the 141 finding out reader isn't a guy behind their mask (fem reader x simon) request from @wolfiemagic
You joined the 141 almost a year ago, everything was great, minus one small detail. They all thought you were a guy. You wore a mask just like Simon, originally you got it to help blend in during missions but just like Simon you grew to love it and wear it daily. The 141 never asked about it, or pried you to take it off, probably because they were used to Simon, that's what made you stay. But because of that mask, they never saw you, and they had just assumed you were also a guy, and well you never corrected them.Â
It was far from the first time someone assumed you were a guy, most of the time you just let people assume that. When they know you're a girl they tend to look down on you and doubt you, it just got easier for you if they thought you were a guy. You've had people straight up ignore you, but that never happens when they think you're a guy. You've been with the 141 long enough to know they don't think like that, but now it just seems so weird to tell them, and a part of you is worried they'll be mad that you lied to them.Â
Honestly at first you weren't sure how you had gotten away with it, but over the years you've started piecing things together. Your callsign was bird because you had a deeper voice than the average girl, but a higher voice than the average guy. The callsign made people stop asking about your unusually high voice, they just accepted you were a guy with a higher voice, but they definitely made fun of you for it. Every month you claimed to be sick, and no one ever paid enough attention to the dates to see the consistency, Soap just joked that you had the worst immune system. You always wore baggy clothes, not to hide your identity but just because you liked it. You tended to wear a binder during training, honestly you just preferred it over a sports bra.
The most confusing thing to you was Price. He had looked over your chart, including your medical shit, so either he somehow didn't notice or he was just playing along. You later learned while out drinking with them that Price always asks Laswell to only give him the important bits of information, too much paper work he said, apparently this didn't include your sex. You later called Laswell to confirm this and she just said your secret is safe with her, even after you explained it wasn't necessarily a secret.Â
You've been on plenty of missions with the 141, and they never notice. Right now you were on a regular mission, that was until an enemy managed to sneak up behind you. They sliced your stomach before pushing you out of the window, they even managed to shoot you on your fall down. Thankfully the cut wasn't too deep, the shot only hit your upper arm, and they didn't come to confirm your death. Even with your injuries and fall you had enough energy to alert the team, very shakily you told them where you were. Simon immediately answered âstay there, Iâm comingâ you just kept mumbling his name softly, he had always been nice to you, and odd quiet sort of nice, not what you would expect from him.Â
Your eyes were just starting to go blurry when you felt Simon pick you up. As soon as he gets you into the vehicle he starts taking care of your wounds. Putting pressure on your stomach, while Soap helps bandage the wound, Gaz putting pressure on your shoulder. You would definitely need stitches, and as soon as Price got in they were heading straight to the nearest hospital. Price was the one who removed your mask, he knew it was something personal but your life was more important and he needed to make sure you were breathing. You saw them all stare, the way they actually looked you over, now without all the gear on, their hands still worked following Simon's orders, but they looked utterly shocked, all of them except Simon. Simon focused on your wounds but he did look at your face once, almost as if he knew and understood.
Simon getting taken in by southern reader Masterlist
Simon rescuing reader Masterlist
Dragon rider Reader x Dragon shifter 141 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16 Part 17 Part 18 Part 19 Part 20 Part 21
Reader joining the military to find Simon, their father Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14
Reader stopping Simon from committing suicide Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8
the 141 finding out reader isn't a guy behind their mask (fem reader x Simon) Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7
(I had to many links so now I have more masterlists)
You're pretty sure the entire team hates you. You were new on the team and it didn't seem like they were happy to have you, you can see it clearly. You see how Gaz can casually talk and joke with anyone on base, but he never talks to you, in fact once he even stopped talking when you walked in. Unlike Gaz, Soap does talk to you but the jokes he makes are at your expense, you're pretty certain he is subtly bullying you. Price rarely talks to you, and when he does it only about work and you swear he is disappointed in you even when you haven't done anything. And Ghost, oh he definitely hates, you could argue with yourself that you're just misunderstanding the others, but even with Ghost's face hidden you can tell he stares at you, honestly glares. Doesn't even talk at all if you're around, and on your first mission he out right asked Price if he had to be with you.Â
It was starting to get to you, you were sure something was going on, and what do you do when you're stressed, you start cooking. Some people stress clean, you stress cook/bake, it gives your mind and hands something to do, helps you calm down and think straight. So here you are still cooking after all night, normally you would only stress cook or bake for an hour or two, but you had just stayed up all night cooking and baking. The kitchen was less messy than one might expect, though there were lots of dishes out. There were food dishes covering the entire rec room table and even some on the counter that didn't have space on the table. And now you were panicking again, how would you put all the food away, and before they guys wake up. You were frantically opening cabinets trying to find containers to put food away, you couldn't find any. You looked back to the table, now realizing there was no way, even if you found containers there wouldn't be enough, and there was not enough room in the fridge. You were about to full on start panicking, which definitely would lead to more cooking/baking. And in your frantic searching and semi-panic you hadn't noticed the guys standing frozen in the hallway, just staring at the table.
Price was the first to get a grip, he pushed past the rest of them âya cooking for a family or something kid?â Price asked, both joking and trying to understand why there was so much food. You immediately started apologizing âIâm so sorry, really I'm sorry. I don't know what happened. I was stressed last night so I started cooking, and I guess it got out of control. I'm sorry I didn't realize how long it had been or how much food I made. I promise I'll take care of it, I'll put it up right awayâ the words came spewing out, you tried to go pick up the food from the table but Price stopped you âhold on, are ya saying you stayed up all night, did you even eatâ Price was just concerned but you thought he was scolding you âwell no, Iâm sorry sir, it wont affect my performance I promise. I won't stay up againâ Price could tell you weren't really understanding him, he grabbed both your shoulders making you look at him âIâm not worried about that, I'm worried about you. If you're stressed you need to relax, and you definitely need to eat.â Price didn't let you argue, he pulled out a chair and helped you sit. You stared up at Price while he fixed you a plate âhere you go, and stop stressing about the food, we can figure it outâ you argued, a part of you still convinced he was mad or disappointed in you "I don't know what to do sir, there's nothing to put it in, and nowhere to put itâ Price could see how you were starting to panic again, âlove, I have three huge soldiers behind me who have never seen this much homemade food at once, it'll get eaten. Right now I need you to eat, because none of us are gonna eat until you've eaten something.âÂ
And Price meant that, they sat at the table, but none of them even touched the food while you ate. Once you finished your first plate, Price gave you a whole another plate before he motioned for his men to eat. Which they immediately did, food stacked high on their plates, after their first serving you could already see a difference in the amount of food. You didn't think they'd want to eat something you made, but they all devoured their food, you swear you heard Soap moan. Not only did they eat but they complimented the food, every one of them. When Price finished, the others were now on their second or third plate, he pulled you to the side. âNext time you're stressed you come tell us. You'll never be part of the team if you keep to yourself all the timeâ
You looked up at him confused. âI thought you guys didn't want me aroundâ Price shook his head âno love, you're just new so everyone's a little awkward around you, not sure what to say or joke about, and you didn't make much of an effort to join the team.â that⌠made sense for the most part but still âsure maybe that's true for you, Gaz, and Soap but Ghost? He hates me, doesn't trust me one bitâ Price pointed to Ghost who was still devouring your food âhe doesnât hate you you were just new, and he definitely wouldn't be eating your food if he didn't trust youâ you went to point out the time he directly asked to not be with you during a mission but somehow Price knew already âit took him months to trust us on the battlefield, he had just met you and you weren't really talking to any of us. Trust me luv he doesnt hate you but you're going to have to try if you want him to like you. We all had to put in the effortâ you nodded âwhy don't you join us today, it'll be easier for everyone to get to know youâ Price phrased it as a question but it wasn't, he headed back to the rest of the guys tugging you behind him.Â
CW: Noncon, thick dick, breeding, pregnancy, stalking, kidnapping, general yandere behavior, rut/mating cycles
Word Count: 1.1k
(Comm for an anon who wanted only to be known as "Dreams." I hope you all enjoy it!)
It was a warm day in the Heartfell Forest. You were a simple human woman enjoying a day of camping. You were originally supposed to have come here with an entire group, taking off your job as a sales rep to have the trip. And every single other person bailed. But you werenât about to just waste all the prep you had made, supplies you had bought, time off you had accumulated. No, you were going to go camping. You had always enjoyed the great outdoors, and while you had never gone camping before, this would be no exception.
Your friend Sarah had said that you shouldnât go alone but the Heartfell Forest was very safe and there was really nothing to worry about. You werenât the toughest person out there, pretty timid, but it was nice to get away from it all.
You had picked a spot to set up camp and went about setting up your tent and a fire.
Sarah was right though, you probably shouldnât have gone alone. As you went about making camp you werenât alone. Someone, who was not entirely human, was watching you from the shadows.
Lim was a rabbit man. A cryptic human-rabbit hybrid. Fur covered his arms and legs. A creature existing in the twilight forest existing between the worlds.
He was in rut, and the smell of a potential mate had drifted into the pocket realm he inhabited and caused him to migrate into this one to investigate. He liked what he saw and used his long floppy ears to listen in on you as you talked to yourself. He loved your voice too.
The rabbit noted how small and weak you were compared to his tall toned form. It would be a trivial thing to just pick you up and take you back to his home. Where no one could ever possibly find you. But he wanted to watch you a while longer before stealing you away and giving you the gift of his seed in your womb.
He had to confirm that you were perfect for him.
You clearly were. You didnât seem particularly in your element out here all alone. Not confident or particularly skilled, yet at the same time it was evident you were independent enough to feed yourself. You studied your books and manuals carefully and got done what you needed to.
Lim didnât want an entirely helpless mate, nor did he want one that was too headstrong and confident.
He watched as you made your fire and cooked some food you had positively identified as safe along with the food you had brought with you. Once you had eaten, put the fire out, and explored a bit, you settled down in your tent for bed.
You fell asleep quickly, the activities of the day having worn you out. It was warm and cozy in your tent. And then it was too warm. Too stuffy. You woke up and found out why. Some type of creature was in the tent with you. A man with long rabbit-like ears and large eyes.
You were about to scream but a large furry hand covered your mouth before you had the chance. You were yanked from your tent and could see the creature more clearly under the moonlight. He was at least six and a half feet tall and lean but toned. He picked you up easily and suddenly there was darkness.
When you could see again you were in a mist filled forest with seemingly endless rows of monotonous trees. You couldnât tell the time of day but it didnât seem like night. He took you back to his burrow as you kicked and struggled before finally giving up and crying, rubbing your back and introducing himself as Lim on the way, explaining to you that you were his wife now and were about to be filled with his children.
When the two of you reached his home he didnât take his time. He ripped away your clothes with you crying and sobbing beneath him on his bedding.
He wiped your tears away and tried to calm you but was too eager for a good bout of breeding to waste any more time than that. You were his mate and youâd just have to get used to that, better get started now rather than later. His rut demanded it.
Your mind was trying to make sense of everything that was happening and how you had ended up beneath him. His mind was focused on the task of removing your clothing and massaging your pussy with his thumb, making sure you were nice and wet for his scarily huge dick.
Your traitorous cunt wept with your juices despite your fear allowing him to slide into it with only slight difficulty, hurting you a bit at first before you adjusted to its girth.
The sobs that left you were occasionally interrupted by involuntary moans and gasps as your body continued to betray you. You tried to calm down and let him have his way with you, not wanting to anger the frightening beast man.
Lim thrust into you wildly, animalistically biting at your neck and claiming your flesh as his as he fucked you.
When you shook around his cock in climax he didnât stop at all, in fact he quickened the pace, seeing your conflicted face under him, the way your lip quivered in fear and bliss at the same time drove him feral.
You spasmed several more times from the pleasure he was forcing on your abused pussy before he finally came inside you, depositing his fertile essence deep within your cunt. His large balls that had been slapping you with each thrust now throbbed and filled you to the point of leaking and bulging your belly just slightly, claiming your insides with his seed and practically guaranteeing that youâd be having his litter.
He laid by you then held you close as your hole leaked, you continued to cry silently while he tried to soothe you and talked about how cute your babies would be.
A few years later you were still trapped in the strange world, your belly was heavy with a second litter and your first batch was running around the burrow energetically as you cooked dinner. You yearned for home but were too terrified to try to run and had no way to return to your world anyway.
Author's note: completely forgot i wrote this lmao
The bath was warm, steam curling through the air and clinging to the stone walls of your private chambers.
Outside, the last light of dusk painted King's Landing in shades of amber and rose, but here there was only the gentle lap of water and the steady beat of your husband's heart beneath your ear.
Valarr's arms wrapped around you from behind, his chest pressed against your back as you both soaked in the heated water. His lips found the curve of your shoulder, pressing lazy kisses against your skin.
The tension of the day, of every day, seemed to melt away in these quiet moments, when it was just the two of you and the rest of the world could not intrude.
"You're quiet tonight, ÄbrazČłrys," he murmured against you, using the Valyrian endearment he favored when you were alone. Wife. His breath was warm against your damp skin, and you felt him smile as you shivered slightly.
You turned in his arms, water sloshing gently, until you faced him. His dark hair was wet and plastered to his forehead, and that striking streak of silver-gold caught the candlelight like spun moonlight.
You traced your fingers along his jaw, feeling the slight roughness where his beard had begun to grow by evening's end, then down to where his pulse beat steady and strong beneath your touch.
"Just tired," you whispered. "I've felt... strange today. Queasy."
His brow furrowed immediately, the lazy contentment in his blue eyes replaced by sharp concern. His hand came up to cup your face, thumb stroking gently across your cheekbone. "Strange how? Should I call for a maester? Is it your stomach? A headache?"
You laughed softly, the sound muffled against his chest as you leaned into him. The warmth of him, the solid reality of his love, it was the only anchor you needed. "Valarr, I feel a bit ill, not dying. Besides, you know what the maesters will say." You pulled back, offering him a wry smile that didn't quite reach your eyes. "That my courses are late again, perhaps? They've said that a hundred times."
Something flickered in his expression, pain, quickly masked, but you knew him too well to miss it. He pulled you closer, one hand coming up to cradle the back of your head, fingers threading through your wet hair with infinite gentleness.
"One day," he promised, his voice rough with emotion. "One day, yndysâ"
"I know." You kissed his chest, just above his heart. "I know you believe that."
Two years. Two years you had been married to Valarr Targaryen, and your belly remained empty, your courses as regular as the turning of the moon. Two years without even a hint of a pregnancy, not even a miscarriage to prove that you could conceive. Two years of hope and heartbreak, of seeing the pity in kind eyes and the cruelty in cruel ones.
Two years of rumors.
---
The first time you heard them, you had been walking through the gardens, seeking respite from the stuffy confines of the Keep and the weight of courtly expectations. The roses were in bloom, their scent heavy and sweet, and you had thought to steal a moment of peace before the evening's duties called you back.
You rounded a hedge and caught the tail end of a conversation between two of your ladies-in-waiting. You recognized their voicesâLady Celia, young and pretty and recently wed herself, and Lady Jeyne, older and sharper-tongued, who had served in court since before you arrived.
"...two years is telling, isn't it?" Jeyne was saying, her voice carrying clearly through the afternoon air. "Not even a miscarriage. My sister miscarried twice before she birthed her first, and even that was considered unusual. But nothing? For two years? There has to be something wrong with her."
Celia's voice was softer, hesitant. "Perhaps the prince... perhaps he does not... I mean, if he cannotâ"
"No, no, there's nothing wrong with him." Jeyne laughed, the sound ugly. "I've heard the serving girls talk. He's perfectly capable. It's her. Some women just aren't made for bearing children. It happens."
"But what will happen?" Celia asked. "To their marriage, I mean? The prince needs an heirâthe realm needs an heir. If she's barren..."
You had frozen mid-step, your heart plummeting into your stomach. The words barren, annulment, new wife echoed in your mind, each one a knife. Before you could retreat, before you could compose yourself into the mask of a princess, a voice like winter cut through the air.
"Enough."
Valarr stood behind you, you realized. He must have followed you from the chambers, must have heard everything. His face was cold, controlledâthe face of a prince, not the warm, loving husband you knew. But his eyes... his eyes burned with a fury you had never seen.
The two women went white as milk when they saw him. Celia dropped into a curtsy so low she nearly fell. Jeyne's face lost all its color, her mouth opening and closing soundlessly.
"You will return to your families," Valarr said, his voice leaving no room for argument. There was no heat in it, no emotion, and that was somehow more terrifying than if he had screamed. "By morning. You will pack your things tonight, and you will be gone before the sun rises. If I hear so much as a whisper of such slander againâfrom anyone, about my wifeâit will not be banishment they face. Am I understood?"
They fled. And then Valarr's arms were around you, his cold prince's mask crumbling as he held you close, his breath coming in ragged gasps against your hair.
"Pay them no mind," he begged you, his lips pressed to your hair, your temple, anywhere he could reach. "They are fools. They know nothing. They are nothing. You are everythingâ"
"But what if they're right?" The words tore from you, raw and bleeding, before you could stop them. You pulled back just enough to look at him, to let him see the tears streaming down your face. "What if I am barren? What if I can never give you children, never give you an heir, neverâ"
He kissed you then, fierce and desperate, swallowing your fears with his lips and his love. When he finally pulled back, his own eyes were wet.
"Then we will have no children," he said, his voice steady despite the tears. "And I will love you just the same. I will love you until my last breath and beyond. I will love you in this life and the next and every life after that. You are mine, Y/N. Not for your womb. Not for your ability to give me heirs. For you. For your laugh. For the way you crinkle your nose when you're annoyed. For the way you hum in your sleep. For you."
---
The rumors never stopped, of course. They simply grew quieter, more insidious. You saw the looks at feasts, the whispers behind fans and goblets, the pity in some eyes and the smug satisfaction in others. You heard the murmurs of annulment and new wife and barren floating through the halls like poisoned butterflies.
But you also saw the way Valarr shut them down. A cold stare here, a sharp word there. Once, a lord who spoke too loudly at a feast about the "prince's unfortunate marriage situation" found himself assigned to the farthest, most miserable post in the Seven Kingdoms within the week. His wife wept. His children wailed. And Valarr watched it all with an expression of stone.
He never told you about that. You heard it from a servant who thought you should know how fiercely your husband protected you.
He protected you. He cherished you. And every month, when your courses came, he held you while you cried and then he held you while you made love, as if he could pour all his love into you and make the pain disappear.
"Next month," he would whisper against your skin, his voice thick with his own unshed tears. "Next month, my love. We'll try again next month. And the month after. And the month after that. For as long as it takes. For forever, if that's what it takes."
And you would believe him, because believing him was easier than believing the whispers. Because loving him was the easiest thing you had ever done, and being loved by him was the greatest gift you had ever received.
---
In the bath, with the warm water soothing your aching body, you tried to push away the queasiness that had plagued you all day. Probably something you ate. Perhaps the fish at supper had been off. Perhaps the heat was too much. There were a hundred explanations, and none of them were the one you had stopped allowing yourself to hope for.
Valarr's hands moved gently along your back, soothing, loving, tracing patterns on your skin that he had memorized long ago. His touch was reverent, as it always was, as if you were something precious and fragile and infinitely worthy of worship.
"You work too hard," he murmured against your shoulder. "You exhaust yourself with duties. You're up before dawn, you don't rest during the day, you attend every function, you smile at every lord and lady who looks down on you." His arms tightened around you.
"Perhaps we should retreat to Dragonstone for a moon. Just the two of us. No court, no duties, no whispers. Just us."
"That would only give the gossips more fuel," you sighed, leaning your head back against his chest. "The prince hiding away his barren wife. She must be even more defective than we thought, if he can't bear to be seen with her."
"Stop." His voice was gentle but firm, and he turned you in his arms so he could look into your eyes. "Do not let them live in your head, my love. They are not worth a single one of your tears. They are not worth a single moment of your peace. You are more than their words. You are more than their cruelty. You are mine, and I will not let them hurt you."
You opened your mouth to respond, to tell him that his love was enough, that you were trying so hard to believe him, that some days you even succeededâ
But the words never came.
Instead, a pain ripped through youâsharp, sudden, agonizing. It seized your lower belly, your womb, with such ferocity that a scream tore from your throat before you could stop it. Your body curled inward, hands flying to your stomach as if you could somehow contain the agony.
"Y/N?" Valarr's hands caught you as you doubled over, the water splashing wildly around you both. His voice was sharp with terror. "Y/N, what is it? What's wrong?"
"Painâ" You gasped, another wave crashing over you, deeper and more intense than the first. "Valarr, it hurtsâsomething's wrongâ"
He was already moving, lifting you from the bath with strength you forgot he possessed. Water streamed from both of you as he carried you to the bed, his face ashen with terror, his arms shaking but steady. He laid you down as gently as if you were made of glass, but even that small movement sent another spike of agony through you.
"Did I hurt you?" he was asking, his voice breaking as he knelt beside the bed, his hands hovering over you, afraid to touch, afraid not to. "Sweetheart, did Iâwas it something I didâin the bath, did Iâ"
You couldn't answer. Another pain, deeper than before, had you curling in on yourself, a keening cry escaping your lips. It felt like something was tearing inside you, something vital and essential, and you clutched at Valarr's hand with desperate strength.
He wrapped a vest around you, his hands trembling so badly he could barely manage the ties, and then he was on his feet and shoutingâscreamingâfor servants, for guards, for a maester.
"NOW!" he roared, his voice echoing off the stone walls. "GET THE MAESTER NOW! RUN!"
---
The hours that followed were a blur of agony and confusion.
Maester Edric came, his face grave as he examined you. You lay in the bed, sweat soaking your hair, the linens beneath you, pains ripping through you at irregular intervals that made no sense to anyone. Valarr never left your side. He held your hand through every wave of pain, pressed cool cloths to your forehead, whispered words of love and terror in between calling for answers no one could give.
"I can find nothing wrong," the maester said finally, his brow furrowed deep with confusion and frustration. He had examined you twice, three times, each time with the same result. "No fever, no swelling, no sign of injury or illness. Her stomach is soft, not rigid. Her pulse is strong. I... I do not understand."
"Then look again!" Valarr demanded, his voice cracking. He had not slept, had not eaten, had not left your side for a moment. His eyes were red-rimmed, his hair a wild mess, his tunic stained with your sweat where he had held you. "She is in agonyâlook again! There must be something! There has to be something!"
They gave you milk of the poppy. It dulled the edges of the pain but did not stop it entirely. You drifted in and out of consciousness, aware of Valarr's voice, of his hand gripping yours, of the whispered fears of servants who thought you were dying.
Dying. The thought floated through your poppy-fogged mind. Was this death? This endless, ripping pain that came in waves like the sea? Was this how it endedânot with a grand tragedy, but with some mysterious illness that even the maesters could not name?
"The Seven are taking her," you heard someone whisperâone of the servants, a woman who had served your household for years. Her voice was thick with tears. "It's a punishment. It must be. For something."
"Hold your tongue!" another voice hissed, but the damage was done.
You saw Valarr's face harden, saw the fury flash through his terror, but he didn't leave your side. He couldn't. He was trapped between his need to protect you and his need to protect your honor, and in the end, you were more important.
"Leave," he said quietly to the room at large. "Everyone except the maester. Now."
They fled. And then it was just you, and Valarr, and the maester who could do nothing but watch you suffer.
"There's something," you gasped during a lucid moment, when the pain had receded enough to allow thought. Your voice was barely a whisper, cracked and broken. "There's somethingâI can feel itâinside meâtrying to come outâ"
Valarr was instantly alert, leaning close. "What? What do you feel?"
"I don't knowâ" Another wave of pain crashed over you, and you screamed, your back arching off the bed. "Somethingâthere's something thereâI can feel itâpleaseâ"
A servant girlâwho had been allowed to stay to fetch water and linensâhurried to look when Valarr gestured frantically. She lifted the sheets, peered between your legs, and then stumbled backward with a sharp intake of breath.
"Gods," she whispered, her face going white as bone. "Gods aboveâ"
"What?" Valarr was on his feet, his heart in his throat. "What is it? What's wrong?"
The girl's face was white as bone, her eyes wide as saucers. She pointed with a trembling hand. "It'sâmy prince, it's a headâthe princess is giving birthâ"
The next hour was chaos and wonder in equal measure.
Maester Edric rushed back in, his composure completely shattered. More servants were called, women who had experience with birth, who knew what to do. Linens, hot water, cloths, all the preparations for a birth that no one had known was coming.
Through it all, Valarr stayed at your side, his face a mask of shock and awe and desperate fear. He held your hand through every contraction, wiped the sweat from your brow, pressed kisses to your temple and whispered words of love and encouragement.
"How?" he kept asking, his voice wondering and terrified all at once. "How did we not know? How did no one know?"
But you knew. You knew, even through the pain, even through the haze of milk of the poppy. Your courses had comeâlight, yes, irregular, but present enough that you had never thought to question. Your belly had remained flat, your weight unchanged, your body showing no signs of the life growing within. You had never felt the quickening, never felt the child move, never experienced any of the symptoms that every book and every woman said you should have felt. A hidden heir. A secret kept so perfectly that even the mother hadn't known.
"The babe is coming," the head midwife announced, her voice calm and professional despite the extraordinary circumstances. "My prince, you may want toâ"
"I'm not leaving." Valarr's voice was steel. "I'm not leaving her. Not for a moment."
And then, with one final, agonizing push that tore a scream from your throat, a new cry filled the room.
Not your cry, a new voice, small and fierce and alive, cutting through the chaos like a ray of sunlight through storm clouds.
Silence fell. Everyone in the room seemed to stop breathing, to stop moving, as the midwife lifted the tiny, squalling bundle.
"A boy," she said, her voice awed. "My prince, my princess... you have a son."
Valarr didn't look at the babe at first. He looked at you, his eyes streaming tears, his face pressed to your sweat-damp hair, his whole body shaking with relief and joy and a love so overwhelming it seemed to fill the entire room.
"You did it," he whispered, his voice broken and beautiful. "You beautiful, perfect, impossible womanâyou did it. You gave me a son. You gave us a son."
The midwife approached, the babe wrapped in clean linen, still crying with the fierce determination of new life. "Would you like to hold him, my princess?"
You nodded, unable to speak, and they placed him in your arms.
He was smallâsmaller than you had expected, though you had no basis for comparisonâand wet-faced from crying, with a tuft of in his tiny head. His eyes were squeezed shut, his little fists clenched, his cries slowly subsiding as he settled against your chest.
Valarr leaned down, one trembling finger reaching out to gently touch that tiny head. His face crumpled, and for the first time since you had known him, your strong, fierce husband wept openly.
"He's perfect," he managed. "He's absolutely perfect. Just like his mother."
You looked up at him, at your husband who had defended you against a kingdom, who had loved you when the world called you barren, who had held you through every disappointment and every fear and never once wavered in his devotion.
"I told you," you whispered, your voice broken but triumphant, a smile spreading across your exhausted face. "I told you there was something wrong with me."
Valarr laughedâa sound of pure, overwhelming joy, bright and free and wonderfulâand kissed you with all the love in his heart. He kissed your lips, your cheeks, your forehead, your hair, each kiss a promise and a prayer and a celebration.
"Nothing wrong with you," he agreed against your lips. "Nothing but perfection. Nothing but miracle. My wife. My love. The mother of my son."
The news spread through the Red Keep like wildfire.
By dawn, the entire castle knew. The princess who was whispered to be barren had given birth in the night, to a healthy son, without anyone even knowing she was with child. The servants who had thought she was dying now spoke of miracles and blessings. The ladies who had whispered behind her back now hurried to offer congratulations, their faces flushed with embarrassment.
And in your chambers, as the first light of dawn crept over King's Landing, you held your son and watched your husband pace the room like a man possessed.
"A son," Valarr kept saying, as if he couldn't quite believe it. "We have a son. I have a son. We have a son."
"You've said that seventeen times now," you teased gently, though your own smile hadn't faded since the babe was placed in your arms.
"And I'll say it seventeen hundred more." He came to sit beside you on the bed, his hand reaching out to stroke the babe's cheek with infinite gentleness. "Have you thought of a name?"
You looked down at the tiny face, peaceful now in sleep, and felt your heart swell with a love so fierce it almost hurt.
"He'll need a cradle," you murmured, suddenly realizing all the things that would need to be done. "And clothesâwe have no clothes for him. And a wet nurseâI don't know if I canâ"
"Shh." Valarr pressed a kiss to your forehead. "All of that will be handled. Right now, you rest. You've done enough for one night." His voice cracked with emotion. "You've done everything."
---
The days that followed were a blur of visitors and well-wishers, of lords and ladies coming to pay their respects to the prince and princess and their miraculous son.
King Daeron II came himself, his aged face bright with joy as he held his first great-grandson. "Auriom," he said, testing the name. "A fine choice. First of his name"
Prince Baelor, Valarr's father, stood tall and proud, his nose wrinkling as he smiled "The boy looks the same as valarr did as a babe," he observed. "And he his mother's strength. He'll go far."
Even the rumors changed. No longer was there talk of annulment and barrenness. Now the whispers were of miracles and blessings, of the Seven's favor shining upon the young prince and his devoted wife. The same ladies who had once pitied you now sought your favor. The lords who had whispered of setting you aside now bowed low and offered congratulations.
You didn't care about any of them. You cared about the tiny life in your arms, and the husband who looked at you as if you had hung the moon and stars.
One night, a week after the birth, you woke to find the cradle empty and your husband standing by the window, holding Aurion in his arms.
You watched them for a long momentâValarr, his dark hair messy, that silver streak catching the moonlight, swaying gently as he hummed a soft Valyrian lullaby to the babe in his arms. His voice was low and sweet, the ancient words wrapping around the quiet room like a blessing.
"ĹĂąos iÄ hĹŤrenkon qrinuntys," he sang. "JemÄŤ iksis zÄlagon." Light and shadow, my little prince. Forever there is fire.
You must have made a sound, because he turned, his face softening when he saw you awake.
"Couldn't sleep?" you asked softly.
"He was fussing," Valarr said, crossing to sit beside you on the bed. "I didn't want him to wake you. You need your rest."
You reached out, touching his face, feeling the slight stubble on his jaw. "So do you."
He turned his head, kissing your palm. "I can't stop looking at him," he admitted quietly. "I keep thinking... what if we had listened to them? What if I had let the whispers sway me? What if I had let them convince me that you weren't enough?" His voice broke. "I would have missed this. I would have missed him. I would have missed everything that matters."
You moved closer, resting your head against his shoulder, looking down at your son together.
Aurion slept peacefully, his tiny chest rising and falling, one small fist pressed against his cheek.
"You never wavered," you reminded him. "Not once. Even when I doubted myself, you never doubted me."
"Because I know you," Valarr said simply. "I know your heart. I know your soul. I know that you are the best thing that has ever happened to me, and I will spend the rest of my life making sure you know it too."
Summary: In which you save the realm by fucking your husband
TW: SMUT, Voyeurism
WC: 13K
The royal box had been an exquisite torture.
All day, you had sat among the lords and ladies of the Reach, the velvet cushion beneath you doing absolutely nothing to comfort the restless ache that had taken root deep in your belly. The sun had beaten down on the tourney grounds, the air thick with the smell of trampled grass and churned earth and the distant roasting meat from the feast-fires, but you had barely noticed any of it. Your attention had been fixed entirely, hopelessly, on the black knight.
Your husband. Every time his black destrier thundered down the lists, every time his black armor caught the sunlight and gleamed like polished obsidian, every time his lance shattered against an opponent's shield in an explosion of splinters, you felt it in the pit of your stomach, a clench, a slow molten roll of heat that had nothing to do with the summer sun. Your fingers gripped the arms of your chair. Your thighs pressed together beneath your gown, shifting against the wetness that had gathered there. Your breath came shallow and quick.
He had unhorsed three men before midday. Three, and each time he rode past the royal box you could have sworn he lingered just a moment longer when his eyes found yours. Blue and brown. The gods had given him one eye the color of a summer sky and the other the rich dark of freshly turned earth, and you were absolutely certain they had done it specifically to ruin you.
You shifted in your seat for the dozenth time, squeezing your thighs together in a vain attempt to relieve the throbbing pressure that had built between them. Lady Webber, seated beside you, leaned over with concern in her broad, honest face.
"Are you quite well, Your Grace? You look rather flushed."
"Perfectly well," you managed, not looking away from the grounds. Valarr was circling his horse at the far end, preparing for another pass. The way he sat in the saddle, the way his thighs gripped the horse's flanks, thick muscle flexing beneath dark steel, the easy confidence in his posture, the way he tucked his helm under his arm and ran a gauntleted hand through his hair, that silver gold streak on the left side catching the lightâ
"The heat," you added, gripping the arm of your chair until your knuckles went white. "It is only the heat."
But it was not the heat. It was remembering how those thighs felt when they were gripping your hips instead of a saddle. It was knowing exactly what that controlled violence looked like when it was unleashed in your bedchamber, when he was buried deep inside you and that same focused intensity was bent entirely on drawing scream after scream from your lips. It was the way his armor hugged his body and the way you knew every inch of what lay beneath, the lean muscle and warm skin, the trail of dark hair below his navel that you loved to follow with your tongue, the scattering of scars from a lifetime of training, the way his stomach tensed and jumped when you dragged your nails across it. It was knowing exactly what that body could do, the sounds it could wring from you, the positions it could fold you into, the seemingly endless stamina that left you wrecked and trembling and begging for more. And being forced to sit in polite company, smiling and nodding and making idle conversation, while he displayed all that power and grace and leashed violence before half the Reachâ
By the time the final tilt was called and the tourney began to wind down for the day, you were fairly vibrating out of your skin. Your smallclothes were soaked through. You had imagined, in vivid and increasingly creative detail, at least seven different ways you wanted him to fuck youâbent over the railing of the royal box, on your knees in the shadow of the stands, on your back in the trampled grass with the roar of the crowd still echoing in your earsâand you had reached the point where you no longer trusted yourself to speak to anyone without your voice cracking.
So when the crowds dispersed and the lords and ladies began drifting, you did not drift with them. You walked straight toward the black and red pennants that marked the Targaryen tents.
His squire was a boy of perhaps five and ten, all gangly limbs and anxious eyes, and he was already struggling with the straps of Valarr's vambraces when you swept through the canvas flap.
You did not break stride. "Out."
The boy's eyes went wide as saucers. "Your Grace, I was justâ"
"Now."
He fled. The tent flap barely had time to settle before you turned to face your husband.
Valarr stood in the center of the pavilion, still armored, his helm already discarded on a nearby table. His odd eyes found you immediately, and the corner of his mouth curved into a slow, knowing smile, the smile of a man who knew exactly what he had been doing all day.
"My wife," he said. His voice was slightly hoarse from shouting commands over the din of the lists, and the roughness of it sent a shiver straight down your spine, straight to the aching place between your legs. "You dismissed my squire rather abruptly. Have I done something to offend?"
You crossed the space between you in four strides. The tent was warm, lit by a half-dozen candles that cast dancing shadows across the canvas walls. The air smelled of leather and oiled metal and the faint, clean undertone of his sweat, that particular scent of him that made you want to press your nose to the base of his throat and breathe him in until you were dizzy with it.
"You have been offending me all day," you said, stopping so close that the steel of his cuirass nearly brushed your bodice. Your voice came out low and rough, barely more than a growl. "Parading around on that horse. Riding like that. Looking like that. Do you have any idea what you put me through? Do you have any idea how many times I had to press my thighs together just to keep from moaning aloud in front of half the nobility of the Reach?"
His brows lifted slightly, but the smile did not leave his lips. It deepened, if anything, the corner of his mouth curling in a way that was positively smug. "I was competing in a tourney. It is generally what one does at a tourney."
"You know exactly what you were doing. Every time you rode past the royal box, you looked at me. You knew I was watching."
"Enlighten me," he said, his voice dropping into something darker, more dangerous. "What was I doing?"
You reached up and pressed your palms flat against his breastplate. The metal was warm from the sun and from the heat of his body beneath, and you could feel the faint vibration of his heartbeat through the steel, steady, strong, slightly faster than it should be.
"You were magnificent," you said, your voice dropping to barely a whisper. "Every pass. Every impact. When you unhorsed Lord Ashford's cousin, when that lance hit true and he went flying, I thought I might scream. Do you know what it does to a woman, watching her husband ride full tilt with a lance in his hand, fearless, perfect, everyone in the stands cheering his name? Do you know what it does to me, Valarr, watching you dominate every man who dares ride against you, knowing that same ferocity is going to be focused on me the moment we're alone?"
His mismatched eyes had gone dark, his breath had changed, grown shallower. He did not move. "Tell me."
"It makes me wet," you said, blunt and shameless, your eyes locked on his. "It makes me ache. It makes me want to drag you off that horse by your hair and have my way with you in the dirt in front of everyone. I was ready to climb over the railing and ride you right there in the royal box. In front of Lord Ashford. In front of Lady Webber. In front of the gods and every noble house of the Reach. I would have let them all watch. I was so far gone I would not have cared." His breath caught. Through his breeches, you could see the growing evidence of his arousal, the thick outline of his cock pressing against the fabric.
"You are playing a dangerous game, wife."
"I am not playing." You pressed closer, your breasts flattening against the hard steel of his cuirass, your lips nearly brushing his chin. "I have been sitting in soaked smallclothes for hours, thinking about your cock. Thinking about how it feels when you first push inside me. Thinking about how you stretch me, how you fill me so completely I forget my own name. Thinking about the sounds you make when you're closeâthat raw, broken groan you try to swallow. I have been thinking about it all day, Valarr. And I am done thinking."
He kissed you. It was deep, hungry and consuming, his mouth slanting over yours with a ferocity that matched everything you had been feeling all day. His tongue swept into your mouth, claiming, demanding, and you moaned into the kiss as his free hand found the small of your back and pulled you hard against him. Your body pressed flush against the unyielding plane of his armored chest, the contrast of cool steel against your heated breasts making your nipples tighten to aching peaks. You gasped into his mouth, and he swallowed the sound, his tongue sliding against yours in a rhythm that was pure filthy promise.
You fisted your hands in the collar of his gambeson, pulling him impossibly closer, and he made a sound low in his throat that vibrated through his chest and into yours. You could taste the salt of his sweat, the faint sweetness of the watered wine he must have drunk between tilts, the heat of him. Your body was on fire. Every inch of your skin felt electric, alive, aching. The slick heat between your thighs had grown almost unbearable; you could feel it on your inner thighs, could feel how ready you were for him.
"Help me," you gasped against his mouth, your fingers fumbling with the buckles at his shoulders. "The pauldrons. Get them off. Get everything off. I need to feel your skin. I need your cock inside me before I lose my mind entirely."
He pulled back just enough to look at you, his chest heaving, his lips red and slightly swollen from your kisses. His eyes were blazing with a hunger that made your knees weak.
"Tell me what you want," he said, his voice a rasp that sent heat pooling low in your belly. "Exactly. Tell me every detail, and I will give it to you."
"I want you on your back in this tent." You wrenched one pauldron free and let it drop to the ground with a heavy thud. "I want to feel every inch of you against me without this damned steel in the way." The second pauldron followed. "I want to strip you bare and put my mouth on every part of you. Your throat. Your chest. Your stomach." Your fingers moved to the buckles of his cuirass as you spoke, your voice growing breathier with each word. "I want to take your cock in my mouth and feel you get harder on my tongue. I want to taste you, Valarr. I want to taste your release when you spend down my throat. And then I want you on top of me, driving into me so hard I cannot walk tomorrow. I want to feel you come inside me, hot and deep, filling me up until I can feel it dripping down my thighs. I want you to ruin me, Valarr Targaryen, until neither of us can remember our own names."
He stared at you for a long moment, his breathing ragged, his eyes burning. The bulge in his breeches was straining against the fabric now, thick and unmistakable. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse.
"You," he said, the word barely more than a growl, "are the most infuriating, intoxicating, utterly maddening woman I have ever known."
"Less talking," you breathed, reaching for the final buckles of his cuirass. "More undressing. I want to see what I do to you. I want to see how hard you are for me."
You made quick work of the breastplate, your fingers moving with a speed born of pure, desperate need. The steel plate hit the ground with a clang that echoed through the tent, and then you were pressing yourself against his gambeson, the padded fabric still damp with his sweat, the heat of his body seeping through to meet your own. Your hands slid down his chest, over the hard planes of muscle, down his stomach, lowerâ
"Gods," you whispered, your forehead dropping to his chest as your palm pressed against the thick ridge of his erection through his breeches. He was hard as iron, hot even through the fabric, and he twitched against your touch. "Do you feel what you do to me? Do you have any idea how much I want you?"
His handsâstill gauntleted, curse himâslid down your sides, over your hips, and settled on the curve of your backside. He pulled you flush against him, grinding his hardness against your belly, and there was no hiding what this was doing to him. The thick length of him pressed against you, and you whimpered at the feel of it, at the promise of being filled.
"I have some idea," he murmured against your hair, his voice strained. "I have been half-hard since the first tilt, watching you watch me. Do you know how difficult it is to ride with a cockstand?"
"Then why are you still wearing so many clothes?"
You dropped to your knees. His hands hovered in the air where you had been standing, and he looked down at you with an expression that was equal parts shock and raw, naked want. His cock was at eye level now, straining obscenely against his breeches, and you could see the damp spot where his arousal had already begun to leak through the fabric.
"You are kneeling in front of me." His voice was barely a whisper, rough and desperate. "In a tourney tent. Where anyone could walk in. Where anyone could hear you when I make you scream."
"Then you had better be quick about deciding what comes next." You pulled one greave free and started on the other, your fingers brushing deliberately against the inside of his thigh as you worked. He shuddered. "Though I should warn youâI'm not feeling particularly quiet tonight. And I'm not feeling particularly quick. When you finally put your cock inside me, I intend to take my time."
The second greave came off. You stayed on your knees, your hands resting on his armored thighs, your face tilted up to meet his gaze, your lips parted and your eyes heavy-lidded with want. The candles flickered. The shadows danced. And Valarr Targaryen looked down at you like you were the most terrifying, wonderful thing he had ever seen like he wanted to devour you whole.
"Stand up," he said, his voice rough as gravel.
"Make me."
He reached down and pulled you to your feet in one motion, his hands under your arms, and then his mouth was on yours again and you were being walked backward toward the cot in the corner of the tent. Your back hit the tent pole, and he pressed himself against you, one armored thigh sliding between your legs and grinding against your aching cunt through the layers of your gown. The pressure was maddening, not nearly enough, and the sound you made was absolutely shameless, a desperate, keening moan that would have been heard three tents away if anyone had been listening.
"Yes," you gasped, arching against him, rolling your hips to grind against his thigh. "Yes, please, yes, right there, gods, Valarrâ"
He kissed down your throat, his teeth grazing your pulse point, his tongue soothing the sting, and you dug your fingers into his shoulders through the gambeson, your nails biting into the fabric.
"I want you," you said, the words tumbling out of you like a prayer. "I have wanted you since the first tilt. I have wanted you since I woke up this morning wet and aching from dreams of you. I want you all the time, Valarr, every moment of every day. I want your mouth on my breasts. I want your fingers inside me. I want your cock so deep I can feel you in my throat. I want you to fuck me until I cannot remember my own name, until my voice is hoarse from screaming yours, until I am so full of your seed that it takes days to stop feeling it drip out of meâ"
He stopped. His mouth stilled against your collarbone. His thigh stopped its maddening pressure between your legs. His hands, which had been sliding down to the small of your back, went still.
"Whatâ"
"My love."
The tone made you freeze. It was tender. Affectionate. Entirely too calm for a man whose cock had been pressed against your belly moments ago, hard and wanting.
You looked up. His eyes were soft now, the hunger banked, replaced by something warm and unbearably fond. And lurking in the corner of his mouth was that quirk, that maddening, insufferable little quirk that meant he was about to say something you did not want to hear.
"I am so very tired."
The words did not register at first. You blinked, your body still humming with unspent desire, your cunt still clenching around nothing, your lips still tingling from his kiss. "What?"
"The armor. You cannot imagine. I have been carrying it all day in this heat. Every muscle in my body aches. My shoulders. My back. My..." He gestured vaguely downward. "...everything."
"I will soothe your muscles. I will soothe every part of you. That is precisely what I am trying to do." You pressed your palm against the hard length of him through his breeches to emphasize your point. He was still rock hard. Still twitching at your touch. "This does not feel like a man who is too tired."
His smile widened. He was enjoying this. You could see it in his eyes, the way the blue one sparkled with mischief and the brown one warmed with suppressed laughter. He was enjoying this entirely too much.
"You are very sweet," he said, and leaned down to press a kiss, soft, chaste, utterly infuriating, to your forehead. Then he gently removed your hand from his erection, his fingers wrapping around your wrist with infuriating tenderness. "But I fear I would be poor company. I can barely keep my eyes open. A man of two and twenty is not so spry as he once was. The spirit is willing, but the flesh..." He heaved a dramatic sigh. "The flesh is very, very tired."
"You are two and twenty. And your flesh is very clearly willing."
"An old two and twenty. The joints begin to protest. It is a terrible thing. The maesters have warned me about overexertion."
"Valarr Targaryen, I swear to every god in the Seven Kingdoms, if you do not put your cock inside me right nowâ"
"Perhaps tomorrow, my love." He stepped back, "After a proper night's rest. When my strength has returned. Then I will be able to give you the attention you deserve." His voice dropped, his eyes sweeping over your flushed face and heaving chest and the visible stiffness of your nipples through your gown. "Every. Single. Bit. Of it. I will take my time with you. Make you scream until you cannot remember your own nameâwasn't that what you wanted? But I will only do it properly when I am not about to collapse from exhaustion."
He was already moving toward the armor stand, where a simple dark tunic and breeches lay waiting. You stood frozen in place, surrounded by the pieces of his discarded armor, your body still humming with unspent desire, your soaked smallclothes clinging to your heated flesh, your lips still tingling from his kiss.
"You cannot be serious."
He pulled the tunic over his head with deliberate, unhurried movements, covering the sweat-damp linen of his gambeson. He turned back to you, looking for all the world like a man without a care, his hair still tousled and that silver streak falling roguishly across his brow. The bulge in his breeches hadâthrough what must have been monumental effort of willâbegun to subside.
"I am always serious," he said, utterly failing to keep the mirth from his voice. "I shall send for wine. Something cool, to help with the heat. You look rather flushed, my love. And your breathing is quite... irregular. Have you been sitting in the sun? Perhaps you should lie down. In the cot. Alone. To recover your strength."
Your mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
"I have not been sitting in the sun. I have been sitting in the royal box watching my husband ride like a god of war and thinking about how much I wanted him to bend me over the railing andâ"
"Careful," he said, raising a finger, his expression one of mock concern. "The canvas walls, remember? And I am so very weary I might faint at the details. Think of my delicate constitution."
You picked up the nearest objectâa gauntletâand hurled it at his head.
He caught it. One handed. Without looking away from your face. The man had been trained by knights of the Kingsguard since he could walk, and he caught it like it was a ball tossed by a child. He turned the gauntlet over in his hands, his smile widening into something that was pure, unrepentant mischief.
"Tomorrow, my love," he said, his voice dropping into something lower, something that promised and teased in equal measure. His eyes swept over you, lingering on your parted lips, on the flush that extended down your throat, on the way your hands were still clenched into fists at your sides. "I give you my word. Tomorrow, I will make you forget your own name. Tomorrow, I will have you in every way you described and several you have not yet imagined. Tomorrow, you will be so thoroughly satisfied that you will not be able to look at a tourney field without blushing for the rest of your life."
"Tomorrow," you repeated, your voice flat with disbelief and frustration andâgods help youâreluctant amusement.
"Tomorrow," he confirmed. And then he was at the tent flap, lifting the canvas, pausing just long enough to look back over his shoulder. His eyes raked over you one last time, and there was a flash of heat in themâa glimpse of the hunger he was so carefully restraining, a promise that he was suffering too, that every moment of this tease was costing him as much as it was costing you.
"Dream of me," he said, his voice a low, rough murmur that sent one last shiver down your spine. "Dream of what I'm going to do to you. In detail. I want a full report in the morning." And he winked.
The canvas fell closed behind him. You stood alone in the silence of the tent, surrounded by candlesmoke and the scent of him, your body still aching and your pride still smarting and your heart still racing and your cunt still throbbing with the orgasm he had denied you.
"Tomorrow," you muttered to the empty air, already beginning to smile despite yourselfâa slow, predatory smile that promised retribution. "We shall see about tomorrow, my prince. You have made a grave tactical error. You have given me an entire night to plan." And somewhere outside the tent, you could have sworn you heard him laugh.
â
You woke to heat, a deep, liquid heat that was already pooling low in your belly, already drawing your thighs apart with an urgency that bordered on involuntary, already dragging you up from the depths of a dream you couldn't quite remember, a dream full of shadows and steel and a voice murmuring promises against your skin. Your body was responding before your mind could catch up, back arching slightly off the furs, fingers twisting in the linen sheets, a soft, confused sound escaping your lips that was half whimper, half question.
And then you felt it. The slow, deliberate, devastating drag of a tongue through your most intimate folds.
Your eyes flew open with a gasp that tore from somewhere deep in your chest. The world was waking up around you, ordinary and routine and utterly indifferent to the fact that beneath the furs, between your legs, was a head of brown hair with a distinctive streak of silver gold threading back from the temple like a bolt of lightning frozen in time.
"Valarrâ" His name came out as a croak, half confusion, half moan, because his tongue had just circled the sensitive bud at the apex of your sex with devastating precision and your hips bucked entirely without your permission, your thighs clamping briefly against his ears before he pressed them back open with firm, unhurried hands. "Whatâwhat are youâisn't itâoh godsâ"
He did not lift his head. He did not stop. He did not even acknowledge that you had spoken beyond a low, pleased hum that vibrated against your cunt and made your eyes roll back. His tongue flattened and dragged upward through your folds with a languid, unhurried thoroughness that spoke of a man who had all the time in the world and intended to use every single moment of it to reduce you to incoherence. One of his hands was splayed across your lower belly, holding you steady, pinning you to the cot with a casual possession that made your blood sing. The other was hooked under your right thigh, fingers dimpling your flesh, keeping you spread open for his attentions with an implacable gentleness that was somehow more devastating than force.
"Good morrow," he murmured against your cunt, the words shaped directly into your slick, heated flesh, and the vibration of his voice made you gasp and clutch at the furs beneath you.
"Isn't itâ" You lost the words entirely as his tongue slipped inside you, just briefly, a teasing thrust that curled upward and made your hips roll in a helpless, seeking rhythm. "Isn't it a jousting day? Theâthe listsâyou should beâyou should be preparingâ"
He hummed against you, a low sound of consideration, and the vibration coupled with the slow circle his tongue was tracing around your pearl nearly made you forget your own name, let alone your question. "The jousts have been suspended."
Your mind, hazy with pleasure and sleep and the insistent, expert pressure of his mouth, struggled to process this information with anything resembling coherence. "Suspended? Why would theyâoh, right there, don't stop, please don't stopâwhy would they suspend the jousts?"
"The Bright Prince," Valarr said, pausing just long enough to press a hot, open mouthed kiss to the inside of your thigh, his stubble rasping against your sensitive skin and leaving a trail of pleasant friction in its wake, "has demanded a trial of seven."
"WhoâAerion?" You propped yourself up on your elbows, looking down at him through the disheveled curtain of your hair. His mismatched eyes gleamed up at you from between your thighs, one the deep blue of sapphires, one the warm brown of aged whisky, both filled with a lazy, predatory satisfaction that made your stomach flip and your cunt clench around nothing. "Aerion demanded a trial of seven? Against whom? Why? What in the seven hells happened while I was asleep?"
Valarr sighed, a warm exhale against your slick, swollen folds that made you shiver from your crown to your toes. "A hedge knight. Ser Duncan the Tall. He struck Aerion to defend a puppeteer girl, and now my dear cousin demands blood and calls it justice." He pressed another kiss to your mound, the tip of his nose nudging against the thatch of curls there. "He has accused the hedge knight of assault and the knight has demanded a trial by combat. Aerion, being Aerion, has escalated it to a trial of seven."
"That'sâthat's absurd, Aerion isâ" You gasped sharply as his tongue dipped back into you, long and slow and curling, cutting off your outrage with a wave of pleasure that made your elbows tremble. "Valarr, I'm trying toâto care about this, it's important, you must let meâ"
"I am between your legs," he said, his voice muffled against your cunt, his tongue tracing idle patterns through your folds that made rational thought nearly impossible, "with my tongue inside my wife, and she is asking about my cousin."
"You cannot simplyâwake me up like this and expect me not toâto have questions about a trial of seven whenâoh, godsâ"
He had found your pearl again, circling it with the very tip of his tongue, a feather light touch that somehow managed to be devastating in its precision. Your elbows gave out. You collapsed back against the pillows with a moan that was frankly indecent, one hand flying to his hair, your fingers threading through the brown strands and brushing against that distinctive silver streak that marked him as surely as a banner marked an army. He made a sound of deep, masculine approval against your flesh and redoubled his efforts, his tongue working you with a rhythm that was devastatingly precise, alternating between broad, flat strokes that covered your entire cunt and focused, pointed flicks against your pearl that made sparks dance behind your closed eyelids.
"I am trying," he said between strokes, his voice low and rough with satisfaction, "to apologize for yesterday. For my behavior. For my cruelty."
"You are trying," you managed, your voice breathless and trembling and utterly lacking the sharp edge you wanted it to have, "to distract me from being angry with you. You're trying to lick your way out of the trouble you caused."
He paused, just for a moment, and looked up at you with an expression of mock-innocence that was entirely undermined by the slickness glistening on his lips and chin. "Is it working?"
Your hips were rolling against his mouth now, your body chasing its pleasure without any input from your pride, without any regard for your dignity. "No. Absolutely not. I am stillâI am still furious with youâ"
He sucked your pearl between his lips, gentle at first and then not, a sudden increase in pressure that bordered on overwhelming, and the sound you made was absolutely humiliating, a keening, desperate cry that you would deny to your dying day.
"You sound furious," he agreed, releasing you with a wet, obscene pop, his voice dripping with satisfaction and something deeper, something hungrier.
"You left me," you gasped, your fingers tightening in his hair, pulling just hard enough to make him hiss. "You left me aching and desperate and so wet I was dripping down my own thighs, and you winked at me like it was a game, like I was a piece on a cyvasse board you'd already capturedâ"
"It was a game." He dragged his tongue through your folds again, slow and thorough, from your entrance all the way up to your pearl, savoring you like a man savoring the finest vintage. "A very enjoyable game. One I intend to play again."
"For you."
"For both of us." He pressed a kiss to your mound, then another just below your navel, his stubble scraping pleasantly against your skin, leaving a trail of tingling sensation. "I believe the terms of our game included a promise for tomorrow. And tomorrow, my sweet wife, has arrived. I woke before dawn thinking about this. Thinking about you. Thinking about how you looked when I left youâflushed and furious and so gods-damned beautiful I nearly turned around and took you right there on the floor of my tent."
You yanked his hair. Not hard enough to truly hurt, but hard enough to pull his mouth away from where you desperately, desperately wanted it. He looked up at you, his lips glistening with your arousal, his chin wet, his eyes dark and amused and slightly reproachful at being denied his prize.
"I have not forgiven you," you informed him, proud of how steady your voice sounded despite the fact that your thighs were trembling and your cunt was clenching around nothing and every nerve in your body was screaming for him to put his mouth back where it belonged.
"So you've said." He tried to lower his head again, but you tightened your grip, keeping him in place. A flash of something dangerous crossed his features, annoyance, yes, but also interest. He liked this. He liked you fighting back. It was, after all, why he had married you.
"You teased me," you said, and now your voice was steadier, fueled by the righteous indignation that had kept you awake half the night. "You worked me up until I was practically beggingâuntil I was saying please and Valarr and I need youâuntil I would have done anything, anything you asked, just to feel you inside me. And then you patted my head like a well-behaved hound and sent me to bed alone, aching and empty and so frustrated I thought I might scream."
"I kissed your forehead."
"Worse." You glared down at him, though the effect was somewhat undermined by the fact that you were still flushed and panting and spread open beneath him, your slickness still visible on his face, your nipples peaked and visible through the thin linen of your shift. "It was a forehead kiss. The forehead kiss of a man who knows exactly what he's doing and is enjoying it far, far too much." You leaned up slightly, your grip still tight in his hair. "Do you have any idea how long I lay awake last night after you left me? Do you have any idea what I did, alone in your tent, thinking about you?"
His smile widened, slow and wolfish. "Tell me."
"Hours." You released his hair, letting your hand trail down the side of his face, tracing the sharp line of his jaw, the proud cheekbones, the slightly too full lips that were still wet with you. "Hours, Valarr. Thinking about what I was going to do to you today. Planning. Scheming. Touching myself in the dark while I imagined all the ways I would make you pay for your cruelty."
His eyes darkened further, the pupils swallowing the irises. "You touched yourself."
"I did. Twice. It wasn't enough." You let your hand drop back to the furs. "Nothing I did to myself was enough. That's what you did to me. You ruined me for my own fingers, and then you left me alone."
"Planning and scheming," he murmured, pressing a kiss to your hip bone that was almost reverent. "And touching yourself in the dark. That sounds very industrious. What did you decide? What punishment have you devised for your wicked husband?"
"I decided you need to suffer the way I suffered." You watched his face carefully, saw the flicker of interest, of anticipation. "I decided I would make you want me so badly you couldn't think straight, and then I would deny you. I decided I would tie you to this cot and touch myself in front of you and let you watch, and watch, and watch, and never once let you inside me. I decided I would make you beg the way you made me beg."
He was very still now, his breath warm against your hip, his eyes fixed on your face with an intensity that made your heart race. "That would be a cruel punishment indeed."
"You taught me cruelty. You should be proud."
"I am." He nipped at the sensitive skin just above your hip bone, hard enough to make you jump and gasp. "I am so very proud. My wife, a quick study in vengeance." His tongue soothed the sting of his teeth. "But I notice you are not tying me to the cot. You are not touching yourself. You are not denying me anything. You are lying here, spread open, wet and wanting, letting me taste you."
You smiled. It was not a sweet smile. "Where is your armor?" you asked.
Valarr blinked. The question was so incongruous, so utterly unrelated to the situation at hand, his face still wet with you, your thighs still spread, his cock visibly straining against his smallclothes, that for a moment he simply stared at you.
"What?"
"Your armor. The black plate. The gauntlets. The gorget. All of it. Where is it?"
"In the tourney tent, I imagine." He spoke slowly, warily, as if you were a strange beast that might bite him. "My squire would have cleaned and laid it out for inspection, as he does every morning before a day ofâ" He stopped. His eyes narrowed with suspicion and something that might have been dawning comprehension. "Why?"
You released his hair and sat up slowly, pushing yourself back against the pillows, drawing your knees together with a deliberate, pointed movement that made his eyes flick down to your thighs with undisguised regret. You looked at him with an expression you had been perfecting since last night, sweet on the surface, sharp beneath, like honey hiding a blade.
"Take me there."
"To the tourney tent?" His voice had gone very careful, very controlled.
"To the tourney tent. Where your armor is. Where your squire has laid it out so carefully."
His brows drew together, a furrow appearing between them. "You want me to stopâ" he glanced meaningfully at your thighs, at the evidence of his attentions still glistening on your skin, at the obvious, aching hard on tenting his smallclothesâ "this, and walk across the tourney grounds in full view of half the realm, to my tent, because you want to see my armor?"
"I want you to put it on."
The words hung in the air between you like a challenge, like a thrown gauntlet.
Something flickered in his eyes. "You want me to put on my armor."
"Not all of it." You let your voice drop into something lower, something darker, something that made his pupils dilate and his breath catch almost imperceptibly. "Just enough. Just the pieces I want."
He was silent for a long moment, studying your face, reading the intention there. Then he sat back on his heels, still kneeling between your legs, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The gesture was casual, almost lazy, but his eyes had gone very dark.
"You want me to fuck you in my armor." It was not a question.
"I want you to finish what you started yesterday." You sat up fully, drawing your knees together, letting the shift fall down over your thighs, letting him see that you were still in control of this situation despite the fact that your thighs were still slick and your heart was still racing and your cunt was still aching with the emptiness he had left. "You were in your armor yesterday. Every time I looked at youâon the field, in the tent, standing over me with your gauntlets dripping waterâyou were in your armor. Every fantasy I had last night, alone in this bed with my fingers between my legs, you were wearing your armor. I imagined the sound you would make when you walked toward me. I imagined the cold of the metal against my bare skin. I imagined you taking me in your armor, still sweating from the tourney, still smelling of leather and victory." She paused, watching his face, watching the way his jaw had tightened and his hands had curled into fists against his thighs. "And then you took it off piece by piece and left me standing in the wreckage of it while you walked away in a plain linen tunic like a common hedge knight."
"Like a hedge knight." His voice was flat, but there was an edge to it now, a sharpening.
"A hedge knight would have stayed and finished what he started. A hedge knight would have put his mouth to better use. A hedge knight would have fucked me until I couldn't walk straight instead of patting me on the head and sending me to bed." You raised an eyebrow at him, letting the challenge hang in the air. "So yes. I want you in your armor. I want to feel the steel against my bare skin. I want to hear it creak and clank while you move inside me. I want to remember exactly who I marriedâthe prince who rides like a god of war and fucks like one too, not the man who is too tired and too smug and too busy playing games to bed his wife properly." You tilted your head, letting your gaze drift pointedly to the obvious bulge in his smallclothes. "Unless, of course, you are still tired. Unless yesterday's exertions were too much for you. In which case, I am sure there is a cot somewhere you can nap on while I find other, more satisfying ways to amuse myself at this trial of seven."
The threat landed exactly as intended.
His jaw tightened until you could see the muscle jumping beneath the skin. His hands flexed against his thighs, the knuckles whitening. His breath came faster, his chest rising and falling beneath the thin linen of his tunic. And when he spoke, his voice was a low, dangerous rumble that seemed to vibrate in the very air between you, a sound that sent a shiver straight to your core and made your nipples tighten to aching points.
"Get dressed."
You smiled. Sweetly. Innocently. The smile of a woman who had just won the first tilt of the day and was already planning the second.
"As my prince commands," you murmured, and swung your legs over the side of the cot with deliberate, unhurried grace.
He caught your wrist before you could stand. The movement was so fast you barely saw itâone moment he was kneeling on the bed, the next he was pressed against your back, his chest against your spine, his mouth at your ear, his fingers wrapped around your wrist like a manacle of warm, living steel. You could feel every inch of him through the thin linen of his tunic, the hard planes of his chest, the ridged muscles of his abdomen, and pressing insistently against the curve of your lower back, the hot, rigid length of his cock, still trapped in his smallclothes, still achingly hard.
"You are going to regret this," he murmured, his lips brushing the sensitive shell of your ear, his breath warm and uneven, his voice a promise and a threat and a prayer all tangled together. "When I get you in that tent, surrounded by my armor, with no one to hear you scream and nowhere to run and nothing between us but steel and needâyou are going to regret every single moment of bratty defiance you have given me this morning. Every sharp word. Every wicked look. Every time you pulled my hair and stopped my tongue and denied me what is mine."
His free hand slid around your waist, palm flat against your belly, fingers splayed wide, pulling you back against him so you could feel exactly how hard he was, exactly how much he wanted you.
"I am going to bend you over my shield," he continued, his voice dropping to a whisper that was somehow more terrifying than a shout, "and fuck you until you cannot remember your own name. I am going to take you against the armor stand and let the whole camp hear you scream. I am going to put you on your knees in the middle of my war gear and use that clever mouth until tears are running down your cheeks and you are begging meâbegging me, the way you made me beg with your eyes yesterdayâto let you come. And I am not going to let you. Not until you have apologized. Not until you have taken back every insolent word. Not until you have admitted, out loud, that you are mine and that no one elseâno hedge knight, no high lord, no god on earth or in the heavensâcould ever satisfy you the way I do."
His teeth grazed your earlobe, a sharp, bright spark of sensation that made you gasp and arch against him involuntarily.
"Do you understand me?"
You turned your head just enough to meet his eyes. Blue and brown. Burning with a fire that matched your own. The dragon's eyes, you thought, and felt a thrill of something that was half fear and half desperate, aching want.
"Prove it," you said, your voice steady despite the trembling in your thighs. "Put on the armor. Show me the prince I married. And then maybeâmaybeâI'll let you have what you want."
You pulled your wrist free with a sharp twist, stood, and began to dress with hands that only trembled a little. Behind you, you heard him exhale, a long, slow breath, the breath of a man steadying himself for battle.
â
Valarr walked a half-step behind you the entire way, close enough that the heat radiating from his body seeped through the thin fabric of your gown like a fever you couldn't shake, close enough that when you passed through a narrow gap between two pavilions his hand found the curve of your backside and squeezed hard enough to make you stumble mid stride, his fingers digging into the soft flesh with proprietary confidence before delivering a sharp, stinging slap that echoed in the confined space. You shot him a glare over your shoulder, heat flooding your cheeks. He smiled back, utterly unrepentant, his eyes glittering with dark promise and the kind of smug satisfaction that made you want to slap him and kiss him in equal measure.
The camp churned with the news of the trial of seven like a kicked anthill. Everywhere you looked, men and women clustered in tight knots, speaking in low, urgent voices that hummed with equal parts dread and morbid fascination. You caught fragments as you passed, snippets of conversation that floated past your ears barely registeredâ"Aerion Brightflame," spoken with the particular revulsion reserved for mad dogs, and "the hedge knight, seven feet if he's an inch, and the Reachmen have flocked to his banner," and "who in the Seven Hells will stand for the accuser against a prince of the blood?"âbut the words washed over you like water over stone. Your focus had narrowed to a single point, a lodestone pulling you inexorably forward: the black and red pennants of the Targaryen tourney tent, snapping and twisting in the morning breeze ahead, their fabric tongues of dragonfire against the pale blue sky.
His squire was waiting outside, a gangly boy of perhaps fifteen with anxious eyes that darted about like startled sparrows and a perpetually worried expression etched into the soft planes of a face still waiting for its first proper shave. He straightened so abruptly when he saw you both approaching that he nearly tripped over his own feet, relief flickering across his features like sunlight breaking through storm clouds.
"Your Graceâ"
"Leave us," Valarr said, not breaking stride, not sparing the boy so much as a glance. "Stand guard. No one enters this tent. Not the hand himself. Not the High Septon. Not the Stranger incarnate. Do you understand?"
The boy's eyes went very wide, the whites showing all around the dark irises. He swallowed audibly, his prominent Adam's apple bobbing. "Yes, my prince. No one. Absolutely no one. I will guard the tent with my life. I swear it on my mother'sâ"
"See that you do."
Valarr held the tent flap open for you, the heavy canvas lifted high on his forearm, and you stepped inside, the cooler shadows of the interior washing over your flushed skin like a balm.
The space within was exactly as you remembered it from yesterday, you walked to the center of the tent, the trampled grass soft beneath your slippers, and turned to face him with deliberate slowness, letting him see the curve of your smile, the arch of your brow.
"Well, my prince," you said, your voice pitched light and teasing, a silk-wrapped needle, "shall we begin?"
He was already reaching for the gambeson draped over the stand, the padded linen garment rustling as he lifted it. "You wanted to put me in my armor. Put me in my armor. Every piece. Every buckle. Every strap."
"I want you to tell me," you said, stepping close enough that the hem of your gown brushed against his boots, taking the padded garment from his hands with deliberate slowness, your fingers dragging across his knuckles, "what you're going to do to me. Every detail. Every moment. While I dress you piece by piece."
His eyes darkened, the pupils swallowing the violet and the black alike. "You want a story?"
"I want a promise." You shook out the gambeson, holding it open for him. "I want to hear exactly what's waiting for me. Consider it... motivation to survive the day."
He slid his arms into the padded sleeves, and you stepped behind him to help guide the garment over the broad expanse of his shoulders, your fingers brushing the bare, warm skin of his arms, the corded muscle that flexed beneath your touch like a living thing. The gambeson was still cool from the night air, but beneath it, his skin was furnace-hot, radiating warmth through the padded linen. You moved around to his front and began to lace the garment closed, starting at his sternum and working your way down with excruciating slowness, your knuckles pressing against his chest with every pass of the cord, feeling the steady, accelerating thunder of his heartbeat beneath your touch.
"When I have you," he began, his voice dropping to that low, rough register that vibrated in your bones, "the first thing I am going to do is put you on your knees."
You sank down before him, not in obedience but to reach for the sabatons, kneeling at his feet to fasten the articulated steel shoes around his boots. The position was not lost on him; you watched his hands flex at his sides, the tendons standing out against the skin, watched his jaw tighten as he looked down at you kneeling before him with your hair spilling over your shoulders and your face level with his hips. "On my knees," you repeated, your voice soft and feigned innocent. "And then?"
"And then I am going to watch you take my cock out of my breeches. Slowly. No rushing, no tearing at the laces like you're unwrapping a gift. I want to see your hands on meâboth hands, your fingers wrapping around my length, your thumbs tracing the ridge of the head. I want to see your face when you first feel how hard I am for you, how much I've been aching for you since I opened my eyes this morning." His voice dropped to something barely above a growl. "I've been half-hard since I woke up thinking about the sounds you made last night. Since I tasted you on my tongue. Gods, I can still taste youâsalt and sweet and something I can't name but can't forget. It's been driving me mad all morning."
You fastened the second sabaton, your fingers steady despite the molten heat building low in your belly, spreading outward like wine spilled on silk. You reached for the first greave, the shaped steel plate cool against your palms. "Go on," you said, and your voice emerged steadier than you felt. "Tell me more."
"Then I'm going to put my hand in your hairâ" he reached down and suited the gesture to the word, his fingers threading through the hair at your crown, tightening just enough to tilt your head back, to force your gaze up to meet his, "âand guide your mouth to me. And you are going to take me as deep as you can, until your lips meet the base of my shaft and your nose presses against my belly. I want to feel the back of your throat. I want to feel you swallow around me. I want to see tears in your eyesânot from pain, but from the effort, from wanting to take all of me, from being so full of me you can barely breathe." He paused while you buckled the first greave around his shin, your fingers working the leather straps through the buckles, pulling them snug against the padded linen beneath. "But I'm not going to let you finish me that way. Not today."
"No?" You looked up at him through your lashes, your hands pausing on the second greave.
"No." The word was a growl that seemed to originate somewhere deep in his chest, rumbling through the air between you. "Today, I want to be inside you when I spend. I want to feel you come around my cock, feel you clench and pulse and cry out my name so loudly that the whole Red Keep knows who you belong to. I want to fill you up until it drips down your thighs, the way you said you wanted yesterday, the way you whispered in my ear when you thought you were being scandalous. Every word you said to me yesterdayâI remember all of it. Every filthy, beautiful, desperate word. And I intend to make every single one of them come true before the sun sets."
You rose, your body humming with anticipation like a plucked harp string, and reached for the cuirass. The black steel was cool and heavy against your palms as you lifted it from the table, the three-headed dragon crest seeming to watch you with knowing ruby eyes. You pressed the breastplate into place against his chest, and he held it there while you moved around behind him to begin fastening the side buckles. His eyes tracked you in the polished reflection of the armor, never leaving your face as your fingers worked methodically down his sides, pulling each strap through its buckle, testing each fastening with a sharp tug.
"Then I'm going to bend you over the armor stand," he said, his voice a low, dark rumble that vibrated through the steel beneath your hands, through your fingertips, into the marrow of your bones. "And I'm going to push your skirts up around your waistâslowly, so I can watch the fabric slide up the backs of your thighs, so I can see the curve of your arse inch by inch before I bare you completely. And I'm going to take you from behind, standing up, with my armor still on. You'll feel the cold steel of my cuirass against your back, hard and unyielding. You'll feel the chill of my greaves against your calves. You'll smell the metal and the leather mixed with the scent of us. But inside you, I'll be hot. Hot and hard and so deep you'll feel me in your throat, in your chest, in the very core of you."
Your breath caught in your chest like a trapped bird. Your fingers fumbled on the last buckle, the leather slipping through your grasp before you caught it again, and you heard him exhale, not quite a laugh, but something darkly satisfied, something that said he knew exactly what his words were doing to you.
"Then," he continued, relentless, merciless, "when I've had my fill of watching myself disappear inside you from behind, I'm going to carry you to the cot and put you on your back. And I'm going to take off my gauntlets so I can feel your skin with my bare hands. I'm going to hold you down, one hand between your breasts, pinning you to the mattress. And I'm going to fuck you slowly. So slowly you'll feel every inch of me, every ridge, every pulse. So slowly you'll beg me to go faster. And I won't. Not until you apologize for every bratty, insolent, maddening thing you said to me this morning."
You finished the last buckle of the cuirass with hands that trembled ever so slightlyâyou knew he could see it, could feel it in the minute vibrations transmitted through the steelâand reached for the gorget. The throat armor was shaped to cradle his neck, to protect the vulnerable hollow where his pulse beat visibly beneath the skin. "Apologize?" you managed, your voice emerging breathier than you intended, a half-octave higher than your usual register. "For what, precisely?"
"For pulling my hair when you knew it would drive me to distraction. For denying me what we both wanted because you were enjoying the game too much to end it. For threatening to find satisfaction elsewhere." His eyes burned into yours, twin flames of violet and shadow, and his voice dropped to something barely above a whisper, something that was somehow more commanding than any shout could be. "You are going to say 'I am yours, Valarr, and no one else's. My body is yours. My pleasure is yours. Everything I am is yours.' And then, and only then, will I let you come. Not a moment before. No matter how much you plead."
You swallowed hard. Your throat was dry as parchment left in the sun. "And if I refuse? If I'm stubborn and willful and refuse to give you the satisfaction?"
His smile was slow and wolfish and altogether dangerous, the kind of smile that would have made a lesser woman run for the hills. "Then I'll keep going until you don't. I can do this all day, sweetheart. I can bring you to the edge again and again and again until you forget your own name, until you forget why you were resisting in the first place, until the only word left in your vocabulary is 'please.' And then I'll make you wait a little longer, just because I can."
The gorget was in place, the final buckle secured beneath his left ear. Only the gauntlets remained on the table, and the helmâa sculpted thing of black steel with a dragon crest sweeping back from the crown like frozen fire. You reached for the gauntlets, the articulated steel fingers clicking softly against each other, but he caught your wrists in his bare hands before you could lift them.
"Leave them," he said, his voice rough as stone dragged over gravel. "I want to feel you. I've been waiting all morning to feel you."
And then his mouth was on yours. The kiss was a conquest and surrender woven together into a single act. His hands slid into your hair, tilting your head back to expose the vulnerable column of your throat before his mouth descended. His tongue swept into your mouth with a hunger that bordered on violence, tasting of the wine he'd drunk before you arrived, tasting of want and need and barely leashed desperation. The steel of his cuirass pressed cold and unyielding against your breasts through the thin fabric of your gown, and the contrast of sensations, cold metal against your front, hot mouth against your lips, hard steel against your soft flesh, soft tongue sliding against yours, made your head spin like you'd drunk an entire flagon of the Arbor gold on the table.
You kissed him back with everything you had, with every ounce of frustration and desire and desperate wanting that had been building since yesterday, since this morning, since the moment you'd first laid eyes on him. Your hands fisted in the fabric of his gambeson where it showed above the cuirass, pulling him closer, closer, until the steel was pressed so tight against you that you could feel the steel imprinting on your skin through your dress.
"Gods," you gasped against his mouth, pulling back just far enough to drag air into your burning lungs, "I want you. I want you now. Right now."
"Then have me."
He walked you backward with the steady, unstoppable momentum of a tide, his armored body a wall of heat and steel pushing against your softness, until your spine hit the armor stand. The wooden frame rattled violently, a pauldron clattering to the trampled grass with a dull thud, a vambrace following it a moment later, and then his hands were on your hips, the heat of his bare palms searing through your gown, lifting you onto the edge of the campaign table with effortless strength. Your skirts bunched around your thighs, the fabric rucking up past your knees, past midthigh, until the cool morning air kissed skin that was already flushed and feverish. His armored body pressed between your legs, the steel of his cuirass shockingly cold against the heated, sensitive skin of your inner thighs, and you wrapped your legs around his waist with a desperation that surprised you, pulling him closer, the ridges of the armor pressing into your soft flesh in ways that would leave marks, and you didn't care, you didn't care at all.
"Tell me you want this," he said, his voice ragged, his forehead pressed against yours, his breath coming in harsh pants that mingled with your own. "Tell me you want me. I need to hear you say it. I need to know this isn't justâI need to know you want this as much as I do."
"I want you," you breathed, the words spilling out of you like water from a cracked dam, unstoppable and honest and raw. "I want you all the time, every moment of every day, until it drives me to distraction. I am yours, Valarr Targaryen. I am yours and no one else's, now and always, today and tomorrow and every day after. My body is yours. My pleasure is yours. Everything I am is yours."
He kissed you again, harder, more desperately, the careful control he'd maintained all morning finally snapping like an overwound harp string. One hand left your hip and you felt him fumbling between your bodies, working at the laces of his breeches with urgent, unsteady fingers, and then he was free, and you felt the hot, hard length of him pressing against your inner thigh, leaving a trail of slick moisture against your skin.
The first press of him against your entrance made you gasp into his mouth. You were still slick from his attentions this morning, your body still aching and empty from the interrupted promise of the night before, still desperate and ready despiteâor perhaps because ofâeverything. And when he pushed inside youâone long, slow, relentless thrust that filled you completely, that stretched you in ways that walked the perfect line between pleasure and exquisite acheâyou cried out so loudly you were certain the entire camp must have heard, certain the squire outside the tent must be blushing to the roots of his hair, certain the news would spread through the tourney grounds faster than word of the trial itself.
"Yes," you sobbed, your head falling back, your nails digging into the back of his neck hard enough to leave crescents in his skin, your inner muscles clenching around the sudden, overwhelming fullness of him. "Yes, yes, yesâ"
He took you with a ferocity that drove the breath from your lungs in sharp, punched-out cries, each thrust hitting deep enough to make your vision blur at the edges. His bare hands gripped your hips, fingers digging into the soft flesh hard enough to bruise, pulling you onto him with every driving thrust, meeting your body with his own in a rhythm that was more storm than song. The armor stand rattled and creaked beneath you with the force of his movements, the remaining pieces of armor clanking against each other like discordant bells, and you had to brace one hand behind you on the table to keep from being driven backward onto the scattered steel.
The sound of it was utterly obscene, and you were past caring. The clank of steel against steel. The creak of leather straps straining. The wet, rhythmic slide of your bodies joining and parting and joining again. The raw, desperate, animal sounds tearing from your throat with every thrust, moans and gasps and half-formed words that might have been his name or might have been prayers. You wrapped your legs tighter around his waist, your ankles locking behind the small of his back, and the slight shift in angle made him hit a spot deep inside you that sent white lightning arcing up your spine, that made you scream, that made your inner muscles flutter and clench around him in involuntary spasm.
"That's it," he growled against your ear, his voice dark with satisfaction and unspent hunger. "Let them hear you. Let the whole camp hear who you belong to. Let the gods hear. I don't care. I want everyone to know."
"ValarrâValarrâI'm going toâI'm so close, I'm going toâ"
"Come for me." The command was a growl, a plea, a demand all at once. "Now. I want to feel you."
The command shattered what little control you had left. Your orgasm crashed over you like a wave in a storm, white-hot and blinding, starting somewhere deep in your core and radiating outward in pulses of pure, incandescent pleasure. You screamed his name so loudly your voice cracked and broke on the second syllable, your head thrown back, your spine arching, your body convulsing around him in rhythmic, milking pulses that drew a guttural groan from somewhere deep in his chest. The world went white at the edges, then gray, then nothing at all for a suspended moment of pure, perfect oblivion.
He followed you over the edge moments later, burying himself to the hilt inside you with a final, deep thrust, his face buried in the curve of your neck, his breath hot and ragged against your sweat-damp skin, his body shuddering with the force of his release. You felt him pulse inside youâonce, twice, three times, fourâfelt the hot, flooding spill of his seed filling you, felt it begin to drip down your thighs even before he pulled out, a slow, warm trickle that traced paths down your trembling skin.
For a long moment, neither of you moved. The tent was filled with the sound of ragged, desperate breathing, yours, his, indistinguishable from each other, two sets of lungs working in tandem. The armor stand creaked beneath you with a final, settling groan. The fallen pauldron gleamed on the grass, its polished surface now smudged with fingerprints. Somewhere in the distance, a crier was calling something about the trial of seven, his voice high and thin and utterly irrelevant, a fly buzzing at the edge of a world that had shrunk to the space between your bodies.
Valarr lifted his head from your shoulder slowly, as if it weighed more than his helm, and looked at you with those eyes still hazy with the remnants of pleasure, still dark with hunger despite everything you'd just done, still burning with something that looked terrifyingly like devotion and his lips were kiss-swollen, and there was a mark on his neck where your nails had raked across the skin, and he was the most beautiful thing you had ever seen.
"I believe," he said, his voice hoarse and scraped-raw, the words emerging between still-labored breaths, "that I owed you a proper apology. For my behavior. For my presumption. For everything."
You laughed, a breathless, exhausted, utterly satisfied sound that bubbled up from somewhere deep in your chest and emerged as something between a giggle and a sigh. The movement made him shift inside you, still half-hard, and you gasped at the oversensitive friction. "Accepted," you managed, your own voice barely more than a whisper. "Though I should warn youâif that's how you apologize, I may need to find reasons to be cross with you more often."
â
Outside the tent, the squire stood at rigid attention, his spine so straight it was on the verge of snapping, his face the color of curdled milk, his eyes fixed on the distant treeline with the desperate intensity of a man who was trying very, very hard to be somewhere else entirely. His name was Edric, he was fifteen years old, he had been in Prince Valarr's service for exactly eight months, and he was fairly certain that nothing in his life had prepared him for this.
He had heard everything. Everything. The first moan had been bad enough, a high, breathy sound that had made his ears turn pink and his gaze drop to his boots. The second moan had been worse, drawn out and trembling, followed by a rhythmic creaking that could only be the armor stand, the armor stand, gods preserve him, the very armor stand he had polished that morning, taking a structural battering it had never been designed to withstand. And then there had been words. Words. The princess had said thingsâthings he was fairly certain he should not repeat even under threat of tortureâand the prince had responded in a voice so low and rough and possessive that Edric had actually taken three involuntary steps away from the tent flap.
Now there was screaming. Not the bad kind of screaming but the kind of screaming that made his entire body flush with heat and his throat go dry and his brain very pointedly refuse to form coherent thoughts.
He was going to die. He was going to die of embarrassment right here, outside his prince's tent, and the maesters would have to invent an entirely new category of death to explain what had happened to him.
Maybe I should have become a septon, he thought miserably. Septons don't have to stand outside tents listening toâ
A particularly sharp cry rang out from within, followed by the unmistakable sound of something wooden and structural creaking in rhythmic protest. Edric squeezed his eyes shut and began mentally reciting the names of all seven aspects of the Seven. Father, Mother, Warrior, Maiden, Smith, Crone, Strangerâ
The Stranger, he felt, was particularly appropriate. He was fairly certain he was about to die of embarrassment.
"VALARRâyesâright THEREâ"
Edric opened his eyes and fixed them on a cloud that was drifting lazily across the morning sky. That was a nice cloud. Clouds were safe. Clouds did not make sounds that would haunt his dreams for the rest of his natural life.
He was so focused on the cloudâand on mentally reciting every prayer he knew, and on wondering whether it was possible to un-hear something through sheer force of willâthat he did not notice the approach of the man until a shadow fell across him and a voice spoke from approximately two feet away.
"Where is my son's armor?"
Edric jumped approximately three feet into the air and spun around with a strangled yelp that he would deny to his dying day.
Prince Baelor Breakspear stood before him.
"Y-y-your Grace." Edric's voice cracked on every syllable, pitching upward like a boy of twelve instead of a squire of fifteen. "Prince Valarr's armor isâahâit isâit is inside the tent. Yes. Inside. The tent. Where the armor is."
Baelor's eyes, the same deep blue as his son's left eye, narrowed slightly. "Are you quite well, lad? You look rather flushed."
"I am perfectly well, Your Grace. Perfectly. It is only theâthe heat. The morning heat. Very hot this morning. Unusually hot. I was justâstanding here. Guarding. As one does."
Baelor studied him for a long, uncomfortable moment, then seemed to decide that squires were simply peculiar creatures and not worth further investigation. "Good. I have need of the armor beforeâ"
His hand was already reaching for the tent flap and Edric's soul departed his body.
"Your Grace, waitâ"
Baelor stopped, his fingers an inch from the canvas. He had heard something.
A sound. A distinctly human sound. "Oh, Valarrâ" The voice from within was high and breathy and unmistakably feminine, stretched taut with something between ecstasy and desperation. "Right THEREâdon't stopâgods, don't you DARE stopâ"
Baelor Breakspear's hand froze in midair. His fingers curled inward, retreating from the canvas as though it had suddenly burst into flame.
Edric wanted to die. He wanted the earth to open up and swallow him whole. He wanted to be anywhere else in the Seven Kingdomsâthe Wall, the deserts of Dorne, the smoking ruins of Valyria itselfâanywhere but standing next to his prince's father while said prince was audibly, enthusiastically, thoroughly fucking his wife twenty feet away.
"IâYour Grace, I am underâunder very strict ordersâ" Edric's voice was barely a whisper, his face now achieving a shade of crimson that would have impressed a painter. "No one is to enter the tent. Not anyone. Not for any reason. Those wereâthose were Prince Valarr's exact words. His very exact words. He was quite specific."
Another sound from within, a rhythmic creaking, the unmistakable clank of steel against something wooden, a low, rough, guttural male groan that was absolutely, undeniably, catastrophically Prince Valarr's voice.
Baelor stood frozen outside his son's tent with his mouth slightly open and his cheeks slowly, inexorably turning the color of a summer rose.
"Valarr! VALARRâI'mâI'm going toâI'mâ"
A scream. Female. Ecstatic. Utterly, comprehensively unmistakable. It was the kind of scream that left nothing to the imaginationâthe kind of scream that painted a very detailed picture of exactly what was happening inside that tent, a picture that Edric desperately, desperately did not want to be seeing in his mind's eye.
And then, as if the scream had not been damning enough:
"VALARR! YES! YES, RIGHT THEREâFILL ME UPâDON'T STOPâ"
The silence that followed was deafening.
Baelor Breakspear stared at the tent flap as though it had personally insulted his entire bloodline. His hand, still raised, slowly lowered to his side. His jaw worked soundlessly for a momentâopening, closing, opening againâlike a fish that had been unexpectedly yanked from the water and was still trying to process its new reality.
"I..." He cleared his throat. "I... see."
"The armor," Edric whispered miserably, staring at the ground as though it might offer him salvation, "is... occupied, Your Grace."
Baelor's voice, when he finally found it, was remarkably steady for a man who had just been forced to confront the fact that his son was, at present, engaged in activities that would make a Dornish courtesan blush. "Occupied."
"Very occupied."
"Yesâlike thatâexactly like thatâoh, gods, I can feel you so deepâ"
"Extremely occupied," Edric amended, his voice barely audible. "Thoroughly occupied. Could not be more occupied if they tried."
A long, agonizing pause. From within the tent came the unmistakable sound of bodies shifting, the creak of the cotâthe cot, gods, they had moved to the cotâand a low, breathy laugh that was definitely the princess.
"Well," Baelor said, and his voice had acquired a slightly strangled quality, as though someone had their hands wrapped around his throat, "it is... it is good that they are... that the marriage is... that they are clearly very..." He paused, searching for a word that would not make this situation worse. "...compatible.""
"HarderâHARDERâI want to feel you for DAYSâ"
Baelor closed his eyes. He drew a long, slow breath through his nose. He opened his eyes again and looked at the sky as though beseeching the Seven themselves for intervention.
"Right," he said, to no one in particular. "Right. Well. I suppose... I suppose I shall find armor elsewhere. Ser Humfrey Hardyng may have something suitable. He is roughly my same proportions. Give or take. Or perhaps Lord Ashford keeps spares in the armory. For... for emergencies." He paused.
"VALARR, I'M GOING TO COME AGAINâ"
Baelor turned on his heel with the rigid, mechanical dignity of a man who had decided that the only way to survive this encounter was to pretend it had never happened. His movements were stiff, precise, the movements of a soldier retreating in good order from a battle that could not be won.
"I shall go now," he announced to the world at large. He took three long strides toward the main thoroughfare of the camp.
"Your Grace!" Edric called after him, his voice cracking with desperation. "Shall Iâshould Iâdo you want me to tell Prince Valarr that you came looking for him? When he isâwhen he is finished with hisâwith the armor?"
Baelor did not break stride. He did not slow down. He did not look back. If anything, he appeared to walk faster.
"You may tell my son," he said, his voice carrying back over his shoulder with a strained composure that was honestly quite heroic under the circumstances, "that I wish him joy of his morning. That I am pleasedâvery pleasedâthat his marriage is so... vigorous. That I am profoundly, deeply, inexpressibly glad that I did not walk into that tent. And that if either of them everâeverâspeaks of this in my presence, I shall deny it happened until my dying breath."
He paused, just for a moment, and added in a tone of immense, bone-deep exhaustion: "The Seven give me strength."
And then Prince Baelor Breakspear, the finest knight of the realm, disappeared around the corner of a supply tent with the speed of a man who had suddenly remembered an urgent appointment on the other side of the known world.
Edric stood alone, staring at the spot where his prince's father had been, listening to the sounds still emerging from within the tentâa rhythmic thumping now, another rising moan, and something that sounded distressingly like the cot beginning to splinterâand wondered if it was physically possible to die of embarrassment.
It was, he concluded, probably not possible. Which meant he would have to live with this memory for the rest of his natural life.
"OhâohâVALARRâ"
The rest of his natural life was looking to be very, very long indeed.
At least, as safe as you could get in a zombie apocalypse. The undead didnât do well in the cold, limbs with no blood froze, fell off, slowed them to an essentially inert state.
But when you didnât need to worry about horrifying, rotting, infectious dead people, you had to worry about starving.
When the news broke that the cold slowed them down, just about everyone migrated north. What that meant, though, was basically all of the stores were totally raided.
So here you were, in your fingerless gloves (that used to have fingers) digging through the wreckage of a 7-11 youâd been to before trying to find anything edible enough. Youâd take something even technically edible at this point. The gloves catch on a broken shelf, sending your frustrations over the edge. You rip them off and throw them on the ground.
It was the fifth store you had tried today. You were getting desperate enough to start trying the same places again. In the summer, you could forage in the forest, maybe even catch something in a snare if you were lucky. But right now? The forest was deader than the zombies. Youâd have to rely on something canned pre-apocalypse. Or you could die. That was looking pretty appealing right now.
Your doom-and-gloom thoughts were interrupted by a loud rattle by the door. On instinct, you ducked and pulled your knife from your belt, making yourself small behind a shelf. Sure, winter slowed them down, but that didnât mean a persistent straggler wasnât possible. You couldnât let your guard down.
You were tense, ready for any scenarioâŚuntil you heard voices. Accented voicesâat least to you in mountain-town USA.
âBloody hell, this place is a ghost townâŚâ
They were human, but you still didnât dare poke out. The apocalypse did nasty things to people. Made them compromise their morals for survival. Some people leaned into that more than others and there was no way to know.
âJust see if thereâs anything salvageable, sergeant. Map says this is the last town for a while.â
Sergeant? Military? Last you heard, they were all wiped out in the initial push-back. Not to mention they were passersby, which was incredibly rare. People in general were getting rarer by the day, but most people clung to the safety of the cold, and towns they knew. Unknowns were dangerous. Trained ones, even more so.
As far as you knew, this place didnât have a back door. But, if you could get to the front undetected, you could get the hell out of dodge, belly no less empty, but still very much alive. Youâd take that trade-off.
As they rounded the shelves, you paralleled their movements, snaking around them to stay out of sight. Curiosity was a beast of its own, though, so you risked a peek.
There were three of them, all large men. One was older with mutton chops and a bucket hat, holding a gunâa large oneâand looking around while the others dug through the mess. The other two were younger. One shorter, but no less built, with a Mohawk of all things. The other, very pretty with a Union Jack on his cap.
They all had guns (another rarity these days) and tac vests, clearly military and clearly not American. Definitely wanted to avoid them.
They seemed occupied with their search, which benefited you. They didnât seem overtly concerned with their noise levels either, so it was easier to sneak away. By the time you made it to the front door, you almost felt like it was too easy. Still looking back to make sure they hadnât seen you, you didnât notice the hulking figure in front of you. But boy did he see you.
He grabbed you by the straps of your backpack before slamming you against the brick wall of the building. OhâŚthey left a scout. You realized a little too late. He was the scariest of them all, face fully covered by a skull mask. He had to have been well over 6 feet, and struck an intimidatingly muscular figure. You were so so so incredibly fucked.
âCaptain!â His low voice cut through the silence of the outdoors, making you flinch. You canât remember the last time someone had yelled in your presence. Frankly, itâs been a while since youâd seen anyone at all.
His comrades responded rapidly, flying outside with their guns up ready to defend him. They deflated at the sight of you, whichâŚwas sort of offensive. Sure, you probably didnât look as intimidating as them, what with no gun, and you were clearly outnumbered, but still. They didnât know what you could do.
âWell, what do we have âere, Ghost?â Mutton chopsâthe captain?âasks.
Your brows furrow, âghostâŚ?â You canât help but whispering inquisitively.
His gaze turns back on you, âgot a problem?â
âNo!â You speak louder, head shaking, âno problemâŚjustâŚghost?â
The one with a Mohawk snorts before Pretty Boy stomps on his foot.
Youâre confused at the dynamic here. Are you in danger? You canât tell. Ghost still has you pinned, but they all seem very relaxed and Mohawk even seems to find humor in the situation.
âAreâŚyou gonna kill me?â You were always told that speaking your mind is best.
The captain lowers his weapon fully, hands coming to wrap around the front straps of his vest before rocking on his heels and smirking a little. You try to ignore the way it crinkles his eyes and how that makes you feel. âNo, sweetâeart, weâre not that type of folk. Just needed to make certain you werenât a threat.â
Thereâs silence for a moment. Your gaze sweeps from the captain to Ghosts hands, still wrapped around your backpack straps and pinning you to the wall, before back to the captain in a silent plea.
âAlrighâ, Ghost, release.â He lets you go, dropping you the inch he had you raised back to the ground, before backing up.
You fix your jacket and bag and clear your throat, wiping your hands down the front of your shirt. âWellâŚgentlemenâŚif thatâs allâŚâ you move to leave before the captain jerks you back by the hook on the back of your bag.
âNot so fast.â
This is getting old quick.
âWhat!â You flip to face him, exasperated and no longer caring, âwhat could I possibly doââ you stop at the sight of a granola bar in his outstretched hand. You look down at it and then back at him. Was he really offering this to you? Food was so scarce and kind people even scarcer. What did he want in return?
Before you could ask or just grab it and run, the sound of a motorcycle revving in the distance interrupted your thoughts.
You flinch hard, looking the direction it came before backtracking rapidly. âShit. Shit, shitââ
Theyâre confused but youâd be damned if you had another run in with him. Youâre about to take off when you think about them. Clearly unfamiliar with the territory and kind enough to offer you food (âŚand not kill you). The least you could do is save them from this fate.
So, you grab Pretty Boyâs bicep and tug him along with a âcome with me!â
âHey, wait a secondââ Ghost is gripping his gun and taking a defensive step forward, but you donât have time for his suspicion.
Youâre still holding Prettyâs bicep when you swoop past Mohawk and grab him too, âif you want to die thatâs fine by me!â The two in your hold are sharing a glance over your head but seem inclined to listen. You donât spare a look to see if the other two are following, if not, itâs their funeral.
Youâre pretty sure the gas station has a secondary building around back for overstock and snow supplies. Last you checked all the food was gone, but hopefully the door was still in tact. You had to be out of sight before they got here.
The sounds of motorcycles were getting closer, and your window was closing. Luckily, you could see the shed still standing with a door. You abandon the hold on the boys in favor of tugging the latch and opening the door to the shed. Looking behind you, the other two ended up following, both seeming more suspicious of you than they had when you were pressed to a wall. There wasnât time to explain, though, so you just ushered them in before following and closing the door.
It was about a quarter of the size of the actual station, with some closets and nooks and crannies, but they stayed huddled by the entryway, reluctant to venture further into the dark unknown.
You turn to face them, feeling claustrophobic at the way they are towering around you. You take off your backpack, shoving it into the chest in front of you. âHold this.â
You start to rummage through before Ghost interrupts, âare you going to explain anything?â
Your head whips up in the dark, âshh!â You pull out a flashlight and flick it on, zipping your bag up and flinging it onto your back.
You break out of the circle, giving the room a glance over to make sure no zombies had made this their hibernation home. When youâre certain itâs clear, you turn back around to answer.
âListen, thereâs only one group in town that have motorcycles and you donât want to cross their path.â
They share a dubious look with one another before shouldering their guns higher. âI think weâd be set, love.â
You scoff, âyouâre not the only ones with guns. And from the looks of it, youâre a lot nicer than they are.â
âWeâre only nice to people who look on the verge of starving. Itâs not like you pose much of a threat.â Ghost again.
Theyâre not getting it. âJust!âtrust me. Youâre passing through, right? Not from around here?â Youâre looking at each of them in the eye, trying to impress upon them how serious you are. âThese guys rolled up at the very start. People were making a community here. With walls and laws, trying to make something of this mess. They tore it all to shreds. Pretended to join the community and then opened the gates to a bunch of undead. The things that they didââ you take a breath and look away before continuing, âtheyâre not good, okay? If they saw the gear yâallâre sporting, theyâd never let you walk away.â
You can only hope you got through to them because the motorcycles are here. You turn off the flashlight and punch through their group again to peek out a gap in the door. Please donât stop here, please donât stop here, pleaseâ
They park the bikes in front of the 7-11.
âAlright! Split up, see if this fine establishment has what weâre lookinâ for!â His southern drawl makes you shudder, thinking back to how callous he was in the wake of the destruction he caused.
âHis name is Graves.â You whisper, not taking your eyes off of him. âWas U.S. military before all of thisâŚdeserted when the shit hit the fan.â
They donât ask how you know so much about him.
Suddenly you jerk back with a hissed âshit!â
Suddenly youâre turning around and pushing on their chests to get them to move. âGo, go, go! Someone is coming.â
You had seen plenty of hiding places when you were checking for undead, you just had to hope they wouldnât check too thoroughly.
You all scrambled for a place to hide, silently directing them to places you had spotted. Everyone squeezed into gaps or took closets, and then it was just you, standing in the middle of the room, spinning helplessly. Footsteps approached from outside, about to reach the door, when someone stuck their hand out and jerked you into their spot.
Ghost squeezed you into the cabinet he was in, chest pressing to yours, before shutting the door and plunging you into darkness.
âIââ you try to whisper, but he just brings his hand up to cover your mouth as the door to the shed creaks open.
Your breathing picks up as someone enters to room, sweeping a flashlight back and forth, momentarily illuminating the crack in the cabinet. You can hear his boots scrape the floor and the click of a gun as he leisurely makes his way deeper into the room.
Eventually he stops in front of your cabinet. Your eye flickers from the crack to Ghostâs eyes. His gun is nuzzled between the two of you. He brings his finger up to his lips before reaching down to your thigh holster for your knife, not yet pulling it out, just hovering with his hand pressed against your thigh and waiting for the door to open.
âWalkowski!â You hear Graves yell from the main building. The man retracts his hand from the handle of the cabinet and runs back to his master.
Ghost drops both of his hands from you and you finally feel like you can breathe again.
You all give it a moment before emerging from your hiding spots. You approach the door that is still ajar, looking out to find no one in sight.
You look over your shoulder and gesture for them to follow before shooting out and jogging for the back of the gas station.
As you all take refuge behind the back wall, Graves finally re-emerges with his crew.
âAny clues on our little deflector?â He asks his goons as they flood back to him.
âNot sure, sir, but we did find this.â One of them holds up two glovesâyour gloves.
Graves chuckles and takes them from his hands. âWell Iâll be!â He holds them up and waves them at his other comrades, âlooks like weâre on the right track, boys!â
Your head drops, eyes squeezing shut at your stupidity. A barely audible fuck leaves you. The boys share a look, starting to put some dots together.
You all stay silent as they all get back on their bikes and start up the road. The tension only minimally leaves your shoulders, you honestly look on the verge of tears as you stand.
âWellâŚit was nice meeting you. Thanks for the granola bar. If youâre trying to get out of town youâre going to want to follow the highway so you donât get stuck in a snowed-out overpass.â You point in the direction of a large road, not turning around to face them before staring the opposite direction Graves went.
âCome with us.â Ghost stops you before even fully considering what heâs saying. He spares a look at John, forgetting chain of command for a moment. All heâs thinking about is that he knows what itâs like to be running from something. To be scared. But John doesnât protest, in fact they all look to be in agreement.
That does get you to turn back. âWhat?â You say incredulously.
âWe could use a guide.â He offers.
âIâmââ you look around like youâd find someone to protest, âIâm not just dropping everything I have here forâŚfor some strangers I met 30 minutes agoâŚâ despite your arguments, you look contemplative.
âEverything you have here? Like what? The lack of food and a sociopath on your ass?â Tough love it is.
You scoff and shake your head. Of course they caught that. Your brain tells you that thereâs no argument, that obviously you canât go with them. ButâŚbutâŚ
To tell the truth, you had nothing here. Just the memory of what was before Graves took everything. He was right. You were starving and terrified Graves would find you everyday. You were sick of watching your own back, sick of having no one to talk to, and sick of Graves looming over you.
You open and close your mouth a couple of times. ââŚokay.â
Youâre not sure how, but you felt like you had just irreparably changed something.
Reader who intentionally fucks up everyoneâs call sign just to piss them off.
It started with Soap (because what kind of nickname is Soap?). You thought it was infinitely funny that all these big, bad, serious military men were going around calling their comrade soap. So obviously your first instinct was to bully him, sue you!
âYou cominâ, suds?â You honestly didnât mean to say it out loud, but youâd been calling him it in your head for so long it was bound to slip out.
You giggle a little to yourself, your joke finally revealed, âyeah! Cause likeâŚsoap makes suds.â
Heâs confused for a second before he joins the bit like he always does, âaye, soap does. Wanna see my suds, if ya ken what I mean.â He wiggles his eyebrows.
The team groans, âoh, come on, Soap! Gross!â
âWhat! The birdie started it!â
Ghost was the next victim. AgainâŚweird nickname. He was so serious and emo all the time, and then he walked around with a skull mask and skull gloves with a name like ghost? He needed to be teased. He was begging for it.
âOkayâŚwhatâs the plan, Boo?â
He looks disgusted. âWhat did you just call me?â
You say it again but jump at him a little and flash your hands, âBoo! YâknowâŚlike scaryâŚlike a ghost.â
âSounds like a pet name,â you can tell his lip is probably curled under his mask.
âIt is!â You donât deny.
He looks away and continues the planning. Soap snorts.
Your captain had no nickname, which honestly you didnât think was fair, so you burdened yourself with the task of bestowing one upon him.
You pull it out once he ends up pulling off some, frankly, crazy maneuvers. âWoo! Way to go, Bill!â
He turns to stare confused, âwho the fuck is Bill?â
âYou are!â you smile unabashedly, âlikeâŚthe price you payâŚwith a dollar bill.â
âWe donât use those here, love.â
ââŚirrelevant.â
He rolls his eyes and walks away.
Now Kyle, lovely Kyle, had a fairly normal nickname (bless him), but you still decided to change his.
âHey, Gas.â
âHey, whereââ he stops and blinks, tilts his head slightly, âdid youâŚcall me gas?â
âYup! Itâs what I thought they were calling you when I first got here.â
He shakes his head incredulously, âyou canât call me gas.â
âWhat? Would you prefer petrol?â You think youâre funny.
âYouâre incorrigible.â He stands to leave.
âI have other options! Gas wait! What about garr-bear? Gas come back!â You run after him.
The last time youâd seen the boys look this scared was when Makarov almost blew Johnnyâs head off, whichâŚspelled great things for your situation.
Youâd been called in on a tip that a home in central London was the hub for a home-grown terrorist organization planning some sort of public attack. Stakes were high, but when were they not. For a while, things were going according to plan. Good, even. You shouldâve known it couldnât last.
You and the rest of the 141 followed your normal positions and breech protocol for a populated area, Price and Gaz going in through the front, Ghost and Soap through the back, and you getting in through a second-story window. A song and dance youâve done a million times before.
You were pleasantly surprised when each of you called out a âclear!â without much hassle. Maybe the organization had already bugged out? Still, there was another level to check.
âPushing to third,â you say down your radio.
âRog,â keep us apprised.â Price says back.
The place honestly looks abandoned, you figure youâll be fine on your own, so you donât bother requesting backup.
The third level starts out much the same, no movement, just normal house that looks emptied in a hurry. Until you see the last door.
Itâs gotta be some sort of clean-room. Instead of a normal wooden door, theyâve jury-rigged a glass sliding door. Inside of the room, white sheets of plastic encasing everything. You can barely see into the room beyond a sliver left open in the sheet. Odd, you think, and open the sliding door. This has to be where the magic was happening. Maybe a bomb-making studio?
âI got something up here. No tangos, just some weird clean-room.â
âHeard, weâre coming up.â
Except when you finish sliding the door open, and push the sheet aside, a motion sensor dispenser activates. Like those scent ones, but you donât think itâs Febreeze in there. A white powder blows into your face, getting into your eyes and nose immediately. You cough harshly, shaking your head and turning back around, trying to rub it off your face.
âFuâfuck-â you cough out.
Reality hits fast. This is not for making bombs. Itâs for making biological weapons. And you were just exposed.
The team climbs the stairs, you can hear them about to step into the room, which cannot happen. You donât know what you were just hit with and you donât know how far it traveled, but if thereâs a chance itâs contained to this room, theyâre not getting in.
You whirl around, wanting to close the door, but it happens without you moving a muscle. Some sort of mechanism engages, slamming the sliding door shut and locking it. The boys stop short, confused at first to see the door move on its own. Until a morbid realization dawns on their faces.
With the sheet pulled aside, they can see into the room, no, the lab. Biohazard fridges and waste boxes, haz suits and a biosafety cabinet. And you, in the middle of it all, exposed.
Johnny rushes forward, trying to pull the door open even though he just saw it lock.
âSergeantâŚâ Priceâs warning tone bleeds through the door. You can tell heâs using it to cover his dread. âWhatâs going on?â
âOpen the door, bird.â
You cough again, which does nothing to aid their fears, âafraid I canât, Johnny,â you put down your gun, and start taking off your gear, âthey werenât making bombs.â
âThey were making biological weapons.â Finishes Simon grimly.
âAffirm.â Youâre trying to keep your cool, but you know thereâs a high likelihood whatever you just inhaled will kill you.
Unfortunately, this is a reality of your job, which means you have some crash course training on it. Which means you know what some of the first steps are. You start stripping of your outer layers, which are presumably covered in the substance.
âYou need to lock this place down. Get away from the door, I donât know how far it travelled. Call a containment team and the nearest hospital with a quarantine wing ready to receive a patient exposed to an unknown biological. Theyâll need to set upââ
Youâre cut off. âHey,â Kyle puts his hand on the sliding glass, immediately going directly against what you had just said about stepping back, âyouâre gonna be okay.â
Itâs only then you notice how badly your hands are shaking while you try to unbutton your jacket. You drop your hands.
âI know.â Itâs a lie.
John is already on the phone with Laswell, getting in contact with all the right people for your situation. You knew you could trust him to keep his head steady, even now. (John is trying to stop his own shaking, he knows he needs to be strong for you).
Johnny is at the door now, âshow us what dosed you.â He demands.
You shake your head, âno, you all need to leave. If anything else happens you canât beââ
âWeâre staying.â Simon cuts you off firmly.
âBuââ you try to start again.
âThatâs final.â
You donât try to argue anymore. You just grab a face shield from the wall and start ripping down the dispenser. Sure youâre already dosed, but you donât exactly want to repeat the experience.
You show it to them. It really is just a modified scent dispenser, you could get one at any store. They immediately start analyzing.
âWell itâs cheap, they couldâve gotten that from anywhere, so theyâre not well funded?â
âNo, but look at the lab, itâs sophisticated. You canât just get those supplies from anywhere.â
âWhy bother setting up a trap if youâre actively using the space?â
âThey knew someone else was coming. So were we the target or just unlucky?â
âSo whatâs the point in dosing someone beyond your control? Theyâll go to the authorities and youâll be exposed?â
âUnless they wanted to expose someone. In a controlled environment. To test their work.â
While they keep going in circles about their theories, something hits you. How could they have guaranteed someone would find their workshop?
Call in a tip.
If thatâs the case, the testing theory still stands. You start looking around, the boys shut up when they can tell youâre on to something. You finally see it, tucked behind a microscope. A camera.
You donât hesitate to pick it up and smash it.
âJohn, call Kate back. See if she can find out who called the tip in. I bet itâs our guy.â You flip back around to them to explain your thinking, âthe test subject theory stands, they wanted to see it on someone before they went big. So they called in the tip so someone would wander in here, and then they were gonna sit and watch the effects through that camera.â
âSick fucksâŚâ you heard Kyle murmur. You donât disagree.
âSo then whatâs the main act?â Simon draws the focus back to whatâs really at stake.
âThatâs what we neeââ youâre coughing again. Itâs rougher this time, hurts more. You tuck your mouth into your elbow and let it run its course, but when you pull back, your arm is covered in blood.
They all stop short at the sight. It doesnât bode well. You can hear a faint âJohn? John are you there,â coming from Priceâs phone. Heâs opting to stare at you rather than respond.
âHenâŚâ
You wipe it away, âIâm fine. Letâs focus on what matters, the actual attack.â
They all look like they want to argue, but you canât really argue with someone whoâs dying.
John jumps into action, divvying the team. He tells Johnny and Kyle to go take a second look at the house with their new eyes to try and figure out the target. They protest, wanting to stay with you, but you think John knew if they kept worrying about you, youâd start to freak out too. You give them both a nod to let them know itâs okay.
âSee you soon,â you say, more for their sake.
When theyâre gone, John gets your head back in the game.
âAlright, we need to investigate this room just like any other. Youâre our eyes, got it?â
You nod, taking off the face shield and grabbing a pair of gloves, starting to look around. You mostly find the expected supplies in an illegal-makeshift-terrorist lab. But two things stands out: a vial stand with 4 vials missing and a password-protected computer. You knew they were probably planning a more extensive attack, but this is more proof. And the computer, well that might just be a gold mine.
You flip around to tell them what youâve found only to see Simon sitting on the ground fiddling with the mechanics of the door.
You rush back to the door, âhey! Stop that! Simonââ
âWeâre gettinâ you out! Iâm not hearinâ any argument about that!â
You kneel in front of the door, placing your hand over the glass where heâs working. âWe donât know what this is, Simon. There are people on the way who know how to deal with this, right?â You look up at John to confirm. He nods. âTheyâll be able to get me out of here without exposing the rest of you. You all need to stay in commission to stop the attack.â
He listens. Reluctantly stopping his fiddling. His head drops and he brings his arm to rest on his bent knee. âSo what can we do? I canât just sit here doinâ nothinâ watching you cough up blood.â
âI found a protected computer. If we can hack in, we might be able to figure out their plansâŚand what infected me.â You donât mention that the very fact they left the computer here doesnât bode well for your situation. The only reason they would leave a liability like that laying around is if they thought you would die before getting into it.
Still, he perks up at that. âOkay, get Johnny back up here, heâs the best hacker.â
John radios down, and the moment he asks for them to come back theyâre asking a million questions. Concerned that something happened to you.
ââM fine, Johnny. Just need that big, beautiful brain of yours.â
âItâs all yours, whaâdâya need?â
Thatâs how Johnny ends up talking you through how to hack a computer; itâs tedious but necessary. While youâre working, the containment team arrives. With a lot of reluctance and fighting, they shepherd the team away from the door to set up a secondary containment room where you can be decontaminated before getting to a hospital. You tell them itâs fine and try to keep a strong face, but losing sight of them makes you feel worse.
It doesnât help that the giant bouts of coughing are getting closer together, and more blood is coming out. You catch sight of yourself in the reflection of a glass door andâŚyou donât look good. Your skin is pallid and sweaty, your under-eyes are dark, thereâs blood lining your chapped lipsâŚmaybe itâs a good thing they canât see you anymore.
They check in frequently, especially when you have to stop responding because of the cough. Finally, blessedly, you get into the computer.
âFuckâŚâ
Immediately theyâre flooding the radio, thinking something went wrong with you. Unfortunately itâs worse. Youâve found schematics of an air duct system for a building. The blueprints are labeled âPalace of Westminster.â
âI got the target, itâs parliament. You need to go now. Theyâre going to use the air ductsââ
Youâre coughing again. Thereâs more bloodâtoo much bloodâand you canât inhale without it going back into your lungs. Youâre choking on it as you collapse to your knees, your legs finally giving out from under you from the exhaustion. Your radio is still on.
Youâre looking up at the ceiling now, eyes blurring with tears from the gagging. You should turn to your side, you know you should, but you canât get your body to cooperate. Youâre going to die, you canât help thinking.
You can hear yelling in your ear piece and outside the door. Some sort of commotion with the containment team?
The next thing you hear is the sliding door mechanism finally releasing, and someone slamming it open. A presence at your side. You expect a hazmat, instead youâre greeted by a skull mask. Your brows furrow in confusion, he shouldnât be in here. Are you hallucinating?
He flips you onto your side so you can expel the blood from your lungs.
âYouâyou canât beââ Itâs too hard to talk.
âShut up.â
He wipes your brow, and the blood from your chin, before shoving his pack under your head to elevate it.
ââM sorry, I need to keep looking for what this is, youâre going to be fine. We wonât let you die.â He says to explain why he moves away from you to search the computer.
Your eyes flutter, barely catching the rest of your team holding off the containment team to get Simon in the room, trying to get in themselves. Then youâre gone.
When you wake up again thereâs a tube down your throat. It causes immediate panic and gagging until multiple figures shoot up from chairs lining your bed. First you see Kyle grabbing your shoulder and cheek, spewing comforting words and telling you to calm down and breathe. Then thereâs John who you see yelling out the door for a nurse. Johnny is grabbing your hand and Simon is hovering in the corner of the room likeâŚwell like a ghost.
You try to keep calm enough until the nurses arrive to remove the tube from your throat, which is as unpleasant as it sounds. But finally when theyâre done, youâre semi-okay again and left alone with your boys. Which is very needed because you are incredibly confused.
Theyâre able to explain that you collapsed from the biologicalânow known to have been a modified strain of anthraxâso they rushed in to stupidly (âwas heroic!â claims Johnny) save you. Simon was able to decipher the rest of the plan, how it was anthrax, how they were going to attack parliament. Kate was able to track down the source of the tip, too. Using that info, Johnny, John, and Kyle were all able to stop the attack while you and Simon were transported to the hospital to be treated. Luckily, the terrorists werenât stupid enough to work on something they didnât have a treatment to, which Simon was also able to find.
So really, everything worked out. Happily ever after. Even still, the boys didnât seem happy.
Now that youâre okay, John seems to think itâs appropriate for him to lay into you, âthat can never happen again.â He says sternly while moving his hands from his hips to cross them over his chest. He goes on to call your actions idiotic, saying you should have waited to investigate the room until they were there, or how you shouldnât have kept working while infected (he seems to forget how he encouraged you to investigate the room). Still, throughout the whole lecture you canât help but smile. You know heâs not actually mad, but was actually incredibly worried. Now heâs covering his fear using his Captain title. Youâre okay with that, as long as you keep getting to hear his voice. He gets so worked up he eventually has to leave the room, claiming he needs more coffee.
Kyle leans down and kisses your forehead, ââm glad youâre alright. DidnâtâŚdidnât know what weâd do if we lost you.â You barely see his eyes start to get glossy before he goes after John, also claiming caffeine.
Johnny squeezes your hand, âIâm never lettinâ you outta ma sight on ops again, mark me words!â He tries to play it off like he always does, but you hear the shake in his voice. And you recall the urgency he moved with in that house.
Johnny looks between you and Simon, some unspoken conversation happens between the two of them before Johnny excuses himself as well.
Then itâs just you and Simon. Even though youâve been getting increasingly close to the team (maybe too close) youâve still been walking on eggshells around him. Unsure of how he felt about you. It seems heâs unsure too, given how tucked into the corner he is. You think that will be it, doomed to sit in this silence until the others return until,
âThought we lost ya,â he whispers. Youâve never heard him talk this gentle before.
You donât respond. How do you to that? Heâs not even looking at you.
âNever been that scared. Not since Johnnyââ he shakes his head to clear the memory. You know heâs incredibly close with them. You know the Makarov situation shook him greatly. You didnât know he could feel the same way about you.
ââŚIâm alright.â Is all you can offer.
âYou almost werenât.â He finally looks at you. âI care about you. We all do. You donât get to leave.â He says it like itâs an order.
You never expected him to be that clear about his feelings, and even though heâs technically berating you, you canât help the warmth that fills your chest.
âIâm not planning on leaving anytime soon.â
He finally comes closer. âGood. Neither are we.â
You were finally settling in with the team. Not to say that all of your worries about fitting in were assuaged; when you sat down the conversation still died down, and the interactions were still sometimes stilted, or they seemed avoidant about touching you, but you didnât feel as uncomfortable with your semi-isolation as you used to.
Today you were flying to meet up with the ULF and someone named Farah Karim to collaborate on some threat. You hadnât met her or her team before, but you were told by the 141 that she did good work, and so did her right hand man, ex-CIA Alex Keller.
When you arrived, a woman with a headscarf greeted you all brightly. Besides her, a man with a mustache. Both wereâŚeasy on the eyes to say the least.
âPrice! Itâs good to see you again.â They grasped each otherâs forearms in greeting before she turned to you. She sized you up briefly, âand a new faceâŚwho is this?â
âFarah, meet the newest member of the 141.â
You smiled politely and shook her hand, âpleasure.â
âHope theyâre not treating you too terribly, and if they are, I can knock them around for you.â She shared a teasing glance with Price.
âYeah, Iâd take her word for it. Been at the receiving end of that myself one too many times.â The man besides her piped up. âIâm Alex, âs good to see a new face. Especially one as nice as yours.â His tone turned a different color at the last part.
Before you could think to respond to that, Farah jabbed her elbow into his side.
âWhat Alex means to say, is that we are glad you a here. Please follow me.â
You tried to push the interaction from your mind and keep a strictly professional demeanor. ButâŚit had been a while since someone had talked to you like that. Since you felt wanted.
You got to talk to Alex a bit more as you all shuffled around settling in and discussing strategy, and he was nice. Really nice. And attractive. And he smelled good which was honestly impressive if you considered how sweatâ
âSergeant!â You snapped out of your train of thought. âYou with us?â
âYes, Captain. Sorry.â
Price was not happy. Farah was eyeing you up and Alex was blatantly flirting and you were staring back. He liked to think he was a man in control of his emotions, and he owed a lot to Farah and Alex, but if they didnât stop making a move on you right nowâŚ
He could tell the rest of his boys were bothered too. Kyle didnât have his normally pleasant expression on, Simon was doing his death stare, and Johnny was clenching his jaw so hard he thought it might crack.
It really was their fault they hadnât made a move sooner. But they werenât sure how you would feel about the whole thing, and John had insisted they wait longer to not compromise the team dynamic.
But every day they fell harder for you. John just didnât realize there could possibly be competition.
The op went well enough. As a group you were able to stop the threat. The real treat was getting to know Farah and Alex. They were both incredibly fun and interesting to talk to, and they treated you so well. Farah showed you around their compound and they ate with you every day. You almost feltâŚcourted.
The other positive was throughout this mission, your own team seemed to warm up to you more. Gone were the stilted conversations and the touch avoidance. Rather, itâs like they started to overcorrect. Priceâs hand found your waist to guide you, Soap was tossing his arm over your shoulder regularly, Kyle was patting your head at every turn, and SimonâŚdidnât look like he wanted to kill you anymore (baby steps). You donât know if it was the change of scenery or if the presence of their other friends made them more open, but you werenât complaining.
When it finally came time to leave and head back to your own base, Farah pulled Price to the side one last time to ask,
âSoâŚis that one yours? Because Alex and Iââ
âOurs,â Price cut her off with finality, âjust doesnât know it yet.â
You had a tendency to be fiercely, but quietly, loyal. Itâs not like you gave this loyalty out freely, but once someone proved themselves to you and you realized you liked them, youâd do anything for them.
To be honest it didnât come up that much. The people you were closest to were all very capable, and rarely needed anything from you.
You also werenât a very aggressive person. Sure you were in the military, but outside of missions, you were never harsh with your words or fists.
Also, you had pretty tough skin. People said shit. Itâs what they do. You had to learn to ignore whatever shit they said about you. It used to bother you, but youâve realized itâs impossible to please everyone and to just block it out.
So no one really expected you to punch that corporal.
You and Ghost were entering the mess hall after a, frankly, brutal training. Itâs something youâve done a million times before. Go to training, walk to the mess with whatever member of your team you found, and meet up with the rest of them for lunch.
This time however, you had a joint training with the American Marines. It happens around once a year, to keep relations and share tactics between allies. Youâd never had a problem before. Honestly it could be kind of fun.
This time, however, there was this one corporal who just wouldnât shut up. He was one of those guys who thought he was better than everyone else and was not quiet about it. It didnât help that he was quite crass and rude to top it all off.
During the training, it had grated on your nerves. He had said some maybe not-nice things about the drill instructorsâbut hey who hadnât? When theyâre smoking you so hard you want to throw up, tossing out a couple of insults under your breath was not uncommon. But he was just so annoying. Not to say that he was bad at his job. He matched Ghost pretty well throughout the whole thing, with Ghost pulling ahead towards the end. Apparently that didnât sit right with him.
So when you and Ghost walked past him, and he whispered âfreak,â clearly directed at Simon, you kind of lost it.
You whipped around, âwhat did you say?â Your eyes narrowed harshly at him. You might be able to tolerate people saying shit about you, but that had no hold over what you tolerated toward people you cared about.
You knew what people thought about Simonâthat he was this weird, hard-core, mysterious freak. Youâd be lying if you said you werenât intimidated by him when you first met. But when you get to know Simon you realize heâsâŚkinda a dork? Who else would make the stupid jokes he does, or help you tie your shoe that one time you broke your arm, or gently move your teddy bear (youâre not ashamed) before he sat on your bed. Now donât get it wrong, he was a killing machine, but thatâs not all he was.
So yeah you had gotten a little protective over Ghost and how people tended to perceive him. Luckily, anyone who was around for longer than 24 hours knew not to fuck with him. But not this corporal.
âSaid, freak.â He repeated unabashedly.
So you clocked him in the nose. And he went down. Hard.
Honestly you didnât really think your actions through, nor did you expect him to go down so easily. But here you were with an American marine bleeding from the nose at your feet with the entire mess hall as witnesses. Oh and look at that, it seems his nose is actually broken, not just bleeding.
âWoah,â came from Ghost as he grabbed your bicep to pull you away from the marine. âAinât nothing I havenât heard before, sweetheart.â
He looked genuinely confused on why you would defend him so fiercely. And if that didnât make you want to punch that corporal more-
âSergeant! My office, now.â Shit. Price.
âDoesnât mean you should have to hear it,â you gave to Simon before briskly following your captain out of the mess.
And oh no your foot slipped and just seemed to jam into the corporal on the way out. Shame.
Youâd always been considered odd, what with the way you sometimes go days without speaking for no apparent reason? Most people donât get that. They donât get the way it feels like your lips are glued together and if youâre forced to part them your throat will rip. But your team gets it.
Maybe not get it, they donât need to get it, they just adapt to it. Which is practically their whole job: adaptation. So it wasnât hard the first morning you came from your room and didnât speak.
They caught on fast, only asking yes or no questions that you could answer with a shake or nod of your head. It was even more convenient that you regularly used hand signals on the job.
You tried to play it cool but secretly you were entirely shocked (and on the verge of crying) that they didnât press the issue. They didnât ask why you werenât talking or pressure you to do soâŚthey just adapted. When you spoke againâmerely a meek hello at breakfast a couple days laterâKyle just smiled and brushed your cheek with his knuckle like he was glad to hear you again. He didnât groan finally or start interrogating you, just content to let you be.
By now theyâre used to it. So when, once again, you offer no greeting before finding a home on the stool for the island, just waving gently at Johnny cooking eggs on the stove, he doesnât bat an eye.
âMorninâ, hen! Sleep well?â He asks while sliding your favorite morning drink to you.
You smile and nod, taking a sip as he turns back to the eggs.
When John joins, giving a gruff âmorninââmorning voice not quite cleared yetâas he bee-lines to the coffee machine. He passes you and puts a heavy hand on your head, ruffling your hair a little, not expecting a response. Then he wraps around to where Johnny is working diligently at the stove, standing behind him with one hand on his waist while he sips his new mug. âLookinâ good, sergeant.â
âMe or the eggs?â Johnny jokes back.
âDefinitely you, Johnny.â Kyle comes out of the woodwork to join you all.
âDamn right!â
You smile into your cup. The way their voices fill the silence is comfortable, kind. Reminds you of home. No need for you to chime in.
Kyle makes his pit stop at your seat, planting a kiss on the top of your head before opening the fridge for his daily ginger shot like the health loser he was.
âCannae believe you drink that shite, Kyle.â Johnny shakes his head while pushing the eggs with a spatula.
Kyle downs it fast in defiance and gives an exaggerated âahh!â once itâs gone. Then he points at Johnny and says âthis is why my course time is better than yours.â
âBoysâŚâ Price warns, not wanting a repeat of the argument that broke out last week.
Both sets of hands shoot in the air in surrender as they part to complete their next tasks.
Simon slinks in, claiming the spot next to you and lightly shoving his shoulder into yours. It reminds you of how a cat nudges your legs in greeting. It seems like today is a quiet day for him too.
That was the other thing that made it easierâyou werenât the only one who didnât speak sometimes.
John fills another mug and slides it to Simon.
You sit in the conversation and the smell of the breakfast cooking, and share a soft look with Simon, the sun giving everything a gentle glow. Youâre glad you have people that understand.
It was the only thing you could think as you looked at the rest of your team in their gas masks, yours lying shattered on the floor.
Youâd gotten some intel about a new terrorist weapon being manufactured in this warehouse. The tip said it was gaseous, so you had come prepared with gas masks. From the surveying the team had done, the warehouse seemed fairly empty. You entered on a stealth basis, hoping to get a sample, maybe sabotage the production, and get out. Of course, things are never that simple.
The team was split up: Ghost and Soap on gathering info from the office, Price on overwatch, Gaz getting a sample of gas, and you setting charges to destroy the warehouse. But of course, just when you thought you had all the enemies accounted for, one came in from a side door in your blind spot. The only warning you got was,
âWe have one entering the warehouse from the west.â Came Priceâs gruff voice over the comms.
By that time, you were already grappling on the ground, both having knocked your weapons away from each other.
âIâm seeing that, thank you!â You struggled out through the strain of the fight. âWeâve gone loud! Iâm in contactââ
The enemy rips the gas mask from your face. âShit!â
âHow copy?â You hear Ghost but youâre currently in an arm wrestle over a gun, âweâre on our way to your last known location, hold on.â
You win the arm wrestle, securing your gun and aiming it at the enemy. In a last ditch effort to save his ass, he lunges for a lever on a tank next to you, ripping open a valve and sending a rush of green gas directly into your face.
You flinch away, abandoning your aim in favor of finding clean air. But youâve already inhaled, you can feel it stinging your throat and lungs, causing you to cough violently.
ââstatus? Come in, sitrep now!â You barely hear Price, your brain getting fuzzy fast. The lines of the building start warping, contorting and stretching until the walls look theyâre falling on top of you. When you look down at your hands theyâre covered in blood, several fingers missing. A roach crawls from the back of your hand to start skittering up your arm. You try to swat it away, breathing heavily and shuffling back. More bugs now, crawling all over you. You donât know where they came from or what to do, you can barely comprehend everything youâre seeing.
So when you started to scream, your comms still open, their hearts drop. Ghost and Soap round the corner fast, quickly followed by Gaz and Price busting through separate doors.
They donât know what to make of what they see. Youâre hyperventilating, brushing your arms and shaking out, squirming on the floor like youâre trying to get something off of you.
âGet off!â You screech, alongside other barely sensical pleas. Ghost shoots forward to grab your arms and stop your struggling. But when youâre faced with a large, scary man in a skull mask, it just sets you off more.
You see a man whose face is melting off to reveal the skull underneath, grabbing at you with sharp claws and shouting in your face. Suddenly you donât care about the roaches, a new fresh monster greats you.
Your screaming gets worse, shoving harshly at Ghost, âno no no, stop!â
Youâve attracted the attention of the other people in the warehouse.
âFuckâŚGhost, Soap, sort that out and get to exfil! Gaz, youâre with me, weâre holding here!â Price gives the order.
Youâre frightened by this face-melt man. âPlease donât hurt me!â You cry out. Simonâs heart breaks a little. Youâve never been scared of him before.
Simon rips off his mask, âhey! Itâs me, itâs Simon!â Heâs trying to make sense of what youâre seeing, why youâre so freaked out. He doesnât care right now about the dangers of taking the mask off. He just cares about you.
Johnny comes next to you both, crouching down to help. âHey, there, birdieâŚthey gotcha good, eh?â He speaks like heâs trying to calm a spooked dog. He shares a concerned glance with Simon.
Your breathing slows marginally, recognizing their faces but not understanding whatâs real, brain going too slow to understand what theyâre saying.
A sob bubbles out, âwhatâs happening?â
âNot sure, sweetâeart, but we gotcha,â Simon grunts out while swooping you up.
The world tilts, nausea filling you quickly. You let out a whine.
ââS alrighâ, hen, weâre gettinâ ya outta here.â
The rest is a bit of a blur. You hear gunshots and feel the jostle of being carried. Itâs hard to differentiate between whatâs real and whatâs your scary, gas-induced visions. They get you into the exit vehicle, and Price and Gaz pull out of the building, blowing it up with the charges you managed to set.
Still, youâre inconsolable. Screaming and crying and shaking. Nothing they do makes any difference. They just have to sit there and listen to you suffer. They try to hide their flinches at your noises of fear. It takes a while, but finally you settle and pass out.
Eventually, hours later, you find yourself in the exfil vehicle, laying in the back with your head on Kyleâs lap.
âHey, prettyâŚhow we feelinâ?â
You still feel dizzy and slightly nauseous, and you sense youâre missing some time. Looking around, the walls are no longer warping and Kyle looksâŚnormal. Not like heâll become a scary monster at the drop of a hat.
âWhaââ you try to get out, but your throat is incredibly sore.
âJohnny, water.â Kyle demands.
He sits you up and youâre able to drink some water and get your bearings, trying to ignore the concerned looks being not-so-subtly thrown your way.
Finally when youâre ready, âwhat happened?â
They all toss glances to one another, asking without words who will get the duty of explaining.
John speaks first, âsome sort ofâŚhallucinogenic gas, as far as we can figure. There was some in the air and you didnât have your mask. You wereâŚdistressed, to say the least. Going on about stuff that wasnât there.â
You think about the things you saw, flinching a little at the memory. You rub your head, ârightâŚshit, did we destroy the compound?â Your head shoots up at the thought.
âItâs gone.â John assures. âWeâre getting you medical ASAP. Donât know the full effects.â
Normally youâd argue, spew some bull about being fine. But to tell the truth, you felt like shit. You just nodded and mumbled an âmâkayâ before looking out the window. Which did nothing except concern them more.
John spent most of the ride looking in the rear view mirror to see you. Kyle ended up pulling you down to have your head on his lap again, while your legs went to Johnnyâs lap. Kyle rubbed your head at one mention of a headache, whereas Johnny found comfort in caressing the exposed strip of your ankle. Simon reached back from the front seat to grab your hand, and all the assurance from them meant you were quick to find sleep.
You didnât wake up again until you were in the base hospital, still surrounded by your boys.
Reader who is passively suicidal. Who maybe doesnât even realize it, but it bleeds into everything.
Youâve always had a dark, dry sense of humor that was easy to brush aside, but the first time this habit was glaringly obvious was on an op when you were almost hit by an enemy vehicle.
In this line of work it was natural to contemplate your death. Maybe you did it too much. So when that car was speeding your way, your first thoughts werenât how to get out of the way, or survival, but rather how painful this death would be. Not because you wanted to avoid death, but that ideally it wouldnât be that bad. So you didnât move.
Instead of the unforgiving force of the car, you were hit with the warm body of Ghost shoving you out of the way. You both land hard on the dirt out of the road, but thereâs no moment to speak as youâre immediately under fire once more. Itâs like the impact kicked you back into gear, refocusing you on the objective and letting you continue fighting.
It doesnât mean the boys didnât notice. And it doesnât mean they let you off easy. Once youâre back to safety, Simon drags you into the makeshift war room, basically tossing you in.
âWhat the hell was that, sergeant?â His voice is hard. Loud. Heâs mad.
The rest of the team trickles in with varying degrees of dread on their faces.
You donât feel much of anything. âWhat was what?â
Simon scoffs, looking away in exasperation briefly before crossing his arms and stepping into your space to look in your eyes, âyou know exactly what.â
Youâre confused. Why the hell would he care that much? Your eyebrow barely twitches. âLook I get I fucked up okay, Iâm sorry you had to save my ass.â You really donât give two shits that he saved you. If that had been the end of the line for you, you wouldâve been okay with that.
Everyone releases their air heavily, the room shifts. You donât get why, itâs not like they havenât had incidents like this themselvesâclose calls.
âI donât give a ratâs ass that I had to cover you, thatâs what Iâm here for, sergeant. I care that it looked like you werenât going to do anything.â Heâs speaking softer now likeâŚlike youâll break. That just pisses you off.
âSo what, I froze?â You take a step back, arms crossing over your chest, angling away from them.
âYou donât freeze.â
Thereâs a heavy silence that sneaks its way into every corner of the room before Johnny breaks it.
âItâŚit looked like you wanted to get hit.â
The scoff that leaves you is unconvincing. âI wasnâtâŚâ you canât finish the thought. Honestly you donât know what you were thinking. You just know sometimes you get tired. And sometimes you think the easiest way to get rid of the ache is leaving.
Youâre not looking at them when Simon comes back and grabs your shoulder. He forces you to look at him, ââs not happening again. Clear? We need you.â
You just nod.
They begrudgingly let it go. Who among them isnât a little fucked up? But from then on youâre under a tight watch. All they find are more red flags.
You donât take care of yourself, leaving eating and sleeping and showering to the last minute. You donât seem to do anything you enjoy, no hobbies outside of duty. When you have time off they donât see you and they assumed you left base, but then they see you emerge haggard from your room three days into their leave. Had you even been out of your room before then?
They donât say anything because they know youâll deflect and scatter, but theyâre scared. Yes, you were their teammate but itâs become more than that. Even with the lack of energy you seem to display, youâre still unrelentingly there for them.
When Johnny got shot and miraculously lived, semi-paralyzed, and had to do months of PT, you were there. At every appointment, staying with him to take care of him and make sure he did his exercises.
When Simon went to his own dark places, you were there. Finding him half-delirious from nightmares in the rec room and making sure he made it back to his room. Giving him water and someone to talk to, making sure he didnât go too deep. Which is why he was confused you couldnât recognize the signs in yourself.
When Kyleâs mom unexpectedly passed, you were there. You booked the flights, packed his bags, kept him standing during the funeral. You negotiated for his extended PTO, never letting anyone mistreat him when he was down.
And when John was court marshaled for what happened with Shepherd, you were there. You helped Simon keep the team together, coordinated with Kate to keep him informed, you even helped formulate his case.
They might say loyalty was your fatal flaw. They just wished you could see these signs in yourself and give yourself the same treatment you gave others. But if you couldnât, they would.
It was easier to see the signs now. You volunteering for the risky roles on ops, offering to be bait, choosing hand-to-hand encounters when you couldâve easily used your gun.
Theyâre lost. They donât know what to do. If they stop you from taking these roles, chances are youâll say theyâre coddling you. If they take you off duty entirely, they might lose you forever. How do they balance supporting you and helping you?
They start with words. Making sure you understand how much the risks youâre taking affect them.
ItâŚconfuses you again. You didnât realize they gave this much of a shit if you lived or died. You kinda just thought you were teammates. Any deeper feelings toward them you pushed down because you knew it wouldnât be possible.
But when youâre strapping in to be repelled off a cliff, Johnny stops you. He grabs your shoulders and forces you to look in his eyes. âYer cominâ back, ya hear? We need ya.â
You donât even get time to respond before Kyle is swooping in and kneeling in front of you, finishing strapping your harness and double-checking the other connectors. He looks up at you and you try to ignore the image that invokes. âYou heard Johnny, love, we need you to come back.â Heâs smiling that blinding-white smile that could probably cause world peace.
You figure your COs will be as stoic as always, but instead, John places a heavy, warm hand on your head, giving it a pat. He takes a deep breath before his hand comes down to the back of your neck and tells you, âwe trust you sarge, come back to us.â
Your brain is basically empty trying to process all the excess affection when Simon brings a hand up to fix the hair John just rustled. Heâs never done that before. You never imagined him ever doing that. You can feel the warmth of his skin on your forehead through the glove. âWe need you back. Rog?â
You canât even think before youâre nodding and saying ârogâ back.
Youâre halfway down the cliff before you even register half of what happened. Your chest is warm, and you think your cheeks are too. You canât place the feeling but it feels almost like the ice in your body is thawing, like youâre coming back to yourself after being gone for too long.
It doesnât cause too much permanently the first time, but they keep doing it. Every single time before an op, every time you volunteer for some risky procedure, hell even randomly at lunch now. Some of it is starting to worm into your brain that maybe you have people that care about you. That would care if you were gone.
Itâs not a cure, not a quick fix, but itâs making you rethink some of the things you had taken as factâlike that you are expendable. They keep insisting, silently and loudly and in all the space between, that you arenât. Maybe you should start to listen.
Summary: After the events of re8 your husband Chris comes home to you, but he has something you didnât expect for him to come home with.
Tags: 18+ content - Mentions Breeding Kink, Mentions of pregnancy, Reader has INTENSE baby fever and wants a family, Fluff, Established relationship, Slight crack fic taken seriously
A/N: Read part two here ! Second fic woo ! I decided to go a different route than my first fic when it came back to writing either way I hope y'all enjoy and once again I apologize for a potential OOC Chris ! In this fic both Ethan and Mia passed away during the events of re8. Fic is inspired by Ice Nine Kill's cover of "Can't help falling in love", so I recommend listening to it while you read.
"Wise men say only fools rush in, but I can't help falling in love with you"
Birds were chirping as they flew around the neighborhood, cars were honking as people parked their cars and went inside, the chatter of neighbors saying "hello" and "how are you this evening?" as they passed each other. To most this was the 'normal suburban evening', to you it was a potential evening without your lover Chris Redfield. You and Chris had been together for over 10 years, married for 4 and despite it being a long time each day you felt yourself fall in love with him all over again. For the most part at least. You were aware of Chris's work, the dangers it carried not only for Chris, but for you as well. You were also aware of the horrors Chris has seen to which he doesn't describe to you for better or for worst.
One of the few missions he's ever talked to you about- even if it was in simple wording or phrases- was the incident with the Baker family that happened in Louisiana in 2017. As if the walls had ears that listened in 24/7 he would talk a certain way when it came to conversations dealing with his workâ slow, soft, and careful. Chris had mentioned the Winters family as well, telling you more about Ethan and Mia as he spent more time with them. He told you in general terms how they both got involved with the Baker family incident, and told you even more of their personalities. To say Chris liked them could be considered an understatement, but did he still keep them at arms length for safety purposes? Hell yes he did.
âShall I stay? Would it be a sin? If I can't help falling in love with youâ
When Chris mentioned the arrival of the newest addition to the Winters family you couldnât help but smile and congratulate them. While you may have never personally met the Winters family due to multiple reasons you always remembered to tell Chris to pass on your messages to them; Chris also mentioned they would do the same. Though at the same time when you heard the mentions of this âRoseâ you couldnât help but sigh to yourself at maybe the thought of a kid between you and your loyal husband.
Then came the day where Chris had to once again leave for an unknown period of time to do a missionâ hopefully perfect timing for you to contemplate your wishes for a family some more. Flashing images of Chris holding children in the air, running around the yard with them, your husband cuddled up to them on the couch flooded your mind and only fueled your wish for a family. With a determined look you were preparing to have a talk with Chris the moment he had gotten homeâwhenever that may be. You knew the missions that Chris dealt with could be as short as a single day to a few days to a few weeks depending on the situation, so you could only wait.
âLike a river flows, surely to the sea. Darling, so it goes, some things are meant to beâ
Currently, it had been over 24 hours since Chris had left for the newest mission that he was on, leaving you alone in the house once again. Humming softly you made your way downstairs towards your kitchen, once again the evening chatter and noise beginning to form outside the walls of your home. It was in your natural routine to make a bit extra food just in case Chris were to randomly walk in through the door, and thatâs exactly what you did; an extra glass filled with wine was set to the side next to yours. This was peaceful, and you liked it that way.
Lost in your own world you didnât hear the door of your home being opened, it wasnât until you heard a âSweetheart, Iâm backâ coming from the voice you knew all too well that you decided to turn around. âGood thing I made extra foodâ you thought to yourself making your way towards the front door. You expected to see your husband standing there in all his glory, bags on the floor and arms spread open waiting for a hug and maybe if you were luckyâ a bouquet of flowers in his hands. What you DIDNâT expect to see was Chris standing there with a nervous smile on his face, bags on the floor, arms NOT spread out, unfortunately no flowers in his handsâ and a baby cradled against his chest resting in his arms.
âTake my hand, take my whole life too, for I can't help falling in love with youâ
The silence between you and Chris is long and tense, the only noises in the house that can be heard is the food in the kitchen cooking and the baby in Chrisâ arms. âChris Redfield⌠why is there a baby in your arms? Better yet WHOâs baby is in your arms?â you asked, questions filling your head with each passing second as Chris continues to stand there, nervous smile still prominent as he chuckles into the air. âWell- uhm to formally introduce you to her- this is Rose! Rose Winters..â Chris says as if heâs trying to think of how to word his following sentences. Slowly but surely he makes his way towards you, Rose now actively cooing and reaching towards Chris as he continues his words carefully. âThis last missionâŚâ he began âinvolved the Winters- unfortunately they didnât make itâ he stated, looking down towards Rose.
The look of bewilderment filled your face, did the hands of fate listen to your pleas of wishing for a family and give you grace? If you could fall to your knees and thank the gods you would, but you held yourself back. âOh.. Iâm so sorry Chris, I knew you were close to themâ you said softly, placing a hand on his bicep as you stared down at Rose. âI have to admit she is pretty cute- are we going to be raising her?â You asked, now looking up towards your husband with curious eyes. Youâve never wanted to hear a âyesâ more than before. âYes, we will but she will also be monitored heavily due to the fact she may have something that involves the Baker family incidentâ Chris said, wiggling his fingers at Rose so she could play with them. Upon hearing the yes you were sold.
âLike a river flows, surely to the sea. Darling, so it goes, some things are meant to beâ
To say you were enamored with Ms. Rose Winters would be an understatement. From the moment Chris handed her to you hearts appeared in your pupils and you melted. Chris swears on his life that he hasnât seen you this in love with anything or anyone ever since yours and his wedding 4 years ago. As the days progress itâs clear that both yourself and Chris have gained a very strong parental sense when it came to Rose; Ms. Winters deserved only the best in the end. Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months of you and Chris playing parents to Rose, each day that passed brung more love and memories out of the 3 of you. Eventually the baby fever hit again, this time hitting you AND Chris like a truck.
It was a quiet Friday evening in the Redfield household, Rose was in her bassinet near the kitchen entrance cooing away as she liked to do most nightsâyou assumed that was her way of trying to put her thoughts into the conversation and it made you swoon. You were busy making a simple dinner for yourself and Chris, back towards the man who was currently staring holes into your back. Chris, on the other hand, was watching the scene play outâ you, his wife, the love of his life cooking a meal he would heavily enjoy, and to his right Rose the daughter he gained and learned to love as his own.
âTake my hand, take my whole life tooâ
âLoveâ Chris said as he got up to move behind you, hands resting at your hips; his eyes meeting yours for a second as he presses a kiss to your shoulder. A soft âmm?â can be heard from you as you lean into your husband, listening to him speak. âI was thinking⌠Rose would get lonely no? Once sheâs older..â He said softly, trailing more kisses from your shoulder to your neck, âI was just thinking- wouldnât it be nice if we give her a brother or sister?â. Upon hearing the words that just fell from your husbandâs lips you fell stiff, goosebumps lining your skin. âAre you sure?â is the only question that you can suddenly manage to ask, your heart racing with every passing second as you await Chrisâs response. Once you heard the soft âmhmâ from him all lights were green and ready to go!
It took your all to not jump Chrisâ bones right then and there despite every fiber of your being practically screaming at you to do so. Though, as a result of your efforts all for the rest of dinner and through the process of putting Rose to sleep you felt heat spreading over your body like a fire. It didnât help as well that Chris was constantly looming around you and if he couldâhe was over your shoulder. He would stand there, hands somewhere on your body, whispering sweet nothings to you followed by phrases like âI canât wait to feel youâ âWant me to fill you up?â âGod youâd look so pretty pregnant with our kidsâ and the one he liked to tell you the most was âGonna breed you so wellâ.
The moment Rose had fallen asleep it took you and Chris little to no time running to your bedroom, clothes getting thrown around, rushed kisses, and occasional laughs and chuckles coming from the both of yâall from behind the closed doors. Chris made you a promise and he made sure everything was in yours and his favors that night, so it was no surprise when a few weeks later there you were Rose in one arm and a positive test in the other.
Chris Redfield was a simple man who loved his home, his wife, and his soon to be 2 kids; he could only hope Mia and Ethan would be happy as well.
âFor I can't help falling in love with you, for I can't help falling in love with youâ
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