yeah,but why?

‘03 | taurus | australian

[flyboy-and-fight-me]

Yodito

[harryscherriess]

Brunch

pairing: loverboy!Jack Abbot x Girlfriend! Reader

This came to me while I was at brunch with my friends and got a little tipsy!! Basically, if you went out to brunch with your girlfriends and got a little too drunk and texted Jack to pick you up, and your friends get jealous!

We need more yearner/ loverboy Jack Abbot fics, like I know that man gets down bad for his woman!!!! lowk feel like the ending is rushed, but i hope you enjoy anyway!!

more of my works here!

WC: 1.2k

You didn't plan on drinking so much, but you were with your besties and the conversation was flowing, and the drink kept coming. One of your friends was telling you work drama, because that's always fun. After all, it's incredible how adults act in the workplace sometimes! You didn't realize that you were that drunk until you stumbled to the bathroom and smiled at yourself in the mirror the whole time you were washing your hands. 

There was one thing on your mind, your lovely and handsome boyfriend, Jack, who so graciously offered to drop you off and pick you up whenever you were ready. You'd sat back down at the table while one of your friends was telling a story about how she thinks her boyfriend is gonna propose, but she's not ready yet, and you were absent-mindedly listening while you pulled out your phone to text Jack. 

You were completely in your own world texting Jack until one of your friends called your name 

"Are you texting Jack?"  Mira asked, raising an eyebrow 

"Maybe," you said sheepishly 

"Oh my god, is he coming?" Camille said, wiggling her eyebrows 

"Also, maybe," you said 

"'Maybe' my ass." Sloane giggled. 

You laughed, setting your phone face down on the table. "He said he'd be here in like... fifteen."

"I swear that man appears out of thin air every time you text him," Nadia said, leaning back in her chair. 

“He was already out,” you said 

“Doing what?” Mira questioned

“Grocery shopping,” you said, taking a sip of water 

She stared at you.“…He’s grocery shopping on a Saturday?”

“Mhm.”

“And he’s leaving to come get you?” she asked 

“I mean… yeah.” You shrugged. 

“You didn’t tell him to.” 

“I didn’t have to,” you shrugged again. There wasn’t anything else to say.  If you texted Jack because you were ready to go home, he'd come get you. 

If you mentioned on a Tuesday that you were craving cinnamon raisin bread, it'd somehow end up on the kitchen counter before the week was over. If you forgot your lunch on the counter before work, he'd text you a picture of it five minutes later with, turn around, I'm in the parking garage.

It wasn't something the two of you talked about. It was just Jack.

“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again…” Nadia pointed at you with her fork. “I hate how cute you two are.”

It's actually kind of annoying," Mira muttered.

"What is?" you asked.

"The way you two make everything look so... easy."

 "It isn't easy." You frowned.

Everyone’s eyes landed on you.

"I don't know..." You laughed quietly. "It's just... we've been together long enough that none of it feels like a big deal anymore."

"What do you mean?" Camille asked.

You shrugged. "I know he'll answer if I call and I know he’ll come get me” .You smiled to yourself. "He knows I can't fall asleep unless the fan's on."

Another shrug. "I don't know. We stopped keeping score of who does what for who a long time ago."

Nadia tilted her head. "So all that stuff just... happens?"

"Yeah."

"Nobody's trying to impress anybody anymore." 

You shook your head. "I mean, I'm sure we still are."

That earned a few laughs.

"But it doesn't feel like that."

"It just feels like..."You searched for the words before smiling. "...coming home."

Sloane smiled. "I want that."

"So do I," Mira admitted.

You laughed, suddenly feeling a little shy. "It sounds way deeper than I meant it to."

"No," Nadia said. "I think you actually explained it perfectly."

The conversation carried on for another fifteen minutes. Your friends ordered another basket of fries for the table, and someone else started talking about a coworker who'd accidentally had their mic on during a Zoom call while complaining about a manager. 

You were laughing so hard your stomach hurt when your phone buzzed against the table.

here 

His truck was parked at the curb. "He always parks in the same spot," you mumbled more to yourself than anyone else.

One of your friends laughed. "You sound so happy."

"I am."You stood, slinging your purse over your shoulder.

Immediately, one of your friends reached over. "Nope."

"What?" you asked, brows furrowing 

"We're coming," they said in unison

"...Why?"

"We wanna see him," Sloane stated

"You've all met him," you sighed, looking outside at Jack.

"Not after four mimosas," Camille corrected.

"I had three." Everyone looked at you. "...And a half."

"That's what I thought."

You rolled your eyes, unable to stop smiling as the five of you walked toward the front of the restaurant.

The little bell above the door chimed as you stepped outside.

Jack looked up from where he was leaning against the passenger door. His sunglasses were pushed on top of his head, grocery bags still sitting in the backseat behind him.

You walked straight over until you were standing right in front of him. "Hi."

"Hi, baby." His hand found your waist before he leaned down and kissed the top of your head. "You have fun?"

"So much fun," you said 

He reached over and slipped your purse off your shoulder. "I got it." You watched him tuck it into the backseat with the groceries before he closed the door again.

"You bought groceries," you commented

"I did," he said, rubbing your waist

"What'd you get?" you said

"You'll see when we get home," 

"I wanna know now." You pouted. 

He laughed quietly.

Behind you, one of your friends cleared her throat.

"So..."

The two of you turned around.

Jack smiled politely. "Hey, guys."

A chorus of hellos answered him.

 "We have a question."Nadia folded her arms.

"What'd you tell them?" Jack looked at you. 

You gasped. "I didn't tell them anything." "They've been interrogating me for twenty minutes."

 "Is he always like this?" She pointed between the two of you.

"Like what?" Jack frowned slightly.

She gestured vaguely. "The purse, the pickup, the groceries, the forehead kiss."

Jack glanced over at you before looking back at her. "I don't know." 

He shrugged. "That's just... us."  

You smiled. "See?" "I told you."

Your friend looked at you in disbelief. "He doesn't even realize he's doing it."

"I know," you said, looking at him and then back at your friends. 

"Am I missing something?" Jack looked between the two of you. 

You laughed, slipping your hand into his. "No."

"You sure?" 

"Mhm."

"You girls figure it out?" he said, squeezing your hand

"I think so," Camille said 

He nodded once as if that settled it.

"Good."

You gave his hand a little squeeze. "Babe?"

"Hm?"

"I'm hungry again."

He smiled. "I had a feeling." He reached into the backseat and pulled out one of the grocery bags. "I stopped by the bakery while I was there."

You looked inside. "...You got the rosemary focaccia." 

"You said last week you were thinking about it," he said, smiling at you. 

Your jaw dropped a little. "I forgot I said that."

One of your friends let out the longest sigh.

You smiled to yourself before looking back at your friends. "I told you."

"What?" Jack asked 

"It just feels normal," you said 

Jack reached over and opened the passenger door. "You ready to go home?"

"So ready." You nodded.

[maybestrid33]

Scales and Blood

Jacaerys Velaryon x wife!reader - House of the Dragon

Summary: It starts as something almost laughable: a dragon who prefers his rider’s wife to his rider. But when a dragon decides something is his to guard, the world learns to step carefully around what he has chosen.

Warnings: 16+ morning after, brief nudity, possessive/protective Jace, pregnancy, control/protection, scary dragon and his rider who are both secretly softies, innuendo, non-graphic childbirth, huge time jumps

A/N: This got a lil out of hand, I admit. It was meant to be a short blurb, and yet here we are. Ik people wanted smut, so I added some morning after here, and I plan to write another smut-heavy fic next so dw.

MASTERLIST - REQUESTS (open) - WC: 4.7k

The storm had burned itself out sometime before dawn.

Now all that remained was the steady drip of rain from Dragonstone's black stone walls and the distant crash of waves below the cliffs. Pale morning light slipped through the narrow windows in soft ribbons, washing the chamber in silver.

You wake slowly.

Not necessarily because you're rested, but because you're warm. Far warmer than you ought to be beneath a blanket that had long since been kicked to the foot of the bed.

Jace is wrapped around you as though sometime during the night he'd decided that simply sleeping beside you wasn't close enough. One arm is draped securely across your waist, his face buried against the back of your shoulder, his breathing slow and even. His dark curls are a complete mess, and one bare leg has somehow become tangled with yours beneath the sheets.

You smile to yourself.

"You'll complain about your shoulder later," you murmur.

A sleepy sound, somewhere between a hum and a groan, vibrates against your skin.

"I'll survive." His voice is thick with sleep and his grip tightens just enough to pull you impossibly closer. There's something almost boyish about the way he says it, as though it's a victory in itself.

You turn carefully within the circle of his arms until you're facing him. The movement earns another sleepy complaint, though he makes no effort to let go.

Up close, you can still see the faint flush lingering across his cheeks from the warmth of the room. A thin scratch is visible beneath his collarbone, your own fault no doubt.

You remeber is so clearly, how the rain had battered against the windows, how the candles had guttered low, how his forehead was resting against yours while the storm rolled over Dragonstone. But inside your bed chamber, you'd barely noticed.

"You look terribly pleased with yourself," you say.

One eye opens. "Well, I married you, didn't I?"

"Your point being?"

"It happens to be something I am very pleased about." He studies you for a long moment. "I was thinking..." He continues, thumb brushing lazily over your bare waist. "That I should arrange for more storms."

"Oh?"

"They appear to encourage you to stay in bed."

Outside, somewhere beyond the window, comes the deep, familiar rumble of a dragon.

Jace sighs dramatically without lifting his head. "He's awake."

He presses a kiss to your forehead before finally, reluctantly, releasing you. "If Vermax has flown all the way here simply to interrupt my morning," he declares, "I shall have to remind him who hatched him."

You grin as you reach for the discarded shift lying somewhere beside the bed.

By the time you're both dressed the castle has begun to wake around you.

You trail a step behind Jace, fingers loosely hooked around his sleeve more out of habit than necessity. To be honest, it is a habit you've only recently allowed yourself.

When you first arrived as his wife, you had been painfully conscious of every eye that followed you through the castle.

The princess, the prince's bride. Too young, some had whispered when they thought you were out of earshot. Too sheltered or too soft for Dragonstone.

You had smiled through every greeting, learned every name you could remember, and prayed no one noticed how often you got lost in the twisting corridors of black stone.

Jace had noticed.

Three days after your wedding, he'd quietly taken your hand before supper and walked every hallway, pointing out hidden staircases, quicker routes, which doors stuck in damp weather and which windows gave the best view of Blackwater Bay.

"I cannot believe you've spent an entire afternoon making sure I know my way around the castle." You'd said that evening in your chambers.

"Why can't you believe it?"

"You drew me a map."

"It was an excellent map."

"It had little dragons."

"So you wouldn't get bored."

You laugh. "You named one after Lord Celtigar."

"That one looked particularly grumpy." He grins, a quick flash of satisfaction that softens his usually princely composure, and reaches for your hand.

In your mind, the heir to the Iron Throne ought to be careful, composed, forever aware of watching eyes. But Jace rarely seems to remember, or perhaps he simply doesn't care.

A pair of servants step into the corridor ahead.

The moment they see the two of you, they bow hurriedly. "My prince. Princess."

You smile in greeting, Jace nods once, polite but distracted.

Only after they've passed do you realize he never let go of your hand.

Not even for a moment.

"You know," you tease quietly, "there are people who might think you're terribly devoted."

"They'd be right." He looks at you then with a familiar softness, so unguarded it almost steals your breath.

His thumb brushes absentmindedly across your knuckles. "And I'm not inclined to stop simply because people are looking."

Before you can answer, a deep, resonant rumble rolls across the courtyard outside.

Jace exhales through his nose.

"There he is."

You cross toward one of the narrow windows overlooking the inner yard. Far below, Vermax has landed.

The young dragon stands with his wings half-folded, emerald scales still glistening from the night's rain. A pair of dragonkeepers are speaking to him from what they clearly believe is a safe distance.

Vermax is paying them absolutely no attention. Instead, his great head is tilted upward.

Toward this very window.

You laugh. "I think he's looking for you Jace."

Jace joins you at the window. "No."

He follows the dragon's gaze for a moment before the corners of his mouth twitch. "I think," he says with theatrical resignation, "he's looking for you."

As though to prove his point, Vermax lets out another low, expectant chirr, quieter than his earlier call.

You blink. "Surely not."

Down in the courtyard, Vermax chirrs again.

It becomes impossible to deny by the end of the week. Vermax has decided you belong to him.

"No," Jace says flatly one afternoon, watching the dragon nudge your shoulder with surprising delicacy. "Absolutely not."

You laugh, scratching beneath the smooth ridge of emerald scales where you've discovered he likes it best. "What has he done now?"

"He is stealing my wife."

As if personally offended by the accusation, Vermax lowers his head another inch until the broad curve of his snout is pressed insistently against your side.

Jace stares. "You see?"

"He wants attention."

"I gave him an entire sheep this morning."

You can't help the laugh that escapes you, and it echoes across the training yard, bright enough that even a pair of dragonkeepers glance over with amused smiles.

You and Jace turn to go back inside, but only make it perhaps ten paces before heavy footsteps thud softly behind you.

The dragon has stood and started following.

"Vermax."

He stops, tilting his head.

"You can't come into the castle."

It doesn't stop there.

If you choose to read beneath the old weirwood overlooking the sea, Vermax appears within the hour.

If you wander the beach collecting shells after supper, a shadow passes lazily overhead before circling back toward shore. When you look up, the dragon is gliding against the afternoon sky.

The dragon dips lower, just enough that the rush of displaced air sends your skirts fluttering.

You laugh and wave. High above, Vermax answers with a delighted trill.

One morning you step into the gardens alone, intending only to cut fresh lavender for your chambers. You have barely even filled half the basket when a familiar shadow rolls across the flowers.

Then comes the gentle, unmistakable whuff of warm dragon breath.

You don't even look up.

"Good morning, Vermax." The dragon answers with a contented rumble.

He settles himself just beyond the garden wall, folding his forelegs neatly beneath him.

And there he remains.

When Jace finds you nearly an hour later, basket overflowing with lavender, he stops dead.

"You've got to be joking."

"What?"

He points.

Vermax, his great head rests on crossed forelegs, one eye lazily cracked open just enough to keep you in sight.

You walk over, unable to resist stroking the smooth scales along Vermax's jaw.

Jace follows, and you shake your head, laughing, and slip your free hand into his. Immediately, Vermax opens both eyes.

He watches the joined hands for a long, silent moment. Then, with another deep, satisfied rumble, he closes them again.

A couple weeks later, Dragonstone is hosting a small gathering of sworn lords from the Crownlands. Nothing particularly grand, just an awful lot of petitions, trade disputes, and endless discussions that leave Jace rubbing his temples by supper.

You escape the hall as politely as you can.

"I shall only be a moment," you promise him.

His hand lingers around yours before he lets go. "I know."

"You'll survive without me, Jace, I promise."

The sea air is cooler outside. Rain still clings to the black stone, leaving everything smelling of salt and earth. You breathe deeply, grateful for the quiet after hours of smiling at strangers.

You don't notice the shadow until it passes overhead.

A heartbeat later, Vermax lands beyond the outer wall with enough force to make loose gravel dance across the ground.

"You again?" you laugh.

His answer is a soft chirr as he lowers his head, inviting the familiar scratch beneath his jaw.

You indulge him. "You know," you murmur, "your rider insists you're abandoning him."

You continue scratching him anyway.

The interruption comes quietly. "My princess."

You turn. One of the visiting lords, a pleasant enough man whose name escapes you, has stepped into the courtyard. He offers a courteous bow.

"I hoped I might thank you for your kindness at supper."

"You are very kind, my lord."

He smiles. "I confess Dragonstone is rather less… welcoming than I imagined."

You glance at the dragon. "I imagine it has nothing to do with the fire-breathing beats circling at all times."

The lord laughs and takes a step closer.

Vermax's head lifts. The movement is slow enough that, for a moment, no one notices. Until the rumbling begins. It vibrates through the stone beneath your feet and the lord stops mid-sentence.

His smile falters.

Vermax does not bare his teeth, he does not spread his wings, he simply fixes the man with one unblinking emerald eye.

The rumble deepens.

"My lady," the lord corrects takes an instinctive step backward.

The sound stops.

You blink.

"…That was odd."

The lord laughs a little too loudly. "I believe… I shall return inside."

You think little of it.

Until it happens again, and again, and again. Not only with strangers, but with servants and guards. Even dragonkeepers he has known since hatching.

If someone approaches you too quickly, Vermax appears.

If voices grow heated nearby, he materialises as though summoned by instinct alone. He has become a living wall of green scales between you and the rest of the world.

A fortnight passes.

The castle settles into its familiar rhythm, though Vermax never quite returns to his old habits.

If anything, he grows bolder.

By now, even the servants have stopped remarking upon it.

"Your shadow awaits you, Princess," one maid says one morning with a knowing smile.

You peer from the window. Sure enough, a pair of emerald eyes are already fixed expectantly on the tower.

You laugh. "I do believe I've been adopted."

That afternoon, the weather is fair.

Jace has escaped the council chambers looking thoroughly exhausted, finding you exactly where he expected, beneath the old windswept tree overlooking the cliffs, a book forgotten in your lap while Vermax dozes nearby.

Or appears to.

His eyes are closed.

One wing lies stretched lazily across the grass, shimmering green beneath the sun.

Jace watches while walking towards you, finally bending to kiss the top of your head. Then, without thinking, he reaches a hand toward you.

Vermax's eyes snap open.

The dragon rises in one smooth motion, slipping between you and Jace with astonishing precision. His great neck curves across the narrow space, not striking, not threatening, but blocking.

Jace freezes.

For one suspended heartbeat, neither moves.

The dragon's head turns slightly, one brilliant green eye fixed on his rider, Jace stares back.

"...Vermax."

The dragon lets out a low sound, as though asking something only he understands. Then, just as suddenly, he steps aside.

You blink. "What on earth was that?"

Jace doesn't answer, he is still looking at Vermax.

"I've never..." he murmurs.

"What?"

"He has never stood between us."

By evening, Jace has sought out the dragonkeepers; he wants an explanation.

The oldest among them is already waiting when Jace reaches the caverns.

He bows deeply.

"My prince."

"You've noticed." It is not a question.

The old man is silent for a long moment. "...Yes."

"Then tell me."

Another pause.

"There are tales." The dragonkeeper folds weathered hands before him. "And the tales are all I have."

Jace says nothing, but his jaw tightens.

The old man continues carefully. "Dragons know certain things before men do, sometimes."

"What things?"

"Danger." Jace nods once. "Weather." Another nod. "And..." The man hesitates. "Life."

Jace blinks. "...What do you mean?"

"There are old records. Rare ones. A dragon becoming unusually protective of a rider's wife. Of a queen. Of a princess."

"Protective?"

"They guard." The dragonkeeper's gaze drifts toward the mouth of the cavern, where Vermax sleeps beyond the fading light.

Jace remembers every strange moment of the past weeks and his heartbeat quickens.

"No."

"It is only a possibility."

"No."

"Has the princess been unwell?"

"...No."

"Has she been unusually tired?"

Jace opens his mouth. Closes it again.

"And..." the dragonkeeper says gently, "when did the dragon's behavior begin?"

Jace's mind races backwards until he finally remembers the storm. How Vermax had refused to leave the castle, had hovered outside their chambers, nudging him toward the tower when he'd intended to return to his studies.

He'd laughed. "Apparently, he has plans for us."

Three months, almost exactly.

The dragonkeeper watches the realisation settle over his prince's face. Quietly, he says, "I believe... it may be time to send for the maester."

Jace finds you in your solar not five minutes later. You look up from the embroidery in your lap, smiling the moment he steps through the door, but the smile falters almost immediately.

"Jace?"

His hair is windblown from crossing the castle at nearly a run, his expression unreadable in a way you've never quite seen before. He closes the door behind him without a word and simply looks at you, searching your face as though expecting to find something different.

"What is it?"

He crosses the room in three long strides and kneels before your chair, taking both your hands in his. "Have you felt unwell?"

You blink. "...No."

"Not at all?"

"A little tired, perhaps, but you've been working me through every feast and council dinner on Dragonstone." You smile faintly. "I assumed being a princess was simply quite exhausting."

His thumb traces absent circles across your knuckles. "And nothing else?"

"I've slept later than usual."

"You've always liked sleeping late."

You grin, leaning forward to whisper, "I do when my husband keeps me awake half the night."

The corner of his mouth twitches despite himself, though the smile never quite reaches his eyes. "When was your last moon's blood?"

You stare at him. "What?"

He doesn't repeat himself, and slowly, your own amusement fades. You set the embroidery aside. "I..." You pause, thinking. "I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"I've never had reason to count the days so carefully, Jace."

Silence settles between you. You begin counting backwards in your head, tracing feasts, journeys, the passing weeks. Your brows knit together. "A couple of weeks, maybe," you murmur. "I'm not sure."

His expression answers before he speaks. "The dragonkeepers believe Vermax sensed it."

You let out a disbelieving laugh. "Jace."

"They've seen it before."

"Surely they haven't."

"They swear they have."

You shake your head, trying to make sense of it. "So... because Vermax has decided to follow me everywhere..."

"And because he stood between us."

"...he thinks I'm carrying a child?"

"Yes."

You both fall quiet.

"Oh."

It is the only word you can manage, and Jace squeezes your hands.

"I've sent for the maester."

"You've... already?"

"He'll be here shortly."

The maester, when he finally arrives, is kind and discreet, far too accustomed to royal nerves to comment on the tension hanging in the room. He asks a handful of careful questions, his expression growing steadily more thoughtful with each answer.

When he rises from his examination, he folds his hands inside his sleeves and smiles.

"My prince."

Jace has been standing by the window the entire time.

"So?"

The old man inclines his head. "My congratulations."

The room falls completely still. You look at Jace. He looks at you. Neither of you speaks.

The maester continues, almost gently. "If my calculations are correct, Her Grace is nearing the end of her third month."

He leaves you with instructions about rest, diet, and avoiding undue strain, but you hear almost none of it, too focused on the way the room seems to have shrunk around you.

The door clicks shut.

Then Jace crosses the room so quickly that you barely have time to stand before his arms are around you. He buries his face against your hair, holding you so tightly it almost hurts.

You laugh through the tears threatening your eyes.

"I think..." Your voice catches. "I think we're going to have a baby."

He nods once against your shoulder, voice barely a whisper. "I know."

Jace's spiral into overprotectiveness begins with the reasonable things.

"No more riding."

You open your mouth to argue, but are stopped before any sound escapes by a single raised eyebrow.

The maester, entirely unhelpfully, agrees with him.

Then come the stairs.

"If no one is with you."

"Jace."

"They're uneven."

"They have been uneven for a hundred years."

He insists on taking your arm every time you descend them after that.

By the time your gowns no longer sit quite as they used to, he has become impossible.

Servants carry anything heavier than a book. Meals appear in your chambers if the Great Hall is too crowded. Councils are moved rather than asking you to cross the castle, and if you so much as mention feeling tired, Jace is already leading you back toward your rooms before you've finished the sentence.

"You know women have been having children since the beginning of time?"

"I am aware, yes."

"They don't all require an escort to the library."

"I don't care, because you will have one.

Once, you disappear for nearly an hour.

Jace finds you asleep in the late afternoon sun, curled against the warm curve of Vermax's foreleg with a book lying open across your lap.

The dragon is awake. His head rests protectively around you, just close enough to shelter you from the wind without touching.

At Jace's approach, one emerald eye opens. For a long moment, dragon and rider simply look at one another. Then Vermax lowers his head again.

You stir at the sound of footsteps, blinking sleepily up at your husband.

"There you are."

"I've been looking everywhere."

"I was comfortable."

"I can see that."

By the eighth month, you start to begrudingly appreciate Jace's over-the-top efforts.

"I cannot reach my boots."

Jace looks up from the letter he'd been pretending to read. "You reached them yesterday."

"I was smaller yesterday."

He watches you glare down at the impossible curve of your stomach as though sheer determination might convince it to move. After another unsuccessful attempt, you huff dramatically and fold your arms.

"This child is already causing problems."

"Our child," Jace corrects.

"Our child," you sigh, "has stolen my feet."

A smile threatens at the corners of his mouth. With the patience of a man who has accepted this as his fate, he sets the letter aside and kneels in front of you.

"Oh, don't you dare."

"You said you couldn't reach."

"I did not ask you to-"

"You were about to."

He lifts one foot gently onto his knee and makes quick work of the laces.

"Jace, you don't have to do everything you know."

"I know."

"So why do you?"

He finishes tying the second boot before looking up at you. "Because I like taking care of my wife."

A number of weeks later the castle wakes before dawn to the sound of a dragon.

Not roaring; pacing.

The heavy scrape of claws against stone echoes through the courtyard, followed by a low, restless rumble that seems to vibrate through the walls of Dragonstone itself.

You stir beneath the blankets, still half asleep. "...He's at it again."

Beside you, Jace groans into his pillow. "If he has frightened another stableboy, I swear on all that is holy-"

Another rumble.

Closer this time. Longer, almost a whine in nature.

Jace sits up. "...That's odd."

For the past several months Vermax has scarcely left the courtyard beneath your chambers, but he has always been quiet. Content simply to stand and watch.

The windows rattle faintly as his tail sweeps across the stone.

Jace is already pulling on a tunic. "I'll see what's wrong."

You nod, pushing yourself upright with considerably more effort than dignity. He smiles over his shoulder as he ducks out of the room, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes.

The courtyard is in chaos.

Dragonkeepers stand well back from Vermax, speaking to him in soothing High Valyrian that goes utterly ignored. The dragon paces in tight circles, wings half-spread, head swinging constantly toward the tower above.

One keeper catches sight of Jace.

"My prince."

"What happened?"

"We don't know."

Vermax notices his rider. Instead of calming, the dragon lets out another deep, agitated rumble and immediately turns toward the tower again, toward your chambers. Then, he stamps a forefoot. Hard enough that dust shakes from the walls.

Up in the tower, you're sitting and waiting for Jace when pain tightens unexpectedly across your abdomen.

You stop halfway across the chamber, one hand finding the edge of the table. "...Hm."

The feeling passes as quickly as it came.

Outside, Vermax lets out the loudest cry you've ever heard him make. It rolls across the cliffs and back again.

You freeze before calling out. "...Jace?"

He is already taking the stairs two at a time. He bursts through the chamber doors moments later, slightly out of breath.

Before he can speak, another wave rolls through you. Your hand flies instinctively to your stomach.

Jace's face drains of colour. "What is it?"

"I..." You breathe carefully. "I think..."

Another pause. Then, despite yourself, you laugh. "I think Vermax has solved another mystery."

For one heartbeat Jace simply stares.

Then his eyes widen.

"No."

"I think so."

As if the universe itself objects to his denial, another wave steals your breath. You grip the bedpost but Jace is at your side before you can blink, one arm already around your waist.

"The maester."

His voice comes out far calmer than his expression.

"Someone fetch the maester!"

Outside, Vermax finally stops pacing.

He lowers himself heavily onto the black stone directly beneath your windows, refusing every attempt by the dragonkeepers to coax him away.

His head remains lifted toward the tower.

After hours of pain and effort the world slowly comes back into focus in pieces.

Sound first; soft voices, the distant rush of the sea, the occasional crackle of the hearth. Then warmth pressed against your side. You blink against the haze of exhaustion and find yourself surrounded by dim candlelight and movement that feels almost too gentle for how loud everything had just been.

Jace is here.

He’s sitting half on the edge of the bed, hair dishevelled, sleeves rolled up wrong, a smear of something dark on his cuff that you vaguely decide not to think about too hard. His eyes are fixed on you with a kind of stunned intensity, as if he’s afraid that if he looks away for even a second, this will all vanish.

“You’re shaking,” you murmur, though your own voice barely holds together.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

A beat of silence passes between you before he exhales and finally lets himself lean forward, pressing a careful kiss against your forehead.

“And him?” he asks, like he’s been holding the question in his teeth for hours.

You don’t even need to answer. The little bundle in your arms shifts slightly, a tiny sound breaking through the quiet and Jace goes utterly still. His gaze drops to the child as though he’s afraid it might disappear if he stares too hard.

“He's beautiful,” he says finally.

You adjust the blanket slightly, and the baby nestles closer, face scrunching briefly before settling again. Jace makes a sound that is halfway between a laugh and something dangerously close to breaking.

“I don’t-” he starts, then stops, swallowing. “I didn’t think it would feel like this.”

“You thought it would feel like what?”

He doesn’t answer immediately. His hand hovers near the bundle, stops short, then retreats again like he’s not sure he’s allowed.

“Louder,” he admits.

You huff a weak laugh. “I'm not sure it'll stay this quiet, so we should probably try to enjoy it while it lasts.”

He finally looks at you again, and there’s something undone in his expression that you’ve never seen before. “I need to see him,” he says.

You tilt your head slightly. “You’ve been staring at him for an hour.”

“Alright, I need to hold him.”

You carefully shift the baby into his arms. It’s awkward at first, Jace holding himself too rigid, like he’s afraid of doing it wrong, like one wrong breath might undo everything, but then the child settles against him and something in his shoulders breaks open.

He exhales, slow and unsteady. There’s a long silence where he doesn’t say anything at all.

Then, barely audible, “I can't believe he’s mine.”

You smile faintly. “Yes.”

Jace looks down again, thumb brushing so lightly over the baby’s cheek it’s almost not there. “He looks…” He pauses, helpless. “He looks like he knows things already.”

“That’s probably just you projecting.”

Outside the window, a deep sound rolls through the cliffs. Jace’s head lifts instantly.

“Oh.”

Jace carefully adjusts his grip on the baby, like he’s handling something far more fragile than steel and fire could ever be.

“I should-” he starts.

You raise an eyebrow. “You should what?”

He’s already standing. “I should show him.”

You blink at him. “Jace.”

But he’s not really listening anymore. Not in the way he used to, at least. This is something else, instinctive and almost urgent.

“Jace, it’s freezing outside.”

“I’ll be quick.”

So you watch him wrap a cloak around himself and the baby like it’s the most natural thing in the world, then walk out of the room.

By the time he reaches the courtyard, Vermax is already there.

The dragon is enormous against the grey morning sky, wings folded, tail curled tightly around the stone like he’s been rooted there for hours. When he sees Jace, he doesn’t move at first.

Then Jace steps into the open.

Vermax’s head lowers immediately.

Jace stops a few paces away, breathing uneven, then lifts the bundle higher against his chest.

“This is my son.”

Vermax steps forward, so carefully. The ground still trembles slightly beneath the weight of him, but he is impossibly gentle as he lowers his head until he’s level with Jace’s arms. One massive eye focuses on the tiny face within the blanket.

For a long moment, he does nothing.

Then he exhales. Warm air, slow and careful, brushes over the child like a blessing.

The baby stirs, and Vermax freezes instantly.

Jace laughs under his breath, disbelieving and wrecked all at once. “It’s alright,” he murmurs. “He’s yours too, apparently.”

The dragon makes a soft, almost questioning sound, then lowers himself further until his forehead rests against the stone directly in front of them, as if offering something wordless and absolute.

Jace finally looks up at him properly, smiling.

“Say hello,” he whispers.

Vermax answers with a quiet, reverent rumble that rolls out across Dragonstone.

this was too cute, idk where the idea came from but i needed some vermax jace fluff

[multific]

A Husband's Duties

Marcus Acacius x Reader

Summary: After a small injury, you decide it is better to not burden your husband, and hide it from him. But of course, when he finds out and he is less than impressed. 

As you prepare dinner in the warm glow of the kitchen, a sudden surge of pain shoots through your body. 

In an instant, you feel a sharp pain in your side, causing you to wince and clutch at the source of the discomfort. 

As you try to shake off the pain, you can't help but worry about how Marcus will react when he comes home and sees what you've been hiding.

The minutes tick by slowly, each second feeling like an eternity as you desperately try to compose yourself. 

You know that Marcus will be upset if he finds out you've been injured and kept it from him. But deep down, you also know that you were only trying to protect him, to spare him from unnecessary worry.

Finally, the sound of the front door opening echoes through your home, signalling Marcus's return. Your heart races as you continue to work in the kitchen, your movements becoming more strained with every passing second. 

You can hear his footsteps approaching, growing louder with each step.

"My Love, I'm home," Marcus calls out, his voice filled with a mix of fatigue and excitement. 

But as soon as he catches sight of you, his eyes narrow, and concern replaces the joy on his face.

"What happened?" he asks, his voice tinged with anger, his eyes fixed on the pained expression etched across your face. 

You take a deep breath, struggling to find the right words to explain yourself.

"I... I didn't want to worry you," you stammer, your voice barely a whisper. "I thought I could handle it on my own."

Marcus' anger softens, replaced by a mixture of worry and frustration. He crosses the room in a few strides, gently taking your hand in his. 

"I appreciate your efforts, My Love, but you should never have to face something like this alone. Tell me please, what happened?" he says, his voice filled with a tenderness that reassures you.

You let out a long sigh.

"I fell. I took the wrong step and fell up the stairs. I hurt my side when I fell on the stone steps."

He carefully tends to your injury, his touch gentle and comforting. As he wraps a bandage around your side, you can feel his relentless support, his love flowing through every action.

"My Love, I might just have to follow you everyone to make sure you are safe and sound."

"I do not wish to keep you from your duties."

"Being your husband is my greatest one." he said and you smiled at him.

For the next couple of days, Marcus becomes your rock, taking care of you with such love and care. 

He cooks, cleans, and ensures that you have everything you need to heal. But more than that, he listens to your fears and worries, offering a steady hand to lean on during your recovery.

Through it all, you learn the importance of openness and trust in a relationship. 

You realize that keeping secrets, even with good intentions, can only lead to misunderstandings and unnecessary distress. 

Marcus's anger reflected his concern for your well-being, a reminder that the strength of your bond lies in open and honest communication.

As you heal, you grow closer and closer, cherishing the deep love between you. 

In the end, your injury becomes a trigger for strengthening your relationship, reminding both of you of the power of compassion and teamwork in overcoming any challenge that comes your way.

Taglist: 

@castellandiangelo @imagines-by-a-typical-fangirl @manduse @jacalineiscomingforyou 

@mandoloriancookie @deliciousfestsalad @lilliumrorum @asgards-princess-of-mischief 

@fallout-girl219 @dracaryxzs @snowtargaryen 

~Masterlist~

ˇAO3ˇ

/YOU DO NOT HAVE PERMISSION TO TRANSLATE, TO STEAL OR TO REUPLOAD ANY OF MY WORKS TO THIS OR OTHER PLATFORMS/

[ssweeterthanfiction]

Greek Getaway!

harry castillo x fashion intern fem!reader content warnings: fluff, a TINY bit of smut at the end, age gap (reader is in late twenties, harry is in forties) summary: a vacation with your billionaire boyfriend wc: 3.8k

masterlist. | part two.

You’re exhausted by the time you unlock the penthouse door.

Your shoes are already in your hand, one strap broken, and your makeup has melted somewhere between the subway and the elevator. Your bag slips off your shoulder the second you step inside.

And then, before you can even exhale, you smell something.

Something warm. Garlic. Herbs. Olive oil.

You barely have time to register it when...

“Mi vida,” Harry’s voice greets you from somewhere near the kitchen. “I was about two minutes away from coming to track you down.”

You blink. You must look absolutely wrecked because his brow creases the second he sees you.

You try to speak, some kind of apology for being late or not answering his last text, but then Harry is already walking over, sliding a hand around your waist and leaning down to kiss your forehead.

“You’re tired,” he says softly.

“I look like a fashion intern who got sent to coffee duty in the rain.”

“You look like a goddess who’s overworked and underappreciated.” He kisses your temple again, then your cheek. “But lucky for you, I’m a very generous man.”

You laugh, head resting against his chest. “Did you order something?”

“I cooked. And I have a surprise for you.” His lips graze your ear, and he pulls back just enough to grin. “Come on. Close your eyes.”

“…Is it a new purse?”

“No purses, but if you want another I'll happily buy you it,” he says with a soft chuckle. “Promise. Just trust me.”

With your heels still dangling from your fingers and your shoulders sagging from the week you’ve had, you close your eyes. You hear him walk around you—there’s a soft rustle, the sound of a switch, and then his warm hands gently guide you forward.

"Okay," he says, stopping you at the edge of the living room. “You can open them now.”

You blink a few times.

And then your mouth drops open.

On the coffee table sits an itinerary, two first-class boarding passes, and a leather travel journal. A small bowl of olives and feta cheese rests beside a chilled bottle of wine. A book you’ve been eyeing—about ancient Greek fashion trends—is tucked under it all with a gold ribbon wrapped around the cover.

“We leave Friday,” Harry says, watching your reaction carefully.

You don’t respond at first.

You just stare. Then you look at him. Then the tickets. Then him again.

“Greece?” you ask quietly.

His hands slide down to your waist, pulling you in closer. “Ten days. No emails. No calls from your nightmare of a supervisor. Just us, the sea, and a suite with your name on it.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’ve never been more serious.”

You throw your arms around his neck so fast he stumbles a little backward, laughing against your shoulder as you pepper his jaw with kisses.

“I love you,” you mumble into his neck.

“I know,” he murmurs. “But say it again when we're in Greece, sí?”

The sun isn’t even fully up yet when you shoot out of bed, chest tight, your brain already racing.

Okay. Passport. Toiletries. Swimsuits. Did I pack my black heels? Shit, I didn’t email my supervisor. Did I set my out-of-office?

You’re halfway to the closet in one of Harry’s old dress shirts, panic-walking, when a sleepy voice cuts through the quiet.

“Mi amor…what are you doing?”

You turn to find him still in bed, the sheets low on his hips, hair mussed, watching you like you’re the most fascinating thing in the world.

“I- sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. I just need to finish packing. And check the tickets. And my skincare is still in the bathroom. And I think I forgot to-”

“Stop,” he says gently, sitting up. “Come here.”

“I...Harry...”

“Come here.”

You grumble something under your breath but obey, climbing onto the bed reluctantly. He pulls you into his lap, strong arms wrapping around you, warm and slow and grounding.

“Baby,” he says, pressing a kiss just below your ear. “I already packed your bags.”

You blink. “What?”

“Everything’s in the foyer. New luggage, cream leather, matches the shoes I got you. Your passport’s in your purse. Your skincare’s already packed. Out-of-office email sent.” Another kiss, this one to your jaw. “I even bought you new bathing suits. The red one with the gold ring you were eyeing? It’s folded between three pairs of sunglasses I had overnighted.”

You pull back just enough to look at him.

“You bought me sunglasses?”

“I bought you Greece,” he says smugly. “The sunglasses were just a bonus.”

Despite the panic still simmering behind your eyes, a small laugh slips out. “You’re impossible.”

“I’m efficient. And madly in love with you.”

You let your forehead rest against his, finally allowing yourself to breathe.

“What about the airport?” you mumble. “Security? We’re going to hit traffic. What if we-”

“Car’s downstairs. The driver’s early. Don't worry about TSA or any airport stuff, let me worry about that.”

You blink again. “Who are you?”

He grins, leaning in for a soft, slow kiss. “Someone who hates seeing you stress. Now go brush your teeth, come back here for five more minutes of cuddling, and then we’ll go on the best vacation of your life.”

You sigh dramatically, draping yourself over him.

“Fine..."

He chuckles and kisses your shoulder. “Just let me take care of everything baby.”

You’ve never been in this part of JFK.

There are no long lines. No screaming toddlers. No buzz of flight numbers crackling over intercoms. Here, everything is quiet. Elegant. Every surface gleams. Every scent is subtle, fresh citrus, expensive cologne, and warm espresso drifting from the sleek lounge bar nearby.

Harry rests a hand on the small of your back as you step inside the private terminal, effortlessly guiding you past security with a nod to the staff. The agents don’t ask for your ID. They just smile at him like they know him. Like they’ve known him.

Because they do.

“This isn’t even the lounge,” you whisper, heels softly clicking against polished marble. “This is just the entrance?”

Harry laughs low, brushing your hair behind your ear. “You’re adorable when you’re shocked.”

“I’m not shocked,” you mumble, eyes glued to the towering floral arrangement near the check-in desk. “I’m…digesting.”

He presses a kiss to your cheek. “Wait until you see the jet.”

You reach the private lounge and freeze. Plush velvet seating. Soft instrumental jazz. A breakfast spread that looks catered by a Michelin-star chef. There’s a Hermes throw draped casually over the arm of one of the couches. And a tray with your favorite pastry and a cappuccino already waiting, your name written in delicate script on a place card.

“You did not have that brought out for me,” you say, half-laughing.

“I did,” he says, already loosening the cuffs of his cream button-down and settling onto the couch like he owns the building.

You blink. “Harry, this is insane.”

He looks up from his phone and pats the seat beside him. “No, baby. This is standard.”

You sit beside him slowly, dazed, taking the cappuccino like it’s a fragile artifact. “So…this is what it’s like to fly with you?”

“This is what it’s like to date me.”

You look at him. His expression is unreadable for a beat, somewhere between teasing and completely serious.

He breaks the silence by tugging your legs gently across his lap, massaging your ankle with one hand. “I know you’re not used to this.”

“I really, really am not.”

He leans in, voice quiet. “But you’ll get used to it. If you let me take care of you.”

You study him. His sharp jawline. The steady confidence. The hint of concern in his eyes, like maybe he’s not sure if all of this is too much. If he’s too much.

You shift closer and rest your head on his shoulder. “I think I’m okay with that.”

He presses a kiss to your forehead, lips lingering.

A few minutes later, an attendant appears, polished and polite. “Mr. Castillo? We’re ready for boarding. Would you like to walk out now?”

He nods and glances down at you. “Ready for your chariot?”

“You mean the jet?”

“Yes the jet. One of three.”

You blink, slipping your hand into his as he helps you up. “Of course you have three jets...”

The tarmac is quiet.

You can hear the gentle hum of the engines in the distance, the warm wind brushing past your legs as you follow Harry across the runway. He walks like this is nothing—tailored, crisp linen shirt fluttering slightly, hand resting protectively on the small of your back. You, however, feel like you’ve just stepped into a scene from a dream you never let yourself have.

The jet comes into view, and your breath catches.

It’s not flashy. It’s stunning. Cream exterior, gleaming gold accents, the “Castillo” name discreetly painted near the steps. A flight attendant stands waiting at the base of the staircase, smiling warmly.

Harry gives you a look, half smug, half sweet.

You swat his arm. “You’re enjoying this.”

“Immensely,” he murmurs, and offers his hand as you take the first step. “Watch your step, mi vida.”

Inside, the cabin is glowing in the early morning light.

Cream and beige leather seats, real wood paneling, soft gold light fixtures. A queen-sized bed tucked into the back with a cashmere blanket folded neatly at the edge. A built-in espresso machine, a small tray with chocolate-covered almonds and fresh fruit. The air smells like bergamot and something you can’t place—maybe Harry’s cologne, maybe just money.

You pause, completely still in the aisle, blinking.

“Is this real?”

Harry steps behind you, wrapping his arms loosely around your waist, chin resting on your shoulder.

“Very.”

You turn toward him, overwhelmed. “It has a bed.”

“Of course it has a bed. It’s a twelve-hour flight.”

“You bought me pajamas, didn’t you?”

He smirks. “Check the drawer next to the bed.”

You move, still barefoot from security, padding toward the bed and opening the drawer. Silk. The softest navy blue slip you’ve ever seen, your initials stitched discreetly into the hem.

You blink back at him. “You’re ridiculous.”

He shrugs. “Comfort is important.”

You curl into one of the plush leather seats while Harry disappears into the back to speak with the pilot. When he returns, the plane is already taxiing. He sits beside you, tugs your legs into his lap, and hands you a glass of champagne.

“Are you sure I’m not dreaming?” you whisper, swirling the flute.

“Positive.”

The next few hours pass in a blur of luxury and warmth.

Harry shows you how to recline your seat back, you sip espresso while he reads a novel in Spanish beside you, his thumb absentmindedly rubbing circles into your thigh. At one point, he feeds you strawberries dipped in honey. At another, you climb into bed and nap with your face pressed to his chest while the clouds pass outside the window.

You’re half-dozing, curled up in the silk pajamas he packed for you, and Harry has you lying across his lap again, this time on the jet’s bed. He’s gently combing his fingers through your hair, careful not to tug, careful not to wake you fully.

“You know,” he murmurs quietly, almost to himself, “when I bought this jet, I imagined using it for meetings, quick flights, boring things.”

You hum sleepily.

He leans down and presses a kiss to your temple.

“But now you’re in my bed, on my jet, wearing pajamas I had monogrammed for you, and I suddenly care a lot less about boardrooms.”

You smile into his chest. “So I’m your favorite investment?”

“The only one I’ll never want to cash out.”

You wake up later—disoriented, warm, and blinking in soft gold light. The silk pajamas are clinging gently to your skin. Harry’s fingers are still stroking your hair, slow and rhythmic.

“We’re somewhere over the Atlantic,” he says softly. “You’ve been out for three hours.”

You hum. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

“You looked peaceful.”

You glance up at him. “How much longer?”

“Seven hours.”

“Good. Plenty of time to make out on your fancy jet.”

Harry huffs a laugh, deep and warm. “Is that what you plan to do with the time I spent organizing a gourmet in-flight lunch?”

“Do I get both?”

He leans down, brushing his lips against your forehead. “You get everything.”

The jet door opens to a rush of warm, sun-kissed air.

It smells like salt and citrus and something earthy. The kind of air that makes you exhale without realizing you’ve been holding your breath.

Harry squeezes your hand gently as you descend the stairs. “Welcome to Greece, mi vida.”

A sleek black car is already waiting on the tarmac. The driver gives Harry a polite nod but hands him the keys. Of course. Harry prefers to drive.

He opens your door before you can touch the handle.

The roads wind gently away from the coast, olive groves on either side, small bursts of bougainvillea climbing over stone fences. You lean your head back against the leather seat.

Harry’s driving with one hand, sunglasses low on his nose, shirt collar open just enough to show the tan beginning to deepen on his skin.

He glances at you as you stare out the window, enchanted. “Tired?”

“Not anymore.”

You rest a hand on his thigh. His thumb brushes slow circles against the inside of your knee.

“Is the villa close?” you ask quietly.

Harry smiles, eyes back on the road. “You’ll know when you see it.”

And then, just like magic, it appears.

The gates are discreet but grand, vines curling around the stone pillars. A long gravel drive opens to a view that could break your heart: cliffs rolling down into the Aegean, sun spilling across pale terraces and tall cypress trees. The villa sits like a secret—modern but sunwashed, soft tan stone and white linen curtains fluttering from open windows.

It doesn’t look like a vacation rental.

It looks like a fantasy.

Harry parks the car with practiced ease and gets out, jogging around to open your door. He holds out a hand, and when you take it, he tugs you close for a kiss, warm and unhurried, right there in the driveway.

“I could get used to this,” you whisper against his lips.

“You should,” he says simply. “This place is ours for the week.”

You blink. “You mean we rented it?”

“I mean I own it.”

“…Harry.”

He laughs. “What? I bought it years ago. It’s underused.”

You shake your head and let him lead you up the stone steps. Inside, the air is cooler, touched by sea breeze. The walls are smooth, white stucco. A bowl of fresh figs sits on the kitchen counter. You spot a private pool through the glass doors and what looks like a private staircase leading straight to the beach below.

You turn to look at him—mouth parted, breath shallow.

He’s watching you carefully.

“Too much?” he asks softly.

“No,” you say, stepping into him, curling your fingers into the collar of his shirt. “It’s perfect.”

He kisses you again, slower this time.

“I want you to feel like you can breathe here,” he murmurs. “No expectations. No deadlines. Just rest. Me. This view.”

You nod against him.

You don’t need the view, though.

You’ve got Harry.

The villa feels like it was made just for the two of you.

You walk barefoot through each room, your fingers trailing over smooth stone countertops and pale wood beams, sun filtering through gauzy curtains. The living space opens into an airy kitchen and then to a hallway that leads to a bedroom so breathtaking it almost doesn’t feel real—arched windows, silk pillow cases, a bed big enough to lose yourselves in.

Harry walks behind you, occasionally pointing things out in his low, rich voice.

“That staircase leads straight down to a private beach,” he says, motioning toward a little stone path tucked into the side of the property. “And the guest house is through the olive trees over there. But we won’t need it.”

You glance back at him with a playful smile. “No guests?”

He raises a brow. “Not unless you’re planning on inviting someone.”

You shake your head, giggling. “Nope. I want you all to myself.”

“Good,” he murmurs.

You spend the afternoon wandering in and out of rooms, discovering sun-warmed terraces, hidden lounge chairs, and little alcoves that smell like rosemary and fresh linen.

And then the sky starts to turn gold.

You slip into the pool just as the sun begins to dip below the horizon. The water is warm, glowing with the last remnants of daylight.

Harry joins you in navy swim trunks, lazy and relaxed, hair tousled by the breeze. He swims up behind you, wraps his arms around your waist, and pulls you gently against him.

You lean back into his chest. “This feels like a dream.”

“It’s real,” he says, kissing your shoulder. “All of it.”

The two of you float in silence, the water cradling you while the sky melts into shades of pink, orange, and lavender. His hands stay on your hips. His lips find the side of your neck. And for once, time doesn’t feel like it’s racing.

Later, Harry insists on cooking.

He opens a bottle of wine, rolls his sleeves up, and starts chopping fresh herbs like he’s done it a thousand times. The kitchen fills with the scent of garlic, tomatoes, lemon zest.

You sit at the island in one of his oversized button-downs, watching him.

“You know,” you tease, “I thought you would've just had a private chef on standby.”

“I am the private chef tonight,” he says, tossing you a wink. “And I only cook for you.”

The food is incredible—simple, fresh, perfect. Pasta tossed with olive oil and basil. Grilled shrimp with lemon. He pours you more wine before you can ask.

The sun’s fully set now. A few lanterns flicker around the terrace. The sound of the sea hums low in the background.

After dinner, you find yourself standing on the villa’s highest balcony, arms wrapped around your own waist, looking out at the dark horizon.

It’s quiet. Gentle. Magic.

You don’t even hear him step up behind you—but you feel him the second his hands touch your sides, gliding slowly around your waist until they meet at your stomach. His chin rests on your shoulder. His body curves into yours.

“You belong here,” Harry says softly, his voice deep and steady in your ear. “In this life. With me.”

You exhale shakily, your hands covering his.

“I don’t always feel like I do.”

“Well, you do now,” he says simply. “This villa. This view. The wine, the sea, the bed behind us. It’s all yours. Because you’re mine.”

You turn in his arms and press your forehead against his chest.

“You make me feel like I’m not pretending.”

He tilts your chin up, kissing you gently. “There’s nothing pretend about this.”

The stars begin to come out.

And in his arms, you believe it.

You don’t go back inside right away.

You stay on the balcony, wrapped in Harry’s arms, long after the stars appear—just swaying slightly, your bare feet against warm stone, the wind catching the hem of his shirt you’re wearing.

Eventually, he kisses your cheek and murmurs, “Come swim with me again.”

The pool at night is even more breathtaking.

Lanterns glow from the corners of the terrace, casting a warm shimmer across the water. You strip down to your underwear and slip in without a word. Harry follows, slow and unhurried, the moonlight catching on his skin.

You float toward each other like it’s instinct.

His hands find your waist underwater, fingertips brushing your ribs as you hook your arms around his neck.

“Hi,” you whisper, smiling softly.

“Hi,” he murmurs, brushing his nose against yours. “You’re glowing.”

You hum. “That’s just the villa lighting.”

“No, that’s you. You always do this to me.”

He kisses you, deeper, slower. The kind of kiss that makes your knees weak even in water. The kind that makes you forget the rest of the world exists.

His lips trail down your neck, your collarbone, his fingers gripping your thighs underwater before he lifts you, effortlessly, to sit on the edge of the pool. The cool night air brushes your damp skin, and he follows you up—mouth finding your stomach, your hip, the inside of your thigh.

“Let me take care of you,” he says against your skin. “Just relax for me, mi amor.”

You do.

And he does.

He takes his time, worshipping you slowly, thoroughly, until your back arches and your breath catches and your fingers knot in his damp curls. When you’re spent and trembling, he kisses your knee, then your lips, and lifts you into his arms.

“Bed,” he murmurs.

He lays you on the bed like you’re made of glass.

Your skin is still damp, your heart still fluttering, and you reach for him without hesitation.

Harry covers your body with his, kissing you again, this time deeper. His hands cup your face, his lips trailing down your jaw.

When he pushes into you, it’s slow, like a promise. He whispers things you can’t fully hear, too far gone, but you feel them in how he touches you. His hips move with a steady rhythm, one hand braced by your head, the other tangled with yours.

“You feel like heaven,” he breathes against your mouth.

You moan softly, legs tightening around him.

“You’re mine,” he says, almost reverent. “All of this. You.”

Your body trembles again, clinging to him as your breath shatters against his neck.

He follows with a groan, low, ragged, undone.

He doesn’t move for a long time. Just rests his forehead against yours, breathing you in.

Later, you’re tucked into his chest, fresh sheets under you, hair still damp, the sliding glass doors open just enough to let the sea breeze in.

Harry’s fingers are tracing lazy circles on your spine.

“You okay?” he asks, voice warm and quiet.

“More than.”

He kisses your forehead, lips lingering.

“You looked out at that view tonight like you were waiting for it to disappear,” he murmurs.

You swallow. “I guess part of me still doesn’t believe this is real.”

Harry cups your jaw and gently guides your face up to meet his.

“It is,” he says. “I’m real. This is real. And I’ll keep reminding you until you believe it.”

You nod softly, curling closer into him, eyes fluttering shut.

“Don’t let me wake up,” you whisper sleepily.

“I won’t,” he says. “Sleep, baby. You’re safe.”

The waves crash in the distance.

The moonlight spills across your skin.

And in Harry’s arms, you finally let yourself drift.

A/N: this is most likely gonna be a 2 part thing! but only if u guys want it to be ofc!!!

[marcuspikegf]

joel miller x pregnant! reader

𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐦𝐲 𝐬𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐞 !

about me | i am ovulating so bad….

summary : the world has fallen, but in the walls of jackson, a new life grows. you remember before the outbreak, mothers used to play music for their children. or, the guilt of bringing a baby into this world, and joel miller plays guitar for his two girls <3

warnings: fluff…fluff and angst. so much fluff and angst. god your teeth will ROT so bad you’ll need to call the dentist. seriously like fluff ALERT. age gap undefined, using game logic i guess here, joel is like 55 and reader is younger (undefined) but in my head she’s in her 30s <3 (but can be anything.) joel calls himself an old man like once. no use of y/n, you and joel are expecting a baby girl. AAAA but there’s so much guilt and pain from like. bringing a child into this world. joel miller is possessive and eeeeeeeveryone knows it. also warning pregnancy. of course as usual no reader description except ur…pregnant.

authors note: yeah guys idk. i’m ovulating. i NEED to be pregnant with joel miller’s baby it’s not even a want anymore it’s a NEED. a requirement. i just got possessed writing it in the middle of the day. it’s been a long few days of jet lag, so much jet lag. and also uni pre reading came in and it’s destroying me so bad…electrical engineering is not my friend 😭😭😭this is…not my usual, ive also never been pregnant before so like. help. constructive criticism is 100% welcomed. AAAAAH im thinking of making this a series like a cherry pie universe where joel + reader raise a baby in jackson (OF CORUSE AN AU WHERE HE SURVIVES. WHAT THE HELL IM NOT EVIL.) so please like comment if u want to be tagged!!! i love reblogs and comments so much <3333 joel is a girldad a girl father pedro pascal please never stop playing dads <3 you give me joy and hope. as im posting this im stuck on this long ass drive and there’s barely any internet pls free me. like this sucks idek when it’s going to be posted, hopefully harry castillo pt 2 will b out soon this week !!!

it’s as if the world fell to pieces yesterday, when had been a mess for years. you barely remember the before, before when the world was sunnier. 

there’s the guilt, guilt in carrying the life in your stomach. guilt that you’re bringing her into this world, full of hate and death. guilt you bring her into such a broken life, with the infected crawling outside jackson’s walls. but it takes a village — maria and tommy were always here to help, so was the rest of the townsfolk.

and there was joel, sweet sweet joel. your husband, the father of your child. he’d always place a hand over your swollen stomach, proud that he’d marked you as his. proud that you were carrying his baby, his very blood in you. he was so gentle with how he stroked your stomach, how he laid a big hand where you guided it, to feel your daughter kick.

you’re sitting next to him now, on his couch. he’s so warm, and in the last month of your pregnancy, you’ve been feeling all too cold. your hands feel frozen, and he holds them in his own big ones, rubbing them between his own, lacing fingers, pressing palms. it’s good, warm. it feels like life and sun, and not like the cold that you know lies behind jackson’s walls.

“joel?” you look up at him, and he can never refuse those big doe eyes of yours, so wide, looking at him like he hangs the moon and the stars. you’re younger than him, seen less violence than him, he’d been a raider, killed. and you…?

you haven’t. you’re like the sun, luminous. you shine brighter than anyone else in the room, shine even brighter with the glow pregnancy brought out in you. he likes that you’re heavy with his seed, likes that he’s claimed you and everyone in jackson can see that. his star, that he caught whilst hanging the moon. his star, he chose to keep for himself.

“mm?” he grunts back in a reply, his hand gently stroking your knuckles, he likes the dips of the skin there, from the days spent working in the farm. yet soft from all the creams he’d found for you on patrol. 

he’s handsome, the years haven’t been kind to the world, to him. but they’ve been kind to his face. his eyes are big and brown. and they look down at you with such care. 

“nevermind.” you blush, after a second, ducking your head, turning your face away so he can’t see the expression on your face. he loves it when you smile like that, it turns him into mush inside. all shy and ridiculous, like a startled deer.

“go on darlin’?” he asks, keeping his hand on yours, keeping his warmth with you. 

“it’s silly joel.” you sigh, before turning back to him, there’s a fondness in your eyes that he sees as they flick down to your stomach. you slip away a hand from him, and press it to your stomach.

“i just.” you pause, something lodged in your throat, “i just…”

he frowns, his hand covering yours on your stomach. fall is colder now, and you’re wearing a knit cardigan to keep you and the baby warm. she isn’t kicking or anything, but you seem so sad, his heart aches.

“you jus’ what, peach?” he asks, his voice all low and gravelly, dripping with worry, his eyes are wide as he looks into your face. he’s always scared with you, scared that something will happen, scared that he’ll loose you too. scared that you’ll slip away like tess did, like sarah did, like everything good was taken from him.

scared. scared that you would go, and so would his daughter with you. somewhere where he couldn’t find you, orpheus, he would make a deal with hades to bring you back. 

“you don’t…” you lick your lips, and take a deep breath. he’s worried, possessive, doesn’t let you out of the house in the last month. he has a hand hovering over you, your stomach, like he tethers you to earth. “don’t worry joel, nothing’s wrong with me.”

“or baby?” he asks, voice rough. of course nothing’s wrong with her, or you’d say something.

“or the baby.” you exhale, and he feels your cool breath on his fingers, comforting, you are alive. alive and in his arms. 

“then what is it, sweetheart.” he traces circles on your stomach, it’s an odd feeling, but you like it. “c’mon, you can tell me, promise, this old man won’t laugh.”  

“not that old.” you sigh, your hand finds his chin, and you rub the stubble lovingly. he needs to shave, and soon. “it’s just, i don’t even know if people do it that often these days, but god. i want my baby to listen to music, heard it helped with development and all that.”

he sees the tip of your nose twitch, and the tears mist your big eyes. the guilt, the guilt of bringing a child into a world like this.

“peach…” he sighs, and tucks a stray strand away from your face. “peach, you ain’t doing anything wrong by her, by bringing her here.”

“feels like i am.” you choke out, and she has a loving father and mother, a sister in ellie, an uncle, aunt. a village behind her. it takes a village. and yet. your heart halts, because she will never have the ordinary joys of what a baby would have had before. toys, stupid dancing fruits on the phone, cartoons. small things.

“how about i play some music, ‘kay?” he lets out a breath, and when he gets up, the chill seeps into your bones. the empty space beside you, once with his warmth, now with the cool pooling around you. 

he comes back a few seconds later, the guitar in his hands. he props up a little further away from you on the sofa, but close enough so that you and the baby can hear him well. 

he sets it up properly, tuning the strings with ear memory. each pluck of the string is gentle, like he is with you, his fingers big and thick and playing each note perfectly.

“you are my sunshine.” he starts, his fingers playing the chords perfectly, and you swear you’ll start crying this very second. the hormones, no, his love for you is choking you. 

the song is so sweet, wrapped up in his rough cadence, like he always has wrapped his love in. he plays it carefully, plays it without tearing up — failing that when he sees you cry. some words get caught in his throat as he continues singing. 

you can feel your daughter kick, and you rest your hand over your stomach as he plays, sunshine — you both are his sunshine. he hasn’t even seen her, and he knows that she’d be like the sun incarnate, just like you. his two stars that he will always orbit, always have their warmth light up their world.

“she kicked!” you call out to him, and he stops playing immediately to cover your stomach with his hand, feel the little feet kick against his hand. his heart thuds in his chest as he feels them, feels your hand grasp his. 

he’d never realised he could get something like this — deserved something like this. ever had the chance to get something like this, after everything, after the world falling to shit. 

you’re going to say something, but it gets caught in the kiss he gives you, all so soft and sweet, his chapped lips against your own soft ones. you’re heavy with his child, you’re completely his, and you love it so much. 

he holds you a little tighter at night, kisses you slow, like eating his favourite cherry pie you make. it’s nice, knowing someone like you carries his daughter, someone like you makes his life worth living, every day. 

[pedroscurls]

love at last (one-shot)

summary: harry’s never been in love before… until he meets you, which awakens a part of him that he never thought he was capable of.

pairing: harry castillo x fem!reader content warning(s): minor spoilers so please beware!, love at first sight trope, harry is charming and completely smitten, mainly harry POV, harry + reader go on dates!, no use of y/n. word count: 4.6k a/n: i just finished watching materialists and i'm OBSESSED with harry so obviously the next best thing is to write for him. please heed the warnings, there will be a few spoilers mentioned in this story!!! hope you enjoy nonetheless bc i'm gonna be dreaming about harry for a long time (look at those CURLS in that second pic tho jfc 🥵)

Harry had given up on the idea of love. He hadn’t felt it before and he felt like life was just passing him by. Was something wrong with him? Was he just not capable of falling in love—being in love? 

Lucy was a good match for him, but it felt forced. There was a mutual attraction, but something had been missing and he wasn’t sure what it was. 

Not until she said that she didn’t love him. Harry realized at that moment that he didn’t love her either. Lucy said it was supposed to be easy, but he wasn’t sure anymore. He tried Adore’s services, but the matches didn’t feel real, didn’t feel authentic. These women just wanted him for his money, his height, his job. He checked a lot of the women’s boxes—he was a unicorn, which Lucy liked to put it. 

But it never felt easy. He looked at each woman from a business standpoint, something transactional, but Harry yearned for something more. 

Something deep. 

Something real.

So, he canceled his membership and decided that maybe love was just never going to be in the cards for him. 

And maybe that he didn’t need it anyway. 

The dating scene in New York was horrific. To you, it felt like every nice man in the world didn’t exist. All the dates you had been on ended terribly—with some even ending early. 

The men were either too judgmental or too self-centered, or worse—just wanted one thing and one thing only. Was it this hard to find someone nice? You thought maybe you had been too picky, so you lessened your expectations—that didn’t work either. 

So, you decided to stop dating altogether and instead put your focus into work. If the universe wanted you to be in love, then maybe you should just be patient and let life do its own work. 

Harry had felt instant attraction before, but the first time he laid eyes on you it felt like time stood still. You were laughing at something someone said and he felt a flutter at the pit of his stomach. He’s never seen you at any of his family’s parties before, he would have remembered you. 

He ordered a drink at the bar as he glanced at you from the corner of his eye. Your smile was so warm, so kind, so genuine. He normally has this natural confidence in him, but when he saw you walking towards the bar, he straightened up and felt his heart race faster. 

Maybe you were a friend of his sister-in-law, he wasn’t sure. His family’s parties were usually so big that he doesn’t remember who’s who. But he knew that he was definitely going to remember you. 

The party was for his brother and his wife—a baby shower and gender reveal. A year after their wedding and they’re already expecting. 

He felt you stand next to him and then he heard your voice, which only made him even more nervous because you sounded so sweet, so nice. Harry had taken a deep breath and then finally turned his body to face yours, but when your eyes met his own, he felt his stomach do flips. 

“Hi,” you said with a small smile. 

“Hi,” he replied with one of his own. 

“Friend of the family?” you asked. 

Harry shook his head. “Older brother.” 

You widened your eyes and reached out to rest a hand over his forearm—a natural reaction from you. “Oh my god, you’re Harry.” 

Harry looked down at your hand briefly and smiled, nodding in your direction. “That’d be me. Are you friends with my brother or…” 

“I’m friends with Charlotte,” you answered, dropping your hand from his forearm. “I was teaching English abroad so I couldn’t make it to her wedding. I’m just glad I could make it for this event.” 

“Where did you teach?” Harry asked. 

“Philippines,” you smiled brightly. “It was amazing. I loved it there.” 

Harry couldn’t help but smile too. You made him feel comfortable, despite the nerves he was feeling before you walked over. “And now? Are you going back there to teach?” 

You shook your head. “It was only a two year contract. I have my certification now to teach English to non-native English speakers here in the States, so New York is home for now.” 

Harry could hear the passion for your work in your voice and the way your entire face lit up. It was refreshing—talking to someone who actually enjoyed what they did for a living. “So you’re teaching at a school? Elementary?” 

You let out a quiet laugh and shook your head again. “As much as I loved teaching younger kids when I was in the Philippines, my focus now is teaching adult learners. I work at a local community college.” 

Harry smiled to himself. He heard the bartender set your glass of wine next to you and you turned away from him to thank the other man from behind the counter. The same genuine and kind smile lining your lips. 

“You sound like you love your job,” he said. 

“Oh, I do. It’s a lot of work, but it’s so rewarding. I try to tell my students that learning English shouldn’t ever replace their native tongue,” you continued. “That their native language is something to be proud of and that just because they’re learning English doesn’t mean it replaces the language they know and grew up with.” 

“You must be an amazing teacher,” he grinned. 

“I try to be,” you laughed quietly. You could feel your cheeks heating up as you took note of just how handsome he is. You had heard about Harry from your dinners with Charlotte, but she didn’t say how extremely handsome he was or how deep his brown eyes were. 

“And I’m just in private equity,” he sighed teasingly. 

“Well, at least you’re rich,” you laughed quietly. “I bet that’s nice.” 

Harry shrugged. He wondered if this is where the conversation will shift, if the genuine authenticity he felt from you will disappear. “It’s a family business.” 

“Oh, so it’s not what you would have wanted to do?” You asked, taking a sip from your glass. You lean against the counter of the bar and stare up at him. “If it isn’t, what would you have wanted to pursue?” 

Harry tilted his head as he brought his own glass to his lips. He stared at you from the rim of his glass and then dropped his eyes momentarily to look down at his feet. “Not sure. I haven’t really had the chance to even think of what I would want to do if I wasn’t in the family business.” 

“Hm,” you said, eyes looking up at him from top to bottom. “Maybe a model?” 

He grinned. “Are you hitting on me?” 

“And if I am?” you smiled, eyes staring deeply into his own. 

Harry’s brows slightly raised at your forwardness and he glanced off to the side when he heard his name being called. Then, he looked at you and shot you an apologetic look. “Could I get your name?” 

You smiled and shrugged. “Find me later if you really want to find out, Harry.” You turned on your heel and left him at the counter of the bar when the other guests approached Harry. You glanced over your shoulder to see his eyes staring directly at you as he nodded at whatever the other person is saying. 

You and Harry kept stealing glances at each other from across the room. You could see the way his eyes lingered along your frame and you’re already three drinks in and feeling very brave. 

When Charlotte and Peter found out they’re having a boy, the music only became louder and everyone began dancing. Harry’s eyes stayed focused on you as he walked through the crowd straight to you. He sat next to you and smiled to himself, tilting his head in your direction. 

“Will you tell me your name now?” Harry asked.

You smiled and nodded, telling him your name as you turned your body to face his. You drape one of your legs over the other as you set aside your finished glass of wine. 

Harry smiled. “It’s nice to officially meet you,” he nodded.  “Now, would you like to dance?” 

“Oh, I don’t—” 

Harry interrupted you by standing up. He extended a hand out for you and maintained that charming smile. “If I say please, will you reconsider?” 

You bit your lower lip and shook your head, slipping your hand into his own. He helped you to your feet and then led you onto the dance floor. One of his arms snaked around your waist, pulling you closer to him as he kept a tight hold on your hand. You bit your lower lip and moved your free hand to rest on his shoulder. 

Being this close to him was intoxicating—feeling his broad chest remain flush against your own, his deep brown eyes staring directly at you as if you were the only person in the room, and god he smelled so good. You inhaled quietly and let your eyes fall shut, allowing him to lead you through the slow dance. 

“Can I take you out to dinner?” he whispered into your ear. 

You pulled back and opened your eyes to look at him. He’s still fucking smiling. 

“Are you asking me out, Harry?” 

“Would that be a bad thing?” 

You stared into his eyes as you both sway side to side to the song. You had sworn off dating after so many failed dates, but Harry… Well, there was something about him that piqued your interest from the moment you laid eyes on him today. 

“Well, no, but—”

His smile dropped and his eyes softened. “Oh shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t even ask if you were seeing anyone.” 

You could feel his hold around you loosen, but you tightened your grip around his hand and pulled him back flush against you. “I’m not seeing anyone.” 

“Oh,” he nodded slowly. “Okay, great. That’s—That’s great for me,” he chuckles quietly. 

“But I kind of sworn off dating… at least for a while,” you admitted. “Lots of bad dates and I just—”

Harry spun you around and pulled you back into his chest, holding you tighter now. “I’ll take you anywhere you want to go,” he whispered. “Do whatever you want to do… and if after that date you decide you want to officially swear off dating, then I’ll go my own way and you’ll go yours.” 

“You’re charming, you know that?” You smiled, biting the inside of your cheek. 

Harry shrugged, though a large grin lined his lips. “So, is that a yes?” 

“Okay, one date.” 

“One date is all I need,” he smiled, kissing your cheek and holding you firmly against him as he continued to dance with you. 

On your first date with Harry, he had taken you to one the finest restaurants in New York. It had taken you by surprise and you felt very out of your element. You weren’t used to dates like this. He was very chivalrous—he showed up with flowers, opened doors for you, pulled out your seat, and even offered his coat when he noticed you were getting cold. 

And the conversation came easy. He made you laugh and you made him blush. How could someone like him be single? When he reached for your hand during the walk around the park, you looked up at him and found him smiling in your direction. 

He didn’t kiss you on the lips when he brought you back home. Harry had just cupped your cheek, whispered that he had a great time, and kissed your forehead. It was the simplest gesture, nothing too grand or over the top, but you felt your stomach flutter with butterflies. 

Then, you asked him out for a second date. He was grinning—dimples deep in his cheek as his hand dropped from your cheek to wrap around your waist. His strong embrace filled you with so much warmth, so much anticipation because for some strange reason, it felt like you belonged there. In his arms. 

He insisted that he take you out to one of his favorite restaurants and you agreed with a smile. Harry kissed your cheek that same night before walking back to his car. He waited until you were inside before driving away. 

On the second date, Harry wanted to surprise you. He took you to a sushi restaurant—something more casual, but still romantic nonetheless. He rented out the entire small restaurant just for the both of you. The look of surprise on his face made him feel proud, more confident that maybe you wanted to date him more exclusively. 

Harry enjoyed spending time with you and how you had always given him your sole attention and focus. It even brought a smile to his face at just how kind you were to everyone you encountered. During the date, you were intrigued and interested in how the head sushi chefs were making the food. 

It was such an intimate setting and it felt easy. Harry had to wonder if this was what Lucy said a year ago—love should be easy. With the right person, love can be the easiest thing in the world. 

Throughout the date, you were becoming more touchy. A hand on his forearm or leaning against him as you let out a laugh that wracked your entire body. Even after the date when you both were walking around the same park again, he had taken your hand and you laced your fingers with his. Then, he felt your head rest against his shoulder and it made the flutter in his stomach more noticeable. 

When he dropped you off at your front door, you had stared up at him with your big eyes and he wanted nothing more than to pull you into him and press his lips against yours. 

But Harry didn’t. He wanted to respect you and your boundaries. You were playing with the lapel of his jacket before gripping it and pulling him against you. Harry’s hands had darted out to rest on your hips—to steady you, to ground himself. 

“Are you gonna ask to kiss me, Harry?” you had whispered. 

Harry’s lips parted as he stared into your eyes. The grip on the hips tightened and he gave you a single nod. He had taken a step forward, eyes completely dark and filled with desire. “Just wanted to make sure you were comfortable.” 

You smiled and moved your hands to play with the hair at his nape, the curls at the back of his head. You leaned in—just enough for the tip of your nose to brush against his. Harry inhaled sharply. 

“If you don’t kiss me now, Harry, I’m gonna think you don’t like me.” 

Harry tilted his head and leaned forward, nudging your nose with his own. “Well, we can’t have that, can we?” He moved one of his hands to your cheek and leaned in to press his lips firmly against your own. He remembered how soft and warm your lips were, the sound of a quiet whimper escaping you, and the way his heart was racing. Harry hadn’t felt like this before—how even when he wasn’t around you, all he could do was think about you, or how the butterflies in the pit of his stomach fluttered whenever he saw your name flash across his phone. 

It also made him feel special whenever you were together. You were kind and generous to strangers, but he always felt like the luckiest person whenever your attention was shifted to him. This was only the second date and Harry found himself wanting this to be more exclusive as the date continued. 

The kiss lasted only a few more seconds—the both of you getting carried away before you pulled away from him. Harry remembered the look on your face. The small smile that lined your lips, the way your arms had loosely wrapped around his shoulders, your eyes gazing repeatedly down to his lips like you wanted more. Needed more. 

“Where do you want to go for our third date?” he asked, whispering quietly as he brushed his lips with yours.

“How about I plan it?” you replied, pursing your lips to capture his own in a gentle kiss. 

“Yeah?” Harry asked, dropping his hand from your cheek to join his other at your lower back. He laced his fingers and pulled you flush against him, the feeling of your body heat radiating against his own awakening something deep inside of him. Yearning. Desire. Need. 

“Yeah,” you nodded. “Let me take you out this time.” 

Harry smiled. He had always been the one to plan the dates, to cater to the other person that he was slightly taken aback at your offer. It made him feel giddy, excited at the possibility of what you would plan. “Okay,” he answered. “I’ll let you take me out this time.” 

“Good,” you smiled and pecked his lips. “I’ll see you then?”

Harry nodded, but pulled you back into a deep kiss. This time—it was intense, more intimate, urgent. His lips moved with your own and his hands drifted lower until the tips of his fingers rested just above your ass. He wanted to reach down and squeeze, but he didn’t. Not yet, he told himself. Not yet. 

“I’ll see you then, baby.”

On the third date, you had told him to dress casually. He called you just before he was about to pick you up, asking just how casual he was supposed to dress. You had smiled to yourself and told him casual enough to the point where he wouldn’t care if his clothes would get wrinkled. 

So, when he picked you up—dressed in a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt with sneakers, you practically wanted to pull him back into your apartment. The date could wait a little longer. You loved seeing him in a suit—had gotten used to seeing him dressed so formally—but seeing him like this, so relaxed and casual just made him sexier. 

“This casual enough?” he asked, presenting you with another bouquet of flowers. 

“You look hot,” you complimented and leaned in to peck his lips. He smiled when you pulled away and then took your hand to lead you outside of your apartment. 

“So…” you told him. “We’re having a picnic.”

Harry grinned and pulled you close to him. You hadn’t yet closed the door to your apartment, but he leaned in and pressed his lips eagerly against your own. Without hesitation, he had moved his lips with yours, hand moving to rest on your hip. “A picnic sounds nice.”

He didn’t know what to expect, but he certainly didn’t expect to be lying on a large blanket with you next to him. You both were looking up at the clear, blue sky talking about something so random. He felt his heart skip a beat when he heard you laugh—it filled his senses until all he could hear was you and how happy you looked. He wondered if this was what other couples felt like, if this is what they would normally do—have a picnic in the park, eat some food, then lie down in each other’s arms just embracing each other’s company. 

When your laughter died down, Harry had moved to rest his hand on your cheek. You stared up at him, the smile still remaining on your lips. He felt like he could sense what you were thinking about, communicating with you through his eyes. 

His thumb had brushed against your lower lip and he leans in, pecking your lips lightly. 

“Can I ask you something?” Harry whispered. He felt the nerves begin to build and looked away from you for a moment. It wasn’t until you replied with a soft and quiet yes that he looked back at you.

“Would you want to date more exclusively? More seriously?” he asked in a rush. Harry’s eyes softened and the smile on your lips never faltered. 

“I’d like that,” you answered instantly. “I’d like that a lot actually.”

“Really?” 

“Really,” you repeated. 

Harry let out a sigh of relief and leaned in to press his lips against yours again. Your arms wrapped around his shoulders as you lay on your back with him propping himself on his side to kiss you. He felt a huge weight lift off his shoulders—he couldn’t help but feel extremely overjoyed and happy that the feeling was mutual. 

Almost six months later and now in a fully committed relationship with you, Harry finally understands what Lucy meant—love was supposed to be easy… and loving you felt like second nature to him.

You had been spending most days at his penthouse. There’s already a space in his closet for you and extra counter space in the bathroom. You manage to make this place a home—he’d come home and you’d be there in the kitchen, making dinner. Or on some nights, he’d catch you grading some papers. This felt easy. Being with you was easy. 

Harry knew that he loved you the moment he laid eyes on you. It’s cliche—he knows—but every time he’s around you, his heart races. When he sees you smile or hears you laugh, it makes his stomach do flips. And when he’s holding you in his arms, his life feels complete—like the one thing that had been missing in his life is now here with him. 

He hadn’t yet said he loved you because he wanted to do it right. He wanted it to be perfect. Harry had an entire date planned—he was going to take you out to the same restaurant from your first date. Take you for a walk around the park afterwards and then, he’d tell you how much he loves you. It was going to be romantic—something to remember for the rest of his days, but that morning… His entire plan was thrown out the window. 

You were in his kitchen, dressed in one of his shirts, making breakfast. Harry had gotten used to this, but for some reason, that morning, he felt his breath catch in his throat. The sun shone through his large windows, illuminating you in a warm glow. He was dressed in a pair of sleep pants and a worn t-shirt as he stared at you, a smile slowly lining his lips. 

He walked over to you and watched as your eyes moved from the pan and over to him. Harry bit his lower lip at the sight of your broad smile. You dropped the spatula and walked over to him, wrapping your arms loosely around his shoulders as you pecked his lips lightly.

“I was going to surprise you with breakfast in bed,” you said. “Since you always like to surprise me, I figured I could return the favor this time.”

Harry chuckled and allowed his arms to wrap loosely around your waist. He held your body firmly against his own as he leaned forward to rest his forehead against yours. “Why are you so good to me?” he asked quietly, hand coming up to rest on your cheek. 

“Hmm,” you answered. “Maybe because I really like you.” 

Harry grinned and pulled back to look into your eyes. His thumb brushed against your cheek as he tilted his head. “Yeah?” 

You nodded, leaning against his touch. “Yeah,” you answered. “Consider yourself lucky, Mr. Castillo.”

Harry’s eyes narrowed as he reached behind you to turn off the stove. He lifted you off your feet to set you on top of the kitchen counter, moving his hands to rest at either side of you. He moved to stand between your legs as he felt your hands move to card through his hair. 

“I am,” he whispered quietly. “Very lucky.” His eyes stared deeply into your own. His heart felt like it was beating out of his chest—the nerves slowly beginning to build as those three words settled on the tip of his tongue. There was a tense silence that filled the air and it was almost like you could anticipate what Harry was about to say next. 

Your hands moved to his cheeks, feeling the bristles of hair underneath your fingertips. You leaned down to kiss the tip of his nose as his hands moved from the edges of the counter to his rest on your hips. 

“Baby,” he said softly. 

“Harry,” you replied. 

“I’m in love with you,” he blurted out as he pulled back just enough to look into your eyes. “I thought I’d never be capable of love. It just always seemed so difficult for me, but you—loving you is easy.” Harry couldn’t help the tears that build in his deep brown eyes. The way you were looking at him now eased so much of the nerves and worry that he felt. “You make me feel—baby,” he sighed—his breath catching in his throat as he brought a hand up to wipe the fallen tear that trickled down his cheek once he blinked.

“Hey…” you whispered, kissing his cheek lightly. “I’m in love with you too, Harry.” 

He pulled back. Eyes wide, features etched with shock. “You make me feel good,” Harry continued. “Valuable. Seen. Heard. Special. Every moment spent with you is always better than the last, and when I’m apart from you, I’m always counting the minutes until I can see you again.” He let out a shaky breath as he leaned in to rest his forehead against yours. His nose brushed against yours as he whispered, “I love you. I think I loved you the first time I saw you.” 

“God, I forgot how charming you are,” you teased, hands moving to his shoulders as you slowly wrapped your arms around him. “You made me believe in love again, Harry. I’m so glad I said yes when you asked me out… and to think, I could have missed out on this, on you.” Leaning in, you pecked his lips lightly. “And loving you is easy too. You make me feel safe and I’ve never felt that before… with anyone.”

Harry smiled and gently pulled you off the counter, your legs easily sliding around his waist as he walked you both to the large couch. He sat down with you on his lap as he brought a hand up to your cheek. “Move in with me?” 

“Didn’t you know?” You smiled, leaning in to brush your lips with his. “I was slowly beginning to move my things in anyway,” you grinned. 

Harry chuckled, firmly pressing his lips against your own. “I love you, baby,” he mumbled. “So much.” 

“Mmm,” you smiled, pulling away briefly. “Gonna show me how much?” 

His eyes darkened instantly and he wrapped his arms around your waist to swiftly lie you on your back against the couch. Harry settled himself between your legs as he leaned back in—eagerly pressing his lips along your jawline down to the side of your neck. 

“Oh, baby, you know I will,” he grinned against you, peppering light kisses against your neck. 

The feeling of his stubble tickled your skin, causing a fit of giggles to escape your lips. He smiled to himself and pulled away from you briefly to look into eyes. 

“I love you,” he whispered, a content smile lining his lips. 

“I love you too, Harry. Now get back here and kiss me,” you giggled, linking your hands together at the nape of his neck and pulling him back down to press your lips with his. 

Harry smiled against your lips—contentment, relief, and happiness filling his entire soul. 

Lucy forgot to mention that loving was only easy if it was with the right person. 

And you—you were the right person for him. 

[petalsinblood]

Pairing: Alex Serian x f!reader

Summary: You help Alex practice a harder cello piece. But this practice is somehow entirely different from the previous ones.

Warnings: established relationship, MDNI (+18), swearing, subby Alex, sensory deprivation kinda (Alex is listening to music here), dry humping, fingering, brief oral (f receiving), unprotected p in v, aftercare

Word count: 4k

Author's note: Look, I don't have anything to say. I think we all saw what we did yesterday, and immediately got obsessed. Did I write this during the night and fucked up my sleep schedule again? Maybe. But I think it was worth it. My darling Cha (@bergamote-catsandbooks) thank you for being so excited to beta read this story. Love you! 💜

The house is quiet. Quieter than on most days.

There isn’t any music echoing off the walls, no sound of cello creeping around every corner and the occasional curse of Alex when he misses a beat, or he makes a mistake.

It seems too odd. Your ears are already used to the constant loudness in the house, and now it is almost like it is haunted.

You shake yourself back to reality, giving the soup another stir in the pot before you reach to turn off the stove. You move to take a spoon from one of the drawers. The smells in the kitchen makes your mouth water, and your moves are maybe too quick as you taste the still too hot food.

The moment the spoon touches your lips, you hear a loud and frustrated sigh coming from the living room.

Well, maybe today isn’t as peaceful as you thought it would be.

You swallow that spoonful of soup, humming at the taste before you put the used spoon in the dirty dishes. It clatters against the plates, but you’re already out the door, worry filling you as you round the corner and your eyes fall on Alex.

You furrow your brows, not noticing anything unusual. Alex is laying on the couch, headphones on, tapping on the bunch of paper in front of him in his lap with a pencil. You almost swoon at the way he looks like. Black tank top with gray sweatpants. One of those outfits he wears when he’s not in his practice room, playing on his cello in just a shirt and his underwear.

“Alex,” you call out, but quickly realize that he can’t hear you because of the music playing in both his ears.

So you walk through the room, your bare feet tapping on the wooden floor quietly as you get closer. When you arrive beside him he still doesn’t look up, and as you sit down a soft breeze hits you through the open window behind the couch.

“Alex,” you try again, leaning closer to him.

When he still doesn’t pay any attention, not even turning his gaze towards you for a second, you do something that you immediately know you would regret after.

You take hold of the bunch of paper in his lap, placing it on the coffee table in front of you, followed by his pencil too.

“Hey, what are you doing?” he asks confused, brows furrowing, making the lines between them deeper.

You reach to push back his headphones, letting it hang around his neck as you look at him. “Lunch is ready,” you announce with a soft smile, pushing back a strand of hair that fell in front of his forehead.

His hands fall back onto his stomach, and with a frustrated sigh he throws his head back against the pillow. “I was in the middle of analyzing a very hard passage,” he murmurs under his breath, and you immediately feel guilty for interrupting him.

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you couldn’t have known,” he shakes his head, lifting his head and looking at you. With one hand he reaches out, holding you by your waist and pulling you suddenly towards him. To prevent falling across him and landing on the floor, you throw your leg over his lap, straddling his hips. When your eyes fall on his face, you see a wide grin paying on his lips. “It’s okay.”

“You’re a menace.”

“Maybe,” he shrugs, his arms circling your middle and pulling you down to his chest. You rest your head in the crook of his neck as much as the headphones allow, and you listen to the music playing from it, the pace too fast, notes flying so quickly you can’t even understand how someone is able to play that.

“What is it?” you ask, curiosity winning as you glance up at him from behind your eyelashes.

“Saint-Saëns, Cello Concerto No. 2, Op. 119,” he answers immediately. Your eyes widen at his precision for knowing the exact passage, and you smile up at him.

“Sounds complicated.”

“That’s why I’m analyzing it first. I may understand harder works, but not this one. The notes I’m making don't make any sense,” he explains, his thumb drawing small circles on your back.

“And it’s making you frustrated because you want everything to go perfectly on your first try.” It’s not even a question. You know him so well now, to understand that he’s a perfectionist, when it comes to his playing and music.

“At this point you know me better than me," he chuckles. He angles his head so he can place a soft kiss on your temple, hugging you tighter.

You stay like that for a few minutes. Him holding you, the music playing beside your ear, the occasional chirping of birds creeping through the window, filling the room. But no matter how peaceful the moment seems like, the position makes your legs go numb, so you start squirming in his lap, trying to find a better one.

As you move, you feel his hands tightening on your waist, and he lets out a low groan. “Shit. Stop moving around, baby.”

You look at him confused for a second, not understanding why he says that, but then realization dawns on you when you push yourself back to sit in his lap again. You can feel something hard under you, pressing against your center. You look at him with a surprised expression, but then a satisfied smile stretches across your face. “You’re hard.”

He tries to ignore your statement, clearing his throat as he looks up and down your body. “This is my shirt. The one that I played in yesterday.”

“Don’t avoid the conversation,” you warn him, leaning close so you are hovering above him, steadying yourself with your hands on his chest. “You’re hard just by me moving around a little in your lap.”

“That wasn’t moving around a little. You were basically dry humping me. Of course I get hard.”

“Oh, Alex. I see some concepts are not clear for you. This is what dry humping is,” you shoot back with a wicked smile, starting to move your hips around in his lap, dragging the most aching part of your body across the hard line of his cock in his pants, and you can’t help but let out a soft sigh at the feeling, the thin fabric of your underwear not blocking the sensation.

“Oh, fuck,” he groans, gripping your hips and guiding your movements as he occasionally lifts his hips to match your rhythm.

When he closes his eyes and throws his head back, you suddenly stop. He tries to thrust up again, but you lift off of him enough that he can’t reach you, and he looks at you with a wounded expression. “Why did you stop?”

“I thought you wanted me to stop, no? You said it moments before.”

“No, hell no. I don’t want you to stop. The music must have got to my brain for saying that. Too many notes, too many sounds, too many—”

You don’t let him finish the sentence, capturing his lips with yours. He groans into the kiss, and you take that quick moment to take control, slipping your tongue past his teeth. His hands wander down from your back to your ass, squeezing down hard when you teasingly nip at his bottom lip.

You can feel his hands moving again, up under your — technically his — shirt, caressing your back before he moves them to your front, moaning gently when he realized you don’t have any bra on. He immediately starts playing with your breasts, the callouses on his hands rough against your skin, but still igniting a fire on the path he takes with them.

You can feel the wetness between your thighs, and maybe because of the lack of oxygen getting to your brain because of the kiss, or because something else entirely, you get an idea you never had before.

You break away from him with a soft gasp, taking in a deep breath as you look into his eyes, seeing only hunger and desire burning in them, his soft brown eyes turning almost fully black.

When you feel like your brain can function again, you reach for his headphones, taking them off from around his neck, but not putting them down behind you on the coffee table. You just hold them while he looks at you with confusion. You nod towards his tank top. “Take it off.”

He complies without a sound, taking his hands from under your shirt and sitting up so he can quickly get out of his tank top, throwing it to the side. When he is done, he lays back again, his hands finding their place again on your waist.

You lift the headphones a little in the air, hovering above him again. “So I hear this piece is very fast. Must require some amazing finger work,” you wonder, and you watch how his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “I wonder how yours is compared to it.”

Without warning you take hold of his left hand, guiding it down along the waistband of your underwear until you dip it into the fabric, his fingers immediately swiping across your wetness. He moves to dip his fingers lower, but you stop him with a soft squeeze on his wrist, and you hold up the headphones in your other hand. “You’ll follow this pace, alright?” you ask, and lift it to put it on his head, but he is the one stopping you now.

“I won’t be able to hear you that way.”

“Take it as a challenge or an experiment,” you answer. “Imagine a deaf musician. They simply rely on their feelings and eyes. They feel the vibration of the strings under their fingers, see where they’re supposed to hold them down. You feel too, no?” you ask, bucking your hips into his hand, his fingers gliding across your folds again.

“I do,” he nods, his voice strained.

“Great. Good thing you have this piece on repeat.”

You place the headphones on his head, pulling them over his ears so he can only hear the music and nothing else. You nod at him, and he dips his fingers between your folds, swiping them back and forth until his index settles on your clit, drawing slow and tight circles over it.

But his pace is not matching the music you heard coming from his headphone earlier, so you lean down next to his ear, lifting one side of the headphone so he can hear you. “I don’t think the music is this slow.”

That is all you say before placing the headphone back on his ear and leaning back again. At your words his finger immediately speeds up, following the pace of the piece in his ear. His eyes are studying your reactions closely, and you can see them glint when your mouth opens around a soft moan, your eyebrows running together.

You reach to unbutton the shirt you have on, giving him a free sight of your bare breasts, and he doesn’t miss a beat as he sits up to take one of your nipples in his mouth while his right hand plays with the other. His tongue circles around the hardened nub while his index finger wanders downwards towards your entrance. You hold on to him with your arms around his shoulders, and you tilt your hips a little when he eases one finger inside of you, a soft moan leaving your lips.

He starts to move it in and out of you to the music, and you can already feel your walls tightening around his finger, your orgasm building up faster in you than you expected.

It doesn’t take long until he adds a second finger too, and you look down at him.

He is now resting his chin on your sternum, your nipple still glistening from his saliva. But in his eyes you see such concentration like you never saw before. He is looking out for every small breath you let out against his face, every time you open your mouth when you moan, every time you furrow your brow at the sensation growing in you.

And you know he can also feel the way your walls are tightening around his fingers.

So when the music hits another fast point and he picks up the pace of his fingers again, you let go. You fall forward, letting your forehead rest against his while your orgasm washes over you. Your thighs are shaking slightly around his, but he holds you up, slowing his fingers so you can ride out your high without him overstimulating you.

When you feel like your body can work again, you lean in to kiss him. He reciprocates it, pulling his hand out from your underwear to place it on your thigh.

When you pull back, you also push off one side of his headphones. “And how is your timing?”

“What do you mean?” he asks confused.

“Your timing. When you have to hold down the note, or jump into a passage,” you explain, trying to sound like you understand everything about his world.

“It’s pretty good I guess,” he shrugs, still looking at you with furrowed brows, trying to guess where this conversation is going.

“How about we practice that too?” you ask, slowly climbing off of him to lay down on your back. He follows you, hovering above you. “Do you want the underwear to stay?” you ask, hooking your thumbs in the waistband.

“No, not this time,” he shakes his head, his answer coming out breathless. You start pushing the lacy material off, but he takes over halfway down your thighs, pulling them off himself and throwing it on the ground. His eyes fall on your exposed center for a second, and before you can say anything, he is already laying on his stomach between your thighs.

You place your leg on his shoulders, but realize that this position easily pushes off his headphones, so you reach down to pull it back in place, keeping your hands on either side of his head.

He doesn’t wait for you to approve his action, he dives in, swiping his tongue all the way from your entrance to your clit. You jerk your hips at the sudden contact, and he places one hand on your lower belly to keep you still.

You let out a loud moan when he starts drawing quick circles over your clit with his tongue, you are sure that he can hear it even through the headphones. And when he closes his lips around the little nub and starts sucking it gently between his teeth, you know you won’t be able to last too long this way.

And the second time you come, you want that to happen on his cock.

So you quickly pull him up by his hair, and the sight of him with your wetness glistening on his mustache and beard makes you go dizzy. You partially push back the headphones from his ears again.

You open your legs wider so he can settle in, and when he is leaning comfortably over you, you reach down to pull down his gray sweatpants along with his underwear too. The moment his cock is free, your focus falls on it. His tip is already glistening with his precum, the head almost an angry red for being denied any friction for so long.

You place your hand on his stomach first, following that path of coarse hair from his belly button leading down to his cock, taking a hold of him.

He lets out a long groan above you as you gather his precum with your fingers, spreading it over his length as you stroke him a few times.

When you pull your hand away, he tries to chase it at first, bucking his hips, but then he waits for what you are going to do next. You reach up taking a hold of his headphones. “Concentrate on the timing,” you remind him before you put the headphones back over his ears.

He purses his lips, but nods. He reaches down between your bodies, taking a hold of his cock and guiding it through your folds a few times before he lines himself up at your entrance, pushing in slowly. Your walls stretch around his length, and you throw your head back against the pillows at the feeling.

He lowers himself closer to your body, his forearms resting on both side of your head, his chest making contact with your breasts.

When he bottoms out, you both let out a strained moan. He waits for a few seconds for you to adjust to his size before he starts moving based on the music.

His rhythm is steady, and when he hits the spot in you, you don’t even care anymore if he really is following the music’s timing, or he is just making it up. Your arms are thrown around his shoulders, keeping him close while you wrap your legs around his waist, the new angle allowing him to go deeper in you, making you see stars.

You are moaning at every thrust, and next to your ear Alex is grunting too, breathing heavily and occasionally cursing under his breath. You can hear the music drifting out from his headphones, but it doesn’t matter anymore.

You tear it off from his head, throwing it to the ground carelessly.

Alex falters for a second, pulling back to look down at you, and when you nod in encouragement it is almost like a spell falls over him. He leans down to capture your mouth with his, and he starts driving into you with more force and determination, and you can’t help but hold on to him tighter, every thrust sending you further up on the couch.

The living room is filled with moans and the sound of skin slapping against each other, the smell of sweat and sex lingering in the air. Now the house is not filled with cello notes bouncing off the walls, but with the music of two people merging into one.

“Oh God, Alex,” you moan into his mouth.

He groans too, closing his eyes tightly. “Fuck, I missed hearing your moans,” he murmurs against your lips before kissing you again.

You can feel yourself get closer to your high again, and you pull back to warn him. “I’m close, Alex. I think I’m gonna—” Your sentence is broke off with a loud moan from you, your walls squeezing him tight as your orgasm washes over you in waves again, this one a lot more powerful than the previous.

Alex doesn’t stop moving above you, but you can feel how his thrusts become sloppier, and he doesn’t need more than a few before he comes hard, burying himself to the hilt, his warmth filling you. You can feel his cock twitching in you as your walls milk every last drop of cum from him, and then he collapses over you, careful not to crush you with his weight.

Neither of you says anything, but you don’t need to.

You brush your fingers through his hair, combing back the sweaty curls as he breathes into the crook of your neck. His hand is all over your body where he can reach — your arms, your shoulders, your sides, your outer thighs.

You have already learned that after such an intense time with you he always needs time to process. He is not used to such level of intimacy, not used to being vulnerable in front of anyone. So after these moments he needs some time to look back at them while you hold him close. Not because he is weak, but because he is afraid of the possibility that it was only just a dream that he made up to comfort himself.

And you always wait patiently until he is the one to break the silence.

Like now.

“I’m hungry,” he says with such simplicity that you can’t help but let out a soft chuckle.

“I bet you are. We’ll need to re-heat the soup.”

“Maybe, but I don’t regret having this moment,” he shrugs, looking up at you with a loving smile. He cranes his neck to place a kiss on your jaw before he pushes himself off of you. Both of you let out a low hiss when he pulls out of you, the emptiness in you suddenly too unexpected. He gets up from the couch, pulling his underwear and sweats back on before he looks back down at you. “I’ll get a wet towel.”

You nod, resting your head on a soft pillow as you watch him walk away, the muscles in his back moving under his tanned skin, hips swaying slightly with every step he takes, making your eyes fall on the curve of his ass.

When he disappears around the corner, you look up at the ceiling, closing your eyes for a few minutes, listening to the birds chirping outside under the window.

You only open them again when you hear his footsteps.

He kneels down beside the couch, cleaning you gently, and you watch in silence as he works. When he is done, you look around for your underwear, and when you see it on the ground you reach for it, but he stops you. You glance at him holding up a simple black material, and you look at him with a questioning expression. “A new pair of underwear. So you wouldn’t have to put on back one that is… well, you know,” he tries to find the words, and you consider it adorable how he stumbles over his own thoughts.

“I get it, don’t worry,” you reassure him, taking it from his hand to put it on. When the material sits around you comfortably, you take his face between your palms, leaning in to place a soft kiss on his forehead. “Thank you.”

“Right,” he laughs nervously, getting up from the ground and pointing in the direction of the kitchen. “I’ll, uh, get us some food then. I’ll be right back,” he announces.

Before he can disappear behind the corner you call after him. “Alex.”

He turns around quickly, eyebrows pulled up, waiting for your next words. “Yeah?”

“I love you.”

His lips pull into a small smile at those three words. He nods before he finally disappears.

He didn’t say it back. He never has, but you're patient with him. You know about some of the traumas that happened in his past. He sometimes is emotionally distant, but you don’t blame him. In those times you let him have his moment in his practice room, and when he comes out after spending hours in there, you keep him company.

Sometimes he talks about what happened at the rehearsal that day, or why he feels that way, sometimes he just prefers the silence and you close to him. There were times he asked you to read for him, or asked if he could play for you while you watched.

Even though he doesn’t say it out loud, you know he loves you. He shows it with his actions.

He just needs time to process his own emotions and feelings before he can say those three little words out loud too.

And you will be next to him when that day comes. Let it be days, weeks, months, or even years. But you know that you won’t ever be his first true love.

His true love will always be the music, and the beauty of playing. He fell in love with it as a child, and since then the bond between him and the music only grew. Nothing proves it better than him still playing on his first cello, that he got from his parents.

But you don’t mind. It was composed for him this way.

And his fingers run through the strings of life with a quiet, but strong confidence, creating a beautiful melody.

Taglist (let me know if you'd like to be added or removed from it): @picketniffler, @speaktothehandpeasants, @harriedandharassed, @bergamote-catsandbooks, @misstokyo7love, @shadowqueen2024, @missadangel, @annwrites24, @eviispunk, @baronessvonglitter, @johnssherlock221, @goonersquad101, @my-tearsricochet, @nutbutterjellie, @kokoluwie, @cozymochaa

Some peope who were interested, but aren't on the taglist: @grogusmum, @vodkaandpizza, @peepawmiller, @kellyxo1, @mystickittytaco, @ningaispunk, @fckyeahsaltandpeppercurls, @loveoverpride, @pedrospurplerain, @chewie-bars, @604to647, @joelmillerpascal, @smvtluvr

[targlocket]

Cregan Stark loves his spoiled, pampered, heavily pregnant wife

cregan stark x wife!reader

cw: (mdni+18), fluff fluff fluff, pregnancy, lactation, banter, crack, cregan is obsessed with his wife, fondling, breast play, slight dirty talk, (2.5kw).

“I curse you.”

Cregan didn’t even lift his head at the words, the only tell that he had heard his wife being the slight twitch at the corner of his lips as he continued to glide ink on paper.

He could hear you waddling, huffing, and puffing up a storm as you closed the door to his solar, making as much noise as possible to draw him to pay attention to you, no matter how much work he had to do.

And who was Cregan Stark if not a mere supplicant to all and any of his wife’s whims?

“Curse me?” He spoke, lifting his eyes towards you, the curl of his lips deepening into amusement as he observed how endearing you looked, heavily pregnant and shooting daggers his way. “To what possible end, my love? You had but seen me for the first time today.” Cregan said, arching one bushy brow, leaning back in his mahogany chair to get a better view of his beloved treasure of the North. “What have I done to earn such a harsh punishment?”

You scowled, stepping closer, your gait more akin to a mother duck than anything else, making warmth bloom in Cregan’s chest, letting his eyes sweep over you from the soles of your feet to the top of your head, taking you in, gorging on the sight of his pretty wife, all plump and heavy with his babe. He will never cease to pray to all the Northern Gods for this blessing, dropping to his knees in front of the weirwood tree, forehead pressed to the cold ground as he thanked them profusely for letting him cast his gaze upon such divinity.

“You have done plenty,” you scoffed, scrunching your nose in his direction. The closer you got to his desk, the more the resemblance between you and a disgruntled kitten became more and more apparent, making him hum. “My feet ache, my belly is too big, I’ve eaten a dozen lemon cakes in one sitting, and I can barely walk.”

Cregan pressed his lips together to suppress a splitting grin, way too amused and enamored with his crimes that he had apparently had a hand in, unbeknownst to him. How can a man like him even dare to stand there and not be swiftly punished for such wrongdoings? Other men were beheaded for less.

“Are all those ailments my doing?” He asked, feigning innocence as he waited for you to approach, letting you decide whether you wanted him near or not right now. “How could I have been such a cruel husband, hm?” Cregan continued, fingers twitching with the need to touch, to pull, to hold, but he relented, knowing the wrong move could earn him an even grumpier wife, and that is not what he wished for at the moment.

“Utterly cruel,” you affirmed, lip curling, baring your teeth at him as you stopped next to his chair, your pregnant belly brushing his arm, making his breath hitch, the wonder of such a miracle never quite ceasing. “You brought this upon me.” Your lips pursed into a pout, indignant and fussy as you continued. “If you weren’t so relentless in giving me your seed, I would’ve never resembled a thousand-pound duckling right now.”

Thousand-pound duckling.

Cregan couldn’t stop the huff of amusement that slipped past his lips even if he tried.

Smack.

“You dare laugh?” You gasped, affronted and utterly offended that your husband was finding your grievances even remotely entertaining, hand making contact with his broad shoulder again and again.

It truly only served to heighten his grin even more, eyes crinkling at the edges for a few moments as he let you hit him to your heart’s content, the slaps no more than a kitten batting its paws at a great wolf, Cregan cataloguing them more as pets than anything that could bring any harm.

“I laugh,” he started, tone woven with amusement, but achingly fond now as he watched you, lifting one hand to clasp yours, bringing it to his mouth to press a soft kiss onto the back of it, halting your fussing. “Because my wife is being ridiculous,” and he could already sense the protest on your tongue at his words, so he was quick to preempt that by continuing, turning your palm to press his lips to the inside of it now. “And she does not look like a thousand-pound duckling, but the most beautiful woman I, and the Seven Kingdoms have ever seen.”

You huffed, your scowl lessening.

Watching you melt gradually from his words was always one of Cregan’s joys in life, chest puffing with pride in being able to will his irritable wife into mellowness, that pretty face of yours warming whenever he “had the nerve,” as you often say, to be tender to you.

“You’re only saying that to appease me,” you protested, but moved closer, nudging him with your knee, indicating that you wished to be closer, to be tended to. A silent demand that your husband knew as well as breathing.

Cregan’s chair screeched quietly onto the hard floor as he made space for you in front of him, broad thighs parting to coax you near. He patted one meaty leg with his palm, head tilting as he watched you, lips softening at the corners, amusement bleeding into fondness. “Come here, to your husband, sweetling.”

“Are you certain you can hold the weight of me, husband?” You challenged, even as you stepped into his space. “Perhaps I am too hefty, even for you.”

Utter nonsense, Cregan thought. He knew you knew how strong he was. How easy it would be for him to hold you and not break a sweat while doing so. As if he doesn’t train and work himself to the bone whenever he is allowed a moment from the droning of courtiers to hone the muscles you secretly favour. Cregan could carry you in his arms through Winterfell’s walls for a handful of hours, he wagers, before the need to stop and take a breather would catch up to him.

“Hm, you reckon?” He rumbled, his hands finding purchase on your hips, smoothing over the flowy material of your dress. Gods, he loved the garments you’ve been adorning as of late—warm colors, soft fabrics, all cascading in rivulets down your soft, lush body. He had given word for more of such dresses to the seamstresses, without your knowledge. You didn’t have to know of his plans yet. Nor were you aware of how he made sure the hearths were lit periodically in every room you frequented, so the need for more than a cloak over your soft silks, satins, and linens was not necessary. It would’ve obstructed his view of you.

You squirmed just a bit, just enough to show resistance, even when he could feel you melting like honey in his grasp as he slowly turned you around, your back to his chest, seating you right onto his lap with a pleased, content groan. The solid weight of you, of the babe you were carrying, leaning back against him, trusting him to hold it all, made something pleased and animal bloom into his chest. If he were any more wolf in anything but sigil and tradition, he was sure he would’ve purred like a content beast right now.

“There you go,” Cregan said, broad palms using their grip onto your soft hips to hike you up higher until you were flush against him from hips to shoulders. “My pretty wife,” he murmured, leaning in to nose at your throat with a satisfied sigh, inhaling the scent of your bath oils, milk and you. “Smelling like a treat here on my lap.”

Cregan knows you would taste even better, but the time for that is not now. He loves to savour you most later in the night, when he has you all pliant and drowsy next to him, bundled up in the furs and pelts from his latest hunts, huffing and whining about all the pains and aches that plague you. And it is your husband’s duty to mend them with his tongue, hands and cock, in any way his lovely wife sees fit.

“I do not feel like a treat,” comes your response, leaning your head back against his shoulder as you grumble. “And it is your doing.”

Ah, of course. Anything that ails you is always Cregan’s demerit, be it truth or fib.

“Apologies, sweet wife,” he whispers against the warm skin of your neck, nuzzling there as a hound would its owner for clemency after being scolded. “How shall I repent for my wrongs at present, pray tell? I am yours to command, as always.”

Truth be told, Cregan could provoke you, could throw your whining and complaining back at you, as he often did, but he had found himself powerless to do such a thing in the moons since you have been with child. How could he muster even a modicum of bravado against the woman who now carried their babe? His heir. His little pup, as Cregan often called them, to your dismay, even tho he knew you did not mind the moniker in the slightest, especially when he was kissing all over the taut skin of your belly in the soft light of mornings, whispering sweet nothings to your stomach, as if the babe could hear him.

"Let me, my love." His broad palms smooth up from your hips, just enough to cradle the bottom of your pregnant, heavy belly and lift, supporting some of the weight himself, holding steady and firm. “There you go.”

The relief is instant.

You melt back into him with a soft sigh, as if a great burden has been taken from you, being gifted a moment of relaxation, where your husband was bearing the heavy load of your unborn babe. He had done this countless times since the nearing of your term, only more than a moon away until you were to be surrounded by midwives and maesters.

“It is a boulder,” you fuss, but your eyes flutter in delight, the ache in your back easing the more Cregan bears the brunt of your belly. “One I shall never have to haul around again, Gods be good.”

He hums at your words, knowing them not to be entirely founded, for he knows you are quite fond of the idea of having more than one set of little legs running around Winterfell in the years to come, but he keeps the quip to himself, mindful of your repose.

“I cannot abide by having to change my garments every few hours because I’m dripping milk like cattle.”

Dripping milk.

Cregan freezes for a moment before tipping his chin onto your shoulder to peer down your chest, and truth be told, there they were, your words sounding truthful.

Pebbled nipples peeking through damp material, where milk had stained the fabric, your heavy breasts full of milk, ready to nurture the future babe.

Your husband’s breath caught at the sight, tongue unconsciously poking out to wet his lips, as if wanting to taste the patches of wet silk and suck them into his mouth so he could relish the flavour of your nourishment.

“My poor, sweet wife,” Cregan crooned, one palm still supporting your pregnant belly, while the other slowly travelled upwards, caressing the soft fabric of your dress, until he could cup one full breast, making you huff. “So full of milk already,” he continued, thumb brushing over the damp peak of your nipple through the silk, eliciting a breathier sound this time, which made him hum. “Ready to feed our babe.”

He expected you to squirm, to fuss again at him, but you arched into his touch, limbs melting onto his lap, as if his touches were the flame to melt wax onto paper, willing you pliant and malleable.

“They ache,” you complained, pushing your chest into his palm, urging him to aid you in your grievance, as any husband should. “They’re too full.”

“Too full?” came your husband’s voice, lower, more gruff, as if your words had affected him more than he wished to admit. “And no one to suckle on these pretty tits yet, isn’t it?” He said, palm shifting, covering your breast fully, fingers dimpling the clothes’ softness as he squeezed gently, fondling the lushness slowly.

Again and again and again.

You didn’t mind the rhythmic press of his palm; on the contrary, you relished it, each one accompanied by one of those sweet sighs of content that Cregan drank in like the finest Arbour gold.

With each squeeze, the material of your dress dampened, your husband drawing out more and more milk, wetting both your dress and his palm. He groaned at the feeling, fingers dimpling the flesh harder, but never enough to hurt. “Gods, sweetling, you’re leaking everywhere,” he rumbled, pupils blown wide as he watched the way the silk darkened as more and more sweetness dripped from your pebbled nipples. “Makin’ me want to suckle at it like a babe.”

You gasped, one of your hands lifting to swat at the one he had around your breast, which only made him squeeze more. “Don’t be dissolute!” You reprimanded, but did nothing else to stop his fondling, weaving your fingers through his against your heaving tit, aiding him as you continued. “Just keep going.”

Cregan groaned, tilting his head to the side to nuzzle into the crook of your neck, the scent of sweet, warm milk already permeating the air around you, making him dizzy with the need to dip his head low and mouth at you until you couldn’t resist any more. “You’re a cruel woman,” he rasped, mouth parting, tongue poking out, as if tasting the air would suffice, as if that would even come close to having your milk on his palate. “All lush and ripe like a summer peach, sitting on my lap, dripping all over me,” he growled, feeling his palm dampen more with each squeeze. “And not letting me put my mouth on you.”

It was torture to sit there and not take what he wanted, but he knew that you’d give in soon. Only a matter of time until Cregan would crawl over you, tugging down at your neckline to slobber and mouth at your milk-heavy tits until he was drunk on the taste and you were pliant and lax under him, mewling and squirming.

And probably offering him your other breast to suckle at as well, if you were in good spirits, and he prayed dutifully to the Gods that day.

tags: @pinkdoeweirdo @silkaurum @through-the-looking--glass @pearlessance @chaotichereticcavern @mademoisellepetite @creganed @ship-slut @kyscamel @boojaynaqueen @roxxmo @bisexualforestfire @samthegreenapologist @vlarrtrgryn @sedonasummer @goldenhoneyedwine

divider: @/strangergraphics

[thebriarbunny]

꒰ 𓈒 ୨୧ ۪ ֹ +18 minor dni ˖ ˚ !!

𝓖𝓻𝓪𝓱𝓪𝓶 + 𝓓𝓲 𝓛𝓪𝓾𝓻𝓮𝓷𝓽𝓲𝓼 𝓛𝓲𝓷𝓴 𝓛𝓲𝓫𝓻𝓪𝓻𝓲𝓮𝓼

-> links lead to nsfw vids ᝰ.ᐟ must be logged into Twitter/X

𝒢𝒶𝓇𝓇𝑒𝓉𝓉 𝒢𝓇𝒶𝒽𝒶𝓂⁴⁴

ᝰ.ᐟ helping him relax after a hard practice

ᝰ.ᐟ using your thighs

ᝰ.ᐟ couch quicky before the boys get home

ᝰ.ᐟ shower s*x after practice

ᝰ.ᐟ not an option she has to come—eyp

ᝰ.ᐟ t!tty f*cking with garrett

ᝰ.ᐟ making up s*x with <- the hands in this

ᝰ.ᐟ riding his face

ᝰ.ᐟ gripping your waist when you’re on top

ᝰ.ᐟ sneaking into his hotel room after an away game

𝒟𝑒𝒶𝓃 𝒟𝒾 𝐿𝒶𝓊𝓇𝑒𝓃𝓉𝒾𝓈⁶⁶

ᝰ.ᐟ eyp + teasing

ᝰ.ᐟ he’s good at using his hands…

ᝰ.ᐟ … and he needs them on you at all times

ᝰ.ᐟ post-season vacation with dean

ᝰ.ᐟ pushing it back in

ᝰ.ᐟ in the front seat of your car

ᝰ.ᐟ casual but you can’t stay away from each other

ᝰ.ᐟ riding in reverse with your heels on

ᝰ.ᐟ back shot with your face against the bed

ᝰ.ᐟ pinning you to the mattress

𝐵𝑜𝓉𝒽

ᝰ.ᐟ sharing you on an off-day

ᝰ.ᐟ dvp with your boyfriends

dividers pixopix

[filmjules]

𓏲⋆ TELLING THE OFF CAMPUS BOYS TO GET ON THEIR KNEES WHEN THEY ASK FOR SOMETHING ( cw: suggestive/explicit dialogue & topics, no smut )

DEAN DI LAURENTIS

“Babe,” he whined, “Baaaabe.”

You turned around from the stove, facing your annoying boyfriend.

He knew it got on your nerves when he stood behind you while you were cooking. Especially when he whined the whole time.

So when he asked, “Can I taste test it?” you didn’t immediately shut him down like you normally did.

No, instead you said, “If you get down on your knees and ask, maybe I’ll consider it.”

Why you didn’t expect him to actually do it? Who knows.

He was down on his knees within seconds, his hands pawing at your hips. “Please, baby. Can I please taste test it?”

You had to hold in your laugh, but you felt like he earned it.

Putting your hand on his head and petting him like a dog, you said, “Yes you can, for being such a good boy,” in a very mocking tone.

It didn’t phase Dean one bit though, if anything, he seemed to enjoy it. He pushed his head into your hand like a cat and then stood up with an expectant look on his face.

You rolled your eyes and pulled out a piece of pasta, dropping it directly in his open mouth. He moaned when he tasted it, then gave you a quick kiss on the lips.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” he murmured against your shoulder, already standing right behind you again.

GARRETT GRAHAM

Garrett had been annoying you all day.

You convinced him to go shopping with you, leaving out the details of where you were going and how long it would be.

He knew it could take a while, but 3 hours? After the first hour he was complaining at every store. You offered to leave early, but when he saw the small pout on your face he changed his mind.

But that didn’t mean he was going to stop groaning and moping.

When you stopped to look at two different tops, he took it as an opportunity to rest his head on your shoulder, pressing a soft kiss to your neck.

“Garrett...” you trailed off, a subtle warning to do too much in terms of PDA. He hummed, his free hand—the one not holding all of your shopping bags—coming up to rest on your hips.

“I have an idea,” he mumbled, pressing another soft kiss to your shoulder. “Let’s get you some new stuff from Victoria’s Secret. I’ll buy.”

You rolled your eyes, deciding on the black top instead of the white one.

“If you want me to go try on lingerie for you, you’d better get on your knees and beg,” you joked, walking further into the store.

When you stopped to look at a pair of pants, you saw Garrett drop to his knees in the corner of your eye.

“Please, gorgeous. Let me buy you some new lingerie. I’ll be so good from here on out,” he pleaded, his hands pressed together in a praying motion.

Your eyes darted around, seeing the mostly empty store. “Stand up, oh my god.”

He shook his head, “not until you say yes.”

“Garrett.”

“Princess.”

You sighed, “Fine. Now stand up.”

JOHN TUCKER

“Let me eat you out, sweetheart,” Tucker mumbled against your neck, reaching behind you to lock his bedroom door.

“Uh-uh.”

His lips formed a pout, “Please?”

“If you really want to...” you trailed off, seeing the glint of hope in his eyes, “Get on your knees and ask again, then maybe I’ll let you get a taste.”

For a moment he looked surprised, but he did as you said.

He dropped to his knees, pressing feather-light kissed to your bare stomach and thighs. “Can I get a taste of you, gorgeous?” His hands ran up the backs of your legs. “Please.”

You sighed, your fingers playing with his dark curls. “Okay, fine, but hurry up. I wanna feel you inside me as soon as possible.”

“Yes ma’am.”

JOHN LOGAN

“Come with me,” Logan asked as he pulled on his sweatpants, “The gym is so boring when I’m alone.”

You were already standing, putting on lotion as you listened to your boyfriend try to reason with you to go to the gym with him.

“I showered just last night. You want to make me shower again in less than 12 hours?”

He looked up at you and shrugged, a suggestive smirk on his face. “I’ll help you out?”

“Of course you would.”

Throwing his head back, he groaned. “Why does my girlfriend hate me?”

You rolled your eyes and sighed, “Tell you what. You get on your knees and beg me to come with, and maybe I’ll go and let you ‘help me out’ in the shower later.”

He was on his knees in front of you within seconds.

“Please come with me, gorgeous. The gym is so much more enjoyable with you there,” he pleaded, begging with the way his big brown eyes were looking up at you.

You clicked your tongue, “Fine. Only because I didn’t actually think you would do that.”

He smirked, standing up and pressing a ‘thank you’ kiss to your cheek. “You underestimate me, baby.”

masterlist

[shadeofpeach]

Warm mornings

Pairing: Dr. Jack Abbot x girlfriend!reader Warnings: none, pure fluff. Summary: Your skin against his is exactly what Jack needs to wash away a brutal shift.

Disclaimer: This story is pure fiction and written solely for entertainment purposes.

The quiet of the apartment at seven in the morning was always a blessing after a hard shift. And today was monday. Meaning you didn't have to start your day early. Meaning Jack didn't have to crawl into a cold bed to crash alone; it meant he got you.

Jack walked into the bedroom. The blinds were drawn, keeping the room dark. And there you were, buried beneath a nest of blankets, completely dead to the world.

Sitting on bed, Jack set his prosthetic leg aside, rubbing the residual limb for a brief second and then quickly stripped off his clothes until he was just in his boxers.

The air in the room was cool, but as Jack slid under the duvet, he was instantly met with a radiating heat.

You stirred, letting out a sleepy mumble.

"Jack...?" you breathed, voice raspy with sleep.

"Hey, beautiful," he whispered. "Come here."

You instinctively shifted closer, seeking out his touch.

Jack kissed your cheek and wrapped his arms around you and pulled you flush against him.

You draped an arm over his bare chest, your forehead pressing right against his body.

He rested his chin on the top of your head, his hand slowly tracing the curve of your shoulder and then your back. His thumb brushed over your shoulder blade, feeling the rise and fall of your breathing.

"You're so warm," Jack murmured, his lips brushing against your hair as he smiled. "And so soft. All I need."

After that, his hand slid down to your thigh. His fingers gently squeezed your warm skin, a sigh escaping him as he pulled your leg up and draped it over his hip. He drew you even closer, tucking your body tightly against his, so there was absolutely no space left between you.

You let out a soft hum at the sudden closeness, your fingers lightly curling into his nape, intertwining them with his curls.

"Missed you, handsome," you mumbled sleepy into his neck.

"Missed you too, doll," he whispered back, feeling your body relax heavily against his, leaving caresses on your leg.

He closed his eyes, inhaling your scent and letting his mind completely relax.

With you wrapped securely in his arms, the stress of the shift faded.

Jack had a few precious hours before your alarm would finally go off, and he intended to spend every minute of them right here, holding you.

⋆｡˚☤🩺✧˖°.｡⋆💉

the pitt masterlist

[jxerv]

can I ask for a Ormund x wife reader smut?

like when he has to go to war or something🫶🏻🫶🏻

touch it | o.h

Pairings: Ormund Hightower x Wife!Reader

Summary: Your husband has to go away for the war and you need a moment with him

WARNINGS: MDNI, morning sex, fingering, kinda pregnancy kink, p in v

A/n: I crave him yall don’t understand. Ik he’s a lil bitch but the actor is too hot. Hope you’ll enjoy this 😩

masterlist | wc: 3k

THE MORNING light streamed through the window in broad golden shafts, slipping past the sheer curtains and painting bright bands across the floor covered in Oriental rugs. The room slowly filled with that soft, gentle glow that comes just before full daylight, caressing the dark wooden furniture, the gilded carvings of the bedposts, and the great fireplace, now long since gone cold. Lord Hightower's bedchamber and that of his lady wife were as orderly as ever, kept with the meticulous care befitting the residence of one of the most powerful houses of the Reach. Yet here and there, a few details betrayed the night you had spent together. A cloak had been left at the foot of the bed, a leather belt hung carelessly over the arm of a chair, and your silk gown lay crumpled beside the rug alongside your small clothes, as though it had been forgotten in the haste of reaching your husband's embrace. The air still carried the scent of the spiced wine you had shared the previous evening, mingling with the sweeter fragrance of your hair oil and the salty breeze drifting in from the docks of Oldtown.

The two of you lay naked beneath the covers of the great bed at the center of the chamber, wrapped in the warmth you had shared throughout the night. Ormund Hightower, your beloved husband and Lord of the Hightower, had one arm wrapped around your waist with a possessive ease that had long since become familiar. Even in his sleep, he seemed incapable of letting you go; his fingers rested against your hip as though reassuring themselves that you were still there. His chest rose and fell steadily beneath your cheek, his breathing deep and even. You sighed softly as a cool morning breeze slipped through the half-open window, brushing against your bare skin and sending a shiver through you. Instinctively, you curled closer to him, turning fully into his embrace in search of his warmth, pressing your face against his chest as you listened to the slow, comforting beat of his heart.

He murmured something unintelligible in his sleep, a word that dissolved against your skin, and his strong arm tightened around your shoulders, drawing you even closer. His face nestled into the crook of your neck, his warm breath making your eyes flutter shut for a brief moment. His lips barely brushed your skin as he spoke again, his voice thick with sleep. "What are you doing awake already?" he mumbled against your neck without opening his eyes.

A faint smile touched your lips as you traced idle circles across his chest with the tips of your fingers, following the contours of the muscles beneath his skin. "I don't know. My eyes just opened on their own." Your voice was low, almost a whisper, as though you feared breaking the stillness of the moment.

Ormund let out a slow breath and allowed his hand to glide gently down your arm, caressing you with a tenderness few would have imagined in a man of his size. For a moment he remained silent, his eyes still closed, but you knew he was listening to you with complete attention. "Something's troubling you. I can feel it." It wasn't a question. He knew you well enough to recognize the weight of your thoughts, even when you tried to hide them.

You lifted your gaze to his face and smiled faintly. His chestnut hair had fallen messily across his forehead in unruly waves, and without the stern expression he wore before his lords, he looked almost younger, closer to the man you had come to love. "I think I'm just... sad."

Ormund finally opened his eyes and looked at you with an intensity that made it impossible to look away. There was affection in them, concern, and that quiet tenderness he reserved for you alone. His hand came to rest against your back as he studied you in silence for a moment, as though trying to read every thought hidden behind your expression. "And why would my lady wife ever be sad?"

You let out a quiet huff and rolled your eyes, though the smile that escaped you betrayed how impossible it was to stay annoyed with him. "Don't tease me. You know why." Your voice caught slightly on the last word, and the silence that followed only made the truth you were both trying to ignore feel more real.

"Is it because I'm leaving for war?" he asked simply, though he already knew the answer. His fingers continued to stroke your arm, slow and patient, as though trying to soothe a pain he could never truly erase.

You lowered your eyes to his hand and gave a small nod. "What else could it be?" you murmured, pouting ever so slightly in a way that reminded him just how much younger you were than he was. You always carried yourself with impeccable grace, with all the composure expected of the Lady of the Hightower, yet in moments like these, Ormund could still see the young woman you had once been. The young woman you still are.

"This afternoon you'll leave, and I'll have to stay here, all alone. I wish I could come with you." The words spilled out faster than you had intended, carried by a sadness you had tried to conceal throughout the previous evening.

Ormund smiled faintly, a smile tinged with both weariness and affection. He leaned down and pressed his lips to yours, kissing away your pout with a sweetness that made you forget everything else for a moment. You smiled against his lips and slipped your fingers into his soft hair, keeping him close. When he finally drew back, he remained only a breath away, close enough for you to still feel the warmth of his breathing. "I'm not taking my wife to a battlefield, surrounded by soldiers who haven't seen a woman or had sex in weeks, sleeping in a foul-smelling tent." His tone was light, almost teasing, but beneath his words lay an unshakable resolve. You didn't deserve that, you deserved warm food, soft silks and the comfort of your shared bed. He would not have it in any different way.

You swallowed quietly, feeling his fingers continue to glide over your skin with infinite care. His touch had always been astonishingly gentle, a stark contrast to the strength of his hands and the reputation for severity he had earned among his bannermen.

"I know, but-" You tried to speak, but he interrupted before you could finish.

"You'll stay here, where I know you'll be safe, in the comfort of our home. You're the Lady of the Hightower. You cannot leave." His voice remained calm, but there was no room for argument. You fell silent, staring at the bedsheet gathered between your fingers as you fought the tightness rising in your throat. The reality of his departure suddenly felt much closer: the sound of horses' hooves in the courtyard, the men making ready to ride, the banners of House Hightower leaving Oldtown without him.

Ormund rested a hand against your cheek and gently lifted your face until your eyes met his once more. There was a solemnity in his gaze that made you understand just how much these words meant to him. "Promise me. Promise me you'll stay here, where you'll be safe."

You let out a slow breath, feeling the weight of those words and of the love that accompanied them. At last, you gave a small nod. "I promise."

A satisfied, almost proud expression crossed Ormund's face, and his thumb gently stroked your cheek in reassurance. "Good. Now, how can I make up for my absence, my lady wife?" The question came with a firm squeeze of the fat of your ass.

A mischievous smile slowly spread across your lips. "I know exactly how."

He chuckled softly at your response, a sound that rumbled through his chest and vibrated against your skin. "Oh? And pray tell, what did you have in mind, my dearest?" His voice was low and rich with amusement and anticipation. His hand slid lower, tracing the curve of your hip and coming to rest on your bare thigh, squeezing gently. The heat of his palm seeped into your skin, igniting a familiar spark at its path. Ormund leaned in closer, his lips brushing the shell of your ear. "Whatever it is, I'm sure we can find a way to make it happen before I must take my leave." His other hand came up to tangle in your hair, tilting your head back slightly to expose the column of your throat.

You tilted your head back further, exposing more of your neck to his touch. A soft gasp escaped your lips as you felt his teeth graze your pulse point, sending a shiver down your spine to your very aching core. "Perhaps we could start by get warm. It's a little cold here." Your hand slid down his hairy chest slowly, fingers splaying across the hard planes of his abdomen. You could feel the heat of his naked skin, its hardness. Leaning in, you nipped playfully at his earlobe. "I want you to put a babe in me so I might have company until your return, my lord husband."

Ormund's breath hitched at your bold words, desire flaring hot and urgent in his eyes. He captured your lips in a searing kiss, pouring all his passion and need into the heated press of his mouth against yours. His tongue delved deep, stroking along yours slowly as his hands roamed your curves with growing hunger. "Such a wanton request from my beautiful wife." he growled approvingly against your lips. In one swift motion, he rolled you onto your back, settling his muscular body over yours. The hard length of his hardness nudged insistently against your thigh as he gazed down at you with blatant lust. "I will gladly oblige and fill this womb with my seed. By the time I return, you'll be heavy with our child, a living reminder of my claim on you."

You arched your back, pressing your breasts against his chest as you wrapped your legs around his hips. The heat of his arousal brushed against your slick folds, making you burn at the mere touch. "Please, my lord." you whimpered, rolling your hips to grind against him.

Oh, how beautiful you were when you pleaded him so.

He would’ve give you the sky, stars and moon only if you asked to.

Your nails raked down his back as you pulled him closer, desperate to eliminate any remaining space between your bodies. The musky scent of his thickness mixed with the lingering traces of last night's wine, creating an intoxicating perfume that clouded your senses.

With a low groan, Ormund captured your wrists and pinned them above your head, holding them easily with one large hand. His other hand slid down the smooth plane of your stomach to cup your mound, unable to keep his hands to himself, fingers delving between your slick folds to stroke your sensitive flesh. His hand was cold against your skin, so cold it made you tremble in his grip.

"So wet for me already." he purred in your ear, circling your clit with the pad of his thumb. "My perfect, eager lady wife."

You shut your eyes closed, trying to get more friction from him. Your hips moved against his hand impatiently, rolling slowly, chasing that cold touch. You cried out a moan, your back arching off the bed as his fingers slowly entered in your wetness. Pleasure sparked through your body, making your toes curl against the warm sheets. Your inner walls clenched around them, sucking them in with a wet and disgusting sound that filled your chambers. You tugged at your restrained wrists, not really trying to escape but reveling in being held down, at his mercy. Your eyes locked with his, hazy with lust and adoration. "Please, Ormund."

Ormund's eyes darkened with hunger, watching you writhe beneath his touch, your desperate pleas music to his ears. He could listen to your whines all day and night without getting tired. He would gladly listen to only you for the rest of his life. Slowly and torturously, he pumped his fingers inside you, curling them to stroke that secret spot that made stars burst behind your eyelids. His thumb circled your clit in maddeningly light touches, stoking the flames of your desire higher and higher.

"Look how pretty you are like this." His voice was a low, seductive rumble. He added a third finger, stretching you deliciously. The obscene wet sounds of your coupling filled the room, punctuated by your increasingly high-pitched moans. "So greedy, so desperate."

Your head thrashed from side to side on the pillow, lost in the overwhelming sensations. Drool leaked from the corner of your open mouth as garbled cries spilled from your trembling lips. The pleasure was too intense, building to a peak far too quickly than you were used to. Your thighs began to quake and tense, signaling your impending release.

"Don't stop!" you wailed, grinding shamelessly against his hand. Tears pricked the corners of your eyes. You were so close, hovering right on the edge of blissful oblivion. Just a little more, and you'd shatter completely in his arms.

Ormund watched you intently, drinking in every twitch and shudder of your body, every broken cry that fell from your lips. He could feel your walls starting to flutter around his fingers, telling him just how close you were. With a wicked grin, he removed his fingers abruptly, ignoring your wail of protest. Before you could even process the loss, he settled himself between your thighs, the thick head of his cock nudging insistently at your entrance. He gathered your arousal on his tip, never sliding it into you.

"Not yet, my love. I want to feel you come undone around my cock." With that, he thrusted forward, sheathing himself to the hilt in one smooth stroke. A guttural moan tore from his throat at the sensation of your tight heat enveloping him.

A loud moan ripped from your throat as you felt filled completely, your back bowing off the bed. Your nails dug into his wide shoulders, surely leaving crescent-shaped indents in his skin. The stretch of his thick length inside you bordered on painful but felt so incredibly good. Your walls spasmed and clenched around him rhythmically, trying to draw him even deeper inside.

"Oh gods, yes!" you sobbed, tears of pleasure finally streaming down your face. You could feel every throbbing inch of him, pulsing inside your most intimate place. The base of his shaft rubbed softly against your swollen clit with each tiny movement, pushing you rapidly towards your peak. Ormund kissed each one of your tears with care, planting his hands at each side of your face.

He set a relentless pace, pounding into you with deep, powerful strokes that shook the bed frame against the wall. The obscene slap of skin on skin echoed through the room, mixing with your wanton moans and his own grunts of exertion. It burned, you could clearly feel the sting of his force, but it felt so good. He angled his hips, driving into that special spot inside you with each thrust, determined to make you fall apart.

"I'm gonna give you a babe, my wife." His voice was strained, sweat beading on his brow from the effort of holding back his own release. One hand snaked between your bodies to rub tight circles on your clit, pushing you closer to the edge. "'M gonna give you so many babies to make you company."

Your world narrowed down to the feeling of him moving inside you, filling you up so completely. Each powerful thrust sent shockwaves of pleasure radiating through your entire body, making your toes curl and your vision blur. The coil of tension in your lower belly wound tighter and tighter, pushed to the brink by his relentless stimulation.

"Yes! Yes! Give me your babies!" you begged incoherently, too far gone to care about anything but chasing your rapidly approaching climax. Your walls started to flutter wildly around his length, gripping him like a vice. With a final rub to your clit and a particularly deep thrust, you shattered. Your moan echoed off the chamber, the guards and the servants surely must've heard it, and your orgasm crashed over you like a tidal wave. Your body convulsed violently, back arching nearly in half as ecstasy consumed you.

Ormund groaned deeply as he felt your walls clamp down around him, rippling and squeezing his cock. Your climax triggered his own, and with a grunt, he buried himself to the hilt inside you. His cock jerked and pulsed as he emptied himself into your spasming cunt, flooding you with his hot seed. He ground against you, ensuring every last drop took root in your womb. "Take it all, my love." His words were punctuated by short pants as the aftershocks of his release shuddered through him. He collapsed on top of you, careful not to crush you with his larger frame.

You clung to him desperately, your nails raking down his sweat-slicked back as you rode out the waves of your shared climax. Each spurt of his release painted your insides, marking you as his in the most intimate way possible. As the intensity began to fade, you went limp beneath him, utterly spent. Your chest heaved with each labored breath, and your heart raced wildly against your ribs. You turned your head to press a tender kiss to his jaw, savoring the salty taste of his skin.

"Come back to me, my love. I'll be waiting you here." you whispered softly.

He held you close, one hand stroking gently through your hair while the other traced soothing patterns on your sweat-dampened skin. As your breathing slowed, he pressed a soft kiss to your forehead, then your nose, and finally your lips, a gesture that belied the passion of moments before. "I will always come back to you, my dearest." His voice was low and fervent with decision. He shifted slightly, careful not to dislodge himself from your warmth. "Rest now, my wife. I will hold you until it's time for me to go."

[targlocket]

OUR BOY

ormund hightower x wife!reader, mom figure!reader & daeron targaryen

cw: spoilers for ep 4!!, found family trope, reader thinks of daeron as her own, tension, religious themes, slight manipulation, fluff fluff, motherly reader!!, hurt/comfort, reader is very protective of daeron, emotional distress, quarelling, ormund does love his wife, petnames (my love, sweetheart, sweetling), (2.7kw).

synopsis: A child doesn't need to come from the womb to weave his way into your heart. Your husband knows as much.

a/n: this was a wip since the second episode sitting in my drafts, and now with episode four out, it sparked me to continue it! i love daeron so much, and so does reader. they're a dysfunctional family, but they make it work! guys this piece is very dear to me okay it's my baby i love it so much.

"From King Aemond."

"King?" You frown, looking at the young squire for confirmation, which he gives with a slow nod of his head.

"Yes, my lady," Daeron says, brows pinching, mimicking your bewilderment. "The messenger said so himself when he delivered the letter to Lord Ormund."

You huff, the news rattling you a bit, sighing as if the weight of what must've transpired back in King's Landing is already heavy to carry. "Gods helps us all."

Daeron's expression turns sympathetic as he sees your mood sour, prompting you to step closer, one hand moving to brush his cheek as you speak, your tone hushed but warm. "Don't give me that look," you scold, but it contradicts the softness of your touch and tone. "There's nothing to worry about." Your thumb smooths over his cheekbone, motherly and reassuring, as you always do when he's putting others' emotions onto his own young shoulders. "Ormund will know what to make of it."

"As always."

Both of you perk up at the familiar voice, watching as your husband enters the tent through the flaps, one eyebrow raised as he assesses the scene, eyes narrowing at the sight of your hand cradling Daeron's cheek, jaw clenching minutely. "Such matters are not for wives," he shoots you a look, "or squires," his voice dips to a firmer tone as he glances at Daeron, "to worry about." Ormund closes the flap behind him before continuing, seeking privacy. "Or talk behind their hands like gossiping mongrels where I cannot hear."

You feel Daeron tense beneath your hand, and your thumb brushes his cheek to soothe, huffing as you hold your husband's gaze. "The boy was just relaying information to me, which I am grateful for." Daeron relaxes under your touch, which makes you hum, sneaking him a small smile before turning your gaze back to Ormund. "As any squire would."

"He is my squire."

"I borrowed him," you counter, lifting your chin, not backing down.

"You cannot borrow someone's squire. It is unheard of."

"And yet you are hearing about it now. Novelties are common during wartime, are they not?"

The corner of Ormund's lips twitches for one moment at your audacity before he scoffs, eyes narrowed as he holds your gaze enough to let you know this will not be the end of this conversation. It sends a shiver down your spine.

"So they say," he responds, stepping closer, motioning with one hand towards the flap of the tent. "Go see what that beast of yours is doing, won't you? There are matters I must discuss with Lady Hightower." Ormund's tone is firm, brooking no argument as he waits for Daeron to obey, the young boy nodding curtly, before turning to do the same to you, albeit a touch more reverent.

"My lord, my lady."

You smile, thumb tracing his cheek once more before he moves, letting your hand fall to your side, watching as he makes haste towards the tent's exit.

The silence he leaves behind is thick for a heartbeat, two, before it is broken by your husband's voice. "You coddle him incessantly," he reprimands, face scrunching in distaste, as if such a thing offended him personally. "Petting him like a cat and cooing at him as if he were but a babe."

Being a touch theatrical has always been one of your husband's most endearing traits, and one of his most daunting, as you sometimes remind him, to his annoyance. You will never admit that poking at that certain flaw of his tickles you greatly, just as it does now.

"He is young," you combat, "and this is his first ever war. A gentle touch would do him well."

"Too gentle of a touch will soften him overmuch and he will not be fit to fight alongside me, as is his duty," your husband counters, tone resolute as he takes slow, measured steps towards you, eyes narrowed, jaw clenched. "You know this."

And you did. The importance of coming out victorious was paramount to your husband, his house, and his cause. Seating the rightful heir on the Iron Throne was the one thing that mattered most, and Ormund was hellbent on seeing it through to the end, by any means necessary.

"I am aware," your tone softens, sighing as you reach for him, hand touching his cheek as you did Daeron, but the difference was stark in the way you offered your affection, thumbing at the cut of his cheekbone with intent, leaning in until your breaths mingled. Ormund frowned, knowing you were trying to appease him, but didn't pull away, instead leaning into your touch, tilting his head into the cradle of your palm, eyes boring into yours. “But someone has to soften the rigour you instill in him, husband, for he shall not be cruel, but just, even in times of war.”

“Being just is not enough,” he protests again, and you can feel his jaw tighten beneath your hand, which you try to soothe with soft swipes of your thumb along the bone, a touch that he welcomes, despite the turmoil in his gaze. “If one needs to be heartless, then the Gods have willed it so.”

Your brows pinch together, the urge to try and make your husband see reason slowly curdling into something acrid. “Since when have the Gods willed a young boy to cruelty, Ormund?” Your tone is no longer soft nor warm, sharpening at the mere thought of Daeron being made into something he was not meant to be. “Is this what the Seven Pointed Star had taught us all these years?”

Ormund’s eyes widen for a fraction, the use of his name in such a cadence from you and the sting of your words halting his breath. He knew how fiercely protective you were of the boy, like a lioness with its cub, even if not yours by womb. Now it was his turn to try and bring back the sweetness in your tone, for he shall never admit it, but having his wife cross with him was a fate he did not particularly enjoy.

“My love,” he murmured, and tried not to react when he saw your expression pinch even more at the fond moniker. “Sometimes, in the midst of war, we cannot abide by all that The Faith has taught us, no matter how much we wish to grace the Gods with our deeds.” Ormund took a breath, trying not to get irritated when your pretty face didn’t soften an inch. “And that boy is fated to sit The Iron Throne, for his blood is pure, and not savage, and his teachings are proper, and not the stuff of legends long past.”

Sit the Iron Throne.

You took a step back, recoiling from your husband as if burned, the warmth of your touch no longer on his cheek as you whispered, mortified. “Sit the Iron Throne?”

Such plans were news to you, for Aemond was to be the rightful heir now that Aegon was gone. But it seems your husband’s ideals reached further than you could’ve ever conjured up yourself. Was it because Aemond was to be sent to Harrenhal? Did your husband believe Rhaenyra’s forces would slay Vhagar and thus leave the throne with no one to occupy it?

“No,” you said, resolute, fingers starting to tremble as you curled them into fists at your side. “I will not have my boy thrown into that den of vipers that we’ve tried so hard to keep him safe from.”

Ormund’s chest rattled with the deep breath he took, as if preparing himself for the onslaught of your dissatisfaction to come. “He is not—”

“Don’t you dare!” Your tone was sharp as steel, voice rising, all pretence gone now that your husband had braved to utter those words to you, knowing how much they would chip at your tender heart. “You know just as well as I that Daeron is more mine than anyone else’s. I have raised him since he was a babe—”

“And you have done so valiantly, my dear, but—” Ormund tries to soothe, but the bitter taste in your mouth from his words is more pungent than anything he could say to save himself from your wrath.

“Do not patronise me so!”

Your chest is heaving, and you feel those damnable pinpricks behind your eyes, moisture dampening your lash line, tears slowly forming, as if already feeling the grief of losing one of the things you cherish most. “King’s Landing is a wretched place, devoid of honour and swarming with enemies, and you want to send our—”

Our son.

But you stop, chin wobbling, not daring to say such a thing now, knowing it will do no good, and only make your husband protest further.

The sweetest boy, who hid his chubby little face into your skirts and clung to them when nightmares came at night, is now sentenced to a life you know he does not wish for. You can already feel your stomach churning with trepidation just at the thought, your gaze unwavering despite the tears brimming in your eyes to shoot daggers at your husband, who stays unmoving before you, looking equal parts irritated and unsure of how to proceed in the face of such strong emotions.

“I cannot, Ormund,” you whisper, voice breaking around the edges. “I shall not let you make a scheme of my boy just to fuel your own ambitions.”

You expect your husband to protest, to scream and rage and rip the very tent you’re in apart in his hands, but he does none of those things. Instead, he watches you, as calculated as he’s ever been, as if devising a plan to turn your sorrow into something for his own gain, or so you think.

What you do not anticipate is for Ormund to sigh, long and suffering, before walking towards you, lessening the distance between your bodies until his sword hilt bumps against your hip. “Do you believe that I am doing this solely for my own gain, my love?”

And you want to argue that, yes, you are certain of such things, for your husband was never one to not think of himself or his family first and foremost. But you don’t get to verbalise that, Ormund’s voice, softer than before, carrying that tone which could melt the marrow of your bones in mere seconds, but now, your impending grief is too great, your sorrow hardening you too much for such mellowness so quick.

“I do it for us,” he says, tilting his head to the side, bringing your faces closer, noses almost brushing. “For our legacy. For the future of House Hightower, which is now in ruins given the death of Otto and the usurpation of the King.”

You wish to protest, but your husband does not let you, sensing the argument on the tip of your tongue before it forms, a habit he picked up after more than a decade by your side, knowing you inside and out.

“Ascending Daeron to the throne will grant us power beyond our imagination, and allow the boy to live in a world of his own making.” The words are just and sound, but they do not go through you; the image of your sweet Daeron sitting upon that blasted throne full of swords and lies is too heavy on your heart.

“He will be in grave danger,” you croak, tears brimming along your lash line, slowly slipping down warm cheeks. “People will seek to harm him, to demand favours he’s not ready to offer, to—”

“And I will be in his shadow, making sure none of that comes to fruition,” Ormund says, tone brooking no argument, his gaze holding yours, willing you to see the seriousness of the matter. “If anyone dares to conspire against our boy, I will have their heads before they can draw their next breath. You have my word, sweet wife.”

Our boy.

You draw in a trembling, wet breath, your husband’s words breaking your heart and putting it back together in one fell swoop, a quiet, choked sob parting your lips as you try to utter a word back, anything to dismantle Ormund’s words, but you cannot.

“Oh, my love,” he coos, and it does not sound as condescending as it should’ve, as Ormund would pity those around him who show weakness. No, not with you. He wouldn’t dare make a spectacle of your tender, caring heart, which has grounded him many a time in his darkest, most turbulent moments. “Come here, sweetheart. Do not weep so.”

And you, powerless to resist, take the small step which is needed to bridge the distance between you, allowing your husband to cradle you in his arms, holding you as gently as one would a flower, but firm enough to make it known he wishes not to let go anytime soon.

One of his broad palms settles along your back, slowly smoothing down from the small of your back to the nape of your neck, the other anchored to the back of your head, coaxing you to rest your face along his throat. “Shh, shh, sweetling,” he whispers, turning his head to brush the words against your temple before pressing a soft, lingering kiss against your brow. “I will never let anything befall you or the boy. You know that with certainty.”

You do.

Gods, you do, but the fear that gripped your heart like a vice at the thought of such a grand plan was more powerful than reason and proof. Ormund had always gone above and beyond to ensure you and Daeron were safe at all times, even when he was away, instructing guards to follow you around like shadows and sit unmoving at your doors while you slumbered.

“I-i know, but the peril that awaits him if—”

Another kiss brushing your skin halted your incoming spiral, the feeling of your husband’s warm, rough lips against your temple melting you further into the safe strength of his arms, a haven in itself as you feared for what was to come. “The peril shall not exist. Our boy will have me, you, and more men-at-arms that I can count to keep him away from harm. In that, you must trust. In me, also.”

Your arms, which have hesitated until now, moved to grip at the back of your husband’s tunic as you embraced him tightly, needing a rock to cling to, nuzzling your face into his throat, dampening his skin with your tears as you sobbed quietly. “I trust in you more than life itself,” you croaked, and felt the pleased hum your words elicited from Ormund, as if the thought of you confiding in him so wholeheartedly brought him immense satisfaction. “But not that place, those people, that damned chair.”

“And you are right to do so, my love,” he approved, slowly putting weight from one foot to another, guiding your bodies into a gentle sway from side to side, meant to soothe you further. “Gods know everything the Targaryens touch is defiled beyond words. But we shall change that. Make it our own. A place where we and the boy can build a world fit for us alone.”

It sounded too good to be true, like a fairytale the septas would whisper to babes as they grew older, but the determined tone of your husband’s voice made you want to cling to this fantasy as well.

“Just us and our boy?” You murmured, fingers curling tighter into Ormund’s tunic, as if you could etch the very hope of such notions into his very bones.

“Yes, my sweet,” he whispered, brushing another lingering kiss to your temple, eyes fluttering shut as he held you close, still swaying. “Just us and our boy.”

gif cr: @/emmaziadarcy

[lovebugism]

BLOOD OF MY BLOOD, KIN OF MY KIN ─── ormund hightower

summary: a glimpse into the years you and ormund raised daeron before the war took its toll, and all the years after. (10k)

characters: ormund hightower / wife!reader, daeron targaryen, alicent hightower, viserys i targaryen, mentions of rhaenyra and daemon

contents: established relationship, found family, domestic bliss, angst, hurt/comfort, protective!ormund, canon divergent, not proofread, cw for mentions of pregnancy complications and miscarriages, brief mentions of blood and gore, canon typical manipulation and psychosis from ormund towards the end lol

( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )

115 A.C. / Oldtown

The bed is still warm from your blood on the morning the babe arrives.

It had not been quite two days since the maester had drawn the small, still shape of your daughter from you and told you, gently enough as not to break you further, that she had never drawn breath at all. You had told none of the household that you had been carrying her at all, save for the maesters and your closest of handmaidens — for you had learned, after the second loss, how courtiers feed on grief like vultures to carrion. So while you wept for days longer than your babe would ever live, the rest of Oldtown simply assumed that their lady had taken ill with a woman’s ailment, and kept to her rooms accordingly.

But today the King is coming, and your mother would surely turn in her early grave if she knew the lady she raised up planned to receive a king from a sickbed — pallid, unlaced, and undone.

“There is no harm in resting, my love,” Ormund coos from across the room, watching with attentive eyes as your handmaiden laces you into a gown of Hightower green. You keep yourself braced on the wooden back of a chair and grit your teeth with every tug, pulling carefully to conceal the subtle bump of your stomach.

The man tilts his head and crosses his arms over the chest of his emerald doublet, in a feeble attempt to extinguish the worry searing between his lungs. “Viserys is a king man. He will understand. Alicent, more than anyone, would understand—”

“And what has Alicent lost?” you argue, sharper than you intended. Your head whips hard to the side in time to find Ormund flinching beneath the bite of your words — a small flicker at the edges of his eyes; a brief lowering of his brows. 

You soften with a sigh a moment later and remind yourself that Ormund lost something too, even if the loss was not pulled from his body to claim it. 

“Forgive me, I… I only meant that… The Queen has four living children. And she carried each one with grace— There is no part of her that could possibly understand how I feel… And I wouldn’t wish it upon her besides.”

Ormund exhales through his nose and takes a step closer, boots scuffing the cobbles. “Then at least let me tell them that you are unwell—”

“No,” you dismiss with a shake of your stubborn head, eyes shutting briefly when the corset tightens again. “I refuse to be spoken of like some frail, ailing thing while the King sups at our table.”

Your gaze is wet with unshed tears when they open again, snapping to Ormund’s pale ones with a glimmering determination. “I am the Lady Hightower,” you tell him, brows raised and eyes firm. “So I will greet them standing. On my own feet. In my own home.”

Ormund’s chest, still heavy with grief, blooms with a distant sort of pride at your words. Perhaps because a part of him had long understood that you did not always dream of being the Lady Hightower. Your marriage was made of meetings and ledgers and alliances rather than any actual tenderness, as was true in most great marriages in Westeros. He knows, had you had it your way, you would’ve wed that gardener’s boy you grew up with — who you attempted to bring with you to Oldtown upon your betrothal, along with many of your household’s servants.

Ormund had the brawny, olive-skinned boy sent away within a fortnight — the moment he understood what kind of feelings the peasant boy had for you, and you for him. It was perhaps the first mad thing he ever did for you and, by Ormund’s later admission, the first time he realized that he might love you truly. (Though he had not thought it mad at the time, or love until many moons later, when he was struck with the sudden realization that the thought of Oldtown with you in it would be entirely unbearable.)

“Then we shall go,” Ormund nods in acquiescence as he plants himself just ahead of you. His gaze fixes into a sterner look a second later, as he tilts his chin to his chest and ducks into your eyeline. “But know I am not happy about this.”

“And yet Oldtown will remain standing anyway,” you joke in a softer coo. “I have faith that we’ll survive one of your unhappy mornings, my lord.”

The walk from your chambers to the gates of Oldtown is not long, but you feel every stone beneath your slippers as if the journey were some great pilgrimage across the whole of Westeros. 

You brace Ormund’s strong arm with both your hands, fingers curling into the fine wool of his coat hard enough to blanche your knuckles. He slows his long stride to match your smaller, more careful one without a word shared between you — a wall of green and muscles at your side, shielding you from the curious eyes of courtiers wondering why their lord and lady moved so slowly. So close.

It’s the first time you’ve tasted fresh air in three days. The breeze smells of the sea from the harbor and fish from the markets — mixing with the sweet citrus of the orange and lemon trees blooming in the gardens. Their white petals scatter like snow along the pale stone with every gust off the bay. You breathe in deeply through your nose, trying hopelessly to clear away the metallic tang of your own blood stubbornly clinging to the inside of your nostrils.

“His Grace, Viserys of House Targaryen,” the herald calls as the royal party files in on fine horses and gilded carriages, black banners snapping in the wind. “First of His Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men.”

Viserys is the first to exit when the caravan finally stills. He descends the steps a knight places down for him, portlier than you remember from your last journey to King’s Landing, some years before your marriage. His kind face has started to wither from fatigue and age alike. The crown seems heavier upon his head, though perhaps it’s only from where his silver hair has started to thin at the scalp.

Alicent follows out just behind him. She wears a black dress with drooping sleeves and a veil to cover her long auburn curls, fit for a funeral procession. A knight of white armor and long black hair helps her descend the steps as she cradles a small, dark bundle squirming in protest in her arms.

You sink into a curtsy. A white-hot pain swells from the pit of your stomach to the top of your spine — a lightning strike that burns for minutes after. You grip Ormund’s arm until your fingers tremble, though the polite smile on your face remains when you rise again.

“Ormund,” Viserys greets with an easy smile. He clasps your husband’s free arm with a genuine affection while his tired eyes drift along the white stone towers of the city. “My… Oldtown is just as fair as I remember it.”

“I agree, Your Grace, though I confess I am far more partial,” Ormund responds with a dry humor and a knightly smile. “I hear the view improves the longer one is forced to stare at it.”

Viserys laughs while, beside him, Alicent tries and fails to summon her own. Her elegant features are worn from the weeks of travel, many of which you imagine were spent balancing the fussing weight concealed against her chest just now.

“And my lady…” Viserys inclines his silver head towards you, studying your face with a pair of kind eyes. “You look well.”

You feel, in a word, like death dressed in Hightower green. You feel hollowed out and stitched together again, the farthest thing from well. But you nod once and thank the King all the same, profoundly grateful when your voice doesn’t shake.

“Truly. Marriage suits you both well,” Viserys nods. “Though, I admit, I’d hope Daeron might have had a cousin or two near enough in age to grow up beside him here. Once he’s old enough for such things, of course.”

Ormund tenses beside you. 

His arm feels very suddenly like holding onto stone. His pale eyes turn glacial in a flicker; a withheld grief that he forces himself to swallow down the second it rises like bile in his throat. You say nothing at all. You just keep smiling and pray to whatever god will hear you that you do not weep in front of the King and all his men.

“But there’s still time— You’ll have one of your own before long, I’m sure of it,” the older man continues, possessing no notion of what had happened behind these walls hardly two days past. If he notices anything amiss, he does not dwell on it, and turns instead to Alicent. “Go on. Let them see the boy.”

Alicent’s arms tighten instinctively around the bundle in her grasp and inhales sharply through her nose. It had been her own decision that Daeron be sent to her family’s ancestral home. Her last child was not quite six months when she counseled her King to send him to ward, far from the chaos of King’s Landing. But she finds herself suddenly plagued by the harsh realization that this will be the last time she will hold this baby as he is now. The next time she’s like to lay eyes on him again, he’ll be an unrecognizable young boy, and not nearly the small thing fussing against her collarbone now.

“He hasn't slept," Alicent warns as she steps closer. Her green eyes are warm and weary when they flit to you. “He didn’t take well to the carriage. Or the ship. He’s cried the whole way from Blackwater, I think. Poor thing…”

“I’m sure we can manage a crying babe, my Queen,” Ormund says gently, though there’s a distant aching in his voice disguised as good humor that only you could recognize. “I grew up with Gwayne, if you remember. I’m more than acquainted with wailing boys by now.”

Alicent musters a small smile and closes the distance between you to settle her son in your arms. 

He’s warm — that’s the first thing you notice — he’s a small furnace swaddled in Targaryen black. He stirs briefly at the transfer from one chest to another, round face screwing tight in the prelude to a wail. Your heart clenches to brace yourself for that sound. It never comes.

The babe turns his face into the curve of your throat and settles into stillness with one small fist curled into the fabric of your gown. The tiny sound he makes isn’t a cry, but it isn’t quite a coo either. He sleeps, finally, in your arms — not even two days after you held your daughter between them, who had never awoken at all.

Ormund’s wide hand settles at the small of your back. Even in its steadiness, you feel the subtle tremor of his fingers against your spine. His throat tightens with the sudden urge to cry at the sight — of you, still frail and yet so bravely composed, cradling another woman’s child after laying your own to rest in the sept. He swallows through the hands of grief strangling his throat and feels a warmer feeling settling in its wake.

“Well…” Viserys hums, watching the baby sleep against you with a proud look in his weathered eyes. “It seems the boy’s found his corner of Oldtown already— Isn’t that lovely, Alicent?”

The woman nods, though shock still etches slightly in her pale features and behind the dark green of her eyes. “Of course, Your Grace,” she says and clears her throat, blinking back her tears with a queen’s practiced grace. “Thank you both for taking him.”

“He'll want for nothing here," Ormund swears with a firm nod. “You have my word. We'll raise him as if he were our own trueborn son.”

You pull the blanket gently back to peer at the sleeping baby swaddled within it. He’s practically all cheeks, with his mother’s mouth and nose. 

You had been certain, two days past, that your life had surely ended with your daughter’s. That there would be nothing more to life than a hollow, vacant silence. But now, there is warmth — and a babe’s slow breath fanning along your collarbone. 

You do not yet have a name for the foreign feeling swelling inside of you. It’s not joy, not yet, but it isn’t grief either. Or, at least, not only grief. And for now, that would have to be enough.

127 A.C. / Training Yard

The sound of clashing steel finds you before the sight of it does. The ring and scrape of blade on blade carries across the bustling courtyard, where you’ve gone to look for a young prince who was, as Maester Yorrick informed you with a palpable impatience, nearly an hour late for his lessons. You find the boy exactly where you imagined he would be — sword-training with his uncle, who has since stripped down to a pale tunic now darkened with sweat from the exercise.

Daeron, now thirteen years of age, is all knees and elbows from a sudden growth spurt that had taken him seemingly overnight. He presses a defensive attack upon his uncle with all the fierceness of a knight, but with the gracelessness of a teenage boy. Even you could tell from where you stood that his swing had no hope of landing. Ormund turns the blow aside with a lazy flick of his wrist, no more troublesome than swatting a fly from the air.

“Awful,” you hear the man scold from afar. When Daeron grits his teeth and presses forward once more, Ormund steps back and lets the boy’s momentum carry him a half stride too far. His blade misses his mark by inches. “Gods, that’s even worse—”

Daeron lunges a third time, fuelled now by a boyish rage that twists his freckled features. Ormund steps inside the overextended reach, hooks a boot around the boy’s ankle, and trips him onto the dirt with his blunted blade pressed to his ribs. Daeron hits the ground with a thud, red-faced and breathing heavy. His long auburn tendrils cling to his sweaty temple when he whips his head to glare up at his uncle.

“Dead,” Ormund proclaims from where he stands over the boy, flat but not totally unkind. He raises his brows and tilts his chin to his chest. “If this were a real sword, I’d have had your head before the thought to swing finished forming in that head of yours.”

Daeron twists himself upward and shoves the faux blade away with a boyish scowl. “You always say that,” he grumbles, refusing the hand Ormund extends to help him up. He rises to full height on his own and swipes dirt from his pale palms.

“Yes. I always say it because it's always true. You're thinking with your temper again— I can see it in your shoulders before you’ve even moved,” the older man lectures as he turns on the heel of his boot and walks off a few paces. “Again. And this time, think before you swing. Not after—” 

“I think that’s enough for this morning,” you call to them as you step further into the yard, dress skirts rushing around your ankles in the summer breeze. “Maester Yorrick has been waiting all morning. And his patience, unlike yours, my lord, has its limits.”

Daeron nods once, shoulders sagging with an absent relief. “Yes, ma’am—”

“Give us a few more minutes,” Ormund dismisses simultaneously. “He’s close to getting his footwork right. I can feel it.”

You flash the man a look — one slight lift of your brow, one flicker of dullness behind the eyes. Years of marriage have honed that wordless look to a firm edge, one which finds Ormund like a blade. He nods in concession with a heavy exhale through his nose.

“You heard her, boy. Go on,” Ormund says, jerking his chin toward the tower and extending his hand out for the practice sword.

Daeron obeys without question. He passes the dull blade over and crosses the yard to you. You see the sweat and dirt streaked across his freckled face the closer he gets. “Come here to me,” you sigh and catch his round chin between your thumb and forefinger when he plants himself ahead of you. You swipe the filth from his cheeks with the hem of your sleeve like you’ve done since he was small enough to fit in one arm.

“I’m not a child anymore, you know," Daeron reminds you with a childish grimace as he suffers your motherly affections. “I’m a squire now.”

“Oh, a squire, are you?” you croon in response with an obvious air of sarcasm. You smooth wild auburn hair from his temples before pressing a chaste kiss to his hairline. “Go on now— before Maester Yorrick decides to make you study your histories until sundown.” 

Daeron nods and ducks past you towards the tower stair, though you catch the corner of his pink mouth twitching upward into a grin before he’s turned away. You watch him leave with an attentive stare as Ormund discards the training swords at their posts. He approaches you in long, slow strides, allowing you to see the mark that training has left upon him — the way the sweat dampens his dark curls and the collar of his tunic, making the fabric stick to his broad shoulders and toned chest. 

He smells of sweet wine, musky bathing oils, and salty sweat when he towers just before you. He tips his chin to his chest and raises his brows to his hairline, pale eyes glimmering with an expectant look.

“…Well?” 

You blink up at him with a feigned innocence. “Well, what?”

“My kiss,” he answers with a shrug like it’s obvious, like he were a man coming to collect his debts. “You gave the boy his, and I’ve spent half the morning training him— I should think that I’ve earned at least that much.” 

“Oh, really?” you squint. “After you told the boy he’s like to lose his head?”

“I told him the truth,” Ormund argues with an unrepentant laugh and takes a slow step closer to you. “Is the truth unkind merely because it stings a little going down?” 

His hands splay along your waist, wide and warm along the edges of your corset. It takes everything in you not to cave for him right there, in the full view of the crowded courtyard. You cross your arms over your chest instead. “If you keep being so hard on him, he’ll grow to hate sword training altogether—”

“May be. But he will go on alive a good deal longer for having learned it the hard way now— instead of on a real field, with real steel, without me there to guide him.” Ormund ducks his head to catch your eye, pale gaze glimmering in time the pink smile tugging at his lips. “Surely you are not truly cross with me, my love…” he croons quietly.

You shrug with a raised chin, unwilling to concede so easily. “Perhaps I am.”

“Well, then, it’s hardly my doing,” he chuckles, a sound far warmer than the silver-gold sunshine sprawling over the courtyard. The pads of his thumbs smooth over your ribs in an absentminded affection. “You've gone so soft on the boy that you can scarcely bear to watch him lose a practice bout, without petting his hair over it after."

“Well, someone in this household has to be soft with him," you argue lightly, more teasing now than truly cross. Your slipper scrapes the dirt as you take a short step closer to him. What little distance remained between you closes now in an instant; each rise and fall of his chest brushes your folded arms. “You spend your mornings convincing the poor boy the world means to kill him, and I spend my nights convincing him that he could rule the world entire if he wished... Perhaps he’ll come out well-balanced for it, in the end.”

“Assuming one of us doesn’t kill the other over the method first,” Ormund quips.

“Precisely,” you nod.

“Well, I think it’s a fine system,” the man agrees gravely, drawing you an impossible inch closer by the hands still on your waist. His breath fans warm across your jaw as he leans in closer, still smelling of the mint leaves he’d chewed after breakfast. “And one I certainly intend to go on employing indefinitely… If my wife forgives me long enough to let me kiss her.”

His low voice glitters somewhere in the center of your chest. Your eyes narrow despite the small smile curling hopelessly at your mouth. “I don’t think I’ve yet decided,” you lilt.

“Well, I have,” he croons quietly, and does not wait for your retort before leaning down to press his lips against yours.

His broad nose flattens into the side of yours under the weight of his kiss, a slow and languid thing — as natural as the white waves ebbing and flowing against the pale stone tower of Oldtown. Your hands twist in his pale tunic billowing in the sea breeze, dissolving into the man like salt in water. 

There is nothing you would not forgive this man for, you think distantly to yourself. There is no madness he could not lead you toward, not if he kisses you like this the entire way there.

130 A.C. /  Ormund’s Solar

The raven arrives like all the rest — unceremoniously, on a sunless grey morning, from the trembling hands of the weathered maester. You tend to your needlework by the crackling hearth, burning low to fight off the morning chill blowing in from the sea, while Daeron reads in the opposite chair with one leg slung over the arm of it — both of you still waking with the early morning.

Across the room, Ormund sits at his desk and breaks the seal with a dull crack. Your gaze drifts to the man as he unrolls the letter, parchment whispering beneath his ringed fingers. You watch his pale eyes flit across the words once, and his brows lower in confusion a moment later. He shifts in his seat and reads it again, slower this time. His spine straightens with a soldier’s subconscious instinct as he draws a deep breath in and forgets to let it go. 

The quiet feels loud as it swells within the solar. The popping fire startles you briefly, as you get lost in Ormund’s wordless dread. You feel his silent panic as if it were your own. You rise from your seat and lay your needlework on the cushion behind you, careful not to trouble Daeron’s reading as you stroll to the man’s side.

“Ormund?” you call quietly to him. “Ormund— What does it say?”

He says nothing in response; he just lifts his ringed hand and passes you the parchment curled between his middle and forefinger. His eyes remained fixed on a negligible chip in the cobblestone wall across the room as you pluck the paper from his hand. His silence is not convincing; his silence, as you’ve learned in years of marriage, is far more frightening than any voice he could raise.  

Your eyes dart over the scrawled ink thrice over, just as he had, because your mind refuses to process the words on the first two passes.

“By the time this reaches you, the city has already fallen. Rhaenyra Targaryen holds King’s Landing and names herself Queen upon the Iron Throne. She has taken the Queen Dowager prisoner, as well as the King’s wife and last living heir. Send word of your household’s safety. Guard the boy.” 

The letters blur and steady and blur again, swimming before your eyes. Your blood runs cold while the glowing hearth simultaneously fills the room with a near-unbearable heat. As your breaths come faster and shallower to you, you hear a small voice call from behind you.

“Is something wrong?” Daeron wonders aloud as he glances up from the heavy novel in his lap. His auburn brows knit low over his green eyes, casting a faint shadow over his freckled cheeks, which are slowly starting to lose the softness of boyhood.

“Go on to your chambers, Daeron,” you tell him in a voice strangely steady compared to how shaken you feel. “It’s time to break your fast. I’ll have the servants fetch it for you.” 

“I’m not hungry,” the boy insists as he rises slowly from his chair, setting his book aside and walking slowly from the hearth. His eyes dart back and forth between your profile and Ormund’s when both of you refuse to look at him. His shoulders straighten with a strangling tension. “What’s happened? What does it say—?”

“Daeron,” Ormund snaps, voice cutting through the quiet room like a blade. His eyes are similarly sharp when they snap finally to the boy’s pleading once. “Listen to your mother, boy. Go.”

Mother, he says. The word lingers and hangs in the air for a long moment. Even in his newfound worry, Ormund’s eyes still flicker with a startled awareness at how easily the slip-up had escaped him, though there is little time to dwell on it now. 

Daeron's pink mouth parts with some half-formed protest at the ready. Whatever words he could conjure up on such short notice turn to dust on his tongue at the look his uncle gives him, chiseled features hardening into an unfeeling sort of look. Daeron exhales a held breath, gathers his book from his seat, and heads for the door without further argument.

Ormund’s knowing voice follows him out: “And don’t stand outside the door eavesdropping, either. Straight to your chambers. I'll know if you've stopped on the stair."

Only when the door shuts behind the boy with a soft click do your teary eyes lift from the parchment in your trembling hands. You say nothing for a long moment. The muffled sounds of the bustling castle fill the silence — the sounds of an oblivious world still living, though it feels a little like yours has stopped.

“I know," Ormund says before you’ve spoken, before you’ve needed to speak. “I know.”

“Okay,” you nod once. “So what are you going to do?”

He huffs a not-quite laugh. “I’ve only just found out about this. As have you,” he answers, a little sharper than he means to. “I’ll need a moment to think about the problem before you ask me to solve it, my love.” 

“A moment is no longer a luxury we have,” you argue, voice rising despite yourself and wavering on every syllable with a palpable fear. “Rhaenyra has dragons, Ormund— she has Daemon and three new bastard riders sworn to her besides. She does not need a moment to bring any of them to our door.”

Your dress skirt spins around your ankles when you turn suddenly in place. Ormund’s pale eyes follow your form as you storm back towards the hearth, ranting the whole way there.

“She will come for him, Ormund— not if, when. She will stop at nothing to silence any claim that challenges her own,” you continue, voice cracking under the weight of your unshed tears. “Daeron is a threat to her! Simply by breathing, he is a threat to her, and she will not leave him idling here out of some… familial courtesy for some half-brother she’s never met.”

The flame crackles quietly when you toss the letter into it. The wax seal blackens and weeps; the ink turns slowly to ash. You’d hoped that destroying those words might, in turn, settle the uneasy feeling they’ve brought you; but to no avail.

“I know that,” Ormund nods with a jaw clenched tight, ringed fingers curling into fists over his thighs beneath the desk. 

“Then think!” Your shout bounces off the cobbled walls as you turn to face him once more. His face blurs behind the burning tears clouding your vision. The swelling emotion thickens your voice as you yell to him, half-wild with a preemptive grief. “I have already buried children who never got to draw breath— I will not bury another who has drawn fifteen years of them under this roof! Do not let them take him, Ormund— I don't care what it costs. Do not let them our boy!”

Ormund’s chair scrapes the cobbles as he rises slowly to full height. He crosses the solar in slow, silent strides. Your glassy eyes stay locked with his as he nears. You peer stubbornly up at him from beneath your lashes, clumped with unshed tears; but you do not protest when his palms smooth over the outsides of your elbows to pull you into his arms. 

You melt hopelessly against his chest, fisting the back of his doublet in both hands, and trembling slowly as you choke down a sob. Ormund’s wide hands smooth along your back and feels his chest tighten with a striking, familiar ache. He thought once there was no worse sound in the world than hearing your weeping over a lost child; but he knows, now, that there is something equally as troubling: your weeping over a child you fear you’re about to lose and feeling like there is no time yet to stop it.

“I will not let anyone take him,” Ormunds promises evenly, with a distance that suggests he’s already assembling a plan in the depths of his mind. His arms curl tighter, pressing you harder against him. “I swear it to you. By the gods, they will not have our son.”

You pull back from him, just far enough to search his steady gaze with your wearier one. “But how?” you press weakly, more of a demand than a real question.

Ormund ponders for a long moment. The shadow of his adam’s apple rises and falls in his throat as he swallows. And when he speaks again, the words fall from his tongue flat and even, as if he were testing each one the moment they left his mouth.

“No one at court has laid eyes on the boy since he was a babe in arms…” he answers lowly, brows lifting to his hairline. “Alicent hasn’t seen him in years… There is no one outside these walls who would know what he looks like… So if they come— when they come… I suppose Rhaenryra would presume any silver-haired boy as Viserys’ heir.”

Your brows furrow as confusion twists slowly across your face.

“We’d only need enough lye and patience,” Ormund continues with a shrug. “And a boy willing enough to answer to a name that isn’t his, and to go with Rhaenyra, should her dragons come calling.”

You tense within his hold as the words run through you like ice-cold water. “You mean to… to send a different child in his place?”

“Yes,” Ormund answers instantly and without apology. “It isn’t a kind plan, I know. And I won’t pretend that someone else’s son won’t have to suffer for it, if it comes to pass, but… You did not ask me for a kind plan.”

You grieve the heat of his hands when he lifts them from your back, just to smooth his gently calloused palms over your jaw a moment later. He rubs the rough pads of his thumbs along your burning cheeks. You melt into his touch of warm velvet and peer up at him with teary eyes. Ormund’s gaze softens around the edges as his mouth lifts into a sad sort of smile.

“You asked me not to let them take our boy,” he continues lowly. “And however cruel it may be… this is but the only coin I have to buy that promise with.”

You know that a part of you should be horrified. You know what he is describing is a monstrous thing — an innocent boy’s whole life offered as a shield for another’s. You search deep within yourself to find that terror, but cannot seem to locate it. Instead, you find relief, like a crack of sunlight peeking through storm clouds — the very hint of a promise that your family was not long in the dying just yet.

“Do it,” you hear yourself say, shaking your head between his hands. “Whatever it costs… Whoever it costs… Do it.”

Ormund nods with a deep inhale through his nose, leaning forward to press his mouth to your hairline — to seal his promise with a kiss.

130 A.C. / Tumbleton Sept

Rhaenyra's dragonriders come for Daeron not nearly a fortnight into the army's march. Ormund sends the son of a merchant in his place — a boy of the right age and the right pale coloring, plucked quietly from Oldtown and dressed in borrowed finery before anyone thought to look twice. “Be brave, young prince," Ormund had said to the blanch-haired boy, only for show, though what he really meant was: “I will have your family hanged if you do not play your part.”

Ormund knelt before Daemon Targaryen and swore his fealty to the Queen, but marched on for Tumbleton the second the dragons took flight, all the shame. 

The chaos follows them there, too.

Daeron attempts to seek a momentary refuge in the foreign castle’s candlelit sept. A cramped chamber made of brown stone and hazy smoke from the flickering candles, where Tessarion grumbles in protest of captivity. The lack of sunlight has dulled her fluorescent blue scales, and has made her ill-tempered due to the lack of exercise. Daeron alone she allows close, pressing her great head into the boy’s small neck, and momentarily forgetting about the heavy chains around her throat when he pets her stony scales. 

Ormund finds him there. Ormund has a way of finding him anywhere. It is a gift and a curse, perhaps — comforting when Daeron was small and frightened of the dark; but less so now, when Daeron’s every attempt at solitude is interrupted by his uncle, constantly watching him as if he were a traitor to be surveilled and not his kin.

“I have warned you against indulging in affections for the best,” Ormund says as he approaches. The man cradles the boy's freckled cheeks in his wide, calloused palms despite Tessarion's low growl of warning.“You are a good boy,” he says, and in the very same breath, without losing the tender smile on his face: “You have a taint in your blood,” and “You must be king.”

Ormund makes less and less sense to him these days — the throes of war, Daeron supposes, though a part of him is frightened that it began long before that. 

Sometimes he thinks Ormund only makes sense when you’re near enough to translate his tangled, wild emotions back into something grounded and real. You’ve always had a way of gentling the man; usually with nothing more than a steady hand along his wrist to calm whatever storm had been moving within him. 

Daeron has seen you do it a hundred times over without ever quite understanding how. But he prays now for your swift return from the city, so that you might do it again — so that you might soften whatever unfamiliar thing has taken root in his uncle when he commands his soldiers to drag in the peasant man from earlier that afternoon. The one who broke Ser Garrick’s nose defending against his own wife’s assault; an act any decent lord would have called simple justice. 

Ormund draws his sword from its sheath at his hip. The hiss of the steel leaving the leather fills the small stone sept, loud enough to echo off the old walls that have likely seen a great many prayers and, Daeron suspects, not so very many murders. The older man turns the blade and offers the embellished hilt to the boy, pale eyes hardening when he hesitates.

“We have risked much and more to raise you up,” Ormund says, strong features twisting into something resembling offense. “Surely, you do not wish to disappoint us now.”

Us. Daeron is pulled into his uncle’s orbit at that single syllable alone; the unbearable thought of failing the only two people in this world who have ever troubled themselves to love him — one standing before him with a blade held out like a peace offering, and the other somewhere in the depths of the dark city but still steady on his mind all the same.

Daeron lays his palms out flat before his brain has fully comprehended the motion. He prays Ormund doesn’t notice how they tremble when he rests the sword upon them — the weight of the blade cold and heavy upon his fingers.

Daeron’s hands tremble around the ornate leather hilt of Ormund’s sword. His misty eyes find the prisoner kneeling just before him on the cold stone — bloodied and chained for a crime any noble man in Westeros would surely commit with honor — before glancing slowly to where his uncle looms behind him. Candlelight flickers in shades of orange-gold upon the man’s chiseled features, pooling a deep black in the hollows of his eyes.

“What would Mother think of this?” Daeron hears himself ask, voice cracking under the weight of the tears burning hot in the backs of his eyes. 

It is his last and most desperate attempt to reach for his uncle, just as he has seen you do, and to pull him back from the dangerous ledge he stands upon. But he knows the man has already made up his mind; and he knows that there is no version of him that walks out of this sept without spilling blood.

Ormund’s face softens slightly, though there is little tenderness in what he asks of the boy now. “Alicent would understand,” he coos in a gentle voice. “War asks difficult things of every great house—”

“I didn’t—” Daeron swallows hard, smaller now than moments before. “I did not mean the Lady Alicent…” 

Realization flashes across Ormund’s face — a visible recognition of exactly which woman the boy had meant, and has always meant every time the word slipped accidentally from his mouth and was never corrected for it after. Daeron was not yours by blood, but he was yours in every other way that matters. The small, warm weight of him stopped crying the moment he was placed into your arms fifteen years ago, and never truly stopped being yours since.

Still, Ormund does not soften for it. If anything, something in him hardens further as he takes a slow step closer to the boy.

“Your mother would be proud,” he answers, brows lowered as if the answer was the plainest thing in the world. “Don’t you see? Any strike against this army is a strike against her, against everything she’s built to keep you safe… Any man who raises his fist against our men raises it, in the end, against her… And do you not want to protect her, just as she has spent every day protecting you?”

Daeron swallows hard. The weight of Ormund’s words feels heavy in his throat, heavier than the blade in his hands as his trembling fingers tighten around its hilt. His teary green eyes linger on the steel, flickering shades of gold in the candlelight. 

“No, please, I beg you,” the battered prisoner rasps, dried blood matting at his curls from whatever rough handling had brought him here. “I have a family, my lord. Please—”

Daeron’s eyes lift to find the man’s pleading gaze and linger upon him for a long while. He sees your face in the very back of his mind, the only real mother he’s ever truly known, and hears Ormund’s disappointed voice layered over it as he draws the heavy blade back. 

Then he strikes. 

The cut is not clean. The blade lodges at an off angle in the man’s corded neck and sticks somewhere deep between flesh and bone. The man’s pained shout comes out wet and gargled, bouncing off the cobbled walls and in the depths of Daeron’s mind. 

The boy’s body flinches from what his own hand has done as bright crimson blood spouts from the gaping wound and splatters along the old stone. 

His face crumples as he removes the blade. It takes a world of strength in his thin arms to wrench it out again. A quiet whimper sounds in his throat when the blade drags against bone and stumbles backward when the man’s limp body collapses at his feet with a dull smack. Dark blood spreads slowly across the stone in a widening, glistening pool that catches the candlelight like moonlight on the bay.

Daeron looks down at the crimson dripping off the steel blade. He does not notice his uncle’s approach until his broader hands are gently guiding the sword from his fingers — fingers that no longer feel like his own. 

Ormund wipes the steel clean against the dead man's tunic, one side and then the other, with the methodical care of a man cleaning a hunting knife after a kill. He sheaths the blade back into its hilt and closes the remaining distance between him and the boy.

When Daeron’s mind finally returns to his body — ears still ringing, vision still hazy — his wide eyes snap to his uncle’s face and sees a quiet pride swimming in his features once more. It’s as comforting as it is horrifying. And when Ormund's strong arms wrap around the boy’s shoulders and draw him close to his chest, that feels like a dizzying concoction of the two even more so.

“I am proud of you, boy…” Ormund tells him as he leans in close, pressing his mouth to the boy’s hair in a near-kiss, though he whispers to him instead:  “Do not tell your mother of this. Understood?"

Daeron does not answer, though Ormund does not ask him for one now.

130 A.C.  /  Tumbleton Castle

You return to the castle late in the evening, weary down to your bones from the long day. 

You had gone into town with what coin and grain the army could spare, and found Lady Kat there among the frightened smallfolk, tending to the smith's wife, whose arm still sat bound in a rough splint. The woman's round face was kind, but you knew that no amount of offered bread or soft words could cure what comfort had been taken from her.

“Do you know where my husband is?” she had asked you before you left, with something desperate in her voice that made you wish you had a better answer than the only truthful one you could give.

“I’m sorry. I do not know," you told her, smiling in what sympathy you could muster, honest in your ignorance if nothing else.

The question sits strangely in your chest on the ride back to the castle, though you struggle to place exactly why.

Dinner is already laid out by the time you arrive. The long table is embellished with more food than Tumbleton's starving smallfolk have likely seen since the war began. The notion sits heavy in your stomach before you’ve even entered the dining hall, where Ormund rises from his seat to greet you. 

His warmth is striking, a shade too bright for the late hour. He presses a jeweled chalice of ale into your hand with a tender grin and a pair of soft eyes, asking after the wife and the town's wounded with an attentiveness he doesn’t usually spare for such small domestic accounts.

“Sit,” he tells you with one wide hand along the small of your back to urge you the short distance to the table. “You've had a long day, my love. Eat something before it goes cold."

Confusion floods your face at the emptiness beside your usual seat. “Where's Daeron? He hasn’t missed out on lemon cakes since he was old enough to chew them.”

“He's not feeling well. Best to let him rest,” Ormund answers with a polite smile as he pours himself a goblet of wine. His soft eyes flit between you and the glugging flagon. “Sit with me, love. I’m sure you’re half-starved yourself."

He sits down in his cushioned seat at the head of the long table and gestures for you to take yours. You remain stubbornly in place, because you know him far too well for anything else. Years of marriage have taught you every register of his voice; every flicker behind his eyes; every twitch in his features. And this one, all warm and careful and slightly too eager, is one you’d learned to trust least of all.

“What have you done?” you deadpan.

Ormund scoffs a breathless laugh, bouncing his broad shoulders in a shrug. “Why do you insist I’ve done something?” 

“Because I can hear it in your voice.”

Ormund huffs again, though it’s more of a sound of surprise than true laughter this time. “Well, I assure you, dear wife, I have done nothing at all.”

“Is that what will Daeron tell me?” you press. “When I go to his chambers and ask him myself?"

“He will tell you that I'm an excellent uncle and an even better husband," Ormund quips with his elbows propped on the table and his pointer fingers steepled together. “And also that you ought to sit down and eat your supper with your poor husband, before you go making a production out of a boy's upset stomach.”

You leave despite his words, led purely by the intuition swirling in your stomach that drags you directly to Daeron’s chamber door. You knock once and receive no answer — when the silence holds on the third try, you let yourself in and find the boy alone in his room, curled small on the edge of his bed in a way that strikes you deep in the chest; a reminder of that swaddled babe curled against your chest fifteen years past.

He does not look up when you enter, nor when you lower yourself gingerly onto the edge of the mattress beside him without a word. His shoulders shake in small, tight increments as he struggles to choke down his own sobs. He drags each breath in through his nose and holds it for a beat too long until it shudders out of him again.

He freezes when you lay a gentle hand on his shoulder, going rigid against whatever emotion he’s trying not to shake loose.

“What's happened, my love?" you coo to him, gentling your voice the way you might for a much younger child. “Tell me."

He shakes his auburn head against the pillow and sniffles to himself. “He told me I couldn't…"

“Who? Ormund?”  you press and feel a preemptive anger kindling hot in your chest before you’ve even heard the whole of it. “Well… Your uncle tells me a great many things that I’ve long since learned to ignore. So I imagine he can spare us the indulgence of a secret or two.”

After another shaky breath, Daeron pushes himself up from the mattress. He snivels wetly and wipes his flushed cheeks with the back of one hand. You smooth down his wild flaming tendrils until he finds the words to speak.

“The blacksmith…” he wavers. “The one who struck Ser Garrick this morning…”

Your stomach swirls with a sick feeling when he trails off. Your blood runs cold with a fear of what he might say next. You think instantly of the woman with the kind face and the splinted arm, asking so gently if you knew where her husband had run off to. You have to remind yourself to breathe again as you ask, “What of him?”

“Ormund made me…” Daeron’s breath catches in his throat with a horror reignited in the pit of his chest. “He said any strike against the army was a strike against the crown. Against me. Against you.” He forces each word out through unshed tears and feels half-furious at himself when his voice shatters. “He told me it would be a king’s justice. That it— that it would make you proud.”

The boy’s eyes lift to yours then, glassy and green and rimmed red. They dart back and forth over your face, searching for an ounce of comfort within it.

“Are you?” he asks in a voice barely above a whisper. “Proud of me, I mean.”

You nod until the words have climbed through the fear swelling in your throat.

“Of course I am,” you answer breathlessly, but with no hesitation at all despite the dread searing in your chest. “I have been proud of you since the day I met you. Nothing you could do— Nothing of what your uncle made you do could change that. And you did it, I have no doubt, because some part of you believed it would keep our family safe. Protecting the people you love, even when doing so costs so much, is no easy feat, my love. I know this better than you might think…” 

Your mind drifts to the pale-haired boy — the merchant’s son who was brown of hair before you found him. The boy who was borrowed and dressed up in a prince’s wardrobe and sent off to whatever fate Rhaenyra’s justice had in store for him. The boy who is very likely chained or worse for a crime that was never truly his, simply because you and Ormund decided his captivity was a fair trade for Daeron’s freedom.

Daeron watches your eyes well with tears of your own, and his freckled face crumples further at the thought of hurting you further. “I did not mean to make you sad…" he mutters with a wet gaze that flits between yours.

“You haven't," you tell him firmly, though your voice remains steady. You gather the boy into your arms and press your cheek against his hair, feeling his tear-stained cheeks wet the skin of your chest. “I’m not sad, my love. I promise. I only love you. That's all….”

You sit with him for a long while after that — until his breathing steadies and his shoulders lose their edge. Only then do you rise, with one last kiss to his forehead, and leave him to whatever uneasy slumber he can manage after what the long day had done to him.

You run into Ormund on your way down the long corridor. His broad form towers in the narrow passageway as his wide hands splay before him in confusion. “What’s taken you so long? Your dinner’s already gone cold.”

“I’m not hungry.”

Your shoulder scrapes along his arm as you shove by him with little affection. Ormund huffs and falls easily into step with you on his much longer legs. The two of you move through the stony corridors in a silent tension that grows with every step you take, torchlight guttering along the damp walls as you pass them. The words of an argument well in your throat the whole way to your chambers and refuse to break free until the door has shut finally behind you.

“I cannot believe you!” you shout, features twisted in anger. “How dare you tell my son to lie to me! After everything—"

Ormund shakes his head. “I only told him to spare you a grief that serves no purpose—"

“You told him to kill a man, Ormund! A smith. A husband.” The words come out through a jaw clenched tight. Your eyes glitter in the flickering candlelight with every one that spills from your mouth, hands gesticulating wildly at your sides. “I stood in that town not an hour ago and told his wife I didn't know where he was. And I didn't know, because you hadn't thought to tell me you hadn’t let him go at all! And now I have to carry that too, on top of everything else because you've decided I didn’t need to be troubled with it—”

“It’s war!” Ormund shouts, voice ringing through the cobbled walls. His handsome features harden instantly as he stares you down with emotionless pale eyes. His long fingers curl into fists before relaxing once more in a repeated cycle intended to calm him. “I will not apologize for teaching that boy what war requires of men who mean to survive it. For now, it’s only Ser Garrick’s broken nose, but we will have far worse than that done to us before this war is through. If Daeron doesn’t learn that now, he’s as good as dead—”

“He’s sixteen—”

“He’s the King's last trueborn son, with any righteous claim to the throne!” Ormund thunders over your teary retort, approaching you with long strides. “He is the rider of a dragon that is the only thing standing between this army and total ruin— What don’t you understand about that?”

Ormund towers over you at once. His firm hands close hard around your arms, keeping you close and unmoving before him. He ducks his head to your height, eyes darting wildly between yours.

“Do you think I enjoyed putting that sword in his hand?” he continues, quieter now. “Do you think I've slept easy a single night since we left Oldtown, knowing what I'm shaping him into— why I have to?”

You swallow hard through a tight throat, peering up at him through the tears clouding your vision. “I think you’ve decided his suffering is a fair price for war,” you waver. “And I think you decided that without asking me.”

“Yes,” Ormund nods without reservation. “I have decided a great many things without asking you first— I did not ask you first when I decided to blanch that stranger’s hair and send him off in Daeron’s place, did I? And yet you still thanked me for it with your words and body when it kept our boy breathing.”

His words tear right through your chest. You shake your head in protest of them even though you know that he’s right — that you are no better than Ormund even in his madness; that you would do worse and more for Daeron if the war called for it, if you were brave enough to do it. 

“Did I complain, all those years, when grief after grief left this house without an heir of its own blood?” Ormund goes on, quieter now but no less harsh, as his features twist in a stifled sort of anguish. “Did I complain when courtiers wondered in whispers why a man would stay wed to a wife that could not give him an heir?” 

You flinch at his words like you can feel them physically, tearing you from the inside out, though his long fingers caging you force you to stomach them.

“I never complained. Because I love you and because I understood it was no fault of your own,” Ormund continues. “So I have earned, I think, the right to make one hard choice without you looking at me as though I’ve become some monster for it.”

Anger pricks your skin beneath your heavy gown like needles.

It is not the unfairness of the blow of his words that sends you reeling, but rather the sheer astonishment at how low he has stooped in his fury — in his grief. It is, perhaps, the cruelest thing he’s ever said to you; made crueler still for how plainly he does not seem to recognize his own cruelty at all.

“Say that again,” you tell him in an emotionless monotone. “Say it plainly, exactly how you mean it— that you think I am some monster—”

“I didn’t mean…” Ormund huffs and hangs his head, tense shoulders dropping as the lingering anger slips from his skin like rain. “I am not saying this to be cruel— Gods know, I’d sooner cut out my own tongue before I meant any cruelty to you.”

His pale eyes are wet and soft again when they lift to meet yours. His hands loosen their grip on your arms as they lift to cradle your cheeks, softly calloused and warm like velvet along your blazing skin.

“Daeron is the only child either of us has been permitted to keep,” the man continues, softer now. “He is not merely a boy I love, though gods know I do, but he is the only proof that we were ever meant to be parents at all… After everything this life took from us in the trying… Do you understand what I’m telling you?"

“So what?” you press, voice breaking. “The only way he gets to stay ours is if he survives long enough to sit a throne? Is that the only way to remove the taint from his blood— that’s what you called it, right?”

Ormund softens further in the face of your anger.

“Without Aemond, without Vhagar, this army has no dragon to answer to whatever Rhaenyra sends against us next… But Daeron has Tessarion, and Daeron has a claim that half this army would follow into the fire itself,” he coos gently to you, as if anything louder might break you entirely. His thumbs smooth gently along your cheekbones, wiping away a tear that clings stubbornly to the burning skin there. “The war is coming here, my love. It is not a thing we can shield him from any longer. He is our only hope of surviving what is coming, and every bit his birthright to lead it."

“Surely…” you trail off in disbelief, wild eyes searching his bluer ones. “Surely you do not mean to make our child fight in this war."

“It is the will of the gods,” Ormund croons as if it were that simple.

Something in you knows, as each word spills from his mouth, that this is not a man reasoning clearly. You can hear it in the smoothness of his voice and in each too-quick answer on his tongue. And yet, you want more than anything for him to be right. You want it so badly it frightens you — for the gods to will this war’s end, for Ormund’s victory, for your son’s survival. 

You don’t realize you’re crying until Ormund draws you fully into his chest with one wide hand along your back and another cradling the back of your head. Tears fall from your lashes and wet the front of his emerald doublet.

“Listen to me…” he mutters into your hair. “If he sits that throne, no one in this realm could ever call him anything but ours. He is Viserys’s heir, yes, but he became a Hightower the moment you held him— and if he rules, no man will ever again whisper that he is not truly yours. He will restore ancient order to the throne. That is how we keep him.”

You shake your head in protest as you lean back from him again, just far enough to peer up at him with tear-heavy eyes. “Just bring him back to me,” you plead fiercely to him. “When this battle is done, I don't care what it costs you to manage it. Bring him back—”

“I will," Ormund nods with the same iron certainty that has carried you through every hard year of your marriage. “I swear it to you. I’ll bring him home—”

“And you,” you remind with a stern finger jabbed into the center of his chest. “You come back to me, too— I have buried enough of what I love in this life, Ormund. I will not bury another. You come back to me. Both of you.”

He nods and leans down to press his forehead against yours. Each of his heaving exhales through his nose fans warm across your chin.

“I will,” he breathes against you, thumbs sweeping again along your cheekbone. He shifts against you to brush the smallest of kisses to the bridge of your nose — so gentle that it makes you feel like crying. Your hands curl hard around his wrist to keep him close. “The gods owe us a debt. And we will see it repaid in full before this war is through, I promise you.”

You cling to the certainty in his voice the way a drowning woman clings to driftwood; the way a starving woman clings to the memory of her last full meal — you cling to him the way a grieving woman clings to the gods themselves.

[yesimfinewhydoyouask]

The Flannel

Jack Abbot x wife!reader

Description- What happens when Jack's wife returns from the bar bathroom and finds another woman with her hands on her husband

CW- reader is jealous as all hell, another character attempts infidelity, Jack has a damn good time, casual and not literal mention of violence, takes place in a bar, implied alcohol consumption

AN- This spawned into existence while I was waiting to pick up my gal from the dentist. It's by far the shortest thing I've ever written, but I usually struggle with length anyway (that's what she said)

You’d be an idiot if you thought it would never happen. That no one would ever see Jack Abbot, the handsome, muscular man with beautiful steady eyes and a heart you couldn’t help but trust the first time he smiled, and wish that they had him for themselves. 

You knew it happened, that people gave him a second glance when they passed him on the street, subtly looking him over head to toe and admiring the nice shape of him, the way he moved with quiet confidence, not taking up more space than he needed to make a show of himself like some did. He was handsome, he was attractive, he was beautiful and sexy and cute all rolled into one. You knew these things, and you knew others would too. How could they not?

That didn’t make it any easier to see as you returned from the bar bathroom. 

The woman was standing between your stool and Jack’s at the bartop, a hand resting lightly on his shoulder as she tossed her head back in a laugh. Her chocolate curls fell down to her shoulders, catching the dim bar lighting and shining like a rich sleek metal as it moved.

Something in your stomach twisted, something dark and ugly that you didn’t care to think about, filling you with an undeserved surge of anger. You wanted to smack her hand away from him, to yell in her face to back off. 

The black metal band on his finger was clear as day. You could see it from nearly across the room, glinting in the hanging lights where his weathered hand wrapped around his lowball tumbler. She must have been able to see it with how intently she gazed at him, drinking him in as if she’d never seen a man before. 

That made it all the worse. Accidents happened, a stumble turning into brushed shoulders that could be laughed off, but this, this, was purposeful. It was a choice she was making, to cozy up to Jack, to not look at his wedding band as if it would merely poof out of existence.

Fuck that.

You were storming over before you realized it.

Jack’s face lit up as he spotted you, still a few feet away.

“There’s my girl,” he greeted warmly. His arm was outstretched, welcoming you against his side, the spot by your stool still occupied by the pretty brunette woman who’d had her hands all over him.

“Hi, baby,” you said sweetly, stepping into his embrace and leaning even closer, one hand cupping his cheek to steady him as you kissed him deeply. He made a small sound of surprise in the back of his throat, but kissed you back without hesitation, his arm wrapping further around you to hold you close. His eyes were dark when you parted, a faint questioning look passing behind them as you grinned at him coyly, bottom lip caught between your teeth. 

“Making friends?” you asked lightly, settling yourself sideways on his lap, making sure to favor his good leg before you pressed one more kiss to his temple, your fingers combing through the thick curls at the back of his head. When you turned to face the woman, smiling overly sweetly at her, you felt a sick twinge of satisfaction to see the way her lips pursed together tightly.

“Sweetheart, this is Jessie,” Jack introduced, gesturing to the woman. His words lilted with faint humor, like he was watching his favorite reality show and the drama had just gotten good. “She was just complimenting my shirt.”

You laughed weakly. Of course she was. Just the thick flannel, surely it had nothing to do with the way he filled it out with his broad shoulders and thick, bulging biceps. 

“It looks like really good quality,” Jessie said, desperately trying to sound neutral. “What is it, cotton?”

Jack hummed, looking to you with a faint smirk. “I wouldn’t know,” he admitted. “This one bought it for me.” His arm tightened around you for a moment, giving you a slight squeeze. 

You frowned, your hand running up and down his chest to feel the fabric as you thought. She wasn’t wrong, it really was a good shirt. You’d always loved the soft feel of it under your hands when you ran your hands over his shoulders, sometimes bunching the fabric in your fists when he caught you off guard with an especially deep kiss. 

“I don’t remember.” You chuckled, giving her an easy smile. “Guess I’ll have to check later when he takes it off.”

Jessie nodded once in silent understanding, swallowing thickly before she picked up her drink from the counter. It was so close to the one you’d left Jack to look over for you that it had left a ring of condensation on the edge of the napkin you used as a coaster. 

“Right, well, I guess I’ll leave you to it,” she said, doing her best to paste on a cheerful smile to match her overly chipper tone. Her words sounded hollow, her finger tracing the rim of her glass as her eyes moved between you and Jack.

You only nodded, giving her an almost sympathetic smile to watch her go from your perch on Jack’s lap, fingers still twirling through his curls in a way you knew from countless hours curled up together that he loved. You picked up your own glass to sip, and Jack had to duck his head into the crook of your neck to muffle the sudden laugh he let slip at the way her eyes widened when she saw your wedding ring. 

A flicker of pride went through him, glad that even after so long together, he had made the right choice that day. Hours of designing had gone into your set of rings, months spent deliberating every curve of the band and cut of the stone before he finally showed you, wanting to make every detail perfect for you, to give you something as beautiful as you were that you would never want to take off. And you never did. 

“Have a good night, Jessie!” you called as she retreated. 

Jack gave you a warm look when she was out of earshot, dark hazel eyes trailing over your face like he wanted to catch every detail of it.

“You handled that mildly,” he drawled, amusement curling at the corner of his mouth. His eyes glimmered, the corners creasing the way they always did, bearing the weight of his hidden smile for him. 

You laughed, adjusting your position on his lap to wrap both arms behind his neck. 

“Careful, Jack,” you teased. “I might think you liked seeing me all possessive.”

He only hummed, the deep vibration carrying through his chest and into your side pressed against it, lifting one shoulder before letting it down into a small shrug. 

“You expect me to be upset to have you all over me, playing with my hair?” He gave you a cocky smirk, gaze lowering for just a moment to your lips before flicking back up. Your breath caught, and he noticed, head tilting slightly as he looked up at you through his lashes that had no business being so thick. 

“Thought for a moment you might smash a bottle over her head,” he continued, though his voice had dropped. His hand gripped your thigh, pulling you higher up his lap as he adjusted how he sat on the barstool. It couldn’t have been comfortable for him, but he was far from complaining. “That what you want, honey? Me having to stitch her up?”

The thought of his hands on her made you angry enough to bite your tongue. 

“That’s exactly why I didn’t,” you pointed out smugly, nestling even closer until the tip of your nose brushed the bridge of his. “I’d much rather keep you as my private doctor, Jack.”

He laughed through his nose, his unblinking gaze meeting yours without dropping. “I’ll be your anything, baby, but I don’t think I should be your doctor.”

You rolled your eyes, giving his scruffy cheek a kiss before fully melting against him, nuzzling into the side of his neck.

“Have it your way then. I’ll just make Robby my emergency contact.”

A sharp laugh left Jack before he could stop it. 

“Don’t even joke about that, sweetheart.”

[heavenlybarnesss]

Currently hyper fixated on Jack and pregnant!reader 🥹 Because like let’s say you’re waddling around your kitchen in the early hours of the morning, unable to sleep with the uncomfortable size of your tummy at this point. We’re talking third trimester, any day now timeline. In walks Jack post shift, exhausted and grateful to be home. He sets his bag down and slides his shoes off at the door. He knows you’ve been struggling with sleeping through the night, but still moves through the house quietly in case you are.

He can hear you puttering around in the kitchen, cabinets opening and closing as you change your mind twenty different times about what you’re craving. He leans against the wall, a crinkly eyed smile on his face watching you. Amused by you. Amazed by you. His sleepy girl who’s creating a tiny life inside of her. You’re in one of his old band T-shirts, a pair of his boxers, and fluffy socks. Your hair’s up and disheveled with puffy, sleepy eyes to tie together the ‘hot mess express’ look you’re sporting. And Jack loves it.

Nothing screams ‘sexy’ to Jack like the woman he loves carrying his child. You could be wearing a fucking garbage bag and Jack Abbot still wants up in those guts, baby. You let out a little yawn while steeping your tea under the light above the stove, gasping in surprise as he comes up behind you and wraps his strong arms under your belly. He lifts it, earning an actual moan of relief from you. You could cry, it feels that fucking good. The last few weeks have been hell for your lower back, and you’ve been fussing about it (reasonably so) to Jack more often. Your heart just melts at the thought of him picking up a tip or two from the OBGYN nurses at the hospital.

“You get any sleep, mommy?” he mumbles into your shoulder.

“A little. I think we’re having a rockstar, babe. She loves partying into the early hours of the morning, this one. She’s been kicking me since three a.m.” Jack can’t help but chuckle at the havoc your unborn daughter is already wreaking on you.

“Does this help?” he asks. You nod your head appreciatively.

“Jack, it feels so good. Thank you,” you sigh blissfully. You relax into his arms, letting your head lull back lazily against his warm chest. “How’d you know this would help?”

“Dana actually gave me this one. I jus’ felt awful watchin’ you be so uncomfortable. Broke my heart, baby.” He kisses the side of your head tenderly.

“You know what’s breaking my heart right now?” Jack’s head perks up, caught off guard and slightly confused by your question.

“What’s that?” he asks, tentative.

“That we’re all out of chocolate chips, and now I can’t make chocolate chip pancakes,” you whine. Jack can’t help but laugh. You laugh too, you know it sounds ridiculous. But it also sounds so good.

“I see a Door Dash order from Denny’s in my future,” Jack says. You let him gently drop your belly before turning to face him.

“Hmm…I was thinking Waffle House,” you smile. The lack of sleep and backaches are totally worth mornings like this. And - despite the crying - even more so after the birth of your daughter.