Next up someone is going to claim that the Narnia series isn't kids books.
Kids books is probably not the best way to word it, you can enjoy them at every age, including your childhood, as you get older you may find new truths in them, but they're still good for any age.
I told my little nephew that I'd wave at his airplane when it flew over my house today, and he very calmly and politely explained that it wouldn't be possible to see me due to the limitations of human vision. I said he just had to squint real hard, and he took a deep breath and went into the toddler version of "see, what you're not understanding–"
29th June 2026.
This year's Strawberry Moon was extremely low in the sky, which made it look very large and bright. (A perfect photographic opportunity!)
During a high speed car chase pursuit, the FOX 11 Los Angeles helicopter had an unexpected moment when they spotted a rooster and a chicken casually walking down the sidewalk right in the middle of the pursuit.
inability to correctly perceive 3d objects is in fact far more dangerous when someone is driving a car next to you then when they're like, sending emails to you.
heard someone say "who even owns a rolling pin anymore" and my brain froze trying to process it. what does that mean. are u implying rolling pins are outdated technology? did we come up with a shiny new 21st century method of flattening dough of which i remain uninformed? is there now an app on the app store people are using instead??? im losing my mind "who even owns a rolling pin" people who BAKE
there have been four editing passes on my spider sex book, and each time they take away so many commas. no fresh commas are being added, this is just a continued culling. if you see a comma in the final book please understand that it survived so much
Hi!Do you still take request?If you do can I request for a yandere modern Valarr Targaryen with ex reader?Where reader escape him when she notice the red flags around their relationship but not without having his babies—twin boys, without him knowing of course. She's gone missing for like five years—with the help of Aerion who help her because he just like making chaos for his cousin. With Valarr being heir to the company and all was forced to marry, he never shared bed with his wife, they had a shared agreement and somewhat a friendship—just friendship.
Then by some luck his sons where the ones that reach out, they're smart boys and like their papa wanted a complete family, Valarr knew for an instant that their his and reader's children especially when they had the reader's eyes but has his face.
Thank you❤️
Hi! So, I do still take requests and I LOVED THIS ONE!!! Thank you so much for sending this in, I hope I did it justice and sorry if it's a little too long. But honestly, if you have any more, please DO NOT HESITATE to send them in because this one was a lot of fun, so thanks!
Family Portraits Lie
Modern!Yandere!Valarr x fem!reader—in which, you flee when you see the red flags with Aerion's help and don't look back until five years later he shows up on your doorstep because your sons want their dad and he's never stopped wanting you.
TW: 18+ MDNI. Sex, dub con, possessive behaviour, slight hint of abuse, manipulation. OOC Aerion, mischievous kids. (I think that's all. Just a general warning, it is dark)
Five Years Ago
Valarr was the perfect boyfriend—on the outside at least, on the inside, he was strange, little things telling you to run, to leave. To never look back and just put him in your rearview mirror because this is not love. It cannot be love.
It was in the little things, the way he gripped your arm tighter around any man, even your brother. The way he held you close, fingers always splayed in a way that would say mine, not I love you, or even stay close, I’ll protect you. No, he gripped you in a way that stated mine. Like he owned you, like you belonged to him and only him; like you were not your own person. Like all you were was his, an extension of him, not an active agent of your own right.
It was in the little things, the comments that he made on your clothes, comments about the necklines and the fit and the cut and wouldn’t you prefer to be more comfortable. Comments dressed up as caring, but were really just possessive.
It was in the little things, the way he spoke to you, the way he spoke to your friends and your brother. Carefully measured comments that sounded fine when not listening too closely but were really separating you and him from them.
It was in the little things, the way he whispered you are mine over I love you late at night, the way he said your name, like you were a possession that he had to protect over a person he wanted to love.
It was in the little things. All of them. Every second of every day when you were with him. And when you weren’t.
He knew where you were no matter what, little texts sent to your phone like while you’re at the coffee shop, can you bring me one back, love? or when are you leaving the club? I miss you or even, are you out with Dunk and Raymun again? Is that why you’re at the movies and not with me?
He seemed to know everything about you, about your family. He played on your past, pressing on the wounds left behind by your father’s abandonment of you, pressing on the wounds just to drive you into his arms because in his embrace, he stopped pressing. He pretended to be the place where pain went away, that he took your pain away, when really he caused it.
And you were tired.
You were tired of falling for his words and sentiments and the gentle way he held when you fell asleep and the way he remembered your coffee order as if those good little things made up for all the others, all the little things that were dangerous and damaging.
You were getting out. Tonight.
That’s what you told yourself even as your resolve crumbled, looking at the pregnancy stick in your hand, the one with the two pink lines facing you, the one you were white-knuckling so tightly in the hotel lobby bathroom where you escaped from the gala, waiting on the ride from Duncan.
“Fuck,” you hiss, fingers tightening even more around the thin stick, the one with simple geometry on the digital screen, the geometry that feels like a death sentence, dread pooling in your stomach, climbing and rising, tainting your mouth with the sour taste. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”
“Language, darling, language,” says a deep voice, one that grates on your every nerve while also setting every nerve on edge as you wait. You wait because Aerion has a reason for everything he does and right now? His comments, his appearance in the lady’s room is no different.
He has a reason.
“What the fuck do you want, Aerion?!” you snap, turning around while keeping the pregnancy test behind your back, preventing him from seeing it, not even a glimpse because you don’t know what would get back to Valarr if he saw it. You don’t know what he’d say.
“I don’t want anything. See, I noticed that perfect, precious Valarr’s darling girlfriend wasn’t so loving tonight, remaining as distant from him as he seemed to allow and then I noticed you take off for this bathroom, looking sick. See…I hate my cousin and if you want out and he’s not letting you out…well, consider me your guardian angel cause I’ll help,” he tells you and you narrow your eyes, taking in the set of his jaw, the stiffness in it and the barely concealed rage in his eyes, his focus straying to your wrist, the one that hangs by your side, fingers holding your clutch. The wrist with the bruise in the shape of Valarr’s hand.
“What’s with the angry look, Aerion?” you ask, unsure if what you’re seeing is real. If he truly is angry because of the bruise, because of the pain. Because of the fact you feel you have to flee rather than leave.
“I always knew my cousin was a bastard,” he hisses, stepping closer, his hand taking your bruised wrist with a tenderness that surprises you, his hands turning your arm over, examining it for more injuries, gaze assessing. “I just didn’t realize he was a bastard.” The difference in the way he says the word tells you something—he doesn’t like the injury on your wrist.
“Like you’re any different?” you counter, pulling your wrist from his grip and taking a step back from him, away from his assessing stare, the calculations behind his eyes. “We all know the stories of you, Aerion. You’re no better than Valarr.”
“On the contrary,” he says, crossing his arms, adopting a relaxed pose that you can see is a farce from the tension in his body, the stiff lines of his shoulders, “I don’t hide who I am. I don’t dress my obsessions up as love and pretend that the pain I cause is protection. If someone is going to love me, to be with me, they know what they’re getting into. They don’t go into it blind because I pretended to be something I wasn’t until I had them. That’s a coward’s game.”
“Fair enough,” you whisper, bringing your other hand forwards, the stick in your hand, the face flashing at him. “And if you’re gonna be my guardian angel while I escape, can you get rid of this?” You hold it out to him and he nods, just once, taking it from your hands, eyes straying to your stomach, to what grows within.
“I can arrange a solution,” he says, tone leading with that dark seductive tone that he’s made popular across the web. “If you want.” Your hands move almost of their own accord to rest on your lower belly, pressing just softly as if the child is there already, going to kick against your hand even though it’s too soon and you can’t help the smile that grows as you picture peanut-butter stained fingers on furniture, sticky little hands reaching for you, tears soothed by your presence and those soft words of love you, Mommy.
“I don’t need a solution, Aerion,” you whisper, tone soft and fond. Dreaming. “I just need to flee.” And he nods once, watching you as you pull two phones from your clutch, one going into the trash can and the other buzzing with a message, two words Leave Now.
“I’m assuming that fleeing takes place now?” he asks and you look up at him, nodding once before turning to the exit that leads into the lobby versus the ballroom.
“Make sure he doesn’t notice I’m gone?” you ask and in reply, you watch as his lips stretch into a dark grin, a look that promises exactly what you wish.
“If there’s one thing I excel at, darling,” he says, stepping backwards, to the ballroom exist, “it’s making chaos for the golden-not-so-golden cousin of mine. He won’t notice you’re gone until it’s too late. Trust me.”
And then he’s gone and you run.
You run, leaving behind the ballroom, the gala, the press and the powerful people. You run, straight to your brother’s beat-up pick-up truck, climbing in and hoping to God that you are free. Completely free.
You run, knowing that you left the phone he knew about behind, the ballgown that you’re fairly certain had something in it to know your location crumpled in a bathroom stall, replaced by clothes you’d slipped into your clutch when Valarr was in the bathroom. The same clutch you’d dropped in the hotel lobby as you fled.
You take no chances, none at all.
You want freedom. You want a life not constrained by someone else’s view of love. You want to live.
And it starts now.
***
Aerion is causing problems. He is always causing problems, but he has made it Valarr’s problem—flirting with women, threatening men, knocking displays over at a faux-display of drunkenness.
“Must you do this cousin?” Valarr hisses, dragging Aerion out of the ballroom by his collar, tossing him back, watching him stumble over his feet before righting and smiling that rakish smirk. “Must you make scenes? I believe youare the reason my girlfriend is spending most of the night in the restroom.”
“Is she there, cousin? Or has she slipped your leash?” Aerion’s words are pointed as he glances leisurely at his watch, eyebrows flicking up as he looks up at Valarr with a faux-sympathetic smile. “I fear, midnight has arrived and Cinderella’s fled to freedom. See…in this story, Prince Charming doesn’t like to share his toys and the Fairy Godmother sets Cinderella free. Only this Fairy Godmother ensures that nothing left behind can cause Prince Charming to find her again.”
“You lie,” Valarr snaps, stalking forwards, his hand curling into Aerion’s shirt as he pulls him closer, nostrils flaring as Aerion simply smiles, one eyebrow rising.
“Do I? Maybe you should check, Prince Charming.” And Valarr releases him with a shove, turning and running into the lady’s room, his eyes scanning every inch of the room, noticing the crumpled ball gown in the stall. He relaxes for a moment, remembering you complaining of the tight lacing, saying you were taking it off as soon as you could.
“My love, are you alright?” he calls out, stepping deeper into the room, to the stall where he thinks you rest, simply taking a breather from the party and the weight of expectations, but he receives no answer. “My love?” He pushes the stall door open, expecting you to hiss at him, but all he sees is your ball gown discarded on the floor. He slams every stall door open, but everyone is empty. He looks through the entire room, pulling his phone to check your location, the blinker flashing that you are here and so he calls you, the sound of your ringtone ringing through the bathroom and he follows the sound to the garbage can, noticing your cell phone resting there, his Caller ID changed, flashing up at him.
I am no possession.
And that’s when he feels everything slip out from under him, the world tilting and shifting with your absence, his stomach bottoming out as he slams his fist into the mirror, the glass shattering in and around his skin, over and over and over, the pain like nothing at all because you are gone, until a woman comes into the room, letting out a high-pitched shriek at the sight of him, punching the mirror over and over despite the glass sticking out of his fists.
Security comes, pulling him away as he fights against them, his only words “she left me. She left me. She left me. She left me. She left me.” He fights against them as they pull him from the room, place him in an ambulance, his last sight before the ambulance doors close, Aerion’s face with a smirk as he waves with his fingers, mouthing I’m the Fairy Godmother in this story.
And then Valarr lets the black of a world without you, wash over him.
It all goes dark.
————
Four Years Ago
“You still love this girl who left you?” Kiera asks Valarr, leaning back in the café chair, her elegant hands curled around the cup of coffee, rings glimmering in the light. She looks every inch of what is expected of him and he hates it. All he wants is you back.
He wants you and your graphic tees and cargo pants and your insistence that he watch proper TV with you, not financial documentaries. He wants you and the way you need iced drinks winter, spring, summer, fall. He wants you and your laugh that is just a bit too loud, just a bit too deep, just a bit too harsh.
He wants you because you are not what is expected of him, simply because you are what he wants. What he has always wanted since he met you in university when you were coming from the library, holding tight to a sweating plastic cup of iced coffee in one hand, arms loaded down with history books in the other.
He wants you because you were his. You were his everything and yet you left. You left his safety and protection and love for what? What has happened to you? Where are you? He knows not but he looks.
He looked for you for an entire year, looking and looking and looking and finding nothing. Nothing but emptiness and loneliness, met with his father’s disappointed stare as he whispered, “you are obsessed, my boy. Let the girl go.” But he can’t.
Because you’re his. You are. You just forgot.
But you’ll come back again.
He knows it.
“Yes,” he answers Kiera, folding his hands on the table, looking at her, stare intense. The two have been friends since they were children—just friends. He found you and she loves Daeron, his cousin, in that once in a lifetime kind of love.
He just refuses to love her. Claims he’s not deserving, he’ll just pull her down, ruin her. He won’t do that.
“And you want to marry me?” she clarifies and he nods, just once, sharp and smooth, jaw tight. “I love your cousin, you love this Cinderella chick who ran away with Aerion’s help and now he’s disappeared off the face of the planet…yet you want to marry me?”
“I need to for the image of stability and so do you. We’re friends. A marriage in title only, both free to do what needs doing and when one of us gets our love, an amicable divorce and quiet remarriages,” he says and she looks up and over to the corner of the ceiling, calculations flashing behind her eyes and then she nods, just once. A mirror of his.
“Deal.”
***
“Boys! You only put food in your mouth!” you admonish, reaching down and pulling Daemon’s hand out of Jace’s mouth. “You do not eat your brother!”
“Sounds like you’re having a wild time, darling,” Aerion calls out and you sigh, lifting Daemon up and settling him on your hip, bouncing him gently as you turn, one eyebrow arched, taking in the state of him, mussed hair, unzipped leather jacket, a scent of designer perfume and sex carrying in with him and a grocery bag dangling from one hand’s fingers.
“Twin boys of half-Targaryen? Yeah, wild time,” you tell him, gaze dropping pointedly to the bag in his hands. “What have you brought in that bag?” He holds it out to you, a teasing smile growing on his face before melting to a real one, one of sweetness and protectiveness as he bends down to Jace, picking him up and holding him before him like a prize—a very Lion King move.
You glance down into the cloth depths of the bag, unleashing a small “thank you god!” when you see that the bag holds more coffee and sugar—the two things that you’re running on completely.
“It’s fine to use my name, darling,” Aerion tells you and you roll your eyes as you set the bag on the kitchen counter, taking Jace with your now free hand, settling him on your other hip, both boys now in your grip.
“No holding the boys when you still smell like your one-night stand,” you tell him and he smiles at you, that languid smile that you’ve learned over the years is his language of I like you. You’re my family. But I will still fuck with you because that’s my love language.
“You sound jealous, darling,” he calls out as he backs away, towards the hallway and the bathroom. “It just takes one word and I’ll adapt from Uncle Aerion to Daddy.”
“Shut up, you freak! You’re like my brother! Egh,” you say, gagging at the end of your sentence to make a point, Daemon’s hands tangling in the necklace you wear while Jace reaches out his hands slapping a drum rhythm on your left cheek.
“You flatter me,” he yells and then he’s disappeared into the bathroom, the door slamming shut behind him, leaving you alone with your precious boys. The boys of your eyes, Valarr’s hair and his nose and chin, your cheekbones and temperament. The boys of your heart, the boys who have become your whole life.
Who have become Aerion’s too. When you fled that night, Dunk drove all night, stopping only occasionally to buy Dunkin’s, feeding you more caffeine than was necessary or healthy, Aerion also fled. Aerion fled after you because he saw someone who was breaking from living with someone who lied and he didn’t like that. He told a fairytale of being your fairy godmother and he meant it.
Means it.
He showed up at the doorstep of your new house, bought with your Uncle Arlan’s life insurance, Dunk saying that if it got you safe, that’s what mattered. He showed up and stayed, buying groceries, going out to get what you wanted for your pregnancy cravings, going to all your Lamaze classes as your birthing partner and settling into the role of best friend.
He wasn’t lying to you when he said he wasn’t lying about the way he was when he was with someone romantically, but for you? There was nothing, just safety and warmth because you were friends. Only friends.
But he was there when you gave birth, there when you were in pain, squeezing his hand so hard, he swore you broke it. He was there for that and he’s there for everything else too. He’s running to the nursery some nights, knocking on your bedroom door, telling you he’s got it, telling you to rest. He’s there for the boys, for you, for Dunk and Tanselle.
He’s there because he’s your best friend, platonic soulmate.
He’s there because he’s your fairy godmother, guardian angel and he’s not done guarding you yet.
Maybe never.
————
Three Years Ago
“Mama!” Daemon cries, his voice cracking and you run from the bathroom, tucking your towel under one arm, barely stopping the spray of water before bursting out from your bathroom, bedroom, to the hall, only to see Daemon playing with Jace and Aerion, holding a toy, looking at you and holding it out. “Mama play!”
“No, Daemon, honey. Mama has to get dressed before she can play. Mama has to go to work.” He sighs and throws his toy down, the plastic dump truck hitting Jace’s foot, causing him to break into a wail that has you sighing before Aerion holds up one hand at you.
“Go, darling,” he says and you sigh.
“Thank you,” you cry, before disappearing back into your room, drying off and getting dressed, pulling on your blazer, tucking your keys into your pocket, a piece of photo paper tumbling to the ground. You bend and pick it up, flipping it over, noticing first Valarr, then you. The two of you are laughing, taken at a photo booth when you’d finally convinced him to go to the Reach festival with you.
You still feel that twinge in your heart when you look at him, tracing the lines of his face before you sigh and shake your head, crumpling it up and leaving it on the ground. “Why’d you have to be that way, Val?” you whisper and then you go, kissing Daemon and Jace goodbye, warning Aerion that they can’t watch too much TV and then you’re out the door, driving to work, the image of Valarr’s smile lingering.
He’ll always linger though.
***
“Your uncle,” Kiera declares, bursting into the apartment, tossing her bag into the house, the leather purse sliding across the marble floor, “is a fucking prick!”
“What did he do now?” Valarr calls out, his attention focused solely on the video on his phone, the one of you, telling him to stop filming and be serious. And him telling you that if you could stop being so beautiful then maybe.
“He’s asking when we’re having children!” she yells, stomping into the living room and flopping onto the couch beside Valarr, putting her high-heeled feet up on the coffee table. Valarr doesn’t even protest, simply thinking of children. You’ll be a good mother when you come back. He pictures the two of you with children, the way they’ll look like a mix of the two of you.
And he wants that so badly it hurts.
Actually, he just wants you.
“I hope you told him never,” is all he says in response and Kiera snorts, crossing her arms and looking over at him.
“I told him more than that…things I will not repeat in polite company.”
———
Two Years Ago
“Mommy,” Jace calls out, stepping into your office where you speak on the phone in hushed voices, coaching a woman in tears through the route she’ll have to take to leave her husband, one where he won’t know. One where he can’t follow. You hold up one finger at him, smiling sadly at him and he nods, pouting but waiting.
“…I know, Lena. I know. It’s scary but I need you to breathe for me and go to the Subway, okay? You know the route, we talked you through it yesterday at the office, right? Okay. Lena, are you okay to make it on your own or do you want me to send someone to your location?” You wait, hearing as she says that she’s okay, she’ll make it, hanging up after she thanks you and you sigh, letting your business phone rest on your desk as you walk around it to crouch before your ever-growing son.
“What’s up, kiddo?”
“Where’s our Daddy? Uncle Dunk and Uncle Aerion are our uncles, but everyone has a daddy so where’s ours?” And you don’t have an answer because in all your planning, you never planned for an answer for him.
And that’s what causes trouble to begin.
———
Now
“Did you send the message right?” Daemon hisses, glancing back at Jace where he’s bent over the computer, typing away.
“Just a second!” Jace snaps, hitting the enter key with a dramatic flourish before looking up at his brother with a triumphant smile, one that’s so much like his Uncle Aerion’s that it terrifies you some days because it’s a smile that reads of trouble and mischief and danger. “Done.”
“You think he’ll come?”
“I think he’ll have to if he loved Mommy as much as Uncle Aerion made it sound.” And then Jace hops off of your desk chair, shutting your computer down and walking to his brother, patting him on the back twice. “Nice job keeping lookout.”
“Next time,” Daemon says as the two walk down the hall to their shared room, the room decorated with dragons and vampires, “I’m sending the message and you’re the damn lookout.”
***
Valarr does not like Instagram, does not like any form of social media, viewing them as a necessary nuisance, a way to try and track you, a way to post about the business, share futures with people who should not care yet do.
Valarr does not like it, yet here he is, holding his phone like a lifeline staring at an image of you and two little boys with his face and your eyes set in. It’s an amalgamation of the two of you, his wildest dreams come to startling fruition accompanied by a message—we need to meet.
Valarr_Targaryen
When and where?
D&J&Y&V
Today, 1:00PM, Rhaenyra’s Safe Route.
Valarr_Targaryen
Which kingdom?
D&J&Y&V
I dunno.
Check whatever location thingy is on this account
If that’s a thing.
I dunno.
Just Google the damn place
Jace, out.
Valarr can feel the world slip out from under him, his hand squeezing his phone tight, to tight, the world suddenly shifting beneath him again, chest constricting, every muscle drawn taut as if he’s a puppet on a puppeteer’s strings because there you are.
You and sons that are of you and him. You and his sons, his children. Bits of himself in the world, bits of himself that were grown in you and taken care of by you. Bits of himself that do not know he exists, yet do. And they look so happy in that picture with you—you look so happy—but if there is one thing Valarr has learned through his life, it is that family portraits lie.
And this one certainly does.
He knows that you must him as much as he misses you, that you must be pained by his absence. He knows that your brother Dunk and his ever-dramatic wife Tanselle must have poisoned your mind against him, saying that his protection was too possessive, that his love was just a toxin. He knows that Aerion would have gladly helped cause problems and that you are their unwitting victim.
You have believed them but now he has the chance to show you the truth. Whoever has reached out to him has given him the chance to have you again, to save you from the people who have wished to tear you apart from the moment he asked you out the first time.
He can finally save you.
And that’s why he does what this Jace character suggested, searching the Safe Route, finding a website proclaiming safety for those who need to flee from partners who hurt them. Finding a website with your picture beside Aerion, a story of two friends with hurt in their pasts and a drive to protect, to save. A headquarters located in Reach with safe routes located all through the Seven Kingdoms, the enterprise growing and growing.
You hadn’t faded from the world, he realizes. He just hadn’t known where to look.
But he does now.
And he’s never letting you go again.
***
“Gorgeous, Red,” you cry as you step out of the elevator, tugging your little boys after you as gently as possible, their hands ever so small and fragile in theirs.
“What do you need, Boss?” she asks, looking up from her computer, red hair pulled back into a messy bun, some curls falling into her eyes as she takes in the scene before her. “No,” she says before you can even tell her, her hands flat on her desk, pushing her chair back as she stands, shaking her head.
“Please, Red! They’re after-school care got cancelled and Dunk and Tanselle are meeting with their birthing coach and Aerion’s busy in a financial meeting! I have people that need my help and they typically don’t appreciate little boys who swear too much sitting in,” you plead, stopping before her desk, tilting your head to the side with a pout and she sighs, rolling her eyes before nodding once and falling back into her desk chair.
“Just this once,” she says, “and you owe me big time!” You let go of the boys and watch as they scamper around the circular desk to hug Red and you hold up your hands like you’re praying, waving them at her and mouthing you’re a fucking goddess, thank you. And then you disappear around the hall, beckoning the boys to be good before you disappear into your office where your first client waits, tears running down her face as she holds her purse close to her stomach.
“Talk to me, Jessica,” you whisper, crouching before her chair, taking her hands from her purse and holding them lightly in your own. “What did he do?”
***
The boys waste no time when they see you close the door to dart from Red’s desk back towards the elevator, running, their dragon decorated sneakers squeaking. “Hey!” Red calls out, her voice sharp, eyes sharper when they turn back, “Where the hell do you two think you’re going?”
“Food,” Daemon says at the same time Jace says, “bathroom.” Jace curses internally, ever so your child, more fond of swearing than any other form of words and he knew he should have ironed out the plan with Daemon earlier. Or better yet, just duct tape his younger brother’s mouth so he can’t talk at all (maybe he’s a bit more of Aerion than you care to admit too).
“We’re going to the bathroom and then getting food,” Jace clarifies and Red’s eyes are narrowed as her gaze darts between the identical boys, identical in genetics not in manners or styles before she rolls her eyes just once.
“Bring me something back,” is all she says before turning back to her computer, to the emails from people who need help, need saving. People who need to escape.
“Will do,” they answer in unison before disappearing into the elevator, pressing the glowing M button, the metal doors sliding closed as Daemon bunches up the sleeve of his neat button down to look at his dragon watch, noting the time, 12:55.
“ETA, five minutes,” he says and Jace rolls his eyes, reaching out a hand to slap him upside the head.
“Dummy,” he hisses, “ETA is estimated time of arrival. He could already be there! Our meeting time is in five minutes. Jesus Christ!”
“Don’t call me a dummy, you dummy,” Daemon yells, slapping Jace, the doors sliding open onto the crisp and clean lobby before the brotherly fight can turn into an all-out brawl and the boys dart out into the lobby, towards the strange round couch Aerion had insisted on buying that you had told him was stupid and he had told you that if you were doing this together, he could damn well help pick out the lobby’s furniture.
They jump onto it and position themselves with arms crossed as they watch the doors, waiting. Daemon is every inch Valarr’s son, down to the way he wears little button-ups neatly pressed and slacks and Jace is every inch yours with his graphic tees and dark blue jeans and mini drum kit in the basement beside your full-size one, his drumsticks in his back pocket.
“Where is he?” Daemon hisses, looking at his watch and then the revolving doors and it’s all Jace can do not to hit him. But he’s so hittable, the lovable idiot.
“Shut up!” Jace says just as Valarr steps in, perfectly groomed in a three-piece suit, sleek watch on his wrist and eyes laser-focused, gaze darting with precision around the lobby before landing on the boys sitting with arms crossed on the round couch. They watch as he pauses, face freezing in utter shock at the sight of them before he walks in a way that appears to be slow and measured but in reality is as frantic and quick as Valarr lets himself get in public.
And when he’s reached them, he drops to his knees, opening his arms just slightly, whispering, “my boys” in a reverent tone that has Daemon and Jace sharing a look—one with pursed lips and raised eyebrows, a look that telegraphs what’s up with this guy?
“Hold up, mister,” Jace says, sliding off the couch to stand before Valarr, arms crossed and one leg kicked out in a pose that is so you, that Valarr’s breath hitches in his throat, even more so when he takes note of the drumsticks sticking out on an angle from Jace’s pocket. “We know that biology we are your sons, but we need to discuss some things.”
“Yeah,” Daemon says, hopping off the couch to stand beside his brother, hands on his hips. “What my brother said.”
“What would you like to know, boys?” Valarr asks them and they look at each other, nodding once, just briefly before turning back to him.
“See, first thing you need to understand,” Jace begins, Daemon continuing on for him, “is that we’re not doing this for us or because we really wanna know you.”
“We’re doing this—” Jace.
“For our mommy.” Daemon.
“Because a few nights ago, she was talking with Uncle Dunk, Auntie Tanselle and Uncle Aerion when she thought that we were asleep—” Jace.
“Which was honestly her mistake, because we like never sleep—” Daemon.
“But our sleeping habits are not the point. What is—” Jace.
“Is that Mommy said she felt like she’d failed us because she had always promised herself that if she had kids one day that they’d have two loving parents—” Daemon.
“To make up for her and Uncle Dunk’s shitty life when their Mom and Dad abandoned them to their Uncle Arlan—" Jace.
“And then Uncle Aerion said that, Valarr is—and I quote—a fucking lying bitch who I should have punched in the face. Why the fuck do you want him playing Dad?—” Daemon.
“In which Mummy corrected him of that notion saying that you just hadn’t ever learned to love right but that you weren’t the point. She was just saying—” Jace.
“That we deserved both parents. Then Uncle Aerion—” Daemon.
“Pouted like a fucking bitch—” Jace.
“Asking why he and Uncle Dunk and Auntie Tanselle weren’t enough and then Mommy just threw up her hands and said that she gave up—” Daemon.
“And so we decided to find you so that we could Mommy what she always wanted with the perfect loving family she never had.” Jace steps forwards, placing his body between Valarr and Daemon, arms still crossed, little expression stern, the look in his eyes exactly like yours that Valarr finds it hard to breathe.
“But we need to know,” Jace continues, looking at Valarr, “why should Uncle Aerion have punched you when he had the chance?” Valarr doesn’t know what to say to these boys who look just like him and you, confronted with the way you think he failed you. The way they poison your mind against his love.
So, he doesn’t know how to answer in any way except the truth. “I loved her in a way that was wrong. I loved her so much that I wanted to protect her from everything and I forgot that she could protect herself.” Jace looks back at Daemon who nods once and so he reaches back into his back pocket, pulling out a slip of paper and passing it to Valarr.
“We’re staying with Uncle Dunk and Auntie Tanselle tonight because once every two months they and Uncle Aerion say that Mummy needs a mental health day so she spends the night alone. You should talk to her. That’s our address.” Jace takes a step back, Daemon stepping forwards to take his brother’s place.
“But she can’t know we reached out to you and if you hurt her—”
“We’ll kill you,” Jace finishes, his eyes—your eyes—narrowed in a way that is both precious and terrifying.
“I understand.” And then Valarr watches as they take off, scampering and racing, shoving each other as they go to the vending machine, choosing three things and paying with a cell phone before punching the button for the elevator over and over again, slapping at each other’s hands, each one wanting to be the one to hit the button before they disappear into the elevator, concealed from his sight again.
And then he looks at the address in his hands, 1205 Aerys Road, the address to your home. The home where you live and raise his sons and the place you ran to, running from him because of the way you were poisoned against him.
But he can’t find it in himself to be angry because fairly soon he’ll see you again, he’ll hold you and love you and correct you of any notion that he is not perfect for you, proper and kind and caring and yours. Always yours.
He imagines for a moment what life will be like after he sees you. He’ll have to move here, he won’t want to take you away from your work, your home or his boys from their school and friends. And you’ll have lazy mornings of coffee and laughs and hand-holding while sheparding the kids to do whatever they need to do. And you’ll definitely have more children, maybe a daughter and he’ll be there for the whole process that time.
And in his life that’s soon to come, he’ll make sure you can never leave him again.
It’s why he calls his lawyer, “Raymun,” he says, tone tense and stern with an undercurrent of hope, something that hasn’t been there in years, “I need a divorce. Write up the papers and deliver them to Kiera. Tell her she can have the house if she wants it because I’m moving.”
***
“Here you go, Red,” Jace says, handing her a Kit-Kat before settling on the playmat behind her desk and shoving his Twinkie in his mouth whole before picking up his book, settling in as Daemon begins to build with Lego.
“Thanks, kiddos,” Red says, typing away at her desk, constructing an escape plan for one of the clients, attention barely straying as she sends the plan to the secret email they set up for the client, the one that she can only access at the library, a place her wife refuses to go to with her.
“Hey, boys,” you call, stepping out of your office, voice soft as you guide your client to the printer, pulling the piece of paper designed to look like a blood requisition form off and handing it to her with a sincere look before she sniffles and walks to the elevator, tearfully telling you thank you. “Time to go, Uncle Dunk and Auntie Tanselle wait for no one.”
And the boys share a smile as they follow you to the stairs, their hands in yours as they chatter lies at you, all the while anticipating coming home to you happy because they made sure that the family was complete.
That they could have a proper picture.
***
It’s late and you’re tired, the boys at your brother’s and a glass of wine in your hand as you turn on the TV, flipping through Hulu and clicking on High Potential, the finale flashing up on the screen just as the doorbell rings.
“Fuck,” you hiss, pressing pause on the remote and setting both it and your glass of wine down on the coffee table, heading out to the entryway, your body clothed in fluffy pj pants and the one shirt of Valarr’s that you couldn’t leave behind when you fled. You pull open the front door, sighing as you do so, anticipating Aerion but instead seeing the man you fled from five years ago.
And you freeze.
You freeze because suddenly you’re back, in that hazy state of when you felt loved while at the same time trapped, harmed. That memory of when he bruised your wrist, gripping you hard, preventing you from leaving because he wasn’t done talking. That same memory of him kissing your wrist, every part of your bruise when he realized he’d hurt you, tears slipping down his stoic face as he told you he didn’t mean to and all you could think was you never do.
You freeze and he takes the moment to slip inside, closing the door and flipping the lock even as you turn on your heel, running to make up for lapse, knowing you left your phone on the kitchen counter, that all you have to do is call Aerion and all this will end.
That he’ll punch him like he should have long ago.
“Can you stop running from me, my love?” Valarr calls out and you stop, gritting your jaw and turning back to him, hands curling into fists at your side.
“I’m not your love,” you grit out, “and last I checked, you fucker, you’re married. So what the fuck are you doing here?!”
“We have sons,” he says in answer, stepping closer to you, his steps predatory and familiar, the way he walks setting that fire in your skin alight, the one you haven’t felt since him. Not once in five years.
“How the fuck do you know that?!” you hiss, taking a step back from him and his advance, a step back for every two of his until your back is up against the kitchen island and his body is in front of you, arms bracketing you as they land on either side of you.
“They found me,” he whispers, the words sending a shiver through you, one of both desire and fear. “They found me because they know you want the complete picture, the two loving parents and the happy children. They found me and I came…I will always come for you, for them.” You swallow once, the motion harsh as your mouth dries, the closeness of his body strange and unwelcome yet all too welcome.
“They’re just kids,” you whisper, “they don’t know what they’re talking about.” But your voice lacks conviction and you and he both know it. It’s why he dips his head to yours, pressing a soft, lingering kiss, one that has you melting while at the same time giving in because you want this, want him.
You just don’t want what he’ll make it become with that twisted kind of love he has.
“I think they do,” he whispers, pulling back, resting his forehead against yours. “I think you’ve wanted me this whole time, but everyone’s poisoned you against me. They’ve made you think my love is bad when really…it’s the only thing right.” You break out of his hold and step away, shaking your head, trying to get sense back in because for a second—just a second, you almost believed him.
“Your love,” you hiss, “is fucked up. You put fucking trackers in my clothes and on my phone! You didn’t want me alone with any guy even my fucking brother! You criticized what I wore and what I did and what I said! That’s notlove, Valarr! That was fucking possession and I am not a possession!”
“No,” he says, tone matter-of-fact and quiet. Thoughtful. “You’re everything.” And his words are so perfectly Valarr that you can feel your knees going weak at the simple way he hands you everything. “I’m not leaving, my love. And I’m not letting you leave me again. I have gone five years without you; I cannot go another one.”
“Can you love me differently?” you ask, your face crumpling as the tears threaten to overwhelm you. He walks to you, taking your face in his hands gently, ever so gently that that touch is what threatens to break you.
“No,” he whispers, tone soft but perfectly imperfect mismatched eyes fierce with a love that burns so bright. “No because that’s the only way I can love you. I can only love you like you’re everything, like you’re my life because you are. I can promise to try and not be jealous when you spend time with certain people. I can promise you that I will never hurt you, I can promise that I will love you and our sons with all that I am and have and will be, but no. I cannot love you differently because you are everything and I must protect you. Without you…I am nothing. I have been nothing for five years, just a ghost floating through my life. Just me love you, sweetheart. Let me be your husband, their father. Please.”
“You’re already married,” you whisper, your hands coming to rest on his chest, feeling his heart beating erratically against your palm as he shakes his head.
“I’m divorced as of 2:00 PM this afternoon and we never slept together. Strictly friends, strictly for appearances. And as of 4:00 PM today, Kiera wed the man she’s always loved since he finally came to his senses.” You look down, look away, his stare too intense, threatening to overwrite the history you know, the story you ran from when his hands tighten on your face. Not painfully, just forcefully. “Did you sleep with Aerion?” His tone is measured, too measured, the tone that always threatened his darkness.
“Ew! That would be like fucking Dunk! Are you insane?! That’s disgusting. He’s my ride-or-die, but I ain’t fucking riding him,” you say and Valarr lets out a breathy, relieved laugh.
“There she is,” he whispers, softly, tracing your face with his right hand, lingering on the plushness of your lips, delighting in the way they part of their own accord at his touch, his thumb slipping in and pressing down just slightly on your tongue, “my perfect girl.” And then he pulls his thumb out of your mouth, pressing his lips to yours in a fierce kiss that erases all your doubts and fears from your head.
Suddenly, you can’t remember why you ever fled him at all.
He’s kissing you, his tongue stroking yours, his hands dropping, fingers digging into your hips as he walks you backward, to your bedroom, kicking the door closed behind him, his lips never once leaving yours. He’s trailing his lips down your neck, sucking and biting, hands roaming, touching every inch of you.
“You’re still so…perfect,” he breathes, stepping back just slightly, enough to pull your shirt—his shirt—from your body, noticing the way your breasts are already free, no bra, nipples pebbled with both desire and chill. “Still as I remembered.” And then he’s pulling the rest of your clothes off, his lips toying with your breasts, sucking and biting and nipping, his hand slipping between your legs, fingers slipping inside while toying with your clit, your moans unleashing something wild in him, even more so when your hands wander to his clothes, pulling at them.
It’s why he shoves you to the bed, stripping, his one hand sticky with you before he’s standing before you, entirely bare, cock ready and hard, leaking just slightly because this is what he’s dreamed of for five years. Among other things—all to do with you.
“You’re mine,” he breathes, climbing onto the bed, hovering over you, his cock teasing your entrance, your walls clenching around nothing because you too have gone without for five years unable to imagine it with anyone but the man before you. The man who ruined you with his toxic, fucked up love.
The same love you’re walking straight into.
It’s just this time, you’re not going in blind.
“And you’re mine,” you gasp in reply as he pushes inside of you in one brutal thrust, entirely sheathing himself inside of you. He stays just like that for a moment as he presses a kiss to your lips, delighting in the familiar feeling of you, all you surrounding him, holding him. Loving him and letting him love you in return.
And then he’s moving in and out, delighting in every sound you make, unleash. Every sound you let out because he’s starved. He’s lived five years like a ghost, still clinging to the things you left behind, searching for your scent on the cloth, waiting for a sign of you only to get nothing.
And now here you are, underneath him, whining his name, walls clenching around him, milking his release as you come undone around him, his spurting in hot ropes, thick inside of you. And then he’s collapsing beside you, holding you close, hearing you sigh as you shake your head.
“Something wrong, my love?” he asks you, voice soft and you pull out of his arms, pull away from him, standing, the evidence of your lovemaking trickling down your thighs as you stand.
“I fucked up,” you whisper, grabbing your discarded shirt from the floor and pulling it on. “I fucked up real bad. You’re fucking toxic, you’re a manipulator and I just…I almost let you back in. How the fuck could I do that?” Valarr rises from the bed, going to you, pressing you back, back into the wall, his body caging you in, a cage with no escape. One made in the name of love.
“I am not leaving. Not now, not ever and you will never run again. I wasn’t lying, love. We can do this the easy way like I thought we were going to…or we can do this the hard way,” he pauses, his hand coming to grip your jaw, drawing your gaze back to him. “Are we going to have to do this the hard way, my love?”
“No,” you whisper and he delights in the quiet way you say it, guiding you back to bed and holding tight to you, knowing for the first time that now, finally he has you.
And you fall asleep in the arms that feel like an iron cage, knowing that this time, there is no escape.
But when he whispers, “I love you, I have always loved you, will always love you. You were made for me and me for you. Is it really so bad to be with me?” you start to doubt if you really want to escape.
If you really ever did.
———
Three Years Later
“Kids!” you yell, sighing, hands on your hips as you hear Daemon huff and Jace curse and Rhae sighing. “Kids, get down here! Your dad wants this family portrait taken and we can’t take it without you!” You feel Valarr as he wraps his arms around you, hands coming to rest on your slightly swollen stomach, your fourth—and last—child growing within.
“Give them a little, my love,” he whispers, breath warm on your neck. “They’re still children.”
“And they’re a pain in my ass,” you hiss as the front door opens, Dunk and Tanselle stepping through, a three-year-old child, your niece, Jessie, swinging between the two of them, Aerion following close on their heels, eyes still narrowing on Valarr, scanning you for any bruise.
He was the hardest to convince that everything was fine, but he made his peace by promising that if he found a single bruise on you that wasn’t caused my passionate sex, he was punching Valarr like he should have the night you pulled a reverse Cinderella story.
But three years later and you’re happy. You married Valarr in a small ceremony and he made a press announcement, lying to people about how you left because you didn’t want to ruin his life, to have people think you were baby-trapping him but now he found you again and his life is complete.
You married Valarr and your boys, your precious beautiful boys, sighed in relief because they thought they’d done the right thing. That everything had all worked out.
But as you all arrange yourselves like the photographer wants, all you think is that life is not easy. That Valarr still loves you in that all-consuming, dangerous way. That possessive way. The things that made you run in the first place, still remaining, just tempered slightly by Aerion. The things that made you run still exist and all you can do is grin and bare it.
And remember that he does it because he loves you.
Because you’re his everything. And that’s the most important thing. The most precious thing.
But as he holds you loosely, smiling, one hand resting on Jace’s head, for the photographer, Dunk’s arm around him, all you can think is that this photo is false.
But you’ve always known that family portraits lie.
And at least he loves you. At least that’s not a lie captured in a flash. He just loves you too much.
And there are worse things.
“I love you,” he whispers just before the flash resounds, the photo captured. “I love you more than life because—” he drops his voice just slightly, leaning in more to you, “you are my life.”
“I love you too, Val,” you whisper back and for once it doesn’t grate, doesn’t hide how you also hate him. Because you don’t.
Family portraits lie but they also show when everything breaks.
There is Nothing I Would Not Do To Keep You—Modern Version
Modern!Yandere!Valarr x AFAB!reader—in which, you're going to leave him and he makes sure you can't by baby-trapping you.
Requested: Yes. (Canon version, here)
TW: 18+ MDNI, sex, baby-trapping, mentions of an ED, mentions of mental health struggles and death threats. Possessive behaviour, obsessive behaviour.
Valarr knows you mean to leave him, to exit his life and enter back into the strangeness and wildness and dangerous nature of the world, the world you used to occupy. The one that does not have him in it. He knows because he knows everything about you—he knows where you go, he knows who you talk to, text. He knows because you are his and he protects that which is his.
The first sign that you were leaving was the letterman’s jacket hanging in his side of the closet. The jacket he gave you at the beginning of the relationship when the two of you went to an outdoor movie and it started to rain. He had a jacket, you did not.
“Just take mine,” he had told you and you had looked at him with hesitation, that marked insecurity that one has in the beginning of a relationship, when you wonder what will make it break. What will end it before it’s begun.
“But then you don’t have one,” you had countered and in response, he had shrugged out of his jacket, the letterman from his high school football days, wrapping it around your shoulders.
“Is it so bad that I want to keep you dry over myself?” he had asked you and it was the first time that you had not had an answer for him, your mouth opening and then closing, eyes reflecting the fact that you didn’t have a counter for once. And you had taken it, worn it the whole drive home trying to not look at him and the way his shirt clung to his skin when it was heavy with rainwater. You’d tried to give it back to him when he pulled up outside your apartment building, but he shook his head, saying, “keep it for now. Then I at least know you have a jacket.”
And it was later, after you’d had that conversation, becoming official that you told him he was never getting the letterman’s jacket back, not as long as the two of you were together.
And there it was, hanging on a hanger in his side of the closet, no longer hanging by the door. No, you’d taken care to hang it up in his closet, a tender gesture but one that still said you were leaving him.
He couldn’t have you leave him.
It was why he checked the clone of your phone, the one he made back in the early days, back when you spent more time with men you claimed were friends, men he didn’t trust. He hadn’t checked it in months, preferring to just follow the tracker he had on your phone—the tracker you didn’t know about—wanting to give you some semblance of privacy.
But when he saw the jacket he had to know. And that’s when he saw the conversation with Tanselle, your best friend. The conversation where you told her you had to leave him. Had to.
You didn’t have to do anything—except stay.
You:
I can’t do this anymore, Tans
It’s just too much.
Tanselle:
But you love him???
Or do you not anymore???????
Someone ELSE?????
GIRL!!!!!!! SPILL!!!!!!!!!!!!
You:
I do love him.
That’s the problem.
Tanselle:
Loving your boyfriend is the problem????!!!!!
Girl, it’s normally loving SOMEONE ELSE that’s the problem
You:
The world has an opinion on everything.
They don’t like my laugh, my hair, the way I dress.
They say I’m a fucking gold-digger and I’m TIRED
I’m tired of it Tans.
I just want my life back.
Tanselle:
That’s why loving him is the problem.
Cause you don’t want to leave him.
You:
No.
But it’s just too much. I can’t keep doing this.
I had to get rid of the bathroom scale, Tans.
It’s not good for me.
Tanselle:
How do you wanna play this, then???
Are you telling him??
You:
Do you think I should????
Tanselle:
Maybe…don’t
He’ll just talk you into staying.
It’s not good for you.
I’ll talk with Dunk and see what we can do.
Kay????
You:
You’re the best, Tans
Thank you.
Tanselle:
Ride or die, sister.
Ride or die.
You:
Ride or die.
😘
He’d nearly thrown the cloned phone across the room, nearly shattered it at the idea of you leaving him. Youleaving him!
How could you leave him?! How you could you even try?! Didn’t you know that you were his?!
You were his in the first way that had ever felt real. Ever felt right. You were something not given to him because he was a Targaryen, the heir to everything. No. You were something made for him, Valarr, the boy, the man. The person.
And you were going to leave him. You were going to leave him because of other people and comments and what they made you think. You were going to leave him for nothing. Why didn’t you just go to him and tell him what you were feeling, he would fix it.
He would do anything for you. Anything. Because you were his and had been since the early days, had been since the day he turned the corner to the library at the same time you were exiting, the two of you colliding and he’d heard your laugh.
He’d heard you laugh and he was done for. He was done for because it wasn’t delicate and sweet and kind and fake. It was real and it was loud and it wasn’t trying to be anything but real. The laugh was a reflection of you and he remembered when he looked up, catching sight of you and the way you held your hand to your head, laughing, eyes closed as you shook your head, opening them, the beautiful depths focusing upon him.
“I’m so sorry,” you had said. “I wasn’t really watching where I was going. Captivating read, you know.” You’d held up an old, aged book with yellowed pages, the cover embossed, a history book on the Dance of the Dragons.
“It was my fault, truly,” he’d replied and you had nodded, prepared to walk off, to leave it to a simple gesture in passing but he wasn’t ready. He wasn’t ready because when he looked into your eyes, he felt something he had never felt before. He felt like he was meant for you, made for you. Like it was fate. “Do you like coffee?” It had been a lame question and your expression had told him so as your phone buzzed loudly in your pocket and you pursed your lips at him before seeming to come to some realization.
“Depends,” you’d answered.
“On what?” he’d asked you, desperate to keep you with him, keep you talking, keep you staring at him.
“On why you’re asking.” You’d arched your brows and waited, crossing your arms, one foot kicking out while you tapped a metronome beat on your arm.
“Do you want to get coffee with me?” he had amended, rewarded with your smile, something that made his heart freeze in his chest while you nodded.
“I’m free on Tuesday if you are,” you had answered and that was it. That was the start of it all, the start of a relationship, the one that you have now. The beautiful one full of laughter and lazy mornings, coffee at the breakfast table where the two of you pass pieces of the newspaper back and forth—because you insist on a paper copy, for the contrast.
A relationship you want to end.
Tanselle:
How bad are the people, bestie?
Cause we can’t get you out for a few months.
You:
They’re bad, but I’ll take the time I can get with Valarr.
I’m really gonna miss him.
Tanselle:
You wish his last name was anything but Targaryen don’t you?
You:
Yeah.
But then he wouldn’t be him.
Double-edged sword.
Tanselle:
Dunk’s got a spare room out in Essos.
He just needs a couple months
Plans and stuff
You:
Should I really leave him?
I mean…
Tanselle:
And how long before you do something drastic?
How long before those comments aren’t just comments??
Babes, I know you.
You:
I feel bad.
I feel like I should tell him.
Tanselle:
And have him talk you out of it??
Have you stay in a relationship that yeah
It’s great with him
But you have FUCKING DEATH THREATS
And people make comments on your body
…
Babes, I’m not burying you because you fell back in old habits
Cause you wanna be pretty for him.
You:
Two months???
Tanselle:
Two months.
Hold on for two months.
Don’t do anything stupid, please.
I’m begging you.
You:
I never do stupid shit alone.
I do it with you.
Tanselle:
That’s my girl.
Just two months.
It was when Valarr saw the most recent ones, the ones with the timeline, the ones where you said you didn’t want to leave, but you felt like you had to that he hatched his plan. Because he wasn’t losing you. He wouldn’t.
He couldn’t. You were everything.
And that was when he switched your birth control pills for placebos, removing the old Plan Bs from the bathroom cabinet, ones from the start of the relationship, for just in case moments. When you asked him why he was getting rid of them, he just said they were expired and you nodded, disappearing, expression the saddest he had ever seen it.
All because you thought you were leaving him.
You were never leaving him; he wouldn’t let you. Not even if he had to chase you to the ends of the earth, drag you back from heaven or hell or burn the entire world down.
No. He has two months. Two months to make sure you never leave, to get you pregnant.
***
“I’m home,” you call out, stepping into the apartment, the stillness the first thing that hits you as you hang up your coat on the hanger, stifling the sob that’s been building since you checked your phone, noticing the new DMs, the new messages from people who had somehow found your number. The death threats and comments and hatred.
You could not wait to leave.
You would miss Valarr terribly, but you were tired of all of this. You were tired of what came with him—the press conferences and galas, the expectations of fancy clothes and dinner and children. You just wanted a simple life—a house and a partner who worked a normal job, one that meant your faces wouldn’t be plastered on every tabloid magazine as soon as you went out. You wanted a life where children were a choice not an expectation.
But you would miss him.
You just wouldn’t miss the life that came with him.
“Bedroom,” you hear him call as you kick off your sneakers, lifting your messenger bag from your shoulder, setting it on the hooks for the bags, pulling your laptop out, emails for work you have to catch up on.
“Did you eat yet?” you yell and in response, you can hear him exit the bedroom, his steps heavy yet soft at the same time as he steps out, dressed in nothing but a half-belted robe.
“Typically, darling,” he says, his voice low and sensual, seductive, “when someone says bedroom, it’s an invitation.” And as much as you want him, you want sex not to be planned and dressed up in silk. You wanted to come home and have dinner and maybe curl up on the couch with tea and a movie.
You wanted sex, but not this.
“And I have stuff to do for work,” you tell him, control firm as your eyes stay focused on his, not dipping lower, not drifting to the expanse of bare chest exposed by the silk robe.
“Please,” he begs and his tone is all that matters and you roll your eyes, setting your phone and laptop down on the table, stepping towards, your hands reaching for his which he gives to you, his skin warm and strong and firm.
“Those are the magic words,” you whisper, a smile curving up your lips as he leads you from the kitchen to the bedroom, the room lit by candles, bed covered in roses.
And it’s then you realize it’s your birthday.
“Is this…?” you trail off, feeling a lump in your throat at the effort, at the perfection. At the love.
“Happy birthday, my love,” he whispers, his hands finding the hem of your t-shirt, lifting it up and over your head, tossing it halfway across the room, his hands deftly unlacing your bra and tossing that too, fingers hooking in your waistband, preparing to pull down, leave you completely naked before him.
“Hardly fair,” you counter, stilling his hands, your fingers undoing the belt on his robe and pushing it down his shoulders, his hands leaving your waistband to shed the material, letting it drop to the floor, his body hard and ready.
“Now you,” he whispers, voice low and you obey, pulling the rest of your clothes off and following him to the bed, feeling that burning within your skin, the need for friction and contact. Filling.
He lays you down on the bed, his mouth and hands trailing over your body, worshipping every inch of you, your body growing hot and fevered, thighs slick with your arousal. “Just fuck me,” you whine, pressing your thighs together tightly and all he does is smile at you, crawling up so his face is just over yours, his cock teasing your entrance, pressing into the slickness.
“Needy, aren’t you, my love?” he teases and you sigh, your hands finding his back, nails digging in as he simply slides his cock from your entrance to your clit, teasing you. Toying with you.
“If you don’t fuck me, Valarr,” you hiss, “I’ll do it myself.” At your words, he pushes inside of you, the stretch ecstasy, even more so as he sheathes inside, waiting for a moment, two before pulling out, slamming back into you with fervour, his focus never straying from you, lips hot on your neck, kissing and sucking at the skin, leaving marks.
“Mine,” he cries every time he slams his hips into you, his body shifting and adjusting, throwing your legs up and over his shoulders, pushing them forward with his body every time he slams into you, your walls responding in clenches and flutters that have groans pulled from his lips.
“Want to f-fill you up,” he moans, slamming his hips into you completely, his cock hitting that spot inside of you, the one that drives you to pleasure, the one that makes false stars spin. “Want to see you—round with,” he groans, pulling out for a moment, catching his breath, “with my child.” And at those he words, he slams into you again, sheathing completely, driving you to the edge, your walls clenching around him, release flowing through and out of you, limbs growing leaden as he finds his release, shooting into you in thick hot spurts that have you gasping while he collapses beside you, pulling you close and burying his face in your neck.
“Happy birthday, my love,” he whispers, the two of you pulled down into sleep. You, calm thinking about your even schedule of birth control—he, calm because he knows he switched them out.
And even if this time didn’t take, there are many other chances for it too.
***
It’s one month later, a few weeks before you leave that you take the test. You’d been feeling sick all week, rushing to the bathroom in the mornings, emptying the contents of your stomach, Valarr’s hands always there—one to hold your hair back and the other to rub your back, soothing and calming, telling you that it’s okay, it’s going to be okay.
You’d also noticed your breasts feeling tender, feeling heavy. You were more tired, fatigued. You worried, but you also wondered how. You wondered how because you were religious in taking your pills, having been on them since you were a kid to help with your period pain and you worried that the pharmacy had messed up your prescription. They’d done that once, hence the expired Plan B, Valarr had to throw out a month ago.
And here it was. The two pink lines on the stick, your confirmation and you couldn’t help it, couldn’t help the tears that began to fall, turning quickly to noisy sobs as you looked at the first test you felt you’d ever really failed.
You’d always wanted kids, wanted to be a mother someday, but did you want them now? Did you want them with Valarr? Did you want them this young?
Did you want to burden Valarr with this? But did you also want to leave like this?
“Baby! Baby, are you okay?!” Valarr cries, bursting into the bathroom, his expression scared, but eyes dancing with some emotion you can’t seem to name—fear, probably.
“I’m sorry,” you cry, holding the test out to him. “God, I’m sorry, Val. I thought I was taking the right pills, but the pharmacy has messed up before and they must have messed up now…Oh god, I’m so sorry!” You bury your face in your hands, sobs wracking your body, but you feel his arms around you, pulling you to his body.
“Shh,” he whispers, one hand smoothing down the hair on your head, the other anchoring your body to his as if he’s afraid you’ll take flight and disappear. “It’s alright. It’s okay. I’m happy. But…” he sighs and you pull back, just enough to look up at him, at his mismatched eyes and the warring light in them—one light happy and the other sad. “Do you want the child? Because if you don’t…” he trails off, waiting and you can’t help the sob that cracks through you again and you pull away from him so completely.
“I was—I was gonna leave you,” you cry and you hear him sigh as he leans back against the wall, stretching his legs out in front of him, one hand white-knuckling the test.
“I know,” he whispers and you can feel a seed of worry and fear growing in you, that thought of maybe the pharmacy didn’t mess up.
“How?” you ask, your tears slowing, rage growing in their place until you hear his answer, until you hear him say, “the letterman’s jacket.”
“What?”
“My letterman’s jacket was hanging up in my side of the closet. You said that as long as we together, I was never going to get it back and there it was,” he jabs his hand forwards as if pointing at the offending sign, “hanging on my side of the closet, all neat and clean and not on you. And that’s when I knew, but I didn’t want to confront you. I just…I just wanted to enjoy our time for however long I had you.”
“I’m sorry!” you cry and then he’s there, holding you against him as you cry, your tears soaking through his shirt, yet he never complains, just holds you and whispers that he loves you. And when you’re calmer, quieter, you whisper, “I do want the kid. I mean…if you do.”
“I want it all with you, love,” he whispers and he pulls you up, guiding you from the bathroom, back to the bedroom, pulling a box from his nightstand, flipping the box open to reveal a beautiful ring—the exact kind you always wanted for an engagement ring.
“I was gonna leave and you…” your throat thickens, tears lining your eyes and he just smiles at you, sadly.
“You were going to leave and I was planning on proposing. Not the way I thought this would go, but…” he shrugs and slips the ring onto your finger, pulling you tightly against him. “At least we’re together. Forever.”
***
Valarr was the happiest man that day, seeing you crying on the ground, babbling about how sorry you were for your plans, but he wasn’t mad. He was never mad at you—he was mad at Tanselle and Dunk and those people who dared to threaten him, but never you. Never you because you were his soulmate, his other half.
The mother of his child.
You were carrying his child. It was one thing to plan for it, to get rid of everything until the only option was pregnancy and it was another to hear it, to see that stick with two pink lines. To see the proof of your love, the proof that you couldn’t leave him.
He was even happier when he saw the engagement ring on your finger, this physical tether, a rope between the two of you. A mark of someone else. That mark that you were his.
And he’s happy now, watching you debate over colours for the nursery, holding up chips of paint to him, musing about each one before scribbling down in a book about the aesthetic—you’re looking for something called chaos child, something that they get to grow and choose and decide in.
But he was happiest when he checked the clone of your phone, messages proudly saying that you were his and his alone. That you were staying where you were meant to be, marrying the man you were meant to be with. Him.
Always him.
Only ever him.
He doesn’t wonder if you’re dealing well, if you’re worried or stressed, he just cares that you are here. That youare his. That you can’t leave.
That you are here, with him, forever.
And if some part of you wonders about the baby, his happiness, it doesn’t matter. Because you can’t leave him, not now.
Not ever.
He’s made sure of that, he’s made sure that even in leaving, he is never gone. That all roads lead back to him.
Always.
“Are you alright, Val?” you whisper, turning in his arms, voice thick with sleep, your hands resting atop his on the small swell of your stomach.
“I’m wonderful, my love,” he whispers, his words ruffling your hair as you snuggle back into him, sighing once, content in the circle of his arms.
“You’re thinking,” you reply, voice still thick with sleep, still calm and even, measured. He likes the way. You sound when you fall asleep, how completely at peace you are.
“I was just thinking,” he murmurs, tightening his hold on you just slightly, just enough to feel more grounded in your presence, “that there are no lengths I will not go to keep you.”
And he means those words. More than he means most things, those words reflecting the truest truth he knows.
You are his and he is yours.
And he will burn this world down if it will mean you stay in his arms.
