You sat on the couch, sprawled out, trying to rest. Of course your eyes seemed to be totally fixed on Beau. Beau and your two week old daughter. You smile, watching him sway gently with your daughter tucked against his chest.
“College Beau was hot,” you admit. “Boyfriend Beau was even better.” You say thinking fondly on your dating days as you get off the couch, crossing over to him.
He arches a brow. “And husband Beau?” You step closer, sliding your hands over his waist carefully not to disturb your sleeping baby.
“Pretty great.” You grin.
“Pretty great?” he repeats, offended. You grin up at him before glancing at the baby.
“But Daddy Beau?” You bite your lip, letting your eyes drag slowly over him. “Daddy Beau is definitely my favorite.”
His mouth curves into a smug smile and he laughs a little.
“Yeah?” He asks.
“Yeah.” You lean up to kiss the corner of his mouth. “It’s honestly a little rude how sexy you look holding our baby.”
Beau glances down at your daughter, then back at you.
“You hear that, Bug? Mommy thinks Daddy’s hot.” He whispers.
“She does not need to hear that.” You tease.
“She deserves to know her dad’s still got it. Besides it’s kinda how she got here.” He says winking at you.
“You’re unbearable.” You laugh.
“And still you married me,” he reminds you, stealing a proper kiss. You grin at him.
“Of course, I had to make sure my babies came out cute.” You tease. Beau laughs.
“I knew you just married me for my good looks and athletic genes.” He retorts. You giggle.
“Oh shut it.” You say, kissing his lips softly. He smiles against your lips, his hair messy, eyes sleepy. Yet he’s never looked more handsome to you.
you get hit a lil too hard in the head during a training session, sending everyone in a panic as they gather around you, (zuko hauling you into his arms) as everyone frantically asks questions that your brain can notcomprehend.
“what happened?”
“how many fingers am i holding up?”
“can you see?”
“what day is it?” 
the questions blur together in a haze.
katara asks the final question. “how’s your head?” her fingers tap against your forehead.
“mm no complaints” you mumble giddily, huffing a laugh at yourself as your world stars to shift back into focus.
“huh?” sokka grunts out, trying to make sense of your murmuring.
“i said..”you repeat louder, mind still fuzzy. “no complaints.”
“complaints?” aang echoes confused.
“right, zuko?” you turn your concussed attention to your partner of many many years, bottom lip jutting out as you wait for his answer.
zuko goes bright red, the tip of his ear staining pink as he offers a tight yet entirely enamoured smile.
“right?” you ask again, pout deepening, as you blearily blink up at your fiancé.
he can’t help the soft laugh that bubbles out of him as he reaches down to sweep your hair back behind your ears, palm cupping your jaw.
“no complaints” he squeezes the fat of your cheeks between his thumb and forefinger affectionately. “but we’re more concerned about your actual head. how’s it feeling?”
“actual head? huh? what are you….” sokka questions with an exasperated sigh.
it takes him three more seconds before he catches on.
“ooooh…gross.”
a/n: idk how i feel about this but it’s been in my head (hehe get it) and i have a full fic but idk if you guys wanna read it lmk pls
would u write smth with flirty banter with beau please! maybe something abt his contact name just being beau no petnames no emojis or something compared to the girls and its cute fluff love u!
stud - beau maxwell x reader
authors note: okay so!! this is a little (🤏🏻) baby. but i LOVE this little baby. this is my baby. let’s all love baby!!!! thank you anon for this request, i love you🩷 (oh and i just had to write a little suggestive scene hehehehe my bad)
“What is that?”
“Your name?”
“But why is it so dry?”
“Sweetie, nothing is dry about you.”
Giggling, you look back down at your phone where his contact is open. To be honest, you never thought his own first name would make him outright scandalized. But looking at him now, he’s never looked more offended.
“Oh, come on,” you scoff, shoving his shoulder playfully. “Get over it.”
“You? Never,” Beau says, shaking his head. “But this? This, I cannot accept.” He points an accusatory finger at the screen.
In your phone, Beau appears simply as… Beau.
“Now, for real, what is your problem?” You turn to face him where he’s sitting next to you on the couch. Both of you had crashed at your place near campus after a grueling day of lectures and practice.
You’ve been seeing him for a couple of months now, ever since you ran into him at Malone’s. You were out with the girls, and Beau was with Dean and a few other hockey and football players. They were playing billiards, and he was losing. Big time. Seeing his struggle, you couldn’t help but tease him about his lack of ball coordination—which was hilarious, considering Beau is the most talented quarterback for Briar’s football team.
Beau had looked up from the table, locked eyes with you, and smirked. “This one's for you, then.” He proceeded to miss the ball completely.
The guys had thrown their heads back, erupting into laughter alongside you and your friends.
“Maybe if you buy me a drink, you can make up for whatever that was,” you’d said, pointing a finger at the table and winking.
“Come closer then,” he’d replied, his voice dropping. “I don’t bite. Unless you want me to.”
Back on the couch, Beau nudges you with his elbow. “I call you pet names all the time.”
“And?” You raise an eyebrow.
“Don’t you think I deserve one in return?”
You laugh straight in his face. “You’re seriously pressed because I didn’t save you under a pet name?”
“I am! I'm privileged,” he insists, jutting his chin out before reaching over to flick your nose.
“Privileged, my ass,” you laugh, rolling your eyes. “The only privilege you have is me.”
“Yeah. Like I said, I’m privileged,” he winks. You hate how easily a blush creeps up your neck at his words.
“Okay, so what do you have in mind?” You clear your throat, trying to ground yourself because his unrelenting gaze is making your heart skip a beat and your brain malfunction.
“Gimme.” He snatches the phone out of your hand and starts typing furiously. When he’s done, he flashes a victorious smile. “There.”
You peer down at the screen and instantly snort. “Magic Stick? How is that a cute nickname?”
“Maybe I went a little overboard, but tell me it isn’t fitting.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it a stick, but…” you murmur, letting the joke hang in the air. “Anyway. How about…” You tap your chin with your index finger, pretending to think hard. “Oh! How about Sexy Back?”
“Now you’re just flattering me.” Beau presses a dramatic hand against his heart.
“Yeah, you’re cocky enough,” you grimace. Then, as a better idea strikes you, you bite your lip and quickly type it into the name bar.
“Stud?” he reads aloud.
“Yeah. It fits you perfectly.” You flash a wide, bright smile at him, your eyes twinkling like you’ve just solved a world crisis. But, to be fair, it was a crisis for Beau.
Beau’s gaze instantly darkens, the playful banter evaporating. “God, you’re so fucking pretty like this,” he whispers. His thumb slides over your bottom lip, brushing against the skin with agonizing tenderness, goosebumps spreading all over your body.
“You’re such a flirt,” you breathe, your eyes locking onto his plush lips as the space between you suddenly feels entirely too small.
“C’mere,” he murmurs against your lips.
Before you can even answer, his hand slides up your thigh, guiding you effortlessly onto his lap. You instinctively lock your hands behind his neck, burying your fingers in his hair as his right hand travels up the expanse of your back, finally settling firmly at your nape to draw you down into a kiss. All the while, his other hand grips your thigh, anchoring you right where you belong.
Your moan gets lost in his groan as you taste each other, driven by a mutual, ravenous craving. Keeping you anchored by the nape of your neck, his tongue licks along your bottom lip, wordlessly begging you to let him in. You part your lips happily—he’s addictive, sweeter than any candy.
His tongue swipes over yours, sending a delicious shiver straight down your spine. The sensation makes you arch deeper into him, pressing your chest flush against his.
The kiss deepens, the slow friction of your swollen lips echoing softly in the quiet room. Almost unconsciously, driven by pure instinct, your hips begin to rock against his.
He grunts against your mouth, his palm sliding down to grip your ass, giving it a sharp, light smack to break your rhythm.
“Stop it, you tease,” he rasps, though he doesn't actually pull away, instead continuing to pepper your lips with breathless, bruising pecks.
“I’m sorry,” you murmur. You honestly hadn't even realized what you were doing - your body had simply taken over, leaving your mind completely numb.
“I don’t want to come in my pants the first time I’m with you,” he admits through hazy eyes.
“Aw, but I’d be honored,” you pout.
“My misery would be honourable?”
“I could brag about it.”
“Absolutely not,” he shakes his head aggressively, while Beau pinches your thigh. “You can only brag about the earth shattering orgasm I’ll give you and the aftercare.”
You gape at him. “I’ll get aftercare?”
“Baby, you’ll get everything,” he kisses your cheek, “You own me,” and kisses your jaw.
BLOOD OF MY BLOOD, KIN OF MY KIN
─── ormund hightower
summary: a glimpse into the years you and ormund raised daeron before the war took its toll, and all the years after. (10k)
characters: ormund hightower / wife!reader, daeron targaryen, alicent hightower, viserys i targaryen, mentions of rhaenyra and daemon
contents: established relationship, found family, domestic bliss, angst, hurt/comfort, protective!ormund, canon divergent, not proofread, cw for mentions of pregnancy complications and miscarriages, brief mentions of blood and gore, canon typical manipulation and psychosis from ormund towards the end lol
( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )
115 A.C. / Oldtown
The bed is still warm from your blood on the morning the babe arrives.
It had not been quite two days since the maester had drawn the small, still shape of your daughter from you and told you, gently enough as not to break you further, that she had never drawn breath at all. You had told none of the household that you had been carrying her at all, save for the maesters and your closest of handmaidens — for you had learned, after the second loss, how courtiers feed on grief like vultures to carrion. So while you wept for days longer than your babe would ever live, the rest of Oldtown simply assumed that their lady had taken ill with a woman’s ailment, and kept to her rooms accordingly.
But today the King is coming, and your mother would surely turn in her early grave if she knew the lady she raised up planned to receive a king from a sickbed — pallid, unlaced, and undone.
“There is no harm in resting, my love,” Ormund coos from across the room, watching with attentive eyes as your handmaiden laces you into a gown of Hightower green. You keep yourself braced on the wooden back of a chair and grit your teeth with every tug, pulling carefully to conceal the subtle bump of your stomach.
The man tilts his head and crosses his arms over the chest of his emerald doublet, in a feeble attempt to extinguish the worry searing between his lungs. “Viserys is a king man. He will understand. Alicent, more than anyone, would understand—”
“And what has Alicent lost?” you argue, sharper than you intended. Your head whips hard to the side in time to find Ormund flinching beneath the bite of your words — a small flicker at the edges of his eyes; a brief lowering of his brows.
You soften with a sigh a moment later and remind yourself that Ormund lost something too, even if the loss was not pulled from his body to claim it.
“Forgive me, I… I only meant that… The Queen has four living children. And she carried each one with grace— There is no part of her that could possibly understand how I feel… And I wouldn’t wish it upon her besides.”
Ormund exhales through his nose and takes a step closer, boots scuffing the cobbles. “Then at least let me tell them that you are unwell—”
“No,” you dismiss with a shake of your stubborn head, eyes shutting briefly when the corset tightens again. “I refuse to be spoken of like some frail, ailing thing while the King sups at our table.”
Your gaze is wet with unshed tears when they open again, snapping to Ormund’s pale ones with a glimmering determination. “I am the Lady Hightower,” you tell him, brows raised and eyes firm. “So I will greet them standing. On my own feet. In my own home.”
Ormund’s chest, still heavy with grief, blooms with a distant sort of pride at your words. Perhaps because a part of him had long understood that you did not always dream of being the Lady Hightower. Your marriage was made of meetings and ledgers and alliances rather than any actual tenderness, as was true in most great marriages in Westeros. He knows, had you had it your way, you would’ve wed that gardener’s boy you grew up with — who you attempted to bring with you to Oldtown upon your betrothal, along with many of your household’s servants.
Ormund had the brawny, olive-skinned boy sent away within a fortnight — the moment he understood what kind of feelings the peasant boy had for you, and you for him. It was perhaps the first mad thing he ever did for you and, by Ormund’s later admission, the first time he realized that he might love you truly. (Though he had not thought it mad at the time, or love until many moons later, when he was struck with the sudden realization that the thought of Oldtown with you in it would be entirely unbearable.)
“Then we shall go,” Ormund nods in acquiescence as he plants himself just ahead of you. His gaze fixes into a sterner look a second later, as he tilts his chin to his chest and ducks into your eyeline. “But know I am not happy about this.”
“And yet Oldtown will remain standing anyway,” you joke in a softer coo. “I have faith that we’ll survive one of your unhappy mornings, my lord.”
The walk from your chambers to the gates of Oldtown is not long, but you feel every stone beneath your slippers as if the journey were some great pilgrimage across the whole of Westeros.
You brace Ormund’s strong arm with both your hands, fingers curling into the fine wool of his coat hard enough to blanche your knuckles. He slows his long stride to match your smaller, more careful one without a word shared between you — a wall of green and muscles at your side, shielding you from the curious eyes of courtiers wondering why their lord and lady moved so slowly. So close.
It’s the first time you’ve tasted fresh air in three days. The breeze smells of the sea from the harbor and fish from the markets — mixing with the sweet citrus of the orange and lemon trees blooming in the gardens. Their white petals scatter like snow along the pale stone with every gust off the bay. You breathe in deeply through your nose, trying hopelessly to clear away the metallic tang of your own blood stubbornly clinging to the inside of your nostrils.
“His Grace, Viserys of House Targaryen,” the herald calls as the royal party files in on fine horses and gilded carriages, black banners snapping in the wind. “First of His Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men.”
Viserys is the first to exit when the caravan finally stills. He descends the steps a knight places down for him, portlier than you remember from your last journey to King’s Landing, some years before your marriage. His kind face has started to wither from fatigue and age alike. The crown seems heavier upon his head, though perhaps it’s only from where his silver hair has started to thin at the scalp.
Alicent follows out just behind him. She wears a black dress with drooping sleeves and a veil to cover her long auburn curls, fit for a funeral procession. A knight of white armor and long black hair helps her descend the steps as she cradles a small, dark bundle squirming in protest in her arms.
You sink into a curtsy. A white-hot pain swells from the pit of your stomach to the top of your spine — a lightning strike that burns for minutes after. You grip Ormund’s arm until your fingers tremble, though the polite smile on your face remains when you rise again.
“Ormund,” Viserys greets with an easy smile. He clasps your husband’s free arm with a genuine affection while his tired eyes drift along the white stone towers of the city. “My… Oldtown is just as fair as I remember it.”
“I agree, Your Grace, though I confess I am far more partial,” Ormund responds with a dry humor and a knightly smile. “I hear the view improves the longer one is forced to stare at it.”
Viserys laughs while, beside him, Alicent tries and fails to summon her own. Her elegant features are worn from the weeks of travel, many of which you imagine were spent balancing the fussing weight concealed against her chest just now.
“And my lady…” Viserys inclines his silver head towards you, studying your face with a pair of kind eyes. “You look well.”
You feel, in a word, like death dressed in Hightower green. You feel hollowed out and stitched together again, the farthest thing from well. But you nod once and thank the King all the same, profoundly grateful when your voice doesn’t shake.
“Truly. Marriage suits you both well,” Viserys nods. “Though, I admit, I’d hope Daeron might have had a cousin or two near enough in age to grow up beside him here. Once he’s old enough for such things, of course.”
Ormund tenses beside you.
His arm feels very suddenly like holding onto stone. His pale eyes turn glacial in a flicker; a withheld grief that he forces himself to swallow down the second it rises like bile in his throat. You say nothing at all. You just keep smiling and pray to whatever god will hear you that you do not weep in front of the King and all his men.
“But there’s still time— You’ll have one of your own before long, I’m sure of it,” the older man continues, possessing no notion of what had happened behind these walls hardly two days past. If he notices anything amiss, he does not dwell on it, and turns instead to Alicent. “Go on. Let them see the boy.”
Alicent’s arms tighten instinctively around the bundle in her grasp and inhales sharply through her nose. It had been her own decision that Daeron be sent to her family’s ancestral home. Her last child was not quite six months when she counseled her King to send him to ward, far from the chaos of King’s Landing. But she finds herself suddenly plagued by the harsh realization that this will be the last time she will hold this baby as he is now. The next time she’s like to lay eyes on him again, he’ll be an unrecognizable young boy, and not nearly the small thing fussing against her collarbone now.
“He hasn't slept," Alicent warns as she steps closer. Her green eyes are warm and weary when they flit to you. “He didn’t take well to the carriage. Or the ship. He’s cried the whole way from Blackwater, I think. Poor thing…”
“I’m sure we can manage a crying babe, my Queen,” Ormund says gently, though there’s a distant aching in his voice disguised as good humor that only you could recognize. “I grew up with Gwayne, if you remember. I’m more than acquainted with wailing boys by now.”
Alicent musters a small smile and closes the distance between you to settle her son in your arms.
He’s warm — that’s the first thing you notice — he’s a small furnace swaddled in Targaryen black. He stirs briefly at the transfer from one chest to another, round face screwing tight in the prelude to a wail. Your heart clenches to brace yourself for that sound. It never comes.
The babe turns his face into the curve of your throat and settles into stillness with one small fist curled into the fabric of your gown. The tiny sound he makes isn’t a cry, but it isn’t quite a coo either. He sleeps, finally, in your arms — not even two days after you held your daughter between them, who had never awoken at all.
Ormund’s wide hand settles at the small of your back. Even in its steadiness, you feel the subtle tremor of his fingers against your spine. His throat tightens with the sudden urge to cry at the sight — of you, still frail and yet so bravely composed, cradling another woman’s child after laying your own to rest in the sept. He swallows through the hands of grief strangling his throat and feels a warmer feeling settling in its wake.
“Well…” Viserys hums, watching the baby sleep against you with a proud look in his weathered eyes. “It seems the boy’s found his corner of Oldtown already— Isn’t that lovely, Alicent?”
The woman nods, though shock still etches slightly in her pale features and behind the dark green of her eyes. “Of course, Your Grace,” she says and clears her throat, blinking back her tears with a queen’s practiced grace. “Thank you both for taking him.”
“He'll want for nothing here," Ormund swears with a firm nod. “You have my word. We'll raise him as if he were our own trueborn son.”
You pull the blanket gently back to peer at the sleeping baby swaddled within it. He’s practically all cheeks, with his mother’s mouth and nose.
You had been certain, two days past, that your life had surely ended with your daughter’s. That there would be nothing more to life than a hollow, vacant silence. But now, there is warmth — and a babe’s slow breath fanning along your collarbone.
You do not yet have a name for the foreign feeling swelling inside of you. It’s not joy, not yet, but it isn’t grief either. Or, at least, not only grief. And for now, that would have to be enough.
127 A.C. / Training Yard
The sound of clashing steel finds you before the sight of it does. The ring and scrape of blade on blade carries across the bustling courtyard, where you’ve gone to look for a young prince who was, as Maester Yorrick informed you with a palpable impatience, nearly an hour late for his lessons. You find the boy exactly where you imagined he would be — sword-training with his uncle, who has since stripped down to a pale tunic now darkened with sweat from the exercise.
Daeron, now thirteen years of age, is all knees and elbows from a sudden growth spurt that had taken him seemingly overnight. He presses a defensive attack upon his uncle with all the fierceness of a knight, but with the gracelessness of a teenage boy. Even you could tell from where you stood that his swing had no hope of landing. Ormund turns the blow aside with a lazy flick of his wrist, no more troublesome than swatting a fly from the air.
“Awful,” you hear the man scold from afar. When Daeron grits his teeth and presses forward once more, Ormund steps back and lets the boy’s momentum carry him a half stride too far. His blade misses his mark by inches. “Gods, that’s even worse—”
Daeron lunges a third time, fuelled now by a boyish rage that twists his freckled features. Ormund steps inside the overextended reach, hooks a boot around the boy’s ankle, and trips him onto the dirt with his blunted blade pressed to his ribs. Daeron hits the ground with a thud, red-faced and breathing heavy. His long auburn tendrils cling to his sweaty temple when he whips his head to glare up at his uncle.
“Dead,” Ormund proclaims from where he stands over the boy, flat but not totally unkind. He raises his brows and tilts his chin to his chest. “If this were a real sword, I’d have had your head before the thought to swing finished forming in that head of yours.”
Daeron twists himself upward and shoves the faux blade away with a boyish scowl. “You always say that,” he grumbles, refusing the hand Ormund extends to help him up. He rises to full height on his own and swipes dirt from his pale palms.
“Yes. I always say it because it's always true. You're thinking with your temper again— I can see it in your shoulders before you’ve even moved,” the older man lectures as he turns on the heel of his boot and walks off a few paces. “Again. And this time, think before you swing. Not after—”
“I think that’s enough for this morning,” you call to them as you step further into the yard, dress skirts rushing around your ankles in the summer breeze. “Maester Yorrick has been waiting all morning. And his patience, unlike yours, my lord, has its limits.”
Daeron nods once, shoulders sagging with an absent relief. “Yes, ma’am—”
“Give us a few more minutes,” Ormund dismisses simultaneously. “He’s close to getting his footwork right. I can feel it.”
You flash the man a look — one slight lift of your brow, one flicker of dullness behind the eyes. Years of marriage have honed that wordless look to a firm edge, one which finds Ormund like a blade. He nods in concession with a heavy exhale through his nose.
“You heard her, boy. Go on,” Ormund says, jerking his chin toward the tower and extending his hand out for the practice sword.
Daeron obeys without question. He passes the dull blade over and crosses the yard to you. You see the sweat and dirt streaked across his freckled face the closer he gets. “Come here to me,” you sigh and catch his round chin between your thumb and forefinger when he plants himself ahead of you. You swipe the filth from his cheeks with the hem of your sleeve like you’ve done since he was small enough to fit in one arm.
“I’m not a child anymore, you know," Daeron reminds you with a childish grimace as he suffers your motherly affections. “I’m a squire now.”
“Oh, a squire, are you?” you croon in response with an obvious air of sarcasm. You smooth wild auburn hair from his temples before pressing a chaste kiss to his hairline. “Go on now— before Maester Yorrick decides to make you study your histories until sundown.”
Daeron nods and ducks past you towards the tower stair, though you catch the corner of his pink mouth twitching upward into a grin before he’s turned away. You watch him leave with an attentive stare as Ormund discards the training swords at their posts. He approaches you in long, slow strides, allowing you to see the mark that training has left upon him — the way the sweat dampens his dark curls and the collar of his tunic, making the fabric stick to his broad shoulders and toned chest.
He smells of sweet wine, musky bathing oils, and salty sweat when he towers just before you. He tips his chin to his chest and raises his brows to his hairline, pale eyes glimmering with an expectant look.
“…Well?”
You blink up at him with a feigned innocence. “Well, what?”
“My kiss,” he answers with a shrug like it’s obvious, like he were a man coming to collect his debts. “You gave the boy his, and I’ve spent half the morning training him— I should think that I’ve earned at least that much.”
“Oh, really?” you squint. “After you told the boy he’s like to lose his head?”
“I told him the truth,” Ormund argues with an unrepentant laugh and takes a slow step closer to you. “Is the truth unkind merely because it stings a little going down?”
His hands splay along your waist, wide and warm along the edges of your corset. It takes everything in you not to cave for him right there, in the full view of the crowded courtyard. You cross your arms over your chest instead. “If you keep being so hard on him, he’ll grow to hate sword training altogether—”
“May be. But he will go on alive a good deal longer for having learned it the hard way now— instead of on a real field, with real steel, without me there to guide him.” Ormund ducks his head to catch your eye, pale gaze glimmering in time the pink smile tugging at his lips. “Surely you are not truly cross with me, my love…” he croons quietly.
You shrug with a raised chin, unwilling to concede so easily. “Perhaps I am.”
“Well, then, it’s hardly my doing,” he chuckles, a sound far warmer than the silver-gold sunshine sprawling over the courtyard. The pads of his thumbs smooth over your ribs in an absentminded affection. “You've gone so soft on the boy that you can scarcely bear to watch him lose a practice bout, without petting his hair over it after."
“Well, someone in this household has to be soft with him," you argue lightly, more teasing now than truly cross. Your slipper scrapes the dirt as you take a short step closer to him. What little distance remained between you closes now in an instant; each rise and fall of his chest brushes your folded arms. “You spend your mornings convincing the poor boy the world means to kill him, and I spend my nights convincing him that he could rule the world entire if he wished... Perhaps he’ll come out well-balanced for it, in the end.”
“Assuming one of us doesn’t kill the other over the method first,” Ormund quips.
“Precisely,” you nod.
“Well, I think it’s a fine system,” the man agrees gravely, drawing you an impossible inch closer by the hands still on your waist. His breath fans warm across your jaw as he leans in closer, still smelling of the mint leaves he’d chewed after breakfast. “And one I certainly intend to go on employing indefinitely… If my wife forgives me long enough to let me kiss her.”
His low voice glitters somewhere in the center of your chest. Your eyes narrow despite the small smile curling hopelessly at your mouth. “I don’t think I’ve yet decided,” you lilt.
“Well, I have,” he croons quietly, and does not wait for your retort before leaning down to press his lips against yours.
His broad nose flattens into the side of yours under the weight of his kiss, a slow and languid thing — as natural as the white waves ebbing and flowing against the pale stone tower of Oldtown. Your hands twist in his pale tunic billowing in the sea breeze, dissolving into the man like salt in water.
There is nothing you would not forgive this man for, you think distantly to yourself. There is no madness he could not lead you toward, not if he kisses you like this the entire way there.
130 A.C. / Ormund’s Solar
The raven arrives like all the rest — unceremoniously, on a sunless grey morning, from the trembling hands of the weathered maester. You tend to your needlework by the crackling hearth, burning low to fight off the morning chill blowing in from the sea, while Daeron reads in the opposite chair with one leg slung over the arm of it — both of you still waking with the early morning.
Across the room, Ormund sits at his desk and breaks the seal with a dull crack. Your gaze drifts to the man as he unrolls the letter, parchment whispering beneath his ringed fingers. You watch his pale eyes flit across the words once, and his brows lower in confusion a moment later. He shifts in his seat and reads it again, slower this time. His spine straightens with a soldier’s subconscious instinct as he draws a deep breath in and forgets to let it go.
The quiet feels loud as it swells within the solar. The popping fire startles you briefly, as you get lost in Ormund’s wordless dread. You feel his silent panic as if it were your own. You rise from your seat and lay your needlework on the cushion behind you, careful not to trouble Daeron’s reading as you stroll to the man’s side.
“Ormund?” you call quietly to him. “Ormund— What does it say?”
He says nothing in response; he just lifts his ringed hand and passes you the parchment curled between his middle and forefinger. His eyes remained fixed on a negligible chip in the cobblestone wall across the room as you pluck the paper from his hand. His silence is not convincing; his silence, as you’ve learned in years of marriage, is far more frightening than any voice he could raise.
Your eyes dart over the scrawled ink thrice over, just as he had, because your mind refuses to process the words on the first two passes.
“By the time this reaches you, the city has already fallen. Rhaenyra Targaryen holds King’s Landing and names herself Queen upon the Iron Throne. She has taken the Queen Dowager prisoner, as well as the King’s wife and last living heir. Send word of your household’s safety. Guard the boy.”
The letters blur and steady and blur again, swimming before your eyes. Your blood runs cold while the glowing hearth simultaneously fills the room with a near-unbearable heat. As your breaths come faster and shallower to you, you hear a small voice call from behind you.
“Is something wrong?” Daeron wonders aloud as he glances up from the heavy novel in his lap. His auburn brows knit low over his green eyes, casting a faint shadow over his freckled cheeks, which are slowly starting to lose the softness of boyhood.
“Go on to your chambers, Daeron,” you tell him in a voice strangely steady compared to how shaken you feel. “It’s time to break your fast. I’ll have the servants fetch it for you.”
“I’m not hungry,” the boy insists as he rises slowly from his chair, setting his book aside and walking slowly from the hearth. His eyes dart back and forth between your profile and Ormund’s when both of you refuse to look at him. His shoulders straighten with a strangling tension. “What’s happened? What does it say—?”
“Daeron,” Ormund snaps, voice cutting through the quiet room like a blade. His eyes are similarly sharp when they snap finally to the boy’s pleading once. “Listen to your mother, boy. Go.”
Mother, he says. The word lingers and hangs in the air for a long moment. Even in his newfound worry, Ormund’s eyes still flicker with a startled awareness at how easily the slip-up had escaped him, though there is little time to dwell on it now.
Daeron's pink mouth parts with some half-formed protest at the ready. Whatever words he could conjure up on such short notice turn to dust on his tongue at the look his uncle gives him, chiseled features hardening into an unfeeling sort of look. Daeron exhales a held breath, gathers his book from his seat, and heads for the door without further argument.
Ormund’s knowing voice follows him out: “And don’t stand outside the door eavesdropping, either. Straight to your chambers. I'll know if you've stopped on the stair."
Only when the door shuts behind the boy with a soft click do your teary eyes lift from the parchment in your trembling hands. You say nothing for a long moment. The muffled sounds of the bustling castle fill the silence — the sounds of an oblivious world still living, though it feels a little like yours has stopped.
“I know," Ormund says before you’ve spoken, before you’ve needed to speak. “I know.”
“Okay,” you nod once. “So what are you going to do?”
He huffs a not-quite laugh. “I’ve only just found out about this. As have you,” he answers, a little sharper than he means to. “I’ll need a moment to think about the problem before you ask me to solve it, my love.”
“A moment is no longer a luxury we have,” you argue, voice rising despite yourself and wavering on every syllable with a palpable fear. “Rhaenyra has dragons, Ormund— she has Daemon and three new bastard riders sworn to her besides. She does not need a moment to bring any of them to our door.”
Your dress skirt spins around your ankles when you turn suddenly in place. Ormund’s pale eyes follow your form as you storm back towards the hearth, ranting the whole way there.
“She will come for him, Ormund— not if, when. She will stop at nothing to silence any claim that challenges her own,” you continue, voice cracking under the weight of your unshed tears. “Daeron is a threat to her! Simply by breathing, he is a threat to her, and she will not leave him idling here out of some… familial courtesy for some half-brother she’s never met.”
The flame crackles quietly when you toss the letter into it. The wax seal blackens and weeps; the ink turns slowly to ash. You’d hoped that destroying those words might, in turn, settle the uneasy feeling they’ve brought you; but to no avail.
“I know that,” Ormund nods with a jaw clenched tight, ringed fingers curling into fists over his thighs beneath the desk.
“Then think!” Your shout bounces off the cobbled walls as you turn to face him once more. His face blurs behind the burning tears clouding your vision. The swelling emotion thickens your voice as you yell to him, half-wild with a preemptive grief. “I have already buried children who never got to draw breath— I will not bury another who has drawn fifteen years of them under this roof! Do not let them take him, Ormund— I don't care what it costs. Do not let them our boy!”
Ormund’s chair scrapes the cobbles as he rises slowly to full height. He crosses the solar in slow, silent strides. Your glassy eyes stay locked with his as he nears. You peer stubbornly up at him from beneath your lashes, clumped with unshed tears; but you do not protest when his palms smooth over the outsides of your elbows to pull you into his arms.
You melt hopelessly against his chest, fisting the back of his doublet in both hands, and trembling slowly as you choke down a sob. Ormund’s wide hands smooth along your back and feels his chest tighten with a striking, familiar ache. He thought once there was no worse sound in the world than hearing your weeping over a lost child; but he knows, now, that there is something equally as troubling: your weeping over a child you fear you’re about to lose and feeling like there is no time yet to stop it.
“I will not let anyone take him,” Ormunds promises evenly, with a distance that suggests he’s already assembling a plan in the depths of his mind. His arms curl tighter, pressing you harder against him. “I swear it to you. By the gods, they will not have our son.”
You pull back from him, just far enough to search his steady gaze with your wearier one. “But how?” you press weakly, more of a demand than a real question.
Ormund ponders for a long moment. The shadow of his adam’s apple rises and falls in his throat as he swallows. And when he speaks again, the words fall from his tongue flat and even, as if he were testing each one the moment they left his mouth.
“No one at court has laid eyes on the boy since he was a babe in arms…” he answers lowly, brows lifting to his hairline. “Alicent hasn’t seen him in years… There is no one outside these walls who would know what he looks like… So if they come— when they come… I suppose Rhaenryra would presume any silver-haired boy as Viserys’ heir.”
Your brows furrow as confusion twists slowly across your face.
“We’d only need enough lye and patience,” Ormund continues with a shrug. “And a boy willing enough to answer to a name that isn’t his, and to go with Rhaenyra, should her dragons come calling.”
You tense within his hold as the words run through you like ice-cold water. “You mean to… to send a different child in his place?”
“Yes,” Ormund answers instantly and without apology. “It isn’t a kind plan, I know. And I won’t pretend that someone else’s son won’t have to suffer for it, if it comes to pass, but… You did not ask me for a kind plan.”
You grieve the heat of his hands when he lifts them from your back, just to smooth his gently calloused palms over your jaw a moment later. He rubs the rough pads of his thumbs along your burning cheeks. You melt into his touch of warm velvet and peer up at him with teary eyes. Ormund’s gaze softens around the edges as his mouth lifts into a sad sort of smile.
“You asked me not to let them take our boy,” he continues lowly. “And however cruel it may be… this is but the only coin I have to buy that promise with.”
You know that a part of you should be horrified. You know what he is describing is a monstrous thing — an innocent boy’s whole life offered as a shield for another’s. You search deep within yourself to find that terror, but cannot seem to locate it. Instead, you find relief, like a crack of sunlight peeking through storm clouds — the very hint of a promise that your family was not long in the dying just yet.
“Do it,” you hear yourself say, shaking your head between his hands. “Whatever it costs… Whoever it costs… Do it.”
Ormund nods with a deep inhale through his nose, leaning forward to press his mouth to your hairline — to seal his promise with a kiss.
130 A.C. / Tumbleton Sept
Rhaenyra's dragonriders come for Daeron not nearly a fortnight into the army's march. Ormund sends the son of a merchant in his place — a boy of the right age and the right pale coloring, plucked quietly from Oldtown and dressed in borrowed finery before anyone thought to look twice. “Be brave, young prince," Ormund had said to the blanch-haired boy, only for show, though what he really meant was: “I will have your family hanged if you do not play your part.”
Ormund knelt before Daemon Targaryen and swore his fealty to the Queen, but marched on for Tumbleton the second the dragons took flight, all the shame.
The chaos follows them there, too.
Daeron attempts to seek a momentary refuge in the foreign castle’s candlelit sept. A cramped chamber made of brown stone and hazy smoke from the flickering candles, where Tessarion grumbles in protest of captivity. The lack of sunlight has dulled her fluorescent blue scales, and has made her ill-tempered due to the lack of exercise. Daeron alone she allows close, pressing her great head into the boy’s small neck, and momentarily forgetting about the heavy chains around her throat when he pets her stony scales.
Ormund finds him there. Ormund has a way of finding him anywhere. It is a gift and a curse, perhaps — comforting when Daeron was small and frightened of the dark; but less so now, when Daeron’s every attempt at solitude is interrupted by his uncle, constantly watching him as if he were a traitor to be surveilled and not his kin.
“I have warned you against indulging in affections for the best,” Ormund says as he approaches. The man cradles the boy's freckled cheeks in his wide, calloused palms despite Tessarion's low growl of warning.“You are a good boy,” he says, and in the very same breath, without losing the tender smile on his face: “You have a taint in your blood,” and “You must be king.”
Ormund makes less and less sense to him these days — the throes of war, Daeron supposes, though a part of him is frightened that it began long before that.
Sometimes he thinks Ormund only makes sense when you’re near enough to translate his tangled, wild emotions back into something grounded and real. You’ve always had a way of gentling the man; usually with nothing more than a steady hand along his wrist to calm whatever storm had been moving within him.
Daeron has seen you do it a hundred times over without ever quite understanding how. But he prays now for your swift return from the city, so that you might do it again — so that you might soften whatever unfamiliar thing has taken root in his uncle when he commands his soldiers to drag in the peasant man from earlier that afternoon. The one who broke Ser Garrick’s nose defending against his own wife’s assault; an act any decent lord would have called simple justice.
Ormund draws his sword from its sheath at his hip. The hiss of the steel leaving the leather fills the small stone sept, loud enough to echo off the old walls that have likely seen a great many prayers and, Daeron suspects, not so very many murders. The older man turns the blade and offers the embellished hilt to the boy, pale eyes hardening when he hesitates.
“We have risked much and more to raise you up,” Ormund says, strong features twisting into something resembling offense. “Surely, you do not wish to disappoint us now.”
Us. Daeron is pulled into his uncle’s orbit at that single syllable alone; the unbearable thought of failing the only two people in this world who have ever troubled themselves to love him — one standing before him with a blade held out like a peace offering, and the other somewhere in the depths of the dark city but still steady on his mind all the same.
Daeron lays his palms out flat before his brain has fully comprehended the motion. He prays Ormund doesn’t notice how they tremble when he rests the sword upon them — the weight of the blade cold and heavy upon his fingers.
Daeron’s hands tremble around the ornate leather hilt of Ormund’s sword. His misty eyes find the prisoner kneeling just before him on the cold stone — bloodied and chained for a crime any noble man in Westeros would surely commit with honor — before glancing slowly to where his uncle looms behind him. Candlelight flickers in shades of orange-gold upon the man’s chiseled features, pooling a deep black in the hollows of his eyes.
“What would Mother think of this?” Daeron hears himself ask, voice cracking under the weight of the tears burning hot in the backs of his eyes.
It is his last and most desperate attempt to reach for his uncle, just as he has seen you do, and to pull him back from the dangerous ledge he stands upon. But he knows the man has already made up his mind; and he knows that there is no version of him that walks out of this sept without spilling blood.
Ormund’s face softens slightly, though there is little tenderness in what he asks of the boy now. “Alicent would understand,” he coos in a gentle voice. “War asks difficult things of every great house—”
“I didn’t—” Daeron swallows hard, smaller now than moments before. “I did not mean the Lady Alicent…”
Realization flashes across Ormund’s face — a visible recognition of exactly which woman the boy had meant, and has always meant every time the word slipped accidentally from his mouth and was never corrected for it after. Daeron was not yours by blood, but he was yours in every other way that matters. The small, warm weight of him stopped crying the moment he was placed into your arms fifteen years ago, and never truly stopped being yours since.
Still, Ormund does not soften for it. If anything, something in him hardens further as he takes a slow step closer to the boy.
“Your mother would be proud,” he answers, brows lowered as if the answer was the plainest thing in the world. “Don’t you see? Any strike against this army is a strike against her, against everything she’s built to keep you safe… Any man who raises his fist against our men raises it, in the end, against her… And do you not want to protect her, just as she has spent every day protecting you?”
Daeron swallows hard. The weight of Ormund’s words feels heavy in his throat, heavier than the blade in his hands as his trembling fingers tighten around its hilt. His teary green eyes linger on the steel, flickering shades of gold in the candlelight.
“No, please, I beg you,” the battered prisoner rasps, dried blood matting at his curls from whatever rough handling had brought him here. “I have a family, my lord. Please—”
Daeron’s eyes lift to find the man’s pleading gaze and linger upon him for a long while. He sees your face in the very back of his mind, the only real mother he’s ever truly known, and hears Ormund’s disappointed voice layered over it as he draws the heavy blade back.
Then he strikes.
The cut is not clean. The blade lodges at an off angle in the man’s corded neck and sticks somewhere deep between flesh and bone. The man’s pained shout comes out wet and gargled, bouncing off the cobbled walls and in the depths of Daeron’s mind.
The boy’s body flinches from what his own hand has done as bright crimson blood spouts from the gaping wound and splatters along the old stone.
His face crumples as he removes the blade. It takes a world of strength in his thin arms to wrench it out again. A quiet whimper sounds in his throat when the blade drags against bone and stumbles backward when the man’s limp body collapses at his feet with a dull smack. Dark blood spreads slowly across the stone in a widening, glistening pool that catches the candlelight like moonlight on the bay.
Daeron looks down at the crimson dripping off the steel blade. He does not notice his uncle’s approach until his broader hands are gently guiding the sword from his fingers — fingers that no longer feel like his own.
Ormund wipes the steel clean against the dead man's tunic, one side and then the other, with the methodical care of a man cleaning a hunting knife after a kill. He sheaths the blade back into its hilt and closes the remaining distance between him and the boy.
When Daeron’s mind finally returns to his body — ears still ringing, vision still hazy — his wide eyes snap to his uncle’s face and sees a quiet pride swimming in his features once more. It’s as comforting as it is horrifying. And when Ormund's strong arms wrap around the boy’s shoulders and draw him close to his chest, that feels like a dizzying concoction of the two even more so.
“I am proud of you, boy…” Ormund tells him as he leans in close, pressing his mouth to the boy’s hair in a near-kiss, though he whispers to him instead: “Do not tell your mother of this. Understood?"
Daeron does not answer, though Ormund does not ask him for one now.
130 A.C. / Tumbleton Castle
You return to the castle late in the evening, weary down to your bones from the long day.
You had gone into town with what coin and grain the army could spare, and found Lady Kat there among the frightened smallfolk, tending to the smith's wife, whose arm still sat bound in a rough splint. The woman's round face was kind, but you knew that no amount of offered bread or soft words could cure what comfort had been taken from her.
“Do you know where my husband is?” she had asked you before you left, with something desperate in her voice that made you wish you had a better answer than the only truthful one you could give.
“I’m sorry. I do not know," you told her, smiling in what sympathy you could muster, honest in your ignorance if nothing else.
The question sits strangely in your chest on the ride back to the castle, though you struggle to place exactly why.
Dinner is already laid out by the time you arrive. The long table is embellished with more food than Tumbleton's starving smallfolk have likely seen since the war began. The notion sits heavy in your stomach before you’ve even entered the dining hall, where Ormund rises from his seat to greet you.
His warmth is striking, a shade too bright for the late hour. He presses a jeweled chalice of ale into your hand with a tender grin and a pair of soft eyes, asking after the wife and the town's wounded with an attentiveness he doesn’t usually spare for such small domestic accounts.
“Sit,” he tells you with one wide hand along the small of your back to urge you the short distance to the table. “You've had a long day, my love. Eat something before it goes cold."
Confusion floods your face at the emptiness beside your usual seat. “Where's Daeron? He hasn’t missed out on lemon cakes since he was old enough to chew them.”
“He's not feeling well. Best to let him rest,” Ormund answers with a polite smile as he pours himself a goblet of wine. His soft eyes flit between you and the glugging flagon. “Sit with me, love. I’m sure you’re half-starved yourself."
He sits down in his cushioned seat at the head of the long table and gestures for you to take yours. You remain stubbornly in place, because you know him far too well for anything else. Years of marriage have taught you every register of his voice; every flicker behind his eyes; every twitch in his features. And this one, all warm and careful and slightly too eager, is one you’d learned to trust least of all.
“What have you done?” you deadpan.
Ormund scoffs a breathless laugh, bouncing his broad shoulders in a shrug. “Why do you insist I’ve done something?”
“Because I can hear it in your voice.”
Ormund huffs again, though it’s more of a sound of surprise than true laughter this time. “Well, I assure you, dear wife, I have done nothing at all.”
“Is that what will Daeron tell me?” you press. “When I go to his chambers and ask him myself?"
“He will tell you that I'm an excellent uncle and an even better husband," Ormund quips with his elbows propped on the table and his pointer fingers steepled together. “And also that you ought to sit down and eat your supper with your poor husband, before you go making a production out of a boy's upset stomach.”
You leave despite his words, led purely by the intuition swirling in your stomach that drags you directly to Daeron’s chamber door. You knock once and receive no answer — when the silence holds on the third try, you let yourself in and find the boy alone in his room, curled small on the edge of his bed in a way that strikes you deep in the chest; a reminder of that swaddled babe curled against your chest fifteen years past.
He does not look up when you enter, nor when you lower yourself gingerly onto the edge of the mattress beside him without a word. His shoulders shake in small, tight increments as he struggles to choke down his own sobs. He drags each breath in through his nose and holds it for a beat too long until it shudders out of him again.
He freezes when you lay a gentle hand on his shoulder, going rigid against whatever emotion he’s trying not to shake loose.
“What's happened, my love?" you coo to him, gentling your voice the way you might for a much younger child. “Tell me."
He shakes his auburn head against the pillow and sniffles to himself. “He told me I couldn't…"
“Who? Ormund?” you press and feel a preemptive anger kindling hot in your chest before you’ve even heard the whole of it. “Well… Your uncle tells me a great many things that I’ve long since learned to ignore. So I imagine he can spare us the indulgence of a secret or two.”
After another shaky breath, Daeron pushes himself up from the mattress. He snivels wetly and wipes his flushed cheeks with the back of one hand. You smooth down his wild flaming tendrils until he finds the words to speak.
“The blacksmith…” he wavers. “The one who struck Ser Garrick this morning…”
Your stomach swirls with a sick feeling when he trails off. Your blood runs cold with a fear of what he might say next. You think instantly of the woman with the kind face and the splinted arm, asking so gently if you knew where her husband had run off to. You have to remind yourself to breathe again as you ask, “What of him?”
“Ormund made me…” Daeron’s breath catches in his throat with a horror reignited in the pit of his chest. “He said any strike against the army was a strike against the crown. Against me. Against you.” He forces each word out through unshed tears and feels half-furious at himself when his voice shatters. “He told me it would be a king’s justice. That it— that it would make you proud.”
The boy’s eyes lift to yours then, glassy and green and rimmed red. They dart back and forth over your face, searching for an ounce of comfort within it.
“Are you?” he asks in a voice barely above a whisper. “Proud of me, I mean.”
You nod until the words have climbed through the fear swelling in your throat.
“Of course I am,” you answer breathlessly, but with no hesitation at all despite the dread searing in your chest. “I have been proud of you since the day I met you. Nothing you could do— Nothing of what your uncle made you do could change that. And you did it, I have no doubt, because some part of you believed it would keep our family safe. Protecting the people you love, even when doing so costs so much, is no easy feat, my love. I know this better than you might think…”
Your mind drifts to the pale-haired boy — the merchant’s son who was brown of hair before you found him. The boy who was borrowed and dressed up in a prince’s wardrobe and sent off to whatever fate Rhaenyra’s justice had in store for him. The boy who is very likely chained or worse for a crime that was never truly his, simply because you and Ormund decided his captivity was a fair trade for Daeron’s freedom.
Daeron watches your eyes well with tears of your own, and his freckled face crumples further at the thought of hurting you further. “I did not mean to make you sad…" he mutters with a wet gaze that flits between yours.
“You haven't," you tell him firmly, though your voice remains steady. You gather the boy into your arms and press your cheek against his hair, feeling his tear-stained cheeks wet the skin of your chest. “I’m not sad, my love. I promise. I only love you. That's all….”
You sit with him for a long while after that — until his breathing steadies and his shoulders lose their edge. Only then do you rise, with one last kiss to his forehead, and leave him to whatever uneasy slumber he can manage after what the long day had done to him.
You run into Ormund on your way down the long corridor. His broad form towers in the narrow passageway as his wide hands splay before him in confusion. “What’s taken you so long? Your dinner’s already gone cold.”
“I’m not hungry.”
Your shoulder scrapes along his arm as you shove by him with little affection. Ormund huffs and falls easily into step with you on his much longer legs. The two of you move through the stony corridors in a silent tension that grows with every step you take, torchlight guttering along the damp walls as you pass them. The words of an argument well in your throat the whole way to your chambers and refuse to break free until the door has shut finally behind you.
“I cannot believe you!” you shout, features twisted in anger. “How dare you tell my son to lie to me! After everything—"
Ormund shakes his head. “I only told him to spare you a grief that serves no purpose—"
“You told him to kill a man, Ormund! A smith. A husband.” The words come out through a jaw clenched tight. Your eyes glitter in the flickering candlelight with every one that spills from your mouth, hands gesticulating wildly at your sides. “I stood in that town not an hour ago and told his wife I didn't know where he was. And I didn't know, because you hadn't thought to tell me you hadn’t let him go at all! And now I have to carry that too, on top of everything else because you've decided I didn’t need to be troubled with it—”
“It’s war!” Ormund shouts, voice ringing through the cobbled walls. His handsome features harden instantly as he stares you down with emotionless pale eyes. His long fingers curl into fists before relaxing once more in a repeated cycle intended to calm him. “I will not apologize for teaching that boy what war requires of men who mean to survive it. For now, it’s only Ser Garrick’s broken nose, but we will have far worse than that done to us before this war is through. If Daeron doesn’t learn that now, he’s as good as dead—”
“He’s sixteen—”
“He’s the King's last trueborn son, with any righteous claim to the throne!” Ormund thunders over your teary retort, approaching you with long strides. “He is the rider of a dragon that is the only thing standing between this army and total ruin— What don’t you understand about that?”
Ormund towers over you at once. His firm hands close hard around your arms, keeping you close and unmoving before him. He ducks his head to your height, eyes darting wildly between yours.
“Do you think I enjoyed putting that sword in his hand?” he continues, quieter now. “Do you think I've slept easy a single night since we left Oldtown, knowing what I'm shaping him into— why I have to?”
You swallow hard through a tight throat, peering up at him through the tears clouding your vision. “I think you’ve decided his suffering is a fair price for war,” you waver. “And I think you decided that without asking me.”
“Yes,” Ormund nods without reservation. “I have decided a great many things without asking you first— I did not ask you first when I decided to blanch that stranger’s hair and send him off in Daeron’s place, did I? And yet you still thanked me for it with your words and body when it kept our boy breathing.”
His words tear right through your chest. You shake your head in protest of them even though you know that he’s right — that you are no better than Ormund even in his madness; that you would do worse and more for Daeron if the war called for it, if you were brave enough to do it.
“Did I complain, all those years, when grief after grief left this house without an heir of its own blood?” Ormund goes on, quieter now but no less harsh, as his features twist in a stifled sort of anguish. “Did I complain when courtiers wondered in whispers why a man would stay wed to a wife that could not give him an heir?”
You flinch at his words like you can feel them physically, tearing you from the inside out, though his long fingers caging you force you to stomach them.
“I never complained. Because I love you and because I understood it was no fault of your own,” Ormund continues. “So I have earned, I think, the right to make one hard choice without you looking at me as though I’ve become some monster for it.”
Anger pricks your skin beneath your heavy gown like needles.
It is not the unfairness of the blow of his words that sends you reeling, but rather the sheer astonishment at how low he has stooped in his fury — in his grief. It is, perhaps, the cruelest thing he’s ever said to you; made crueler still for how plainly he does not seem to recognize his own cruelty at all.
“Say that again,” you tell him in an emotionless monotone. “Say it plainly, exactly how you mean it— that you think I am some monster—”
“I didn’t mean…” Ormund huffs and hangs his head, tense shoulders dropping as the lingering anger slips from his skin like rain. “I am not saying this to be cruel— Gods know, I’d sooner cut out my own tongue before I meant any cruelty to you.”
His pale eyes are wet and soft again when they lift to meet yours. His hands loosen their grip on your arms as they lift to cradle your cheeks, softly calloused and warm like velvet along your blazing skin.
“Daeron is the only child either of us has been permitted to keep,” the man continues, softer now. “He is not merely a boy I love, though gods know I do, but he is the only proof that we were ever meant to be parents at all… After everything this life took from us in the trying… Do you understand what I’m telling you?"
“So what?” you press, voice breaking. “The only way he gets to stay ours is if he survives long enough to sit a throne? Is that the only way to remove the taint from his blood— that’s what you called it, right?”
Ormund softens further in the face of your anger.
“Without Aemond, without Vhagar, this army has no dragon to answer to whatever Rhaenyra sends against us next… But Daeron has Tessarion, and Daeron has a claim that half this army would follow into the fire itself,” he coos gently to you, as if anything louder might break you entirely. His thumbs smooth gently along your cheekbones, wiping away a tear that clings stubbornly to the burning skin there. “The war is coming here, my love. It is not a thing we can shield him from any longer. He is our only hope of surviving what is coming, and every bit his birthright to lead it."
“Surely…” you trail off in disbelief, wild eyes searching his bluer ones. “Surely you do not mean to make our child fight in this war."
“It is the will of the gods,” Ormund croons as if it were that simple.
Something in you knows, as each word spills from his mouth, that this is not a man reasoning clearly. You can hear it in the smoothness of his voice and in each too-quick answer on his tongue. And yet, you want more than anything for him to be right. You want it so badly it frightens you — for the gods to will this war’s end, for Ormund’s victory, for your son’s survival.
You don’t realize you’re crying until Ormund draws you fully into his chest with one wide hand along your back and another cradling the back of your head. Tears fall from your lashes and wet the front of his emerald doublet.
“Listen to me…” he mutters into your hair. “If he sits that throne, no one in this realm could ever call him anything but ours. He is Viserys’s heir, yes, but he became a Hightower the moment you held him— and if he rules, no man will ever again whisper that he is not truly yours. He will restore ancient order to the throne. That is how we keep him.”
You shake your head in protest as you lean back from him again, just far enough to peer up at him with tear-heavy eyes. “Just bring him back to me,” you plead fiercely to him. “When this battle is done, I don't care what it costs you to manage it. Bring him back—”
“I will," Ormund nods with the same iron certainty that has carried you through every hard year of your marriage. “I swear it to you. I’ll bring him home—”
“And you,” you remind with a stern finger jabbed into the center of his chest. “You come back to me, too— I have buried enough of what I love in this life, Ormund. I will not bury another. You come back to me. Both of you.”
He nods and leans down to press his forehead against yours. Each of his heaving exhales through his nose fans warm across your chin.
“I will,” he breathes against you, thumbs sweeping again along your cheekbone. He shifts against you to brush the smallest of kisses to the bridge of your nose — so gentle that it makes you feel like crying. Your hands curl hard around his wrist to keep him close. “The gods owe us a debt. And we will see it repaid in full before this war is through, I promise you.”
You cling to the certainty in his voice the way a drowning woman clings to driftwood; the way a starving woman clings to the memory of her last full meal — you cling to him the way a grieving woman clings to the gods themselves.
The shocking thing about Laura Dodsworth’s pictures of 100 women’s breasts isn’t the flesh on show, or the many shapes and sizes, but the realisation that images of unairbrushed, non-uniform breasts seem to be so rare. “We see images of breasts everywhere,” says the 41-year-old photographer, “but they’re unreal. They create an unflattering comparison but also an unobtainable ideal. I wanted to rehumanise women through honest photography.”
rabbits are lucky on account of all the clover like they eat so much clover that they're bound to be chowing down on some four-leafed ones and all of the luck from those few lucky clovers is heavy (good luck weighs more than bad luck or neutral luck does) so it slips down the body and gets stored in the rabbit's feet and that's how their feet are so strong and able to hop so far it's all the luck.
visiting Logan at the garage when he's dirty from oil and shit
For this one, we are following Logan’s book backstory. I hate that they changed his father for a mother in rehab, and that he has a sister instead of a brother working at the garage. (just like I hate how they watered down Phil’s abuse…)
Summary: You visit Logan at the garage…in a skirt
Warnings: 18+, suggestive content,
—
You pulled outside Logan & Sons Auto Repair, spotting Logan's truck parked along the side of the building where he always left it. The familiar sight tugged a smile onto your face before you had even turned off the engine.
The afternoon sun was beating down on the cracked asphalt as you climbed out, the scent of warm pavement, motor oil, and rubber already drifting through the air. The wide garage doors were rolled open, exposing cars up on lifts and the organized chaos of tool chests, air hoses, and half-disassembled engines.
The rhythmic clank of metal echoed from inside, followed by the whir of an impact wrench.
You stepped through the open bay, weaving around a stack of tires.
One of the older mechanics glanced up from beneath the hood of a pickup truck. ‘’Well, look who decided to stop by,’’ he said with a knowing grin.
‘’Hi George,’’ you greeted, smiling at the man in his early fifties.
‘’No clicking noise this time?’’
You shook your head. ‘’Car is doing good.’’
He wiped his grease-stained hands on a rag before jerking his chin toward the far end of the shop, already knowing you were looking for Logan. ‘’Last bay. He’s been under that Mustang since lunch.’’
‘’Thanks.’’
As you made your way deeper into the garage, familiar sounds filled the space — classic rock humming from an old radio, compressed air hissing, muffled laughter between the mechanics.
You spotted him a second later, half hidden under a red car that looked far too fancy to be here.
You reached for the creeper and yanked hard, causing him to roll out from under the car, spanner in hand.
‘’What the fu—?’’ Logan trailed off, looking up at you from his perch with his bandana tied over his head and oil smeared on his cheek. ‘’Hey, babe.’’ He smiled, pleased to see you. ‘’Got any car trouble?’’
‘’Nope,’’ you replied. ‘’I was just stopping by to see you.’’
The garage was thirty minutes from Briar, but you didn't have anything else to do this afternoon. And you secretly loved to see him in his mechanic overalls. Bonus points if it was dirty or open at the chest.
‘’I’m kind of in the middle of something here… Jeffrey was supposed to have this Mustang ready for 3PM, but he called to say something came up and couldn’t come in to finish the job,’’ Logan explained, tired of his unreliable brother. ‘’This client leaves good tip so we can’t afford to lose him.’’
You hummed in understanding as he wheeled himself back under the car.
‘’I get it. But you should tell Jeffrey to go fuck himself.’’
Logan snorted. ‘’I wish!’’
A familiar tune came on the radio and you found yourself humming to it while Logan worked on the Mustang. Ever so often, he would peek one eye out from under the car, catching your silhouette standing there — patient and pretty in your skirt and flowy blouse —, and it hit him all over again how lucky he was.
‘’You wanna make yourself useful, baby?’’ he asked as the music changed, voice teasing but warm. ‘’Grab me that 10mm socket from the tray?’’
You turned toward the rolling tool cart, scanning the neatly organized sockets until you spotted the 10mm. Picking it up, you walked back to Logan and, with one leg on either side of his body, handed it over to him.
He rolled out from under the car to grab the tool and swore. ‘’Can you please not stand like that?’’ he said, gesturing to the perfect view up your skirt that you had unintentionally given him. ‘’You know I can’t focus with that pink thong right in my face.’’
A soft laugh left your lips. ‘’Close your eyes.’’
‘’Close your legs.’’
‘’No.’’ You crossed your arms, looking down at him. ‘’You’re looking up my skirt.’’
‘’Because you’re flashing your pussy in my face!’’
The sound of a tool clattering on the concret accompanied by a loud ’Ow, fuck!’ coming from one of the other mechanics echoed in the garage. He hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but his space was right next to Logan’s so he had heard everything.
‘’You did not just say that… Jesus, this is a garage, kid.’’
Logan groaned in embarrassment and moved to roll back under the car.
pairing: John Logan x Di Laurentis “man eater”twin sister/au
blurb: Logan shares a casual past with Dean’s twin sister, at least that’s what they both think. He lets his insecurities about his upbringing get to him, she lets her cool girl, “man eater” persona get the better of her, and neither of them ever share how deep their feelings actually are (despite everyone else knowing)
30% smutty? oral f receiving, minors dni, drinking/alcohol mentioned, some cursing, yearning Logan ofc & slightly jealous Logan, au where instead of Summer, Dean has a twin sister, it’s my world so Logan has a truck
🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈
Logan’s POV
The shower wasn’t helping.
Steam filled the bathroom until the mirror fogged over completely, but his mind refused to quiet.
She was here. Actually here.
Not a FaceTime call from Cambridge.
Not an Instagram story she had posted.
She was sleeping under the same roof again.
Dean’s green light comment banged around in his head like a puck against the boards. What the fuck was that?
Logan dragged a towel over his hair.
Four months. It had only been four months.
Then why did it feel like years? His mind betrayed him.
⸻
Thanksgiving. The boys’ house. Music filling downstairs. Garrett yelling over a football game. Dean arguing with Tucker about whether pumpkin pie was overrated.
She’d found him in the kitchen washing dishes from their multi-course dinner Tucker prepared.
“I’m bored.” She said as she sat herself on the kitchen island directly behind his back and kicked her legs.
He’d smiled without looking up from the sink.
“Liar.”
“I’m serious.”
“No.” He turned around this time and leaned closer. “You just wanted an excuse to steal me.”
That smile. The one she only gave him “Maybe.”
He remembered taking her hand. Leading her upstairs.
The way she’d laughed quietly when Hannah almost caught them in the hallway.
The way the noise from downstairs slowly disappeared until it was just the two of them.
It was his room, but every time she stepped inside his heart raced. He’s never felt so comfortable yet so erratic all at once than in their opening moments every time before he got his hands on her. There was always something so comforting about knowing that’s how her visits would end up, yet so the opposite knowing he was finger tips away from an angel.
The second his door quietly clicked he finally put his mouth to hers, starving. He craned his neck downwards, both hands spread engulfing the sides of her face, her slender jawline, almost all the way around to the nape of her neck.
She didn’t even have time to wrap her arms around him, both of her delicate hands resting on his chest while his tongue explored hers. It was the kind of kiss that makes red heat spread down your entire body, blooming at your jaw and moving down your chest, in between your legs, weakening your knees. “Missed you.” She whispered against him, uncharacteristically tender to anyone else but not to him. He smirked against her mouth and almost nodded.
She tasted sweet, a mixture of the mini marshmallows they were hiding from Tucker earlier, her minty lip gloss and how her spit always tastes.
He grazed one hand to the small of her back gently, never letting it leave her body as he stepped forward toward his bed, guiding her by pure memory but keeping a hold on her.
She finally landed, perched on the edge of his bed with her legs naturally slightly parted. Only then did he disconnect from her, and it felt like the opposite of coming up for air. She was his air.
She looked up at him, big blue eyes through thick bare lashes. Her hair was slightly messy already, her skin glowing in nothing but the last pieces of sunlight creeping through his curtains, her lips puffed and wet from his kiss. Undone for him, exactly how he liked her and how only he could see her. He needed to see more of her.
She was wearing a large cream cable knit sweater as a dress, Dean’s, a cream slip dress just barely peaking underneath. Logan had been dying all day to see the rest of it.
“Wanna take this off of you Angel. That okay?” He asked genuinely, barely above a whisper and barely tugging at the hem of the sweater. So gentle, and that nickname he saved for her from her Halloween costume Sophomore year.
Y/N just nodded, never losing eye contact. He couldn’t help but keep his hands slightly too close to her body as he peeled the sweater off and tossed it across the room, finally taking her in. Her perfect body that he knew every inch of, every curve, that he dreamt about every month that she was away. Just barely covered by silk and lace, she looked like she was dipped in champagne. The strap naturally slipped off her shoulder, and her nipples pebbled through the bust, an effect of Logan’s wandering hands.
Logan dropped to his knees. In any other circumstance it would have seemed dramatic, but he knows if anyone else would have seen her they would’ve understood.
He spread both hands again but this time over the plush, soft skin just above her knees, looking up for another nod of approval from her before placing a gentle kiss on her inner thigh, stopping to look up between each one as he moved higher. “So soft baby.” He mumbled against her. Her slip was pushed just above her hips as his hands traveled, placing both hands over her hipbones and rubbing small circles with his soft but slightly calloused thumbs. He took a deep breath full of her before placing a single kiss directly to her center, the only thing between them being a thin cotton g-string. Logan knew he was sick, he did. But he craved that smell and even more than that, he craved her taste. Y/N let out a soft whimper, and it took everything in him not to full blown beg. He gave her another look upwards just through his own lashes, on his knees before her like a man worshipping, “Please angel, I need to taste you. Is that okay?”
⸻
Logan squeezed his eyes shut. Jesus Christ.
He could still remember the way she’d looked at him afterward. Unguarded. Unpolished. Safe. His thick length swelled at the memory.
He scrubbed both hands down his face. “Get it together,” he muttered.
It was a party. Not a confession. Definitely not the beginning of anything. Just another night. He almost laughed at himself. Yeah. Keep telling yourself that.
⸻
Y/N’s POV
Harvard had taught her plenty. Constitutional law. Civil procedure. How to dismantle a fifty page case brief before breakfast.
It had not taught her how to stop thinking about John Logan.
She sat crosslegged on the guest bed in one of Dean’s old tee shirts while her blow dryer sat idle beside her.
Four months. She’d made it four whole months. Without kissing him. Without touching him. Without hearing him laugh from the next room. Her stomach tightened.
⸻
Thanksgiving. She’d told herself she only wanted five minutes alone. Just five.
“Please angel, I need to taste you. Is that okay?”
For an opinionated woman, someone who always had something witty to say, being alone with Logan meant Y/N could give that all up. She truly melted into him whenever they were alone together, let him lead, and that’s one of the reasons she loved him loved IT so much.
From the second they made it into his room it was like she regressed into something pliable, she could barely speak. He was so strong but so soft with her at the same time. He tasted like the beer he was nursing after dinner, mixed with a slight hint of mint and the taste of his spit. He smelled so John, musky mixed with Irish Spring and a touch of something woody.
Logan looked up at her from in between her thighs, a few messy curls falling over his forehead and fingers curling into the strings of her thong. His big sad brown eyes below dark thick lashes, begging her for permission just to taste her. She realized her mouth was slightly parted, dry as she tried to swallow. All she could do was nod.
“Need words baby, I’m dyin down here.” He practically whined. It was filthy. Her face heated up as she flopped backwards on the bed, she couldn’t take looking into his eyes, his scrunched eyebrows.
“Please Johnny, need you.”
“Need what? Look at me baby, wanna see you.”
She propped herself back onto her forearms hesitantly. “Need you to taste me.”
That was all Logan needed. Even when they both wanted to move faster, he still ever so gently he ran her panties down her legs until they hit the floor, pressing one last kiss to the inside of her calf not breaking eye contact as he propped her legs up on his shoulders. He took a second just to stare at her now. Rosy, sparkling, and open for him. “So beautiful.” His voice was a mix between cocky, needy and growling. He licked a stripe from both holes up to her already sensitive clit making Y/N shiver, just to taste her arousal that had been pooling for him all day. The scruff on his face added the perfect amount of extra friction. “So wet for me already, you did miss me, huh?” Smart comebacks passed through her mind but she couldn’t get a word out before Logan dove into her, switching deep into both needy holes with his tongue long, coming back to circle her clit softly on a cycle. He knew exactly what she needed, no conversation necessary. But she knew by now that he needed this just as much.
Deep breaths and long groans escaped him mixed with the sounds of her whimpers and squelching. They both were reaching ecstasy and she didn’t even get to touch him yet. Her whimpers turned into whining, that’s her calling card to let Logan know she’s close. He added his middle finger into her core followed by his index, working in and out of her when he pulled away and mumbled against her thigh, “Cmon Angel, doing so well for me, let me see you. I know you’re close baby, you can let go. I got you.” He punctuated it with one final suck to her clit and she broke apart for him. She let out a ragged gasp, “John.” As her back arched and white hot pleasure peaked through her.
He licked her through her peak, lapping up whatever she had to give. He came up from his knees, still working her gently with his fingers to let his slick covered tongue and mouth explore hers.
⸻
She smirked to herself. She remembered how easily he’d read her. How he’d known exactly what she needed before she’d said a word. How being with him had always felt less like losing control, and more like finally being able to let go of it.
Heat rushed into her cheeks and in between her thighs.
“Nope.” She snapped off the bed quickly. “We’re not doing this today.”
She caught her reflection in the mirror. Wet wavy blonde hair. Bare face. Dean’s oversized shirt hanging off one shoulder.
She looked…Young. Not like the woman everyone thought she was.
Her smile faded.
The biggest joke was that Briar thought she was some legendary maneater.
Harvard thought she slept with senators’ sons. Her parents probably assumed she’d have a fiancé before graduation.
The truth? Twenty two years old. One man.
John Logan. Only John Logan. Always John Logan.
She’d never corrected anyone. Why would she? People saw what they wanted to see. A pretty girl who flirted, got taken on expensive dinners, ski trips, private jets. Dean’s sister must be sleeping with anyone, her pick of the litter. It was easier than explaining she’d never found anyone worth following after him. Because what if he’d only ever seen it as convenient? To him they were just comfortable, friends with history.
What if she’d built an entire fantasy around some guy she lost her virginity to at 18? She exhaled sharply. “No.” She pointed at herself in the mirror. “Absolutely not.”
She knew this game. Smile. Flirt. Laugh. Be Dean Di Laurentis’s untouchable twin sister. The girl nobody ever got close enough to hurt. She’d been playing the part for years.
⸻
By eight o’clock the house was packed. Music shook the walls. Someone had already started a game of beer pong. Pool balls clicked in the distance. Dean was yelling from the kitchen before half the guests had even arrived. Logan accepted another beer he had no intention of finishing.
“You okay?” Garrett bumped his shoulder.
“Fine.”
“You’ve been holding the same drink for twenty minutes.”
“I’m pacing myself.” His jaw clicked.
Garrett snorted. “Sure.”
The front hallway suddenly fell quieter. Heads turned. Logan looked up and forgot how to breathe. She was halfway down the staircase and he felt like she was moving in slow motion.
She wore perfectly faded vintage denim that fit like it had been tailored just for her, another Paris vintage shop find, paired with a simple fitted black camisole. Her classic gold jewelry caught the warm overhead lights every time she moved, matching her long golden blowout that bounced with each step. She had a slight natural glow to her, enough to make you question if she’s been on a short vacation in March. Beautiful enough to make people stop mid conversation without even realizing they’d done it. She looked expensive. Not because of the labels. Because she carried herself like she’d never questioned whether she belonged wherever she happened to be.
Garrett slowly looked at Logan. Then Tucker. Then Dean. Dean caught the exchange and smirked into his drink. Logan never noticed. His entire world had narrowed to the woman walking toward him.
He’d seen her in gowns worth more than his truck. He’d seen her in oversized Harvard sweatshirts. He’d seen her in her favorite old Briar hoodie of his that nearly reached her knees. He’d seen her in nothing. Somehow every time he saw her she stole the air from his lungs.
She reached the bottom step. “Wellsy!”
Hannah spun around from the kitchen island just in time to catch her in a hug. “There she is!” Hannah laughed. “I was beginning to think Harvard kidnapped you.”
“They tried.”
“And?”
“I billed them for emotional damages.”
Hannah snorted. “I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you too.”
The girls settled against the kitchen island immediately slipping into conversation like no time had passed.
Logan watched from across the kitchen.
She asked Hannah about her writing. About classes. About Garrett. Remembered little details from conversations months old. She made people feel remembered. It was one of his favorite things about her.
Dean caught Y/N’s attention and pointed toward the counter without looking up from the cooler. “Top shelf.”
She frowned and cocked her head. “What?”
Garrett grinned. “Open the cabinet.”
She reached up, opening the cupboard above the microwave. A brand-new bottle of Hendrick’s gin sat front and center, completely untouched. Beside it rested a few fresh limes and a bottle of tonic. She looked back over her shoulder, eyebrows lifting. “You guys remembered?”
Tucker looked offended. “Remembered? You’ve been gone four months, not dead.”
Dean snorted. “You think we’d let you come home without your grandma liquor?”
She gasped dramatically. “Gin is sophisticated.”
“It’s retirement home vodka,” Garrett shot back.
“It’s delicious.”
“It’s what accountants order.”
“It’s what the Queen drank.”
Dean pointed toward Garrett. “See? Old.”
She rolled her eyes so hard it made Hannah laugh. “You all have the palates of fraternity boys.”
“We are kinda fraternity boys,” Tucker reminded her.
“Exactly.” She pulled the bottle from the cabinet anyway, smiling to herself. “Thanks guysssss.”
“It was Logan’s idea,” Garrett said casually, already turning back to walk toward the beer pong table. “He said we’d better buy it because you’d complain if all we had was cheap vodka.”
Logan looked up so quickly Garrett burst into laughter.
“What?” Garrett shrugged innocently. “You did.”
A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth as her eyes found Logan across the kitchen.
“Thanks Johnny.” She answered casually and sweet, playing the part like a professional.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “It would’ve been weird if you came home and couldn’t have your drink.”
“See?” she announced triumphantly to the room. “Someone appreciates refinement.”
“Refinement?” Dean laughed. “You put lime in gin.”
“I put lime in Hendrick’s.”
“Oh, excuse me.”
She shook her head, already pouring herself a cocktail. Logan watched her squeeze a wedge of lime over the glass before taking the smallest sip. He smiled to himself.
She was, without question, the only person under forty five he knew who genuinely preferred gin. Everyone else ordered tequila shots or cheap beer. She drank gin like she was born at a country club fifty years too early. It should’ve been pretentious. Somehow on her, it was just another thing that made perfect sense. Another tiny piece of her he noticed. And judging by the way she caught his eye over the rim of her glass, lifting it ever so slightly in silent thanks, maybe she noticed him too.
Within seconds she was swept into new conversations. Remembering names. Laughing with girls she’d met exactly twice.
Somehow making every person she spoke to feel like they’d been the one she’d been hoping to see. Miss Universe, Garrett hadn’t been wrong.
Dean tossed her a ping-pong ball from across the room. “1v1?”
She caught it one handed. “You sure you want to lose in front of all these people?”
Dean scoffed. “I carried you through childhood.”
“You cheated through childhood.”
“I strategized.”
“You cheated.”
The boys laughed.
Logan smiled into his beer. God. He’d missed her.
An hour later he was in the same position, only moving from the kitchen to the living room to take a better view of her. Three drinks sat abandoned around him. He wasn’t drunk. He wasn’t even close. He was just…watching. Watching her tease Tucker after beating him at cards. Watching her steal chips out of the bowl in Garrett’s lap. Watching her lean over the pool table to sink a celeb shot. Watching her throw her head back laughing at something Dean had said. Like she’d never left, like she’d always belonged here. In another life he wished she’d always stay.
Allie appeared beside him. “You know,” she said casually.
“Hm?” He snapped out of his daze.
“I’ve been thinking.”
“That’s dangerous.”
She rolled her eyes. “If I managed to domesticate Dean Di Laurentis…”
Logan laughed quietly.
“…then honestly?” She sipped her drink. “Nothing is impossible.”
Y/N was laughing with Hannah, one hand wrapped around her almost empty gin and tonic.
“I think she likes somebody.”
His fingers tightened almost imperceptibly around the neck of his beer. “Oh?”
“I could be wrong…” A smile tugged at the corner of Allie’s mouth. “…but I’ve caught her looking at one particular hockey player when she thinks no one’s paying attention.”Logan felt his heartbeat stumble. “You think?”
“I know what I think.” She studied him for a moment, amusement dancing in her eyes.“Wait…” The usual crease found its way in between his eyebrows. “You’ve noticed that?”
She blinked. “Logan.”
There was enough disbelief packed into the single word that his stomach dropped. “Seriously?”
“You thought you two were subtle?”
He opened his mouth and closed it again. Allie laughed. “Honey…” She leaned in conspiratorially. “Dean has known since freshman year.”
Logan’s eyes widened. “…What?” He replayed Dean’s comment from earlier today.
“Garrett and Tucker figured it out about five minutes after the rest of us.”
“The rest of you?”
“Literally everyone.” She took another sip.“Well…” She reconsidered. “Maybe not Beau. Bless his heart.”
Logan stared at her. “You’re telling me that everyone knows the two of us-“
“-have been orbiting each other like idiots for four years?” Allie finished for him. “Pretty much. They were just letting you both take your time…and taking a little too long in my opinion.”
He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck “Jesus.”
“The only people who don’t seem to know you’re hopelessly gone for each other are the two of you.” She smiled sweetly.
Before he could process that, she patted his arm. “Good luck.”
Then she disappeared into the crowd.
Logan stood frozen. Four years they’d all known. He never considered the possibility that she was stealing glances too, watching too. He felt lucky enough to have her in bedrooms, laundry rooms, country club locker rooms. He never considered she could want him for more than that too, and he still wasn’t sold.
His gaze instinctively searched the room until he found her.
She was near the kitchen island again now, holding the gin he’d remembered to buy. Some guy Logan vaguely recognized from one of Dean’s economics classes had wandered over, leaning casually against the counter while talking to her. She smiled politely and laughed at something he said. The guy stepped a little closer. Too close.
Logan’s jaw tightened. Nope. The thought came so naturally it almost made him laugh.
He didn’t even know what he planned on saying. Didn’t have a reason and didn’t need one. He was on his feet before his brain caught up.
Across the room, Garrett watched him go and elbowed Tucker. “Took him long enough.”
Tucker smirked. “I’ll give him three minutes before he’s got his arm around her.”
Dean didn’t even bother looking up from his drink. “I’ll take the under.”
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