the water is black with venom @goat-limbs - Tumblr Blog

Jul 24

Heartburn | Ch.15.

contents (nsfw): Dunk x fem!Reader, Modern AU friends to lovers rom-com with pregnancy. Humour, fluff, blow jobs, teasing, soft cockwarming, sub!Dunk, dirty talk, breeding kink mentioned, mouth-fucking, praise kink, coming in mouth, slight overstimulation, farse, angst (they fight but resolve!), open-ended with a very clear suggestion as to what happens next.

<- previous chapter MASTERLIST next chapter -> (31/07)

synopsis: In which Rowan gives birth. (Pregnancy status: 33 weeks, III trimester).

word count: 9,6K

a/n: Banner by me, dividers by @strangergraphics, proofread by @hextoken!

Duncan groans softly.

He swears, you're such a tease sometimes. Cuddle with me, let's watch a film, but your hand keeps performing a harrowing torment at his waistline. His shirt has 'ridden up', though it's actually you who's rucked it to his ribs. Little gentle strokes over cotton first, and then, before Duncan knows it, his belly's exposed, and your fingers twirl the hairs at his navel.

He's trying to keep his eyes fixed on the screen, but they drop, every now and then, to the crown of your head. It's sliding lower, he's noted. It started with resting under the wing of his arm, and now your cheek is below his sternum, mouth breathing hot over his ribs. He's forgotten what's on the telly. Your nails scratch round his belly button, and his whole stomach ripples, shaking strands of hair to fall onto your face.

A small, pleased mm falls from him when your fingers brush just below his waistband. You answer with one of your own, then stretch yourself long across the bed. Your legs straighten. Your free arm reaches overhead until the hand lands in his hair.

It's an excellent way to distract him. Duncan must be wired strangely there, for the slightest pull at the roots enters him far lower than it ought to. His eyes fall shut. Heat gathers behind his navel and sinks, slow and heavy, into his groin. You scratch his scalp once, then close your fingers and tug again. His hips give a small, involuntary shift towards you, and only when the side of him meets the warm press of your cheek does he realise how far you have slid. Your face has settled into the crease of his thigh.

He looks down. In the bottom part of his lenses you acquire an odd shape. Your nose corrugates so that its slope dips and makes the tip look smaller. Your eyes set slightly further apart. There's a hand resting over his stomach and that one has an uncannily thin wrist and fingers like warped spider limbs. Below those, he's getting warmer still. It's not so much the feeling, though Duncan's belly's sensitive to any little devotion, as the sight. There's something deeply sensual about having a mouth right next to his cock, no matter if it suggests something or not. He tries to not get outright hard by simply being breathed on. Tries to calm himself, because you've been having a good, low-symptom day and he wouldn't want to impose. How virgin of him. He's had you bent over, on his face, in his hands, and knows every crease of you, and still he ends up with a chubby.

“That is a very low place to cuddle,” he says, thinner than he would like.

"Hm," you purr. "But I like it here."

Duncan puts a hand to the back of your head, meaning only to keep you where he can see you, but your hair threads through his fingers and your cheek turns into his palm. Then, you kiss his groin through the cotton of his sweatpants. His hand closes round your upper arm. "Ah. Right. C'mere, lassie."

He means upwards. He always means upwards. Give him half a kiss below the neck, and he becomes anxious to return the favour, because he is the caretaker. He's had your tongue on his cock more than once, always with some secret fear of becoming selfish or triggering nausea behind it. He tends to stop you, somewhere halfway through it at the latest, and brings you where he can sort you out. There's so much pleasure in it for him that Duncan does not at all consider himself depraved. Lately, it's all been gentler, too. He keeps his mouth tender on you at all times. Keeps his hands wiser between your legs. When he fucks you, it's slow, and he enjoys it tremendously, because instead of seizing him, his orgasms bloom from leniently paced edging and sometimes he feels you coming on him twice while he's still deep in the buzz of his first rapture.

It has not, ever, crossed his mind, that sucking him off might be the end game you seek. You ignore the pull he gives you and put yourself closer to his crotch. Your hand leaves his hair, which Dunk mislikes so much he frowns. It reaches past him, snags a pillow from under his elbow, and tucks it under the side of your belly. You've somehow made yourself heavier so his grip loosens. He brushes a thumb under the sleeve of your T-shirt, and asks, "What're ye doing, girl?"

"Watching a film," you tell him, hooking your fingers under the ribbed band round his lower belly.

He blinks down at you. "Are ye?"

"Mhm," you hum. "Very invested."

He glances at the telly, stupidly. Two people arguing in a kitchen. He has no idea who they are or which of them is winning. Then, he feels a small tug. His hips go up, because this is an instruction and Duncan obeys those, even if the next thing that happens is him getting helplessly exposed. Both layers start going down. His stomach hollows, and to his attempt at sitting up you throw him a cute little glare.

"No moving me," you say.

"But I can—"

"You watch the film."

He sinks back into the pillows doubting he'll be able to tell you anything about the plot or the characters, because his eyes simply won't come off you.

His cock comes free reluctantly. You ease both the underwear and trousers down, then give yourself over to staring, and Duncan suffers it. He rests, half-hard but pulsing, against the crease of his thigh. Even partially sleepy he's still reaching his belly button. Foreskin cradles his polished head and begins to draw back by the slow industry of blood. One clear drop sits at the slit. The hairs covering his balls and groin gather themselves dark on the navel, then disperse again, making a pillow of his stomach. It's a lovely sight, and a rare one for you to admire unabated. Usually by the time you get him in full nude, he's already wanting so badly all of him is flushed and throbbing. Sometimes, you catch glimpses of him when he's changing or stepping with you into the bathtub. He's gorgeous in both forms, and everything that comes between, but soft, Duncan acquires a different kind of beauty. He's guarded and private. Keeps his arm nearby, ready to cover himself if your eyes stay too long. Still heavy, still wide, still large enough to slap loudly against his thigh, but gentle in a way that asks for delicate handling. Lots of him to hurt. Lots of him to love.

Above you, he stirs. "Don't inspect me like that, girl."

You glance up. His ears are red all over. "I've said nothing."

"I can hear ye thinkin'," he says.

"Can you?" you ask, disbelieving him slightly, because it's still odd to think that Dunk would have this sort of dirt in his mind. You know he's capable, based on everything that falls from his mouth when he forgets himself. You doubt, however, that he can tell you want him measured against your face. That you want him to slap you with it. To have him come all over from your forehead to chin, then spread it with his palm and kiss you. "Is there a point in me showing you then?" you say, pressing your lips to his tender side, still benign.

"Ah, fuck—" Duncan breathes. His palm closes over your nape. "You don't have to, girl. You don't have to—"

"Dunk," you say, brushing skin. You give him your heaviest-lidded leer and a girlish little pout. "What if I really, really want to?" Then, you allow your thinking flesh to take over and pat yourself on the cheek with his tip.

His face does a slow, wonderful thing. Such boyish bewilderment. He fights himself there. You can see all the but let me and c'mere and I want to sort ye out first appearing and passing, until all that's left is please. God, yes, please. Take me, please. Break me, pretty, pretty please and thank you.

"A-aye," Duncan says. "All right, just—just mind yourself, yeah?" He brushes hair off your cheek and bands it in his fist.

You nod. Adjust your belly over the pillow and bring your face closer to his lower stomach. It makes a warm bolster under your cheek. Then, you wrap your fingers round the thickening base and guide his hidden crown into your mouth.

"Ah, shite—" he hisses. His head knocks the headboard; thighs quake.

There, he's pliable still. Supple enough that you can press him to your palate, squeeze a little. You lick over him flatly, then tense your tongue into a tip and let yourself brush under the foreskin to taste whatever he's weeping out for you. Your fingers play at his balls—roll them, compress, then let the whole weight rest in the hollow of your hand. Higher, you start sucking him into hardness.

"Oh, sweet girl," Duncan breathes. It makes your cunt tighten some, because your favourite version of him begins to surface: rendered loud by incapacity to keep himself together. Unmanned, even before the main pleasure arrives. He massages the tendon of your neck with his thumb. Murmurs, "Christ alive, ye feel s'good. Ah God, right there. Right there, oh—"

You release him with a wet smack. Gather the spit from the top and guide it down in slow strokes, pulling on skin to reveal him bit by bit. When you look up, his glasses have slipped a little. There's damp above his upper lip, and his mouth hangs open.

"Do you like it?" you ask.

Duncan nods.

“Talk to me,” you say.

His eyes jump to yours. “About what?”

Your wrist moves up until you close his crown in your palm. You twist there. Watch him suck in a sigh and feel his hips lift towards you. "That," you say.

He laughs weakly. Duncan knows the charm of a lover saying exactly what they want. He adores it on you. Every time he hears fuck me harder, or worse, breed me, put a baby in me, he has to squeeze his eyes shut and invoke all sorts of unsexy things in order to last. He knows you like it on him too, so he tries, despite the way getting so exposed has him burning all the way from chest to scalp.

"Fuck," he grits when your thumb presses on the fold under the head. "Ah, fuck, make me hard girl. Put yer mouth back on me, please—"

So you take him back. Since he's asked so nicely. You flatten your tongue and drag it slowly through the tender join beneath the crown. The right there. His belly jerks so sharply that the hairs on it brush your forehead. And then you just… keep him. Suck on him and warm him up until you can feel the flesh getting hotter and roping with blood that swells his veins. He's breathing audibly through his nose. Below, you cradle his thick root in your hand. Massage it, and scrape your nails through the fuzz. Right where he grows out from his groin you press your fingers down and rub them in circles, making his balls come up tightening in response.

Slowly, he begins to fill your cheeks. It feels safe to be there. Special too, because despite Duncan always nodding to your you are allowed to want things, he's still learning. It's almost as if he's used to taking second-hand pleasure from whatever service he's providing. So, you don't tell him this is for you as well. That there is a whim underneath it to check if you are able to wring your man clean without opening your legs.

His thigh firms beneath your cheek. “Slow,” he breathes. “Aye, like that. Christ, look at ye.” A thumb passes over your temple.

Your eyes take him in. Belly bare and quivering. One knee knocked wide to give you room, foot planted as if he needs to brace against the bed. His face has gone helplessly honest. Every stroke of your hand travels visibly through him. “Do ye like it?” he asks.

You let him slide from your mouth, wet and darkened. “Very much.” Then, you kiss the vein on his underside. One small peck. Another, bolder, until your lips part and tongue comes out to make out with his cock. He moans, loud, and squeezes your neck. "Too much?" you ask.

“N-no." He shakes his head. "That’s lovely. Do it again.”

"Mm," you hum, guiding your nose lower. It lands in the webbing of his sack and hauls air greedily. There's a whine, so pretty-sounding you have to rub your thighs together. You lick him all the hard way between the two seams: balls to slit. There, you stop and tell him, "You keep talking."

"Jesus," he whispers. "What're ye doing to me, girl? Put your tongue on me again."

His fingers thread through your hair. His fist closes. There's a small tug you feel at your roots. It makes you moan against him, and Duncan throws his head back.

Yes, this, you think. Show me, tell me. Bear your throat to me. He's not the one to manhandle you, despite having all the necessary equipment. Even when he hauls you, lifts you, holds you, it's all done so considerately sometimes you want to outright tell him that bodies don't break so easily. That it is sometimes nice to nurse a bruise a lover has left you. The hand in your hair is a first. There's an itch within it, a small wicked urge to guide you down. Maybe choke you on him, a little. You pretend he's pushed harder than he did, and swallow as much of him as you can.

“Oh, fuck me,” he whispers. "Oh, my good girl. My best girl, oh fuck—" His pelvis rolls into your mouth. You look up again, waiting. "Yer so—" he manages. "So soft. And warm. I like it when—ah—when ye use your tongue like that. Round the head. Aye, just—" His eyes go shut when your tongue circles his crown. Fingers twitch. "There," he pants. "Oh God, there. God, ye know."

Oh, you do know. You know exactly where his skin pulls tight, where the vein underneath makes him shudder, how far you can take him without your jaw beginning to ache. You know the sound he makes when you play with him like that. You know he will hold his breath until you touch his thigh and remind him to let it out, and still, hearing all that you know already makes it so much sexier. Makes him, in some profound way, even more yours than he was to begin with, and for a moment you forget there is a pregnant belly between you. It's just you, pleasuring your darling in the evening of some nameless day, because you both forsake calendars on the weekends.

Duncan's getting lost in it. It's difficult for him to remain this useless, and near impossible to comprehend that someone would pay his cock so much attention. It makes him want terrible things. He yearns to see your hand jerk him off until he's all sloppy with his own body's drool, preferably while you bite on his lip and have your palm round his neck. When he closes his eyes, an entirely scummy image forces itself into his mind: his cock, sliding in and out of your mouth. Just a little. Shallow, but enough to see your cheeks filling and hollowing. He rubs his fingers on your scalp. “Can ye look at me?” he asks.

You lift your eyes.

His brows draw up. “Oh, girl.”

He's meaning to ask you. His thumb strays to the corner of your lip, right where it shines with spit. He wipes it and spreads it towards your temple. With that tiny pressure your jaw slacks. Tongue lolls out. You lower yourself onto his belly and keep looking up. He gives one, shy roll of his hips. Your mouth pulls in a soft smile. "Is that all right?" he asks.

There's a nod. A hum, too. Your hand stays banded round his base, so when he moves, he's sliding through both things at once. He keeps staring at you, searching for anything that would tell him no, and finds yes everywhere. "Sweet girl," he murmurs. "You've such wicked mouth. That's so fucking lovely." All of it whispered, though there is no one to overhear him.

"Ye always make me feel so good," he says. Cradles the back of your head again. "And yer so pretty. Keep lookin' at me." A swallow.

There is one more thing Duncan wants, but it will give him away horrendously. He starts touching you. Rubbing your back. Brushing through your hair, like he's trying to coax it out of you by begging with his body. You only hum some more and stroke between his root and balls. It's all very maddening. Finally, he brings himself to mumble, "Will ye—would ye roll your eyes for me? Like ye do when you're cross, or when… when you come—oh, please—"

He watches it happen like it's a car crash he's about to be in. Your eyes widen first. Then, recognition settles in them, horrifying and gorgeous, and then oh—your lids flutter and irises travel from one side to the other, and Duncan gasps out your name. "Fuck," he grits. "It's my favourite sight in the whole world. God, I'm close. I'm so close—"

He keeps fucking himself through your fist to your mouth, and reaches the breaking point. His back leaves the pillows. "Fuck, keep going," he breathes, bowing over you. "That’s it. That’s my girl.”

There's a familiar marrow-wring, just this time Duncan is mildly guilty for arriving at it. Stomach ceases to feel like it belongs to him and for a split second he is weightless and stuck in a moment right before the warmth spilling. It's so good already he keeps gasping and moaning, until he ceases to move altogether and just watches the pulsing tip of himself, entirely sure the sight of him filling your mouth is going to destroy him.

Cock stiffens against your tongue. You feel the pull in his sack against your hand, and then the first spurt lands hot and salty; another follows. He groans through various things: your name, countless instances of shredded yes, sweet endearments, all that while you swallow, stroke, and his length throb between your fingers. His belly quakes, and the wave of it moves the whole of his torso. Below the shirt, his chest shudders too. You fix your eyes there and see his heart beating frantically below the breastbone.

Some of the spent slips out of your mouth onto his skin. It milks over the hairs covering his body. You're so enamoured by each of sights that you notice his hands on your shoulders only when he whimpers.

"Too much," he says. "Too much, girl, oh God—"

So you release him. He smacks against his stomach heavily. The shine of him spills around and you can't help yourself—you lick the softened head once and he jerks so violently the bed complains.

“Mercy,” Duncan wheezes. "Sweetheart, please—"

Whether the mercy comes or not, Duncan is certain he could take it. He will never again refuse you if you so much as breathe next to his cock. He knows exactly what he's getting out of going down on you. It's a thing that makes him feel most man of all, to have you clawing at his scalp and suffocating him with your thighs. To hear his name wrapped into moans is his favourite way of being called. That is his purpose in it. Now, he's dazed and confused and beyond blissed, and he's staring at you, staring at his softening cock.

"You're so fucking pretty," you tell him, all serious. "You have the prettiest cock I've seen."

It's so absurd, he giggles. Then laughs out loud, until you frown. Both of his hands get under your arms, and this time you let him lift you. He brings you up with great care and no grace, deposits you across his chest, then catches your jaw and kisses you. The inside of your mouth tastes of him. It's hot. The whole scene excites him so much, Duncan near loses his wits.

"I—" he starts. Hesitates. Dips a thumb in a bit of cum drying on your cheek. "Ye make me so bloody happy, lassie."

You sniff. Smile, then study him with a long glance coming from under heavy lids.

He's looking unbearably dear. Sweaty and pink all over his cheeks. His freckles stand out against the canvas of skin with blood flowing underneath it. You could bust him right there. Tell him you've just learned an extra soft spot on body that's already full of softness. But you decide to keep that one and instead make a mental note to roll your eyes at him in some near future.

Your finger taps his lips. "You know how pretty you are, right? And handsome too."

"Lass." It is at all possible for Duncan to go a deeper shade of pink, it seems. "Don't ye tease me now. I'm already finished."

"'m not," you say. Again, serious. You shift so that your belly fits next to his side. Your hands come to take his glasses off and cradle his face. "I find you incredibly attractive."

It comes out stupidly official, but somehow feels very important to get across. Your thumbs press below his eyes, where the skin is warm and damp. He keeps looking at you, though you suspect he hasn't hidden behind a wince yet only because without the glasses he cannot properly see. Maybe that helps. Maybe it can land cleaner if he does not have to read the whole look on your face.

“You are so handsome, Dunk,” you say. “And just… kind, and—”

The words begin to feel unsafe in your mouth. He's gone awfully still under your touch, shy and pained, as if praise is something that has to be suffered first and enjoyed later in private, when nobody can catch him needing it. This is your way of telling him. A smaller road to the same place. Something that might make him more secure without asking him to repeat it back.

These last few days have been better. Sleepy, sluggish, heavy in some obvious aspects, yet better all the same. The contractions are rare, nausea has left you near entirely, and life has settled into something gentler. You have managed to talk to Rowan a lot. She has been merciful enough to curb her own panic for your sake and lean instead toward being giddy about meeting her girl soon. Duncan has gone out with Raymun twice, and each time he came back with a one-pint flush on his cheeks and an overwhelming urge to kiss you, as if him and Ray had sat on bar stools talking about you and Rowan until missing became physical. Since then, both of you have been waiting for the sign from Ray that labour has started.

Besides that, some old grudges have been vanquished. Your complaints about Duncan coming and going have lost their place. Now he simply comes back, every time. He texts home in 10 when he is on the way, and you know it is only a figure of speech, yet it makes you excited all the same that he has started calling your flat home.

So now you try to tell him. Try to convey, somehow, that he means the world to you in flesh and soul, and all the other worlds you are not sure exist, though the science says they might. He has been doing and saying all the right things, except one. It is almost as if he is too stubborn to say it and his body decided to bleed it out through his pores instead. You know he asked for more time. That is all right. Still, the question of what exactly frightens him gnaws at you. If it is you, you reckon you can make yourself as innocuous as possible.

“Your mouth is lovely,” you say, trembling.

You kiss him once. He lets you. Sits there stunned beneath it, lips soft and parted, breath caught somewhere in the middle of him. You clutch his shirt and kiss him again. Then his cheek, then the place below his eye. “And your teeth,” you whisper. “I love your teeth. And your eyes. Especially when you can’t see a bloody thing.”

“Lassie—”

“You look so sweet without the glasses.”

Your breathing starts to go wrong: shuddery, uneven, too full for the size of your ribs. That animates him. His arm comes round your back, hand firming over your shoulder, and then he plucks you off him just enough to look at you.

“Stop, girl,” he says, frightened. “Yer makin’ yourself cry. What are ye cryin’ for?”

You blink at him. Feel the wetness only then, hot at the corners of your eyes and slipping down. Stupid. You want to tell him properly. Want it so badly your whole body feels too crowded with it, yet the fear of his face changing makes the words retreat. You do not want to corner him or make him feel he has to answer. “Because I need you to know,” you say instead. Your fingers stay twisted in his shirt. “Do you know how dear you are?”

Duncan blinks. His eyes are hazy without the lenses, looking into yours, then away, then back again as if the room keeps moving. He pulls you into him and tucks his face into your neck.

“I don’t,” he says there, muffled. “Not properly. Feels strange hearin’ it.” His mouth presses warm under your jaw. “But I like ye tellin’ me. Even if I look scared while ye do.”

Your hand comes to the nape of his neck.

That is when his phone buzzes on the nightstand. Once, then again. Three more pings come close behind. Duncan keeps holding you while he reaches for it, squinting painfully at the bright screen. “Shite,” he mutters. “I can’t see a thing.” He turns the phone towards your face. “Is it Ray?”

You read the texts with his arm still round you. “Yeah.” Your heart lifts and drops together. “God, it started. They’re at the hospital. He says to come in the morning.”

Duncan goes still for a second. Then he kisses your temple. “Will ye be fit to come? Are ye feelin’ all right?”

You nod and settle against his chest. He puts the phone down blindly and rubs your back, quiet now.

“Dunk?”

“Mm?”

“Will you let me do that more often?”

His hand pauses. “What?”

Your cheeks go hot. “Make you feel good.”

Something changes in the way he breathes. He reaches for his glasses then, gets them on, and looks at you for a long moment. “Sweetheart,” he says, rough and soft together, “how can ye even ask me that?” His thumb comes to your cheek. “I’d beg ye for it if ye didn’t offer." Then, quieter: "Will ye… let me?"

"Yes," you say.

You're not sure if this has settled anything or not. But is assuages enough. Afterwards you let him fuss, despite him being the one with his cock out and cum dried all over it. He showers quickly. Walks around the flat killing all the lights in his very dad-like fashion. Sets the alarms for tomorrow, then comes back to bed and gathers your back to his chest. His hands are wise: one rests on the belly over Aodhán's little kicks, the other covers the crown of your head. He's got his nose wedged into your shoulder and breathes there. The last thing you hear from him is a very sleepy, "You smell so nice, lassie."

Sleep comes easy. Waking not so much. Your bladder practically screams, so the alarm is merely a courtesy that saves you from bursting. You wring yourself out from Duncan's embrace, and by the time you're back he's sitting on the bed and staring at his phone with a hand over his mouth.

"Look," he says. "Fucking Christ, she did it."

You sit beside him and he tilts the screen towards you. There's a picture of Rowan, her red hair looking like some large bird's nest, cheeks and neck flushed, dark circles under her eyes. She's passed out. In her arms there's a baby, also asleep. Long eyelashes and incredibly bushy eyebrows for something so small. Below, caption says: Meet Róisín. Raymun sent it at 4 a.m.

"She looks like Rowan," you say, taking the phone from Duncan's hand to study the picture up close. "She looks exactly like her." It hits you, boulder-heavy, that in approximately four weeks you too will hold a small copy of Duncan and yourself.

Dunk blinks at you. "Ye alright, sweetheart?"

“I’m all right,” you say, and find that it is true enough to count. The feeling is large, yes. Unfriendly in scale. But there is no room for a meltdown when Rowan has just become someone’s mother. “Just strange. Seeing her.”

Duncan watches your face for another second. “Aye.” Then he takes the phone back and looks at the picture again.

It has touched him more than he expected. First, Raymun Fossoway, his best friend in the whole crooked world, has become a father sometime around four in the morning while Duncan was sleeping with his nose against your shoulder. That alone is enough to make the day feel split open. Raymun, who forgets where he puts his wallet twice a week and once tried to dry trainers in an oven, now has a daughter with furious eyebrows and a name. Second, there is the smaller matter of Duncan being next in line.

Soon. Soon enough that the word has begun to lose its general shape and sit on his chest.

You get up to pee again, then wash your face, then start talking from the bathroom about whether Rowan would want food brought in, or if flowers are stupid, or if flowers are allowed, and Duncan sits there a moment longer with the phone cooling in his palm. Last night returns by quieter routes. Your thumbs under his eyes. Your voice saying dear as if the word had been chosen with care. He heard it. He hears it still. He only wishes his body had not been so full of everything else that he sat there useless and never managed to say, You are dear to me too.

The words look simple now. Criminally simple.

“Dunk?” you call.

“Aye.” He rubs a hand over his face and moves. “I’m comin’.”

He dresses in the clothes nearest the chair, then changes the jumper because it has a stain on the cuff, then changes it back because the clean one has a neckline he hates. You pass the bedroom door with your hair half-pinned and one shoe on, and he feels the old fondness strike him in the side. After that he finds the car keys under yesterday’s newspaper, locks up, and follows you out.

In the car he hums under his breath. It takes him three streets to notice he is doing it. You notice sooner and look out the window with your mouth trying not to smile. He stops at a small shop near the hospital and comes back with flowers that are yellow and a little daft-looking.

“No lilies,” he says, getting back behind the wheel. “Thought they’d smell too much.”

You look at the bouquet. “That’s oddly thoughtful.”

“Oddly?”

“Deeply. Terribly. Very thoughtful.”

He gives you a glance and pulls back into traffic.

In the hospital there are white walls, blue signs and floor polish. It's too warm near the lifts and too cold in the corridors. Duncan takes your hand in the car park and keeps it. Across the road. Through the sliding doors. Past reception, where you both speak more quietly for no reason except that everyone else does. In the lift your fingers tighten round his when another family squeezes in with balloons and a foil packet of something that says IT’S A BOY. He rubs his thumb once over your knuckles.

By the maternity ward your palm has gone warm in his. Raymun appears before either of you finds the room number, looking as if somebody has shaken him violently and filled him with light.

“You came,” he says, then laughs at himself. His hair is flattened on one side. His shirt is buttoned wrong. There is a tiny white cloth over one shoulder like a military rank.

Duncan lets go of your hand to hug him.

It happens for a reason. There is a hug, then the flowers to pass over, then Raymun’s nervous pointing towards sanitiser, then the door handle under Duncan’s palm. Still, when he looks back, your hand is empty at your side. The fingers close slowly round the strap of your bag. Your face remains pleasant.

“All right?” he asks.

“Mm.”

Raymun, mercifully too dazed to notice weather in other people, opens the door.

Rowan is sitting propped up in bed like she has survived a duel and intends to give inaccurate statements about it later. Her hair has doubled in size since the photograph and now sits round her head in red disorder. Her lips are dry. One shoulder of her hospital gown has slipped. There is a water bottle on the table large enough to hydrate livestock, a half-peeled banana beside it, and the unmistakable square outline of a pad under the blanket. She looks ruined and victorious.

“Oh my God,” you say, and go to her.

“Careful,” Rowan says, already reaching. “I’m barely held together, hun.”

You bend awkwardly around your own belly and hug her anyway. Rowan shuts her eyes when your cheek touches hers.

“You did it,” you whisper.

“Apparently.” Her voice comes out hoarse and pleased with itself. “I kept asking if I could resign. They said no, can you imagine?”

Raymun makes a helpless sound from near the sink. “She told the midwife she was reporting her to management.”

“I was in pain.”

“You told her birth was a pyramid scheme.”

“It is.”

Duncan laughs, and Rowan’s eyes find him over your shoulder.

“Dunk,” she says, softening all through the exhaustion. “Come here, you massive thing.”

He comes carefully, though he has no idea what danger his largeness presents to the furniture, the baby, Rowan, or the air itself. The room has gained a new centre. He feels it before he properly sees it: a small bundled shape in the clear bassinet beside the bed. Róisín sleeps with one fist by her mouth, scowling hard in her dreams. One ear is folded at the top. Her eyebrows are Raymun’s, ridiculous and dark on a face still deciding what face means.

“Look at her,” Raymun says, and his voice breaks on nothing.

Duncan looks. The baby makes a thin squeak, not quite a cry. More hinge than voice. His heart gives such a stupid jump he nearly steps back.

“She does that,” Rowan says. “It’s normal. Everything terrifying is normal, they tell us.”

“She’s beautiful,” Duncan says.

Rowan sniffs. “She looks like a furious old man.”

“She does,” you say, laughing wetly. “She really does.”

“She’s so beautiful,” Duncan says again, stubborn about it.

Raymun’s face changes. He goes to the bassinet and spends far too long arranging his hands before he lifts her. Already he has the strange care of someone trained for this. Supporting the head. Checking the blanket. Moving with slow cautiousness and panic held between the teeth. He brings her to Duncan.

“Want to hold her?”

Duncan’s mouth opens. “I—”

“Ye don’t have to,” Rowan says.

“No, I want.” He clears his throat. “I want to. If that’s all right.”

Raymun places Róisín into him.

She nearly vanishes against Duncan’s chest. His arms make a fortress round a parcel. For a moment he looks horrified by the difference in scale. Then she settles. Her scowl deepens, as if she has found his heartbeat objectionable, and one tiny pink foot shifts under the blanket.

“Oh,” Duncan says. That is all.

You are standing beside Rowan’s bed with one hand over your mouth. Duncan sees you from the corner of his eye and looks down quickly, because something in your expression makes the room tilt. Love, maybe. Fear too. A look from the shore at incoming storm. His son moves in your belly under the dress, or perhaps Duncan only imagines it because he has another child in his arms and the future suddenly has weight and cheeks and tempers.

He looks at Róisín again. He sees naught of the furious old man Rowan speaks of. Only a child, precious and small enough to fit comfortably in his palms alone. To Duncan, she’s beautiful in some profound way. He holds her for a mere minute and already feels how hard it will be to give her back to Raymun. Then a horrific thought strikes him: how little love must there have been in the person who made him, if they looked at him and did not feel even a poor cousin of this. Or else what an ugly specimen of child he must have been. Red, strange, wrong in the face somehow. A thing easy to set down and leave. His eyes begin to sting.

“You look good with one,” Rowan says.

Duncan coughs and pretends he's red because of embarrassment.

Raymun sits on the edge of the chair beside the bed, then immediately stands again to fetch Rowan’s water. Rowan reaches for it too late. He is already there, cap unscrewed, straw angled towards her mouth. She drinks like she's been rescued from the desert.

“See?” she says after swallowing. “This is what they don’t tell you. You get a baby and also a valet.”

“I was always a valet,” Raymun says.

You laugh. Duncan looks at you over Róisín’s head. Your face has gone soft in a way that makes him want to walk across the room and press his mouth to your forehead for being so loving. He stays where he is. The baby’s folded ear is nearly touching his thumb. He would rather cut the hand off than jostle her.

Rowan follows his gaze. Then she follows yours back to him. Her eyes narrow with a new, exhausted brightness. “Christ,” she says, stretching and sighing. “I’m glad you two finally got on with it.”

Raymun freezes with the water bottle in hand.

You blink. “Red.”

“What?” Rowan says, flushed with the righteousness of operating on no sleep and several hormones at full volume. “I am. The circling was exhausting. I can say shite about Ray all day, and I will, but at least he was blunt with it. He saw me and went, right, you, and now look—” She gestures too widely towards Róisín. Raymun lunges for the water before it tips into the blanket.

“Easy,” he says. “Jesus, Red.”

“I’m only saying.” Rowan’s eyes have gone shiny. “People waste so much time pretending they don’t know what they know. It’s stupid. Look at them. They’re lovely.”

Duncan’s throat closes. The baby gives another little creak in his arms. He looks down at her, then at you, then at Rowan. Heat climbs his neck so fast it feels medical. “Ah,” he says, and tries for a laugh. It comes out wrong. “No, we haven’t—”

Raymun shuts his eyes.

Rowan stops smiling.

You do too.

Duncan burns under it. Three women looking at him, one of them fresh from labour and no less lethal for it, another tiny and wrinkled in his arms, and you with your face gone still in the way that means something has landed and will have to be found later.

“I mean—” he tries. Nothing useful follows. Róisín coos once. A wet, birdlike sound. Then her face folds on itself and she begins to cry. Duncan starts breathing heavily. “Oh, I’m—” He looks down in alarm. “I’m sorry.”

Raymun is there in a second. “It’s all right, mate.” His hands come out. “She’s just hungry. Wasn’t you.”

“A-aye,” Duncan stammers, and gives her back.

Raymun passes Róisín to her mother. The baby roots blindly into the blanket. “Ray, sweetie,” Rowan says, eyes still on Róisín. “Will you bring me a Twirl from the machine?”

“Aye. Course.”

“And take Dunk with you, hm?”

Duncan nods too quickly. Truth be told, he is ready to leave the room for a minute or forever. He cannot quite look at you. His gaze drops to your shoes. “Do ye want anything?”

“Just water is fine.”

“Aye.”

Raymun clasps his shoulder on the way out and steers him through the door.

For a moment the room is held together only by Róisín’s hungry little noises and Rowan arranging herself with a wince. Then Rowan looks up at you. Her face crumples at the corners. “I’m so sorry, hun,” she says. “I’ve said some awful things in the last twenty-four hours, but I had no idea. I saw you two and I thought—”

“It’s fine.” You sit on the chair near her bed and let your hand come to Róisín’s head. Her hair is unbelievably soft, damp in places, warm as something kept under a wing. “I think he’s just… overwhelmed.”

“I caused you grief, haven’t I?”

You do not want the room to turn towards you. Rowan is pale under the flush, and her hand keeps twitching near the baby’s back, counting, checking, learning. You take that hand instead and squeeze it.

“It’s all right,” you say. “It is what it is.” Then, quieter, “Now. Be honest with me. How was the labour?”

“It was fine,” Rowan says flatly.

“Do not lie to me.”

She sighs through her nose and looks at the ceiling. “It was horrible. But not as horrible as I thought it would be. All those stupid exercises they told us to do? They make sense. I hate admitting that. The breathing and the positions and the pelvic floor nonsense. It really helped.” Her eyes come back to you. “You’ll do good.”

You go quiet.

Rowan studies your face. “Are you scared?”

“A little.” Your palm settles over your belly. Beneath it, Aodhán shifts slowly. “I got so used to this.”

“The next thing is better,” Rowan says.

You look at her.

“It is,” she insists, hoarse and certain. “I promise you. I’ve never loved Ray more than I do now.”

That makes you smile. Rowan reaches out and touches your cheek with the backs of her fingers.

“He loves you,” she says. “I can see it.”

The door opens. Raymun comes in first with the Twirl and a bottle of water. Duncan follows behind him, looking so frightened that your chest hurts. Then he sees your face. The smile still there. The absence of disaster. He relaxes by one careful inch.

A thing happens then. For the first time, Duncan has a full conversation with you without either of you opening your mouths.

You give him a look that says act normal, calm down.

He blinks. Are ye cross?

Your eyes drop. Inconclusive. Then you look up again, and Duncan understands: later.

He can do later. He can do this much.

You stay another thirty minutes. Rowan eats half the Twirl and complains that nobody warned her newborns made such aggressive faces in their sleep. Raymun says he did warn her, actually, because he had googled it at six in the morning. Rowan tells him to not act so smart. Duncan stands near the foot of the bed with his hands in his pockets until you pat the chair beside you, and then he sits.

Róisín falls asleep in Rowan’s arms, mouth open, brows still drawn as if dreaming of some adult business. Not long after, Rowan’s head tips back into the pillow. Her eyelids lower mid-sentence.

You rise first. “We’ll go.”

Rowan opens one eye. “Come again.”

“Try and stop me.” You kiss her forehead. She catches your wrist for half a second and squeezes.

Raymun walks you both to the corridor. He hugs you hard and careful round the belly, cheek pressed to your hair. “Missed ye,” he says. “Love ye. You’ve got this.”

Your arms tighten round him. “You too. I love you too.”

Then he turns to Duncan. They clasp forearms first, formal for one second, and then Raymun breaks rank and leans into his chest. Duncan grunts under the contact, then pats his back. “Good man,” Duncan says, rough.

Raymun nods against him. “Yeah.”

When you walk down the corridor outside, Duncan’s chest feels awful. In the courtyard he wants to take your hand again. Instead, he twirls the car keys in his fingers and asks, “How are ye?”

“I… don’t know,” you say, hollow. Your steps slow. “Is there anything I should know about?”

He gulps down a thick glob of spit. “As in—?”

You stop completely. Then you look down at your feet. “How do you—Have you, um. Changed your mind?”

Duncan watches your hands. They keep fidgeting with your rings. “Or not,” you say, “and I just don’t know what’s been on it?”

He is taken aback slightly. It is not that Duncan does not know what he wants. He knows exactly. He just did not want it dissected publicly. “Nothing’s changed,” he says. “I’ve had my mind made a long time now.”

“I don’t understand what that means.”

“Lass,” he sighs. “I’m bein’ as plain with you as I can.” It comes out pained, and Dunk regrets it in an instant.

You huff. Nearly stamp your foot on the pavement, though the movement stops halfway and turns into something smaller and sharper. “You’re not.”

Duncan looks at you, surprised.

“You’re not,” you repeat, more annoyed now. “You say things round the actual thing. You do everything round the actual thing. Then someone says it out loud and you look horrified and start stammering about how we haven’t.”

His mouth opens, then closes again.

“You said you needed time. And I understand that, I really do. But I’m a month away from giving birth and would like to at least have an option to prepare for what comes next,” you tell him. “And being earnest doesn’t equal plain or honest.”

Something odd goes through him. Cornered, maybe. Frustrated, surely, though more with himself than with you. If he had only fallen to his knees and said I love ye madly, perhaps the whole thing would have settled itself. Instead he stands there with the keys biting into his palm and his heart making hard work of the obvious. “I ain’t lyin’,” he says, desperate.

You scoff and kick a small stone across the pavement. “You are not telling me the truth either. You’re not telling me much outside of when we sleep together.”

Something in Duncan boils over. “How else do you want it said, girl?” he asks, and hears his own raised voice too late. “I’ve been there all those months. I proposed. For God’s sake, I sleep with ye every other day and bathe ye and I am there all the damned time, and gladly.”

His voice breaks at the edge. Breath runs short. You only stare at him. “I’d be a real piece of shite if there was nothing coming afterwards,” he says.

There is no response. Duncan wishes, badly, that he could hold your hands now. His voice is very thin when he speaks again. “Ye really think that of me? Ye think I’d… I’d touch ye like that? That I’d braid your hair and sleep next to ye if I was preparin’ to go back to bein’ pub mates?”

“Dunk, I—” You hiccup. Your eyes begin to burn. “I don’t know. It happened to me before, so—” Your hands open uselessly between you, then drop back to your sides. “And you proposed right after I got pregnant. With, if I remember correctly, should we, not I would like to.”

His face tightens all over. “Since when does it matter how it’s done?”

You know where the thing is. It is right there for you to reach. A fistful of mud, a buried little pebble that will hurt him terribly if you throw it just right. So you reach. And you throw.

“Since you fucking tell me you love me while you’re still inside me and while your baby is inside me too and then you take it right back!”

Duncan chokes on something invisible. His chest heaves. His mouth moves once, then again, with no sound coming from it. Then his face cracks. “Because it was badly done!” he yells. “It was cowardly done.”

He turns away, rubs hard at the back of his head, then turns back again. “And I thought I’d been sayin’ it plain all the bloody time.” His hand lifts, pointing at you, though the accusation seems to fail halfway through the gesture. “Fucking shite—”

Then, he turns once more. Starts walking back and forth, one hand at his neck, breathing too hard through his nose. When he speaks, it sounds almost addressed to the pavement. “I thought—I thought you’d be with me after that first damned night, for Christ’s sake.”

“H-how?” you whine, patience snapping clean through. “If I don’t even remember what happened?”

Duncan stops. Scoffs, sharp and disbelieving. “You enjoyed it.”

“What?”

“You enjoyed it,” he says. “You enjoyed it so much you got pregnant with me. You came on my face first. Then I carried you to the bed. Then you said to carry on even though I had no rubber on me. And ye fucked me and told me we were goin' to be all right. Then you left and said you remembered naught of it.”

The words keep coming once they start. Too fast and entirely bare. Duncan looks almost sick with them, and unable to stop.

“Because I—” You gasp. “Because I don’t. Most of it, I don’t. You remember it? Dunk, how could you—”

The hurt comes up hot. Fury too. If only he had been brave then. If only you had been brave and asked outright. Months and months of both of you walking round the same buried thing, each with a different map. God, your head is spinning.

“What?” Duncan says, clipped. “Not tell ye? After that text you sent me, how could I not tell ye, is that it?”

“Well, yes?” He shakes his head. You reach for his arm and he slips away, too wound up to be held. “You don’t believe me,” you say. “Duncan, I was drunk—”

“You weren’t that drunk. You weren’t that drunk, lass.” His voice wobbles, then thickens. “You told me you wanted me. For a long time. And then you didn’t want me, and then you come back and we’re having a baby together and ye ask me if I wanna be around as if I would ever—” He wedges a hand beneath his glasses. His next words come wet. “Don’t do this to me.”

You go still.

“Don’t tell me ye were too drunk to be yourself when you said all that to me,” he says. “Don’t tell me I fucked one girl and got a different one pregnant. I’m bein’ plain. I’m bein’ honest, I’m just—” His breath hitches. “I just. I don’t know the right words.”

You stand there, stunned. Heartbroken, and oddly close to understanding. No matter how ridiculous all of this is, you both seem to be saying the same thing, just badly.

“I’m being plain too. I’m being honest too. So why are we here?” you ask. “Why did you never tell me?”

“Ye’ve always had someone,” Duncan mutters.

“Not when I got pregnant.”

“Cause I—I didn’t want to lose this. I want a… a family. Whatever shape it’s goin’ to have.”

Air puffs through your nose, unbidden.

“What? Don’t ye scoff at me, girl.” His eyes flash, hurt and cross. “Think on it a second before you tell me I’m thick. Look at the men yer with and look at me. Look at how ye acted when I finally got you into my bed—”

You step into his space and put both hands on his chest despite the size of him there, the heat coming off him, and the fact that he looks almost frightening with all that fear turned outward.

“Duncan,” you say, trying to find out if bravery still counts when it comes late. “Three years ago I wanted you to kiss me so badly. And then you didn’t, and avoided me like plague, and grew all judgemental on me—”

Your belly seizes. “Ah, shite—” You fold over the pain.

Duncan catches your shoulder immediately. “What’s wrong?” His tone changes entirely.

“It—it hurts,” you say, cringing. “Fuck, I need to sit—”

“Shite, sweetheart. Luv, c’mere.” He guides you to the nearest bench, one hand at your back and the other under your elbow. “C’mere. Fuck, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He sits with you. His palm comes to your stomach. “Where does it hurt?”

You close your eyes. “Here, it’s just—just a cramp.” You breathe through your mouth. “It’s just a cramp, but it hurts badly.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, it’s a contraction,” you tell him. “Fuck—”

“Take my hand.” He grabs your palm and squeezes. You squeeze back, hard. “Breathe with me, aye?” You nod, though your chest has started to shake. “Girl, I said breathe, not cry.” His face bends in distress. “Why are ye cryin’?”

“I’m sorry, but—” You wipe clumsily at your eyes. “I’ve been—I’ve been eating at myself over whether I’m baby-trapping you all this time.”

“What?”

“You’re so fucking obliging you’d stay if I asked you. Don’t look at me like that, you know you would—”

Duncan stares at you as though you have just told him the shite-coloured onesie he bought was green all along and everyone has been lying to him for sport.

“And I do not remember shite because I’m fucking smaller than you and I don’t eat well, okay?” you grit. “Doesn’t mean anything I said wasn’t true. If I said I wanted you, it means I do.”

You keep squeezing his palm. His free hand rubs your back. Eventually the cramp loosens its teeth and goes. You draw a deeper breath, then look him in the eye.

“Duncan, I…” Your voice breaks, then holds. “I love you so damned much. I mean every word I say to you. But I want you to stay because you want to. Not because it’s proper or honourable.”

For a second Duncan hears nothing. His ears ring. His mouth goes dry. Deep inside him, it feels as though someone has put a blanket over his heart.

He is loved. So damned much.

All the anger and inadequacy lose their shape. What comes in their place is tranquility. Clean enough to frighten him less than it ought. Duncan breathes out, and the next breath comes easier. He cups your jaw, thumb resting near the wet corner of your mouth. “I want to,” he says.

You search his eyes. Then you nod. “Good.”

He nods back. His hand moves down to your stomach. “How’s yer belly?” he asks. “Ye want me to take ye home?”

“Please,” you breathe.

He helps you up slowly. “C’mon, sweetheart.”

For a while there is only the sound of walking. Your hand rests on his arm. His keys sit trapped in his fist. Three steps away from the car, you say, “Rowan’s so insane.”

“Aye,” Duncan says, and smiles. “I know.”

He helps you in, gets your seatbelt settled below the belly, then shuts the door. On the drive back, you doze with your cheek against the glass and one hand tucked under the curve of yourself. Duncan keeps the radio low. Every few minutes his eyes flick from the road to you, then back again.

At home, he carries you from the car. When you make a sleepy objection by the door and try to get down, his hold firms.

“Leave it,” he murmurs. “I’ve got ye.”

Somehow he manages the keys with you still in his arms. Gets the door open, kicks it shut behind him, and walks you straight to the bedroom. There, he sets you on the mattress and pulls the blanket over your legs.

“Sleep, my girl,” he says. “Rest some.”

You blink at him, bleary-eyed. A small sound of surrender leaves you, and then you turn into the pillow.

It is early afternoon, though October has already lowered the light. Duncan stands by the bed until your breathing evens. Then he goes quietly through the flat. Dishes first. Cups, plates, a fork with dried egg on it. He puts the washing on, checks the bin, folds the towels from the radiator. Small works. His hands know this part.

When there is nothing left requiring him, he changes into running clothes. At the door he pauses, listening back towards the bedroom. You do not stir.

Duncan takes one long breath, then steps out.

He knows the right words, after all. He has known them all along. His hands have carried them for weeks, passing them from task to task, hiding them in water, buttons, towels, food, the steady place beneath your belly. Now his mouth knows too.

#nat writes #dunk x reader #dunk the tall x reader #duncan the tall x reader #ser duncan x reader #ser duncan the tall x reader #dunk x reader smut #dunk x you #dunk smut #dunk the tall #ser duncan the tall #akotsk #akotsk fanfic #akotsk x reader #a knight of the seven kingdoms #heartburn

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