yourself before letting out a short breath to blow out the candles.
The apartment goes dark for a second after the smoke curls up into the air. He flicks the stove light on, then Bucky reaches for the wrapped book beside him and holds it out awkwardly.
“And this is... also a thing.”
You blink. “You got me a present?”
“You don't have to sound so surprised.”
You take it from him carefully, with a growing smirk on your face. The paper crinkles softly beneath your fingers as you unwrap it. Then you go still. Completely still. He watches your eyes move over the cover. The old leather, the faded gold lettering.
Your fingers hover over it like you're afraid touching it too hard will make it disappear.
“The last one,” you whisper. Your voice sounds a little broken around the edges. “The last volume of The Canterbury Tales.”
Bucky shifts awkwardly on his feet as you look up at him. Your face is fallen with a joy he's never seen, as if he just hung the moon and painted the stars.
You shake your head in disbelief. “Where did you even—”
“Just found it.” He shrugs.
“Bucky.”
“Took a couple bookstores. Made a deal with the owner once I found it, he was an old history buff on WW2 so…” he admits.
You look up at him then. And there is something in your face he has never seen directed at him before. Something soft, something overwhelming as a clear line starts to well at your eyes. You clutch the book to your chest like you don't know what else to do with it.
"Thank you, Bucky," you whisper, shaky lip tucked betwen your teeth.
A warm silence blooms between you two and Bucky is stuck under your stare, watching the soft dialtion of your pupils. Entranced by them he didn't even notice you had gotten so close, not until he felt the gentle brush of your lips against his cheek.
Words have never failed him like now, stuck and jumbled in the back of his throat only to come out like a garbled hum.
“What'd you wish for?” Bucky asks abrutly as he starts pulling the candles out one by one.
You smile a little, wiping quickly beneath one eye.
“Can't tell you,” you say. “State secrets now.”
He snorts quietly and grabs two spoons from the drawer. You end up on the couch sharing the cake straight from the container, knees brushing every so often in the small space between you. The television is on, though neither of you is paying attention to it. You eat strawberries off the top first and work your way down and Bucky follows suit.
You stay on the couch long after the cake is gone.
The empty container sits forgotten on the coffee table, two spoons abandoned beside it. The book never leaves your lap. At some point, you curl your legs up beneath you and start telling him about the first time you found one of the volumes. How you were seventeen and awkward and had spent an hour pretending to browse because you were too nervous to ask the owner to unlock the glass case.
Bucky laughs.
“So you've always been weird about books.”
“That's rich coming from a hundred-year-old man who still reads history books for fun.”
“Those are different.”
“They're really not.”
You grin when you say it. That soft, sleepy grin he thinks he could spend years chasing. Eventually the conversation drifts. To old bookstores, to the hot dog guy, to Sam, then to terrible movies. You insist he has never properly experienced bad cinema until he has seen Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.
He insists there is no way it can be as ridiculous as you are making it sound. Twenty minutes in, he realizes you were underselling it. By the middle of the movie, you're both laughing. Not polite little laughs either, real ones. The kind that make your stomach hurt and your eyes water and force you to pause because neither of you can hear the dialogue over the sound of the other person losing it.
He can't remember the last time he laughed like this.
By the time the movie is ending, your head is tipped against the back of the couch and your eyes are half closed.
He notices you fighting sleep before you do.
“You're falling asleep.”
“No, I'm not.” You yawn immediately after saying it.
He smiles. “You absolutely are.”
You make a soft noise of protest, but it doesn't have much conviction behind it.And a few minutes later, when he glances over again, you're out completely. Your head has tipped against his shoulder at some point, one hand still loosely wrapped around the book in your lap.
For a second, he just sits there. Listening to the sound of your breathing, the soft hum of the television, the city outside the windows. Then he carefully takes the book from your hands and sets it on the coffee table. He slips one arm beneath your knees and the other around your back.
You stir a little when he lifts you, brows furrowing for a second before you settle again against him.
“Buck?” you mumble sleepily.
“I got you.”
You make another quiet sound and let your head fall against his chest as he carries you down the hallway and into your room. The bedside lamp is still on, there are clothes draped over the chair in the corner and papers stacked haphazardly on your desk, everything is so utterly you.
He sets you down carefully on the bed and pulls the blankets up around you. You don't wake up, not really, you just shift a little beneath the covers and settle. He brushes a piece of hair back from your face and his hand lingers there for a second longer than it should.
Something overcomes him and he leans down, and presses a kiss to your forehead.
“Happy birthday,” he whispers.
As he walked out of you room he saw the book on the table, with a gentle hand he picked it up, brushing a thumb over the pages as he walks down the hall. The rest of the set is on the second highest shelf, lined up together. He slides in the last edition, eyeing the aligned spines with a ghost of a smile before walking off to his room.
The call comes on a Tuesday.
Bucky knows because you walk into the apartment looking vaguely shell-shocked, still clutching your phone in one hand.
You don't even make it all the way into the kitchen before blurting it out. “I got an interview.”
He looks up from where he's sitting at the table. “What?”
“For the curator position.” You blink at him like you still don't believe it yourself. “Next week.”
For a second, all he sees is the excitement on your face. Bright and hopeful, then it disappears almost as quickly as it came.
“Oh,” you say quietly. “Oh no.”
The spiral starts immediately after that. By the end of the week, the apartment is covered in notes. Practice questions taped to the bathroom mirror, flashcards on the kitchen counter, museum reports spread across the couch cushions.
You pace while talking to yourself, you stop sleeping, you definitely stop eating properly. The night before the interview, Bucky finds you sitting cross-legged on the living room floor in sweatpants and one of his old shirts, papers spread around you in uneven piles.
Your glasses are slipping down your nose and your hair is a mess. You look like you're about ten minutes away from a complete breakdown.
“You okay?” he asks, already knowing the answer.
“No,” you say immediately.
He sits down across from you. “What's wrong?”
You stare down at the papers in your lap. “What if I embarrass myself?”
“You won't.”
“What if they ask me something I don't know?”
“You'll know it.”
“What if I freeze?”
“You won't.”
You glare at him a little. “You don't know that.”
He leans back against the couch.
“I know you.”
That quiets you for a second.
Only for a second. Then you start rambling after that. About the anthropology wing. About acquisitions. About field research and exhibit planning and the exact kind of curator you would want to be if anyone ever actually gave you the chance. You talk about preserving history, about wanting people to care. About how every object in the museum used to belong to someone. How every piece of history was once just somebody's normal day.
Bucky listens every time. He listens while you talk yourself into circles. Listens while you explain all the reasons you think you aren't good enough for this.
“I didn't go to the right schools,” you say finally. “I don't know the right people. Everyone else interviewing for this is probably smarter than me and more qualified and—”
“They're gonna be lucky if they get you.”
You stop and the apartment goes quiet around you, scattered notes and pages from your journal fluttering in the air current. Bucky looks at you from across the floor, expression calm like he hasn't just said something that cracked you open right down the middle.
“You mean that?” you ask softly.
“Yeah.” He doesn't even hesitate. “I do.”
You stare at him for a second. Then you move before you can think too hard about it. You lean across the space between you and kiss him. It's quick and impulsive, your hand catches against his shoulder and your mouth brushes his once, soft and startled.
Then you freeze.
“Oh my God,” you whisper, pulling back immediately. “I'm sorry, I shouldn't have—”
Bucky cuts you off by kissing you again, this time slower. Deliberate. His hand comes up to cup your face and suddenly the whole world narrows down to the warmth of his mouth and the way he is holding you like you're something precious.
You melt into it, your hand tangles in the front of his shirt and a soft hum slipping past your lips against his as his thumb brushes softly along your cheek.
When you finally pull apart, both of you look a little stunned. Like neither of you knows what to do with the fact that this has been here all along.
“Okay,” you say softly.
“Okay,” he echoes.
After that, the air between you changes, not in some huge dramatic way. Just softer. He starts brushing his hand against your back when he passes you in the kitchen. You lean against his shoulder on the couch without thinking about it. He kisses your forehead when you leave for work. You steal his hoodies and stop pretending they're yours.
Sometimes you fall asleep together on the couch with the television still on and your legs tangled beneath the blanket. Somewhere in the middle of all of it, Bucky realizes he's stopped thinking of the apartment as somewhere he lives.
Now it just feels like home.
Bucky tries to wake up before you the morning of the interview.
He fails.
By the time he walks into the kitchen, you're already there in nice clothes, standing in front of the coffee maker with your arms crossed and that thousand-yard stare people get right before something important. You look beautiful, terrified and a little bit sick. Your hair is done. Your makeup is subtle. There is a necklace at your throat he thinks he's seen maybe twice before.
You don't notice him at first. You're staring at the coffee pot like if you look away it'll stop working.
“You okay?” he asks softly.
You blink. “No.”
He smiles a little. “You're gonna do great.”
You snort quietly and reach for your mug. “You legally have to say that because you live with me.”
“No,” he says. “I have to say it because it's true.”
That makes you look down for a second as you take a sip of coffee.
“Still feels like I'm gonna throw up.”
“You'll throw up after,” he says. “Like a professional.”
That earns him a small laugh. By the time you're ready to leave, you're standing by the front door shoving things into your bag with shaky hands.
“Keys,” you mutter to yourself. “Wallet. Phone. Museum badge—”
“Hey.”
You look up. Bucky steps closer and reaches for the necklace at your throat.
“It's crooked.”
“Oh.”
His fingers brush softly against your skin as he straightens it and your breath catches a little. So does his. For a second, neither of you says anything. Then he leans down and kisses you. It's quick and soft but it leaves your cheeks warm when he pulls away.
“You got this,” he says.
You nod once then you're gone.
The whole day, Bucky is restless. He tells himself he isn't waiting for you but he definitely is. He tries reading, and ends up readin gthe same page three times. He almost goes to the hot dog stand twice. He paces around the apartment, reorganizes the fridge for no reason, checks the clock so many times it starts to feel personal.
By the time the front door finally opens that night, he looks up so fast it nearly gives him away. You walk in looking different immediately. Not upset exactly, just strange and quiet. Very quiet. Like your thoughts are somewhere else entirely.
He assumes that means you got it. That you're in shock, that you're already halfway out the door toward whatever comes next.
“Hey,” he says carefully from the couch. “How'd it go?”
You stop in the doorway. You still have your bag over your shoulder, coat still on. You look at him for a second before letting out a slow breath.
“I didn't get it.”
The words land strangely between you, it makes Bucky sits up a little straighter.
“Oh.”
You laugh softly, but there isn't much humor in it. “Yeah. They said they wanted to move in a different direction.”
He doesn't know what to say to that. Because he knows how badly you wanted it, knows how much time and sleep and pieces of yourself you've poured into this thing.
But then you shrug one shoulder.
“But...” You look down for a second. “They gave me a raise.”
He blinks, surpised. “Okay.”
“And they're opening a new assistant position to ‘lessen my workload.’”
That takes him a second to process.
“So...” He leans forward a little. “You still got something?”
“I guess.” You look exhausted more than anything. “I don't know if I'm supposed to be happy or devastated.”
Bucky nods slowly.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I get that.”
Because he does. Because sometimes life gives you something almost-good and you don't know what to do with that. He watches you for another second, then he stands.
“Come on.”
You look up. “What?”
“Let's go get hot dogs.”
You stare at him for a second. Then, finally, you smile.
“Okay.”
The hot dog guy takes one look at the two of you and immediately points his tongs in your direction.
“Uh oh,” he says. “This feels emotional.”
You laugh for the first time all day. Real laughter. Bucky feels something unclench in his chest at the sound of it.
“Don't encourage him,” he mutters.
“Too late,” the guy says. “I like her.”
Bucky rolls his eyes and you smile into your sleeve. He pays before you can argue about it, and when you open your mouth to protest, he just gives you a look.
“You had a bad day.”
“So?”
“So let me buy you a hot dog.”
You don't fight him after that.
On the walk back, you stop for ice cream too. Now you're both carrying melting cones down the sidewalk, the city quieter around you than usual. Streetlights glow gold against the pavement. Somewhere in the distance, somebody is playing music with their windows open.
It feels a little like being kids. Or maybe just people who don't know exactly where their lives are going yet. It warms your chest either way. You walk beside him in comfortable silence for a while.
“Hey, Buck?”
“Yeah?”
“You ever hear that whole ‘rejection is just redirection' thing?”
He glances over at you. “...No?”
You laugh softly under your breath. “It's just this thing people say.”
“Okay.” He nods once.
“But that's not what I was getting at.”
He waits as you look down at your ice cream for a second before looking back up at him.
“You know on my birthday you told me to make a wish?”
“Yeah?”
Your smile is smaller now.
"I think it just came true.”
He frowns a little. “You… wished to get passed up on the promotion?”
“No,” you say with a breath of laughter. “No.”
You look at him then, really look at him.
“I wished...” Your voice goes quiet. “That I could spend more time with you.”
Everything in him goes still.
The city. The sidewalk, the half-melted ice cream in his hand. All of it. For a second, neither of you moves. Then Bucky smiles, small at first then bigger.
He ducks his head, shaking it a little.
“State secrets, huh?” he teases softly.
You blush immediately. “Shut up.”
But you're smiling too. You slip your arm through his as you keep walking and Bucky thinks maybe this is what happiness feels like. Small and warm and a little sticky from melted ice cream.
A week later, you come home before sunset.
Bucky is in the kitchen making coffee when he hears the front door open.
“You're home early,” he says, glancing over his shoulder. You lean against the doorway with your bag still hanging off one shoulder.
“I know. Weird, right?”
He smiles a little. “You get fired?”
“Not yet.” You step farther into the kitchen. “I actually have tomorrow afternoon off.”
“Wow.”
“I know,” you say again. “I'm trying not to be overwhelmed by all the free time.”
He laughs quietly and you watch him for a second, seemingly contemplating.
“Do you wanna come by the museum?”
He looks up. “The museum?”
“Yeah.” You shrug one shoulder, suddenly looking a little shy about it. “I could show you around. My favorite exhibits and stuff.”
He tries to act casual. “Sure.”
But secretly, he's thrilled. Because this is your world. He's seen pieces of it before in papers spread across the table and half-finished stories told at two in the morning, but this is different. This is you handing him something important.
The next afternoon, he meets you outside the American Museum of Natural History.
You're waiting near the steps in your work clothes with your ID badge around your neck. You look different now, more awake than he has seen you in weeks, more comfortable.
Like this place fits around you in a way most things don't.
You smile the second you spot him.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
You take him inside to see the old fossils first. You tell him which dinosaur skeletons kids always lose their minds over and which exhibits people walk right past even though they're some of the coolest things in the building.
You talk with your hands when you're excited.
You move quickly from one thing to the next, almost tripping over your own thoughts because there is so much you want to show him.
“And this one,” you say, pointing toward an old display case, “people never pay attention to, but it's one of my favorites.”
Inside are old tools and worn pieces of pottery. Tiny, simple things. You tell him where they came from, who used them, how old they are. Every exhibit comes with a story.
Bucky spends half the time looking at the displays and the other half looking at you. Because you light up here. Your voice gets faster, your smile gets bigger, you stop apologizing for caring too much. It's the happiest he has ever seen you.
At one point, you take him into the giant blue whale room. The enormous whale hangs suspended overhead, casting soft shadows across the floor below. You tilt your head back to look up at it.
“Every museum employee has a designated crying-under-the-whale moment at least once,” you say.
Bucky looks over at you. “Yours probably happened after a meeting.”
You scoff. “No. Mine happened because somebody mislabeled a Bronze Age artifact.”
He laughs harder than he should an you grin.
“I'm serious. It was humiliating.”
“You cried over a label?”
“I care deeply about accuracy.”
“You're insane.”
“Maybe,” you say, smiling up at the whale. “But I'm right.”
He shakes his head, still laughing quietly, standing there beneath the whale with you smiling beside him, he thinks he has never seen anything more beautiful. Eventually, you take him into the Milky Way exhibit.
The room is dark and cool, lit only by thousands of projected stars stretching across the ceiling and walls. Soft bands of white and blue curve overhead, and everything echoes slightly. Your footsteps, his breathing, the sound of the door shutting quietly behind you.
You lead him to one of the benches in the center of the room and sit together. For a while, neither of you says anything. The quiet feels different here. Not empty but peaceful. Bucky leans back and looks up at the stars overhead.
They're beautiful.
But not as beautiful as the look on your face when you stare up at them.
“I used to come here when I first got the job,” you say softly.
He looks over at you, your eyes stay fixed on the ceiling.
“I'd get so stressed and overwhelmed and convinced I wasn't cut out for it.” You smile faintly to yourself. “So I'd come sit in here.”
You lean back a little farther against the bench.
“It helped me remember how small I am.” A pause. “How insignificant everything is.”
You glance over at him. He looks down at his hands for a second before looking back up.
“You're probably the most important thing...” He swallows a little. “To me.”
The room goes quiet again. You blush immediately and turn your face back toward the stars and Bucky does too. For a second. Then he looks back at you, the way the light from the projections catches in your eyes and across your face. It softens every edge of you.
You turn toward him slightly, feeling the gaze from him.
“It's pretty, huh?”
He smiles.
“Yeah...”
But he isn't looking at the stars, you realize after a second, and the mood shifts. Like all the air between you changes. He leans in first this time, a soft breath fans across your face before you meet him halfway. The kiss is slow and gentle, the kind that feels like something settling into place. Your hand finds his without thinking about it, his thumb brushes softly across your knuckles.
When he pulls back, you're both smiling a little and he looks up at the stars again, then back at you.
“What are you gonna do now?”
You blink. “With what?”
“No promotion on the horizon. New assistant to keep you free. What's the future have in hold now?”
You let out a quiet breath, thinking.
“You know,” you say, “I have no idea.”
You lean your head against his shoulder. “For as long as I've been doing this, all I've ever wanted was that job.”
He tilts his head lightly against yours. “What do you want now?”
You look up at him and smile softly.
“You.” Then, after a second, "and a hot dog.”
He laughs and the sound echoes quietly through the stars, you both lean into each other, and suddenly the future doesn't feel so frightening. Because whatever it looks like now, you'll be in it together.
Warnings!!: Slow burn, Reader is an adult!!, mentions of death, Gore, injury detail, post apocalyptic themes, mentions of trauma, improvised treatment, mentions of blood, mature themes, strong language, strong tension, angst, hurt/comfort.
Summary:
(Daryl worked better alone. So did you. But when a supply run goes wrong, you both soon come to realise that being alone wouldn’t cut it.)
A/N: I just had to start a Daryl fic, I honestly couldn’t stop myself opening up that word doc😥 Anyways this is my first Daryl project and I’m super excited, I hope you all enjoy it💋
Alone.
You had been the only one left from your group; a herd of walkers had rolled through them. Screams, gunfire, and the wet, panicked sound of people realising too late that guns didn’t mean much anymore in a world that’d gone to shit.
After that, there had only been you.
You had followed another group for days; they were your best option for refuge, so you tracked them the same way you tracked everything else—quietly, carefully.
They’d made camp in a prison: concrete, steel, fences that still held despite everything trying to tear them down. It wasn’t pretty, but it was functional.
They had a tracker too. Dark hair hanging in his face, moving with practised ease—almost silent, like a predator stalking prey.
He interested you. Until him, you’d never seen anyone track as cautiously as you did.
It wasn’t him that’d spotted you first, though; it was Rick. You’d just gotten back from scouting the prison; he found you strolling through the woods, and out of pure instinct to survive, you raised your gun at him, uncertain and untrusting. The amount of trauma you’d undergone made your action plausible enough.
After numerous questions, careful watching, and an arrangement for you to lower your weapon for refuge—he took you in.
You’d killed 32 walkers.
You’d killed four people. They opened fire on your group; you took them out, and walkers got the rest of them.
That was an acceptable amount for him. Plausible.
It’d been four weeks now since you’d been accepted. You’d become accustomed to your surroundings fairly quickly—living in a prison never seemed so sweet until now.
But “sweet” was relative.
Nothing here was safe. It was just… contained.
The sun was at its high when you stepped out into the yard; the bellowing and grunting of walkers pounding the fences were loud in your ears but also a familiar sound, one you’d gotten all too used to.
You didn’t socialise with many people in the camp; you preferred doing things alone—maybe it was the lack of trust, maybe it was the fact you’d gone alone for so long before all of this.
You stuck to your own side of the fence, away from the others who were also on fence duty.
The fence rattled violently. You took your place, popping your knife in and out of the openings in the metal, taking out walker after walker.
Then—
Footsteps came up on your left.
You didn’t look straight away—you continued jabbing through the brains of the dead.
“Rick wants ya on a run.”
Daryl’s voice. Flat. No greeting. No cushioning.
You finally turned your head slightly, peering at him over your shoulder.
He was wearing that same leather waistcoat—crossbow in hand, posture loose.
“With you?” you asked.
He gave a small shrug. “Me. Glenn. Bob. Michonne.”
A beat.
“And you,” he added.
“I didn’t agree to that.” You turned back to the fence, your knife continuing to stab through skulls.
Daryl let out a short breath through his nose. “Ain’t how Rick put it.”
You shifted your grip on the knife.
“What did he say?”
“That yer goin’,” Daryl said simply.
You shot him a look.
He grunted.
Then silence stretched between the two of you.
The fence shuddered again. A walker’s hand pressed through a gap before snapping back.
Nothing new.
Nothing worth reacting to.
You studied Daryl properly now. Not openly—never openly—but enough.
He wasn’t relaxed. He never really was. But there was something in the way he stood that said he wasn’t here to convince you.
“I work better alone,” you said finally.
Daryl tilted his head slightly. “Yeah? So do I.”
That stopped you for half a second.
A walker slammed the fence harder this time, metal rattling down the line.
“Rick’s tryin’ ta keep things stable,” he said after a moment. “Short on supplies. Need bodies that can move quietly."
You gave a small, humourless exhale. “So you’re saying I’m useful?”
Daryl looked at you properly after that, brows furrowing slightly like he was holding himself back from saying something yet, no words left his mouth.
Silence.
It felt almost awkward.
Your jaw tightened slightly, as you stepped back from the fence to face him properly.
A beat.
“Fine,” you said finally.
Daryl gave a short nod like that was all he expected, but he didn’t leave immediately.
He adjusted his grip on the crossbow, shifting weight from one foot to the other.
“Goin’ in five.” He spoke again, eyes narrowing on you slightly. “Get yer gun.”
That was the last thing he said before he turned on his heel and walked.
You rolled your eyes, stilling for a moment before you huffed, sticking your knife in its pouch on your thigh and walking straight back towards the prison to get your things.
When you got out, everyone going on the run was surrounding the car, discussing and planning.
“We going?” You asked, your gun resting against your leg. Full ammo, safety off.
“We’re going.” Michonne chimed in, eyes flicking towards you, a brief grin spreading across her lips like she found your impatience amusing.
Daryl’s eyes flickered towards your gun, then to your face. “Ya good on ammo?”
You glanced at him briefly. “Yes.”
“Yeah?” he pressed.
“I’m good.”
Another pause.
His eyes flicked over your face briefly before he turned and slipped into the passenger side.
You stayed quiet the whole drive; the others were engaging in conversation. You just sat quietly in the back watching the trees pass.
After twenty minutes, you arrived in a small abandoned town. Stores lining the street, signs gripping onto dear life on the metal they’d originally hung on.
The car rolled to a stop with a soft crunch of gravel and broken glass beneath the tyres.
For a moment, nobody moved.
“Alright,” Glenn said finally, his voice low as he leaned forward over the wheel. “We’ve got—what—three blocks of storefronts?”
Bob let out a breath. “If we’re lucky we won’t run into anything.”
Michonne was already watching the street ahead through the windshield. “We will.”
Daryl was the first out of the car.
“Split up,” he said immediately, stepping back from the door and adjusting his crossbow like the decision was already made. “Cover more ground. Stay in pairs.”
Glenn frowned. “We shouldn’t split too far—”
“We won’t,” Daryl cut in, finalising it.
You stepped out last, scanning the street automatically.
Michonne glanced at you briefly. “You okay?”
You gave a short nod.
“Pharmacy’s there,” Daryl pointed out, turning towards Glenn. “You and Bob take that.”
Glenn hesitated. “And you?”
Daryl tilted his head slightly towards the opposite row of buildings. “Hardware store. Side street.”
Michonne shifted her sword slightly. “I’ll take the centre strip. Check for movement.”
That left you.
Daryl’s eyes flicked to you briefly.
“Yer with me,” he said, leaving no room for arguments.
“Yeah.” You replied, hand unclipping your gun from its holster and pulling it out, letting it hang by your side.
Bob gave a nervous half-laugh as he and Glenn started moving towards the pharmacy.
Michonne moved out further, scanning the lot, sword angled.
Daryl didn’t wait, moving down the street towards the hardware store.
You followed.
The hardware store sat half-collapsed at one corner of the street, its sign swinging slightly in the wind. The front glass had already been blown out, shelves visible through the broken frame.
Daryl slowed as he approached the entrance.
“Quiet,” he muttered, crossbow already levelled by his eye.
You glanced at him for a moment before you looked straight ahead, stepping through the doorway.
Inside, the air shifted immediately—cooler, dust-heavy, stale in a way that clung to your throat. Rows of overturned shelving created narrow paths. Tools scattered across the floor, most already picked clean.
Daryl raised a hand slightly behind him, signalling for you to stop.
You stilled.
His eyes fixed below him.
You followed his line of sight, crouching without thinking, brushing a finger lightly across the floor.
Footprints.
Then the faint bustling of things being knocked off of shelves violently, groans growing louder each second you and Daryl spent in silence.
Walkers.
You stood, aiming your silenced pistol straight ahead, alert. Daryl did the same, the crossbow string tightening under his grip as he pushed forward without warning.
You followed immediately.
The first walker came fast, too fast for how tight the space was.
It stumbled out from between two collapsed racks, half its arm missing, jaw hanging wrong.
You fired before it fully cleared the aisle, watching as it dropped straight to the floor, brain matter splatted in its wake.
Daryl didn’t even look at it. He was already shifting.
“More movin’ back there,” he whispered, voice barely audible.
“I hear them,” you replied.
Another walker pushed through a gap in the shelving, then another behind it.
You stepped forward without hesitation and shot again.
Daryl fired once—clean and precise—and a third went down before it reached either of you.
The walkers kept coming; you didn’t know where they were coming from but, they were coming, and fast at that.
They pushed against the metal shelving, the metal groaning in return.
“Shit, there’s too many!” You bellowed, pivoting around your surroundings; they were to your left and your right, ahead and behind.
Daryl stayed close, his back practically glued to yours, shooting with practised ease—you knew he’d done this a million times before.
You could hear the distant shoots from the other side of the street; Glenn and Bob must’ve caught trouble too.
A shot cracked to your left—Daryl’s crossbow bolt snapped into a walker’s skull before it could lunge.
“Keep movin’!” he barked.
You pivoted, firing twice in quick succession. One walker dropped. Another stumbled forward; you took that one out quicker than the one before it.
Daryl moved like he always did in moments like this—no wasted motion, no hesitation. He stepped into your blind spot without asking, taking out a walker that had come too close behind you.
For a brief second, it almost felt manageable.
Then the shelving shifted.
It started as a low metallic rumble—subtle at first, almost lost beneath the chaos of movement and distant gunfire from outside. Then the sound deepened, the structure finally giving up under the weight of bodies and collapse.
Daryl’s head snapped towards it at the same time as yours.
“Move—” he started.
You twisted fast, trying to clear yourself, but you were a fraction too slow. The edge hit hard, slamming into your side and taking your legs out from under you.
Pain ripped through your leg as the shelving dragged across it on the way down—fast, jagged, immediate.
“Shit—” you choked out, breath gone tight in your throat.
The metal settled with a heavy slam, pinning the edge of your lower leg just enough to trap you in place without fully crushing it.
You froze, jaw clenched so hard it hurt.
Daryl was already moving, taking out a walker on his way over to you, crouching at your side when he made it.
“Don’t move,” he ordered.
“I’m not—” you tried, but even the smallest shift sent a sharp pulse through your leg that cut the sentence short.
“Quit movin,” he said flatly. “Hold still.”
Your fingers dug into the floor. “I can get it off.”
“No,” he snapped without hesitation.
Another walker groaned, closer now, but was silenced fairly quickly with a sharp arrow hit to the head.
He tried pushing at the shelves but it was no use, they were too heavy.
He needed backup.
“Michonne!,” Daryl yelled, voice gruff, hands gripping against the side of the shelving.
You could feel blood dampening your jeans—hot and wet, the smell filling your senses.
White pricked at your eyes; the pain was almost unbearable.
Metallic.
Strong.
Walkers moaned; the smell was attracting them.
A walker limped through, arms angling out.
Daryl raised his crossbow to take it out, but rather, its head was sliced into two before he could even shoot.
Michonne.
“What happened?!” She rushed over, crouching besides you immediately.
“My leg—” You winced, your jaw tightening until it hurt.
Michonne shifted slightly, turning towards Daryl. “We lift it. Clean. No dragging it back over the wound.”
Daryl's eyes dragged from your face to Michonne's, a short nod following; that was all the agreement needed.
He moved, standing, bracing his hands on the metal.
“Ready?” she asked, eyes on you, already standing and moving towards the edge of the shelf that your leg was trapped under.
You forced a breath in.
“Now.”
Metal groaned as they lifted it together, rising just enough to free the pressure.
Pain flared again as your leg shifted under the edge—sharp, hot, immediate—but this time it didn’t catch fully.
“Move!” Daryl snapped, voice slightly strained from the heavy lifting.
You dragged yourself backward fast, teeth clenched, forearms carrying you backward.
The second you were free, the shelving crashed back down behind you with a violent clang that echoed through the store.
For a second, there was nothing but your breathing; then the pain settled in—deep, steady, bleeding through your focus.
Michonne was already tearing fabric and wrapping pressure around the wound. “Do you think you can stand?”
You pushed yourself upright before answering, stubbornness overriding common sense. Pain buckled through your leg, sharp enough to make your vision blur.
Your hand shot out instinctively, grabbing the nearest solid thing.
The nearest solid thing just so happened to be Daryl.
His grip locked around your forearm before you could fall.
“Easy,” Michonne warned.
“I’m fine,” you breathed, though the strain in your voice betrayed you completely.
Daryl looked down at your leg briefly; the blood had dyed your jeans a dark crimson colour now. His jaw tightened at that.
“No. Ya ain’t.” He shot back, jaw tightening. “Put yer arm over ma shoulder.”
You could hear the grumbling of a walker on the opposite end of the store; Michonne turned immediately, sword already lifting.
You didn’t move for a minute, succumbing to the realisation that you needed help—you wouldn’t be able to walk with a wound this deep.
A beat and then—
You threw your arm over Daryl’s shoulder. His hand caught firmly around your waist—not gentle, nor rough either.
“Move,” Michonne said, taking the lead in front of you, chopping down walkers who blocked your path.
Every step sent another pulse of pain, forcing your weight harder against Daryl’s side. He adjusted without comment, keeping you upright while still firing one handed when walkers got too close, arrow straight through bone.
The second you emerged from the storefront, sunlight hit hard enough to make your eyes narrow, tear tracks visible now under the intense light.
“Over here!,” Glenn shouted from beside the car, shooting down walkers that were emerging from alleyways.
“Is she bit?!” Bob asked quickly as you reached the car.
“No,” Daryl answered before you could.
Michonne opened the back door immediately. “Get her in.”
Daryl guided—more accurately shoved—you carefully into the backseat before turning and planting another arrow through a walker that neared the passenger side.
Glenn hauled into the driver's seat; everyone piled into the car as quick as they could.
The car lurched violently forward.
Silence hit for half a second except for heavy breathing and the distant groans fading behind you.
You were in agony the whole way back, a sharp hiss escaping your lips every time Glenn drove over a hitch in the road.
The prison fences finally came into view nearly twenty minutes later.
Glenn sped through the gate as soon as it was opened, gas pedal to the floor, halting just by the prison entrance.
Everyone hauled out.
Daryl held you from one side; Michonne held you from the other.
Carol rushed over, worry etched across her face.
“What happened?” Carol asked, eyes flickering over you.
“Shelf collapsed,” Michonne answered, tightening her grip around your shoulder as you hobbled over the terrain. “Sliced through her leg.”
Rick rushed over quickly.
“Get her to Hershel now.” He shouted.
The second you stepped inside, cooler air brushed against your face, though it did little to dull the throbbing ache in your leg.
You tried taking more of your own weight once you hit smooth ground again, but pain immediately shot through your leg, balance faltering slightly.
Daryl caught it before it became a full stumble, hand tightening instinctively against your side.
Maggie hurried ahead of you, pulling open the next set of doors while Rick cleared people out of the way.
“Daddy!” Maggie called loudly, panic riddling her tone.
You could hear movement upstairs almost instantly.
“What happened?” Hershel’s voice echoed before he even appeared.
“Shelf collapsed!” Bob answered. “She’s bleeding!”
Daryl and Michonne carried you swiftly towards your cell, Michonne settling you down on your bed carefully before stepping back—hands still stained from wrapping your wound.
Daryl simply just moved away, resting his side against the doorway, watching closely.
Your predicament sure had caused a commotion; people were gathering outside of your cell, muttering and whispering.
Hershel made his way to you with pace, that limp still in his walk from getting accustomed to his new prosthetic leg.
“Alright,” he said gently, taking a seat on the edge of your bed, eyes scanning across the blood-soaked fabric wrapping around your leg.
He carefully untied it from the back and peeled it away from the wound, eyes scanning over it to see the damage.
“Deep cut,” Hershel spoke up quietly. “But clean. No infection yet. It’ll need cleaning and then stitching.”
Maggie nodded, quickly rushing out to grab the medical supply box.
“How bad is it?” You winced, hands bunching the fabric of your shirt to grip on.
“It’s bad,” Hershel replied, eyes raising to yours. “But manageable.”
Carol crouched by your side, assessing the injury.
Maggie ran back with the supply box in one hand, a bottle of alcohol and a cloth in the other.
The alcohol was used first.
“This is going to hurt.” Hershel looked up towards you, nodding slightly: a silent warning that he was about to start the cleaning process.
You nodded, your grip on your shirt tightening.
The pain was excruciating; the alcohol burnt through the wound, clearing it completely.
Maggie scrambled through the box, pulling out needle and thread; it’d do as makeshift medical wire.
She gave it to her father, stepping back slightly.
Carol grabbed your hand. “Squeeze my hand, okay?”
A breath and then—
A sharp needle pushed through the wound, thread being sewn through it.
You hissed, eyes shutting so tightly they started to sting.
Your hand squeezed Carol's as tight as it could, unable to speak from the pain of the thread filing through your skin—white pricked at your eyes; you were sure you could’ve passed out.
The needle went through three more times.
Then, Hershel was done, wrapping a bandage around the stitching, keeping the pressure firm.
Sweat clung to the back of your neck; blood dried slowly over your jeans.
“You’re lucky it wasn’t any deeper,” Hershel said with a sigh. “But you will still need to rest.”
You swallowed dryly but didn’t answer.
The room stayed crowded for another few minutes after Hershel finished.
Too many bodies. Too many voices.
Rick eventually pushed off from the corner first.
“Alright,” he said firmly, looking around at everyone else. “Give her some space.”
Nobody argued with that.
People started to file out.
Carol waited a moment before speaking.
“You need anything? Call for me,” she said, brushing a hand lightly against your arm.
You nodded.
Then she left with the rest.
Michonne straightened from the wall, dark eyes flicking toward you briefly, a small smile on her lips before sliding toward the doorway and slipping out.
Daryl was still there, posture tense now, crossbow low in his hand, still watching you through the dark strands of his hair.
He hadn’t moved.
Hershel gathered the last of the supplies into the medical box with a tired sigh. “Get some rest."
Doctors orders.
Then he left too.
The room finally fell quiet.
Just you and Daryl.
Your eyes tracked over him; the dim light overhead caught the exhaustion sitting across his face now that the adrenaline had worn off. Dirt streaked across one side of his shirt; your blood clung to his hands, already drying.
“Thank you…” You spoke, eyes moving towards something that’s wasn’t him.
He didn’t answer straight away.
A beat.
“Don’t gotta thank me’,” he muttered eventually. “Woulda done it for anyone."
You expected that response.
“Yeah…” you spoke weakly, voice barely audible, eyes meeting his once again.
His eyes drifted from yours, turning towards the corridor, then towards the floor, like he was half deciding whether to leave or not.
Your eyes lingered on his face; you couldn’t read him. You never could. Too weak to even try to attempt.
The room filled with that silence you’d always dreaded when two people didn’t know what to say anymore.
Suffocating and thick.
You swallowed once, eyes feeling heavy, exhaustion beginning to take its toll.
“…I should get some rest.” Your voice broke through the quiet.
"Yeah." He responded almost immediately, his eyes meeting yours under the dark strands of his hair.
Another beat.
He shifted, turning slightly, his boots about to carry him out of the cell.
“Daryl…” you called out to him, your voice low but still loud enough that it echoed off the cell walls.
He turned, eyes wider this time, not narrowed like they usually were.
He didn’t talk.
Just waited for you to speak, gaze never drifting from yours.
“Thank you…again.”
A/N: I honestly loved writing this. I really do hope you enjoyed!
Please let me know if you’d like to be added to the Taglist!🖤
Park the shark x reader who's equally as intimidating as him <33
Med students and some residents— hell even some attendings are scared to both of them 😆
I wrote it w the intention of making up a patient but then ended up writing it on baby jane doe. park isn’t in here really until the end. an introduction to the intimidating peds dr that is coincidentally married to the intimidating ortho dr lol. f!reader implied
ONE FISH, TWO FISH
"put in your orders dr. mohan."
robby snapped off his gloves and looked to the resident. clearing his throat before finishing. “—and get peds in here.”
samira stuttered in movement before she glanced to the attending. “peds?”
it wasn’t a question of reasoning but rather a an echo of his request. a clarification to make sure she heard him right. robby nodded. tight lipped as he swiveled his head to the side. “yes.” but the way the word was said made it seem like he was second guessing. robby looked to baby jane doe and then to samira. exhaling through his nose and nodding without saying anything. his hand wiped across his face. “yes, get peds in.” and left.
samira stared at the small patient before whispering under her breath. “shit.”
—
her fingers faltered at the tablet, trying to keep her mind on the patient as she waited. ogilvie stood off to the side. eyeing her as he himself waited. dana had told him to assist. insisted on it apparently. from what ogilvie told the resident.
and when robby came by to see where things were at, looking to samira for an answer on why the student was in there—without actually asking—she carefully explains. “dana thought it’d be a good opportunity for him to—”
“I don’t know why- i was looking to get in on the trauma that came in. I wanted to practice my intubation for my medical procedure log but I was told I’d be learning a lot if I were to help dr. mohan.” the med student interrupts. robby and samira share a quick look before robby clasps his hands together and nods. albeit not being okay with the charge nurse assigning his students to cases without letting him know, he sees…why she did it.
the attending bites his lower lip. “I think dana is right. you’ll learn from this so just uh—” he scratches his beard. “wait for peds. dr.park is an exceptional pediatrician—”
“dr. park?” ogilvie asked looking to samira then back to robby.
“yes, she's—” “a child was abandoned?” your gloves snapped on as you walked in.
“dr.park.” robby acknowledged. you spare a side glance and a lifted hand. a wave. “present the case.”
ogilvie speaks as samira opens her mouth, "sats 99 on room air, normal bp, normal pulse…” your eyes brief them over, before shifting your attention to the small patient.
“well hydrated.” robby says from behind.
“how’s she doing?” you asked as you adjusted the blanket.
“she's seems happy enough. we got a quick a point-of-care CBC.” samira said softly. patiently waiting for you to examine baby jane doe.
“we don’t know the birth history and—” he speaks again.
“I’m aware.” you interrupt this time. sparing the kid a look. “you said so in the case presentation and it’s the indication you gave me. unless you—” “I know I just wanted to validate.” samira and robby don’t say a thing.
your head tilts as you stare at him. eyes sharpen. “student?” you question.
“dr. ogilvie. I’m actually a student doctor,” “I didn’t ask. it was a yes or no.”
that seemed to shut him up pretty quick.
“are you aware that you interrupt, doctor ogilvie?” not even looking at him when you speak as you go back to checking the child. it wasn’t even said as a correction to his introduction moments ago. but rather a bite to his need to have that acknowledgment. you look at him. expectantly. waiting for an answer that has seemed to fall on deaf ears.
“I was just telling you.” it’s a poor attempt to explain.
robby shakes his head, hands behind his neck. lips pressed tightly together. this is why dana was insistent.
“and I’m telling you.” you correct him. your tone hard. no room for arguments.
you look back to the baby, offering a smile to her before dropping it when you turn to those standing off to the side. “she looks good, no obvious source of infection, there’s a possibility of it being benign but since we don't know her history," your eyes find ogilvie's. “let’s get labs done.”
you give your orders as the gloves come off.
“I’ll be back in a few to check in.” you walk around and begin to leave. “and doctor?” you direct to ogilvie, your hand on the handle of the door. the young man turns to you.
“I get wanting to learn, but this isn’t a competition. so few words of advice—considering it is a teaching hospital— learn a thing or two about respect. do not to interrupt when someone is talking to you.”you grit and push at the door. “—even my kids know that.”
it quiet for a minute after you leave, the only noise comes from the small patient as she coos.
“that was dr. park. she's one of our attending pediatricians.” robby starts off slowly, picking up from earlier. his head tipping toward where you just walked out.
the student stands there, looking startled. “she works with kids?"
samira gives a tight lipped smile and robby laughs before he himself walks out. “just you wait.”
—
the med student stared at the man, who was assessing the amputation in front of him. shocked. because that was not the doctor he saw earlier.
“—clean wound. no crush injury. rapid transport time. replantation is a go. I'll book an OR. irrigate the hell out of this with 3 liters."
"3 liters?"
"of saline, genius."
"thanks, shark."
the surgeon walks out but not before giving a side eye— glaring— at the two young men.
"I thought dr. park was a pediatrician?" ogilvie questioned. eyes on robby for clarification.
"dr. park is pediatrics." robby slowly nodded "dr. brendon park, her husband, is orthopedics." the students' eyes widened when he finally caught up to his words.
mafia!aerion and LS.. people are TERRIFIED!! of them!!! they would be such an insane combo. imagine them dealing with a snitch or smth… maybe even mafia!valarr who’s supposed to take over after his father??? yeah. yeah. do you see the vision? i’m losing it rn.
woke up wanting to write aerion, valarr and bloodraven (got a lot of interest in him lately???) and by happy accident saw this. got wayyy into this, there's even plot, someone bonk me over the head rn. not proofread, more snapshot in nature but then not?
Two branches. One name. One rotting throne split down its middle decades ago when the old man at the top couldn't decide which of his sons to favour and so divided his city like a pie.
Baelor inherited the ports, the shipping, the philanthropy, the legitimate face of the family. The side that gets written up in business magazines and shakes hands with senators and lords. Maekar got the weapons, the powders, the back-alley dealings. The side that funds the side that gets written up in business magazines.
They cooperate. They tolerate each other at weddings and funerals. Every made man in either organisation understands that the day the old man dies, the city is going to come apart at the seam.
And Baelor's and Maekar's heirs are exactly the worst possible expression of that fracture.
Aerion was never supposed to inherit a damn thing as a second son. That was Daeron's job because Daeron was the eldest, except Daeron drinks the way men drink when they're trying to put themselves in an early grave, and hasn't been sober at a sit-down in three years.
Aemon refused outright; took his hands and his medical degree and walked at 18. The family refuses to talk about it. Egg is fifteen and Maekar will die before he hands his youngest son a gun.
So the work, the expectation, slid to Aerion. And Aerion fits it the way a knife fits a wound.
Cocky, cruel, beautiful in the way certain weapons are beautiful. The nipple piercing only his lovers know about, rings on every finger that leave bruises when he doesn't bother to take them off first before he fucks you.
He's not stupid. That's the part outsiders tend to miss.
He plays piano in the back room of one of the family's clubs when he's bored. Taught himself purely out of spite when one of his uncles made a comment about his dead mother's accomplishments. He reads Russian literature in the bath. There are annotated copies of Karamazov and Demons stacked on his nightstand alongside the kind of pistol you don't carry unless you've used it, repeatedly.
He conducts business in three languages. He killed his first man at sixteen and didn't lose a single night of sleep over it, and he can quote you the exact passage of Crime and Punishment he was reading while he waited for the body to be moved.
His men love him. His men are, also, a little afraid of him.
Valarr is Aerion's opposite in almost every way. He was born for power. Groomed for it.
Baelor's son, golden and gleaming, the famous white streak at his temple like a brand of inevitability, a mark of being chosen. Six languages, an MBA he didn't need, a board seat he uses, a philanthropy that's real. He runs the legitimate side because Baelor likes the appearance of cleanliness, but everyone in the city understands that clean is a polite fiction.
He has people who have worked for him for ten years and would die for him without being asked. He has fans. Women at galas circle him like sharks circling a particularly pretty piece of meat and he flirts with all of them and goes home with none, because Valarr doesn't give pieces of himself away cheaply.
Valarr collects.
And his cruelty... god, his cruelty. It's ten times worse than Aerion's for being so much quieter.
He doesn't visibly enjoy hurting people. He sits across the table from a man who's betrayed him and he says, in a tone so warm it sounds almost affectionate, I think there's been a misunderstanding, and he tilts his head a fraction, and he keeps eye contact while one of his people unfolds a knife behind the man's chair. And the entire time Valarr is smiling that beautiful, slightly apologetic smile and somehow the man on the wrong side of the table believes he deserves this. Believes it is his own fault. Believes that if he'd only been smarter or quicker or more loyal, Valarr would not be doing this to him.
Valarr makes people agree with their own destruction. It's the most frightening thing about him.
He sleeps eight hours a night and never once has nightmares.
The rivalry between them isn't new, either.
It dates back to a summer at the family compound when they were nine and seven and Valarr won a sailing race and Aerion broke Valarr's collarbone with an oar two days later. Their fathers separated them.
Their fathers re-separated them at thirteen and fifteen, after Aerion put Valarr's face through a glass coffee table at a christening. They've been arranged-marriage civil to each other for twenty years and there's not a man in either organisation who doesn't understand that the second Maekar and Baelor are both in the ground, one of them is going to put the other in a hole, too.
The only question is which one. Money says Valarr, because Valarr is patient, surgical and has institutional weight. Money is wrong, because Valarr underestimates Aerion the way the world underestimates a stray dog with a steel jaw.
Aerion thinks Valarr is a phony. A polished show-piece. A man who's never bled for anything in his life and gets to inherit the larger share of the city purely because his father was born first.
Valarr thinks Aerion is a feral, embarrassing liability. A hand grenade with the pin missing. Useful, because he's terrifying and family, but the kind of relative you keep at a distance from your reputation.
They both, on some level neither would ever say aloud, want to be the one their fathers chose.
—
And then you come south.
—
You don't come south because of the family. That's the thing.
You come south because your father is dead.
Barthogan Stark, of Winterfell, of the north, killed not in any spectacular way but slowly, over three years, by something that ate him from the inside while you held his hand and read aloud to him in the long evenings.
The lawyers need you in the city for a month to handle the estate.
Your father's estate is large, and complicated. Your father was a Stark, which is its own kind of weight in this city even before you start opening drawers and finding things you wish you hadn't.
Your father owned half a shipping line. Your father had a standing reservation at a restaurant Baelor's people own. Your father had, you discover three days in, a file in the locked drawer of his study with the name Targaryen on the tab and photographs inside that you don't yet have the stomach to look at fully.
So you come south. Head-to-toe in black, your father's signet ring on a chain at your throat because you can't yet bring yourself to wear it on your hand.
You don't know the scene yet.
You just know your father knew these people, and you know your father is not in a position to explain why anymore.
—
You meet Bloodraven first.
A man approaches you at your father's funeral. White-haired, in a beautifully cut black coat, the wine-coloured birthmark down one side of his face, an old scar slashing through one eyebrow where the eye underneath no longer lives, partially hidden by the silky white hair.
He doesn't offer condolences. He says, "Lady Stark," in a tone of mild interest. "I knew your father."
"So did most of this city, apparently."
His mouth twitches, but it's not a smile. It's a near-smile, the way a knife is a near-flower.
"Not most of this city, no. Very few people knew your father the way I did. Barthogan and I had a long-running arrangement."
That makes you look at him properly for the first time. "Of what kind?"
"Of the kind," he says, almost gently, "that suggests you and I should also speak."
He is, you realise dimly, the most unsettling person you've ever stood next to, and you grew up surrounded by northern men who killed people for a living.
"I don't know who you are," you tell him.
Technically a lie. You've heard the name. You've heard the name in three different rooms in the last forty-eight hours, always in a hushed register, always with a small instinctive glance at the door.
"Brynden Rivers," he says. "I work for the family."
He doesn't specify which one. You understand, somehow, that this is because he works for neither and both.
"I would like to invite you to have a conversation with me, when you've finished receiving people."
"About my father."
"About a number of things."
His eye (the good one, the red one) settles on you with an unblinking focus that should feel violating and doesn't, quite, because there's nothing leering or hungry in it. It's just attention. Complete, terrible, exact.
"Starks have always been of interest to me, Lady Stark. I hope you don't disappoint."
He inclines his head a fraction and walks away.
You stand at your father's grave with this sentence sitting in your chest like a fist and think—what the fuck does that mean.
—
You find out on a cloudy Tuesday.
He sends a car and you almost don't get in it.
You even reach for your phone to call your lawyer and ask whether there's any conceivable universe in which getting into a car sent by Brynden Rivers is a survivable decision. And then you remember that you're a Stark, your father raised you for this, and your father had a file, and so you get in the car.
It drives you to a house outside the city. You expect a warehouse or a grave, frankly, but no, a house, narrow and elegant and packed floor-to-ceiling with books. A woman lets you in without speaking. (You will learn later she's mute, you will learn even later that Brynden himself had her tongue removed). A maid pours you tea you don't drink. Brynden is waiting for you in a study with three ravens perched on a sideboard like ornamental gargoyles.
He doesn't get up.
"Sit, Lady Stark."
"Brynden."
He pauses.
A small thing. He's been mid-gesture, indicating the chair across from him, and his hand stills in the air for half a beat at the use of his given name.
It is, you suspect, the first time he's been called by it in this house in a very long time. The men who come to this study call him Lord Rivers. Call him sir. Call him Bloodraven, when they're not in his hearing. Possibly two people address him the way you've just addressed him, and both of them are dead now.
His good eye crinkles at the corner, and his hand completes the gesture, his mouth turning toward that near-smile thing again.
"As you like."
You sit.
He sets a folder on the desk between you, a folder you recognise.
It is, in fact, a folder from your father's locked drawer, and the only way Brynden Rivers can have it is because your father gave it to him a long time ago and he made copies of his own, or because Brynden Rivers can simply get things and the locked drawer in your father's study did not present a meaningful obstacle.
You suspect the second. You suspect this is going to be true in a great many things from now on.
"Your father and I had what I would call a working friendship. He kept his half of the country quiet. I kept this half informed. When we exchanged information, it was always to the realm's benefit. He was, by my standards, an honourable man, which is rarer in my line of work than it should be." His good eye glitters as he takes you in, considering. After a brief pause, he adds, "I was sorry to hear of his passing. I do not say that often."
"Thank you."
The near-smile comes again at the quiet sincerity in your voice. He files it. He doesn't comment on it.
"You have, I imagine, discovered some of what he kept on the Targaryens."
Your neck prickles, and you choose your answer carefully, "Some."
"Have you read all of it?" he wonders, stirring his tea.
"No."
"May I suggest you read all of it."
It's not a suggestion and you both know it, despite how dry and mild his tone remains. A beat.
"Why are you helping me, Brynden?" you ask.
He gazes at you for a long time. One of the ravens shifts on its perch and gives a rattling croak. Brynden doesn't blink at the disturbance.
When he answers, his voice is still mild, almost amused, almost (and this is the part that will keep you up at night for weeks) fond.
"As I've told you already: Starks have always been of interest to me, my lady. Because your father gave me twenty years of clean information and asked me for almost nothing in return, and I find I would like to repay that. In a fashion he might have approved of. Because the boys you are about to meet—and you will meet them, very shortly, whether you choose to or not—both believe themselves cleverer than they are, and I have a certain professional appetite for watching clever men be corrected."
He tilts his head. "And because the city is approaching an inflection point I have spent fifteen years preparing for, and you, Lady Stark, have arrived at precisely the moment I had stopped hoping someone like you would arrive. I do not believe in providence. I do, however, believe in well-timed pieces."
You bristle. "I'm not a piece."
"No." He allows himself a half-smile this time. "You are a player. That is the part I find encouraging. I would like to be useful to you, while you are in the south. With the understanding—and I want to be entirely clear about this—that I am not a friend. I am not safe. I have my own reasons."
His good eye fixes on yours. "You should never, at any point in our acquaintance, mistake my interest in you for affection. And you should never, at any point, fail to ask yourself what I am gaining from the help I am offering. I will not be insulted by the question. I will respect you less if you fail to ask it."
You stare at him. "And if I disappoint you, Brynden?"
His expression doesn't change. "Then I will be sorry. But you will be a great deal more sorry than I am, my lady."
A very long silence follows those words.
"Alright," you say. "I would like to know one more thing before I agree."
He dips his chin. "Ask."
"What does it mean, practically, to be working with you?" you wonder, watching him carefully.
He considers the question for a beat. Sets his cup down. Folds his hands.
"It means that I have certain... habits. Of watching. Of knowing where things are, and where people are, and what is being said in rooms I am not in. These habits, when applied to a person, can be expensive. They can also be useful."
He pauses, watching his tea with a slight tilt of his head. "If you and I are doing business, my lady, then a number of my habits will, by necessity, settle on you. You will find that things you did not arrange happen on your behalf. You will find that people who might otherwise have been a nuisance discover other commitments. You will find that the city is, in certain narrow ways, easier than it would otherwise be for a woman in your position to navigate."
Your brows furrow. "You're saying I will be under your protection?"
"I am saying," he corrects, mildly, "that I am not in the habit of using that word. Protection implies an obligation. I do not take obligations to people. I take interests. While my interest in you persists, the practical consequences may be very similar to what other people would call protection. They are not the same thing."
"And if your interest in me ceases?"
"Then the practical consequences cease with it," he says simply, frankly, "I will not punish you for it. I will not seek you out. I will simply no longer be... there." His good eye crinkles slightly at the edges. "I tell you this so you understand the structure. I do not deceive my partners about the terms of the arrangement. It is one of my few professional vanities."
"And while your interest persists?"
"While my interest persists, my lady, you will find that certain men in this city become quite remarkably reluctant to inconvenience you. Aerion Targaryen, for example. Valarr Targaryen, for example."
He pauses. Picks up his cup, sipping from it for a moment.
"You are about to do something dangerous, Lady Stark," he says, leaning back into his seat. "I am familiar with what you are about to do, because I have been doing related work for a long time. You are not going to survive it on your own. You may, possibly, survive it with me. I am offering you the second option, because the first one is not, in my professional estimation, available to you."
You absorb this.
"Brynden."
"Yes, my lady?"
You laugh weakly, a slightly hysterical edge to the sound. "That's the kindest thing anyone has said to me since my father died, and it terrifies me."
He dips his chin slightly. "It should."
Another silence. Different in texture from the last one.
"Alright," you say finally. "I accept."
He tips his head. The half-smile spreads further than you have yet seen it spread. He looks, for one second, like a man who's just received a piece of news he's been waiting on for several years.
"Alright. Then we will begin, little wolf."
You look at him sharply.
He gazes back. He's called you my lady three times tonight and Lady Stark twice. He has, just now, chosen something else, and he's done it knowing exactly what he was doing, and his good eye is on yours with the calm expectant focus, curious to see what you'll do with this small test.
"Little wolf," you echo.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because it suits you. Because your father called you something similar, I believe. And because it amuses me to mark the agreement we've just made with a name only I will use, which neither of the Targaryens will be permitted to. Forgive me the vanity."
You consider him.
"That is a great deal of meaning to put on two words, Brynden."
"All my words have a great deal of meaning on them, little wolf. You will learn to read them in time."
He pours you a second cup of tea. You don't drink it this time either. You sit across from the most dangerous man in the continent and you discuss your father's files, your timelines and the people you're about to meet.
When you leave two hours later you're walking out of his house with a hand-drawn map of the city's power structure that you will memorise in your hotel room that night and burn in your bathroom sink before dawn.
You are walking out, also, with the cold clear understanding that you've just made an alliance with someone who could end you in a heartbeat. And you're walking out, also, with the unmistakable, unsettling sense that he likes you.
That this terrifying man, this man who's unmade entire dynasties and re-made governments and put bodies in walls, has decided in the space of one tea service that you're interesting. And that this is going to be, for the rest of your time in the south, both the most useful and the most dangerous fact about your situation.
At the door, as you put your coat on, you say, "Goodnight, Brynden."
He inclines his head. "Goodnight, little wolf. Please do not take the cab to the corner of your hotel."
"I know," you say. "Four blocks. Check three times."
"Very good," he says mildly.
You take a cab home. You do not let it drop you at your hotel. You have it drop you four blocks away and you walk the rest, and you check the street for tails three times before you go inside, just the way Brynden told you to.
—
You meet Aerion first.
It's at a club. One of theirs. Though you don't know it yet.
Brynden didn't tell you outright. Because he doesn't work like that.
Brynden mentioned, over the second pot of tea, that there was an establishment on a certain corner that did interesting business on Wednesdays. And that if you just so happen to be in the neighbourhood on a Wednesday around midnight you might find the atmosphere instructive.
You understood the shape of what he was saying without him needing to spell it out.
When you walk into the club, no one knows you came from Bloodraven's tea table. No one knows you were briefed on the colour of the wallpaper before you arrived. As far as the city is concerned, you're a Stark heir who's decided to take a walk on a Wednesday, and the city is going to draw its own incorrect conclusions about what that means.
You wear black. A simple slip of a dress, hair down, your father's signet ring on the chain at your throat because you can't yet bring yourself to wear it on your hand. You don't look like a girl who walked in by accident.
You also don't look like a girl who knows what she's walking into, which is the part Aerion notices first.
He's at the bar.
Silver hoops catching the red light, ringed fingers loose around a glass of something amber, the half-smile of a man pretending to find his lieutenant's story amusing. He watches you cross the floor in the mirror behind the bottles and doesn't turn around.
By the time you're three feet from him, he's already decided he's going to fuck you. He's already decided he's going to enjoy it. The only question still genuinely open in his head is how long he's going to let you pretend it's not a foregone conclusion.
"New face," he calls out, without turning.
You don't lift your eyes. "New bar."
"Is it?" His mouth twitches at the corner. He still hasn't turned. He tips his glass a fraction, watching you in the mirror over the lip of it. "What brings you in?"
"A recommendation."
"From?"
"Someone."
His eyes (pale, very pale, the kind that always look like they're catching light even when there isn't any) track up the mirror until they find yours in it. He holds you there a beat too long. You don't look away.
He sets the glass down. He turns.
Oh, you think. Oh.
You've met dangerous men before. Your father's house was full of them. You have not met one quite like this.
It isn't that he's beautiful, though he is, in a way that feels almost spiteful. Like he resents his own face for being a thing other people can use against him. It isn't the rings, or the hoops, or the half-visible ink crawling up the side of his neck.
It's the stillness. The way he looks at you like he's three moves ahead of the conversation.
His lieutenant has gone quiet. His lieutenant has gone, in fact, professionally invisible. He's slid one stool down and turned his shoulder and become deeply interested in his own phone, in a way that tells you several things at once, none of them good. The bartender has found a glass to polish at the far end of the bar.
No one is watching you. Everyone is watching you.
"Let me buy you a drink," he says.
"No, thank you," you respond crisply.
"No?"
"No."
A beat. His head tilts a fraction. Amusement curls in at the edge of his full mouth. "You walk into a stranger's bar at midnight in that dress made for taking off and won't take a drink off the house?"
"I didn't realise it was the house offering."
He laughs under his breath, a private sound. "You know who I am."
"I have a guess," you confirm neutrally.
"Do you?" His eyes go down you once, unhurried, assessing not your body but your posture, which is the thing about him he tries to hide and cannot, which is that he's far more clinical than he lets on. "Guess out loud."
"I don't make guesses out loud, Mr—"
You let it hang. You don't give him the name. He watches you not give it to him and his mouth curls, something a touch closer to approval. Not stupid, you can feel him think. Good.
"Sit," he says, and taps the stool beside him.
"No."
His brows lift slowly. "No?"
"I don't sit on command," you tell him flatly. "Ask properly."
A pause. He looks at you. Truly looks. And his expression shifts through several gears in the space of one breath. The half-smile sharpens into something almost predatory and then that drops away into something far more dangerous, which is curiosity.
Genuine curiosity. He's not been told no by a woman in his own establishment in a long time and the woman in question has done it without flirtation, without the breathy little curl of fear that he's used to detecting in women who are pretending to defy him as a form of foreplay. You have meant it. And he's so unaccustomed to meaning that he is, for one half-second, fascinated.
"Please," he drawls with a smirk, almost mocking, like this is a fun game he's indulging.
You watch him for a beat. Then, "No, thank you."
His laugh this time is incredulous. It cracks out of him before he can stop it. The lieutenant beside him doesn't look up from his phone but you can see the small involuntary tilt of his head. A man who's worked for Aerion Targaryen for a long time and has not, in his hearing, encountered this particular sound before.
"Interesting," Aerion says, under his breath. "Who are you?"
You shrug. "Someone passing through."
"Someone passing through doesn't walk into my bar."
He says my and lets it settle in the air between you. Lets you absorb it. So you understand, if you were in any doubt, exactly whose room you're standing in. It should frighten you. You're aware that it should frighten you. He has the power in this room. But you've decided, on the cab ride over, that you will not let it frighten you.
"Yet here I am."
His eyes drift to your mouth. They come back up. And then they catch, and stay, on the line of your throat. On the chain. On what hangs from the chain, the heavy old metal of the signet. The wolf cut deep and familiar enough that you can feel his recognition before he names it.
His hand moves.
He doesn't ask. He leans in (close, closer than is acceptable in a public space) and he hooks two ringed fingers under the chain at your collarbone and lifts the ring out from where it has settled inside the neckline of your dress. His knuckles brush your sternum. Aerion doesn't pretend they didn't.
He holds the ring up between you, between his thumb and forefinger, and tilts it once into the light, and looks at it, and then at you, and looks at it again.
His mouth changes shape.
The smallest possible thing. A flicker. A recalculation happening behind his face in real time. You watch him watch the ring and you watch him arrive at the answer to some internal question. You understand that the next three seconds are the only seconds in this entire conversation in which you have the advantage, because they're the only seconds in which he's been surprised.
He lets the ring drop.
It lands warm against your skin from his fingers. But his hand doesn't retreat all the way. He lets his knuckles trail, deliberately, down the line of your sternum (half an inch, no more) before he withdraws his hand. He's letting you know he did it. He wants you to know he did it. He wants you to think about it later.
"Stark," he murmurs, almost to himself.
"Yes."
"You should have led with that," he says with a lazy smirk.
"You should have asked," you retort dryly.
Aerion laughs again. It is, this time, not startled. Something more dangerous than startled, which is interested. Fully interested. The kind of interested that has costs attached to it.
He drains the last finger of amber in his glass, sets it down without looking at the bartender (who's already refilling it before the glass touches wood) and turns his whole body toward you, finally, properly, all the unhurried weight of his attention.
"Lady Stark," he drawls smoothly, tasting the name.
"Mr Targaryen."
Heat flickers in those pale eyes. "Aerion."
"Mr Targaryen," you say again, flatter.
His mouth twitches. "You're going to be difficult."
"I imagine I am," you agree mildly.
He steps a half-step closer, and you don't move.
You're distantly aware of every place on your body he's not touching.
The half-inch between his sternum and yours. The small distance between his jaw and your temple. The fact that he's breathing a fraction out of rhythm and you can feel it on your collarbone where his face is angled toward you. He's doing this on purpose, you realise, teaching you the geography of him by withholding it.
One of his rings rotates on his finger. You notice it. A tell, you'll learn later, the thing he does when his head is doing work he hasn't yet allowed his face to show.
"Have a drink with me."
It doesn't come out as a question, or offer.
"No."
"Have a conversation with me," he insists, mouth curling.
You tip your chin slightly. "We're having one right now."
"A longer one."
"No."
His eyes are on your mouth again. They have, you realise, been there for some time. He doesn't bother to pretend otherwise.
When Aerion speaks again his voice has dropped, pitched only for you, and there's a thread in it that's not flirtation, exactly. It's something more dangerous than flirtation, which is appetite, the unmasked kind, the kind he's not bothering to pretty up.
"Why are you in my bar, Stark?" he asks.
You keep your expression neutral. "To look at it."
"And?"
"And I have looked at it."
"And?"
"And I'm going to leave," you tell him flatly.
A beat follows.
"No, you're not," he says, smoothly, matter of fact.
the line of your mouth flattens ever so slightly. "I am."
"You're not," he disagrees in that confident, dangerous drawl.
You tilt your head a fraction further, eyes narrowing. "Are you stopping me, Mr Targaryen?"
Silence.
It stretches. Long enough that the lieutenant beside him gives up on his phone and is now openly, if discreetly, watching the side of Aerion's face, waiting for an order, you conclude.
Aerion doesn't turn. His eyes are on yours and his jaw is pulsing and his thumb is tracing the rim of his refilled glass in a small absent circle. You understand (you can see him understand) that the answer to your question, if he gives the honest one, is yes.
That he wants, with a clarity that's almost embarrassing, to put a hand on your waist and walk you to the back room and find out exactly how long it takes to make you stop talking to him like that. And that he is, with effort, choosing not to. Because something about you is making him choose not to, and he's not yet certain whether he resents you for it or wants to put his teeth in your throat about it.
"No," he says, finally. "I'm not stopping you."
"Good."
"Come back," he says and it sounds more like an order.
"Perhaps," you say.
"Come back, Stark."
You gaze at him, and let him have one moment of looking back. You let your eyes drop, just once, to his mouth. To the line where the lower lip meets the upper, to the faint pale scar at the corner that you had not previously noticed. Because you're not above the small cruelty of letting him know you've noticed him too.
Aerion's nostrils flare a fraction. The hand at his side flexes once and stills. This is, you suspect, going to keep him up tonight.
"Goodnight, Mr Targaryen."
His tongue touches the corner of his mouth, hooded eyes pinned to you. "Aerion."
"Goodnight, Mr Targaryen," you repeat pleasantly.
You turn.
He stops you.
Not with his hand. With his voice. Quieter this time. Almost a question. Almost.
"Wolf."
You go still.
It's the first time anyone has called you that since you came south.
You half-turn. Over your shoulder.
"Mr Targaryen."
His mouth curls. A private thing. Pleased with itself. Half cruel.
"That's what you are. You walked in here in a black dress with a wolf at your throat and you'd not be in my bar at midnight if you didn't want to be looked at. Don't make me call you Lady Stark, sweetheart. We're past that."
"We're not past that."
He loosens a small, throaty sound. "We are."
"Goodnight, Mr Targaryen."
"Goodnight, wolf."
You walk out of his Wednesday establishment in a black dress and a Stark ring at your throat and the eyes of every man in the room on your back, and you don't look back, and you don't check your phone in the cab.
You do not let yourself smile until you're inside your hotel room with the door locked and the chain on.
You stand in the dark in front of the mirror and you lift your father's ring from your sternum and you look at the heat where his knuckles touched you, the small downward trail of it, and you think calmly, that one is going to be a problem.
Your phone, on the bedside table, is silent.
It will stay silent for almost six hours, which is the longest Aerion Targaryen has ever waited to make a second move on a woman he wanted. You don't yet know this. But Brynden will tell you over the next pot of tea, because Brynden knows everything, and Brynden will set the cup down and offer a thin smile and say, that is interesting, little wolf. That is very interesting indeed.
—
You meet Valarr four days later.
At a gala. Your mother's foundation has a table and your mother's foundation now requires, by the inconvenient reality of inheritance, your face above one of the chairs.
You've been doing duty appearances for two weeks now, smiling at men who knew your father and women who knew your mother and accepting condolences from people who really only want to know what you intend to do with the shipping line. You're tired. But you're good at not showing that you're tired, which is its own kind of exhausting.
You're in dark green tonight. Not black.
You've made the small decision, in front of your hotel mirror, that you will not wear black to every event for the rest of your life. Your mother would not have wanted it, and your father would have been embarrassed by the theatre of it. So. Dark green. Heavy silk, high neck, long sleeves. The ring is on your hand tonight, finally. The chain is in a drawer in your hotel room.
You've decided that you can carry this much of him now.
You're at the bar, because the table is full of people you've already done your duty by, and you're looking at a glass of champagne you're not going to drink, when you become aware that someone has crossed the room toward you.
You don't see him coming. That is, you'll learn, the trick of him. He doesn't come at anyone; he arrives. You become aware of him in increments: a small change in the volume of the conversation behind you, a redirection of a waiter's path, the soft polite shifting of two men you'd been half-listening to as they make room without quite acknowledging that they're making it.
By the time you turn your head he's already at your elbow, easy, unhurried, with the half-smile on.
"That's a Krug," he says conversationally, looking at your glass. "You're not drinking it."
"I don't like champagne."
"Why hold it?"
"Because if I put it down they bring me another one."
His smile widens.
It is (god) it's a very good smile. You're going to have to be careful about that smile. Because it's not some practised, professional smile of a man who's been taught how to smile by a publicist. It's real. That's the problem.
His eyes are involved in it; the corners crinkle a fraction, a small genuine warmth pulling at his mouth, and the brown eye and the pale blue eye both go a touch softer. You feel (physically, in the sternum, in a way you do not allow on your face) the small unwanted lurch of someone clocking an exceedingly attractive man at very close range without the benefit of warning.
"I have a solution," he offers.
"Do you now?"
"Give it to me," he offers. "I'll hold it until they stop bringing them."
He extends one hand, palm up, and it's a beautiful hand. The white streak at his temple catches the chandelier light when he turns.
You look at him. You look at the hand. You look at him again.
"Why?"
"Because I'm trying to get you to talk to me, and you're not going to do it while you're holding a drink you do not want. Your posture says I'm not going to be here in three minutes."
You almost laugh but you don't let yourself.
"That obvious?" you wonder.
"To me." He tilts his head a fraction. "And only to me, I would say. You do it very well."
You regard him for a beat. Then you put the champagne flute into his palm.
His fingers close around the stem and brush yours in the handover. It's a deliberate, courteous, almost ceremonial touch, and Valarr doesn't let his fingers linger and that is the entire point. Because the brevity of it is what makes you feel it. He's given you the smallest possible amount of skin and let you understand that you're going to spend the next several minutes thinking about it.
He sets the flute on the bar behind him, turns the stem so the foundation's logo embossed on the napkin underneath is no longer facing you, and steps a half-foot closer. Not enough to be inappropriate. Just enough to drop the volume he needs to use.
"Thank you."
Your brows lift ever so slightly. "You're welcome."
"Valarr."
"I gathered," you tell him.
His eyes crinkle again. "Have we met?"
"No."
He tilts his head slightly and it's devastatingly handsome gesture. "How did you gather?"
"The streak," you tell him bluntly.
His hand drifts up, almost involuntary, the pads of two fingers brushing back through the white at his temple. It's an unconscious gesture and the moment he realises he's made it his mouth flickers in a different way. A private, rueful thing, the look of a man who's been caught.
Which he doesn't mind being caught at by you, because being caught at it suggests you've looked at him long enough to know which thing about him is a tell.
"That obvious?" he wonders lightly.
Your mouth curves. "To me."
He laughs. A delighted, slightly startled sound. The laugh of a man who's realising he's going to have to recalibrate the next forty minutes of his evening.
"And you are?"
You tell him.
A calculated risk. But you take it deliberately. You watch his face when you say Stark, and you watch his face do... nothing.
Not the recalculation Aerion's did. Not even a flicker. Valarr Targaryen has known you were a Stark since you walked in. Valarr Targaryen has had a brief on you sitting in a folder on his desk for ten days. Valarr Targaryen recognised you across the room when he came in and chose his approach accordingly. He was already most of the way across the floor before he allowed himself to look directly at your face. And the fact that his face didn't change when you said the name is not because it didn't matter to him. It's because he was prepared for it to.
You notice all of this. You say nothing.
"Lady Stark," he says, instead. And the way he says it (unhurried, faintly amused, with a small careful weight on the lady) tells you that he knows you've read him, and he respects it, and he's choosing not to lie about it.
"Mr Targaryen."
"May I," he gestures fractionally at the stool beside you, "or are you going to refuse me on principle?"
"On what grounds would I refuse you?" you question, half genuinely curious, half interested in what he'll say.
He manages to look bashful when he says, "On the grounds that I've just confessed, more or less, to having you on a list."
"Do you not have everyone on a list?" you wonder.
His eyes warm. "Yes. But not everyone gets the seat."
You tilt your head. "Sit down, Mr Targaryen."
He sits.
He does so smoothly, settling onto the stool with the practiced grace of a man who's been taught posture by people who took it seriously, jacket falling clean without bunching, the cufflinks at his wrists catching the light when he sets his hand on the bar.
Valarr doesn't look at you while he sits. He looks at the bartender and orders, without asking you, two glasses of something that's not champagne. A rich burgundy that is, you realise when it arrives, the wine your father used to keep at the house.
You don't ask how he knew. You assume he knew. You assume he has known for some time.
"I am sorry about your father."
It's the only condolence anyone has offered you tonight that has not felt rehearsed. It sits in his mouth simply, without weight or catches.
You take the glass he hands you and you set it on the bar between you and say, "Thank you."
"I met him twice," Valarr offers.
"I know."
"Did you?" His head turns. "How?"
"My father kept very thorough notes."
A pause, short one. And then his smile turns a fraction sharper, a fraction more amused, a small genuine respect surfacing under the polish. "I see."
"Do you?"
"I am beginning to."
You sip the wine. It is, of course, perfect. You put it down. You look at him over the rim of the glass.
"Why did you come over, Mr Targaryen?"
He gazes at you with intent, simple heat. "To look at you."
"And?"
"And now I would like a great deal more time to keep looking at you."
Such simple sentence. No performance in it. That's the thing about Valarr that you're going to have to remember, you understand, in the moment he says it, he doesn't perform. He means what he says, while he's also playing you, and the two things are not, for him, in conflict. He can tell you the truth and use the truth as a move at the same time.
It's far more dangerous than lying would be.
You set the glass down.
"How much more time, Mr Targaryen?"
He knuckles settle against his mouth. "As much as you'll give me."
"That's not an answer."
"No," he agrees, pleased. "It's a proposition."
A beat.
"Dinner," he says smoothly. "This week. You choose the place. You choose the night. I'll be there at whichever hour you tell me to be there."
"And if I say no?" you ask.
A tiny smile curves his lips. "Then I'll ask again next week."
"And if I say no again?"
His smile shrinks. Goes private. And it doesn't reach his eyes the same way the first one did. And you understand (for the first time tonight, in a way that's almost a relief) that you've just seen the underneath. The thing Brynden warned you about. The dark well underneath the gold.
"I'm a patient man, Lady Stark."
"How patient?" you question coolly.
A soft laugh tickles out of him. "More patient than is good for the people I'm patient about."
Silence.
It stretches. You hold his gaze. He holds yours. The brown and the pale blue, and underneath both of them, quietly, the dark flicker underneath everything.
"Friday," you say lastly.
His expression doesn't so much as flicker. But his hand, where it's resting on the bar beside his glass, makes one small involuntary movement (the index finger lifts a quarter-inch and sets back down) and you tuck that away. A tell. Good. Everyone has one. You've just found his.
"Friday," he agrees. "Where?"
You name the restaurant.
He inclines his head a fraction. He reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket and produces a small card )cream, simple, a number printed on it and nothing else) and sets it on the bar between you with two fingers, sliding it the last inch toward your glass.
"In case you change your mind," he says smoothly.
"I won't."
"In case anything else changes."
You pick the card up, but you don't put it in your bag. You slide it, without looking, into the cuff of your sleeve, against the inside of your wrist, where it sits warm against the pulse. You watch his eyes track the movement and stay there.
He doesn't pretend he isn't watching. He's been letting you see, all evening, the small disciplined ways in which he's paying attention to you (your mouth, your throat, the cuff of your sleeve) and there's something more affecting about being looked at like this by a man who's in this much control of his own gaze than there would be about being grabbed by one who was not.
"Mr Targaryen," you say neutrally.
"Valarr, when we're alone," he says softly, still drinking you in.
"We're not alone."
"We are, in fact, alone," he says with a wry little smile.
You glance around, then back at him. You've been at this bar for eleven minutes and the four people who were standing within earshot of you when he sat down are no longer there. You didn't see them go. You did not see anyone signal them. They're simply gone, the way the bartender is now polishing glasses at the far end of the bar with the absorbed concentration.
You turn back to him.
"How did you do that?"
His eyes light up with almost playful light. "Do what?" he asks innocently.
"Mr Targaryen."
His mouth twitches. "Valarr. Please."
"How?" you demand.
"A man has to be useful for something, Lady Stark."
He stands, buttons his jacket. He picks up your glass and his own and sets them on the bar in front of the spot where you're sitting, a small arrangement, your wine on the right where your hand can reach it. He leans down (just enough to be heard, no more) and you smell him for the first time. Clean. Something cedar. Nothing showy. Nothing about him is showy and that is, you realise with a small internal alarm, going to be the most dangerous part.
His mouth, when he speaks, is closer to your ear than is correct. Not touching. He doesn't touch you. It's the not touching that does the work.
"Friday, love."
You go still.
Same trick. Aerion did this with wolf, except he's doing it the other way. Quietly, almost as an afterthought, slipping the endearment in under the noise of the gala as if he's been calling you that for months. As if it's already settled.
You've given him no permission.
You can hear, faintly, the small intake of breath this is doing to you. You suspect he can hear it too. He chose this exact distance for that reason.
"Mr Targaryen," you bite out politely.
"I'll see you Friday."
Valarr straightens, stepping back. He inclines his head to you the way a man inclines his head to an equal in a room full of subordinates, and he turns, walking back into the gala. Within thirty seconds he's in a conversation with a senator and his wife, laughing at something the senator has said. He doesn't look at you again. Not once. For the rest of the night.
You watch for it. He doesn't look.
You understand this is its own kind of move.
You finish your wine, sliding off the stool. You walk out of the gala with his card warm against the inside of your wrist and ghost of cedar in your hair where he leaned in. You ride back to your hotel in the dark of the car with your hand pressed flat against your sternum and think, very calmly, that one is also going to be a problem.
Your phone buzzes when you walk into your room.
A single message. A number you don't have saved.
Looking forward to Friday, love.
You don't answer.
You put the phone face-down on the dresser. You slide his card out of your cuff, setting it beside the lamp. You go to the window and gaze down at the city, all that gold and red and dark glass. You think about the two of them (Aerion's knuckles trailing down your sternum, Valarr's mouth at the air beside your ear and the word love tucked inside it) and you understand, in a way you did not understand four hours ago, that you're in genuine trouble.
Your phone, in the dark, lights up a second time.
A different number. One you also don't have saved.
You went home alone, wolf.
You stare at it.
You don't type how do you know. Or type how did you get this number. You don't type anything at all.
You put the phone face-down again and you stand at the window in your dark green dress with a Targaryen on each shoulder of your nervous system, and remember: Brynden told me to be expensive.
You're going to be exactly that.
—
And this is where the game begins. Properly.
—
The following three weeks unfold as follows:
—
Aerion chases you with animal focus.
He doesn't pretend otherwise. He turns up where you are. He sends a man to drive you home from a dinner you did not request a ride from and the man is perfectly polite when you get into the car because the alternative is making a scene. Aerion is leaning against the hood of his own car waiting for you at your hotel one night, smoke in one hand, the silver hoops catching the streetlight.
You say, "This is harassment."
"This is escort, wolf. Don't be dramatic."
His eyes drop to your mouth and stay there a beat too long. He doesn't touch you. He doesn't have to. He's been touching you for four days through the air between you and you both know it.
He kisses you for the first time in the stairwell of a building neither of you owns.
You've followed him into it because he told you he had something to show you, and you went, knowingly, because not going felt like a kind of cowardice you were not prepared to extend to him.
The stairwell is dim. The kiss is not gentle.
Aerion doesn't let it be gentle. He has you against the wall, one ringed hand braced flat beside your head, the other at the line of your jaw, his thumb under your chin to tilt your face up the half-inch he wants it. He doesn't ask, doesn't pause. He kisses you the way a man eats after he's been told he might starve.
You taste smoke. The cinnamon thing he was chewing earlier. Expensive alcohol. Something hot underneath all of it that's just him.
You kiss him back like you're trying to mark him with your teeth. Aerion makes a noise in his throat that he's going to deny later—a raw, involuntary sound—and his hand at your jaw slides back into the hair at the nape of your neck and he uses it. He tilts your head exactly where he wants it and then he makes a pleased noise against your mouth at having gotten it there.
His hips press in once. Deliberate.
He's hard against you within thirty seconds and he doesn't pretend he isn't. He grinds in, once, and your breath stutters out of you against his mouth and he feels it (you feel him feel it) and his teeth catch your lower lip in something almost like punishment for letting him have it. He pulls back enough to look at you. His pupils are blown so wide the pale of his eyes is almost gone. His thumb drags across your wet lower lip.
"Fuck, you're fun to kiss," he murmurs. "Wolf."
"Aerion."
"Mm." His mouth twitches. He likes that, likes that he got the name out of you. He drags his mouth down the line of your jaw, taking his time about it now. He kisses the place where the chain would be if the chain were there tonight. Which it isn't, which means he's noticed the absence.
Aerion drags his mouth lower. He puts his teeth lightly where your pulse is. He waits there. He waits until you make a sound you have not given a man permission to drag out of you in some time. He lifts his head.
"I like that sound," he drawls, a raspy, smug tone in his voice.
"Aerion."
He drags his tongue across your pulse, humming. "What."
You glare are him, angling your head away.
"What?" He's smiling, a lazy, mean thing. His thumb is at your bottom lip again, dragging it down. "We both know you came down here because you wanted me to put my hand under your dress in a stairwell."
"I have a meeting," you say flatly.
He laughs against your mouth. Laughs. He bites your lower lip. Tugs, rolling it between his teeth with hungry, low growl.
"Of course you do."
He kisses you one more time. Deep, bruising. The kind of kiss that's more humiliating than the hand under the dress would have been because of how thoroughly he's making sure you will think about it later. When Aerion pulls back his hand stays at the nape of your neck for one more second. His forehead drops to yours.
"Go to your meeting, wolf."
You go to your meeting.
You sit through it with the ghost of his teeth on your lip and his hand in your hair and you don't let a single person in the room see it on your face. You go back to your hotel and stand in the shower for forty-five minutes. You make yourself come twice. You don't let yourself think his name once while you do it, on principle.
You fail. Both times.
He texts you the next morning at six. You're going to come back to that stairwell.
Am I?
Yes.
Are you asking?
A pause.
Please.
You roll your eyes, don't answer.
You go to a board meeting, turn your phone face-down on the conference table and three of the other directors notice and none of them comment. When you check it after the meeting there are no further messages, which is its own message.
Aerion has learned not to push. Aerion has also learned that he can push you to a place and stop and you will, eventually, come back to that place on your own. And this is the thing he's most dangerous about. He understands restraint as a form of seduction, even though restraint is not native to him, even though every cell in him is howling and burning.
He's genuinely cruel sometimes.
He turns up at a restaurant where you're having dinner with one of your father's old contacts and he sits at the bar across the room. Doesn't approach but doesn't leave, and the contact across from you eventually says, Lady Stark, is that man bothering you? and you say, evenly, no, and the contact looks once at Aerion and once at you and decides not to ask any further questions.
When you leave, Aerion is on the curb. He flicks his cigarette into the gutter.
"Old," he remarks dryly, mockingly.
"None of your business, Mr Targaryen."
"Sixty if he's a day," he goes on, one hand slipping into his dark jeans.
You roll your eyes, walking past him. "Goodnight, Mr Targaryen."
"Wolf."
You stop, turn.
He's leaning against the lamp-post now, hands fully in his pockets, the silver hoops catching the streetlight, that pale steady stare on you, and you understand (looking at him) that he's angry. Not visibly or in a way anyone else could identify. There's a thread of it under the casual posture, in the set of his jaw, in the way one of his rings is rotating on his finger.
"I don't share, wolf."
You snort. "You don't have me," you remind him coolly.
"Not yet."
"You may not get to," you say, harder this time.
His jaw works. He pushes off the lamp-post, crossing the three feet between you without hurry and stops just shy of touching you. His voice, when he speaks, drops enough that the doorman at the restaurant cannot hear it.
"Get in the car."
"No."
He rolls his eyes, opening the door of the sleek, black thing he drove here with. "Please get in the car."
You get in the car.
He doesn't touch you in it. He keeps both hands on the wheel and he drives like a man who's consciously not doing several things at once, and the silence in the car is thick enough that you can hear your own pulse in your ears. At a red light Aerion turns his head and looks at you. He doesn't blink, neither do you.
"You let him pour your wine," he drawls calmly, too calmly.
"I let him pour my wine."
"I don't like that."
"Mr Targaryen."
"I know." His jaw moves. He turns back to the windshield. The light goes green. "I know I don't get to not like it. I'm telling you anyway."
The car slides forward into traffic.
He drops you at your hotel without a word. As you reach for the door he says, without looking at you, "I'm going to ruin you, wolf."
You pause, bristling. You look at him over your shoulder, reaching out until you hand ends up at his sharp jaw. You thumb traces over this full bottom lip, and you say, "You're going to try, Mr Targaryen."
His lips part, eyes narrowing. "Wolf."
"Goodnight, Mr Targaryen," you say politely, letting your hand drop.
You get out, shut the door behind you.
He waits at the curb until you're inside. You see him through the lobby glass. Aerion sits for a long moment with both hands on the wheel and his head tipped back against the rest, and then he drives away.
You make yourself come three times that night and let yourself think his name twice. You consider it a fair compromise.
—
Valarr's version of the chase is worse, because its buried under so much polish that you don't see it until he's already taken what he came for.
There's nothing performative about his charm. That's the part that disarms you and disarms him in equal measure.
He genuinely is funny. He genuinely is attentive. He genuinely does listen to the small thing you said in passing at the gala about preferring grey to white and does remember it three weeks later when something grey arrives at your hotel as a thank-you for a meeting. He doesn't perform interest in you. He is interested in you.
That's the trap. The cruelty of Valarr Targaryen is not that his charm is fake but that his charm is real and the darkness underneath it is also real, and the two are not in opposition, they're the same thing in different lights.
He doesn't turn up where you are. He arranges.
You go to a restaurant and he's already at the table next to yours, alone, reading something, looking up with mild surprise as you pass. You accept a charity board seat and discover the meeting is at a building he owns. Your lawyer mentions, conversationally, that a competing offer has come in on a piece of property you'd been quietly inquiring about, and you don't have to ask who the competing offer is from.
He's funding the property out of his personal portfolio. You buy it anyway, at the inflated price, because losing it would be a worse signal than the cost. The next morning Valarr sends you a card congratulating you on the acquisition and offering you, as a gift, a piece of information about the building's foundation that you did not have and that materially changes the financial picture.
I would not want you to be disadvantaged on a property you fought me for, love, the card says, in his beautiful hand. I want to be a worthy opponent.
You read the card three times. You stare at the love a long moment. Then set the card on fire in your bathroom sink, the way Brynden taught you, and you stand watching it burn and you think, oh, you absolute bastard.
He takes you to dinner on Friday.
You've prepared. Spent an hour with Brynden the night before, going through a third pot of tea, while he gave you a thoughtful little précis on which restaurant Valarr was most likely to favour and what his ordering habits suggested about his cognitive patterns.
You go in prepared. Valarr knows you're prepared. Valarr is also prepared. This is the second-most fun you've had in six months and the most fun belongs to the stairwell, which Valarr doesn't yet know about, which Valarr will eventually know about because Valarr knows everything, but which Valarr doesn't yet have confirmation of, and which is therefore not yet weaponised.
You eat duck. He eats fish.
He asks you about the north, and you tell him true things, because lying to Valarr is a fool's game—he has the resources to verify everything and the patience to do it because it's you, and no stone is unturned when it's you—and you also tell him carefully selected true things, because Valarr doesn't need to know every true thing you know.
He reciprocates. He tells you a story about his mother that he's not, you're fairly certain, told many other people. He's doing this deliberately. You appreciate the move. You don't commend him for it aloud.
He looks at you, across the table, the way a man looks at a problem he has decided is going to be the most interesting problem in his life. And one he's determined to riddle out.
He does it without looking, mostly. That's the part that does the work. He keeps his eyes on yours during the conversation, polite, level, attentive. But in the small silences, the moments when the wine arrives or the dish is changed, his gaze drifts to your mouth, to the line of your throat, to the place at your wrist where the cuff of your sleeve sits, and stays there a beat longer than is appropriate before returning to your eyes.
There's a quiet, devouring hunger in this man that could burn you down to nothing if you were a lesser woman.
You're not a lesser woman.
He's letting you see him do it. That's also a move.
Halfway through the meal he reaches across the table.
He doesn't take your hand. He picks up the wine glass next to it, drinks, sets it down (his glass, not yours, although for half a second you'd thought he meant yours and your pulse had jumped, which he can see) and when Valarr's hand returns to his side of the table his fingertips brush the back of your wrist, once. Briefly. The bare strip of skin between your sleeve and your ring.
It's not really a touch. It's the suggestion of a touch.
It's followed by him resuming his sentence without looking at his hand, as if his body has not just made an entirely separate move from his face.
"You are staring, Mr Targaryen."
"I am, love," he admits, utterly unabashed.
"Why?"
"Because I'm trying to decide whether you know how very beautiful you look in this light, or whether you have decided not to know on purpose."
You set your wine down.
"That's an extremely Valarr Targaryen thing to say."
He laughs, gentle and genuine, a dimple appearing. "Is it?" he wonders, his head cocking.
"It's the kind of compliment that has a hook in it," you clarify.
His smile is quiet. Pleased. The brown eye and the pale blue eye are very steady on yours, a low, simmering devouring.
"Lady Stark."
"Mr Targaryen."
He hums, eyes crinkling at the crisp sound of his surname. "I'm going to ask you a question, love. You may, of course, refuse to answer."
Your spine sets. "Ask."
"Are you going to let me kiss you tonight?" he asks softly.
You stare at him.
He's not moved closer or lowered his voice. The waiter comes back to refill your water and Valarr keeps watching you watching him, and for a long moment, neither of you gives ground.
You consider him.
"No," you reply simply.
He nods, once. Not surprised. "Alright."
"Alright?"
"Yes." He picks up his wine again. "Alright."
That's all. No pushing, no teasing, nothing. He doesn't look wounded. Doesn't adjust his strategy. Valarr takes the no the way a man takes a card off the top of a deck. Looks at it, files it, plays the next hand. And it is (god) it's more affecting than if he had pushed. It is, in fact, the most attractive thing he's done all night, which you suspect he knows.
You finish dinner. He pays. You didn't see him do it.
At the end of dinner he walks you to your car and he doesn't kiss you.
He stops, two feet shy of the car door. The driver has the engine running. The street is mostly empty. Valarr turns to face you and he does the thing he has been doing all night, which is look at you too steadily with that devouring, soft intensity without performing the looking, and then he lifts your hand.
He kisses your knuckles. Brief. Gentle.
Then he turns your hand over. His thumb presses, once, on the inside of your wrist where your pulse is. He holds it there a half-second longer than is correct. Long enough to feel the kick.
He smiles. A small private thing. He felt it.
"I had a very pleasant evening, love."
Despite yourself, you admit, "As did I, Mr Targaryen."
Because it's true, and pretending otherwise would be foolish.
"Do you think next week we could try first names?" he jokes lightly.
Your mouth twitches slightly. "We'll see how the week develops, Mr Targaryen."
Valarr laughs, delighted, and he gets the car door for you. As you slide in he leans down and says, just close enough that no one else in the world can hear, "You're going to be the most enjoyable problem I have ever had."
You glance at him. "That's the plan."
Valarr closes the door and you watch him in your wing mirror as the car pulls away. He's standing on the curb, hands in his pockets, his white streak gleaming under the streetlight, watching you go.
You go home.
You don't make yourself come thinking about Valarr Targaryen. You instead lie in the dark of your hotel room with your hand pressed flat against your sternum and your thumb on the inside of your wrist where his was, and you think, in a tone of considerable alarm, I'm attracted to both of them. I'm genuinely attracted to both of them. And you understand, in the same moment, that this is, structurally, the thing that's going to make this work.
—
And then the rivalry gets worse.
—
It's a Thursday at one of their family's clubs. The bigger one. The legitimate one. The one Valarr's side technically owns and Aerion's side technically launders through.
You're at the bar and you've not invited either of them.
Because you're there with Brynden.
Brynden is the one you came with. Brynden in a charcoal three-piece suit, drinking water, the most unsettling man in the room and the room knows it. No one approaches you, no one even dares to look.
Brynden Rivers turning up at one of the family clubs with the Stark heir on his arm is the kind of social event that's going to be discussed in three boardrooms by morning, and Brynden knows this, which is precisely why he's done it.
"I'm being used as a signal flare, Brynden," you murmur.
"You're being used as a negotiating position, little wolf. There's a difference. You understand the difference, and you've already agreed to it. Drink your water."
You drink your water.
Aerion spots you first.
He comes in from the back and his eyes find the bar before they find anything else, the way they always do now. The moment they land on Brynden beside you Aerion's whole body locks into stillness. You can feel it from across the room.
He comes toward you.
He doesn't approach Brynden. He stops three feet short of you and he says, in a voice that's not his charming voice, "Lady Stark."
You incline your head. "Mr Targaryen."
Aerion's pale, unblinking stare slides to your companion. "Lord Rivers."
"Aerion," Brynden returns mildly.
You watch them. Aerion's jaw is set. One of his rings is rotating on his finger (a tell of his you've started to notice) and his eyes are on Brynden, not you. And then they're on you. And then they're back on Brynden.
You understand, in real time, that Aerion has just received a piece of information he doesn't know what to do with, which is that the most dangerous man in the continent has decided to escort you into one of Aerion's family's establishments without telling him first.
"May I borrow her?" Aerion asks Brynden.
The fact that he asks almost makes your jaw drop. You've never seen Aerion ask anyone anything. He takes. Always.
"That," Brynden says idly, without looking up from his water, "is a question for the lady."
Aerion's eyes flick to you. Hard, burning.
And then Valarr walks in.
Valarr is in a dark blue suit, no tie. He's in the middle of a conversation with one of his lieutenants when he walks in, head turned a fraction to the side, listening.
And then he comes through the doorway and his eyes go to the bar by pure professional habit (Valarr always clocks every entrance and exit and every person of significance in a room within four seconds of entering it) and his eyes land on Brynden beside you and his face does not move.
That's the part that's genuinely impressive. No flicker or doubletake. His face doesn't move at all, but the man he's speaking to falls silent without being told to. Because the temperature in the room has just dropped a second time, and the room feels it.
Aerion sees Valarr in the mirror behind the bar.
Valarr sees Aerion seeing him in the mirror behind the bar.
They both turn their heads, fractionally, and they look at each other, and you watch the entire ten-year cold war between Aerion Targaryen and Valarr Targaryen reignite in the space of one breath.
Neither of them moves. Neither of them speaks. You're standing between them, at the bar, with Brynden Rivers at your elbow drinking water like a man at a Sunday brunch.
You've just become the most fought-over object in the city.
Brynden, almost into his glass: "This is going splendidly, little wolf."
"Shut up, Brynden."
"Yes, my lady."
Valarr crosses to you first.
You've wondered, after, which one of them would have moved first if Brynden hadn't been there. You suspect Aerion. But Valarr is better at public spaces, and Aerion's expression has gone to a place that Valarr clearly doesn't want him acting on in the middle of a club full of men with phones, and so Valarr crosses first.
He comes up to your other side. He doesn't look at Aerion.
"Lady Stark," Valarr says in that smooth, charming voice of his.
"Mr Targaryen."
Valarr inclines his head towards Brynden. "Lord Rivers."
"Valarr," Brynden returns, equally as mildly as earlier with Aerion.
Valarr peers at you, face open. "May I buy you a drink, love?"
You feel Aerion go still at your other shoulder. Not the practised stillness, but the other one. The bad one.
"I have one, thank you," you reply carefully.
"Another one, then," he hedges. "When that one is finished."
"Perhaps."
A pause. Valarr's mouth twitches. You can feel Aerion at your other side practically vibrating. Brynden has set his water down on the bar and is now standing with both hands clasped behind his back, his good eye on the middle distance, the very picture of a man who's professionally ignoring the situation he's personally engineered.
Aerion says, under his breath, "Valarr."
Valarr doesn't turn. "Aerion."
"You're at my Thursday establishment."
"I'm at our Thursday establishment, cousin," Valarr dismisses. "I sign the licence."
"You sign the legitimate licence."
"Yes." Valarr's smile is small and too polite, almost predatory. "The one that allows you to remain operational. You're welcome."
"Valarr." Quieter this time.
You've learned what that quieter register from Aerion means.
"Gentlemen," you interrupt.
Both of them turn to you simultaneously.
It's almost comical. Or it would be comical if it weren't also one of the most dangerous moments of your life. You have the absolute attention of both of them and you can feel Brynden (feel him, without looking) begin to laugh, internally, in a way that doesn't move a single muscle in his face.
"I'm here with Brynden. Who is, as I understand it, a guest of both of your fathers. It would be courteous of you both to permit him to enjoy his evening unmolested." You offer them a cool, bland smile that turns just a little more cutting, promising, around the edges as you gaze at them. "It would also be courteous of you both to permit me to enjoy mine. You may each, separately, ask me to dinner this week, and I will, separately, consider both invitations on their merits. Is that acceptable?"
Aerion's jaw works.
Valarr smiles his beautiful, awful smile. "That's acceptable to me, love."
You angle your head. "Aerion?" you say.
He tries for a smirk, but there's a dangerous edge to it. "Whatever you say, wolf."
You hear Valarr's breath do a small, almost inaudible intake at the wolf. You don't turn your head.
"Thank you," you say, turning toward the pale haired man behind you. "Brynden, I would like another water."
"Of course, little wolf."
Both cousins watch Brynden signal the bartender for a glass of water for you, in their family's establishment, with their family's bartender, in front of their family's men, and use a name for you that neither of them has heard him use before. Neither of them speaks and you almost smile at the subtle power play.
You sip the second water, turning your back on both of them, and you continue your conversation with Brynden as if they're not there.
It takes Valarr forty-five seconds to leave and Aerion three minutes.
When you and Brynden walk out an hour later both of them are gone and the bartender has placed two notes under your coat at the coat check, one in each pocket. Neither of which you read until you're back in your hotel room and Brynden has gone home. You lock the door and run a shower for the ambient sound, the way he taught you to.
Aerion's note says: Saturday. Anywhere. You choose.
Valarr's says: Saturday. Anywhere you wish, love. Let me know what to wear.
You read them both, set them side by side on the desk. You don't respond to either of them until Friday afternoon.
You accept both.
Aerion at seven. Valarr at ten. Neither of them, of course, knows.
You call Brynden. He picks up on the first ring. He always does when you call him.
"Little wolf."
"I have a question of operational ethics, Brynden," you begin, fingers brushing idly over both notes.
A rasp of a breath. "Go on."
"I've just accepted dinner with both of them on the same night," you tell him.
A pause follows your declaration.
And then—and you will, for the rest of your life, swear that this is what you heard—Brynden Rivers, the most dangerous man in the country, makes a sound on the other end of the line that's unmistakably a laugh. One short, quiet laugh.
"Little wolf."
It takes you a second to respond from sheer shock. "Yes?"
"You're not going to disappoint me, are you?"
You smile slightly toward the horizon through the hotel window. "No, Brynden."
"Good," he says, a beat, "Wear black."
He hangs up.
—
And here, finally, is the twist.
The thing they don't know. The thing they'll not know until you choose to let them know, in your time, on your terms, with the maximum possible benefit to you.
Your father's file was not a file on the Targaryens as criminals.
Your father's file was a file on the Targaryens as victims of one.
There is, somewhere very high in Maekar's organisation and somewhere equally as high in Baelor's, a man both of them trust who's been quietly working for someone else for fifteen years.
A man your father had been tracking, on Brynden's behalf, since before you were born, because Brynden suspected and your father confirmed and your father then kept the file, because your father didn't trust Brynden completely either.
Because your father, Barthogan Stark, was nobody's fool.
The photographs in the locked drawer—the ones you finally looked at, fully, in the small hours of a Thursday morning, sitting on your hotel bathroom floor with the door locked because you didn't trust the rest of the building—show this man in three meetings, over three years, with people he should not have been meeting.
And you've decided (and Brynden agreed, with the small private fondness you've learned to read on his ruined face) that you're not going to give this information to either of the Targaryens until you've used it to its absolute maximum value to you.
You're going to date them.
You're going to learn their rooms, their men, their weaknesses, the architecture of their loyalties.
You're going to let Aerion fuck you stupid in stairwells and you're going to let Valarr take you to dinner at his mother's table and you're going to enjoy both of these things genuinely. Because you're not a liar and your attraction to both of them is, troublingly, real.
And you're going to wait.
At the exact moment of maximum leverage (at the sit-down you can already see coming, at the moment when both branches of the family are in one room, when the rivalry between them is at its peak, when each of them believes that you are his) you're going to walk in with Brynden Rivers at your shoulder, and you're going to set the file on the table, and you're going to name the man.
Both branches of the family are going to owe you a debt larger than the one your father is owed.
You're going to extract from that debt exactly what your father would have asked for, which is the thing he died waiting for and did not get.
Your father did not die of nothing. Your father was poisoned. Patiently. Over three years. By the same man in the file.
And Brynden Rivers knew the second he heard of the passing.
Brynden Rivers told you, over the second cup of tea at the second meeting, when he set the photograph down on the desk between you and watched your face for the moment of recognition. Watched you not cry, and watched you instead set the photograph back down and ask him who else knows, and listened to your voice when you asked it and decided, then, finally, that you were going to be useful.
Starks, he had said, have always been of interest to me. I hope you don't disappoint.
summary: as the maester examines you, you are left with more questions than answers.
pairing: maekar targaryen x amnesia wife reader
word count: 3.7k
masterlist
maester melaquin is gentler than you expect, and his hands are warm.
small things to be grateful for, you think, watching as he conducts his examination of you. the maester at your family’s home was much the same way, thorough but most attentive and kind.
your sister had written you about it, not so long ago. the elder one, complaining of the maester’s cold fingers at her husband’s home. she had been wed to the second son of a reachland lord for just shy of a year now. her husband was sweet, but she still writes to you of how she misses home and her hopes of carrying a boy.
the very thought is enough to make you misty-eyed. she has never been particularly outspoken, the consequence of being the eldest, you suppose, but you know she would stand up for you now, given the predicament you find yourself in.
all alone, in a strange place that you do not recognize. you attempt to piece it together—if the prince is here, then perhaps you are in the red keep, his family’s home.
but it makes little sense. you have no reason to be in king’s landing, not unless your family was here with you. they would never ship you off on your own to a strange place in that way.
your mother hardly lets you traipse about the gardens at home alone, much less the king’s castle—
you wince as the maester pushes his finger against a tender spot on the back of your head.
“apologies, my lady,” the maester says quietly, and you blink at him whilst your head throbs. you regain your manners, smiling gently at him, urging him to continue.
you wish he would hurry and finish, because you are tired of being polite while they leave you to make sense of your surroundings yourself.
your eyes travel to reacquaint yourself with these chambers again. and in the corner, unmoved, sits prince maekar, who is very still with his own lilac eyes fixed upon you.
all these tales of chivalrous princes. what a bloody farce.
his grace will not answer your questions, but he seems to take no issue with staring at you intensely as the maester continues to poke and prod. you want to return his gaze, you want to yell at him to tell you the truth—
why are you at his home? where is your family? why was he resting by your beside without any chaperone in sight?
you turn to look at the maid he brought in, but she is unfamiliar to you. she wears a plain gray dress with a beige apron, neither of which you recognize.
the maids at your home are dressed in blue.
maester melaquin steps aside, moving to retrieve his quill and scribble something in his papers that you cannot discern clearly. the other maester steps in closer to you.
this one is younger—perhaps similar to your brother’s age. but where your brother’s gaze is kind, this man’s is more disconcerting.
he brings his hands to your head without asking, as melaquin had, and presses firmly around whatever wound lives there, the one you somehow acquired and promptly forgot about.
“ow,” you say, the painful sound escaping you before you can think of it. it does hurt, and where the other maester had attempted to be gentle, this one does not try.
and worse, his fingers are cold and—
you lose the thought in an instant. your eyes travel to prince maekar as he stands from his seat quickly, almost as though he rose within the same breath that you expressed pain.
he walks over to your bedside, stopping himself just behind the young maester, an expression on his face that you cannot exactly interpret.
if anything, he looks… irritated.
you want to tell him that it is not your fault, that his maester should be wary and warm his hands and that you are not doing anything wrong and he needn’t look so—
“be careful,” the prince snaps, and you blink again, watching it unfold in silence.
oh, you think.
for a moment, it seems logic had abandoned you too. something about the prince makes you slightly uneasy, as though you cannot trust your thoughts and your mind around him.
whenever you begin to think you understand his thoughts, he does something entirely the opposite.
a conundrum that sits uneasily with you. you do not much like being proven wrong.
and, you still do not know why he is here. you do not know why he remains in your chambers at all. perhaps he feels an obligation since you are a lady and not commonfolk, or maybe he has some connection to your father.
either way, you know you will not get a proper answer until the maesters have completed their work. you meet the prince’s eyes, smiling gratefully at him for a moment—the maester’s fingers feel a great deal softer now that he has been chastised.
the smile leaves your face almost as quickly as it appeared—his grace turns away, refusing to look at you. you cannot see his face, but the tips of his ears burn bright red for a moment.
is he blushing?
all i did was smile. if he is so overcome with emotions, he should—
“a few questions, my lady. do you recall the time of your last moonblood?” the young maester asks, and now it is your turn to flush.
a room full of strange men and a prince, for heaven’s sake, and he asks you such a question as casually as he might ask if you would like a cup of tea.
you stumble over your thoughts and your words for a moment, your expression revealing your inner thoughts easily. you have always been quite terrible at concealing it, but now, you hope he can detect your frustration.
“clarence,” maester melaquin interjects quickly. that must be his name, then. clarence. you have a stupid name, maester. “we do not-”
“my apologies, maester melaquin,” clarence says. you are as stupid as your name! you should apologize to me, not him! “-my lady, we must assess if there is a possibility you are with child.”
“excuse me?” you splutter, your face heating and burning hotly.
the gall of him—you are a lady, after all. not some baseborn child or steward’s daughter that you might be foolish enough to lose your maidenhead before marriage.
you have had quite enough of this idiot maester’s antics—pulling yourself away from his touch, shuffling yourself to the other side of the empty bed.
what sort of a question is that for a lady? the injury to your head was not due to a pregnancy, nor are the two like to be related.
had he finished his studies at oldtown yesterday? you are no maester and you know more than—
maester melaquin interjects himself between you and clarence, looking at you most apologetically. he is just about to begin speaking when you notice the prince moving.
he stalks forward, huge and imposing, even from where you are seated. he towers over the young maester, his face shining with a new sort of frustration that you have not yet seen.
is that even… anger?
“let us have a word, outside,” prince maekar says sharply. clarence looks behind himself dumbly, but the prince takes the young maester by the collar and you watch as he all but drags him outside, the door slamming shut behind them.
you turn to look at melaquin, who offers you nothing more than another gentle smile.
and just outside, maekar has to force himself to keep quiet.
seven hells—the maester had one task, to examine you without alluding to anything that might confuse or frighten you.
he did not need you running away in fear before he has figured out how best to explain the situation to you. and what has he done? in moments, almost revealed that there very well is a chance you could be with child. a small chance, but nonetheless.
something he should have asked maekar rather than bringing it up to you.
“if you are ever foolish enough to make such a mistake again-” maekar begins, his grip still tight on them maester’s robe, watching as the boy stares with wide eyes. “-i will ensure you are sent back to the citadel. and you will not leave until you have reforged all your chains, twice over. am i understood?”
“your grace, i-i-”
“am i understood?” he shouts, and the boy agrees hastily, scampering away as quickly as his feet will take him.
maekar brings his fingers to the bridge of his nose.
he has been too loud. you might have heard him.
he opens the door gently, stepping back inside. your eyes flit to him instantly, staring as he resumes his place, standing just beside your bed while melaquin finishes his work.
he trusts melaquin. after all, the man had delivered all six of his children at summerhall. between daeron’s drunken stumbles and aerion’s wounds from the training yard and aegon’s mischief, he sees the man more than he sees you, even.
the maester has already examined your head twice whilst your slept, but there were no answers to be found at the time, none besides estimating, at least somewhat correctly, that you will eventually wake up.
the question had then shifted, changing from if to when you will open your eyes again. almost a fortnight has passed since he had that conversation.
and now you are not nearly as discreet as you used to be, maekar thinks, toying with the thought as a hound plays with a piece of meat. the other answer is that perhaps he simply never noticed.
but you are staring at him again.
in part, it is only fair—he has accomplished nothing but watching you these last weeks. memorizing your every feature, the very ones he had neglected and ignored all these moons that the two of you have been married. there are freckles he did not know existed, the shape of your lips that he wished to see smile once again, the lovely color of your eyes that he wanted to look at again.
well, at least that part came true.
you watch him as he watches you, and because he is your husband, he knows what you are thinking.
just from the look in your eyes, he can tell you are wondering why he will not leave.
it is not an issue of stupidity—he knows you are smarter than those fools at court, all the lords that were constantly offering up their daughters and sisters like a prized foal at a market.
no one had ever caught his eye or impressed him, and though you had not asked for this union, he had still—
“your grace,” melaquin says, and maekar steps closer. you stare between him and the maester for a moment before settling your eyes on melaquin firmly. “my lady, there is no gentle way to state this. you have, at least in part, lost some of your memories.”
your pretty eyes go as wide as coins.
“i… i have? not truly, maester?”
“my sincere apologies, my lady. a blow to the head is known to cause a loss of recollections. i have no doubt that you will begin to slowly gain them back.”
“but how long will it take? when i do not even know the depth of what i have lost?”
“do not think of that now, my lady. tell me, what is the last thing that you can recall?”
melaquin steals a glance at him. maekar stiffens, watching as you attempt to scour through your thoughts to piece something together.
“my… my sister. her first child, she was due to give birth in just a few moons. i-i was home, with my family. i had her letter..” you trail off quietly, looking down at your hands instead.
maekar’s heart almost skips a beat.
your betrothal ring, the one that matches his, it rests on your finger still. if you take notice of it, then—
“your grace? shall i—?” melaquin asks quietly, and maekar nods curtly. “my lady, that was more than a year ago.”
“what?” you cry, your head snapping up quickly. without even meaning to, maekar thinks, you look up at him first. your eyes are pools of grief and confusion, and you do not look away until you realize that you are, indeed, staring at him.
your gaze returns to your hands, your fingers clenching around the sheets tightly as your body trembles.
he has never been good at this. he has never known what you need, or what you want from him. he has never been able to comfort you as he should, as your husband should, and he has failed at even his most essential task—keeping you safe and out of harm’s way.
for a moment, maekar thinks he would give anything to have suffered the blow in your stead.
you sniffle, bringing your hand to wipe the tears from your eyes and he is returned to the land of the living in an instant.
“well… may i finally ask where i am, then?”
“you are at summerhall,” maekar answers.
he blinks, his shoulders tensing further. perhaps he should have though of the answer before a deal longer before replying, but, he does not wish to hurt you with any further lies. the truth slipped out easily.
“summerhall? w-what, the royal palace? alone? i thought this was the red keep or… i…” you trail off, going silent once more.
“the decision was made to bring you here because it is much quieter. more… peaceful for your recovery.”
“how long have i been here?” you ask, not looking at melaquin any further but rather only at maekar.
“nearly the turn of a moon.”
“gods above,” you whisper, mostly to yourself. “well, what happened?” your eyes bore through maekar’s, your breathing getting heavier as he thinks of what he could possibly answer with.
“i… there was tourney. somehow, you.. you were injured,” maekar says, the words seeming hardly believable as they leave his lips.
“oh,” you say breathlessly. “was this at ashford? i-i recall the banner. but that is so far from my home. and they did not stay with me? i do not see why…” you trail off once more.
suddenly, you bring your hands to your head, pressing your palm against your forehead, groaning in pain once more.
maekar does not think about it properly. he comes to sit at your side, bringing his hand to your shoulder gently.
perhaps the gentlest his touch has ever been with you.
you move your own hand away, revealing him to you fully. he thinks for a moment that you might flinch and draw away, but you stay perfectly still. you stare at him with your lovely eyes, a doe’s glance shrouded in tears.
“you should focus on resting,” melaquin says quietly. “regaining your strength, my lady.”
you do not move your eyes from maekar’s, but he can see it clearly.
confusion paints your features as though you cannot imagine a world where your family did not stay with you.
it makes sense, he thinks, from the few interactions he had with them. for the wedding, they had been invited to king’s landing. maekar had spent two weeks with your father, a man closer to his age than you are, and had wondered how everything had changed so quickly.
maekar had once sworn he would never take another wife.
things were different now. his father was almost insistent on the matter, no doubt some remnant of a war wound suffered during the first rebellion or his youth. the king wanted to make amendments, and somehow offering your hand for daeron or aerion was not sufficient.
his mother had come to speak with him after—an instance he was well acquainted with. the king makes a choice and the queen hashes it out amongst their children. even at his age, his mother would still greet him by stroking his hair, reminding him of that intolerable nickname—
“the girl is very sweet,” she had said. “i have met her myself. you could not want for a finer match.”
“i do not want any match.”
“maekar-”
“i will not insult dyanna’s memory by marrying some girl half her age. there are enough princes to marry half the kingdom. choose one of them for her.”
“it is not an insult, my dear son. do you not think dyanna would want you to be happy?”
he remembers gritting his teeth, his jaw tensing as he looked up at his mother.
“i have not been happy since the day she died. and i intend to remain that way until the day i die.”
“you need not remain unhappy, my son. meet the girl. you may be surprised, even.”
and so he had.
your father, maekar remembers, was stoic and sensible, but after an audience with the king, even he could not turn down a royal match for you. despite, perhaps, how much he wanted to.
his first question had been about propriety. he recalls being relieved, because at least someone else felt as maekar did.
after all, this was a matter between you, his eligible daughter and him, an aging prince. he spoke to maekar plainly of how your children would never hold a seat in any part of the realm, that his daughter is young yet and could be the lady to a house.
but maekar does not remember much of the conversation. surprising even himself, he had interrupted your father, reminding him sharply that your children would be princes and princesses. that you would be the wife of a prince.
and in the blink of an eye, he had secured his own match with you without even realizing what he had done.
“your grace?” you ask quietly.
“what?” maekar says, coming back to the present. you sit in front of him, looking up at him. melaquin walks slowly to the door.
“could you write to them? my family?”
maekar stops for a moment, silent.
“yes, my lady. i can,” he watches as you release a breath, your shoulders sinking a little. “you should rest now. i will leave you be.”
“thank you, your grace.”
you look as though you have, perhaps, a million more questions for him. and he knows you do—questions that he cannot answer now.
but you do not say anything to allude to them. instead, you remain silent, watching as he steps away towards the door.
“i-” maekar begins, turning around for a moment, surprising himself again. “you truly do not remember anything?
“what is it that you wish for me to remember?” you ask quietly. you are staring at your hands now, not at him.
“nothing. i will let you rest now.”
“your grace-”
“yes?” he turns back once more.
maekar decides firmly that he hates that his voice is eager, even excited.
“if you do send correspondence today… could you perhaps send one to godsgrace, as well?”
“godsgrace?” he repeats, the word drenched in confusion.
“to ser alliser? we are betrothed, or.. at least we were. i should like to-”
“my lady!” you hear an eager voice shout, just as the maester opens the door to take his leave.
three small bodies rush into the room, clamoring onto the bed where you are resting. you watch prince maekar’s eyes as he watches it happen, his jaw tightening again instantly.
he will hurt himself, you think strangely.
they jump besides you on the bed—a boy and two girls.
one of the girls, the elder, is quiet as she watches you, her dark hair pinned neatly behind her. the other two have that silver hair you recognized in your prince, and they all carry his purple eyes.
the prince’s children, then? or his family, at the very least. you may be a fool without memories but you are not so stupid as to not recognize members of the royal family when they are right in front of you.
and that brings your mind to the other question.
why are they here?
“have we… met before? your graces?” you ask tentatively, your head beginning to hurt again from all the thinking. these children act as though they know you, and yet—
you are certain you have never spoken to them before.
“my lady, i have written to aemon at the citadel. he is looking for a cure through all the books there. though, he says this will take some time, as there are so many books-” the boy rattles off his tale, and you watch with wide eyes.
“stop, aegon. you are being too loud. she has only just awoken-” the older girl chastises him.
“do not tell me-”
“cease your bickering at once,” prince maekar commands, and the children grow quiet, though you can tell by looking at them that they are not frightened. rather they are waiting for an opportunity to continue speaking.
all of this seems almost… familiar.
“i… i do not know,” you stumble over your words. “have i met them?” you ask, looking towards maekar.
you do not know why you continue to turn to him for answers, a man whom you have never met in your life before. it seems almost as though—
the youngest girl, who seems so very small as she lays on your bed with you with her silvery hair falling to her shoulders, stares at you, blinking quietly. she reaches out her arms, as though she wants you to hold her, and you stare, confused still.
“moth-” she begins, when maekar interrupts. he picks up the little girl into his arms quickly, and you stare as it happens.
“father, i-” the boy begins as his sister interrupts him.
“we only wanted to-”
“we have been waiting-”
“out! all of you, now-” the prince barks, and you watch them for a moment.
summary: jack abbot knows how to run a trauma bay. he knows the protocols and the medicine. but when his daughter decides he's "vedy, vedy sick"? it turns out he’s an even better patient.
warning: none.
trope/genre; fluff, girl!dad abbot, married!abbot
wc: 2K.
my masterlist!
Warm kitchen light spilled into the living room, forming a golden square on the rug, which is now covered in scattered toys
A floppy plush rabbit lay tipped on its side on the rug beside a bright fake plastic medicine bottle, while a toy syringe had rolled halfway under the coffee table like it was hiding. Clearly, someone had been running a very serious medical practice there all afternoon.
Jack Abbot sat right in the middle of it all on the couch, his long legs stretched out comfortably in front of him. His shoulders had finally relaxed against the back of the couch, with the course of the years, he’d patiently learned how to leave the weight of the ER behind at the end of the day. He didn’t always manage it perfectly, and some nights the tension lingered in his spine longer than he wanted, but tonight none of that weariness showed in his eyes.
Instead, he watched the tiny person kneeling on the rug in front of him with the same steady, quiet focus he usually saved for trauma bays, and here, with her, it cost him absolutely nothing to give it.
To her. Your little girl, his little girl. Oh, how fast she’s grown.
Your daughter had her whole doctor kit spread out around her like real surgical tools waiting for the next important case. The little pink stethoscope hung crookedly around her neck in a loose loop that looked ready to slide off at any second. Her dark curls had mostly escaped the ponytail you’d carefully tied earlier that afternoon, so soft strands bounced against her round cheeks every time she turned her head or reached for something. She wore the oversized plastic glasses from the toy set, they kept slipping all the way down to the very tip of her tiny nose, but she never seemed to notice or mind. She just looked exactly like a very important, highly credentialed doctor who meant business.
Jack rested his hands on his thighs and waited patiently, content to let her set the pace.
Finally she lifted her head and looked straight up at him, squinting through those sliding glasses with all the serious gravity of someone about to deliver very bad news to a patient.
“Papa,” she announced in her clearest, most official voice.
The corner of his mouth twitched upward in the tiniest smile. “Yes, doctor?”
She pushed herself up to standing, wobbling just a little on her small legs, then shuffled forward with the stethoscope swinging dramatically back and forth against her chest. She stopped right between his knees and tilted her head back to meet his eyes.
“You sick,” she declared firmly.
He blinked slowly, playing along. “I am?”
“Yesh.” She nodded with such fierce conviction that her curls bounced even more. “Vedy sick.”
He let out a quiet, thoughtful hum and leaned back deeper into the cushions, now as a patient who had just accepted the diagnosis and was ready to follow doctor’s orders. “Good thing I’ve got a doctor right here in the house then.”
From the nearby armchair, you watched the whole sweet scene unfold with your chin resting in your palm, not even trying to hide how completely your heart was melting. Earlier that evening she had assigned your role with great ceremony and seriousness, you were officially the nurse. And not any nurse, don’t be confused, you were Mama Nurse. That meant sitting beside the small pile of plastic medical supplies and handing things over whenever she demanded them, which you had been doing with perfect professionalism (tender smiles aside) and zero complaints.
Suddenly the toddler turned her head toward you, eyes wide and expectant.
“Mama Nuhs!”
You straightened up right away. “Yes, doctor?”
“Need… the…” She frowned down at the pile, brow scrunched in deep thought, lips pressed tight together while she searched. Then her little finger shot out. “Da beep-beep.”
You picked up the toy thermometer and passed it to her. “Thermometer, doctor.”
“Mmm-hm,” she agreed, already climbing up onto the couch beside Jack. She braced one tiny hand against his shoulder to keep her balance as she settled in next to him.
“Open mouf,” she ordered.
“Yes, ma’am.”
He parted his lips obediently. She pushed the thermometer toward his cheek in roughly the right direction and stared at him with huge, focused eyes while the imaginary reading happened, her little lips pursed, head tilted just so. You had seen that exact same look on her face plenty of times before: when she was stacking wobbly blocks into impossible towers, or when her shoes refused to go on the right feet. She came by it honestly.
More than one person had told you that Jack made the very same face when he was deep in thought at work.
After a few long seconds she pulled the thermometer away and her eyes went dramatically wide.
“Oh no,” she breathed, voice full of worry.
Jack tilted his head slightly. “Oh no?”
She gasped and pressed one hand to her chest like the news was almost too much. “You vedy, vedy sick!”
He pressed his lips together to keep from smiling too big. “That bad?”
“Yesh!” She scrambled off the couch in a hurry and dove back into the doctor kit with frantic energy, rummaging through everything like she was facing a real emergency that needed immediate action.
“Doctor,” you offered gently, “should we prepare some medicine?”
She nodded fast without looking up. “Medshin!”
Jack settled even deeper into the cushions, folding his arms across his chest in complete trust. “I trust your treatment plan completely.”
She came back holding the toy syringe and stopped right in front of his arm, looking up at him with the stern expression of someone who had done this procedure many times and understood exactly how serious it was. Even if, technically, she’d just gotten the doctor play set a couple of weeks ago. Turns out a couple of weeks is a lot of experience in toddlerhood.
“No move, Papa.”
“Understood.”
She pressed the rounded tip against his forearm and slowly pushed the plunger down. He flinched with real theatrical commitment to the bit, eyebrows shooting up, a sharp hiss of breath through his teeth.
“Ouch. That one really had some kick to it.”
She patted his arm right away with soft little pats. “Brave, Papa.”
Something warm and unguarded settled across his face then, the soft look that only ever appeared when he was safe at home with the two of you. “High praise coming from my physician.”
She accepted the compliment with a grave little nod and reached for the stethoscope again. It took her a moment to untangle the tubing from her curls, and Jack waited through it all. He knew there were some things in life simply that could not be hurried, and this was definitely one of them. It was just too precious to rush through.
When she finally got the plastic disc pressed somewhere near his collarbone and leaned in close, the whole room seemed to hush around them. Her little face hovered just inches from his chest, eyes wide with total concentration, one stray curl brushing lightly against his jaw. Whatever she was listening for inside him, she was listening with every bit of herself.
“Hmm,” she murmured seriously.
Jack glanced over the top of her head at you, his eyes soft and warm with something too gentle for any medical chart to name.
“Well?” he prompted quietly.
She lifted her head. “Your heart go boom boom.”
“Is that good?”
She thought about it with all the seriousness the question deserved. “Vedy loud boom boom.”
“Good loud or bad loud?”
“Gud.” She pulled the stethoscope away and then reached up to place both small hands on his cheeks, squishing his face gently between her palms so she could peer straight into his eyes from only a few inches away. “You need res,” she told him solemnly.
“Rest,” he agreed, not even trying to move his smooshed face.
“Yesh. And ninner.”
“Dinner too?”
“Yesh.”
“What will the dinner be, doctor?”
She let go of his cheeks to think hard about it, staring off into the middle distance with complete focus.
“Mac n cheese.”
He nodded with matching solemnity, it was so cute, how he played along with her without hesitation, you wanted to melt. “Excellent choice.”
Her face lit up bright. “An pish!”
“Fish too?”
“Pish!” she repeated proudly, and you couldn’t help laughing softly from the armchair before you caught yourself.
Jack glanced over at you with a small, amused smile. “Doctor seems very confident in her nutritional recommendations.”
“She graduated top of her class,” you told him seriously.
The toddler, happy that her treatment plan had official approval, turned back to her patient. Her gaze drifted down—like it had started doing more often lately—to the prosthetic leg that extended from below his knee. A few weeks ago she had begun noticing it, not with fear or upset, but the innocent curiosity of a child carefully learning the person she loved best. Her tiny finger reached out and traced the curve of it so gently, poking curiously at the black socket left visible now that he was wearing shorts, the same careful way she touched flowers or fragile toys she wanted to understand.
“Papa boo boo?” she asked softly.
His voice stayed even and calm. “Old one. All healed now, sweetheart.”
She studied it a moment longer, thinking it over. Then she leaned forward and pressed her lips to the prosthetic, carefully, exactly the way she kissed her plushies, her own little boo-booed fingers, or anything else that had ever been hurt and needed to know it was loved.
“There,” she said with satisfaction. “All better now.”
Jack went very still.
You watched the stillness settle, then fade along his whole body, how his shoulders eased down just a fraction, the tight line of his jaw softened, how something held tight inside him finally let go in the safety of this quiet room. His face didn’t give much away to most people, but you had spent long enough learning every small shift to recognize what it looked like when something reached him deep, past every defense he usually kept up, and your baby girl had done that easily.
“Best treatment I’ve ever had,” he said, genuinely meaning it.
She climbed straight into his lap without asking—because she had never once needed permission with her papa—and nestled herself against his chest like she was exactly where she belonged. He wrapped one strong arm around her small back, steady and automatic, and rested his chin lightly on top of her soft curls.
“Papa all better now,” she announced to the whole room.
“Because of you?”
“Yesh.” She sounded so pleased, so completely certain, and not even a little surprised, because in her world, this was simply how things worked. She took care of him, and he got better. It had never crossed her mind that it could happen any other way.
Jack pressed a quiet kiss to the top of her head. When he looked up at you again, that rare softness was still there on his face.
“Nuhs mama,” came the small, very authoritative voice from against his chest.
You raised an eyebrow. “Yes, doctor?”
“Papa need sweep soon,” she declared. “And wabbit story.”
“A rabbit story,” Jack confirmed, looking at you with that quiet, contented smile. “Doctor’s orders.”
You stood up slowly, reaching over to smooth one escaped curl back from her forehead. She turned her face into your hand for a second, just instinctive, trusting, the way she always did, before looking back up at Jack with total satisfaction.
pairing: modern!valarr targaryen x f!stark!reader
summary: Your boyfriend Valarr Targaryen has been picture perfect for three months. When one morning he comes home from the gym sweaty, you crook your fingers to find out how far that leash goes.
contents/warnings: smut (18+), fem!dom undertones, oral (f receiving), fingering, praise kink, hair pulling, biting/marking/scratching, premature ejaculation, multiple orgasms, overstimulation, cunnilingus, cum play/cum eating, dirty talk, possessive behaviour, rough sex, worship, petnames, obsessive!valarr, dragon coding bby!!!
notes: Not planned, not proofread, been writing like a fucking maniac since 8am and it's now nearly 9pm. Cannot fully describe the fucking,,, mad grip they suddenly have on me??? i'm sick. This can be read as standalone but is technically part of modern/trailer trash au.
✶ aerion's version.
"You're disgusting."
You inform him of this calmly around a mouthful of toast.
Valarr leans in the doorway of his own kitchen, looking like a man who’s been put through hell.
Black athletic shorts hang low on his hips, grey t-shirt sweat-dark at the collar and down the centre of the chest. His hair plasters to his forehead in damp, dark whorls except for the white streak at his temple, which has gone almost translucent with sweat. He's breathing through his nose, a towel still slung around the back of his tanned neck. There's a small clean cut at the line of his jaw, and the dried blood is the only thing on him that isn't aesthetic.
"And you're eating my toast," he replies, mouth quirking, mismatched eyes warm on your face. "That's hardly the welcome I was hoping for, love."
"I'm eating my toast,” you clarify, wiggling your toes. “You bought it for me."
"I bought it for the household."
You take another, deliberate bite, staring him down. "I am the household."
Valarr’s eyes crinkle. "Are you, now?"
"Today I am."
You're sitting on his kitchen counter in one of his shirts and nothing else. The white linen one, the soft one, the one he wore to dinner three weeks ago and left here on the back of the bathroom door. Your bare legs rest crossed at the ankles, and you have toast in one hand and coffee in the other.
May sun spills through the eastern windows of his apartment in long gold panels, lighting up the cut peonies on the island, lighting up the smooth marble, lighting up, especially, the sweat at Valarr's collarbones.
You watch him. You take your time about it, too. Your eyes drag—deliberately, calculated, unsubtle—from the wet hair down to the line of his throat, across the soaked t-shirt where it sticks to him. Your attention lingers on the lean cut of his torso under the cotton, down to the shorts, finally to his bare feet on the dark wood floor. You make sure he sees you doing it.
You bring your eyes back up to his, and you raise one eyebrow, calmly, as if you’re reviewing a piece of property.
Valarr’s jaw ticks once, the brown eye darker by half a shade than it was a minute ago.
"Love."
"Yes?"
"I'm going to shower," he informs you.
You take a sip of your coffee. "Are you?"
"I am, yeah," he says, half a laugh in it, drinking you in with that fascinated focus that's become his default in your presence. "I'm—I'm fairly gross, I just got off the rower and the trainer was a sadist this morning. I won't subject you to—"
You crook two fingers at him.
It's a small gesture. Two fingers, lifted, curled. Just once. Come here.
Valarr stops talking.
He stops talking with the visible suddenness of a man whose train of thought has just been derailed by the simplest possible signal. Your two fingers, one small motion, the kind of summoning a woman might do to a dog she's fond of. You watch him do exactly what you knew he would do, which is start across the kitchen toward you without thinking about it.
"You don't actually want to—" he begins.
You sigh. "Valarr."
"—I really am sweaty, love, give me five minutes—"
"Valarr."
He's at the counter. His hands land on your bare knees, automatic, because your knees are at the level of his hands and because he can’t stand near you and not touch you. The contact is hot and slightly damp, not unpleasant, and you watch him register the heat of his palms on you and not pull them back.
"Yes, love?"
Your eyes narrow. "Come here."
His brows wrinkles a little. "I am here."
"Closer."
He laughs. Soft. A little wrecked already, and you've barely started. He steps in between your knees, his hands sliding up your thighs an inch and stopping with that intentional, leashed restraint that’s the central tic of his physical presence. The way he always pauses an inch before he means to land, the calibration he’s constantly performing in the millisecond before he touches you.
Valarr leans down and kisses you.
It's a careful kiss. It's a good morning, sweet girl kiss. Closed-mouthed, warm, his hand coming up to cup your jaw, his thumb stroking once along your cheekbone. He tastes like salt, like the espresso he downed before he left for the gym, like the mint in his pre-workout gum. His nose nudges yours, and Valarr makes a small contented sound in his throat that’s so unbearably boyish that for half a second you almost let him have his shower.
Almost.
You set the coffee down beside you, and set the toast down right after. You free both your hands and you put one of them in Valarr’s damp hair—high, at the crown, where the sweat is—and you fist your fingers in it, and you pull, just enough.
He makes a sound.
It's a small thing, coming out of him like he didn't know he was going to make it at all. A short involuntary catch in his throat—half a groan, half a question—and you feel Valarr’s whole body go still against you. Feel his hand at your jaw arrest, feel the breath leave him and not come back.
You growl.
You don't mean to. It comes out of your throat low and warning and entirely without your permission. A thin rough sound at the back of your tongue, the kind of noise something with teeth makes when it's decided what it wants, and Valarr stops moving altogether.
He stops kissing you, stops breathing. He stops, full stop, his mouth a half-inch from yours, his hand cradling your jaw. The towel still hangs from his neck, his pupils dilating in real time so fast you can watch the brown one go almost black, the blue one going luminous.
"Love," he breathes hotly.
You don't answer.
You hook your bare legs around the back of his thighs, and you pull him forward into you. Yank him in until his hips are pressed against the edge of the counter and against the inside of your thighs. Until the soaked cotton of his t-shirt is against the linen of his shirt you're wearing, and you can feel the heat of him through everything. The post-workout furnace of his body, the damp cling of sweat-warmed cotton against your bare skin.
"You said you needed to shower," you say mildly.
Valarr swallows. "I did say that."
"Do you?" you question, deceptively mildly.
"I—I think I—love."
You're already pulling at the hem of the t-shirt.
You drag it up slowly. You make Valarr lift his arms for you, and he does it instantly, his eyes locked on your face, and the wet cotton peels off him with that particular reluctance damp cotton has. Sticking, releasing, sticking. Until you've got it bunched at his shoulders and then over his head and then balled in your fist and then dropped, wet, to the marble counter beside the toast, where it lands with a small slap that neither of you registers.
He is. He is—
You knew. You've known what Valarr looks like under the t-shirt for three months now.
You’ve catalogued every line of him, watched him strip down in the dim of his bedroom, and traced your hands over him in the dark. You have, several times, watched him swim laps in the building's pool while pretending to read by the glass.
You know what he looks like. But you haven't ever seen him in this light before.
The eastern sun is fully on him, illuminating him fully, painting him golden.
He’s the long, lean, particular shape of a man who works out with the discipline of someone who has time and money to consider his body a project. Not bulky, never bulky, that wouldn't suit him, but cut.
Every line of his body is beautiful and deliberate. The cut of his hipbones above the waistband of the shorts, the smooth, lean stomach with that faint dark and white trail of hair below his navel you've licked twice now. The lift of his chest, where his breath is going uneven, and the long, elegant lines of his toned arms.
There’s sweat in the hollow of his throat. Sweat gathers at his sternum, too, gathers and trails down. There’s a small mole low on his ribs that you’ve kissed three times in three months, and that catches the light now in a way that makes you want to sink your teeth into him.
He’s beautiful. Absurdly beautiful. Valarr is the kind of beautiful that’s been worshipped his whole life and has therefore developed no real defence against being wanted.
You can see it in his face. In the slight parting of his mouth, in the held quality of his breathing. The way Valarr stares at you like you’ve just announced war against him.
Nobody has ever wanted him quite like this before. Not for his wealth or name, or pretty boy looks, but in an older way, the animal way.
You put both hands on him.
You start at the jut of his collarbones. Both palms flat on the slick of him. You drag them down leisurely over the planes of his chest, your thumbs grazing the small dark points of his nipples because you can’t help yourself and because he makes another small sound when you do. Ragged, swallowed; then over the cut of his ribs, the flat of his toned stomach, the line of his sides where his obliques narrow into his hips; down to the waistband of the shorts, where you stop, where you let your fingers hook into the elastic for one held second.
He’s shaking faintly under your hands.
"Love," he rasps again, like it’s the only word left available to him.
"Shhh."
You lean forward.
You put your mouth on his throat.
Right where the sweat gathers. Right at the hollow at the base of Valarr’s throat, where you can taste salt and the dark woody thing that’s his soap and underneath both of those, the warmer animal smell that is just him, just Valarr. The thing you've known by scent since the third week of knowing him by name.
You suck. You set your teeth, very lightly, against the tendon at the side of his neck, and you suck until the skin there gives a little. Until you feel the heat rise to the surface of his skin, until you feel his pulse pound against your tongue. His hands come up and land hard on your hips, fingers digging in, ungoverned.
Valarr groans.
No perfect control in that sound.
It comes out of him into your hair, your throat, the bare line of your shoulder where the linen has slipped. It’s the sound of a man whose composure has finally—finally, after three months of every careful, courteous can I, sweet girl, may I, my love—slipped its leash entirely.
His hands tighten on your hips. He goes hard against you instantly. You feel it happen through the thin shorts, against the inside of your thigh where you've pulled him in between your legs. The heat of it shoots up your spine and turns your vision white at the edges.
"Oh," he breathes against your hair. "Oh, fuck."
You keep your mouth at his throat, mouth twitching with satisfaction. You drag your teeth. You suck a second mark, lower this time, near the cut of his collarbone, and feel his hips push forward involuntarily against yours. Then jerk back as he tries to remember himself, tries to remember he's gross and sweaty and was going to shower.
You don't let him remember.
You hook your legs harder around the back of his thighs, rolling your hips against his. Once. Slow and hard. You make sure Valarr feels the line of you against him through the thin linen of his shirt, through the thin cotton of his shorts and through the heat of his own ridiculous body. His hand at your hip slides up your back, under the hem of the shirt, finds the bare skin there, and his fingers spread, and he holds. Possessive, dazed, cradling you close.
You pull back enough to look at him.
His face. Gone soft, completely glazed. Those mismatched eyes are blown, his mouth parted slightly. His hair is pushed back from his forehead where you've fisted it, his pulse going at his throat so visibly you can count it.
Valarr’s gazing at you the way he looks at you across rooms, the way he looks at you when you laugh at something he said, the way he looks at you when you walk in late to a dinner he’s set up. That immortalising look, the one where he’s making a permanent record of you.
Except now there’s no polish on it. None. The look is stripped down to the thing underneath, which is hunger, which is wonder, the dazed, unguarded face of a man who’s not, in twenty-six years of being adored, ever been taken.
You rake your nails down his chest.
Just enough to leave four faint pink lines that will pink up red within a minute, that he’ll notice in the shower later and trace with his fingers when he looks at himself in the mirror. That will make him hard again four hours from now in some meeting he’ll remember nothing of.
"My love," he says softly. "Christ, what—what are you —"
"Need you," you rasp. “Need you right now, Val.”
It comes out of you low, rough, without softness. Not I'd like, or will you, or any of the carefully negotiated phrasings you’ve used with Valarr for three months, because that’s the register he speaks in. You’ve dropped the register.
You’re looking at him with your eyes gone dark and your mouth wet from his throat, the linen of his shirt slipping off your shoulder, and you have told him exactly what you require.
He stares at you.
The brown eye is so dark now you can't see the iris anymore, the blue one lit from within. He’s breathing through his mouth in shallow pulls, and his hands have not let go of your hips. You can feel him, hard, throbbing, against the inside of your thigh, and you watch the last of his composure go.
You watch it. You watch the moment.
It’s extraordinary.
Nothing slips or cracks. He's too dignified. It’s a handing-over. Three months of careful patient attentive I won't presume, love, and you’ve asked him for one thing in two words. He has, without taking his eyes off your face, simply given you the leash he’s been holding on to himself the entire time, set it down at your feet.
"Whatever you want," he says.
His voice has gone low and ragged. Half-octave under his usual register. Reverent.
"Whatever you want, sweet girl. Whatever you want. I'll—anything. Tell me."
You lean forward. You put your mouth to his ear. You feel the shiver that goes through him when you do.
"Counter," you murmur, lips brushing against heated skin. "Here. Now."
"But—"
"Now, Valarr."
"Yes, yes."
You barely hear it. He's nodding into your hair. His hand is sliding down the back of your thigh and lifting you slightly and pulling you to the very edge of the counter, the marble cool under the back of your thighs and Valarr’s hand hot under them.
His other hand comes up, going into your hair, grabbing a fistful at the nape of your neck. Then his mouth comes back to yours, and this time he’s not polite. There’s nothing careful about this at all. The kiss is open and wet, a little desperate, and it tastes like salt and espresso. Valarr’s making small, devastated sounds into your mouth that he doesn't seem aware of, and his hips roll forward against yours without his permission.
He doesn’t pull them back this time, hasn't apologised, hasn't asked.
You bite his lower lip. Lightly. He groans and you swallow the sound.
"Sweet girl."
You let out a small, pleased hum at the hungry groan in his voice.
"Sweet girl,” he says again, pecking you, then again, one hand at your jaw. "I—what are you—"
"You said anything?"
He murmurs against your lips, "Anything."
"Then stop talking."
He nods with a low groan, his forehead dropping to yours. His hand tightens in your hair. His other hand has come up under the hem of his shirt and slides up the bare skin of your back, splayed hot against your spine.
You roll your hips against his again. Harder, this time. His whole body shudders.
"Oh."
You peck the corner of his mouth. "Shh."
"You can’t,” he whispers, ragged, “you can't do that—"
"I can."
"—you can't, you'll—"
"Valarr."
His breath hitches. "Yes?"
"Be a good boy."
The sound that comes out of him is going to live in your head for the rest of your life.
You smile.
You bring his face up to yours. You make him look at you. He’s looking at you like you’re a miracle he gets to claim for himself, and you look back at him, letting him see your face. You let him see the wolf in you that you’ve been carefully keeping behind glass since he met you, let him see the thing he’s been suspecting was in there and not been allowed to see until now.
His mouth parts.
"Where," he says quietly, wrecked. "Where have you been all my life?"
You smile gently, dragging your thumb across his swollen lower lip.
"Right here, pretty thing," you say lovingly.
A groan rumbles in his throat. "Pretty thing," he repeats, dazed.
Your mouth curves, and you kiss the corner of his mouth again, cradling his cheek. "Mm."
Valarr laughs. Silky, ruined. He turns his face into your hand and kisses your palm, then your wrist and then the inside of your forearm. His eyes, when they come back to your face, are dazed and adoring in a way that’s bordering, you realise distantly, on something more dangerous than adoration.
He drops to his knees. He kneels there, on the dark wood floor, and looks up at you.
For one suspended second, Valarr doesn't move. His hands are at your knees, splayed wide, and he’s on the floor of his own kitchen, gazing up at you. He is, you realise after a beat, waiting.
He’s waiting for you to tell him what you want from him.
Three months of carefully negotiated can I, sweet girl, may I touch you here, may I taste you, will you let me, and you’ve stripped that out of him in eight minutes flat. He’s on his knees, bare-chested, sweat-slick, the early sun gilding the long lean lines of him.
You spread your legs. Just enough. You shift your weight onto the marble and let your knees fall a fraction wider, watching Valarr’s eyes drop to where the linen of his shirt has ridden up. His breath leaves him in one long, painstaking exhale through his nose.
"Love," he breathes. “Anything for you. Just ask.”
You say nothing for a full minute. "Then eat, Valarr."
The sound he makes goes through you like a struck bell.
He surges forward. There’s no other word for it. Doesn't crawl, doesn't lean, he surges, both hands pushing your knees wider as he comes, his mouth opening against the bare inside of your thigh first. High, where you’re softest, and biting, not hard, just enough to make you arch off the marble. Just enough to leave a small crescent he’ll be staring at later in the bathroom mirror like evidence.
Then his mouth is on you.
A sound you don’t recognise slips past your clenched teeth.
It comes out of your throat broken and surprised, unbearably loud in his quiet kitchen, the morning sun slanting across both of you, and Valarr—who’s been so unfailingly polite for three months, who’s asked permission for every step, and eaten you out before with that slow reverence—Valarr eats you now like a man who’s been waiting his entire life for someone to tell him he can do this.
His hands drag across your body, devouring each curve. One comes up under the linen shirt, spreading hot and wide across the small of your back, anchoring you, pulling you to the absolute edge of the counter.
The other hooks under your thigh and lifts, draping your leg over his shoulder, the bare back of your knee against the slick, damp skin of him. Valarr’s hand grips your other thigh hard enough that you'll have small fingertip bruises by lunchtime, four neat ovals in a row on the inside.
And his mouth. His mouth. He’s using his teeth in a way he hasn't before. Lightly, with calculation. He’s using his tongue with the same focused accuracy he’s always used it, but he’s shed the carefulness; he’s shed the I won't presume, he’s going at you with the dazed greed of a man who wanted this for a long, long time.
You fist your hand in his hair.
You pull. Hard. You drag his face deeper into you because you can’t help yourself.
Because the sun is full on both of you and the marble is cold under your thighs, his hair damp under your hand, and his mouth is exactly where you need it, and Valarr moans into you, the sound vibrating against you. His hand on your thigh tightens, and his shoulder presses harder under your knee, making him go at you with renewed focus, as if the pull of your hand in his hair were an instruction he;s just gratefully received.
You come embarrassingly fast.
With one hand fisted in his damp hair and one hand braced flat behind you on the marble. Your back arches, your toes curling, the linen of his shirt sliding off one shoulder, your thighs clamping around his head, and Valarr’s hands grip you through it, holding you exactly where he wants you while you go to pieces against his mouth. He doesn't stop. Doesn't slow. He keeps going through it, soft and persistent, his mouth gentling but not lifting, his tongue dragging through the aftermath of your release with the same dazed, reverent focus.
"Valarr—"
He hums against you, and your hand spasms in his hair.
"Valarr."
He lifts his head a fraction, mouth wet, chin wet too. The white streak at his temple is plastered with sweat, and the dark of his hair is sticking up in places where you’ve been pulling, and his eyes, when they meet yours, are destroyed.
He licks his lower lip.
"More," he states, voice low. “I want more. All of you, sweet girl. Let me taste you. More.”
It's barely a word. More so, a request, a question, and a small wrecked plea rolled into one. You watch Valarr’s face, and you feel—sharply, delightedly, with a clean cold satisfaction in the centre of your chest—that you have him.
That you’ve just had him in a way you haven’t had him before.
Those three months of polished, restrained worship have just been redrawn, definitively, in your favour.
You drag your thumb across his wet lower lip, holding his eyes. You let him see you.
"Up," you tell him softly.
"But I’m not done—"
"Up."
Valarr rises. Like a man who’s forgotten how legs work and is figuring it out in real time, sluggish, stupefied, his hands sliding up the backs of your thighs as he comes, his mouth coming up to yours. He’s kissing you before he’s fully standing, his mouth open against yours, and you taste yourself on him. Sharp and bright and warm. You make a low sound of approval in your throat, biting his lower lip, hard enough to leave a mark, and he whimpers into your mouth.
Oh, that sound.
That sound is going to live in your head until you die.
A beautiful, rasping sound of a man who hasn’t known he was capable of producing that sound until a moment ago. Your hand fists tighter in his hair in reward, and you yank his head back. Your mouth goes to Valarr’s throat where you’ve already marked him once, but you bite him there a second time, harder now, dragging your teeth across the place his pulse is pounding, sucking until you taste salt and the faint copper-edge of where you've broken a capillary, and Valarr—
Valarr's hips jerk forward against yours.
Once. Twice. Hard. Involuntary.
You feel him through the thin gym shorts, against the bare wet of you on the very edge of the counter, and the heat of him is shocking. His gasping breath breaks against your hair in ragged little catches, so you set your teeth into the muscle at the side of his neck and bite.
Hard, unapologetically, the way you would bite into something you intended to keep, and Valarr makes a sound you haven’t heard from him before in your life, low and shocked and delightfully animal. His hips jerk forward one more time and stop, his whole body going rigid against you, his hands clamping on your hips, his forehead dropping hard to your shoulder, and you feel him—
You feel him come.
In his shorts. Through his shorts. Against the inside of your thigh, the bare wet of you, the marble counter underneath. You feel the pulse of it through the thin cotton, and you feel the heat of it bloom against you. He’s shaking, properly shaking, his fingers digging into your hip. Valarr’s mouth slacks open against your collarbone, making small ragged pained sounds into your skin.
You go very still.
You watch his face, eyes wide. His face angles into your throat and stays there, hidden, his shoulders shaking finely under your hands.
You feel the wet heat of him soak through the cotton against your inner thigh, slow and too warm and absurdly intimate, and you understand—with a low, bright pleasure that has nothing to do with reciprocation—that you’ve just made Valarr Targaryen come in his pants in his own kitchen on a Tuesday morning by biting his neck.
He’s gone, distinctly, several shades pinker.
"Fuck," he chokes out, faintly, into your throat. "Oh, fuck."
Your mouth curves into a pleased, feline smile.
You already hear the apology forming on his tongue when he whispers, "I didn't mean—"
"Look at me," you drawl.
"I—"
"Look at me, Val."
He lifts his head.
His face is wrecked, cracked open by pleasure. His mouth gapes, his perfect hair destroyed. His pupils are blown so wide his eyes are nearly black, both of them, even the blue one, and there’s colour high on his cheekbones and the hollow of his throat is heaving. There’s a fresh red bruise blooming under the line of his jaw where you’ve just sucked it into being, and he’s looking at you, just looking like you’ve cracked something open in him.
He swallows.
"I—" His voice is ruined, quiet, faintly embarrassed. "I'm sorry, that has—that hasn’t happened to me since I was—"
You stroke your thumb up his jaw. "It’s alright. I liked it."
"—fifteen, love, I—"
"Valarr, I liked it," you tell him. "I like making you fall apart just as much as you enjoys doing the same to me."
His eyes sharpen, focusing on your face. "You do?"
You drag your hand down his chest in response, watching his eyes track the path of your hand.
You feel him still hard against you—still hard, even through what just happened, the impossibility and the inevitability of him, twenty-six years old and beautiful and on a strict regimen, his body already rallying—and you drag your fingers down across his stomach. Down to the soaked waistband of the shorts, and you slip two fingers into the waistband, and you tug playfully.
"Off."
"Are you sure?" he croaks.
"Take them off."
He nods, fumbling with the drawstring. His hands are shaking—actually shaking, you can see them, his fingers can't manage the knot at first—and you watch him laugh once, breathless, embarrassed, and it makes you smile at him fondly. His own expression softens further when he catches you looking at him like that, some tension melting from his shoulder blades.
The knot finally loosens, and he pushes the shorts down, stepping out of them. He kicks them aside, naked and sweat-streaked. Wet at the front of his thighs where he spilt moments ago, but still hard, gloriously, almost insolently, his cock heavy and flushed dark against the cut of his hip.
You look at him.
You take your time looking at him.
He stands there in his own kitchen and lets you. Valarr’s hands hang at his sides. His face is naked in a way that pricks inside your chest, so you take your time with him.
You let your eyes drag inch at a time. Over the planes of his chest, the four pink lines down his sternum where you scratched him five minutes ago, the two darkening bruises at his throat, the smoothness of his stomach, the trail of hair below his navel. You watch him bear your hungry examination. Watch him stand there and let you look, watch a small, almost-shy smile pull at the corner of his mouth.
"Sweet girl," he says quietly.
You tilt your head.
"You're—"
"Hush, pretty thing," you say instead, still drinking him in.
You reach down between your own thighs.
You don't break eye contact. You drag two fingers through the wet mess of you—your own, his, the slick of both of you mixed at the edge of the marble where his shorts had pressed against you—and you bring your fingers up between you, glistening, and see his face change.
"Oh."
"Open your mouth, Valarr," you instruct gently.
He opens.
He opens with the same dazed, automatic obedience he’s been giving you for the last fifteen minutes.
His head tilting back a fraction, his lips parting, his eyes locked on your face, and you slide your two wet fingers into his mouth, and you push—past his teeth, past his tongue, two knuckles deep—and Valarr's eyes flutter half-shut.
He makes a tiny, muffled sound around your fingers and his hands come up to brace on the counter on either side of your hips. His tongue moves against your fingers, sucking at them, lapping up the wet of himself off your skin with such immediate pleasure that something hot and possessive unfurls in your chest.
You push your fingers a fraction deeper. He takes them. Valarr’s throat works around the heel of your hand. He keeps his eyes on yours.
You pull your fingers out slowly, dragging the wetness across his lower lip, leaving a slick smear.
He makes a small, ruined sound.
"You taste yourself, pretty thing?" you ask quietly.
"Yes," he answers, breathless, eyes hooded.
He leans forward and kisses you.
He kisses you with his mouth still wet from your fingers and your wet still on his tongue, and he kisses you the way he ate you ten seconds before. Open, urgent, no carefulness anywhere in him. You taste him in your own mouth, salt and bright and warm and slightly bitter and him, and his hands have come up off the counter and gripped your hips again, fingers digging in. You feel him roll his hips forward against the bare wetness of your core and groan into your mouth.
He’s so hard. Again. Still. His cock is hot and heavy against the inside of your thigh, and there’s wetness against your skin, and you don't know whose anymore. Valarr’s mouth moves against yours, slick and fully open-mouthed.
You break the kiss after another moment. You hold his face in both your hands.
"Harder," you order huskily.
He groans against your lips. "My sweet girl."
"Harder, Val."
He nods. He kisses you harder. His teeth catch your lower lip, and he sucks at it, tentative, and then—when you make a hungry, pleased sound into his mouth—bolder, biting, the carefulness sliding off him in real time as he learns that you want this. That you’ve wanted this for a while. That the ferocity he’s been keeping behind glass for three months because he was afraid of frightening you was, in fact, the thing you were waiting for.
You drag your hand down between you. You wrap his length in your fist.
Valarr chokes.
"Shhh."
You kiss his cheek, stroking him, once, slow, grip tight. He’s hot and slick at the head from his own coming, from his own anticipation. Valarr shudders against you, his forehead dropping to your collarbone. His hand fists in the linen of his shirt at your back.
"You can't,” he groans, barely audible, “I'll come again, I'll—"
"You will," you agree softly, kissing the shell of his ear.
He loosens a groan. "Love."
"You will, pretty thing,” you say again, thumb rubbing over the slit of his cock. “As many times as I want."
He makes a sound, a ragged half-groan, and you smile against the side of his head, kissing the spot where his white streak meets his temple and you feel him shudder under your mouth.
You keep stroking him. Just at the edge of unbearable. You watch Valarr’s face turn into your shoulder, his hips pushing forward into your hand. You watch the discipline of him—the man who deadlifts at five in the morning, who runs his portfolio with surgical precision, who has never not been in control of a room—fall to absolute pieces against the linen of his own shirt on your shoulder.
"Show me," you murmur into his hair.
"Mm?"
"Show me, Valarr," you whisper into his ear.
Valarr ruts into your fist, a hot, wet pant burning the hollow of your throat, "Show you what, sweet girl?” he croaks. “I—anything, for you—"
You hum, twisting your wrist as you exhale, "Show me your strength."
He stills.
You feel it. He stills against you, his face still pressed to your shoulder, his cock heavy and pulsing obscenly in your hand, his hands locked at the small of your back. You can hear him breathing. Can hear the pulse in his throat against your shoulder.
You feel him register the words, feel him understand them, exactly.
"You're a dragon, aren't you?" you wonder idly. “My golden, beautiful dragon.”
"—yes."
No hesitation.
"Then claim me."
He lifts his head.
The stupified, shocked compliance of the last fifteen minutes is gone.
What’s in its place is something you haven’t seen on Valarr's face yet. He’s not the polished, smiling, immaculate boy who brought you peonies and asked permission to kiss you; what’s in its place is the thing his very polite Targaryen ancestors used to be before three generations of money and manners stripped it out of them, the thing he’s been told all his life he’s too well-bred to be.
The thing he didn't know was in him until you put your two fingers in his mouth and said hello to it.
He doesn't say anything.
He yanks you up off the counter.
One motion. His hands are on you, and your back hits the cold marble of the kitchen island. His mouth is on your throat, and he’s biting you, properly biting you, hard enough to make you gasp. His hand fists in your hair at the nape of your neck, and he’s angling your head exactly where he wants it, and his other hand drops between you. Between your legs, two fingers, no asking, sliding into you with the slick that’s half him and half you and the heel of his hand grinds hard against your core. Your vision goes white.
"Yes," you breathe. “There, yes, Val.”
He kisses your throat, jaw, and tip of your nose. "Sweet girl."
"Yes—"
He pecks your mouth, curling his fingers. "Tell me again."
"Claim me. Use me, Val."
He kisses you. Bruising. He kisses you like he’s furious with you, like he is grateful to you, like he’s been holding his breath for three months and you have only just told him he’s allowed to use his mouth.
Valarr’s fingers work you with the kind of precision that asserts he’s been studying you the entire time and remembers every signal you’ve ever given him.
His thumb—Christ, his thumb—is exactly where you want him, mean and relentless, and he’s learning you all over again. Learning what you sound like when he’s rough with you, learning what you look like when you stop being careful with him, his eyes on your face the whole time, immortalising, committing the whole thing to a permanent record he will not let himself forget for the rest of his life.
You come around his fingers in under a minute.
You come with your forehead pressed to his, moaning loudly, and his mouth open against yours, swallowing the sound.
The fingers buried in you keep moving, and his other hand stays fisted in your hair, and you’re making sounds that are not words, and he’s murmuring into your mouth (that's it, my sweet girl, there she is, my beautiful girl, give it to me, that's mine, you’re mine) in a tone of voice you haven’t heard before. Low and hoarse, certain of himself, and you feel the mine hit something in your chest that makes you bare your teeth with pleasure.
He pulls his fingers out of you, pushing them into his own mouth.
Valarr sucks them clean while watching your face.
You stare at him, still panting, your nerves on fire.
He smiles around his fingers, slow, crooked.
"Love," he says, drawing his fingers out with a wet pop, "tell me where you want me."
"Inside," you tell him. "Need you dripping out of me, pretty thing."
Valarr squeezes his eyes closed, counts mentally, then, croaked, "Counter or floor?"
"Floor."
He doesn’t lower you carefully.
Valarr goes down with you. Goes down to his knees on the dark wood floor with you locked around his waist, and he tips you back, one hand braced behind your head, the other splayed wide at the base of your spine.
He lays you down on the wood with the gentleness of a man laying out a relic and the greed of a man about to break it open.
The wood is cold under your back, the linen of his shirt crinkled up around your ribs. The morning sun is on you both, gilding the slick lines of him, lighting up the white streak at his temple, painting the bruises you've left on his throat in dark purple.
He braces above you.
His hair falls forward over his face. His hand slips between your thighs, lining himself up, and his eyes are on your face, and he’s waiting for the word.
"Now," you urge him.
He pushes into you.
You arch off the floor.
Valarr watches your face, he gives you the half-second to adjust, reading you in real time the way he reads everything. But he doesn’t give you the deliberate measured slowness he’s given you for three months.
He pushes in to the hilt in one long slow stroke that has you fisting your hands in his hair and tipping your head back and making a sound that is going to embarrass you in approximately twenty minutes when you can think clearly again, and Valarr—sweat-slick, marked, beautiful,so beautiful, gone—drops his forehead to yours and breathes against your mouth and doesn't move.
"You’re so perfect," he exhales, a silky sound.
You breathe out a small, pleased sound.
"You drive me insane," he whispers, and there’s a hint of laughter in his ragged voice. “You undo me, love. Do you understand that?”
"Val,” you breathe out, feeling how the fond shortening of his name makes him pulse inside you. “Move."
He does.
He moves the way you’ve asked him to move, the way you’ve told him he’s permitted to move.
He fucks you on the kitchen floor, his hand fisted in your hair. Valarr’s other hand hooks under your thigh, pushing your knee up against your chest, opening you wider for him. His mouth is on your throat, your collarbone, the curve of your shoulder where the linen of his shirt has slipped, biting and sucking and leaving marks of his own, finally, claiming you along the line of your throat the way you’ve just claimed him.
His hips snap forward. Again. Again.
You feel him in your teeth. The tempo is so painfully efficient that it drives you insane. You feel him through your spine in every stroke. The wood of the floor is cold against your back, and your shoulder blades are going to be bruised by tonight, but you can’t bring yourself to care.
His pelvis grinds against yours on every powerful thrust and his hand slips between you, circling where he’s pushing into you, and his thumb is—his thumb is—
You come again, your walls fluttering around his cock, embarrassingly, helplessly, with your nails dragging four red lines down the middle of his toned back. Valarr groans into your throat, yes, yes, that's it, sweet girl, my wolf, that's mine, that's it, give it to me, and he’s fucking you through it without slowing, his rhythm only stuttering for a second and then catching, his eyes wild on your face, his mouth open against yours.
He’s sweating. He hasn’t stopped sweating since he came back from the gym.
The whole of him is slick and hot, the morning sun on him and you feel the salt of him against your mouth when you pull his head down to yours. His hair is a complete wreck where you’ve been yanking at it. His back is going to be a map of your nails by tonight and his throat is going to be a map of your mouth and you almost laugh in delight.
You arch under him instead. You hook your heel into the base of his spine, dragging him deeper.
"Harder, dragon."
The sound that comes out of Valarr is barely human.
A low broken thing. His name lands exactly where you placed it, dragon, not pretty thing, not sweet boy, dragon, the old word, the one his blood has been waiting for.
Valarr’s eyes darken, impossibly so, and his hand at your hair tightens and he gives you exactly what you asked for.
He gives it to you so completely that the world around you becomes very narrow and very sharp and he’s fucking into you with the strength he’s been hiding for three months, the strength of a man who deadlifts at dawn and rows until he aches, the strength of the thing in him that his ancestors used to ride into wars on, and it is—
It is exactly what you needed.
You bite his shoulder. Viciously. Copper burns on your tongue and you feel Valarr’s whole body lock against yours and his hand fist convulsively in your hair and his hips drive forward one last time hard enough to push you up the floor by several inches, and Valarr—
Valarr comes inside you with a sound that’s torn between a sob and a roar, his face pressed into your throat, his other hand braced flat on the wood beside your head with his fingers spread wide and white at the knuckles.
He shakes. Through the whole thing, his hips jerking against yours in small uneven thrusts, and you can feel the heat of him filling you up, gushing deep, and you can feel the pulse of him and you can feel his teeth set into the side of your throat at the very end, marking you, finally properly marking you. Your answering moan sounds more animal than woman, your body coiled around his.
You both go still.
The kitchen is suddenly painfully silent.
It takes you several minutes to come back to your body.
You blink up at the ceiling blearily, squinting. You’re on the dark wood floor of Valarr’s kitchen with his weight on top of you and his face buried in your throat. The linen of his shirt is soaked through at the ribs with sweat that’s now also half his and half yours.
Valarr breathes against your throat.
Then he lifts his head.
He’s looking at you with an expression that’s not quite settled into anything yet. Not fully shock, or joy, not even fear. There’s only the unguarded face of a man whose entire model of himself has just been rearranged by the woman pinned under him on a kitchen floor.
He laughs. Gentle, breathless, fond. He drops his forehead to yours.
"My sweet girl," he says, and his voice is hoarse, "what the fuck have you done to me?"
Your mouth curls into a pleased grin.
You bring his mouth down to yours, kissing him gently, lingering at the seams of his lush mouth. You taste yourself on his mouth, and you taste sweat and salt and the metallic edge of where you broke skin on his shoulder, and you keep your hand fisted lightly in his hair.
"My golden dragon," you murmur fondly. “My beautiful, perfect Val.”
He laughs into your mouth, a terrible, broken sound. He shakes his head against yours.
"Christ."
You only tighten your arms around his shoulders in response.
"You're going to ruin me," he rasps, mouth on your collarbone. "You're my ruin, sweet girl."
"Yes," you agree lightly, stroking his flushed face.
"My love, I need—"
You know what he needs; even if his body is spent, he still wants more, always more. Your knuckles fondly skim over the white streak against his temple.
"Yes, Val," you say quietly, closing your eyes when he begins jerking his hips inside you again, pleasure raking through your oversensitive nerves as his cum drips onto the kitchen floor between you. “Take what you need.”
an: at this point I need a fucking intervention??? what the fuck is going on??? why am I suddenly obsessed with these two? anyway, sound off if you want Aerion version of this concept (¬‿¬)
summary: you awake in a strange place with a prince at your bedside.
pairing: maekar targaryen x amnesia wife reader
word count: 2.3k
you blink open bleary eyes to a dark chamber, the embers of a fire burning in the corner of the room.
you do not recognize the room instantly, and worse—your head is pounding. it aches all around, from the back of your skull to your temples, at an intensity that you can only describe as blistering.
not the sort one receives after indulging in their cups, or the kind after a restless night of sleep. this is something else entirely.
you sigh, your body sinking into the mattress further. it is more comfortable than you recall, your limbs stretching for a moment with a satisfying burn, the shield of sleep still thick in your mind.
everything seems a little numb, still. the sounds of the world outside your window are fairly quiet, save for a few birds chirping. it must not be early enough—usually you can hear the thunderous ring of steel on steel, courtesy of your brother and whatever household knight he is sparring with to begin his day.
even the noises outside the door seem duller than normal. your mother’s solar is only a few steps away, and usually you can hear the chatter radiating from there when you wake. her and your sister, no doubt, the one that rises early every morning with your parents and makes you look bad in comparison.
it could not be your other sister, not anymore. she has been married for almost the length of a year, nearly expecting her first child now, and yet when you are tired, you can almost forget.
the feeling is rather sweet, you think tiredly, when you wake up too early and it feels as though you are still in a dream altogether. one where you are still a girl, waiting for your septa to come wake you, one where all your siblings still live in your home, where everyone is still together.
if you were not so fatigued, you might smile.
you turn your head towards the door slightly, eyes attempting to fixate on the location of the noise, or at least, where the noise would be coming from. it is surprisingly silent, you think, at least for your family’s home. you are all an awfully noisy bunch, and yet—
that is odd, you reflect for a moment, stirring to rub at your eyes.
the door is not… in the correct place? you look to the right of you, where the entrance to your small room has always been, just besides the vanity where you ready yourself. your eyes turn quickly in each direction, looking for those familiar objects—the vanity, the mirror, the wardrobe.
this room is not your own.
you jolt up in bed, sitting up and bringing your knees to your chest, as if you might be able to defend yourself against your confusion somehow.
the only word you can think to describe this room is… morose.
nothing like your bedchamber at home, which is lively and full of sun and color. here, the curtains are almost completely shut, just the barest bit of light pouring in. the fireplace glows dimly but it does little to brighten it enough for you to make sense of where you truly are.
how could that be? how could you have fallen asleep at your home and woken up in an entirely new place?
you turn your head again, looking in the other direction for the door to this chamber. instead you find—
“seven hells-” you shout, scrambling to move yourself from your position under the covers. you push yourself to the other side of the bed, away from the stranger sitting in a chair besides you.
he had been asleep, you think, your own head throbbing even more painfully now from the sudden movement. he had been sitting, but his elbow was against the arm of the seat, leaning against it in his slumber. you think he was even snoring.
you could not make out a face, just a flash of light colored hair, and now—
fuck. he stares for a moment, both of you gone silent, as he blinks wide, lilac eyes at you. and you think for a moment, scanning his features, that he looks almost… relieved.
that is most odd, given that you are anything but relieved. you frantically tug down the hem of your night gown, trying to cover yourself. when you look back at him, he is still silent.
worse—he is staring at your exposed skin. you could almost gasp at the indignation of it if you were not so confused. a sound like a scoff almost escapes you—you thought princes were supposed to be chivalrous.
“your… your grace?” you question, your voice coming out raspy. your throat feels sore, almost, as though you have not drank enough water in some time. suddenly, you feel parched. “uh… where am i?”
“i…” the prince—one of them, you imagine, though you do not know his name since it is your first time ever meeting one in person, like this—begins, before trailing off. “i am glad you are awake now.”
his voice is filled with a sincerity you do not completely understand. he speaks with a seriousness of tone, as though there was a possibility of you not awaking, somehow.
“as am i, your grace,” you reply, blinking at him slowly. “pardon me, but-”
“i will fetch the maester. lay back down,” he orders, and you furrow your brows in confusion.
“maester?” you ask, as he begins to step towards the door. “no, i do not require the maester. can you please call for my mother and father?”
the prince freezes, his hand stopping mid-air as he reaches for the doorknob. he turns around slowly, his violet eyes meeting yours. you notice it then as his jaw tightens, clenching slightly.
relax, ser, you think bleakly and unfiltered, you do not have to go chase them down yourself. i need only a maid to find them—
“your mother and father?” he repeats. you think for a moment that you can hear his teeth grinding against each other.
“yes, your grace. are they not here with me?”
“why would they be here?” he sounds listless, as though you are burdening him with questions he does not want to answer.
“well, my brother then? they did not send me off alone, did they?” you ask, panic rising in your voice as he continues to look at you with that expression on his face. “a-and where am i, if i may ask? i do not recognize these chambers.”
“i am going to fetch the maester. you are in need of his services,” the prince says quietly, and you can no longer discern what emotions exactly lies behind his voice.
“i… i-” you begin, before faltering. you are not even sure what you intend to say.
you stare at him for another moment, breathing heavily. you pull on the cotton sheets to try and cover yourself further.
his grace steps away from the door, walking towards you for a moment. he walks until he is at the edge of the bed, leaning forward to look at you. you shudder under the intensity of his gaze, realizing quickly that this is not—
the prince glowers down at you, his purple eyes locked on yours. his expression is mostly unreadable, but from this close, you can see him very clearly.
it is not light hair, nor blond. it is silver, just as the history books describe it. his hair gleams where the light catches it, pure argentine the longer you stare. you rake your eyes down slowly, to the lilac of his eyes and the pale lashes that he blinks at you.
then the curve of his nose, which you look at for far too long. it seems almost oddly… intimate to study him this way, but you cannot help yourself, not as you take in the pink of his lips and the scars that mark his cheeks.
he must be one of the king’s sons. there is no one else he could be. the crown prince is more dornish than valyrian, you know, so it cannot be him. one of the three others then. perhaps you should have paid attention more closely when your septa would teach you. or even to your father’s conversations at the dinner table.
there always seemed something more important to think about. and well—
your thought is interrupted by him.
“what is it?” he demands, his face much closer to you now.
“i, uh,” you start quietly, blinking rapidly. “you should call for a chaperone, at least. this is not proper.”
the prince shifts from concerned to exasperated.
“what is not proper?”
“well, us, of course. we cannot be alone in a room together,” you state plainly, confused why he is not understanding what you are saying.
are the dragon princes truly so high in the in-step that they do not remember any of the customs of society? just because he is royalty does not excuse him from requiring a maid or some guard to oversee the encounter. to make sure something untoward does not occur, the sort of thing that could ruin you.
gods above—the man was in here while you were asleep. how could that possibly be proper?
the prince brings his fingers to his face, pinching his nose, his fingers forming a fist when he finally brings them back down to his side. he looks frustrated, you think.
and he is not the only one. you pause, your mouth hanging open slightly, waiting for him to say something.
“do you know who i am?” he demands again, the words lingering in the air for a moment before you nod slowly.
“of course. you are a prince.”
he blinks at you.
“i am… a prince? that is all?” his handsome face contorts into an entirely unpleasant expression.
you had not thought your forgetfulness would impact him so deeply. in fact, you cannot even remember ever being introduced to him.
he is not making a good first impression upon you. he cannot expect every lady of the kingdom to be able to tell him apart from his brothers on the first interaction?
you try to think harder, but your head hurts deeply. there are only two silver-haired princes, you finally recall, because the other two have dark hair.
but even of the two, you do not know which stands before you.
“i apologize, your grace,” you start. “my head is ailing me. if i am forgetting our introduction, then i am truly very sorry. i hope you will not judge me too harshly.”
the prince swallows, staring at you. he does not look pleased, not that he ever did.
in fact, he looks as the sort of man who might never be pleased, not about anything. lines of worry are seemingly permanently etched into his face, surrounding his eyes most notably.
you suppose he must have many duties as a prince. children to take care of, surely. you do not know which of the targaryen brood belong to him, but you have seen them before. you think it was a tourney, but you cannot recall exactly now. there is only a few of them with that silver hair that your prince possesses.
those must be his sons, no? the ones possessing the hands and the lances that your younger sister was dying to get her prettily made favor into?
you look at him again, pushing away your thoughts. he sighs, his broad shoulders rising and falling for a moment beneath his doublet.
“i will return with the maester and a chaperone.”
“thank you, your grace.”
you move yourself back slightly, settling against the bed, sliding your legs under the covers again. he watches you as you move, and you suddenly feel warm at the realization.
when his hand reaches the handle, he pauses for a moment. you steal the opportunity before it evades you.
“my prince?” you ask hesitantly.
“yes?”
is that… eagerness? in his voice? you blink, trying to decide if your mind is deceiving you. why would a prince be eager to speak with you, anyhow?
“can i ask for your name? i apologize again, i… i am having trouble remembering.”
the prince looks at you again, but it is unlike the other glances and gazes from just now. he stares intensely, his purple eyes boring through you, the feeling almost hot and fierce.
“maekar,” he says, though the word is strained. “i am maekar.”
oh. yes, you think, that makes sense. the one from the song.
“thank you, prince maekar.”
you turn away, staring out the window of this strange room for a moment. you hear the prince sigh, and then he opens the door and steps outside.
once the door is shut, maekar waits. his head rushes with thoughts that he does not want to think about, and questions that he does not have answers for.
a servant boy walks towards him, no doubt to ask what he requires, but maekar has just lost the last of what remained of his patience.
“get the fucking maester,” he snaps, and the servant almost flinches.
“right away, your grace,” the boys, before hesitating for a moment. “-and what should i tell him?”
“tell him,” maekar begins, before pausing for a moment. he takes a deep breath. “that my wife is awake. and that she does know who i am or where she is.”
The lords of the Seven Kingdoms had long memories, and pride that clung even longer.
Prince Maekar learned that slowly, one letter at a time. One refusal after another, each dressed in courtesy and sealed with finality. House Tarly sent a courteous refusal, all neat phrases and careful distance. House Rowan said nothing for three months, then finally replied with a claim that their daughter had been promised already. The lie was thin enough to show through the parchment. House Baratheon sent condolences. Condolences, as if a death had occurred instead of a proposal. House Hightower did not answer at all, and Maekar did not press them. Smaller houses followed suit, each with their own reason. A daughter too frail, a daughter already in love, a daughter too young, too old, too recently in mourning.
The reasons piled up, one over the other, until they blurred together.
A year had passed since Ashford Meadow. A year since his son dragged that puppeteer girl through the dirt by her hair and broke her finger. Since he called for a Trial of Seven over an insult most men would have swallowed with their wine and forgotten by sunrise. A year since Maekar stood in the field with a hammer in his hand and felt the weight of his own name shift into something people spoke of carefully, if they spoke of it at all.
Men who had never stood near a tourney field could recount it with certainty, as though they had been there themselves. They told it with small changes, but the shape remained. A prince undone in public.
He had tried threatening Aerion with sending him away, exile him to Lys, he wouldn’t be the last Targaryen to do so. He had tried locking him down. He had tried shame. But after all that, Aerion didn’t even flinch, he endured it too easily, quiet in a way that made Maekar uneasy.
So now he had turned to marriage.
At last, Maekar wrote to Dorne. Your father was not the ruling prince, but from Lord Orran Martell, his brother. Close enough to matter, far enough to manoeuvre. When the letter reached him, he read it once, then again, then a third time, slower. Only then did he allow himself a smile.
The carriage carried the scent of cedar and dust, and the road behind you stretched longer with each turn of the wheels.
Your father had spoken plainly. No softening, no illusions. He laid out the value of the match, the reach it offered, the place it would secure. He spoke as he would to a man he trusted with consequence. That was his way of showing regard.
He did not pretend the groom was good. He did not ask you to pretend either.
You are strong enough for this, he had said. I would not send you otherwise.
He had expected hesitation, perhaps fear, but he had not found it.
You watched the land shift through the narrow window, red stone fading into green, dry air thickening with damp. The world changing in slow increments.
You turned the name over again and again, testing it.
Aerion Brightflame.
You had heard the Ashford story, of course, everyone had. The mercy of the hedge knight that some called wisdom and others called weakness. What stayed with you was not the cruelty itself, cruelty was common enough among men with power and power made men careless with other people.
I am no man, he had reportedly said. I am a dragon.
You found this almost amusing.
Not because it was foolish, though it was. Because it told you something useful. A man who believed himself a dragon was a man who had built his entire self upon a story. And stories had seams, they could be read, they could, if one were careful, be rewritten.
Maekar thought he was sending you to tame his son. You could feel it in the careful tone of his words, you could feel the hope through the careful diplomacy of his acceptance letter, which your father had allowed you to read. The prince wanted a strong wife for his son. A steady hand. Something that might anchor Aerion to the earth before he burned everything around him.
But you intended to do something more interesting than that.
The journey north gave you time, and you used it well. The rhythm of the road settled into your bones, wheels creaking, hooves striking dirt, the quiet murmur of voices beyond the curtains. Long hours where nothing changed except the light.
You let your thoughts arrange themselves without forcing them. That was how it always worked best. Piece by piece.
By the time you reached the Crownlands, the structure of your plan had taken shape. You named it: Seven Steps to Tame a Beast.
King's Landing announced itself in smell before sight, woodsmoke, salt, something sour beneath both. Too many people, too little space, all of it pressed together and left to simmer. The Red Keep rose above it all, pale stone against a dull sky. It looked less like a crown and more like something grown in the wrong place.
The reception was brief, formal and efficient.
Maekar received you himself. He stood solid and broad, the years written into his face in hard lines. His hair had gone mostly to silver. His eyes were sharp, searching, measuring. You held his gaze just long enough, then gave him courtesy and nothing more.
Aerion was not there, you noticed.
STEPT 1. Keep Your Distance from the Wild.
A wild creature does not welcome approach. Every movement is weighed, every sound judged. You do not step into its space uninvited. You do not reach. You watch. You learn the rhythm first. Where it rests. What startles it. What draws its attention and what it ignores. Rush, and it turns. Wait, and it forgets you are there.
You did not seek Aerion in those first days, even if it took some effort.
There were servants willing to arrange a meeting. Courtiers who offered, curiosity thinly veiled. You declined each time, politely, with reasons that could not be pressed. Fatigue, settling in, amild headache.
In truth, you were mapping him. You began where he could not avoid being seen.
Meals.
He sat very straight, almost too straight, not relaxed. Every movement placed with care, hands set just so. Shoulders squared. The stillness was deliberate, the kind that came from control, not comfort. He ate little. Drank more than he should, though he kept it from showing. His eyes moved often. Not restless. A sweep, measured, taking stock of the room without drawing attention to it. He noted everything.
He laughed twice in three days, both times it was wrong. Too quick, it stopped at his mouth and went no further. The men around him laughed as well, they always did. You watched them more than him in those moments. Watched how easily they bent to it. Mirrors, all of them, they gave him back what he wanted to see.
On the second day, a steward stumbled over a name. A small mistake, barely worth notice. But Aerion noticed. His jaw tightened, just once. A brief pause before he spoke, a fraction longer than natural. Then it passed, the steward went on, unaware. You did not miss it, he disliked error. Disliked imprecision. The world, in his mind, should hold its shape. When it did not, something in him bristled.
On the third day, there was a gathering. Music, wine, low voices. People playing at ease.
You took a place near the edge, beside a column. Your handmaid stood with you, quiet, unobtrusive. You spoke when required, smiled when expected, nothing more.
Aerion crossed the room twice. The first time, he did not look at you. The second time, he did. A brief glance, flat and measuring. The kind given to something not yet worth attention. You were already looking elsewhere when it happened. Your focus set just past him, as though he were incidental.
Still, you saw enough. The slight tension at his mouth, the way his gaze held for a breath, then moved on. He knew you were there. Of course he did, and he was not interested.
Good.
Interest that comes too easily is useless. It has no weight; it does not last. Curiosity had to be earned.
That night, you sat by the window and let the city settle into silence beneath you.
He was proud, that was obvious, but there was something under it. Control, carefully maintained. He was not as unrestrained as the stories suggested. It meant the outbursts were not constant. They built. Pressure, then release.
He was intelligent. More than most around him allowed. That kind of mind, left without challenge, turns inward. Finds its own amusements, not always good ones. He had been told he was exceptional for too long. Ordinary things no longer held him.
Boredom, then. Boredom as a spark.
You suspected he had never been met with anything real. Only reflections and performance. That would have to change. You drew your braid over your shoulder, thinking.
You were not satisfied. You never were, this early. But you understood the ground beneath your feet now. Where it dipped, where it held. You had not spoken to him yet; you had barely shared a room. And still, you were closer than anyone here knew.
The ceremony took place at dawn.
Black candles burned low, their smoke thick and sweet, curling into the corners of the chamber. The maester spoke in High Valyrian, his voice steady as he shaped words that had existed long before the Conquest. Pale light slipped through a narrow window, thin and colourless. Maekar stood off to the side, his posture rigid, his expression set in that familiar way of a man who no longer expected much in return for doing what was required.
Aerion arrived on time.
He was dressed as expected, red and black, pale hair brushed to the side. He took his place beside you without hesitation, carrying himself like a man waiting out an obligation he could not avoid. He did not fidget; he was too controlled to do so. Instead, he held still, composed to the point of absence, his attention drifting toward the candles now and then as if searching for something that was not there.
When the maester's words required it, he took your hand. His grip was exact, dry and cold. It lingered only as long as custom demanded, then released at once, as if he had touched something hot and withdrawn before the burn could catch.
You kept your gaze forward and before you let your mind move forward, it was over.
The feast was small and slightly mournful. The kind of gathering where people ate and spoke because it was expected, not because they wished to. The food was well prepared, the wine even more so. Conversation moved carefully, never quite settling.
You were seated beside Aerion.
He spent the early portion of the meal demonstrating how effortlessly he could ignore you. He spoke across you, around you, treating the space you occupied as if it had always been empty. It was not for your benefit, it was for the others, for himself, for the quiet need to show that nothing had changed.
During the second course, he turned his head slightly in your direction, just enough to acknowledge you without granting you the full courtesy of attention.
"You are quieter than I expected. I was told Dornish women always had opinions about everything."
It was not the sharpest thing he could have said. You suspected he was holding the sharper things in reserve, testing whether blunt instruments would serve before reaching for finer ones. You let your fingers rest on the stem of your cup before answering.
"We do," you said. "We simply learn early which conversations are worth having."
Then you returned to your plate.
The silence stretched. You could feel it tighten, like cloth pulled just a little too far. You did not look at him; you did not need to. Beside you, he drank, then turned away, letting the moment dissolve.
Across the table, Maekar was watching. When the music began, it was him who moved first. You saw the decision before he acted. He crossed the room with purpose and spoke low to Aerion. You did not hear the words, but you did not need to. There was no request in the exchange.
Aerion turned toward you. He extended his hand with slow precision, making absolutely certain that every person in the room understood this was costing him something.
"Will you honour me, dear wife," he said, the words shaped correctly, the tone less so.
You placed your hand in his.
The floor was not crowded. The other couples kept their distance, leaving a space around you that felt exposed rather than open. He danced well, you noted without surprise, he had been trained to do everything.
This close, you could see the pale sweep of his eyelashes, lighter than his hair, catching the faint light when he blinked. The depth of his lilac eyes was clearer up close, not just colour but something layered beneath it. He had two scars under his cheek, but his skin still looked almost unreal in its smoothness.
His hand at your waist was the same as his grip during the ceremony, measured, controlled, with no warmth.
“Let us understand one another,” he said, his voice low enough to remain private, though there was nothing intimate in it. "I did not want this. I want you to know that I know what my father intends by it, and I want you to know that it will not work."
You let the music carry you through a turn before answering.
“I know you did not want it," you said. "I did not ask for your wanting. I asked for nothing at all, if you recall.”
"You will want things eventually. All wives do."
"Perhaps." You met his gaze briefly, then let it drift past him. "But I did not come here to want things from you, Aerion. I came because the arrangement was made, and I do not refuse an arrangement simply because it is inconvenient."
His hand tightened slightly at your waist, not painfully, but enough to notice.
"You think you can manage me." he said almost curious.
"I think, that they have been trying to manage you your whole life." you said. "And it has not served you much. I am not interested in managing you. I am interested in being your wife. That means I will keep this household in order, I will hold my place properly, and I will do what is required of me. Whether you choose to be part of that is yours to decide."
Another turn as the music continued.
"But I will be here," you added, quieter now. "That part is not negotiable."
He said nothing after that, but you did not mistake the silence for agreement.
Your chambers had been prepared with careful attention as expected. The fire lit, the bed done, everything arranged with quiet precision. You dressed for the night and sat near the hearth with a book open in your lap, though you were not reading.
You waited but he did not come.
The fire burned low. The sounds of the city shifted beyond the walls, settling into the deeper quiet of night. Somewhere, the watch called the hour and you closed the book.
You were not offended; you were not disappointed. You had already known Aerion would rather spend his wedding night in a brothel.
You extinguished the candle by the window and watched the room fall into shadow.
STEPT 2. Become a Familiar Shape.
Constant presence, always at the same distance, without sudden change. Given time, you stop being something to watch for. You become part of the world itself.
In the days that followed, you made yourself ordinary. It took more care than it appeared. True ordinariness had to be consistent. Too much absence would be noticed. Too much presence would draw the eye. You chose your places and kept to them. The great hall in the morning, a corridor near the training yard in the afternoon, a chair by the window in the library, once, where you read for two hours without lifting your head when he entered.
You did not seek him out and you did not avoid him. You were simply there. Aerion noticed.
At first, it was nothing clear. A pause when he entered a room and found you already in it. A shift in his attention, brief and controlled. The smallest recalculation. He had expected something from you. You could see it in what he did not find. No coldness, no wounded pride, no performance at all.
You gave him nothing to work with. Three days after the wedding, he passed you on the library and spoke to you for the first time since the feast.
“I trust you slept well. I confess I cannot say the same for the woman I spent the night with. She complained I kept her awake until dawn.”
You stopped reading and looked up at him.
“Kept her awake, or kept her waiting?” you asked, tilting your head slightly. “There is a difference, I find, between a man who exhausts a woman and a man who simply prevents her from sleeping. One leaves her satisfied. The other leaves her staring at the ceiling." A brief pause. “From what I have heard of you, I suspect she saw rather more of the ceiling than she would have liked.”
You walked away with your book before he could answer.
You had learned early that a voice could betray a person faster than any blade. Most people used it badly. They made it loud when they wanted to be heard, sharpened it when they wanted to cut. They filled it with weight and urgency, as if force alone could make something true. Your father had taught you otherwise. In his solar, he spoke with the same measured evenness whether he was discussing grain yields or deciding a man's fate. A voice that only rises when threatened, he had told you once, is a voice that teaches people when you can be threatened.
You remembered that.
STEP 3. Let It Hear You Before It Sees You.
A calm voice, used often, without command. No edge to it, no sudden movement tied to the sound. The creature learns the voice first, without reason to fear it. Given time, the sound settles into the background. Familiar, expected, something it turns toward without quite knowing why.
So, you began to speak.
The first time was nothing. A grey morning, the stone still holding the night’s cold. Aerion walked the corridor outside the great hall with two of his usual companions, and you were walking alone, and there was no reason to say anything, silence would have served just as well, would in fact have required less effort, but you spoke anyway.
“The easternmost courtyard is iced over this morning,” you said as you went by. “If you are riding, the south gate will be quicker.”
You did not look at him as you said it. You did not look back after.
Behind you, there was a brief silence, and then the low sound of his companions resuming their conversation. You could not tell if he had answered, it did not matter. The point was the sound itself, your voice, steady, offering something useful and nothing more, left behind in his morning like a small, ordinary fact.
You did this again two days later. And again, after that.
An observation about the kitchens. A remark about a particular courier who had been delayed. Once, on the stairs, a quiet comment about a book you carried, spoken into the space without asking for anything in return.
He said nothing the first time. The second time, he gave you a look, the same one you had seen before, sharp and narrow, weighing, deciding whether what it saw was worth the trouble of attention. The third time, he answered, briefly, as if the words had slipped out before he could stop them.
You counted this as exactly what it was, progress.
The friction came eventually. Midday meal, smaller than the evening gatherings, the kind where people allowed themselves to speak a little more freely. You were seated across from Aerion rather than beside him, which meant you had the less comfortable position of being visible to him rather than adjacent.
He had been in a particular mood all morning. You had seen it earlier, out in the courtyard. A tightness in the way he held himself, a coiled irritation that suggested some earlier conversation had not gone as he'd wished. He kept it contained, but it showed in small places. The set of his shoulders, the way his gaze lingered a fraction too long.
Halfway through the meal, he looked at you directly.
“I saw you speaking with the hedge knight this morning. The boy could barely look at you.”
“Ser Duncan,” You corrected, “Could barely look at anyone,” you said. “He has learned that drawing attention to himself is dangerous. A useful instinct, when one lives in a dangerous environment.”
Around the table, the shift was immediate. Eyes moved away, shoulders shifted, someone found their cup suddenly very interesting. No one wanted to be part of whatever this was.
Aerion's mouth curved, but not warmly.
“You say that as an observation. I wonder if you mean it as a criticism.”
“I mean it as neither.” You set down your knife. “A knight who flinches is a knight who has learned what happens when he does not. That tells you something about where he lives.” You looked at him steadily. “The more interesting question is what it tells you about yourself.”
“I am not in the habit of concerning myself with knights anymore.”
“No,” you said. “But you might concern yourself with the fact that a man who fears you will serve you only as long as he must. Fear is a short leash, and the moment it slackens, the moment you turn your back, a frightened man will not think of loyalty. He will think of himself.” You picked up your knife again. "Respect holds longer. It is less satisfying, I imagine, but considerably more reliable."
The table was very quiet.
Aerion's expression did not change, which was its own kind of change, in the vocabulary you had spent weeks building. The muscles around his jaw held with a precision that was not natural stillness. He was choosing his next words with more care than usual, which meant the previous ones had landed somewhere he had not expected them to reach.
“You speak as though I require your counsel,” he said almost thoughtful.
“I speak because the observation seemed worth making,” you said. “What you do with it is your own concern.”
You returned to your meal.
He said nothing more. But he did not look away for a longer moment than was comfortable, and when he finally did, it was not with a quick dismissal, it was with adjustment.
In the library, three days later, you found him already there when you arrived.
This was unusual. Aerion was not, in your observation, a man who spent mornings in libraries by preference. You entered anyways and took the chair you usually took, near the far window, which had the best light and a view of the inner yard, and opened the book you had brought.
For a time, neither of you spoke. The fire cracked softly. From outside came the steady rhythm of steel on steel, practice in the yard below.
“The Celtigar boy.”
You did not look up immediately. You marked your page, then lifted your eyes.
“The one my father is considering for a trade agreement,” he went on. “You spoke with him yesterday.”
“Briefly.” you said.
“He is not what he presents.” There was something restrained in the way he said it. Irritation, perhaps, or reluctance, as though the act of asking you something, or almost asking you something, cost him more than he was willing to fully account for.
You studied him for a moment. “No,” you agreed. “He is not. His family's debts are larger than they've admitted, and his uncle's position in the city has been weakening for two years. The trade agreement would favour him considerably more than it would favour the crown.
Aerion's eyes moved over your face, his gaze precise.
“You gathered that from a brief conversation.”
“From the conversation, and from the days before it,” you said. “People show where the pressure is, if you pay attention.”
A pause.
“My father should know,” he said.
“He should,” you agreed. “I thought you might be the appropriate person to tell him.”
You let that rest between you without elaboration, the implicit suggestion that this was a useful thing, that you were offering it to him rather than taking the credit for it, that you were treating him as someone worth offering useful things to. You did not dress it in sentiment. You did not soften it into a gesture. You simply left it there, plainly, for him to take or ignore as he chose.
He chose to take it. Not gratefully, not with any acknowledgment of the exchange's nature. He simply gave a short, almost inaudible sound of agreement and turned back to his book.
You had met, in your life, exactly three people who understood the particular discipline of the open hand.
Your father was one of them. A merchant woman in Sunspear who had built a trading empire from a single stall was another. The third was a maester who had served your household for eleven years and who had, in that time, quietly accumulated more influence over its workings than anyone with an official title. None of them had achieved what they achieved through force, or through the performance of authority. They had achieved it through the same mechanism, over and over, they gave things away, then let them go.
STEP 4. Offer Without Expectation.
Something of value left within reach, knowledge, advantage, ease. Then you step back. You do not insist. You do not demand. You do not watch too closely. The creature must come to the thing on its own terms, or the thing carries the smell of a trap. Patience here is not passive. It is the most active thing you can do, the discipline of the open hand, extended and then stilled, asking nothing, waiting without the tension of waiting.
You began small, that was where patterns took hold.
The first thing was almost accidental, simple enough to pass unnoticed.
Over weeks, you had seen how Aerion’s mornings turned. When his correspondence waited in disorder, something in him tightened. It was a small irritation, but it spread, it created a particular friction that compounded into the broader texture of his day. His steward handled it unevenly, some days careful, others careless.
You said nothing about this to anyone.
Instead, you mentioned to the steward’s assistant, a young man called Pell, anxious and observant. You mentioned once, that mornings that begin clean tend to stay that way, as though sharing a general philosophy, and then you moved on.
Next day, the letters were sorted before Aerion reached his study. You were nowhere near him when he noticed. You were in the eastern courtyard, the air sharp enough to sting your throat, walking slow circles over frost-hardened ground.
The second offering was more direct, and more deliberate.
The previous night, you had lingered in the great hall long enough to catch a conversation not meant for you. Two of Maekar’s advisors, careless in their angle, speaking of the Plumm family, a loan, a disputed inheritance, a claim that had the potential to become inconvenient for the crown if left unaddressed. The kind of thing that moved slowly until it did not.
You wrote it down, simply a single sheet of paper, placed beneath a volume you had observed Aerion taking from the library shelves twice in the past fortnight, angled just so, easily visible to someone reaching for the book.
You were gone before he arrived, you did not check if it had been taken. This was the discipline, the open hand, and then the stillness.
He found you in the corridor outside the great hall two days later. The way he approached told you enough, straight line, no hesitation, you knew the paper had been found and used.
“The Plumm family matter,” he said. “My father addressed it this morning. He mentioned information that reached him through unusual channels.”
“Did he.” you said.
“He did not know the source.” A pause. “I did.”
You met his gaze, nothing more. “Anyone listening could have heard it,” you said. “I assumed it was worth noting.”
“You assumed,” he repeated sceptical. “And the assumption led you to leave an unsigned document in a place you knew I would find it, rather than simply speaking to me, or to my father directly.”
“Speaking to your father directly would have made it mine to claim. It seemed more useful for it to be yours.” You said, you were well aware that he needed to slowly gain his father’s trusts again.
“You expect me to believe you want nothing in return.” He said.
“I expect nothing from you,” you replied. “I noticed something that seemed relevant to your interests. I noted it where you could find it. That is all.”
He studied you for a long moment, measuring again, then stepped past you without another word. You turned in the opposite direction and continued walking.
The pattern continued.
Days filled with small things, each one easy to miss on its own. A map left open to the right page before a meeting. A quiet word to a knight whose behaviour toward Aerion had been developing a particular insolence. Not a warning, only a reminder of how quickly favour could turn. The knight corrected himself. Aerion noticed the change; you were reasonably certain he had chosen not to address it directly.
During a meal he caught you refilling his cup before the servant reached it, an automatic gesture, barely conscious, and he watched your hand as you set the jug down.
“You do not behave like someone who dislikes me,” he said.
“I am not certain I dislike you,” you said, truthfully. “I have not yet seen enough of you to decide.”
“You have been living in the same castle for a month.”
“So, my husband has taken to keeping track now?” you said, a light note of teasing slipping in despite yourself. You lifted your cup and took a slow sip, letting the taste of the wine linger as a small, knowing smile curved at the corner of your mouth.
He exhaled through his nose, not quite a scoff he meant to share. He didn’t answer. His gaze lingered, a fraction too long to be careless, as if he were trying to smooth over something that had caught him off guard. There was a faint tension in his face, in the set of his jaw and the stillness of his shoulders, the sort of thing that suggested he was trying very hard not to let any hint of embarrassment show.
Later you noticed he took the map you left on his desk. Maekar’s manner afterward told you enough, less strain and more thought behind his words when he spoke to his son. Aerion did not mention it and you did not either.
The absence of acknowledgment said what it needed to. He would take what was useful, he would not name the source. Pride held that line, but still, he had used it. He had accepted the offering, even reluctantly, even silently. That mattered more.
Which meant the distance was slowly shrinking.
He came to your chambers late on a Thursday, when the castle had settled into its quieter rhythm and the corridors carried only the distant steps of the watch.
You sat at your vanity, drawing the brush through your hair in slow, even strokes, winding you down toward sleep. Your sleeping gown was light, meant for the warmth of the room and the privacy of it, nothing more. Your hair hung loose, longer than it appeared when pinned, falling across your shoulders in a way that belonged to a version of yourself you did not generally allow the castle to see.
The door opened without warning, but you did not turn.
You watched him through the mirror instead. It gave you a clearer view than facing him outright. He stepped inside, then paused when he saw you, or the version of you caught in the glass. Something flickered across his face, quick and unguarded, before he shut it down.
You kept brushing your hair.
He crossed the room at an unhurried pace. No sudden movement, no sign of haste, still, there was weight in it. He stopped behind your chair and rested both hands on its back. In the mirror, his eyes met yours directly, without the usual angle or distance.
You held his gaze and continued the brush stroke to its end.
The silence lasted several seconds. In the mirror you watched him watching you. The loose hair, the gown, the particular version of you that belonged to this room and this hour, and you watched him notice that he was watching, and tighten slightly around it.
“I have been really patient with you,” he said at last, his voice low. “I have watched you move through this household for weeks. The documents, the steward, the arrangements that appear before I ask for them.” A pause. “No one does this without a ledger. Show me yours.”
“I told you I keep no ledger,” you said.
“Everyone keeps a ledger.” The words came sharper now. “Whether they admit it or not.”
You set the brush down on the vanity and folded your hands in your lap, and looked at his reflection. The candle shifted, and for a moment the light caught him differently in the mirror. The closeness of him. The space between you that had narrowed without either of you naming it.
“You are angry,” you said. “Not because you think I want something from you. You are angry because you cannot determine what it is, and that distinction is troubling you more than you would like to admit.”
His grip tightened slightly on the chair, his frown deepened. “Do not tell me what troubles me.”
“Then tell me yourself.” You said. “You came here and opened that door without knocking. If you have something to say, say it plainly.”
“What you have offered me,” he said, and this time the control thinned, sharpened into something colder, “is the manner of a woman who wants something. The oldest trick there is. Every woman I have met wanted things. Every woman in this castle wants things. You-” and here something almost contemptuous entered his voice, directed less at you than at his own inability to solve you “-stand there with your quiet gestures and your useful information and expect me to believe it costs you nothing, that you want nothing from me.”
“I told you I expect nothing from you,” you said, for the second time in your acquaintance “Which is not the same as wanting nothing.”
His eyes narrowed slightly. For a moment, his gaze dipped, catching on the fall of your hair over your shoulder, the line of your neck in the candlelight, before returning to your reflection with more force than before.
“Then what do you want,” he said lowly, moving a strand of your hair behind your ear.
You watched him for a moment. The tension in his shoulders. The way he held himself still, as if movement might betray him. The closeness of him, the warmth of it at your back.
“To see you for what you truly are,” you said, now turning around to look up at him. “When no one is performing fear at you.”
The room went quiet.
He did not move at once. His hands remained on the chair, though you felt the subtle shift in them, the restraint in it. His breathing changed, barely, but enough to notice. His gaze stayed on yours, searching now in a way it had not before.
Then he straightened. His hands lifted from the chair with care, as if he had to think about the motion before making it. He held your gaze for a moment longer, something unreadable passing through it. Then he turned and left.
The door closed with a loud thud behind him.
You looked back at your reflection in the glass. The room holding a trace of him still, something unsettled in the air. You reached for the brush and finished what you had started.
A man like Aerion did not adjust. He did not take pressure and reshape himself around it. His world ran on confirmation, on power answered with submission, on a rhythm that reassured him of his place in it. You had been interfering with that rhythm since the morning you arrived. Quietly, consistently, without giving him anything he knew how to answer.
A disruption like that never passed without consequence.
STEP 5. Survive the First Test of Teeth.
Before any bond forms, there is a test. A feint of violence, a warning, a measure of what you are made of. Not always meant to hurt, but whether to see of you will break or bite back. If you do, is over.
You held this thought in the quiet of your morning as you dressed carefully and went about your day.
The argument started in the corridor outside his study, late in the afternoon, when the light came through the western windows, catching dust in the air, turning it gold. You had passed him with the usual moderate acknowledgment, not ignoring him, not seeking him, the same distance you had maintained for weeks, and he had stopped walking.
“You were in my father's solar this morning,” he said.
“I was,” you said. “He asked my opinion on a correspondence from the Arbor.”
“He asked your opinion on that matter,” Something tightened in his face. “Instead of asking me?”
“He did.”
“You have been very busy these days,” he said, “Making yourself useful, to my father, to every corner of this household except the one that is actually your concern.”
“You are my concern,” you said. “Which is precisely why I do not sit waiting for you to need something."
“I do not need anything from you.”
“No,” you agreed. “You have made that very clear last time we discussed. And yet here we are, having this conversation, which you initiated.”
He turned and walked into his study. Not an invitation, but not a dismissal either, and you followed because the conversation was unfinished.
“You think you are very clever,” he said, moving behind his desk, putting wood and distance between you, like it might help him sort what he could not name.
“I think I am.” you said defiantly.
“You think,” he said, and the voice had dropped into its most dangerous register. “That you can arrange yourself into something that suits you, move pieces across a board you were not invited to play on, smile at my father in his solar, look at me like that, and that none of it will have a cost.”
“I have never believed anything is without cost.” you said.
“Then if you are so clever, you should have calculated more carefully.” He stepped past you, toward the door. “You will remain in this room until I say otherwise.” The words came out with anger and the door shut behind him.
You stood in the centre of the room for a moment. Then you moved to his chair, behind his desk, and sat in it, and looked at the documents arranged across the surface, and began, with the unhurried attention, to read them.
Three days later, in the great hall. You had not sought Ser Duncan out specifically. You had spoken with him before, briefly, like with most people in the Keep, and found him to be earnest, possessing more native intelligence than his manner suggested. He was easy to be around. You were in the middle of an unremarkable conversation about the road conditions north of King's Landing, he had travelled them recently, and you had asked a practical question. You felt the shift before you saw him.
A hand settled at your waist. Firm, claiming, meant to be seen, his fingers pressing into the fabric of your dress. Ser Duncan's expression went still, not quite discomfort and not quite confusion.
“My wife,” Aerion said. “I was looking for you.”
Duncan inclined his head and stepped back. You kept your expression exactly as it had been. Aerion’s gaze lingered on you, then flicked once toward the knight, measuring, assembling something he did not like. The hall had gone quiet.
“Is this a game to you,” he said under his breath. An accusation that had the shape of a question.
“No,” you said.
“Then what is it.” He moved in front of you. “What are you doing with the hedge knight-” He stopped, jaw tightening. “Are you provoking me, deliberately.”
“I was having a conversation about road conditions,”
“Do not.” His voice dropped further. “Do not use that voice with me.”
“Which voice would you prefer then? One where I lie?”
“You know,” he said quietly, to you, only to you. “What he did to me.”
“I know what happened at Ashford,” you said, equally quietly. “As does most of the kingdom-”
The struck came fast. Mid-sentence, mid-breath, in front of the hall and the fire and Ser Duncan's suddenly rigid stillness. The back of his hand across your cheek with a force that turned your head and produced a sound that silenced the nearest conversations.
You straightened. You did not touch your face. You did not look at Duncan, who you could feel in your peripheral vision. You looked at Aerion, directly, steadily, with the same expression you had worn in the study, and you said nothing at all.
His jaw was tight and the hall was watching it all. He gripped your wrist, hard, the mark already beginning, and turned toward the corridor, and you went with him because the scene that would result from not going would cost you more.
In your chambers, he released you without a word and left. The door shut and the lock clicked.
You sat by the window. The light had shifted, pale now, moving slowly across the stone. You looked at your wrist, at the faint marks forming. You were not afraid and you were not angry, so you waited with patience.
Maekar went to Aerion that same evening, of course he did. No one told you outright, but you knew before a word reached you. The servant who came to open your chamber door avoided your eyes, her hands slower than usual on the latch. Raised voices, you guessed. Maekar did not shout often, but when he did, it carried. Aerion would have been made to stand there and take it. For the insult. For making a spectacle of his own wife. For stepping, once again, where he had been warned not to. You could almost hear it. The sharp edge of Maekar’s restraint, the threat beneath it.
You let out a slow breath. This would not help. It would tighten something in Aerion, push him further into himself before it loosened anything at all.
He did not return that night, or the next.
On the third, you woke to the sound of your door.
The room was dark, the fire long since reduced to coals and a faint red glow. The kind of hour when even the castle seemed to pause, caught between one watch and the next. You lay still for a moment, listening to the sounds that followed the door, unsteady footsteps, the sounds of a man navigating a familiar space with less precision than usual.
You had smelled the wine, thick and sour on the air, and something else beneath it, cheap perfume and sweat. You had passed enough doorways in this city to know it came from a brothel.
He moved through the dark toward the bed with care that bordered on effort. Not quite stumbling, but close. You lay still with your eyes not quite closed and your breathing steady and you watched him through your lashes.
He stopped at the bedside. For a moment, he only looked at you.
He was less put together than you had ever seen him, his hair dishevelled, collar open, his clothes carrying the evidence of hours spent in places this castle was not and had not bothered to hide it well. His gaze moved over you, slower than usual, lingering in places he would have ignored in daylight. There was anger in it. That much you knew. But there was something else tangled into it, something the drink had loosened.
Then his hand shot out and closed around your throat.
The force of it drove the breath from you before you could think. His grip was sure, fingers settling with a familiarity that made it worse. The ceiling tilted as your body reacted, instinct rising fast and sharp. His face was above yours, close, and it was not the face of a man in full command of himself. His eyes were bright, unfocused in a way that had nothing to do with the dark. His grip tightened.
You felt the tightness clearly, the pressure at your windpipe, the pulse hammering under his hand. The animal instinct toward struggle that rose in you like a tide and that you identified and still you did not move.
And then, quietly, helplessly, from somewhere underneath the shock and the constriction and the absolute clarity of your own danger, you laughed. Not loudly. Not mockingly. Not shaped for him, not meant for anything at all. It simply came, as if your body had found something in the moment that did not fit the rest of it. Simply absurd and honest and almost intimate in its desperation.
The sound of it, barely audible, stopped him completely.
His hand did not leave your throat, but it stopped tightening. His expression shifted, confusion cutting through whatever had driven him here.
“What are you-” he said. It came out raw, his voice rough, stripped of its usual control. “What are you doing, what are you doing to me.”
You said nothing. You held his eyes in the dark and did not struggle, you did not look away.
“I hate you,” he said. The words came out flat, almost tired, like a confession.“I hate what you do. I hate that I cannot-.” His voice broke across the unfinished sentence. “I cannot find the edges of you. I cannot-.”
His grip loosened, fractionally, and then fractionally more.
Something in his face gave way. The control slipped, not all at once, but enough. His shoulders dipped, the tension draining in uneven pieces. Something beneath the surface rising without permission. His forehead dropped, his weight shifted, and then, with the slow, helpless gravity of exhaustion, he leaned against your chest, his hands still loosely at your throat, his body giving what his pride would not. Choked sobs forming on the back of his throat as his shoulders trembled.
You lay still beneath him. The room held its silence. No voices in the corridor, no movement beyond the walls. Only the weight of him, and the strange, unguarded vulnerability he had not allowed himself before.
Carefully, you lifted your hand. Slow and measured. The way one moves around something that might startle.
He felt the motion before you completed it.
He pulled back at once. Your hand knocked aside, not gently, but not the way he had struck you before either, with less force and more reflex. He was off the bed and standing before you had fully processed the movement, and the reassembly was happening in real time, you could watch it, the walls going up stone by stone, the expression reorganizing, the posture recovering its usual architecture.
He did not look at you as he wiped his tears with the back of his hand, and left.
You lay in the dark for a long time after the door closed. Your throat ached. When you touched it, you could feel where his fingers had pressed, the marks already forming under the skin. You let your hand fall back to the bed. You had survived the teeth.
There is a particular kind of silence that follows a storm.
It is not peace, peace settles. This waits, it hangs over what is left, thin and watchful, as if the ground itself is deciding whether anything will take root again. You lived in that silence for six days. You ate in it, walked the corridors in it, spoke when required and otherwise let it sit around you, like weather that refused to move on.
Aerion was never where you were. Not once, not even by accident.
You noticed the pattern the way you noticed everything else. He left rooms when you entered them, not with obvious avoidance, but with quiet efficiency, but avoiding something nonetheless, something that he had not yet decided how to face. The corridors he had habitually used became corridors he did not use. The hours he had kept became hours he abandoned.
Like he was afraid of you. Not in the way people feared harm. In the way they feared being seen too clearly.
STEP 6. Allow Contact on Its Terms.
The first touch is not taken, it is allowed. A still hand. No pressure. No attempt to hold or redirect or claim. The creature must choose the contact, or the contact means nothing. It is the most fragile moment in the entire sequence the one where everything that has been built can collapse in a single wrong movement. Patience here is not strategy. It is something closer to faith, the belief that what has been established is enough to bear weight, if the weight is placed gently enough.
You dressed with care that seventh night, with a specific kind of nightgown your hair loose again, and went to him.
His chambers were deeper in the keep than yours, further from the outer walls, further from the sounds of the city, the kind of rooms that held heat and shadow in equal measure. The door was heavy. The light beneath it was the particular amber of firelight rather than candle, which meant he was awake and the hour was not the reason.
You did not knock.
The room was larger than you had expected, and sparser. There were maps on one wall, detailed ones, and a writing table covered with papers that had the disordered quality of work abandoned mid-thought. A shelf of books, several displaced at a specific angle with care. On a low table near the window, a cup and a flagon, mostly empty. The fire was high, built up more than the room's warmth required, the kind of fire you build when you want something to look at.
He was standing before it.
He turned when you entered, and the firelight caught his face in a way that daylight had never been permitted to. His eyes carried the particular redness that came not from drink but from something that had happened before the drink. His shoulders, which were always exact, held themselves with an effortful maintenance, but it took effort to keep it that way.
You closed the door behind you. The latch caught with a sound that was very small in the quiet.
“You should not be here,” he said.
“Probably,” you agreed. You did not move further into the room yet. You stood near the door and looked at him across the firelit space between you and said “What is wrong.”
“Nothing that concerns you.” He turned back to the fire. The set of his shoulders said the conversation was over, but the fact that he had not told you to leave said something else.
You crossed the room.
Slowly, without purpose written into the movement. You stopped beside him. Not close enough to require acknowledgment, not far enough to be a withdrawal, and you looked at the fire.
Neither of you spoke.
The fire crackled, wood settled with a low crack, and you waited.
A minute passed, then another. The fire shifted, settling lower in the grate, and in the new configuration of light you saw it, brief, barely visible. A single track of tears, catching firelight, at the corner of his jaw.
You did not look at it directly.
“Aerion,” you said.
“My father-.” he began, and then stopped, like the words had caught on something.
You let the silence hold.
“He saw,” he said with flatness. “The marks on your neck. He saw them. Someone spoke of what happened at the hall too.” His jaw tightened. “He made himself very clear.”
“How clear,” you said.
“In all his wisdom, has threatened me, again, to send me into exile.” The word sat between you. Heavy enough on its own. “He called it a last chance. He has called it that before.” Something crossed his voice that was not quite bitterness. “The words had begun to lose their meaning, but it felt too serious now”
You turned to look at him then.
He was still facing the fire, but the profile of him had changed. The structure of his expression had begun to crack. Not enough for others to notice but enough for you. He looked, in the firelight, less like the man who had locked you in his study and struck you in the great hall and more like something earlier than that, rawer and less certain and considerably more alone.
You reached out. Slowly, with the deliberateness you had promised yourself, no force, no urgency, no claim. Your hand found his and held it with the lightness of something offered rather than taken.
He looked down at it.
“I should have covered the marks better,” you said. “I misjudged the consequence. That was my error, and I am sorry for it.”
“That is not-.” He stopped; his hand had not moved. “That is not what this is about.”
And he pulled away fast. Almost startled by it. With the sudden, electric motion of something that has allowed contact and immediately regretted the allowing. He stepped back, something sharp and unsteady in his eyes.
“Do not,” he said, and the word came out wrong, cracked across the middle of it. “Do not do that. Do not stand there and apologize and take my hand and look at me like-.” He stopped again, breath uneven. “Like there is something worth-.” He stopped again. His hands had closed into fists at his sides and he was breathing with effort. “You do not know what I am.”
“I know what you have done,” you said.
“Then you know enough.” He turned away. “You know I hurt people. You know I cannot-.” His voice fractured. He pressed on through it. “I cannot stop myself… there is something wrong with me. There has always been something wrong with me and everyone who has come close enough to see it leaves or breaks. And you are here, in this room, at this hour, and I do not-.” He stopped.
The fire was the only sound.
“I am a beast,” he said, very quietly. Tears running free down his cheeks. “That is what I am. That is all I am.”
You looked at him for a long moment.
“You are a man,” you said, “who has been told a story about himself for so long that he has stopped questioning whether it is the only story available.”
“It is not a story. It is evidence of everything I have done.”
“Evidence can be read in more than one direction,” you said.
“Do not make me into something I am not.”
“I am not making you into anything.” You held his gaze. “I am telling you that what you are is not to be fixed. That the thing you have been, it is not the only version of you that exists. And that-.” You paused, because the next words required accuracy, and accuracy required care. “You matter to me. Not the prince, not the name. You. What is underneath all of this. That matters to me.”
The room was absolutely still.
He looked at you with an expression you had no entry for in the vocabulary you had built of him, something unguarded, almost frightened, like he has been handed something he does not know how to hold and is not certain he can afford to drop.
Then something gave way.
Not loudly. Not all at once. His breath shifted. His shoulders dropped. Whatever he had been holding together slipped. His breathing changed. You did not move toward him, but you did not need to.
He crossed the remaining distance himself without thinking about it, and then his forehead was against your shoulder and his hands were at your sides without grip, without force, simply present, and he was not making a sound but you could feel the shaking of him and the wetness against the fabric of your nightgown and the weight of him.
You stood very still.
You did not put your arms around him. You did not make any movement that could be felt as claiming. You simply held yourself and let him use it, and the fire burned lower as he came apart quietly against your shoulder without asking permission and without being asked to stop.
You did not know how long it lasted. Long enough.
You raised your hand slowly, slowly enough that he could have pulled away again, enough to be refused, and brought your fingers to his hair.
It was shorter than it looked. Silver-pale and fine, the kind of hair that carried light rather than colour, and beneath your fingertips it was softer than you had anticipated. You drew your hand through it once, carefully, from the crown of his head down to the nape of his neck, where the hair ended and the skin began, warm and taut over the column of his spine.
He did not move away.
He leans into your touch involuntarily, as if starved for contact. His eyes flutter shut, a shudder running through him at the simple gesture. It's a chink in his armour, a crack in the façade he has built around himself. He hates how good it feels, how desperately he craves your gentleness, like something that had been starved for so long it had forgotten the word for hunger until the smell of food arrived. He hates that it's you, a woman he has dismissed as a nuisance, a distraction.
You kept your hand still at the nape of his neck and waited until the tension in him eased, just a little, then you took his hand. He did not resist the guiding.
That told you more than anything else had. Aerion Brightflame, who resisted everything, who turned even small things into contests, let himself be guided across the room, no argument, no pause. Just the quiet, spent compliance of someone who had nothing left to push with.
You lay down and he lay beside you.
For a moment he remained on his back, staring upward, and you could feel the effort in him, his composure still running even now, still attempting to impose order on something that had moved past the reach of order.
Then, slowly, as if testing each inch of the movement, allowing himself permission one fraction at a time, he moved closer. His head found your chest. His arms came around your waist, and the grip that followed was not gentle exactly, it had too much need in it for gentleness, but it was not aggression either, it was anchoring.
“Don't mistake this for weakness,” he muttered, eyes fixed somewhere above you, studying something very far away. “Or tenderness.” A pause. “I merely refuse to let my father's words haunt me alone tonight.”
“All right,” you said.
You brought one hand up to his hair again. The same movement, slow, unhurried, from crown to nape and back, repeated with the consistency of something that asked nothing in return. Your other hand rested against his back, barely any pressure at all.
The fire had burned low and the room was mostly shadow.
“If you much as breathe a word of this to anyone,” he murmured into your chest, his voice rough but stripped of its usual edge, “I'll deny it until my last breath.” His arms tightened slightly, involuntarily. “Stay with me tonight… please.”
“I'm not going anywhere,” you said.
As the night went on, Aerion slowly succumbed to sleep. Something about being held, about your gentle touch, brought a peace he had rarely known. He did not dream of dragons or conquests, for once. His sleep was free of the constant restlessness that usually plagued him. He burrowed into your chest, unconsciously seeking more of your warmth, of your presence.
You lay awake longer than he did. Not from discomfort, too much to process, lying in the dark with their thoughts arranged in rows like objects after a flood.
His breathing had changed, his weight against you had changed. The man who had come apart was now simply sleeping. With his face against your chest and his silver hair tickling your collarbone and his arms loosely maintaining their hold even in sleep, the grip eased to something that felt closer to a choice rather than necessity.
You ran your hand through his hair one more time, very slowly. He made a small sound, low and entirely unconscious, and pressed closer.
You looked at the ceiling for a long time and eventually, sleep took you too.
The room was in the grey-dark of late night, not yet dawn, but the black had thinned to something softer. His breathing had changed again; he was watching you.
His breath caught as he took in the sight of you, soft, vulnerable, beautiful in the unguarded way of sleeping things. A strange warmth curled in his chest, foreign and unsettling. He hesitated. His fingers twitched toward your hair, as if to brush a stray lock from your face, then stopped. He scowled at himself, at this weakness. But the scowl faltered when his gaze lingered on the way your lashes rested against your cheeks, the rise and fall of your breath.
Slowly, carefully, he shifted closer, draping an arm over your waist as if claiming you, not with arrogance, but with something dangerously close to possessiveness. His lips pressed against your temple in a fleeting, uncharacteristically tender kiss.
You opened your eyes. The ceiling was grey above you. Beside you, or rather, around you, Aerion had stilled, as if caught in the act of something he had not meant to do.
“Is something wrong?” you asked quietly.
He cleared his throat, his thumb idly tracing circles on your skin, trying for normalcy, trying to ignore the way his stomach twisted at your proximity.
“Are you comfortable?”he asked.
“Yes,” you said. You turned your head slightly to look at him. “Are you?”
He gave a noncommittal hum, not meeting your gaze. The truth was he had slept better than he had in years, but he was not about to say so. That would imply weakness. He shifted slightly, the arm around your waist drawing you a fraction closer without him seeming to notice. His fingers continued their circles, almost absentmindedly, as though he were lost in thought and the touch was the only thing keeping him tethered.
The grey outside the window had begun its slow migration toward something lighter. The fire was entirely cold now, the room held only the warmth of the bed, of proximity, of the particular heat that accumulates between two bodies in the hours before dawn.
Then awareness settled in him fully. Of the closeness. Of the precise arrangement of you against him, the warmth of your body, the thin fabric of your sleeping gown, the way the hem had shifted in the night to lie differently against your skin. His hand tensed briefly.
He swallowed.
You felt it, the shift that moved through him, the awareness sharpening into something specific, something that did not belong entirely to the vulnerability of the preceding hours. His lips parted, but no words came. He looked at you with an expression caught precisely between irritation and something he could not arrange into anything controllable, frustrated by the evidence of his own body, by the want that had surfaced without authorization.
You could feel it, the warmth of him. The unmistakable pressure of his want against your hip, present and unambiguous, and the particular tension of a man who has noticed you noticing and does not know what to do with it.
Neither of you spoke.
His hand, which had stilled, began very slowly, as though testing whether the motion would be stopped, to move again. Not the idle circles of before. Something more deliberate, more aware of itself, tracing the line of fabric against skin, as if testing whether the moment would break.
You did not stop him.
Not passive, there was nothing passive in the attention you were giving to this moment, to his breathing, to the fractional shifts of his weight and the warmth of his mouth near your temple and the press of him against your hip that had not diminished. But still in the way you had always been still near him, present, available, making no demand and offering no resistance, letting the space between you be defined by what he chose to do with it.
He exhaled.
“You are-.” he began, and stopped, his jaw tightened. He tried again, and the words he found were not the ones he had started with, “This changes nothing.”
“I know,” you said.
“I mean it.”
“I know you do,” you said.
His hand moved again with less hesitation, no longer tentative, something with more intention behind it, and his body followed, shifting against you with the weight of a man who has been resisting something for weeks and has arrived, at last, at the particular exhaustion of wanting and the decision to stop pretending otherwise.
His mouth found your throat, the same throat he had gripped days ago in the dark. You brought your hand to his hair, fingers threading through silver.
Aerion exhales slowly, a controlled breath that does nothing to conceal the tension wound through his jaw, his shoulders, the deliberate stillness of his hands. He's beautiful in his conflict, you think. Unbearably so. That sharp face, that proud mouth, carved for cruelty or for this, and tonight the line between them seems very thin.
He opens his eyes again, his gaze locking with yours again. He looks almost pained, his pride warring with the desire that's quickly consuming him. He wants you. Gods, he wants you so much it hurts, and he hates that he can't bring himself to deny it any longer. He hates how powerless he feels at your touch, how he craves more despite his better judgment. His breathing is ragged as he leans over you, his eyes dropping to your lips. “Stop me. Say... say no.” The words come rough, almost like a plea.
You looked at him for one long moment, you take in the conflict laid bare for the first time, the stubborn pride, the hunger he can no longer hide, the exhaustion of holding both apart.
Then you kissed him first.
He kisses you back like a man drowning who has finally stopped fighting the current. His hands come up to grip your face, not gently, and the sound that escapes his throat is low, rough, barely human. The careful prince, the controlled and calculating Aerion Targaryen, dissolves in the space between one breath and the next. What replaces him is something rawer. Hungrier. Something he's kept caged behind violet eyes and cutting remarks for far too long.
The kiss deepens without hesitation, consuming. His mouth moves against yours with a kind of desperate precision, tasting, claiming, as if he's cataloguing every detail through touch alone. You feel the heat of him, radiating off his skin like fever, like fire, like something that has been burning in secret for too long and has finally found air.
His hands roam your body with a feverish desperation, as if trying to memorize every curve, every gasp, every shudder beneath his touch. His kisses trail from your lips down your neck, nipping and sucking at your skin, marking you as his, branding you in the only way he knows how. His hands grip your hips, pulling you flush against him, letting you feel just how badly he aches for you. He's lost in the sensation, in the fire between you both, consumed by it. He's not gentle about it. He leaves a trail of hot, open-mouthed kisses down your neck, his teeth grazing that sensitive point where your shoulder meets your throat. He wants to mark you, to make you scream his name, to make sure there's no doubt in your mind or anyone else's of who you belong to.
His free hand slides under your nightgown, his fingers trailing up your thigh, leaving trails of fire in their wake. His touch is possessive, demanding, as if he's making up for every minute he's denied himself this pleasure. Your breath hitches as his fingers trace higher, teasing, taunting, every brush of skin against skin sending sparks through you. His lips return to yours, swallowing your gasp as his touch grows bolder, more deliberate. He plays with your breasts, kneading them and pinching at your nipples until you arch into him, your back lifting from the mattress like a prayer. His hands clutch at you, clinging as if you're the only solid thing in the world. He's panting now, his control frayed to the breaking point.
“Gods,” he breathes against your collarbone, “I've been waiting-.” He cuts himself off and bites down instead of finishing the sentence, leaving a bruise.
He buries his face in that spot on your neck, his breath hot against your skin, his lips roaming feverishly as if he can't get enough. Then he kisses down your body, his mouth leaving a trail of hot, wet marks down your stomach, your hip, your inner thigh. His hands slide up your legs, his touch rough but reverent, the touch of a man who has never let himself experience something so wholly, so completely. He moves with the focus of someone who has thought about this, who has imagined and resented and wanted in equal measure.
He pauses for a moment, looking up at you, the desire in his eyes burning hotly as he takes in the sight of you, spread out before him like a feast.
“Gods, woman...” His voice comes out low, cracked at the edges. “You look exquisite.”
Your hand goes to his hair, gripping it, silver-pale between your fingers, and you guide him where the ache pulses hottest. He goes willingly, like a man possessed, his lips tracing a path to the very heart of you. He worships at your altar, exploring you with a fervour that borders on madness, his tongue drawing slow, deliberate strokes against your folds, lapping at the slick heat of you with a thoroughness that makes your thighs tremble. He kisses your core the way he kissed your mouth, thoroughly, hungrily, as if he intends to ruin you for anything else.
He slides one finger inside you, curling, exploring, while his tongue continues its work, finding the rhythm that makes your hips roll helplessly toward him. Then two fingers, stretching you slowly, his pace maddening, his silver head moving between your thighs while his free hand pins your hip to the mattress. He teases. He draws it out with the patience of a man who has denied himself too long and now intends to take his time about the undoing. Every time you feel yourself cresting toward the edge, he eases back, withdrawing just enough, slowing just enough, his eyes flicking up to watch your face with something that looks almost like satisfaction.
The third time he pulls back from the precipice, you take a fistful of his hair and drag him up.
“Now,” you tell him. “Take me now.”
A feral smirk curls his lips at your demand. He rises up over you, his chest heaving, his entire body taut with anticipation. He leans down to capture your lips in a bruising kiss, you taste yourself on his tongue, one hand gripping your thigh, the other cupping your face as if to brand the moment into your memory.
“As my lady commands,” he growls against your mouth.
He shifts his hips, pressing himself against your entrance. Then, with one sharp thrust, he buries himself inside you, filling you completely, claiming you in every way possible. The moment he's sheathed inside you, a ragged groan tears from his throat, half pleasure, half disbelief. His forehead drops against yours, his breathing ragged, his fingers digging into your hips as if he fears you'll vanish.
“Gods,” he chokes out. “You feel so- warm. So tight.”
He's barely coherent. That, more than anything, undoes you.
His hips roll against yours in slow, deliberate strokes, each one deeper, more possessive than the last. He watches your face, memorizing every gasp, every flutter of your lashes, as if this is the only thing that's ever truly mattered. His eyes, those violet eyes that have looked at you with contempt and hunger and everything in between by now, are dark, pupils blown wide, and he doesn't look away. He watches you as if watching you is a compulsion he can no longer afford to deny.
“Look at me,” he rasps, when your eyes begin to close. “Don't you dare-.”
And you do, you hold his gaze.
His jaw tightens. Something moves across his expression that he doesn't have the composure left to conceal, something raw and frightened and ferocious all at once. His strokes deepen; his grip hardens.
Then he flips you, without warning, rolling you onto your stomach with the ease of a man accustomed to taking what he wants. The mattress shifts beneath you. His hands find your hips and drag you up to meet him. One palm presses flat between your shoulder blades for a half-second, then slides up, fingers winding into your hair, pressing your face into the pillow.
His lips find your ear, his voice low and rough as he whispers, “I won't be gentle, sweetling.”
It sounds like a warning. It sounds like a promise.
“I don't want you to,” you answer.
The sound he makes at that is almost feral, something ripped from somewhere deep in his chest that he would never willingly give you in daylight. His fingers dig into your hips as he takes you with a force that borders on brutality, each thrust deeper, harder, driven by pure unrestrained need. His lips drag across your shoulder, teeth sinking into your skin to stifle his groan as he loses himself in the heat of you. He releases your hair so both hands can grip your hips, holding you in place, as if he fears you might slip away if he doesn't, his fingers leaving half-moon marks you will feel for days.
His pace is relentless. Desperate. Driven by a hunger that has been building since the first moment he looked at you and hated that he wanted to keep looking.
“I can't-.” you gasp, the pleasure coiling impossibly tight.
“Come for me,” he growls, the words bitten off, rough and low. “Come on- I want to feel you. All of you.”
And you do, you shatter. Your whole body arches into it, trembling beneath him, clenching around him, and you hear his sharp, broken exhale, feel the way his rhythm stutters.
His release hits him like a storm, violent, consuming, unstoppable. His body tenses, his fingers digging into your flesh as he spills inside you with a ragged groan, his forehead pressed between your shoulder blades. For a moment, he just breathes against your skin, his chest heaving, his muscles trembling with the aftershocks.
Then, slowly, he collapses over your back. His weight settles, heavy, present, real. His lips move against one of the bruises he's left on your shoulder. Then another. Not in apology, Aerion Targaryen does not apologize. But in something. Acknowledgment, perhaps.
Neither of you speaks.
His arm slides around you, not tenderly, but with a kind of quiet insistence, as if placing himself between you and something invisible. You feel his heartbeat against your back. Fast, still. Then slower. Then slower still.
The silence stretches. It does not demand anything from either of you. His breathing deepens, but his grip does not loosen. You close your eyes.
Sleep comes for you both like a tide, not gentle, not kind, but inevitable. The way all true things are.
STEP 7. Never Cage What You Cannot Break.
A beast is not tamed by taking away its fangs. That only makes it weaker, and weakness is not the same thing as trust. It is tamed, if it ever is, by giving it a reason not to use them. It stays because it chooses to. It stays… because it chooses to.
The manse Maekar had given you sat at the edge of a quieter part of the city, near enough to court to satisfy obligation and far enough to breathe in peace. It was smaller than the Red Keep, less grand, but that suited the both of you. No one had said so out loud, yet it was clear enough. The walls were warm stone. The windows faced east and caught the morning light instead of shutting it out. Lavender grew along the outer walk, planted by someone before your time, and it had survived the winter with a stubbornness that felt almost personal.
Inside, signs of a shared life had gathered in slow, ordinary ways. His books beside yours on the shelf. Your embroidery frame positioned near the best window, which he had moved without comment one afternoon when he noticed the light falling wrong. A second cup on the table by the fire, already poured.
None of it was dramatic, all of it mattered to you.
You settled deeper into the chair, adjusting your weight carefully. The pregnancy sat heavy in your lap, in your lower back, in the way you rose slowly from chairs and descended stairs with one hand trailing the wall. Seven months had left their mark. Your belly was full and round beneath the loose linen of your gown, warm to the touch, occasionally shifting with the insistence of someone who had not yet been born but already had opinions on its own.
You pressed a hand briefly to your side where the movement was. A flutter, a press. I know, you thought at it. I know you're there.
The fire crackled. Across the room, Aerion sat at the writing table with his back half-turned to you, working through correspondence with the focused quiet of a man who had learned, slowly, imperfectly, to channel his energy into something productive rather than destructive. Candles burned at either side of the table. His silver hair, longer now, caught their light and held it.
He had not spoken in some time. Neither had you.
The silence was not tense. That distinction still struck you sometimes, even now, the difference between his silences then and his silences now. Before, quiet had been the space between provocations, the held breath before a storm. Now it was simply the room at rest, two people existing in the same warmth, without the need to perform that fact.
Your needle moved through the embroidery. A branch. Leaves in pale green thread, stitched slowly because you no longer rushed things that deserved to be unhurried. You had learned that too, somewhere along the way, though you weren't certain when. Perhaps it had been a lesson you taught yourself while teaching him.
“You've been rubbing your back for the better part of an hour.”
His voice came without him turning. Your hand had drifted there without you noticing. You lowered it. “I'm fine.”
“I didn't say you weren't.”
You went back to the embroidery and the scratch of his quill resumed.
You looked at the back of his head for a moment, at the set of his shoulders, the long line of his spine. He was still proud in his posture. That had not changed, nor would it. But there was something different in it now. Less like a man braced for attack. More like a man who had simply grown comfortable inside his own frame.
Maekar had expressed quiet satisfaction, the last time you had attended court. Not in words, the prince was not a man for words where a look would suffice. But satisfaction nonetheless. You had understood it without needing it explained. So had Aerion, which had caused a complicated expression to move across his face, something between pride and the ghost of old resentment, before easing into something closer to acceptance.
He was still Aerion. He could still cut with a word when he chose to. His patience was a thing learned rather than natural, and it occasionally showed its seams. Two weeks prior, at a supper that had run overlong, he had said something to Lord Peake's second son that had made the table go briefly silent. But he had stopped there, he had not pursued it. He had reached instead for his wine and redirected the conversation with a deliberateness you recognized, because you had practiced that deliberateness in front of him, repeatedly, until he understood what it looked like.
He was not fixed, he was better. There was a meaningful difference.
The fire shifted, throwing new shadows. You set down the embroidery and pressed your palm flat against the side of your stomach, feeling the weight of it, the warmth. The child moved again, long, slow, like something turning in a dream. You breathed around it.
The scratch of the quill stopped.
You did not look up immediately. You felt, rather than saw, the moment his attention shifted, the feeling of being observed by Aerion, which you had long since learned to recognize. It was different now too.
You looked up.
When you looked up, he had already turned in his chair. He was watching you with those violet eyes of his, pale in the candlelight, and there was something in his face he had learned to hide less well over time. Not because he had grown careless. Because keeping it hidden had begun to cost him too much, and he had finally decided, with the quiet certainty he brought to every important thing, that it was no longer worth the price.
Then he rose from the table.
He crossed the room at an unhurried pace, the way a man walks when he has already made up his mind. When he stopped in front of you, his gaze dropped from your face to your hands, then to the rounded curve beneath the linen. Then he knelt.
Not in surrender. Not in show. One knee to the floor, steady and deliberate, bringing himself level with what he meant to honour. He reached out, and his hand, the same hand that had once gripped and demanded and taken, settled with impossible gentleness against the side of your stomach.
He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the fullest part of you.
He stayed there a moment, forehead resting lightly against you, his hand curved around the life you carried. His breathing evened out. His eyes were closed. He did not speak at once, and you did not ask him to.
Then, very quietly, without lifting his head, he said, “I love you.”
You looked down at the top of his silver head, at the broad line of his shoulders bent in a shape that was not quite defeat and not quite humility, but close enough to make your throat tighten. You thought of the man who had once watched you across a banquet table with cold, assessing eyes and found nothing in you worth his attention. You thought of all the months between then and now. The arguments. The patience. The slow, stubborn work of remaining.
You reached down and touched his face gently. He looked up at you. The candlelight made his eyes very bright.
You held his gaze and said, simply, “I love you as well.”
No strategy in it. Just the truth, spoken in the same quiet room where you had spent months learning each other's silences.
He turned his face and pressed one more kiss to your stomach, almost habitual, as if he had already developed the instinct, then rose slowly and settled himself on the arm of your chair. His hand remained at your side, warm and present. You returned to your embroidery. His shoulder rested against yours, and he did not move away.
The fire burned low. The night spread softly around the manse.
Later, when he had drifted into sleep beside you and his breathing had gone slow and even, you lay awake in the dark and thought about the whole path that had brought you here.
Seven steps, written out with the clean, measured certainty of someone who understood that hearts, even difficult ones, had their own structure. You had approached him with respect for what it was, patience for what it could become, and no illusions about the process between.
But somewhere in the long careful middle of it, something had shifted that no guide could have anticipated, or perhaps the guide had always known it and simply not named it. The method had worked. But the method had not been the point.
The point was that he had changed.
Not because you had fixed him. Not because you had caged him or diminished him or stripped away the things that made him difficult. He was still proud. Still sharp. Still capable of the particular cold cruelty that had earned him his reputation, though he used it less now, and never against you.
He had changed because he had chosen to. Because somewhere in the accumulated weight of all those quiet days and careful moments, something in him had found a reason.
And he, Aerion Targaryen, the Bright Prince, the man they called Brightflame for the way he burned, had stayed too.
His hand rested over yours in the dark, light and warm and present.
The beast doesn't need its fangs removed, you thought, closing your eyes. It just needs something worth protecting more than it needs to bite.
Sleep came, slow and complete, and took you both with it.
Summary: You return to the Danforth estate after your mother’s death, carrying the letter she left for Chester. You spent your formative years on the estate as the housekeeper’s child, never part of the family but never entirely outside it either. Coming back after years away makes it impossible to ignore the things you’ve always suspected… and have spent years convincing yourself weren’t real. And complicating everything is that you start to care for a man you never thought you would.
Warnings: SMUT (MDNI 18+) loss of a parent, grief, brief mention of alcoholism, language, implied age gap, very headstrong reader (shes fucking sassy and I love her), socioeconomic class differences, bickering, intellectual sparring (basically so much sexual tension), competence kink? alcohol, titus is soooo down bad for you (and very confused over it), graphic descriptions of male masturbation, i think that’s it?
A/N: I worked from home this week (which means I was bad and spent time writing this instead). This is going to be a 2-parter…if its more, somebody please seriously slap me. I wrote this in a way where anything 'revealed' in this story is in the trailer / general lore implied from the trailer, and / or discussed in the first movie. However, I’ll label this as smidge spoilers just in case. This beautiful GIF found HERE. dividers by @saradika-graphics
thank you for reading!! if you comment/reblog with commentary i love you so much!!
Manhattan, New York – Columbia University
The room was already half full when students noticed the board. In thick, deliberate chalk strokes, you’d written:
HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER
The chatter died instantly. A few students exchanged looks. One whispered, "Is this… still Philosophy 482?"
You chuckled and tapped the board once with the chalk, standing at the front, hands folded behind your back, watching the rest of the class settle into their seats.
Finally, a student raised her hand.
"Professor… what exactly is today’s topic?"
"Exactly what you see," you simply gestured toward the board, and a ripple of laughter moved through the room. "This is the beginning of our next unit. For the first half of the semester, we’ve been laying the groundwork with the psychology of decision‑making, but for the next few weeks, we’re going to discuss power and what people will do to keep it. The ethics of secrecy. The morality of fear. And the rituals societies create to justify the unjustifiable."
You erased the word MURDER with a slow, deliberate swipe.
Underneath it, you wrote:
MORAL COMPROMISE
"Let’s begin," you said. "Would you sacrifice a person to maintain wealth, status, or influence?"
A student in the front row frowned. "Most people wouldn’t sacrifice anyone for status. That’s not normal."
"Who’s to say what’s normal?" you challenged. "Most people don’t have status to lose. Power changes the moral landscape. When the stakes rise, so does the willingness to rationalize the unthinkable."
"Is this just about corruption?" another student asked.
"Corruption is such a small word for such a large phenomenon. I’m talking about the stories powerful groups tell themselves. The rituals they cling to. The lines they cross because they believe no one will ever hold them accountable," you said.
Another student leaned forward. "Rituals? Like… actual rituals?"
"Every powerful group has rituals. Some are harmless. Some are… less so. But all of them serve the same purpose: to create loyalty through fear, secrecy, or shared belief," you answered.
A student in the back raised his hand slowly. "Are you saying some people would actually hurt someone to keep their status?"
"I’m saying," you replied, "that throughout history, people have done far worse for far less."
A murmur passed through the room. Then the boldest student (the one who always asked what everyone else was thinking) raised his hand.
"Do you believe there are people out there sacrificing people?"
You walked back to the board, underlined MORAL COMPROMISE, and turned back to the class.
"Belief is irrelevant. What matters is that throughout history, powerful groups have used myths, rituals, and fear to maintain control and make others afraid to question them." You let your gaze drift toward the window. "Whether the stories are true or not is less important than the mere fact that the power of the story is real."
A couple of students traded glances, clearly unsure what to make of your statement. One student lowered their head and began scribbling something quickly in the margin of their notebook.
You picked up the chalk again and wrote on the board:
THE ETHICS OF POWER
"Now," you said, turning back to them, "let’s discuss."
You were about to launch into the first discussion question when the classroom door opened without a knock.
Every head turned.
Your aunt stepped inside, still in her coat, hair slightly windblown, and her eyes darted around the room as if she wasn’t entirely sure how she’d gotten there.
"I need to talk to you," she said abruptly. It stopped you cold. Your aunt was the type to apologize for interrupting a voicemail, the type to ease into every conversation with a dozen gentle qualifiers. For her to cut straight to the point like that… something was wrong.
You turned back to the students. "Everyone, I’m sorry, I need to step out for a moment."
Your aunt was already backing toward the hallway, and you followed her out of the classroom, letting the door fall shut behind you.
"I’ve been calling you all morning," she whispered, voice trembling slightly. "You didn’t answer."
"I’ve been in back‑to‑back classes," you said. "I haven’t even had a break. What’s going on?"
"I was having breakfast with your mom," she swallowed, eyes glistening.
"Okay… and?"
Your aunt took a breath that shook on the way out.
"She had a heart attack."
The moment the package arrived, it didn’t feel real at first. It was too small, too ordinary-looking for what it contained. A cardboard box, the kind that could’ve held books or kitchenware. But you knew. Your hands knew before your mind did, and they went stiff.
You carried it inside like it might break, even though it was the heaviest thing you’d ever held.
Inside the box was the urn you’d chosen. She’d been clear about that for years. Don’t bury me. Don’t put me in the ground. She’d told you once, in a rare moment of unfiltered honesty, that watching her father lowered into the ground had carved something into her. Still, opening the container and seeing the ashes and knowing that this was what remained of the woman who raised you… it hit like a second heart attack. One for her, one for you. You sat there with the urn for a long time, not crying or anything, just sitting with it while the silence settled around you like dust.
You kept the memorial small because you knew she would’ve hated anything grand or performative. It was just a handful of close friends and the few relatives who actually mattered. Your father (who you hadn’t seen since you were a child) had wanted to come, but you asked him not too, especially when you heard him slurring over the phone call. It seemed he still loved his vodka. Having your alcoholic father basically a fucking sperm donor was not something you needed at the memorial. You didn’t say much that day. You didn’t need to. People shared stories…the kind that made your grief feel like a warm ache instead of a blade. Someone brought her favorite pastries. Someone else read a poem she used to quote.
At the end, you opened the urn and let the wind take a handful of her. It lifted the ash gently, almost tenderly, scattering it through the sunlight. It felt right. It felt like giving her back to something bigger than the body that failed her.
What people don’t tell you about death is that once the shock fades, you’re left with a stack of practical tasks that feel almost insulting in their normalcy. There’s no space to fall apart because there are passwords to track down, accounts to close, forms to sign, and strangers on customer‑service lines asking you to "verify the deceased’s date of birth.: Every conversation feels like sandpaper. Every checkbox feels like a betrayal. But you keep going because someone has to.
You spent the next month sorting through her things, making phone calls, and canceling subscriptions she never got around to canceling herself. You met with the realtor to put her apartment on the market, walking through rooms that still smelled like her shampoo. The realtor talked about square footage and comps while you nodded along, pretending you were fine.
At one point, you were sitting in her small home office, going through drawers when you found an envelope tucked beneath a stack of utility bills. Written in her handwriting was a letter addressed to Chester Danforth.
You hadn’t seen him in a long time. Honestly, you hadn’t seen any of the Danforths in years. Your mother had retired 5 years ago, but she had worked for the Danforths for a long time. She had gotten the job when you were 14 and became their live‑in housekeeper, and you moved in with her. The estate sprawled like a fortress with endless echoing hallways, too many locked doors, and grounds so vast they needed their own staff just to keep the place from swallowing itself.
Chester was the patriarch of the family. He was a frightening man with a quick-tempered kind of presence that made a room feel smaller the moment he walked into it. People stepped carefully around him, including his own children. The twins were older than you, so you mostly saw them on holidays, during the occasional family meetings that required everyone’s presence, or on those 'hunting trips' the Danforth trio treated like sacred tradition. However, he treated you like a bonus child, but not in some warm, fatherly way. Chester wasn’t affectionate. He didn’t ask about your day or sit you down for heart‑to‑hearts. His kindness showed up in more transactional ways: offering to put you in a private school during high school, covering your college tuition, and making sure you had what you needed until you graduated from Princeton. It was an odd dynamic—being poor but living inside someone else’s wealth, benefiting from it without ever belonging to it.
The older you got, the more the imbalance of it all started to bother you. You didn’t want to be someone’s charity case, or worse, you didn’t want to owe him anything…not gratitude, not loyalty, and not a place in your life. So you pulled away after college and kept your distance. Your mother stayed on the estate long after you moved out, so she’d still pass along the occasional update...nothing dramatic, just the usual household gossip, but it was enough to remind you why you’d stepped away. There was something about that family that had always unsettled you. You always had the feeling that getting too close meant getting pulled into something you’d never fully understand.
You held the envelope for a long moment, thumb resting on the sealed flap. It would’ve been so easy to slip a finger under the edge and tear it open. You tilted the envelope toward the light, as if that would help you see through it. But then, just as you started to lift the flap, you heard your mother’s voice in your head, the way she sounded when she was laying down a rule she expected you to follow. If something isn’t meant for you, leave it alone. She’d said that to you once when you were a kid, and it stuck.
Whether you wanted to or not, you knew what you had to do.
It was time to go back to the estate and deliver the letter your mother never sent.
Newport, Rhode Island
Ursula yanked the door open like she was already annoyed at whoever dared knock. Her eyes swept over you once, unimpressed.
"You look like shit," she said, voice flat as a cutting board.
"Nice to see you too," you replied. The real surprise was that she answered the door herself. This was a house with enough staff to field a small army. She, of course, looked as flawless as ever with her blonde hair twisted into a perfect bun, makeup sharp, and wearing an outfit that probably cost more than your entire yearly salary.
She didn’t move aside, just stared at you like she was trying to place a face from an old yearbook. "What are you doing here? I haven’t seen since—"
"That night," you said, and Ursula’s mouth twitched.
"God. No wonder you look terrible. That was years ago."
"Not all of us can afford Botox."
"It’s preventative," she shot back.
"Where’s your father?"
"In his study." She glanced behind you, scanning the empty porch. "Is your mother with you?" The question came out a little too quickly, Ursula’s green eyes flicking past you with an eagerness she didn’t bother disguising. For a second, she actually looked hopeful, like your mother might materialize out of thin air with a polite smile and a casserole.
"If you see her, let me know. That’d be impressive," you said as you stepped past her into the foyer.
"Why?"
"Because she’s dead."
"What the fuck do you mean?" Ursula’s face went slack.
You exhaled, already exhausted. "Exactly what it sounds like." And then you gave her the short version.
Ursula blinked hard, processing. "A heart attack?"
"Yes."
"Fuck!"
Before you could respond, she grabbed your wrist and hauled you down the hallway, heels clicking like gunshots. She didn’t bother knocking when she reached the study; she just threw the door open.
"Excuse me," came Chester’s booming voice, and then his eyes landed on you. Surprisingly, he looked the same. And sitting across from him, turning slowly in his chair, was Titus. Ursula immediately cut to the chase, blurting out the news before you could stop her. Chester shot to his feet, with Titus rising a beat after him. It was odd. Titus hadn’t really changed, and yet he had. The gray suited him (annoyingly so), and it only sharpened the features that had always made him objectively attractive.
Chester asked when the funeral was, and you explained that there wasn’t going to be one, and that there had already been a small memorial.
Ursula’s head snapped toward you. "You didn’t invite us?"
In all the years you’d known her, you had never seen Ursula shed a single tear. Not once. But now her eyes glossed over (just for a second) before she jerked her chin up, refusing to let it fall.
Titus exhaled a quiet, dismissive scoff. "Ursula… she was the help." You turned to him immediately and gave him a look that made it unmistakably clear you were offended.
What a fucking asshole.
"I—excuse me," Ursula muttered, voice thin and breaking in ways she clearly hated. And then she spun on her heel and rushed out of the room, disappearing down the hallway before anyone could see whatever expression she was fighting to keep off her face.
Titus stood, straightening his jacket with a lazy flick. "I’ll go deal with her. Last thing we need is her mascara on the antique rugs." He took a few slow steps toward you, closing the distance. "Thanks for the update. Maybe if you’d told us about the memorial, we could’ve shown up and pretended to care." He leaned in just a fraction. "But, it was nice of you to spare us the travel. Very thoughtful."
And with that, Titus walked out after Ursula walked out after Ursula leaving Chester frozen in place and you still vibrating with the sting of his words.
Chester finally exhaled, the sound shaky, and lowered himself into the nearest chair like his bones had suddenly remembered their age. He rubbed a hand over his face, then looked up at you, and something in his expression softened.
"I’m sorry," he muttered. "She was a wonderful woman."
"Thank you," you murmured. "You look well," you added awkwardly, because you’d never been good at tiptoeing around feelings.
"It’s so like you to give me a compliment during a hard time. You haven’t changed at all." He tilted his head, studying you. "Are you okay? Do you need money?"
You rolled your eyes. "That’s not why I’m here."
"Well, I don’t know," he said, spreading his hands. "I haven’t seen you since that summer after you graduated from Princeton. You disappeared after Kip’s wedding."
Kip was Chester’s nephew and the twins’ cousin, close to your age, and he’d gone to prep school with you. He made your life miserable, telling everyone your mother was the maid. It was hard to make friends when the school’s golden boy treated you like gum on the bottom of his shoe.
"Kip’s wedding," you echoed. "I’d hardly call that a wedding."
"He did get married."
"For about twenty‑four hours. And then his bride vanished."
"It’s not his fault his wife ran off with her ex."
"Whatever you say, Chester."
Your tone made it clear you didn’t buy that story for a second and that you knew something far more complicated and far more uncomfortable had happened that night.
And Chester knew you knew something.
"Well, I’m not here to go down memory lane," you said, cutting off whatever excuse Chester was about to reach for. "I’m here because I found a letter in my mother’s office. And I thought you would want this."
You reached into your bag and held it out.
Chester straightened a little, surprised, and took the envelope with both hands. He opened it carefully, smoothing the paper flat on his knee. You watched him read—watched the tiny shifts in his expression, and the way his eyes flicked back and forth faster at certain lines. When he finally reached the end, he folded the letter with deliberate precision and set it on the table beside him.
"Thank you…for bringing me this."
You nodded, but your eyes lingered on the envelope. You couldn’t help it. Something in the way he’d read it made you wonder what was inside. You didn’t pry, but the question settled in the back of your mind anyway, a small, persistent curiosity you tried to swallow down.
"I should go," you pushed yourself to your feet.
"Where are you going?"
"Back to New York."
“It’s the summer,” he said, as if that explained everything. "Aren’t you off?"
"Technically," you said. "I’m teaching 1 online course and doing research."
Your most recent research was exhausting, the kind of hyper‑specific niche work where every lead was a dead end, and every source felt like it had been written by someone who actively hated clarity.
He leaned back, studying you. "Stay."
"What? Why?"
"Why not?" he countered, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. Before you could argue, he added, "Why not stay a few weeks and take your mind off things?"
For a moment, you could almost see the version of him who snuck you extra dessert from the kitchen one day after a boy had called you ugly at school and you had punched him in the face.
"I don’t think Ursula and Titus want me here."
"Their reaction is fair. You know how much they adored your mother."
"Even Titus?"
"Especially Titus," Chester sighed.
You turned your gaze aside, jaw clenched. You had thought about inviting them. You’d even drafted the message multiple times, thumb hovering over the send button. But then the fear had crept in…
And you’d let that win.
The truth was, they had always treated your mother well. Better than well. She’d been the one person in this house everyone trusted. The one who could calm Ursula’s storms, the one who could coax a real smile out of Titus, and the one who could get Chester to eat something besides black coffee and stress. They’d adored her in a way that sometimes made you feel like you were the outsider.
"I fucked up," you said sincerely. "I’m sorry."
"I know you had your reasons," he grunted, the lines around his eyes easing. "The carriage home is under renovation." It was the place you and your mother stayed in when you lived here. "You know how small it is, so we’re expanding it. Adding a few things."
You almost snorted. It had three bedrooms, vaulted ceilings, a sunroom, and a kitchen larger than most apartments. 3500 square feet of "modest" living space, technically separate from the main house but still very much part of the estate. You had no idea what they could possibly be adding. A ballroom for the horses?
"But," Chester continued, gesturing vaguely toward the east side of the mansion, "the East Wing has more than enough rooms available. You’d be comfortable there." You took a small step back, instinctively creating space between you and the offer.
"I’ll… consider it."
Chester nodded once, accepting that as the closest thing to a yes he was going to get today.
A week later, you returned to the estate with your car and a single suitcase. You’d packed with precision—exactly two weeks’ worth of clothes, no more, no less. Staying longer felt like a stupid fucking idea.
The wait staff greeted you warmly, just as they always had with your mother, and carried your things through the East Wing to your room. The space was stunning. It was impossible not to feel a little disoriented by the beauty of the room. Chester wasn’t there since he was somewhere in Switzerland tied up in a board meeting or a summit he couldn’t skip…otherwise known as some fucking old white men's business you didn’t give a fuck about.
Your first task was making things right with Ursula. She accepted your apology in her own dramatic fashion: by calling you a shady bitch, grabbing her purse, and ordering you to drive her to her manicurist so she could fix a chipped nail. You didn’t argue. You drove her across town while she lectured you about the importance of cuticle oil, but only after she took one look at your beat‑up car, made a noise of pure horror, and whipped you the keys to her Bentley. She begged you to get a manicure once you both got there, but you declined, which earned you an eye roll. By the time you dropped her off at cocktails with her friends, you were reasonably sure you’d been forgiven. Or at least reinstated.
When you returned to the house, the late afternoon sun slanting through the hallways, you headed toward the kitchen, and found Titus. He stood at the counter, speaking with the chef about dinner preparations. Titus was specifying the exact marbling grade of the wagyu A5, from a particular farm outside Kobe, flown in from Tokyo that morning. He wanted it seared at a precise temperature, rested for a precise number of minutes, and sliced at a precise angle to preserve the integrity of the fat cap.
Then came the potatoes.
He was requesting a whipped potato so specific it sounded like a spell: Yukon Golds passed through a fine-mesh tamis three times, folded with cultured butter from Normandy, a splash of cream infused with roasted garlic and thyme, and finished with a drizzle of white truffle oil 'only if it’s the one from Alba, not the synthetic stuff.' He added something about the salt needing to be Maldon, not fleur de sel, because fleur de sel interfered with the texture.
The chef nodded along, clearly used to this level of specificity.
You were still trying to understand how mashed potatoes required international sourcing and a culinary dissertation when the chef finally noticed you standing in the doorway.
"Madame," he greeted warmly, "would you like some dinner as well?"
"Please don’t call me that," you said, stepping forward. You offered your hand and your name. "It’s extremely nice to meet you."
"Likewise," he shook your hand with a polite, practiced smile.
"I’ll make my own dinner," you added, glancing at the array of ingredients Titus had demanded. "You seem to have quite a meal to prepare tonight."
Titus’s head snapped toward you, his expression flattening into a slow, unimpressed glare. The chef gave a small, knowing nod and excused himself, heading toward the actual kitchen to begin the real work. This room was just the show kitchen.
You cleared your throat. "So… I guess we’re going to be roommates for a couple weeks."
"If you’re expecting me to roll out a welcome mat, you’re in the wrong house," he exhaled through his nose, sharp and irritated.
"Oh, trust me," you folded your arms, "I’m painfully aware of what house I’m in."
"You know, your mother never made things this complicated. She understood her place here."
"Her place?" you snarled.
"You may have been extended an invitation by my father, but it was done out of courtesy, not because you suddenly matter."
"Look… I know it's been a long time… but there’s no need to be such a dick."
His beautiful hazel eyes narrowed just slightly. "If you didn’t want the truth, you shouldn’t have come back."
"I can’t believe you’re still like this after all this time."
"Like what?"
"A petulant child pretending to be a man. Same old Titus. Snarky, spoiled, and convinced the sun rises just to shine on your trust fund." You pointed towards the other kitchen, exasperated. "And seriously—what was that? You could’ve just asked for a simple meal. Steak and mashed potatoes. That’s it. But no, with you it has to be a whole production. Three sauces, a garnish flown in from somewhere ridiculous, and wagyu that had to cross the entire Pacific so you can feel important." You shook your head, incredulous. "Jesus Christ, do you ever think about the fuel emissions from your dinners, or does the planet also exist to serve your palate?"
"Is this you trying to sound important?" He tilted his head, lips curling in a patronizing half‑smile. "I’d hate to see the unedited version."
"You walk around acting like you’re above everyone," you let out a short, disbelieving laugh, and threw your hands up, pacing a step away before turning back to him, "because you’re miserable, and you want everyone else to feel it too."
His nostrils flared like he was trying to breathe through the spike of anger. "I will not be spoken to like this in my house."
And maybe it was the long drive, or the exhaustion, or the way he was getting under your skin, but the words came out before you could stop them.
"Except it’s not your house. It’s Chester’s. You’re a forty‑something‑year‑old man still living at home with your daddy. Am I missing the part where I should be impressed?" You knew he probably owned his own multiple properties, but that was besides the point.
"I expected better material from you. That was lazy," his expression softened into something infuriatingly patient, like he was humoring a child, "and predictable."
"I can’t believe I was actually going to apologize to you."
"For what? Existing?"
"For not inviting you to the memorial."
"You didn’t want us there. Message received," his voice was flat, but the hurt underneath it was unmistakable.
"You’re right… I didn’t," you swallowed, and your fingers drifted to the counter beside you, tracing the edge of a decorative inlay—anything to keep your hands busy, anything to avoid looking directly at him while you said the next part.
"But my mother probably would have wanted all of you there... especially you. She had a soft spot for you," you admitted, eyes dropping to the pattern beneath your fingertips. "I’m sorry." The words felt strange in your mouth because he drove you insane, but you couldn’t pretend you hadn’t messed up. You kept your gaze on the counter, tracing the design again, slower this time. "I’ll stay out of your way while I’m here."
You pushed off the counter gently, your fingers slipping away from the cool surface, and took a step back, then another, as you moved toward the doorway.
You were infuriating.
It had been a few days, and you were doing a really good job of ignoring him, or at least pretending to. You didn’t look at him when he entered a room, and whenever he passed you in the hall, you didn’t acknowledge him at all. You didn’t even give him the satisfaction of a sarcastic remark. It was as
if he wasn’t worth your attention.
He’d stomp around the estate, muttering under his breath, burning holes into your back every time you didn’t look at him. Titus didn’t understand why it bothered him so much, and the truth was, he was still furious about the way you’d spoken to him. No one talked to him like that…and no one ever had. You were lucky your mother was your mother because Titus had been this close to having all your shit tossed out onto the front steps, setting your car (or maybe even you) on fire, and telling you to fucking walk back to Manhattan.
But it was impossible not to notice you drifting through the house, as if you belonged there. You sat with the staff like you were one of them. Letting the chef teach you knife skills like you were some apprentice he’d taken a liking to. Chatting with the groundskeeper about soil acidity. Sitting with the new housekeeper over tea. And then there was Ursula… Ursula, who didn’t enjoy people. Ursula, who communicated mostly in dry comments and raised eyebrows. Ursula, who had once told a senator’s wife to "stop hovering, you’re blocking the light." But…now there was a spark of amusement in her eyes whenever you walked into a room. She’d mutter something under her breath, and you’d fire back without missing a beat, and Titus would catch the corner of her mouth twitching like she was fighting a smile.
He also didn’t fucking understand how you dressed like someone who’d wandered in from a bus stop, not someone who’d spent the formative years of her life in this house. Half the time, you wore soft, washed‑out t-shirts and jeans that were frayed at the hems. A canvas tote bag with a fading print instead of a designer purse. Shoes that looked like the same ones you still had in fucking high school.
Titus was cutting through the east hallway when he heard your voice before he saw you.
"…I don’t know if the argument holds anymore," you were saying to someone. "I’ve been trying to map the points for days, but the structure keeps collapsing because I can’t find the details I need. I’m starting to think I need to adjust the topic entirely." There was a soft murmur in response, something sympathetic. You let out a breath that sounded like defeat. "I just… I don’t want to scrap 4 months of work. But I can’t keep forcing something that isn’t working."
He finally rounded the corner and found you against the window, phone pressed to your ear, sunlight catching on a yellow sundress he’d never seen before. You looked… You looked beautiful. He’d noticed it the day he saw you in his father's study. Back when you were in high school and then college, the age gap had felt wider—not in years, but in experience. You’d been young, still figuring out who you were, and he and Ursula had written you off as exactly that: young. Now you were well into your 30s, and you carried yourself with a kind of confidence that hadn’t been there before. You had a different presence entirely; the way you spoke, reasoned, and carried yourself belonged to someone who’d grown into their own skin and was sure of their own mind. He slowed without meaning to, and you glanced up mid‑sentence, eyes flicking to him.
"Hey, I—I have to go," you said quickly into the phone. "We’ll talk later."
You ended the call before the person on the other end could respond, like you were trying to hide the fact that he’d caught you in a moment you hadn’t meant to share.
"What’s wrong?" he asked.
You blinked, surprised he’d spoken to you at all. "Nothing."
"Right. You look like the picture of emotional stability."
You shot him a look, the kind that said don’t start, but he just raised an eyebrow, waiting. He wasn’t good at patience, but he could manage it long enough to call your bluff.
You sighed. "My most recent research is just… a pain in my ass."
"Tragic," he said dryly, leaning a shoulder against the opposite wall.
You rolled your eyes, and before he could say anything else, you reached for the laptop you’d left on the decorative side table and didn’t even look at him as you turned away.
Titus watched you go for half a second before pushing off the wall.
"What’s the actual problem?" he said behind you. He was trying to get you to keep talking…and that was the part you didn’t know yet: Titus didn’t ask questions unless he cared about the answer.
You turned just enough to look at him over your shoulder. "I told you. It’s fine."
"I might have a solution," he said, tone annoyingly self‑assured.
You turned fully this time, brows lifting, skepticism written all over your face. "Oh really?"
"Really."
"I’m examining the ritual life of the Carolingian court…8th to 9th century." You cleared your throat. "It’s… complicated. The documentation is sparse. Half the manuscripts are missing, and the ones that survived contradict each other. So I’m trying to reconstruct how the court actually used ritual to create legitimacy."
"Ritual?" he repeated.
"Yeah, that’s what my research is about. That’s what my entire career is about. Symbolic enactments of authority, legitimacy, continuity, and how political structures use ritual to make power feel real."
"So tell me," he said, deceptively casual, "when you say ritual… what exactly do you mean?” He took a slow step closer, gaze locked on yours. "Crowns and scepters?" A faint, sardonic lift of his brow occurred. "Coronations?"
"Rituals don’t have to be grand," you said, testing the words as you offered them. There was a deliberate edge to them, like you were choosing each word with care. "They can be as simple as… a game of hide‑and‑seek."
The moment the phrase left your mouth, Titus’s eyes flickered with a hint of suspicion, the subtle shift in his expression betraying his awareness. He tilted his head, a slow, measured smile playing on his lips, weighing your words and deciding whether you’d meant them the way they sounded. His gaze narrowed slightly, studying you with a calculated calm, but he’d heard exactly what you were implying. He knew you were testing him. And he was trying to decide how much to give back. You remained still, your posture poised and deliberate, not giving away any sign of nervousness. There was a quiet patience in your stance… an unspoken challenge lingering in the air.
"That’s an interesting example," he said.
"You’d be surprised how many rituals survive by being disguised as something harmless," you said. "Especially the ones meant to test people," you said, offering the next breadcrumb, watching to see if he’d follow it. Because he knew the two of you weren’t talking about Carolingian courts anymore.
"You’re right," Titus said, leaning back just slightly, like he was giving you space while still very much watching you. A slow, crooked smile tugged at one corner of his mouth—the kind that never reached his eyes. "This research is clearly out of my depths."
"Well, that’s refreshingly self‑aware of you," you tilted your chin up a little, lips pressing together like you were genuinely impressed.
He stepped away from you, down the hall. He didn’t rush, but he didn’t linger either. He needed space to think, to breathe, to get whatever that hide-and-seek comment had stirred up out of his head. When he reached a side door, he pushed it open and stepped outside. He exhaled, rubbed a hand over his jaw, and tried to make sense of the unease sitting in his stomach. Titus pulled out his phone and typed your name into Google. The Yale directory loaded instantly, and your faculty profile appeared with your photo, your credentials, and your research.
Professor of Philosophy
Specializations: Political Theory, Symbolic Power, Ritual Studies
Research Interests:
– Structures of elite authority
– Hidden governance
– Ritual as social control
– Esoteric traditions in modern institutions
Education:
PhD in Philosophy: Social and Political Philosophy – Yale
MA in Philosophy: Ethics and Society – University of Cambridge
BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics – Princeton
Then he read the title of your dissertation at Yale, and then clicked on the abstract:
"Hidden Power: Esoteric Symbolism and Elite Ritual"
This dissertation shows how esoteric symbols and ritual traditions help elite groups preserve authority in the Western intellectual canon. Rather than secrecy, their power comes from cultural continuity, shaping modern narratives of hidden influence and legitimacy.
He tapped the back arrow and returned to your main faculty page and kept scrolling.
Selected Publications:
– "The Architecture of Obedience: Ritual as a Mechanism of Social Order"
– "Inheritance and Initiation: The Unspoken Rules of Elite Continuity"
– "Games, Trials, and Tests: Symbolic Violence in Modern Ceremonial Practices"
He stopped for a moment, his eyes fixed on the list of titles in front of him. They were so exact, so precise, it almost felt like they were too on the nose. Titus finally lowered his phone slowly, his gaze drifting back to the picture of you he'd kept on his screen.
You knew something about his family… that much was clear.
And that was a problem.
"Oh my God, Titus. You’re panicking about nothing," Ursula groaned.
"It’s not nothing," he shot back. Last night, he had gone straight to his study, shut the door, and pulled up your faculty page again. What started as a quick skim turned into hours of reading, one tab opening another, each link pulling him deeper.
He read everything.
Every article you’d published. Every conference paper. Every footnote, every citation, every obscure reference. Then he opened your dissertation. Two hundred pages of dense theory, historical analysis, and symbolic interpretation, and he read it cover to cover. If he were honest with himself, maybe his dick got hard reading it. You were smart (undeniably and unavoidably smart) and competent in a way that commanded attention. By the time he reached the final chapter, the sky outside had already started to lighten. When Ursula found him, he was still in the same chair, still staring at the same paragraph he’d been rereading for twenty minutes.
Ursula pinched the bridge of her nose. "It’s a coincidence."
"No, it’s not," he growled.
She sighed dramatically, like he was exhausting her on purpose. "Fine. You’re right. It’s not a coincidence… But," she added, holding up a finger, "you said that nothing she’s written or produced says anything about the High Council. So clearly she doesn’t know everything."
Titus stared at her. "That’s your reassurance?"
"Yes," Ursula said, completely unbothered. "Because if she did know everything, she wouldn’t be fucking alive. Father has been following her career for years, and he’s never felt threatened by it."
A muscle feathered in his jaw. "You knew about this?"
"Of course I knew."
"Why didn’t you tell me?"
"You should’ve known sooner," she scowled. "Her mother talked about her constantly when she was in school… which was for like 500 fucking years. Every degree, every fellowship, every paper—God, it was endless."
"I wasn’t listening," Titus frowned.
"Well, that’s your problem," Ursula said, shrugging. "Her mother told us she was getting a philosophy degree. Then another one. Then another one. And Father kept tabs on her the whole time."
"He kept tabs?"
"Yes," Ursula said, rolling her eyes. "Because of her mother. And because… you know." She gestured vaguely. "That night… at Kip’s wedding."
He hadn’t thought about that night in years. In his defense, after so many hunts over the years, they all started to blend together. He remembered coming downstairs the morning after the wedding, and you were already in the foyer, suitcase zipped, coat on, looking like you’d been awake for hours. He’d stood on the stairs, unseen, watching as you thanked Chester for his hospitality and kindness over the last few years. Then you walked out the front door, got into the car waiting for you, and by the end of the week you were in the UK.
"Are you sure we don’t need to take care of her just in case?" Titus turned his head towards his sister, and the look he gave her said everything.
"Yes, I’m sure. She’s a philosopher, Titus. They write about power structures and rituals all the time because they’re bored and underpaid."
"She’s not bored," he rumbled.
"No. She’s not. But she’s also not writing exposés on the High Council. So until she does? Who fucking cares?"
Titus dragged a hand through his hair. "She knows enough to be dangerous."
"Everyone knows enough to be dangerous. You’re just upset she got under your skin."
"She didn’t get under my skin."
"Mm‑hmm," she hummed, unconvinced.
Titus glared at her, but she only smirked.
"Relax," Ursula said, trying to calm him down. "She’s observant, but she’s not omniscient. If she knew the whole picture, she wouldn’t be dropping hints. She’d be fucking running."
Titus was behind the bar the next night, pouring himself a whiskey he absolutely needed. The house was quiet, the kind of quiet that made his thoughts louder, and he’d just taken a drink when the door swung open hard enough to make the bottles rattle.
You walked in, furious.
"What is this?" you demanded, holding your phone out
Titus didn’t answer… He took another slow sip, set the glass down, and only then reached for your phone.
Subject: Resources for Carolingian Research
Dear Professor,
It’s a pleasure to meet you. My brother has done business with the Danforth’s for years, and Titus mentioned yesterday that you are currently conducting research on the ritual life of the Carolingian court. He thought I might be able to assist. I’ve attached several items that may be useful to your work. I hope they prove helpful as you continue developing your project.
A colleague of mine, Dr. Adams, is spending the semester teaching at Peking University; this area happens to be his specialization. I’ve CC’d him here in case you have additional questions or would like further materials.
Your credentials are impressive. If your schedule allows, we would be delighted to host you as a guest lecturer at some point this year. Your philosophical background complements Dr. Adams' historical approach particularly well. Interdisciplinary work is often where the most interesting insights emerge.
Warm regards,
Dr. Barnes,
University of Sydney
Department of History
Titus skimmed it once, then handed your phone back and picked up his whiskey again. "Am I supposed to be having a reaction? Why are you freaking out?"
"Because—" you shoved the phone toward him again, as if he hadn’t read it properly the first time. "Because I don’t understand how they have access to this. These manuscripts aren’t even digitized. They’re not public. They’re not—" You broke off, breath catching. "This isn’t possible."
"Maybe it’s not as impossible as you think."
"No, it is," you snapped. "This is impossible. These sources don’t circulate. They don’t leave the archive. People have been trying to get access to these things for years. And suddenly, some guy in Sydney just—just emails them to me?"
He tapped the bar with one finger, casual, almost bored. "Maybe Australians are smarter than Americans and can locate things more easily. I don’t know."
"Why did you contact him?"
"Because you needed help," Titus said, as if it were obvious. "His brother owed me. He’s a historian with access. You needed sources. It wasn’t complicated." He lifted his glass again.
"I didn’t need your help."
He raised an eyebrow. "You didn’t need access to the sources you’ve been trying to find for months?"
"That’s not the point."
"It’s exactly the point," Titus set his glass down softly, leaning a little forward, eyes now sharp and attentive.
You crossed your arms. "I didn’t need the help from you."
"Oh yes. God forbid you accept help from me."
"I didn’t ask for it, and I certainly didn’t want to get help from a selfish and self-centered individual."
In just a week, Titus had learned to read the progression of your frustration—from the flicker of your lips to the furrow between your brows. He hated admitting that whenever you were pissed off, your eyes would devour him just enough to leave him craving more. He liked it. He enjoyed the thrill he got from being the reason you became rude when you were so nice to everyone else.
"You know, people use connections to get ahead, and you’re acting like using a connection is dirty. It’s not. That’s how the world works."
"Not my world."
"Where do you get off acting morally superior about this?" he chuckled quietly, a low, almost amused sound.
You opened your mouth to retort, but Titus cut you off with a quick raise of his hand. "You grew up in the Danforth bubble, whether you like it or not," he said. "Just because you ran away doesn’t mean you didn’t benefit from connections your entire life. But the second I use one on your behalf, suddenly it’s unethical?"
"That’s not what I—"
"It is," he cut in. "You’re fine with privilege as long as it’s invisible. The moment it has a name attached, you panic."
"So maybe," he said calmly, "stop yelling at me for having helped you."
And while you never said it out loud (not even to yourself on the worst days), you knew the truth: the life you had now existed because of the opportunities Chester Danforth had handed you when you were too young to understand their weight.
Being a philosophy professor at Columbia with a whole string of letters after your name still felt surreal sometimes. You were a Doctor, taught in bright classrooms, published in journals, sat on panels, and lived a life built on ideas and arguments, and the luxury of time to think. You’d worked fucking hard to get there, no question about that, but the door had been opened for you long before you ever reached it because Chester had invested in your education. Admitting that felt like swallowing glass, and it felt like acknowledging a debt you’d spent years trying to outrun.
"My mother always said I had too much pride to admit when I was wrong," you finally said.
"Then we’re both guilty. What I said about your mother… I shouldn’t have said it." The guilt has been pulsing in his wrists, turning his veins black. "About her just being the help. She was obviously so much more than that."
The words hung there, raw and exposed, pulling at the thread of tension between you. His eyes locked on yours, dark and searching, the confusion from before twisting into something deeper—a pull that made his chest tighten, his body aware of every inch of space separating you.
A few tears escaped your eyes, and Titus stood there, frozen, his broad shoulders tense under the dim light of the room. He wasn't good at this…with emotions crashing like waves he couldn't shoot or outrun. His hands flexed at his sides, unsure whether to reach out or pull back, because he knew he wasn’t the best at comforting people.
You stepped closer, the air between you thick with unspoken things, and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek, his stubble scraping lightly against your lips. An unexpected ache unfurled beneath his ribs, subtle but insistent, as if something inside him had shifted a fraction to the left.
"Thank you, Titus..." you whispered, his name sounding like a melody despite the tears. "She loved you and Ursula very much."
You turned to leave the room, your footsteps soft on the floor, but paused at the doorway. Glancing back, you pointed at your phone, the screen still glowing with the email, "And thank you for this too."
"It was nothing," Titus muttered, the words tumbling out, awkward and honest, surprising even him as they bridged the gap of his usual guarded silence.
Titus watched your teeth sink gently into your bottom lip, causing a faint, subconscious tug low in his gut. Titus wondered what it would feel like to slide his tongue into your mouth, and to taste the subtle saltiness of your skin and the lingering hint of your breath. His gaze dipped involuntarily, drawn to the soft swell of your cleavage peeking from the neckline of your shirt, the gentle rise and fall of your chest with each steadying breath. Your eyes held his, fierce yet soft, pulling him in like a current he couldn't fight. The way your body moved, that subtle shift of hips as you lingered in the doorway, ignited a heat that spread through him, making his pulse throb.
You gave him a small wave and murmured a quiet goodnight.
Titus turned abruptly and walked out, striding down the hall to his bedroom. His bedroom was a good 5‑minute walk from the bar, and every step felt like a deliberate fucking punishment. Once he made it to his bedroom, he locked the door behind him before sinking onto the bed, back pressed against the sturdy headboard. His hand drifted down almost without thinking, fingers brushing over the rough fabric of his jeans. He popped the button, zipper rasping open, and shoved them down just enough to free his cock. It was already hard, and he wrapped his calloused fingers around the base, squeezing lightly, and let out a low groan.
Fuck, he thought, eyes squeezing shut. You were beautiful, no denying it. Not in that fake, dolled-up way he'd chased before, but real… He stroked upward slowly, thumb circling the head where a bead of pre-cum glistened. The sound of his name on your tongue echoed in his head, soft now in his imagination, whispered like a secret. 'Titus...' He imagined you saying it closer, your breath hot against his ear, your hand replacing his.
His grip tightened, pumping in a steady rhythm, hips bucking up off the cushion. He pictured you there, peeling off your clothes to reveal the curves he'd only glimpsed—full breasts straining against your shirt, hips that swayed with purpose. He spread his legs wider, free hand gripping his sheets as he jerked faster, the slick sound filling the quiet room. Your lips parting to say his name again, this time moaning it, your body arching toward him.
Sweat beaded on his forehead, breath coming in ragged bursts. He envisioned pinning you down, your legs wrapping around his waist, pussy wet and welcoming as he thrust in deep. 'Titus,' you'd gasp, nails digging into his back, that beautiful face of yours scrunching up with need. His cock throbbed in his fist, veins pulsing, and he twisted his wrist on the upstroke, chasing the heat building low in his belly.
Titus
Titus
Titus
His strokes became more erratic, his balls drawing tight, the pressure coiling like a spring. Suddenly, he came with a guttural curse, his spend spilling over his knuckles in hot spurts, splattering his shirt. His body jerked, chest heaving, as waves of pleasure crashed through him. For a moment, he just lay there, spent, cock softening in his grip, the sticky mess cooling on his skin. But as the high faded, something gnawed at him. He wiped his hand on his thigh, staring at the ceiling, confusion settling in. He'd fucked plenty of women…usually with no strings attached. Bodies slamming together, release and done. But this? Jerking off to the thought of you, not just your body, but the way you moved, the way you saw him? It twisted something inside, unfamiliar and raw. He'd never felt this pull before, this ache that went beyond getting off.
What the hell was this?
Thanks for reading! When it comes to the Carolingian research in this story, a lot of the material is intentionally fictionalized. I did look into how difficult it is to access certain manuscripts, and in reality, many of them are extremely restricted… but in this world, Titus can make anything happen. So that’s part of the fun.
Some of the degree program specializations I mentioned don’t actually exist at the universities I listed. That was deliberate. I wanted the reader to come across as someone who grew up in the Danforth bubble, with the kind of privilege and access that lands you in the Ivy League or top‑tier international programs. Her specialization is also uncommon in real academia. It’s loosely inspired by a program I found online (Doctor Ph.D. Degree Mythology & Occultism), and additional research on this topic Deciphering the Esoteric Meaning: A Conceptual Analysis | Meridian University, and I expanded it to fit the tone and worldbuilding of the story.
So none of this should be taken as historically or academically accurate. It’s all crafted to serve the narrative and the characters. Sorry for the little disclaimer moment—I just know academia and research are their own galaxies, and I want to be clear that I’m taking creative liberties. If anyone reading this has careers in philosophy, history, medieval studies, manuscript research, or anything adjacent… I’m genuinely in awe of you. I felt like a confused child Googling half this stuff. The years you all put into your work is unreal.
I wrote a thesis once upon a time, and I do not miss those days. Sending forehead kisses to everyone who has ever had to decipher a footnote.
Clock in. Find Jack Abbot. Say something that makes him squirm. Clock out. You've never claimed it means anything. You've never claimed it doesn't either. What matters is that something has shifted. Jack is off. And you are going to figure out what happened.
genre: jack abbot x reader, attending jack x attending reader, comedy, because i think i'm funny!, flirty reader makes jacky a nervous boy but he likes it, best friend john shen!!!!,banter, inaccurate medical lingo probably, eventual smut 18+ nsfw, angst in this one sorry!!
(a/n: here yall gooooooo. jack is a little bitch in this. i am so sorry but he will be making up for it, you best believe.)
word count: 3600
pt. 1
You sobered up fast.
It happened the second your ass made contact with the passenger seat of Jack's car. His jacket was being draped over your legs with the kind of quiet care that you were not going to think about too hard.
You'd fought him on the wheelchair, obviously.
"I can walk," you'd told him.
"You have a bandaged knee and you've had some drinks tonight." he'd said, already wheeling it toward you.
"I walked in here didn't I?"
"You hobbled in here leaning on Shen."
You'd looked at the wheelchair. Then up at him. "You could just carry me again," you'd said, smiling up at him. "If you want."
And he had without hesitation started to bend down. Which you had not actually expected. "I'm kidding, Jack." You stepped back, a blush crawling up your own neck for once.
He straightened. Looked at you and shrugged. And held his arm out for you to take instead.
Pittsburgh moved past the window, lit up and unhurried. You called out your directions softly and watched the city go by and tried very hard not to watch the way his forearm flexed every time he reached for the turn signal.
The flirting was supposed to be simple. It had always felt contained. Like something you could pick up and put down. The feeling currently sitting in your lower stomach was not simple.
"How come you and Shen never dated?"
You turned from the window. It was the first full sentence he'd really produced since the hospital. Not a hum, not a grunt, not a one word answer to something you'd said to fill the silence.
You laughed a little. "Even if I saw John romantically," you shifted in the seat to look at him properly, "don't you think we would make the most chaotic couple?"
Jack was quiet for a moment. Genuinely considering it. "Yeah," he said finally. "It would actually be a disaster. And you'd make it everybody's problem."
The laugh came out of you with more force than you'd planned. A snort, completely undignified, and you slapped your hand over your mouth so fast it was almost a reflex.
You would have been mortified and you almost were. Except you looked over at Jack and he was beaming.
Not a small tip of the mouth. Not the almost exhale. A full, genuine, ear-to-ear grin, and the laugh that came with it was quiet but it was real, and it did something catastrophic to your chest.
You'd snort a thousand times for that. Gladly.
…
He insisted on walking you in. "I brought bandage replacements," he said, holding up the small kit he'd taken from the supply room as evidence.
"You know we're both doctors, right?" you said, key already in the lock. "I have all of this in a kit in my closet."
He waved a hand and brushed past you into the apartment. You would have been more embarrassed about the state of the place if your knee hadn't chosen that moment to remind you, with significant enthusiasm, that it was still very much injured. The movie night debris was exactly as you'd left it. Popcorn bowl and all. Across the floor near the couch, was the glittering spread of broken glass that you and John had simply walked away from because that had felt like a problem for future you.
Before you could say anything, Jack turned to you. "Where's your broom?"
"Jack." You shook your head. "You've done enough tonight. I can get it. Go home and get some rest."
He opened the first door within reach and looked inside, closed it, and moved to the next one. Not giving up until you finally relented and told him where it was kept.
You sat on the arm of the couch and watched him sweep, but then your eyes caught on his upper shoulder. The dark bloom of blood was showing through the fabric of his shirt. Small, but unmistakable. "Jack." You straightened. "You're bleeding."
He didn't stop sweeping. Bent to collect the larger pieces of glass into the container he'd found under your sink. "Don't worry about it. I just need to change the bandage."
You crossed the room and grabbed his arm and he turned.
You got close enough to look and the reality of it assembled itself in your head. A hundred different scenarios involving that SWAT uniform and they were not good. "I'm going to worry about it," you said. "What happened?"
"A bullet grazed me today." He shrugged. "Shootout. Bank robbery gone wrong." He rolled the shoulder slightly. "I dressed it the best I could back at the ER."
The thing that crossed your face wasn't anger. It sat somewhere between disappointment and fear. "Take your shirt off," you said. "I'm going to bandage it properly."
"It's fine, really."
"Take." You held his gaze. "Your shirt off. So help me God."
Something shifted in his expression. He straightened and walked toward your living room without another word. When you came back, your heart went directly into your throat.
He was sitting on your couch. In your apartment. At whatever hour this had become. Shirtless, in his camo pants and boots.
You settled on the couch behind him and opened the kit. He sat very still while you worked. You cleaned the wound carefully and applied fresh ointment.
"I don't like that you do this job," you said quietly.
He didn't answer. You smoothed the ointment and reached for the bandage.
"So," he said finally. "Why do you need a recommendation letter? Leaving us?"
You opened the package. "Not intentionally anyways." You peeled the backing. "There's a surgical residency in New York. You know how giddy I get when they need me at the hospital."
You smoothed the bandage down along its edges, pressing gently to make sure it held. Then you tapped his shoulder twice. He reached for his shirt and to pull it back on, and some small, treacherous part of you felt the loss.
"For what it's worth," he said "you would be an asset to wherever you go. PTMC has been lucky to have you."
You snorted. "Yeah, I'm sure you've been waiting for the moment I get out of there."
He turned and the expression on his face was serious and still and his eyes found yours and stayed there. "I notice when you're not there," he said. "I would feel it."
You sat back and blinked, stunned.
Jack Abbot had always been honest with you. He didn't perform sincerity. When he said something he meant it and you'd always respected that about him even when it made him hard to read.
But this was different. This was him on your couch, in your apartment, his shirtless back being cast in the warm glow of the lamp in the living room.
I would feel it.
You didn't say anything. For once in your life, with this man, you had absolutely nothing. No line ready. No deflection loaded. You just sat there and looked at him and felt something in your chest pull tight.
He looked back at you and then his eyes moved across your face first and then down, just briefly, before they came back up to yours.
His hand found your knee, the unharmed one and squeezed once.
"I mean it." he said. He held it one moment longer, then let go. Finally pulling his shirt over his head. "Let me see the knee before I go."
He crouched down and checked the bandage pressing lightly at the edges, checking adherence, asking you to flex it once. His hands were careful and you stared at the top of his head and tried to remember how to be a normal person.
"It looks good." He grabbed his jacket from the arm of the chair. "I should go."
You walked him to the door and at the threshold he stopped and patted his pants pocket. "Oh. Almost forgot."
He held out an envelope with your name on the front, in his handwriting. Clean and precise, because of course it was.
Your recommendation letter.
"Get some sleep, sweetheart." he said quietly. He turned and walked down the hall and you stood in your doorway holding the envelope with both hands and watched him go and did not move until he'd rounded the corner and disappeared completely.
…
You woke up with your hair wrapped around your face, drool on the pillow, and the fading tail end of a dream that had been vivid.
Specific.
Embarrassingly high definition.
It may or may not have involved an attending. It may or may not have also ended with you pushing him back into a very familiar couch and swinging a leg over his lap.
You reached for your phone and called John.
The screen came up black when he answered. "Bitch," you said, already swinging your legs out of bed, padding toward the bathroom. "Are you still asleep?"
"Well I'm up now." John's voice was thick with sleep. "Thanks for that."
The lamp clicked on. You were reaching for your toothbrush when you looked at him and stopped. John was sitting up in bed, blinking, and visible just above his left ear was a patch of hair cropped close to the skin. And buzzed into it, in swirly, cursive: princess.
You stared. "...How'd the date go?"
John picked up the glass of water from his nightstand and took four enormous gulps. "Really good," he said, setting it down. "I think I'm in love."
The laugh that came out of you bounced off the bathroom tiles. You pointed at the screen with your toothbrush. "You know what, hell yeah. Love that for you."
He took another gulp of water, looking considerably more woken up.
You started brushing your teeth. "I need to talk about Jack," you said, or tried to, around the toothbrush.
"What?"
You held up a finger and rinsed. "I need to talk about Jack."
“Wait” He sat up straighter against his headboard. "Talk."
John was very still by the time you finished spilling the whole story. "Well? Did you read the letter?"
"Not yet."
The look on his face was instantaneous. "I'm hanging up on you," he said, annoyed. "Call me back when you've read it and can actually provide me with pivotal information." Then you saw him glance at himself in his mirror. “Also, can I come over and have you fix my hair?"
…
To Whom It May Concern,
It is without reservation that I recommend Y/N for consideration in your surgical residency program. In my years of practicing emergency medicine, I have worked alongside a great number of physicians. I do not offer this kind of endorsement frequently, or lightly.
Y/N is, in the simplest terms, an exceptional doctor. Her clinical instincts are among the sharpest I have encountered.
She is the physician that other physicians want in the room when things go wrong, because she is steady. There is a particular kind of competence that announces itself, and a rarer kind that simply acts. Y/N is the latter. I have watched her de escalate, diagnose, and perform under conditions that would rattle less grounded clinicians, and I have never once watched her falter in a way that cost a patient.
What I would also ask you to consider, though it falls outside the traditional scope of a letter like this, is what she brings beyond her clinical skill.
She makes the people around her better. Not through instruction or oversight, but simply by being present. The nurses trust her. Her colleagues, myself included, are better for working alongside her. That quality is rarer than any board score or procedural metric, and your program would be fortunate to have it walking through the door.
I would be remiss if I did not add, with full transparency, that recommending her for a position in New York means recommending her departure from PTMC. I am aware of this. I am recommending her anyway, because it is the right thing to do, and because anything less would be a disservice to what she is capable of.
She is ready. She has been ready.
Please do not waste that.
Sincerely,
Dr. Jack Abbot
Attending Physician, Emergency Medicine PTMC
…
You'd spent Sunday with John, who had left your apartment with symmetrical hair and red eyes from laughing too hard as he shared how his date went and how he exactly got that haircut.
He had read the letter three times and then set it down on your coffee table. “That man is going to miss you so much it breaks something in him” and then refused to elaborate because his Hinge match was texting him.
On Monday, you were forty minutes into charting at the nurses' station when the radiologist appeared.
He leaned against the counter with ease "You know," he said, by way of greeting, "I've been thinking."
"Dangerous," you said, not looking up from your screen.
He grinned. "There's a new place on Penn Avenue. Small menu, good wine list. Very low lighting." He leaned a little closer. "I think you'd like it."
You looked up. "Just dinner," he said. "No agenda."
"There's always an agenda."
"Okay, minimal agenda." He tilted his head. "Come on. What do you say?"
In your peripheral vision, just past his shoulder, you caught movement. Jack was coming out of a consult room, chart in hand, taking the long way back to the station. His eyes moved across the nurses' station and then they landed on you and the radiologist.
He kept walking. Just a turn on his heel and gone, disappearing around the corner with his jaw set and his shoulders hunched.
"I'll think about it," you said, which was the most diplomatic version of no you currently had access to.
The radiologist looked pleased enough with that to push off the counter and head back to work and you turned back to your screen and tried to find your place in the chart.
...
Things were fine until they weren’t. Jack’s mood had turned sour for whatever reason and you were in the line of fire.
It was a straightforward laceration. Clean edges, good depth assessment, textbook closure. You'd done a thousand of them. Jack appeared at the door while you were finishing the last suture, reviewed the chart on the wall display, and said without looking up, "You'll want to irrigate that more thoroughly before you close."
You looked at the wound and at your irrigation documentation. “I did irrigate it thoroughly."
He set the chart back. "Just flagging it."
He left and your patient looked at you.
"That happens." you said pleasantly, and tied off the suture.
…
You’d written clean, thorough handoff notes since your first year. It was something you took pride in.
Jack picked up the chart. "This is missing the last set of vitals in the summary."
You took the chart back and found the vitals section complete.
"They're right here," you said, keeping your voice even, turning it so he could see.
He looked and said nothing. Set it back down and walked away.
You'd been patient. You knew how to absorb things and keep moving. But this was Jack.
Jack, who had crouched in front of you and checked your bandage. Jack, who had swept up your broken glass without being asked. Jack, who had written she makes the people around her better and folded it into an envelope and carried it in his pocket through a bank robbery.
This was Jack, and it hurt in a new way.
…
You were coming out of the supply room when he fell into step beside you and looked at the supplies in your hands. "That's not the right gauge for what you're doing."
Something in your chest that had been bending all day made a sound like it was about to snap. "Jack." Your voice was very controlled. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"
The room was empty, a patient free bay at the end of the hall, curtain drawn, blessedly quiet. You pulled him in and dropped his arm and turned to face him.
"What is going on with you today?" you said.
"I don't know what you mean."
"You've been on me all shift." You crossed your arms. "Every chart, every order.”
"I'm just doing my job."
"You're not." Your voice climbed a little despite yourself. "You're doing something else entirely and I need you to tell me what it is because you have never, in all the time we've worked together, done this with me."
He looked at the wall. "I'm not doing anything."
"Jack."
"Maybe your work has been slipping," he said flatly. "Maybe I'm doing you a favor by flagging it early."
The room went very quiet. "My work," you said slowly, "has not been slipping."
"I'm just saying.."
"I have given you zero reason today to question a single thing I've done and you know that. So say what you actually mean or don't say anything."
Something like sadness moved across his face. Or was it anger? "Why don't you just go where they actually want you," he said. "In radiology."
The air went out of the room. Your hand went to your jacket pocket, fingers closing around the envelope and you pulled it out, then ripped it.
Clean down the middle. Then across. The pieces small enough that they scattered when you dropped them.
"I don't even fucking want this." Your voice broke on the last word and you hated that, hated it completely, but your eyes were hot and your chest was tight and you were done. "Fuck you, Jack."
You pushed through the curtain and the ER swallowed you back up, bright and loud and you didn't look back.
