its probably a normal sign for the economy that all of my adulthood fantasies are like "imagine having your own kitchen living room and bathroom to decorate" "what if i could get on a train" "maybe one day i could purchase a sturdy pair of shoes" "i should save and invest in a single bicycle"
clark kent ticking the organ donor box on his drivers license automatically out of the goodness of his heart and then panicking because what if he actually dies somehow and some human gets a super heart what would even HAPPEN like he can't have his kryptonian retinas with laser vision donated to a random eight year old and so he has to awkwardly go back to the DMV to get it changed to not an organ donor but he's so embarrassed the whole time because the DMV employees will think he's a bad person that by the time he's done he has to go cry in the car
Ohhhh 26 Protection for LS/Maekar. I love Baelor but these two always destroy me.
26. — protection.
♱ maekar targaryen x f!stark!reader.
“The stores from Last Hearth came in light again,” Lord Manderly is saying. “Third moon in a row.”
“The harvest was poor in the northern hills,” you say, keeping your voice level. “Lord Umber sent word.”
“Weather,” Dustin mutters, “or priorities.”
“The yield matches what they claimed.” Maekar’s voice is quiet and rough from your left, where he stands with his hands clasped behind his back. “I reviewed the reports myself.”
Manderly shifts in his seat. “With respect, Prince Maekar, reviewing reports isn’t the same as knowing a House’s character.”
The solar goes just a fraction quieter. You can feel the distance in Maekar even as he speaks, the space he keeps between himself and this place that is meant to be his home. He came North out of duty and a king’s command and a woman who loved his brother first. The whole court knew it. But Maekar came anyway, because that’s what iron does: it bends, or it breaks.
He just goes cold instead, the prickly dragon temper dampened by something deeper inside.
“Lord Cerwyn,” you say before the silence can curdle. “Your concerns about the Gift?”
Cerwyn pulls out a parchment. “The wildlings have been bolder, my lady. The mountain clans won’t ride north without incentive, and they don’t trust southerners. They’ll want to negotiate with someone who knows how things are done.” He glances at Maekar from the corner of his eye, clearing his throats. “No offence meant, my prince, but this is northern business.”
“My lord husband spent a fortnight in the clan camps this autumn,” you cut in coolly.
“Aye, well.” Cerwyn shifts his weight at the look on your face. “Understanding and commanding are different things. Winter is coming, Lady Stark, and we need lords who know winter in their bones.” A deliberate pause, so heavy you don’t think anyone in the room is breathing. “Not some southern prince who’s never seen snow stick.”
The room falls deadly quiet. You can hear the fire crackling somewhere behind you, wood snapping in the fire, the wind hammering at the shutters. The other lords are watching, waiting to see what you’ll do.
Maekar doesn’t move. His jaw tightens, but he says nothing, the tendons in his hand ripple with restrain as he slowly clenches his fist. He’s learned that silence in the North is sometimes the only armour worth wearing, but you also see the rigid line of his shoulders, the careful blankness of his expression.
He thinks they’re right, you realise with a sharp pang.
“Lord Cerwyn,” you begin, and your voice cuts clean and cool through the room. “My husband was on the Wall with the Night’s Watch this autumn. Were you?”
Cerwyn’s mouth opens, then closes.
“He rode with the mountain clans through the first storm to settle a border dispute you said was too dangerous. He’s overseen every roof repair in Winter Town, inspected every granary from here to the Gift.” Your fingers curl around the armrests, claws sinking into wood, your brows rising slightly. “He knows winter. He’s learning it by living it. What have you done besides complain?”
The lords stare openly—some with approval, others with surprise. Cerwyn’s face goes red, but he doesn’t argue back. Perhaps the wisest thing he’s done all day.
“My lady,” Maekar says carefully, “Lord Cerwyn speaks from concern. It’s not misplaced.”
He’s giving Cerwyn an out, letting the man retreat with dignity, because Maekar understands the politics of pride as a man who grew up in court even if he’s never been particularly good at navigating it. This is what Baelor would have done, you think dismayed, smooth, measured, strategically smart.
But it’s not Baelor beside you.
“Concern does not excuse discourtesy,” you say flatly. “And I will not have my lord husband questioned in his own hall.” You sweep your gaze across them. “Winter is coming. I want lords who will stand with us, not against us because they don’t like where a man was born.”
You rise. “This council is dismissed.”
The lords file out at once, stubborn or not the north is loyal and you imagine the look on your face is stormy enough for them not to test their luck. Cerwyn moves among them with his head hung low. You don’t watch them go. You’re watching Maekar instead, the blankness gone from his face and something guarded taking its place.
“You didn’t have to do that,” he says when the door closes.
“Yes, I did.” You cross to him before he can retreat into that cold distance he wears like armour. “They don’t get to dismiss you. Not in my hall.”
“Your hall,” he repeats, and there’s something bitter in it. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? It’s yours. Winterfell, the North, all of it. I’m just—”
“Mine.” The word comes out fierce, almost possessive. Your hand fists in the front of his tunic, pulling him closer in a gesture that startles you both. “You’re mine, Maekar. My husband. My lord. And I don’t let anyone disrespect what’s mine.”
His breath catches, just a touch, tiniest of hitches. You can see his throat work as he swallows, the muscle there jumping. “Seven hells, woman. You can’t just—”
“I can.” You’re close enough now to feel the heat of him, to see the way his pupils dilate. “You came North for duty. You stayed because you’re too stubborn to quit, but you’re here now, and that makes you mine to protect.”
“Protect,” he echoes, and something in his voice cracks just slightly, a scowl pinching his expression even as his hands come up to grip your waist, fingers digging in just shy of bruising. “Is that what you’re calling it?”
“What would you call it?”
“Claiming.” The word is rough, almost accusing, but his hands tighten on you. “You claimed me in front of them. Made it clear I’m yours.”
“You are.”
He makes a sound low in his throat, hard-edged and mean. “You don’t know what you’re doing to me.”
“Then tell me, husband.”
Maekar just stares at you, jaw working, that iron control warring with something hungrier. Then he yanks you against him properly, one hand sliding into your hair to angle your head back. “You stood there and defended me like I’m something worth keeping. Like you’d gut anyone who tried to take me from you.”
You watch him from under your lashes. “I would.”
“Gods.” His forehead drops to yours, breath coming hard. “You mean that.”
“Every word.” Your fingers curl tighter in his tunic. “You’re mine, Maekar. I don’t care who I loved before or what anyone thinks. You’re what I have now, and I’m not giving you up.”
Something shifts in his expression, the last of that careful distance crumbling . “Say it again.”
“You’re mine.”
“Again.”
“Mine.” You pull him down and press your lips lightly to the uneven texture of his cheek. “My husband. My lord. My problem to deal with.”
He laughs, low and rough, the sound vibrating through his chest into yours. “Your problem.”
“My responsibility.” Your hand slides up to cup his jaw, feeling the scratch of stubble. “And if Cerwyn or anyone else wants to question that, they can answer to me.”
“Fierce little wolf,” he murmurs, but there’s heat in his eyes now, something possessive matching your own. His thumb traces your bottom lip. “Didn’t know you had claws like that, wife.”
“I’m a Stark. We always have claws.” You bite gently at his thumb, making his eyes darken. “And you’re pack now. That means I protect you.”
“Pack,” he repeats, testing the word. Then, quieter: “Yours.”
“Mine.”
He kisses you properly this time, harder and claiming, no room for doubts, backing you against the table until the edge digs into your spine. His hands map your waist, your hips, claiming in turn, and you let him, give as good as you get, until you’re both burning with it.
When he finally pulls back, his eyes are dark and his voice is gravel. “If this is what northern marriages look like, I’ve been underestimating the North.”
“You’ve been underestimating me.” You straighten his tunic where you wrinkled it. “Don’t make that mistake again.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, my lady.” But there’s something raw in his face, something grateful and hungry and almost soft, as much as a hard man could get. “Your hall. Your husband. Your dragon to protect.”
“Good.” You press one more kiss to his mouth, quick and fierce. “Now let’s go show those fools we’re a united front.”
His hand catches yours as you turn, lacing your fingers together. The grip is solid, sure, no hesitation. “Together, then.”
❛ i’m trying to fix your hair, so hold still. ❜ with HW Maekar would go so hard imo 👀👀👀
⊹ ࣪ ˖ pairing: maekar targaryen x f!stark!reader && past baelor "breakspear" targaryen x f!stark!reader
⊹ ࣪ ˖ wc: 2.9k
⊹ ࣪ ˖ notes/content: stark!reader, soft grumpy husband!maekar, a little angst and mentions of past baelor/ls but fluffy ultimately, basically things come to pass as they are in HW and lady stark and maekar get married instead.
read on ao3. ⊹ series masterlist.
Winterfell’s wind is sharp enough to bruise.
The fire in your solar is built up as if for a lord with thin blood: a great stack of split logs and peat, flames licking high, heat licking higher still. Someone has remembered to warm the stones beneath the carpets, too, spreading comforting warmth up your soles. The only cold thing in the room is the man scowling in your chair.
“I said I don’t need—”
“You said you’d let me,” you cut in, coming up behind him with the comb.
Maekar turns his head as if to glower over his shoulder. The movement pulls his hair loose from its rough tie; more of it slips free, silver and stubborn, falling over the collar of his black doublet.
You let out a small, considering noise, tilting your head.
“Gods,” you murmur. “Has no one ever taught you what a brush is for, husband?”
“Steel,” he says promptly. “Beards. Horses. Armour. Not—” he gestures irritably at his own head “—this.”
You can’t quite stop the smile that twists your mouth. The hair is longer than when he first came north. At court, when you first met him, he wore it cropped close in the fashion of the yard, practical and immaculately martial. Months of Winterfell and a wife who likes to sink her fingers into something softer have undone that. It curls now at the nape of his neck when it’s damp, and when he drags his hand through it in the yard, it falls in a way that makes the kitchen girls whisper behind their hands.
It also tangles. Spectacularly.
You set your hand on the heavy line of his shoulder, thumb sinking instinctively into the tense knot between muscle and bone. He’s all angles and solidity under the wool, heat banked there like a forge that’s never quite gone out. A dragon of your own.
“Stay,” you say.
He makes a rough noise. A man who’s spent his life in motion told to do the hardest thing he knows.
“If I sit still, I’ll fall asleep,” he mutters, words irked, but he doesn’t move away. That’s no small victory, and you know it.
You slide the comb into his hair at the ends first, the way any half-competent handmaid knows to, working gently through the worst of the snarls. The teeth catch on a knot and Maekar’s shoulders jerk.
You stop at once. “Did I catch you?”
“No.”
“You flinched.”
“I did not.”
“You absolutely did.”
Maekar lets out a slow breath that could char parchment. “I am not… used to it.”
You soften despite yourself. “All right,” you say, gentler now. “Then get used to it.”
He says nothing to that. But he doesn’t move when you resume your work, working the comb through the worst of the knots, patient as if gentleness with him is not still a thing you are learning in pieces.
Your marriage had not begun with gentleness.
It began with grief folded neatly into duty and being sent North with a prince who was not the one you had wanted.
Baelor loved you. You loved him. But the realm needed something else; something that took a simpler shape, a more secure narrative to follow.
So you were given Maekar instead—stern, sharp-edged Maekar, whose loyalty runs so deep it looks, at first glance, like cruelty. Maekar, who stood through the wedding ceremony with a face like carved stone and touched you that first night as though you were something breakable he had no right to touch, much less hold. Maekar, who said little and watched much and slept with one hand always close to the dagger beneath his pillow for the first month of your marriage, as if he expected your unhappiness to turn murderous in the dark.
Perhaps he had not been entirely wrong. You had not made it easy on him. He had not made it easy on you either.
You ease a thicker knot apart with your fingers. Maekar’s hair is finer than you’d expected the first time you touched it, though there is enough of it that it always feels heavier in your hands than it looks. A warrior’s hair, not a court prince’s.
“You’re making a face,” he declares abruptly, eyes still closed.
“You can’t see my face,” you point out.
“I can feel it,” he insists. “You get… quiet. When you’re thinking too much.”
You hesitate only a heartbeat before answering. You owe him that much.
“I was thinking,” you say thoughtfully, “that if you move again, I’ll fetch the kennelmaster’s shears.”
He snorts, outright, shoulders shaking once under your hand. The sound tugs a smile out of you, unwilling and fond.
“And,” you add, more quietly, “that you look better this way.”
He goes still in a different way. “Better than what?” he asks, after a moment that feels longer than it should be. “Than a half-shorn yard dog?”
“Than your brother,” you say, because there’s no point dancing around the ghost between you.
The words seem to drain the warmth out of your shared chambers, dropping the temperature by several degrees all at once. Maekar’s eyes crack open.
“He’s handsomer,” he says flatly; an old argument, worn smooth by years. “He always was.”
“Baelor is handsome,” you allow. “You are… dangerous.”
His mouth twitches, unsure whether to take offence or not. “That’s not a kindness, my lady.”
“In the North it is,” you say. “Handsome men freeze first.”
That wins you another, startled huff. The corner of his mouth curls, just for a breath.
You smooth your fingers over the back of his neck to gather the loosened strands, and his entire body seems to go alert beneath the surface. It still startles you sometimes, how responsive he is to touch he does not expect. Not because he is delicate—there is nothing delicate about Maekar Targaryen—but because so much of him is held taut so much of the time that the smallest kindness lands like a blow.
“You can tell me if I’m hurting you,” you say quietly.
His laugh is short and humourless. “I’ve been hit with warhammers, my lady. I think I’ll survive a comb.”
“That wasn’t what I meant.”
The silence stretches. Not hostile. Just full. You both know what lives in it.
Baelor’s name has become one of those things you do not say unless you mean to wound. It still exists anyway, a third presence in certain rooms, certain pauses. Maekar has never asked whether you still think of his brother. He has never needed to. He is too perceptive by half when it comes to anything that might hurt him. He notices every distant look, every letter you read twice, every moment some old song at a feast makes your mouth go tight.
And because he is Maekar, he says nothing. He simply carries it, like armour.
Your thumb skims a small, silver scar behind his ear. “Knife?” you ask.
“Training,” he replies. “Baelor’s sword, when we were lads in the training yard. I moved wrong. He cried more than I did.”
You can hear the echo of it in his tone—exasperation and affection and something older, bone-deep and tender. The way he says Baelor’s name is a habit he can’t break, as reflexive as reaching for a blade.
“You miss him.”
His shoulders rise, then fall with a weary exhale. “He’s my brother,” he says bluntly. “I’d miss him if he were a bastard in a ditch, let alone a prince in my chair.”
In your chair, too, goes unsaid.
The comb feels suddenly clumsy in your hand.
“Maekar,” you begin.
“Don’t,” he says, not harshly, never that, just weary. He shifts in the chair, then stops himself when the movement pulls his hair under your hand. A man torn between the urge to bolt and the odd, fragile peace he’s found here. “I know what he is to you. Was.” A muscle jumps in his jaw. “You don’t have to pretend otherwise.”
Anger flares, quick and defensive, prickling all the way down your body. Not at him. At the world that made this a reasonable thing for him to say.
“What, exactly, do you think he is to me?” you ask, moving around the chair so you can see his face properly. He looks up at you, brows drawn, lips set in that familiar, stubborn line.
“Everything,” he answers simply. “The choice you would’ve made, if choices were things our fathers let us keep. The one you dream about when I snore. The story you bite back when the wine’s too strong.”
You stare at him.
“Seven hells,” you say softly. “You really do think little of yourself.”
Colour climbs, faint and uneven, along the high planes of his cheeks. “I think what’s plain,” he mutters. “He rode beside you like he was born for you. You looked at him like—”
“Like I was choosing something I wanted for once?” you cut in. “Instead of something the realm needed?”
He flinches, just a little. “That’s not nothing,” he says. “But it’s not what you got.”
You are so tired of being tender with everyone but yourself.
“Maekar,” you call his name, and there is iron in it now. “Look at me.”
He does. Always has, when you use that tone. As if he’s back in the yard with his father’s hand on his shoulder, telling him to face what’s coming.
“I loved him,” you tell him, because there’s no point blunting it, and he would be able to taste the lie. “I probably always will, in that tiny corner of me that will never be docile. He was the first man I wanted as more than duty.”
His throat works, the smallest twitch of movement in countenance otherwise set from stone. His hand curls on his knee, gloved fingers digging into worn leather.
“I know,” he says. And there’s no anger there, just that familiar, weary acceptance, like he knew you’ll say so, like of course you love the golden prince. “I’m not blind.”
“I also,” you go on, refusing him the luxury of looking away, pressing closer towards him, “watched you ride out in a snowstorm to drag a farmer’s child out of a drift when every sensible lord would’ve sent a servant. Watched you spend an hour teaching my youngest captain how to break a shieldwall and then let her knock you on your arse in front of half the yard.” Your mouth curves, all fondness at the memories you’ve made. “That’s not nothing, either.”
He snorts, a huffing sound, “You enjoyed that too much.”
“I enjoyed the look on your face when she swept your leg,” you correct promptly, your lips twitching. “You were proud of her.”
“Of course I was proud of her,” he grumbles impatiently, as if that’s obvious. “She did what I told her to and took her chance. That’s all I’ve ever wanted from any soldier.”
His eyes flick away, down to your hands. You realise you’ve fisted one in the front of his doublet without noticing, knuckles pressed to his chest. His heart beats hard against them, strong and steady, a grounding feeling running up your arm.
“You deserve… more,” he says suddenly, his voice rough, a little ragged. “Songs. Grand gestures. Baelor has those in him. I have… this.” He gestures between you, between himself and the stone and the cold darkness outside. The hard, unpretty life you share together. “A cold keep. A hard man. No dragons. No crown. Just… me.”
You lean in until you’re close enough to feel his breath on your mouth, until the firelight paints one half of his face in gold and leaves the other in shadow.
“I married you,” you tell him sternly. “Not your brother. Not his crown. You. I chose you after knowing what it felt like to be wanted like that. After seeing exactly what I was giving up.”
His eyes search your face, hunting for the lie. “And if he walked through that door right now,” Maekar says quietly, voice carefully neutral, “and held out his hand?”
You consider it. You owe him the truth, or there’s no point in any of this.
“I’d probably hit him,” you admit quietly, “for taking so long, and then I’d pour him a drink.” You see his mouth tighten, so you press on before he can pull away. “And then I’d keep my seat, because this is my hall and my place is beside my chosen husband, not chasing what-ifs through the snow like a dog after bone.”
The breath leaves him in a rush. “You always do that,” he mutters.
“Do what?”
“Say the thing that cuts me open and mends me in the same breath,” he grunts. “It’s very untidy.”
You can’t help it, you laugh. It startles him, the sound, the brightness of it rippling outwards. Something in his face softens, slow and unwilling, like ice thawing in spring. His hand lifts, hesitates, then settles heavy and careful at the back of your knee where you’re braced on the chair’s arm.
“I am not Baelor,” he says, as if he’s granting you some great revelation. “I don’t know how to say pretty things. I don’t know how to… be what he is.”
“I don’t need two Baelors,” you tell him. “One was plenty. I need you.”
He looks at you, a shine in his eyes that looks almost vulnerable.
“The North needs a hard man who can be kind when it counts,” you go on, your thumb abently skimming over the strong curve of his brow. “Winterfell needs someone who can gut a man before breakfast and still remember to take his boots off at the door. I need someone who will argue with me over troop placements and then let me warm my feet on him in bed without complaint.”
“You kick,” he supplies automatically.
“You snore,” you counter with a small smile.
He huffs, that almost-laugh again filling the air. The hand at your knee tightens, pulls, just enough that you lose your balance and end up half in his lap, skirts tangling over his thighs. The move is clumsy, unpractised. Maekar of all people, knocked awkward by his own desire.
“Apologies,” he says, not sounding very apologetic at all. His hands come up to steady you, big and solid around your waist, scars visible in the firelight. “That was…”
“Clumsy?” you supply.
“Necessary,” he concludes decidedly.
You look down at him. At the scars and the frown-lines and the uncertainty he thinks he hides so well. At the man who came north like a punishment and has been carving himself into something that fits here, day by stubborn day.
“Better,” you say, and lean in to kiss him.
He meets you with more hesitation than a younger man might, more care. As if he’s still half-convinced you might vanish if he presses too hard or holds you too hard. His mouth is warm and a little chapped. And you use this moment to remind him he didn’t marry some southern lady, he married a wolf, a Stark, and there’s nothing soft about your desire or want.
His hands flex against your back, pulling you closer once he realises you’re not going anywhere, when that small, greedy growl of want vibrates from your throat. He deepens the kiss, slow and hungry, all the more intense for the restraint in it, in him. He kisses like he fights, you decide, then—committed, no half-measures once he’s decided, all power and control and passion that burns low but so hot it leaves you breathless.
When you finally draw back for breath, his eyes are dark, pupils wide, devouring you.
“You sure?” he asks, hoarse. “About… all of it?”
“You think I’d let just anyone near my hair?” you wonder, and deliberately reach up to tug at your hair, adding with a grin, “Or yours?”
Maekar lets out a low sound of indignation, but there’s a smile in it now that reaches his eyes. “You’ve ruined my hard reputation,” he proclaims, syllables stern, but you hear the faint streak of amusement underneath. “Braiding my hair. Sitting on my lap. The men will talk.”
“The men already talk,” you shoot back, hand slotting against his cheek. “About how their prince-turned-northern-lord takes to the snow better than half of them. About how he stands between them and the blizzard. About how he loves his lady enough to let her bully his hair into order.”
“Loves,” he repeats, as if tasting the word.
You meet his gaze, holding it for a beat. “Yes.”
His eyes lower. A great, gruff man, suddenly undone by something as small as a syllable.
“Well,” he says eventually, voice low, hand curling possessively at your hip. “Good. Someone ought to.”
“Someone does,” you correct, because Baelor’s ghost is still there, and always will be. “But only one of you gets to keep my feet warm in winter.”
He huffs, pleased despite himself.
“Hold still,” you say again, softer this time, fingers smoothing along the line of his plait, straightening what you’ve already straightened. “I’m not done fixing you yet.”
He grumbles something about not needing fixing, about being fine as he is.
But he doesn’t move.
You can live with this, you think, as his thumb strokes once at the back of your neck, rough and careful.
You could learn this shape.
You already are.
an: Why did this end up being a bit of a Maekar character study? Anyway, I'm sure you're able to infer from this, but if they got married, I genuinely think they would eventually fall in love and be happy together. It might not be immediate connection/love/chemistry she has with Baelor but it's a love they both foster and grow together, one day at a time. This awoke Maekar hunger in me like nothing else lmao. Hope you guys enjoyed!
“Goonbait” and it’s just photos of teenage girls and women in their early 20s smiling and being happy because they’ve each just accomplished one of the biggest moments of their respective careers
It’s not even because her style is alternative or whatever bc they were saying the same thing about the other girls above it’s literally just that young women can’t be seen by these people as anything but a vessel for their sexual desire to the point that they can’t even see a 20 year old make a silly face while smiling during one of the happiest moments of her life without being like she is clearly doing all this just to make me horny.
i get robby feels betrayed by langdon, and that's justified. but to actively make langdon feel small and have langdon second guess every medical decision he makes is such an abuse of power imo. robby is the boss but also langdon's role model. langdon thinks the world of robby, obviously, and he knows hes on robby's shitlist, probably forever. but to hear that vocalized ('i dont want you in my er'), shake up his confidence, and then made to feel extra shitty when robby essentially waits for langdon to fumble over his own words/decisions, is just mean.
robby's acting petty and normally that would be fine but he's going against his own words from last season ('this is a teaching hospital') and letting his own personal feelings get in the way of their work. that was a hard scene to watch just because everyone knows langdon knows his shit. but pressure and heartbreak is the same for everyone. but it was nice to see both mel and garcia be there for him. even though garcia's arrogant/harsh with everyone she was actually quite soft in that scene. she's always been langdon's friend so im sure she's rooting for him underneath all the sarcasm.
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