GIF by @/jagiellonczyk / Dividers by @/saradika-graphics
↪︎ they sing their dearest songs directory
SUMMARY: the grief he carried alone for years finally had somewhere to go — straight into a family he never let himself imagine
Pairing: Adam Dalgliesh x f!reader
A.N.: am I pouring all the love I have for Adam's character on these last chapters? You can bet I am...
Chapter 6
The first thing he changed was the coffee.
You'd mentioned, once, in passing, that the smell of it had turned difficult in the mornings — one of the many small betrayals the second month specialised in, arriving without warning and departing on no schedule you could predict — and the very next morning the coffee had vanished from the counter. In its place: a neat row of teas, arranged with the same precise attention he brought to everything, including, you noted, the particular chamomile blend you'd mentioned once months ago, in a completely unrelated conversation.
"You didn't have to do that," you told him, the first morning you found it.
"I know," he said, and handed you the cup, and pressed his mouth briefly to your temple before he let you have it — an addition to the ritual that hadn't been there a month ago and that you'd noticed, gladly, becoming permanent.
The second thing was his hands.
Like small evidence gathering itself into a pattern. He had always touched you with intention rather than reflex, the deliberateness of a man for whom contact was a considered act rather than an idle one. But something had shifted since that morning, since the test lying face-up between you and his face doing what it had done, and the shift showed itself now in ways that had nothing to do with restraint.
He couldn't seem to stay very far from you for very long.
It wasn't dramatic. He still went to the Yard, still vanished into files and cases with his usual complete concentration. But the moment he was near you, some part of him reoriented. A hand at the small of your back while you stood at the counter. His shoulder against yours on the sofa when there was a whole cushion of space going spare. Reading in separate chairs had quietly stopped being how the evenings went; somewhere in the second month he'd simply started sitting closer, and neither of you had remarked on it, and it had become, without ceremony, how things were now.
His hand found your stomach with the same quiet frequency, and increasingly without his appearing to notice he was doing it. Reading on the sofa, his palm would migrate from your waist to the new, barely-there curve of you and simply rest, warm and still, while his eyes stayed on the page. Standing at the stove, his arms would come around you from behind and settle low, and he'd say nothing about it, as though the gesture required no comment because it was simply where his hands belonged now.
One afternoon in that same stretch of weeks, worn thin by a morning spent at the faculty, you lay down on the sofa for what you'd meant to be twenty minutes and did not resurface for the better part of two hours.
You woke slowly, coming up through layers of sleep toward warmth and a voice — low, threading somewhere near you before you'd assembled enough of yourself to place it.
Adam’s hand was warm at your stomach; you understood that before you understood anything else, some permanent and unquestioning part of you having decided, weeks ago, that this hand in this place required no separate acknowledgment. It moved in slow circles, patient, keeping time with whatever he was saying.
You kept your eyes closed.
He was reading. The special cadence he used only for poetry — careful with the line breaks, giving each its small owed pause — and it took you a moment, still mostly inside the doze, to place it, and longer still to understand he hadn't chosen one of the ones you'd have expected of him.
"Love is, yea, a great thing," his voice said, quiet enough that you understood at once he hadn't meant it for you — not this particular reading, not this particular moment. This one belonged to somebody smaller, currently residing somewhere beneath his palm, who could not yet object to Hardy on the grounds of unfamiliarity, or, for that matter, on any grounds whatsoever. "A great thing to me. When, having drawn across the lawn, in darkness silently—"
He paused. His hand kept moving.
"I don't generally choose that one," he said, to the room, you thought, in the low and private register you'd only ever heard him use for the two of you together. "Most of what I know by heart is elegy. I don't suppose that's the best foundation for someone who hasn't even arrived yet. I thought we might start you on something kinder."
Something in your chest did something helpless and complete, and despite every effort to keep your breathing even, some small sound escaped you — not quite a laugh, an exhale with feeling caught in it — and his hand stilled.
"You're awake," he said. Not embarrassed. Simply registering it, adjusting.
"Only just," you answered, keeping your eyes closed a moment longer. "Don't stop on my account."
A pause, and then his hand resumed its slow circling, though his voice had lost the murmur meant for smaller ears and returned, gently, to its ordinary register. "I don't imagine I could reproduce it convincingly a second time."
"You could try."
"You'd know," he said, a smile appearing on his lips. "You always know when I'm performing something rather than meaning it."
You opened your eyes. He was watching you now instead of the page, the book still open on his knee, his hand spread wide and unhurried against you.
"Why that one?" you asked. "Out of everything you own."
He was quiet a moment, his thumb tracing one slow arc. "I found I didn't want grief to be the first thing to be known by this little one," he said, plainly, no defensiveness in it at all. "I thought — something with joy in it, for once. Cyder, and dancing, and a girl slipping across a lawn in the dark. It seemed a better foundation than the alternative."
You reached for his free hand and he gave it without hesitation, lacing his fingers through yours, and you lay there in the last of the afternoon light with his voice still faintly caught somewhere in your chest, thinking that you had never loved anyone the way you loved this particular man — choosing joy for a person he hadn't met yet, because he'd decided, quietly and without being asked, that grief had had enough of his attention.
"Read the rest," you said. "I'm listening properly now."
He looked at you for a long moment — the kind of look that still, after almost three years, found something in you it hadn't accounted for — and then, his hand never leaving you, he read the rest of it to both of you, and didn't seem to mind the larger audience at all.
The tiredness arrived properly in the third month, with a thoroughness you hadn't been prepared for. You'd read about it and understood it in the abstract and were unprepared for the specific reality, which was less like ordinary fatigue and more like being intermittently and without warning replaced by a version of yourself constructed entirely from lead.
You came home from the library one evening and made it as far as the sofa before your body simply declined to negotiate further.
He found you there twenty minutes later, half-upright, a stack of marking abandoned at an angle across your knee.
"Stay there," he said, before you could attempt to gather yourself into something more presentable.
"I'm fine."
"You are visibly not fine, and I've missed you rather a lot today, so you may as well let me be useful about it." He was already moving — a pillow retrieved from the bedroom, positioned with brisk efficiency, and then he was settling at the other end of the sofa and lifting your feet into his lap, which had long since stopped being something he felt he needed to request permission for.
His thumbs found the arch of one foot and pressed, and you lasted about half a minute before abandoning any pretence of protest.
"You don't have to—"
"I know," he said, in the tone that meant the sentence had been raised and gently dismissed on several previous occasions and would go on being dismissed.
His hands worked with unhurried, methodical attention, and by the time he'd finished both feet the weight that had settled somewhere in your lower legs had loosened entirely.
"Better?"
"Considerably." You looked at him properly. "You've been practising."
"I've been reading," he admitted — which was as close as he generally came to a confession — and you understood, without needing to search for it, that there was a book somewhere in the flat on the subject that he had acquired without mentioning and would continue not mentioning, and that this was, in its way, one of the more devastatingly Adam things about him.
The soup arrived the same week.
It came from nowhere obvious — a specific and categorical craving that announced itself one Thursday morning as an absolute biological law, exact in every particular: the potato soup your mother had made throughout your childhood, the consistency of it, the cream added at the right moment, the exact quantity of white pepper no recipe of your own matched.
You mentioned it once, in passing, not as a request at all.
That evening the soup was on the table.
Not from memory. You discovered this only afterward, and only because you noticed a piece of paper on the kitchen table with a very well-known number on it — he had telephoned your mother. And had, apparently, taken careful notes.
"You telephoned my mother."
"She was very helpful," he said. "She sends her love."
The soup, unsurprisingly, was exactly right.
After that a quiet system established itself, entirely unannounced and entirely characteristic — things you'd mentioned once, idly, began appearing in the flat with a reliability that suggested he retained every offhand comment you made with the same thoroughness he brought to case files. A particular biscuit. A brand of ginger tea. A variety of apple that required, you eventually worked out from the bag, an entirely different shop than the one on the corner.
"You're going to two shops now," you quietly pointed out to him once.
"The other doesn't carry them," he said, with the mild unconcern of a man discussing an unremarkable logistical fact.
"Adam."
"They're better from the second shop," he answered, and returned to whatever he'd been doing — though not before you caught, in the set of his shoulders, something that suggested there was rather more to the apple logistics than he was volunteering. You didn't press. You had a suspicion you'd get the fuller story out of Daniel eventually, as you generally did.
You crossed the kitchen and put your arms around him anyway, because there was, in the end, nothing else adequate to do with the specific tenderness his two-shop apple policy produced in you.
The backache found you properly in the fourth month. A low, persistent ache at the base of your spine that turned the library's chairs, never generous to begin with, actively unkind. You adjusted your posture and took the slow walks and said nothing to him about it, on the grounds that there was nothing to be done and he was already, by any reasonable measure, doing more than enough.
He noticed anyway, as you knew he always did.
You were at the study desk on a Sunday evening, a stubborn revision refusing to resolve, your posture having deteriorated by degrees into something that told anyone paying attention exactly how your lower back felt about the situation. You hadn't heard him come in.
His hands landed on your shoulders, and the sound that left you was embarrassingly close to relief made audible.
He worked at the tension with the same patient thoroughness he brought to every form of care he extended you, his thumbs finding the base of your skull, the heels of his hands moving down along your spine with a precision that made your eyes close of their own accord.
"Why didn't you say?" he asked, kneading a particular rough spot that had you almost moaning.
"It's nothing that can be helped, my love."
"A great deal can be helped, generally," he said, his hands finding the exact source of the ache. "That is, in point of fact, precisely the place."
"How do you know that?"
"I pay attention," he voiced simply and pressed his mouth briefly to the top of your head, as if the sentence needed the gesture to be properly true.
The evening that followed involved a bath he suggested before you'd thought to ask for it — the water exactly right, the salts your doctor had recommended already dissolved into it, sourced, you learned only later, from a pharmacy on the far side of London he'd visited without mentioning. You lay in the warm water while he made tea in the kitchen and thought, not for the first time, about the well-appointed dark he'd once prepared a room against, and what that room had eventually become.
He brought the tea to the bathroom door.
"You telephoned my mother about soup," you started numbering, when he sat on the edge of the bath. "You go to two shops for apples. You've sourced pharmacy salts from across London."
"We've already established this," he answered. "You know I don’t mind. In fact, I am happier doing this for you knowing everything you are enduring."
"I love you," you said. "Enormously. Without any reservation whatsoever."
He took the hand you weren't using to hold your cup and held it, and something in his face eased entirely.
"I know," he said, quietly, a smile grazing his lips. "I love you the same way."
By the fifth month the pregnancy had become visible enough that no coat entirely disguised it, and the Yard, when you visited, had opinions about it that no one voiced directly in Adam's presence.
Daniel had opinions he voiced immediately, however.
"Doctor." He met you at the stairs with the particular brightness he reserved for good news, his eyes dropping to the curve of you before returning, with visible effort at composure, to your face. "You look well."
"I feel like a ship," you told him.
"A very distinguished one," he said, falling into step beside you. "A flagship, really. The kind with—"
"Has Adam told you about the apples?" you asked, as you crossed the incident room floor.
Daniel's face did the thing it did when he had a story he'd been saving.
"There's rather more to it than two shops, in fact," he said, delighted. "Three weeks ago we were mid-interview — properly mid-interview, caution given, solicitor present, the whole formal apparatus — and he passes me a note. An actual note. Folded, like we were at school." His grin widened. "It said: the shop on Marchmont Street. The Braeburns, not the Coxes. Ten minutes, if you can manage it. No please. No explanation. I had to excuse myself from an active police interview to go and fetch apples, and when I got back he took the bag like it was chain-of-custody evidence and didn't say another word about it for the rest of the afternoon."
"He didn't thank you?" you asked as you made your way up the stairs into the upper floor in which Adam’s office was. Daniel helped you by holding your arm when he noticed how the flight of stairs tired you.
"He nodded," Daniel said, with the air of a man still nursing the injustice. "But I want it on record that I have never once been thanked adequately for the apples."
Through the glass, Adam looked up — the timing entirely too precise to be coincidence, which meant he'd almost certainly heard the tail end of it — and something in his expression suggested he had no intention of offering the missing thanks even now.
"You'll get your commendation eventually," you assured him.
"I'd settle for a mention in your upcoming book," Daniel said, brightening considerably, and you laughed, and filed the whole exchange away as one of the more perfect distillations of the two of them you'd yet collected.
"Are you running a book on this baby?" you asked, once you'd recovered, the thought appearing out of thin air in your brain.
A pause — the pause of a man deciding how much honesty the moment could bear. "A small one," he admitted. "Very small. Informal."
"What's your position?"
He drew himself up with the gravity of a man delivering a considered professional judgement. "I think the boss would be extraordinary with a little girl. I don't have scientific grounds for that. I just think it."
You looked through the glass at Adam, who had returned to his file but whose eyes found you again within the space of a breath, the way they always did now, an orbit he'd apparently stopped trying to resist.
You thought of his hands on your stomach every morning. The two shops. The pharmacy salts. The reading, unashamed now, to somebody smaller than the two of you.
"Yes," you said, smiling somewhat dumbly. "I think he would."
He asked you in the sixth month.
It was an ordinary Sunday — you with the manuscript spread across your knee, working through the second reader's report line by line, a pencil tucked behind your ear you kept forgetting was there; him beside you with a book he'd stopped pretending to read some minutes earlier, his socked foot hooked loosely over yours, the lamp lit against the grey outside, the record turning quietly through something unhurried.
You became aware, gradually, that he had gone somewhere else.
Not far — his foot was still against yours, his eyes occasionally finding your face before sliding away again — but somewhere behind his usual stillness something was turning over, restless in the way you'd learned, across the years, to recognise and leave alone. He was circling. He always circled before he arrived.
You turned a page. Didn't press him.
He eventually set the book down.
Properly down — closed, no finger marking his place, which was unlike him enough that you looked up despite yourself — and shifted along the sofa until there was no longer any careful, sociable distance between you at all, gathering you fully against his side instead, one arm around your shoulders, the other coming to rest against the curve of your stomach, his thumb already moving in the slow arc that had become, this past month, simply how his hand behaved whenever it found you.
"I keep talking to her," he said. Quietly. Because apparently he had heard about the bet that circled the Yard and had agreed with the odds.
"I know," you said, waiting for him to make his point.
"I've said things to her I don't believe I've said properly to you. Not in so many words." He was looking at his own hand rather than your face, and something in the set of his jaw told you this had cost him some deliberate effort to start. "I find it considerably easier to be plain with someone who can't yet hold me to it."
You said nothing. You knew exactly how much space this required.
"I love you," he said. "I've told you that, and meant it every time, and I don't think I've ever managed to tell you the size of it. Not properly. I keep reaching for the poems instead — the meter, the form, all the things I've spent my life hiding behind — because the plain version has always felt too large to simply say."
His hand at your stomach tightened, just slightly. Present and entirely certain.
"I don't want to hide behind it tonight," he said.
You turned to look at him properly and found his eyes weren't composed at all — not the careful, contained brightness you'd seen across his desk over a small plastic test, but something rawer, something that had clearly been building since long before this Sunday.
"I want to marry you." The words didn't arrive in the measured cadence he generally reserved for the things that mattered most; they came out slightly too fast, slightly ahead of him, as though he'd been holding them so long they'd stopped waiting for his permission. "I've wanted it for months. I bought a ring three weeks ago and haven't yet found a single evening in which I am not tense about giving it to you, which I recognise is somewhat absurd for a man who interviews murderers for a living without difficulty."
Your breath caught. "You already—"
"It's in the desk drawer. Under the case files, which I'm aware isn't romantic, but I couldn't leave it anywhere you might find it by accident, and then I couldn't decide on an evening that felt adequate to it, and then tonight you were reading the report with your pencil behind your ear and I simply—" He stopped, acknowledging he was spiralling. His hand came up from your stomach to your face, his thumb tracing your cheekbone with a care that had nothing composed left in it. "I simply didn't want to wait any longer to say it properly."
"Adam—"
"Let me finish." There was something almost pleading in it, so unlike him that you closed your mouth and let him. "I'm not a religious man. I don't need the church, or any version of this that requires witnesses beyond the people who actually matter to us. What I need—" his voice caught, actually caught, and he had to stop and breathe before he could go on, his forehead dropping to rest against yours, his hand still at your face, "—what I need is the word for it. To call you my wife and have it be true in every sense the word can carry. I have needed that for longer than I've been willing to admit even to myself."
You reached up and covered his hand with yours where it lay against your cheek.
"Do you remember the thing with the shelves?" he asked, quieter now, his forehead still against yours, his breath unsteady in a way that undid you completely. "I have wanted this — wanted you, permanently — for very much longer than I've had the courage to say so, and I find I'm finished waiting for the courage to arrive on its own. I would like to marry you. Not now, if you'd rather wait until after she's here — whenever you like, however you like. I only find I can no longer bear not having asked."
You were crying before he'd finished, and so, you realised, was he — not dramatically, nothing about him was ever dramatic, but there were tears caught at the corners of his eyes that he made no attempt to hide, which was, in its way, more devastating than anything he'd said.
"Yes," you said.
"You haven't even seen the ring," he said, half a laugh breaking through the unsteadiness. "I feel I ought to at least show you the ring before—"
"I don’t need to, Adam," you said again, and took his face in both hands, and kissed him — his mouth, and then, when you drew back only far enough to breathe, his jaw, his cheekbone, the corner of his eye where a single tear had actually escaped and which you kissed away without comment — and felt his arms come around you properly, both of them, his hand leaving your stomach only to circle your back instead, holding you as close as your bodies currently allowed, his face pressed into your hair.
"I love you," he said again, into your hair, as though the first time hadn't been sufficient and he intended to keep saying it until it was. "I should have told you properly months ago."
"You've been telling me properly every single day," you said. "The tea. The two shops. Reading Hardy to her almost every day. I've never once doubted it, Adam. I have never doubted you."
He drew back enough to look at you, his eyes still bright, his hand coming up to brush away the last of your own tears with a tenderness that had nothing careful or composed about it at all.
"Then let me have the word as well," he said. "I find I want both. The daily proof and the word for it."
"You have both," you tearily smiled. "You've had both for longer than you've let yourself believe."
He kissed you again — slower now, steadier, though his hand shook very slightly where it rested against your jaw, which you noticed and loved him for and said nothing about — and when he finally drew back he got up, unhurried despite everything, and crossed to the desk, and returned with a small box he opened with hands that were, for the first time in the whole of your acquaintance with him, visibly trembling.
The ring was simple. He would have chosen simple; you'd have been surprised by anything else.
"I had a great many things prepared to say about it," he admitted, sliding it onto your finger with careful, deliberate slowness, his eyes moving between the ring and your face as though needing to witness both at once. "About the stone, and why I chose it. But I’m afraid I've forgotten every word of it."
"Tell me whenever you remember," you said. "It doesn’t matter."
Adam smiled and drew you back against his side, both arms around you now, one hand returning at last to your stomach as though it had simply been waiting for the rest of him to catch up.
You stayed there a long while, the lamp steady, the record turning through its last unhurried song, his lips finding your hair and then your temple and then, when you tipped your face up to meet them, your mouth again.
By the seventh month the flat had rearranged itself around you both in a hundred small, unremarked ways — a shelf that had been Hardy criticism now given over to something else entirely, a chair by the window that had become, without discussion, where he sat to read the case files he brought home, close enough that his foot could always find yours beneath the ottoman.
He stopped being subtle about the times he read to her. You caught him at it more often now, and neither of you pretended otherwise anymore.
"You'll spoil her," you told him one such evening, your hand over his where it rested against you, the new ring catching the lamplight when you moved. "Talking to her like she already has opinions."
"She’s like her mother. She already kicks at Hardy specifically," he said, with perfect seriousness. "I consider that an opinion."
"That's indigestion."
"It's discernment and a dashing good taste," he said, and pressed his lips, briefly and without ceremony, to the curve of you, and then, straightening, to your mouth, the kiss of a man who no longer needed to circle anything before he arrived at it.
You sat together afterward in the lamplight with the whole quiet, unhurried evidence of what you were building settled warm between you — his ring on your hand, his hand on your stomach, his voice still finding its way to both of you in whatever form the evening allowed — and thought that you had never, in your life, imagined a happiness with quite this particular shape.
A.N.: the lines of the poem Adam reads to sleepy reader are from Hardy's Great Things.
Devotion in the Dark (Vampire!Baelor x Reader x Vampire!Maekar) - Chapter 2 of 3
Series Masterlist ✦ Chapter 1 ↜ Chapter 2 ↝ Chapter 3 ✦ read on ao3
Summary: As the princes’ attention becomes harder to resist, Dragonstone’s darker nature makes itself known. Friendship, fear, and desire tangle together until a single act of cruelty changes everything.
Word count: 12K
Tags: 18+/MINORS DO NOT INTERACT, SEXUAL EXPLICIT CONTENT, vampire au, arranged hostage situation/political hostage, power imbalance, dark romance, blood kink, fingering, oral sex (f receiving), light choking, age gap, she/her pronouns, AFAB reader, English is my second language
Please let me know if I’ve missed anything!
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters, setting, or story of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. This work is a fanfiction created for enjoyment and non-commercial purposes only.
Author’s note: Thank you all so much for the love that you have given to the first chapter! I truly hope you enjoy this one as well. Leave a like, reblog or comment if you do ☺️
The next morning the atmosphere within Dragonstone felt different, almost wrong in a way. The castle always possessed an undercurrent of tension, a sense that something dangerous lingered beneath every conversation and every action. Yet this felt sharper.
Servants hurried through corridors with unusual urgency. Guards moved in larger numbers than before, the clang of armour echoing from courtyards below, carrying through open windows.
Something happened, you thought. Or was about to.
You intended to meet the ladies for breakfast, but instead a servant intercepted you before you reached the hall.
“The princes request your presence, my lady.”
Bewildered for a moment, you followed without question.
The outer courtyard was a hive of activity. Targaryen banners snapped violently in the wind and magnificent horses stomped restlessly, black-clad retainers moving with grim efficiency, loading supplies. The air smelled of leather, steel and rain. A storm was brewing somewhere beyond Dragonstone's shores.
Your throat seized the moment you saw them.
Baelor stood beside the captain of the guard, speaking quietly while several knights listened nearby. He wore dark riding leathers beneath a long black cloak fastened with a three-headed dragon clasp.
Maekar stood a short distance away, one gloved hand resting upon the pommel of his mace. His attire was darker still, black leather and a black cloak adorning him. The only brightness upon him came from his pale hair and striking eyes.
The stillness of their bodies unsettled you more than any movement would have. They looked less like princes and more like predators waiting, for the moment you entered the courtyard, both turned toward you. Heat rushed to your cheeks so quickly it almost hurt.
Did they know?
The question struck you before you could stop it.
Did they know of every thought that had plagued you these past few days.
Did they hear you whisper their names the night before?
Baelor dismissed the captain with a quiet word before turning fully toward you. A small nod invited you closer.
“My princes.” You curtsied.
Baelor’s gaze swept over you briefly.
“You look tired, dōna riña.” His voice was soft. “Is everything well?”
“I…” You swallowed the lump in your throat. “I slept poorly, that is all.”
“Did you now?” The faint amusement threading through his voice caught you completely off guard.
Beside him, Maekar made a low sound that was suspiciously close to a laugh.
“Did dreams plague you, little dove?” He asked.
Your stomach dropped. For one long, terrible second you forgot how to breathe. Baelor’s mismatched gaze lingered on your far too knowingly, before he looked away. It was as though hearing you whisper their names at night affected him more than it should have.
Mortification burned through you completely.
“My princes, I-!”
“We hear many things here.” Baelor interrupted gently. “Even whispers spoken in the dark.”
Both brothers looked at you knowingly, barely concealed hunger swirling in their eyes. Maekar looked entirely too pleased with your discomfort.
Gods, your face burned as though it was hit by the power of a thousand suns. Thankfully, you were spared further humiliation by one of the guards approaching quickly, speaking to the princes in low and urgent High Valyrian.
The change in Baelor was immediate, his expression hardening and any trace of amusement vanishing.
Duty replaced it. Duty above all.
The shift fascinated you. The prince from the balcony, the man who had listened to stories about your brother, was gone in a blink. In his place stood the Hammer.
And it was a sight to see.
Maekar noticed your stare, and his nostrils flared slightly. Baelor slowly turned towards you as the guard left.
“You must remain inside your room after supper.” He said.
It was not a suggestion, but rather concern hidden beneath command.
“Do not stray from the ladies while we are gone. And do not wander the castle alone while we are absent.”
“Absent?” You frowned despite yourself. “Where are you going?”
“Hunting Faith Militant zealots.” Maekar answered before Baelor could. The contempt in his voice was unmistakable.
“Several have been spotted near the Crownlands.”
You had heard the rumours, something about burned farms and missing peasants. Then another whisper about a chapel where several thralls had been discovered dead. There was a name that surfaced whenever those rumours were spoken, and whether he was a perpetrator or not.
Aerion. Maekar’s second son.
The stories surrounding the Targaryen heirs travelled through every noble household in Westeros, regardless of loyalty.
Baelor had two sons, Valarr and Matarys. Both were raised in the Red Keep, close to their grandsire and being prepared for future rule. There were whispers that it was because Baelor did not wish that the princes spent their entire lives among the ancient darkness of Dragonstone.
Maekar’s children were kept at Summerhall. The great summer palace was built for the royal family, far from their ancestral seat. Daeron, Aerion, Aemon, Daella, Aegon and little Rhae were said to spend most of their days there beneath the care of tutors, knights and loyal courtiers. The fact that they were raised separated from Baelor’s children remained a mystery, and the arrangement only encouraged further speculation.
You knew little beyond rumour, only that children born to the ancient Targaryen bloodline were becoming rare.
The whispers were always the same, how bearing such children was costly and difficult to the mother. To carry the child without undergoing the ancient blood rite demanded sacrifices few survived, even the father was willing to help. Immortal blood did not mingle willingly with mortal flesh, and the burden often claimed either mother, child, or both before the birth was through.
Yet, the blood rite was not a simple gift easily given to anyone fortunate enough to marry into the royal house. It remained a closely guarded privilege, granted only at the Crown’s discretion. Some were never even offered it, and others, it was said, refused of their own accord.
It was common knowledge that Aelinor Penrose, wife to the bookish Prince Aerys, was not offered the blood rite. Whether Alys Arryn, wife to Prince Rhaegel and the mother of his three children, had been offered the same choice remained a matter of quiet speculation.
Prince Baelor’s late wife, Jena Dondarrion, refused such a fate altogether. She had done what duty demanded of her, giving the Crown two heirs before declaring she would bear no more. Immortality held no allure in her eyes. She had fulfilled her obligation to her husband and the realm, and neither pleading nor expectation had ever changed her mind.
Lady Dyanna Dayne, Prince Maekar’s beloved wife, was offered the blood rite and she had intended to accept it. Many whispered that the strength of Dayne blood, coupled with Maekar’s unwavering devotion, had allowed her to bear six children without ever undergoing the transformation. It was spoken of as nothing short of a miracle. Yet, even miracles demanded their price as she perished bringing their sixth child into the world, leaving behind her prince and the children she had fought so fiercely to give him.
And that is where the stories always ended. Not with answers but with silence, for no one spoke of what became of those who accepted the rite, nor could they describe the ritual itself. The questions simply dissolved into whispered glances and hurried changes of subject, as though the knowledge itself belonged only to the dragons, and those bound to them.
But, neither prince appeared interested in discussing family histories now, as their gazes were hardened and you could wager a guess as to why.
Prince Aerion possessed a reputation all on his own, which preceded him wherever he went. He was a brilliant prince, beyond question, but equally dangerous. He was volatile, unpredictable, and possessed of a cruelty that made even seasoned courtiers tread carefully in his presence.
Baelor stepped closer, his hand lifting and cupping your cheek, his thumb gently brushing against it.
“We will return.”
The words should have reassured you, instead they filled you with sudden unease.
You spent weeks trying to make sense of their attention, trying to understand them, trying not to yearn for them, trying not to think about them. And now the thought of Dragonstone without them felt strangely wrong.
I do not want them to leave, you thought.
Baelor saw it, the realisation flickering behind his eyes. Maekar saw it too, and the corner of his mouth twitched.
As Baelor let go of you, Maekar sauntered closer.
“Try not to dream about us too sweetly while we are away, little dove.” He said.
The horrified gasp you let out seemed to delight him further.
When both brothers turned to go to their horses, the courtyard sprang back into motion around them. Orders were shouted, and cloaks billowed in the strengthening wind. Within moments they rode out, surrounded by guards and retainers.
And you remained where you stood, watching them go while too many emotions battled within your chest: relief, concern, frustration, and something else.
Something you stubbornly still refused to name.
Dragonstone became almost lighter in their absence. The noble guests relaxed visibly when the princes vanished beyond the gates, and conversations grew louder, laughter echoed in the halls. Even the servants seemed less tense, moving with less urgency than before.
It seemed the castle breathed easier without its masters. But to you, it felt wrong.
You felt abandoned.
Throughout the following nights, you caught yourself listening for footsteps that never came. More than once, you glanced toward a corridor because you thought you heard their voices, only to find it empty.
At dinner, your eyes drifted instinctively toward the dais. The high table stood occupied by stewards, lords and ladies left in their stead.
Not them.
A small disappointment settled heavily in your chest before you could stop it, brows furrowing. Lady Bethany noticed immediately, and you could feel the disapproval radiating from her.
“You have looked at the dais at least four times tonight.” She stated dryly.
“Nonsense.” You said, reaching for your goblet and hoping it would disguise the sudden dryness in your throat.
Across from you, lady Elinor hid a knowing smile behind her sleeve.
“You miss them.”
The words carried the delighted certainty of a young lady discussing a courtly romance.
“I do not.” You retorted quickly.
Elinor’s smile only widened.
“Then why do you always look disappointed whenever someone else enters the hall?” She asked.
You opened your mouth, then closed it again. Because there was no answer you could safely give. Because you did not dare say it aloud, say your true feelings into existence.
Silence followed, and Bethany set down her fork.
“I hope you know what you are doing.”
The severity in her voice immediately drew your attention.
“The fact that you are here is precarious enough. One miss-step and you may lose your head.” She continued.
You swallowed.
They would not do that to me.
The certainty arrived immediately at first, but doubt followed close behind as your consciousness whispered.
How did you know?
Truth be told, you barely knew them. You knew their presence more than their words, the weight of their attention on you, the way conversations seemed to fade whenever one of them looked at you. The strange, unspoken understanding that lingered in every glance, as though something passed between the three of you that no one else could perceive.
You knew the stories whispered about them, the tales of the Hammer and Anvil who inspired equal measures of fear and admiration. Whose powers stretched far beyond the realm, who could command armies with a word and end lives with little more than a passing thought.
You knew what they were, and yet…
When Baelor smiled at you, it always reached his mismatched eyes, and it was warm enough to ease the tension from your shoulders. There was a gentleness to him that felt almost impossible against the backdrop of every tale ever told about the Targaryens.
Maekar was different, for his attention hid beneath restraint and measured words, revealing itself in fleeting moments. Yet, you were certain that, if he made a promise, the Seven themselves would sooner break faith than Prince Maekar Targaryen.
You could not explain why those small moments were rooted themselves so deeply within you. Perhaps you were a fool, perhaps they were simply skilled enough to make anyone lower their guard.
Yet your heart refused every warning your mind presented.
They would not come to you as they have done so far, if all they desired was to harm you. Men like Baelor and Maekar had no need for pretence, they did not court the trust of a young noblewoman merely to destroy her. If they wished you dead, you would already be buried.
Bethany watched your expression carefully.
“You see?” She said softly. “You must be cautious. Keep away from them.”
You lowered your gaze instead of answering.
Outside, rain struck the castle windows, the storm that had threatened for days finally arrived. Fortunately, the conversation drifted elsewhere before you were forced to defend yourself further.
But Bethany’s words lingered, as did your own certainty.
The only solace you found was in a letter from your brother. The raven arrived not long after Baelor and Maekar departed, small and travel-worn. Its feathers ruffled from the long journey across the realm, but the parchment tied carefully to its leg bore the familiar sigil of your house.
For a moment, you simply held it, a piece of home carried across hundreds of miles.
Your hands trembled slightly as you finally broke the seal.
Dear sister,
Maester Kiran writes the letter in my stead because my hands tire quickly now. But he insists that my words are clear enough for you to hear as I mean them. I do suspect that he changes some of them when he believes I am being too childish. He denies this, of course.
Have you found any dragons yet?
I have read that Dragonstone still keeps the bones of old dragons beneath the castle. Ask if you might visit them, and if they let you, please draw one for me. Make it accurate, not like the ones in the books where they always make the wings too large and the necks snake-like. Though perhaps the wings were large, they were dragons after all.
I wish I could see them myself.
Do not be sad when you read that, for I do not mean it as I once have. Septa Maren says that fear is a wasteful use of a short season, and I have decided she is probably right. I still think she is cruel for saying such things so plainly.
I am not afraid as I once was though.
There are still days when I tire faster, but Maester Kiran says I must be patient. Everyone here tries to treat me as though I might break, and I wish they would stop. I am still myself, I still enjoy books, I still dislike boiled vegetables. And I still think our cousin is unbearable.
I miss you. Please come home if you can.
If you cannot, please write to me. Tell me everything. Tell me what Dragonstone looks like, what the sea sounds like, whether the castle is truly as dark and frightening as the stories claim. Tell me if the princes are as terrifying as everyone says they are.
I would rather have your letters than nothing at all.
Your brother,
Beren
You read it once, then again, and again until the words began to blur and you had to look away. You did not cry, you refused to, though you were fairly certain your nose betrayed you exactly as he had once said it would.
That night, you wrote back by candlelight.
You described the sea surrounding Dragonstone, the way the castle seemed carved from shadow and flame, and of the endless corridors that made it feel older than memory itself. You promised to find the dragon bones he had asked about and draw them properly, even if you suspected no drawing could ever capture something that had once ruled the skies.
You also wrote to him about the princes. Not the rumours, or the fear that followed their names. Only that Baelor was kinder than the stories claimed, that Maekar was quieter, but not as cold as people believed. That perhaps there were different kinds of dragons in the world, the ones carved into stone and bone, and the ones who still walked among men.
The warmth of Beren’s letter remained with you for several days. You kept it close, tucked carefully amongst your belongings. It was a reminder of home, that somewhere else beyond the castle walls, someone still waited for your return.
Then, only days later, another letter arrived.
Your house’s seal was pressed into wax which was the colour of dried blood. It bore no familiar comfort, for you knew the hand that had written it before you even broke the seal.
Your uncle.
Niece,
Words travel even to the corners of the realm, and I am told the princes regard you with greater favour than a guest such as you ought to expect. I confess some relief at this. It would be a poor use of the arrangement I made if you were to squander such an opportunity through fear, or foolishness.
I must share with you unfortunate news that your brother’s health continues to decline. I have engaged new healers from Essos at a considerable expanse, which I trust you will remember when you are in a position to repay the kindnesses afforded to you.
See that you remain useful to your hosts, and useful to our house. Nothing more is required of you.
And that was it, no warmth within the words, not even an imitation of it.
You had expected as much, and yet something inside you tightened as you read them again.
The arrangement…
As though your presence here, your days spent among strangers, your fears and hopes and every uncertain moment since arriving at Dragonstone, were nothing more than a bargain struck and recorded.
You did not tear or burn the letter, you simply folded it neatly once you were finished with it. You put it aside, and returned to Beren’s letter, tracing the letters until the bitterness and loneliness began to fade.
And as the days folded away and you waited for the princes’ return, you began to realize there was another absence you had started to feel.
The dreams changed as well.
They came less frequently than before. They were less vivid, less consuming. Sometimes you would glimpse Maekar’s silver hair disappearing around a corner, and other times Baelor’s voice would call your name from somewhere beyond reach. Once you dreamed of standing within the feast hall alone, the three thrones empty, turning around searching for them.
You awoke before finding them.
Their absence followed you into waking hours.
You found yourself lingering in places where you had last spoken with them. The sea gallery, the battlements, certain corridors. As though some part of you expected them to appear if you waited long enough.
Each time you rose from the bed, you asked servants whether they returned. Each time as you walked with the ladies to retire, you looked toward the gates
Waiting, always waiting.
Days passed, still no sign of them.
And despite the lightness touching the halls, you discovered that you preferred it the other way. Because the castle without the princes felt incomplete. Because you felt incomplete without them.
And so, you found yourself counting the days until they returned.
The following afternoon, you and several of the nobles were granted leave to visit the beach beneath Dragonstone’s cliffs, escorted by a small retinue of guards. You welcomed the chance to leave your thoughts in the castle behind, if only for a few hours.
Together with Bethany, Elenor, and several of the other ladies, you descended the winding path toward the shore. The breeze carried away much of the heaviness that had settled over your thoughts, and for the first time in days, your chest felt lighter.
Before long, your companions drifted ahead, their laughter carried faintly on the wind as they wandered along the shoreline collecting shells and smooth stones left behind by the tide.
Drawn to the restless sea, you lingered behind, watching the waves roll across the dark sand before retreating once more into the endless expanse. A familiar voice reached you.
“My lady.”
You turned, watching as Lord Jasper of House Costayne came closer. He bowed with more flourish than courtesy demanded, dark hair stirred by the breeze.
“Lord Jasper.” You bowed your head.
“I had hoped I might find you.” He wore an easy smile. “Though I must confess that I am glad for us to be without sterner company.”
His gaze swept to the castle and back.
“No mismatched eyes or silver-haired shadows lurking nearby.”
You could not help but frown at his sentiment.
“The princes are away.”
“So I have heard.” His smile widened, pleasant and entirely too knowing. “Hunting Faith Militant zealots, I am told. Truly grim business. Though I confess, it is rather pleasant to speak with you without a prince’s eyes cutting into me from across the room.”
“I do not think they are as frightening as you make them.” You confessed easily.
“No?” He lifted an eyebrow. “Then perhaps I have simply had the misfortune of earning Prince Maekar’s disapproval.”
“I am sure you exaggerate, my lord.”
“I assure you, I do not.” He said, placing a hand dramatically over his heart. “The way he has looked at me, I found myself wondering if that hour would be my last.”
A laugh escaped you before you could stop it, for you knew there was some truth in it.
“You did not think so, my lady?” He asked lightly, looking at the sea. “Truthfully, I envy them.”
“You envy them?” You were surprised at his statement.
“They have your attention far more often than the rest of us.”
Heat crept unexpectedly into your cheeks. “My lord…”
“Oh, do not look so alarmed.” He chuckled. “I mean no offense, for half the court has noticed it.”
“Noticed what?”
“That whenever one of the princes enters a room, everyone else around you ceases to exist for a little while.”
Your heart stumbled.
“I think you imagine too much.” You mumbled, looking at the sea.
“Perhaps.” He sounded unconvinced. “Shall we continue walking?”
The gravel crunched softly beneath your shoes, as both of you walked at an easy pace.
“How fares your brother?” Jasper asked after a moment. “The last we spoke, you told me he had been unwell.”
“He…” You hesitated before smiling faintly. “He wrote to me recently. He is still ill, but in better spirits than before.”
“I am glad to hear it.”
You did not hear any jest or untruthfulness in his voice.
“I know how it is to wait for letters from home. They become precious things.”
You glanced toward him, surprised by the quiet sincerity in his expression.
“Thank you.” You whispered.
The conversation drifted to easier subjects after that, to the sea, to the Valyrian tapestries, to the strange weather that forever surrounded Dragonstone. Lord Jasper proved an attentive listener and an effortless storyteller, and for a fleeting moment, you understood why he was so well liked y the rest.
When you reached Bethany and the other slides just as the castle bells sounded the approaching evening meal, he slowed.
“I have enjoyed borrowing your company for a little while.” His smile returned, touched with mischief. “I only hope Their Graces do not think I have stolen too much of your attention.”
Before you could answer, he bowed and turned away. You watched him go before returning to the ladies.
It had been a somewhat pleasant conversation. Yet, later that evening, as you lay awake listening to the sea break against the cliffs, you found yourself remembering the way he had spoken of the princes.
He had not spoken with fear or admiration, but rather with the careful curiosity of a man trying to solve a puzzle.
That thought lingered as sleep slowly claimed you.
The scream tore you from a dreamless sleep.
That alone was not unusual, as Dragonstone was a castle filled with strange sounds. The wailing storms, the cries of prisoners, the shrieks echoing through distant halls that no one ever seemed willing to explain. But something about this scream was different. It was raw and sharp with terror. Then came another, and this one sounded less human than the first.
Your eyes snapped open. For a moment you lay frozen in bed, heart pounding violently against your ribs. Then, you swung your legs over the side of the bed, bare feet touching the cold stone floor.
Another cry echoed through the stone, and beneath it, so faint you almost imagined it, a sound like something tearing.
A part of you knew you should stay where you were, in the safety of your own room. Instead, you reached for your robe.
By the time you opened your chamber door, several other guests were already peering nervously into the corridor. Bethany stood amongst them.
“Go back inside.” She told you immediately. “Whatever is happening, it is too dangerous for us.”
You should have listened, for every instinct told you to. But another thought crossed your mind before any reason could stop it.
What if something had happened to Baelor? What if Maekar was hurt?
If you were injured, they would come to you, surely. That thought alone carried you forward, and you slipped away before Bethany could catch your sleeve and stop you.
You went down one corridor, then another, deeper into the castle than you went before. The screams had stopped now, only a distant echo remaining, as if the stone itself were still absorbing the sound. You descended a spiral staircase winding beneath Dragonstone, and the further down you went the warmer and thicker the air became. Beneath the scent of stone and old candlewax lingered something else, coppery and unmistakable.
Blood.
The realisation settled cold in your stomach just as familiar voices drifted up from below. And something else, a low and wet sound you did not let yourself name.
You stopped near the bottom of the staircase, partly hidden by shadow. The chamber ahead of you was vast and ancient, directly carved into the volcanic rock. Candlelight flickered unevenly across black pillars that seemed to drink the light rather than reflect it.
And there they were.
Maekar held a young man in an iron grip, one arm locked across his chest, the other forcing his head aside each time he lunged. It should not have been possible, the way he stood his ground. The young man thrashed with the desperate strength of something no longer entirely sane, and Maekar did not so much as shift his footing. His sleeves were torn, and his jaw was clenched tight. The young man’s pale hair was cropped short, blood smeared across his face, and his violet eyes gleamed in the dark, wild and dangerous.
“Aerion, stand the fuck down.” Maekar’s voice did not rise.
It did not need to, for it echoed through the cavern the way thunder rolls through a valley. There was no hesitation in his restraint, he was in absolute control.
“They deserved it!” Aerion snarled, his voice sounding almost feral. “They had it coming.”
“You murdered them.” Baelor’s voice cut through the chamber.
It was cold, far colder than you had ever heard it before.
“I taught them a lesson.” The young man laughed, and it cracked strangely in the middle, as though something underneath it had slipped. “They insulted our house.”
“And now they are dead.”
“Would you have left a matter of Targaryen honour in doubt, uncle?”
Baelor moved.
One moment he stood several steps away, the next he was directly before Aerion. And you had never seen a space vanish so quickly. There was stride, no run, it was as though the chamber itself had folded to bring him closer. His mismatched eyes, especially the violet one, gleamed the same as his nephew’s and brother’s. But where theirs looked wild, his gaze had gone terribly and unnaturally calm. Blood stained his hands and the front of his doublet, dark and still wet.
For the first time, you saw him stripped of every courtly illusion. The prince from feasts and balconies was gone. In his place stood something ancient wearing a familiar face. His stillness was so absolute, that even the torchlight around him seemed to hesitate, flames guttering low near his shoulders. His expression was carved from stone and power radiated from him, as befit the Hammer.
“We are rulers, boy.” Baelor said. “Not beasts.”
Aerion snarled and lunged again. Maekar hauled him back without visible effort. It was only then that your gaze finally dropped to the floor and saw the bodies.
And you recognised them, two lords you had shared a table once or twice, nodded to in passing corridors, and whose names you never quite learned. Their throats were opened, dark and glistening, and something about the wounds looked more like a feeding left unfinished.
“Oh Gods!” The whisper escaped before you could stop it.
Silence crashed through the chamber as every head turned towards you at once, as though some single thread connected all three of them and was just pulled taut. Baelor and Maekar went utterly still. In their preoccupation with the current situation their senses had failed them. But now, you held their full attention and they watched you with that unbreathing and unnatural stillness.
This was not the attention they gave you in the halls, or during feasts. Not the careful restraint, or the quiet toying you had grown almost fond of. This was something else, something that lived beneath the princes, wearing their faces the way a shadow wears a shape.
Baelor’s eyes widened slightly, and you thought that you could see something shift behind them, some careful leash slipping around his neck.
Aerion inhaled once, sharp and deliberate, nostrils flaring, tongue dragging slow across blood-stained lips.
“She smells so sweet.” His voice had dropped into something low and hungry. “So frightened.”
Maekar tightened his hold immediately.
“Enough! Calm yourself boy.” His voice cracked like a whip through the chamber. “She is not yours!”
“You should not be here.” Baelor said, his gaze not leaving yours.
He moved again, so fast you barely registered it. One heartbeat, he stood across the chamber, the next he was in front of you. He grasped your hair, tugging at it, and buried his nose in the crook of your neck. He inhaled deeply, murmuring something low in High Valyrian against your skin, as fangs faintly scraped at the line of your throat.
Your pulse hammered so loudly you were certain the whole chamber could hear it. Shivers ran up your spine and heat spread low in your stomach at his uncourtly touch.
Instinctively, your hands found his arms, and beneath the palms his stillness felt less like a man holding himself back, and more like a hunter deciding.
Behind him, Aerion strained forward with a sound that was inhuman. Maekar hauled him back with a grunt of effort, the first effort you had seen from him all night, shouting something to Baelor that you barely registered over the roar of your own blood in your ears.
“Baelor…” You breathed his name, hissing softly as his grip tightened at the sound of his name leaving your lips.
He closed his eyes and for a long moment nothing in the chamber moved at all. Not him, not Maekar, and not even the air itself. Then, slowly as though every inch cost him a battle you could not see, he forced himself to take a step back, and then another.
He looked at you, unable to fully disguise the hunger still burning behind his eyes, his jaw locked tight enough to ache.
“Leave now, sweet girl.” He said, his voice strained and almost pained. “Please.”
The plea frightened you more than any command could have. Because for the first time since arriving at Dragonstone, you understood, with total and sinking clarity, that whatever existed between you and the princes had become something dangerous.
You turned and ran.
And long after the chamber vanished behind you, you still felt their gazes following you through the stone, patient, hungry, and entirely unhurried.
It was the way a hunter watched it had already decided it would not let go of.
The next day, the castle felt too still, as though the events of the previous night were sealed away behind layers of stone and silence. No one spoke of the screams and no one spoke of the honoured guests who never appeared again at supper. Dragonstone swallowed the truth as it swallowed everything else.
You took breakfast in your chambers, unwilling to see anyone, and least of all your friends.
Your thoughts refused to settle. Again and again, your mind returned, to Aerion’s wild eyes, to Maekar’s cold fury, to Baelor’s bloody hands, to his nose buried in the crook of your neck, to how his fangs pressed against your skin.
You turned each memory you have shared with the princes over endlessly.
Bethany had warned you to be cautious.
Your uncle had reminded you that you were a political pawn.
Reason insisted you should keep your distance.
Instead, you wondered if Maekar felt jealous at how close Baelor came to tasting your blood first, by how instinctively he had reached you first.
The thought should have embarrassed you, but instead it fanned the flames of desire singing in your veins.
When you had first come to Dragonstone, your intentions had been simple enough: earn their goodwill and secure whatever advantage might one day help your brother and your house.
Yet, somewhere along the way, those intentions began to unravel.
You no longer sought their company because duty demanded it. You found yourself watching for them in crowded halls, and listening for familiar footsteps in distant corridors. Whatever this had become, it no longer had anything to do with understanding Dragonstone’s rulers or winning their favour for Beren’s sake.
No.
Whatever would come of it now would be because, against every warning and every measure of good sense, your heart had begun to choose them of its own accord.
A quiet groan escaped you as your silent maid tugged at your hair, bringing your mind back to the present. You stared at yourself in the mirror. A dark red gown was your choice of dress for the day, the colour perhaps being a subconscious choice. A simple gold and pearl necklace rested at your throat, offering the only softness in your appearance.
You were adjusting it when a sharp knock sounded at the door, and one of the maids rushed to answer it.
“My lady.” A young steward entered and bowed. “Prince Baelor invites you to join him in his solar.”
The summons caught you entirely off guard, and yet, you would not think of refusing it.
A little while later, you found yourself standing before the door to his solar, knocking softly and entering at his command. The room smelled of old parchments, candle wax, and incense. Dornish, you thought, as the sweet smell lingered in the air, reminiscent of exotic fruits and distant summers.
Baelor turned as you entered, standing near a large table scattered with maps and correspondence.
For a moment, neither of you spoke. His mismatched gaze moved briefly over you, taking in your hair, the dark gown, and the necklace. You swallowed loudly and lowered yourself into a curtsy.
“My prince.”
The title felt strange now, somehow too formal after what had happened.
“Come closer, dōna riña.” Baelor said, his voice gentle as it had always been.
You obeyed, crossing the chamber and stopping before him. You were close enough to see the exhaustion lingering beneath his composure, to notice that he seemed older somehow than he had the day before.
“I wish to apologise for yesterday.” He said softly, his eyes remaining fixed upon yours. “It was not my intention for you to see me in that way. And…”
His gaze flickered briefly away before returning. “And for me to lose control.”
The honesty of the words surprised you.
“But you did not.” You said, though you were not entirely sure it was true.
A faint, humourless laugh escaped him. “I nearly did.”
The admission settled heavily between you, neither of you looking away. At last, you took a small step closer.
“You stopped.” You said softly. “You did not harm me.”
Something in his expression shifted at that, not relief, not exactly. Something more akin to guilt.
“I should have stopped myself from even coming that close to you. Frightening you…” He murmured, hesitating before gently adjusting a loose strand of hair that had escaped its pins. “Frightening you was never my wish.”
You almost leaned into his touch.
“I was not frightened.” You whispered.
A faint smile touched the corner of his mouth. “My brave girl.”
The fondness in his voice startled you.
“But you were so frightened when you first arrived. Of Dragonstone, of us… now look at you.”
He stepped forward slowly, leaving you room to retreat if you wished. He left you a path, a choice, and you realised he was making certain you saw it. Even when his eyes betrayed how badly he wanted you close.
So you did not move, looking at him keenly. A shadow passed through his eyes and his jaw tightened.
“I told you before, you should truly stop… you should not look at me this way, my dear.”
“And what way would that be?” You held his gaze, your pulse thundering. Warmth spreading between your thighs at the look he was giving you.
“Like you have already forgiven me for my past transgressions…” His voice dropped to a dark rasp. “And for the things I have not yet done.”
His hand was a shock of coolness against your flushed skin. You let out a shaky sigh, leaning into the touch. He was so controlled that his fingers almost trembled with the effort.
His thumb grazed your cheek, dragging slowly toward the corner of your mouth. His eyes locked onto your lips and he inhaled deeply. You blushed as you realised he could smell you, your need for him, and his eyes darkened immediately afterwards.
“Gods…” He murmured, leaning in. “May I, dōna riña?”
You were not sure if he was asking permission to kiss you or to sink his fangs and taste your blood, but the thought of both made your core ache. And deep inside your most treacherous heart, you knew you would say yes to both.
“Yes…” You whispered, your noses brushing and your fingers digging into the heavy fabric of his shoulders. “Please, my prince…”
“Baelor…” His breath was a hot contrast to his skin against your lips. “Call me by my name.”
You barely had time to nod before he pressed his lips against yours. It began with a flicker of restraint, a kiss that felt almost too reverent. But as a low moan escaped your throat, the dam broke. He molded his mouth to yours with a sudden starving intensity. His hand slid up to cup the back of your head, fingers tangling in your hair to tilt your head back. You pressed your palm against his chest, feeling the unnatural, terrifying stillness beneath his doublet.
He deepened the kiss, his tongue sweeping into your mouth to claim you. And though he fought for control, you could feel the strain beneath it. It was a hunger that went beyond lust. It was a craving for closeness, for blood, for something that had been denied for too long.
He broke away abruptly, his forehead resting against yours, his eyes now completely consumed by black.
“Baelor…” You whimpered, voice trembling.
He groaned, a sound of pure agony and want. His hands grasped your waist, his grip bruising and possessive, as he spun you around and pushed you back against the wall. He buried his face in the crook of your neck, inhaling your scent. With a light touch, he unclasped your necklace, letting it clatter unheeded to the floor.
“Will you let me touch you, sweet one?” His tongue flicked against the sensitive shell of your ear, sending a violent shiver down your spine.
“I would let you do anything to me…”
For one single moment, you were unsure if you said the words out loud until Baelor captured your lips again in a bruising kiss.
His hands dove beneath your skirts, hiking the fabric up to your waist. His fingers found the silk of your smallclothes and cupped you firmly. A low groan escaped him at the sheer amount of wetness soaking through the fabric. He pressed against your clit, rubbing it in firm strokes that made your toes curl and your head toss back against the stone wall.
Your arms wrapped around his neck, pulling him closer. A loud, broken whine escaped you as his cool fingers pushed aside your smallclothes and prodded your entrance. He slid one finger inside you, the second following soon. He thrust them in you with wanton abandon, stretching you open while his palm ground relentlessly against your clit. Your walls clenched violently around his fingers.
“I am so sorry, my perfect girl.” He murmured, his lips trailing a path of fire along your jawline. “I will repent until the end of my days for the fright I have caused you.”
You let out a breathless laugh, the pleasure consuming every corner of your mind.
“Only if this is how you always repent.”
He chuckled, pressing against you as his fingers thrust faster. “This is just the beginning of my apology.”
Then you felt it, the thick, rigid press of his hard cock against your thigh. He moved his mouth to the pulsing vein in your throat, his lips grazing the skin where his fangs would normally sink in. A tremour ran through you. You were on the precipice of release, your pulse fluttering wildly beneath his mouth.
“Baelor-”
“I will not bite you.” He groaned against your skin. “Not unless you explicitly ask… not unless you are certain you want me to.”
He accelerated his pace, his fingers driving deep and fast into your soaking heat, his palm pressing harder against your clit. You whined, your hands clutching his hair, pulling him closer.
“Come for me, my dear.” He commanded. “Let me feel your forgiveness…”
Your release hit you like a tidal wave, a crashing orgasm that left you sobbing. Your unrestrained moans were swallowed by his fervent kiss. This was more intense than any dream, an explosion of sensation that left you shaking in his arms.
Would Maekar give you the same release? The thought came unbidden, as Baelor parted away from you.
He slowly withdrew his fingers, and you felt heat creep up your spine as he brought his hand to his mouth. He slowly licked his fingers, savouring your taste with a look of absolute devotion.
You opened your mouth to speak, your heart still racing, when a loud knock echoed through the room. Baelor’s jaw tightened, the predatory hunger vanishing instantly as his prince’s mask slid back into place.
A steward entered carrying a stack of parchments and ledgers, unaware of the tension lingering within the room.
“Your Grace.”
He bowed stiffly before crossing the solar.
Baelor sighed slowly.
The table was already buried beneath correspondence. Reports, petitions, messages bearing the three-headed dragon seal. The burdens of Dragonstone never slept, and neither it seemed did its prince.
The steward began placing documents across the table. Each one appeared to pull Baelor further from the moment you had shared.
His shoulders straightened and the prince who commanded armies and judged disputes settled firmly behind his eyes.
Yet his hand found yours, wrapping firmly around it. You felt his thumb brush lightly across your knuckles before he reluctantly released you.
“You should go, dōna riña.” He said gently. “I will find you later.”
Something warm unfurled within your chest at the promise, a small smile settling in your lips as you nodded and curtsied.
“My prince.”
Baelor inclined his head, but his eyes remained on you until you reached the door. Only when you slipped through the door did he turn back to his duties, with visible reluctance.
And while you walked slowly, you knew one thing with terrifying certainty.
If Baelor sent for you again, you would come running.
Walking from Baelor’s solar, you found yourself wandering in a daze. His voice lingered beneath your skin, refusing to settle. Your fingers drifted unconsciously toward your lips before you caught yourself. You could still feel the ghost of his fingers inside of you, and your release clinging to your thighs.
The castle seemed strangely distant around you. Somewhere in the distance, steel rang against steel and you followed the sound without thinking.
One of the inner courtyards was transformed into a training yard centuries ago. Stone walls enclosed the open space, while knights sparred beneath the watchful eyes of captains.
You walked the edge of, following the torchlights. Suddenly, the air shifted around you, replaced by a sudden presence that made you shiver. As you reached the turn, a hand clamped on your arm, yanking and pushing you against the wall. You gasped, heart racing, but deep down you knew who it could be. You looked up to find Maekar staring at you, his violet eyes seeming brighter than usual.
“I see my brother has already made his apology. He did it faster than I expected.” His jaw flexed.
He had abandoned the formal layers of court for a simple linen shirt, the sleeves rolled carelessly to his forearms. The collar hung open at his throat and chest, scars and white hairs peaking out from underneath it.
“How did you know?” You asked.
“I can smell him on you.” He said, jealousy evident in his voice.
Heat flooded your face. If he could smell Baelor, then he could also -
“Yes, I can smell you too.” He snorted softly, though there was little amusement in his voice. “Did you enjoy the way he apologised to you, little dove?”
Swallowing loudly, you nodded. You knew by now lying to him was futile. “Yes, my prince. I enjoyed it very much.”
Something dark flickered across his features and for a moment he simply stared at you.
“He was… kind to me.” You said, though the both of you knew what you meant by kindness.
He scoffed loudly and rolled his eyes.
“Gods preserve me.” He said, no real malice in his words. “He always does this.”
“Does what?” You tilted your head to the side.
“Makes people believe he is the reasonable one.”
A faint smile tugged at the corner of your mouth. But before you could say anything else, his eyes narrowed and he leaned in.
“Did he taste you?”
“No…” Your voice trembled. “I mean yes… but not my blood.”
Maekar understood the meaning behind your words.
“Fucking hells Baelor.” He said gruffly. “Pretending restraint means he wants something less.”
He crowded into your space, his heavy frame pinning you against the stone as his rough fingers grabbed your chin. They were colder and rougher than Baelor’s.
“Lucky for you, little dove. I have no such qualms.”
You gasped as he leaned in and pressed his lips against yours hard, the kiss all consuming. Your hands found purchase on his shoulders, gripping the shirt tightly as he pressed his whole body against yours.
Gods, what would Baelor think of you if he saw you now?
But those thoughts perished as soon as Maekar tugged your lower lip between his teeth. It was as though he knew what you were thinking, as though he could hear your thoughts. You parted your lips instinctively and he slipped his tongue in, tasting every inch of you.
“My prince…” You moaned.
“No. Say my name.” He groaned against your lips. “I want to hear it.”
With his hand on your chin he moved your head to the side, opening your neck to him. He pressed open mouthed kisses along your jaw and neck, inhaling your scent before biting your neck lightly. His fangs did not puncture your skin, but their bite sent shivers up your spine and heat spread once more between your legs that day.
“Oh, Maekar-” You gasped.
“He was gentle with you, was he not?” He licked the spot. “Like you might shatter if he wanted you too much?”
“He was trying not to hurt-" You moaned as his lips were hot against your neck. “He was trying not to hurt or frighten me.”
Immediately he looked at you, thumb now pressing against your lower lip and dragging against it.
“We both know you can handle more.” He almost growled, pupils wide and pitch black against pale purple.
His free hand grabbed one of your breasts, squeezing it roughly through the fabric.
“Pretty, little dove. You can handle more, hmm?”
You nodded fervently. You could and you wanted more, so much more.
“I need words, girl.”
So like his brother, you thought before answering. “Yes, my- Maekar.”
A breathless laugh escaped him. Suddenly, he dropped to his knees, startling you, rough hands gathering your skirts and pushing them away.
“My brother may have kissed you first.” He grumbled, placing your leg over his shoulder.
Your breath hitched at the implication.
“But I will properly taste you first, little dove.”
He buried his nose between your legs, inhaling you deeply.
“Maekar, somebody could-” The words died in your throat as he pressed his tongue over your small clothes, all rational thoughts disappearing.
“Nobody will.” He said, as his fingers gripped your small clothes and tore them away from you. Cool air hit your exposed folds, your hands pressed against the stone wall.
“Nobody would fucking dare interrupt a prince’s meal.”
The first touch of his tongue against your folds was an icy shock to your core. He did not simply lick, he tasted you with a feral, starving hunger, tongue sweeping deep into you. The sensation was a raw claim that made your toes curl, as he latched on you like a starved man, like it was the last thing he would do.
Your hand threaded through his hair, gripping it tight.
“Fuck…” He groaned, palms firmly grasping your thighs. “You taste sweeter than blood.”
His lips sealed tightly around your clit, tongue swirling around it with a relentless pressure. A loud moan escaped you as he flicked it with a precision that pushed you to the edge of delirium. As his tongue continued to feast, he slid one finger inside you, quickly followed by a second. He did not ease them in, stretching your walls in such a way it made you gasp loudly. Every lap of his tongue and every thrust of his fingers felt like a brand, marking you as his in the most primal way possible.
“Is this better than your dreams, little dove?”
You bit your hand to stifle your moans. Your fingers dug into his hair, hips bucking uncontrollably against his face as you sought more of his tongue and fingers. The risk of being seen, the thought of someone finding you pinned and exposed, your thighs spread wide for him only added fuel to the fire, desire singing through your veins. The sheer audacity of his hunger for you, of his mouth and hands on you drove you over the precipice.
“Maekar! Please-” You cried out, voice breaking. “Oh Gods, please do not stop!”
He did not slow down, burying his face even deeper into your heat, his tongue pressing against your clit, shattering your remaining control. Your orgasm hit you like a physical blow, a violent spasm that started from within your core and that radiated outward, leaving you sobbing and trembling. Your walls clenching against his fingers tight, and you collapsed against the wall, breath coming in jagged and broken gasps.
Maekar did not pull away immediately, desiring to taste every drop of your release. He stayed there, face pressed firmly against your swollen folds, his tongue licking every drop while his fingers pressed inside your for a few more moments, feeling the aftershocks of your climax. His breathing was heavy and ragged against your inner thighs
When he finally stood, the transition was not as jarring as you expected. As your skirts fell back in place, he looked at you, disheveled and completely undone, with a flicker of predatory heat and pride.
“Gods…” He murmured. “You have no idea what you do to me… to us.”
Us… that word struck inside your head like a bell. Not a competition between brothers, but something shared.
You did not get a chance to give it more though as he kissed you fully, like a man furious with himself for wanting you. You groaned as you tasted yourself on his tongue.
Suddenly, his whole body stiffened and he pulled away from the kiss. His attention shifted from you to the expanse behind him. His jaw tightened, whatever warmth he had for you vanished from his features. You followed his gaze, which had turned predatory and alert.
Nothing moved, at least, no at first. Then you caught it, a flash of familiar pale hair disappearing.
Aerion… The realisation struck you instantly.
When Maekar looked back at you, his expression was hardened.
“Leave, now.” He ordered.
The command left little room for argument. You glanced once more towards the corridor, but nothing remained. Only shadows and stone. Only the unsettling feeling that someone, perhaps, had been watching.
Gripping your chin, he pulled your gaze towards him.
“Go back to the sheep.” He pressed a bruising kiss against your lips. “I will find you later.”
After your nod he finally released you and you slowly walked away, but not before turning back to look at him. Shivers danced along your spine as he watched you with an unreadable expression, before melting into the shadows.
The following days blurred into a strange sort of bliss. They became a dizzying cycle of devotion and desire that left you permanently flushed and aching, shaped by the paths the princes led you through.
In public, everything remained proper, the princes maintaining their dignity, and you maintaining yours.
Yet still, glances became conversations, and conversations became understanding. You began recognising the subtle ways they sought you out. Baelor’s gaze always finding yours across a crowded hall, Maekar appearing at your shoulder whenever another lord had your attention for too long. You found yourself smiling more often than you had in years.
The other guests noticed, but none dared say anything.
In private, however, you were their shared secret, for neither prince intended to surrender your company to the other easily. It was not quite a competition. Still, you were a prize they fought over not with words or swords, but with the relentless desire to make you fully theirs.
Whenever Baelor spent hours with you, Maekar always appeared to you before you retired for the day. And whenever Maekar disappeared with you into the dimly lit chambers, Baelor inevitably found a reason to request your presence in his solar later.
Neither acknowledged it or needed to, you understood. And, if you were honest with yourself, you enjoyed the attention far more than you should have. You succumbed to them both easily, like a touch-starved kitten.
Baelor was your sanctuary. In the quiet intimacy of his solar or the sweeping expanse of the balconies overlooking the sea, his touch was a slow burn. He would pull you close, his hands sliding beneath your skirts to find you already wet for him, his lips tracing the line of your throat while his fingers worked you into a frenzy. Promises of eternal devotion were whispered against your skin, his voice a low vibration that made your core tremble. He always treated your pleasure as though it was sacred ritual, and he was your most devoted follower.
Maekar was the storm. He would corner you in the darker corridors, the stone walls cold against your back while his body pressed into you. With your permission, he simply took. He would rip your bodice open just enough to suck your nipples raw, his teeth grazing the peaks until you whimpered. His tongue was cool against your folds and he enjoyed the risk of a servant or courtier turning the corner to find you pinned and panting. He always would intentionally slow his pace just to hear you beg for the release he so cruelly withheld.
You had offered to please them, to sink to your knees and take them both, but they refused. For now, they only sought your pleasure and your surrender. They wanted to see you undone by them.
The dreams still came, for Dragonstone seemed determined to haunt your sleep. Sometimes you dreamt of wandering endless halls, other times you dreamt of silver hair disappearing around distant corners. You also dreamt of mismatched eyes watching from the darkness.
Yet they no longer held the same power over you. Reality had become far more dangerous, for it wanted you, it sought you out, it looked at you with ancient eyes and spoke your name softly.
The castle no longer felt like a prison. For every hour you spent with the princes, every conversation and touch shared, every lingering glance exchanged, made one truth increasingly impossible to ignore.
You were no longer merely surviving Dragonstone.
You were beginning to belong there.
The storm outside drove the ladies indoors. Rain lashed mercilessly against the narrow windows as the hearth crackled in the chamber, shadows dancing across the walls as the wind howled. Since the princes were occupied elsewhere and Dragonstone was locked beneath endless rain, the ladies settled into restless company. Conversation had long since ceased to be about anything of importance, and gossip became the evening’s main entertainment.
You sat between Bethany and Elinor, your needle moving half-heartedly through cloth none particularly cared to finish.
Every few moments your thoughts wandered, and the thread remained suspended uselessly above the cloth. They went to Baelor, to his quiet smile, to the long conversations, to his hand around your neck, his chest firmly pressed against your back. They went to Maekar, to his scowl, to his mouth against yours in a rough kiss, as though he wished to devour the breath from your lungs.
Your needle slipped and you winced, causing Elinor to giggle.
“That is the third time it happened.”
She nudged your shoulder playfully with hers, her own hopeless embroidery in her hands.
Bethany glanced over.
“Are you feeling alright?”
“Yes… I am.” You said, quickly continuing your work. “I am simply… distracted.”
“That is indeed true, you have been distracted for the better part of an hour.” Elinor observed.
“I have not.” You retorted weakly.
“You have.”
Bethany’s mouth twitched, though she wisely kept her eyes upon her work. You tried to concentrate, threading the needle through the cloth. Elinor watched you for another few moments before speaking again.
“You have been different lately.”
Your fingers stilled as you looked at your friend.
“Different?” You repeated.
Tilting her head, Elinor studied you. “You look softer. Less afraid, perhaps.”
Blinking several times, you looked back at your embroidery. “I think I have finally grown accustomed to the castle.”
“Hmm.”
The sound contained considerably more skepticism than the word itself ought to have managed.
“I think she is right.” Bethany added. “You do seem less afraid than you were when we first arrived.”
“I was never afraid.”
Both girls simply looked at you, and you sighed in defeat.
“Very well, perhaps I was.”
Elinor smiled triumphantly at that. She returned to her embroidery, though her attention remained firmly upon you.
“But I must tell you, Bethany and I did wonder at first whether you were simply playing the game well.”
You glanced toward her.
“Winning the princes’ favour….” She continued. “The way any sensible hostage would.”
“There is no shame in that.” Bethany added, finally looking up. “It is what any of us would do in your place.”
You opened your mouth, ready to agree, but Elinor’s expression changed. Her teasing smile faded into something more knowing.
“But it is not that anymore, is it?”
Your hands went still and Elinor set her embroidery aside entirely.
“You do not merely pretend to enjoy their company anymore.” She said matter-of-factly. “You actually do. I have watched you for weeks.”
Warmth crept slowly up your neck, and you cleared your throat.
“I do not know what you mean.” You retorted.
“Oh, I think you do.” Her grin returned, slow and delighted. “You have grown fond of one of them.”
The words struck far too close to the truth and you looked away. Elinor’s eyes widened at that.
“Oh, you have.”
“I have not-”
“You have!”
Several of the other ladies glanced over, while Bethany’s expression had gone carefully still. Elinor leaned closer, lowering her voice as though she were about to reveal some grand political secret.
“Which one?”
You stared at her.
“Which prince has captured your heart?”
A few of the ladies had begun listening openly now.
“Elinor.” Bethany warned.
“What?” Elinor spread her hands innocently. “I am merely asking what everyone else is thinking.”
You looked around the chamber, noticing how several girls immediately pretended to be absorbed in their embroidery.
“Prince Baelor?” Elinor asked. “Or Prince Maekar?”
Your silence, and the colour climbing your cheeks doomed you entirely. The chamber erupted at once into a flurry of overlapping voices.
“I knew it!”
“It was hardly a secret-”
“They never stop staring at her!”
“Which one though?”
“Prince Maekar surely-”
“No, it is Prince Baelor-”
“But she always stared at Prince Maekar!”
“I disagree, it was the Crown Prince she was looking at.”
“She looks at both of them the same way, I have seen it-”
“Please stop.” You said mortified, to no effect whatsoever.
Unfortunately, nobody listened as delight and scandal moved through the room like a struck flint catching dry grass. The ladies continued talking over one another, excitement in the air, all of them thoroughly enjoying themselves at your expense.
Bethany pinched the bridge of her nose, before yelling: “Enough!”
That quieted most of the ladies present, yet Elinor continued to look at you. Her expression changed, disbelief replacing any amusement left.
“Oh.” She exclaimed.
You knew exactly what she was about to say, and you closed your eyes.
“What?” Bethany’s eyes flitted between you.
“It is not just one prince, is it?” Elinor asked, something sharper than teasing entering her voice as the realisation settled over her. “You care for both of them.”
Silence spread through the chamber, as the words landed like a blade. Bethany’s face went from carefully still to something close to horror, and nobody spoke, because nobody could think of anything to say that would make it less true.
Not even you, for denying it now, denying your true feelings after weeks of carrying them silently, would have been a lie too large. For Baelor soothed something restless within you, for Maekar awakened something more reckless. And increasingly, you found yourself unwilling to relinquish either.
“That is enough.” Bethany stood abruptly, the sharpness in her voice reverberating through the room.
She knelt before you, taking your hands firmly in hers, the fear in her eyes piercing through you. Whether it was for you or herself, you were not sure of.
“Listen to me carefully.” She begged. “You must stop this, stop before there is no turning back.”
You swallowed hard.
Too late, the thought arrived instantly. It is already too late, for they are dear to me.
“You do not understand… creatures like them-” She lowered her voice. “They are dangerous. Being a paramour to princes is dangerous enough, but Targaryens…”
Her hands tightened their grip around yours.
“Targaryens take what they want. When powerful men want something, people suffer. And when they tire of it, when they tire of you, people suffer even more!”
Your chest tightened as you looked at her.
Surely, the princes would not tire of you, you thought. Surely not, not the way they acted around you now.
Elinor shifted awkwardly, her earlier delight being drained away entirely now, replaced by something more solemn.
“I was only teasing her.”
“You should not.” Bethany looked at her. “Not about them. Never.”
Unease settled over the gathered ladies.
You knew you should feel guilty, that you should not foster such feelings for your captors, for the men who had brought you here to be judged. But instead you found yourself wondering what either of them would say, if they could hear this conversation now. Would they be amused? Would they mock you for it, later, in the dark of their chambers?
The thoughts frightened you more than you expected it to.
Before you could untangle it further or say anything, a voice drifted from the doorway.
“How touching.”
Prince Aerion leaned casually against the doorframe and every woman in the room froze at once. No one had heard him enter. Your blood turned to ice as his bright violet eyes swept across the chamber, lingering, studying, judging every single one of the ladies in turn the way a butcher considers cuts of meat.
The candles nearest the door guttered as he stepped inside, as though the flames themselves had recoiled. His gaze settled on you last, and stayed, a slow smirk curving his mouth.
“So much talk about my father and uncle.”
Nobody dared interrupt him.
“I did not realise they inspired such devotion.” He sneered.
He drifted further into the room, entirely unhurried, the way something predatory moves when it already knows it has all the time it needs.
Bethany rose slowly, dipping into a curtsy that did not quite hide the fear she felt.
“Your Grace.” She said. “Forgive us, we were speaking foolishly.”
“Yes. Foolish indeed.”
The room felt smaller with every step he took, the air becoming thinner and colder somehow, though the hearth still burned steadily. His gaze never left you.
“My uncle…” He said with contempt. “Always pretending to be so honourable, so noble.”
You instinctively stepped backward. Aerion noticed and his smile only widened.
“My father, pretending to be so good.” His eyes dragged slowly down your frame and back up. “And you…”
“Your Grace-” You tried. “Prince Aerion, you must understand-”
“You want both of them.” He said it like an accusation, like it was something filthy. “How greedy of you.”
“Your Grace, it was only harmless gossip.” Bethany tried to regain control of the situation.
But Aerion ignored her entirely. His attention remained fixed on you, and every instinct in your body screamed a single word.
Danger.
“You make them weak, did you know that?” He asked.
Aerion’s voice had changed. The mocking edge remained, but it had dropped into something quieter, almost conversational. A chill travelled the length of your spine.
“What?” You gasped.
“You heard me.” His eyes remained fixed upon you.
“I could never-” Your voice caught. “How could I even-”
“You have.” The words came with quiet certainty.
“I wonder which one will destroy the other first.” He continued, a cruel smile pulling at his mouth. “All over a lowborn, Blackfyre bitch like you.”
The world seemed to stop, and for a moment you could neither move nor speak. The insult barely registered, because it was the accusation beneath it that left you frozen. The suggestion that whatever had begun between you and the princes could become a weapon against them.
Beside you, Elinor had gone deathly still.
“We-” Bethany’s voice trembled. “Elinor was only jesting.”
Your heart dropped into your stomach as you turned towards her. You could hardly believe she had said it. You knew she was frightened, you could see it plainly now in the rigid set of her shoulders and the colour that was drained from her face.
But that is no excuse! Your thoughts were loud.
But Aerion did not care about fear, his gaze shifting slowly and hungrily first to Bethany, then to Elinor.
The latter was not looking at Aerion, but stared at Bethany instead. There was something in her expression that you had never seen before. Hurt and betrayal raced behind her eyes. The dawning realisation that Bethany’s attempt to save you placed her in the line of fire instead.
“No.” The word left you before you could think.
You stepped forward, placing yourself between Aerion’s gaze and Elinor.
“Bethany did not mean anything by it, and neither did Elinor. They were frightened, and they were speaking carelessly.”
Your voice shook, but you forced yourself to continue.
“It was my fault. I should have stopped them, stopped them from jesting.”
Aerion regarded you in silence, then his sneer returned.
“You do not jest about Targaryen honour.”
The chamber fell utterly silent, even the storm outside seemed distant now. For the first time you understood that whatever game you thought you were playing at Dragonstone had never belonged to you at all.
Then Aerion moved. He was too fast, monstrously fast, faster than anything with a human shape had any right to move. Elinor barely had time to gasp, let alone scream, before he seized her by the throat, her feet leaving the floor entirely.
“No!” You screamed, lurching towards him. “Your grace, please do not harm her. She is innocent!”
He looked directly at you, and something ancient and starving moved behind his eyes.
“No Blackfyre supporter is innocent.”
He smiled, wide and wicked, fangs catching the firelight.
The sound that followed immediately seemed impossibly loud, a single final crack that you would hear again in your dreams for months afterwards.
The room dissolved into panic as women screamed, fleeing towards the door in a tangle of limbs and terror. You watched as Elinor’s body folded and collapsed to the stone floor, already still in a way that living things never were, while Bethany’s scream tore through the chamber as she threw herself down beside her. You could not breathe, you could not think as blood roared so loudly in your ears that the world seemed to tilt sideways around it. Your throat felt impossibly tight, and all you could do was only stare.
Aerion turned towards you, hatred burning openly in his eyes and replacing whatever amusement had lived in his face a moment before.
“You see?” He asked, stalking closer, each step unhurried. “You Blackfyre whore will end up just like her after they are done with you.”
You shook your head, though the words came out barely above a whisper.
“No, they would not.”
“How do you know?” Aerion sneered, closing the last of the distance between you in a single stride. “How do you know that once my uncle and father tire of you, this will not happen to you as well?”
Tears streamed freely down your face now, your whole body trembling.
“I do not believe you.” You voice cracked. “They would not do this to me.”
His hand fisted in your hair, wrenching your head back, baring the long line of your throat to him.
“Pathetic whore.”
You saw his eyes brighten to something almost luminous, fangs lengthening as he leaned in close enough that you could feel his breath against your skin.
Then another voice tore through the chamber, loud enough to shake dust from the rafters.
“AERION!”
Maekar did not walk into the room. He materialised from the shadows, the space between one heartbeat and the next folding shut around him. Fury blazed in his violet eyes as he looked upon his son, and for one strange, dizzying moment, you felt nothing but relief at the sight of him. A relief so total it nearly buckled your knees.
“Let her go.” He growled.
“Father-”
“LET HER GO!”
Aerion snarled and shoved you to the ground rather than release you gently, your palms scraping hard against stone.
“You have become pathetic, father. You think to supplant mother with her?”
“Watch how you speak to me, boy. You know nothing.”
“I should have killed her instead.” Aerion’s eyes darkened.
Maekar lunged at him without an ounce of hesitation. The force of the impact sent Aerion crashing clear across the chamber and into the stone wall hard enough to crack it, dust and shattered rock raining down. Bethany curled her body over Elinor’s as though she could still shield her from anything, sobbing loudly. You watched father and son collide again and again, faster than your eyes could properly follow, blurs of violence and silver hair and torn cloth.
“Idiot!” Maekar shouted. “What were you thinking?”
And then another figure appeared.
Baelor.
You never saw him cross the room. One moment he stood somewhere far across the chamber; the next he knelt beside you, calling your name, his voice cutting through the ringing chaos in your skull like the only true thing left in the world.
You stumbled toward him, and his arms closed around you immediately, pulling you flush against his chest. One hand cradled the back of your head while the other wrapped firm around your waist. He shielded you from the violence unfolding around the room, saving you from a sight you had already seen too much of.
“It is alright.” His voice cut through the chaos, an anchor amidst the storm. “I have you, dōna riña.”
Your hands clenched desperately in the fabric of his doublet, your face buried in the crook of his neck, breathing in the cold and familiar scent of him, as though it alone could hold the world together.
“Please… please do not leave me.” The words escaped before you could stop them, small and broken.
Something shifted in his expression, flashes of grief, guilt, something old and aching moving through it all at once. His hand tightened against your hair.
“Never.” He promised, low and certain. “I will never leave you.”
You did not see the look Maekar gave you as he finally dragged a snarling, bloodied Aerion from the room. You did not see the fear, or the darkness gathering behind his eyes, or the way his gaze lingered on you a moment too long before he forced himself to turn away.
Nor did you see Bethany, still kneeling on the cold stone beside Elinor cradling her, tears cutting clean paths through her cheeks, lifting her head to look at you.
Her expression held far more than grief, for there was blame swirling behind her eyes.
Hi! I've been loving your fics. For the drabbles, could I request a fluffy modern!Baelor with the prompt "realizing how domestic their relationship has become"? The reader meets little Egg without knowing he's a Targaryen, and he basically adopts her like a stray cat until they're close friends, with Baelor often stopping by to pick him up. He keeps coming back simply because he enjoys her company, and before they realize it they've settled into an oddly domestic routine, acting like an old married couple without ever acknowledging it. Then Egg accidentally lets slip that she's had a crush on Baelor for years and tells him to open the nightstand drawer, where he finds a torn-out page from an old business magazine with his photo that she's kept all this time.
A/N: anon I’m so sorry, you sent this in early on during the prompt/drabble requests and it’s sat here because I was just struggling with figuring out egg/reader/Baelor dynamic. I did get stroke of inspiration for it the other day so hopefully you won’t mind if I make reader Eggs nanny!!!
Eyes for you
Modern Baelor Targaryen x F!Nanny!Reader
Prompt: realizing how domestic their relationship has become/reveal of feeling.
WC:1k
”why are you being so quiet?” You looked over at Egg who was in the front passenger seat. Silently riding along and just gripping his bookbag. Which was odd for him. He normally was chatting your blood ear off and wiggling around in his seat.
“What? Am not!” He defended and you rolled your eyes some.
“yes, you are…exceptionally strange actually. I’m sure your uncle will say the same thing I am”. You mutter and flip your indicator on as you turn into his uncle Baelors large driveway. Egg had made a bit of a mess at one of Baelors large work parties and as punishment his father wanted him to go to Baelors house every morning before school and do some sort of chore for him.
It was all a bit stupid but you suppose he had attempted other forms of punishment with his older children over the years and those hadn’t worked so maybe this would? You didn’t mind much, you already had to take Egg to school every morning so all this meant was that you had to get up a hour earlier…and have coffee with Baelor…though that was certainly not something that ate away at you.
“gods-“ you had barely put the car properly in park before Aegon was unlocking the door and dashing to head inside. You sighed as you got out, just in time to see him shove his bag into Baelors stomach before continuing through the house and up the stairs rapidly so he could get the vacuuming done. Baelor was shaking his head, half shocked by the boys behavior but also somewhat amused.
“has he been so rushed all morning?” He questions and you laughed warmly nodding up at him as you came uk the front steps.
“very, must be getting some sort of fun thing at school, he was pratically pulling me out of bloody bed this morning.” You were a live in nanny and so it wasn’t odd for egg to bang on your door to wake you up but today he’d been messing with the stuff on your vanity when you woke.
“then you need coffee more than normal i imagine, come in.” He held the door open for you and you smiled, charmed, and gladly slipped in to the kitchen. Be already had a muffin out for you. He went and got them fresh every morning and always picked up a blueberry one…it was specifically selected for you as he did not enjoy the taste.
“yes, perhaps two cups.” You laughed and relieved the older man’s arm of Eggs bookbag. You frowned a bit seeing the wide pocket. There was some paper rolled up there where his water bottle should be.
“two cups it is,” Baelor hummed a bit as he made you two mugs, just as promised. “Sugar?” He asked and when you didn’t responded he turned around to look at you. His brow raising as you unrolled the paper and then went so red.
“what? Some failing grade?” The man chuckled and you went pale as soon as he spoke, mind spinning and eyes feeling unfocused. You needed to crumble the paper up and shove it in the bin, find egg and have a very big chat about snooping. Baelor was quicker than your frozen mind thought because he was putting the cups down and rushing over because his concern was growing rapidly the longer you were fumbling to find words.
“let me see it-“ his hand touched your shoulder and that alone made you curl in on yourself more. His touch was thrilling and far to much for you to experience and remain contained.
“No. It’s stupid…Wait Don’t Baelor-“ you grew frantic when his hand grabbed the paper because it was a magazine. One you had seen on Maekar’s front office coffee table a few years back. Baelor had been on the front over of it, the text was all about being being a prestigious business man but yuh had cared primarily about the front image. Him in a suit, collar ever so slightly open, his hair graying and smile warm…little crows feet spreading out from the corner of his eyes. You’d run your finger over that spot on the page so much that the glossy print had gone matte there.
“I-“ you swallowed and stared at your feet. “I’ll go get egg and leave.” You whispered, humiliation laced in your voice. There were little hearts drawn around him with a sharpie…it was all so obvious your fucking embarrassing crush.
“Egg!” Baelor shouted, you were surprised he wasn’t stumbling back away from you because of how freakish this reveal was. His brothers nanny secretly fancying him for the past few years? You looked like a pathetic stalker!
“uncle?” Egg thumped down the stairs in a rush with a giddy little smirk on his face. You wanted to strangle him a bit. The nosy little fucker!
“Where did you come upon this?” Baelor’s hand had still not left your back, finger moving ever so slightly in a soothing motion against your shoulder blade. “Do not lie.” He warned because he saw egg realize in this moment that his fun was not amusing to everybody else.
“her vanity drawer…”
Your cheeks flamed “we had discussed you going through my things-“
“your dad is going to hear that you’ve been snooping around, and that you disregard somebody privacy. You would not like it if we all dug through your room. Would you?”
“no but-i thought you’d want to see it.” Egg had been being messy but he has also sort of been playing matchmaker. He saw you two every morning, having coffee and muffins and giggling despite the hour. He saw how at eased and unrestrained his uncle seemed around you.
“go, finish the bedrooms and you can do the stairs as well with the vacuum.” He sighed and waited until egg had hurried off to complete the additional chores to put the magazine down.
“I’m sorry-“ you started but he just moved one of the coffee cups closer, using the magazine as a coaster.
“don’t apologize,” his hand rubbed up and down now and you glanced to him. “It’s charming.” He admitted and pulled his own cup to his lips smirking a bit. “Though I don’t think it’s all that fair that you’ve had this nice photo of me and I’ve nothing of you.”
Your eyes widened and your lip got caught under your upper teeth as a small shocked chuckle came out.
“you’d want a photo of me?” He’s blinking.
“Of the prettiest woman I’ve seen in years? How couldn’t I?”
You supposed egg deserved a cold shoulder from you for a while but later…after he’d squirmed enough you would have to thank him.
Summary: A young noblewoman, bound for the Red Keep, navigates her father’s ambitions and the suffocating rituals of courtly life, Though outwardly obedient, she quietly schemes to use marriage and circumstance as a means to claim her own power. Will Baelor Targaryen be that man?
A/N - Hope yall like it!!
Part 1
The man now standing before my eyes, whose features were those of Baelor Targaryen, eldest son of King Daeron II Targaryen, was looking at me in the way a butcher might look at his disgusting pig, aware that his own life would come to an end at his hands. From when I was a child, I had been told my role as a woman and as a princess was to get married and to give birth to his children, raising them as if they had no father should I ever have a little girl; and with regard to his sons, they were to be brought up as though the entire region had given him birth.
Even though neither of my parents had ever spoken about my betrothal, I knew the time was approaching, because I could feel the passage of time as my body began to change and I realised that I was no longer the little girl I had once been but had become a lady. Yet I was entirely content with this arrangement, since I had never loved and never would, unless I was informed that there was to be a ball in the Great Hall of the Red Keep, at which point I knew that something life-changing was going to happen.
“Mind that, Ashara, when you give them the sign—do you understand?”
My Septa whispered in my ear as my maid wrapped me in my long inner tunic. Her breath felt warm against my cold ears, which had carried secrets since I was born.
“ Septa Roelle, I shall employ my fan, and there I will appear a perfect and innocent princess.”
I speak without turning my head to face her, keeping my gaze forward as my maid wraps me tightly in a corset that leaves me breathless, shaping my body into the vision those men desire, their ideal lady. Septa Roelle withdraws, disappointment plain in her posture when I refuse to play along with her whispering games. Still, I suspect my maid has heard far worse than my subtle rebellion against a future husband who would control every aspect of my life.
“Then vouchsafe me thy knowledge, and enlighten my understanding therewith.”
Her words grate on me, especially as my maid struggles with the impossible task of reshaping my body with the corset, a cruel instrument of suffering for women like me.
“To set the handle to the lips means 'Kiss me,' and to place it on the left ear signifies 'I wish to be rid of thee,' if the man is, well, less than worthy of my time or beauty.”
I murmur the last part quietly, perhaps softer than I intend, while my maid lets out a small laugh and finishes dressing me in my bodice and walking gown. Her name is a secret I keep, for her husband is a wretch who poisoned her happiness until she found refuge here; I promised her my silence. She finds amusement where Septa Roelle does not, but that makes her laughter all the more precious.
"It will take seven to ten days to reach the Red Keep, as fortune allows, according to your brother and your father. Prince Maron Martell of Dorne will accompany us," my Septa announces, her tone resolute.
Whenever my father is mentioned, the air shifts; it always does. He is determined to see me kneel or rise as he wishes, and neither my maid nor my Septa can stop him.
"I have packed your garments in your traveling bag, my princess," my maid whispers, her eyes briefly meeting my Septa's. "Please, heed your Septa's counsel to fulfill your purpose."
They know, as they have known since the day of my birth, that I am determined to marry a wealthy man, no matter what kind of rat he may be, and become what my father wants: a queen. And if Baelor Targaryen can be that man, I will do anything to become what he wishes of a woman, even if I have to face those eyes head on.
One only knows how to take, the other refuses to let you go. One is a stranger in your home, while another doesn't know you exist at all. Sometimes love isn't enough.
content: 18+ | modern au | smut | angst | fluff | manipulation | yearning | age gap | toxic marriage | divorce | pregnancy | separation | finding your way back to each other | two people who've grown apart | midlife crisis | lovers to enemies | friends to lovers | verbal arguments | co-parenting
• Aerion / This Time Is The Last Time
• We Were Careful— coming soon
• Baelor / Best Thing You Never Had — coming soon
• Gwayne / Maybe You Are Better As Friends — coming soon
• Maekar / No One Stays The Same Forever — coming soon
taglist — comment below to be added to the taglist.
a/n: I kinda want them all to be a mix of traditional fic writing and like texts/emails. I feel like none of these will or really should be a one shot. Idk, it’ll be fun. Lmk what you think
reader wanting to suck dagliesh off, but he’s like “you don’t have to worry about me.” and she’s like “i want to, please.”
he lets her do it and almost cums immediately at the sight of her taking his full length, especially the way that she moans when it hits the back of her throat.
i love that man, ugh
MDNI 18+ oral (m!receiving)
Adam Dalgliesh x fem!reader
Adam doesn't see how heaven could be better than this, any eternal salvation seemed bland in comparison to the sin of your mouth. He had tried to deter you, but you had assured him that you had wanted too.
And he was so so glad that you had wanted to, as your mouth moved up and down his length, your cheeks hollowing out as the sloppy sound met the air.
He let out a groan as you moved further down your nose now pressed firmly against the trail of hair leading down to his groan, "You are doing so good," he moaned, his hand taggling into your hair.
You looked up at him through your lashes and he almost spent there and then. You were temptation reborn, and he could understand now how lesser men fell to the devil's feet, because he would do anything to keep this feeling coursing through him. To keep you feeling this way.
Your legs pressed together as you moaned around his cock, sending a vibration straight through him, causing his eyes to clamp shut. That was his undoing. The way you took personal enjoyment with the pleasure you were bringing him.
He let out a low groan as ropes of cum shot out his tip and down your throat. You held his gaze as you swallowed it all, slowly pulling off of him as he let out ragged gasps trying to contain himself.
He thought he had almost had himself composed, but then you smiled up at him. Proud, and it caused the heat that he felt moments ago to fill his veins once more.
"You got more in you old man?" you asked, tilting your head.
"I'll manage," he assured you, reaching down to pull you to your feet causing you to smirk, knowing the night was far from over.
Summary: The irony of you writing smutty scenes in the Priest's Cottage is not wasted on Adam.
Prequel to:
A Beautiful Day To Die - Adam reflects on his reasons to live when he is faced with certain death.
The Thing That Makes Your Heart Race (NSFW) - Adam surprises himself with an answer to an unexpected question.
Boudoir Shots (NSFWish) - Adam finds you've left a surprise for him on his pillow.
Masks (NSFW) - Adam has never understood the appeal of masks... until now.
The year after the death of his wife and child, Adam is in a depression.
He smokes too much, drinks too much and he doesn’t write. That’s the worst part, he thinks. The fact his unable to channel his grief into words, to dispel the darkness that sits in his head, seeping through his body making every day such a damn struggle.
He ignores calls from his publisher, works overtime travelling the country because he can’t stand the thought of being alone in the house that represents the life the three of them were supposed to have.
By the time Michael writes him that letter offering to stay in Dorset, he’s on the cusp of a breakdown. He knows he can’t keep up with the pace he’s set for himself, that he needs to start making changes. It’s why he takes the holiday in the first place.
And then tragedy strikes, his old friend passes away in his armchair, and he finds himself marooned in more grief, more misery.
“I know it doesn’t fix things.” You say as you set a mug down in front of him at the kitchen table in the Priest’s Cottage that that the two of you are now occupying. You’d already been in residence when he’d arrived and apparently there’s no other rooms available in Toynton Grange other than the one upstairs across the hall from yours. All outsiders lumped together, he supposes, as he thinks of the immense satisfaction brother Antsey took in delivering the news. “But I find the world’s woes don’t seem as sharp with a nice cup of tea.”
He wraps his hands around the mug, warming them before he rises it to his lips. It’s a builder’s brew, plenty of sugar heaped in to ward off the shock. You’ve been through this before, he realises.
“Thank you.” His voice doesn’t sound like his own, it’s a raw rasp as he sips from the mug, allowing the heat to radiate through the numbness. “Antsey said you were writer…”
“Romance.” You say, raising your eyebrows scandalously as you tip your head towards the bottle green typewriter with a piece of paper sticking out of the top. “Think contemporary bodice rippers.”
Sex, he summarises. You write about sex, right here, inside the Priest’s Cottage surrounded by an ungodly amount of religious memorabilia.
He begins to laugh, the tickle starting to low in his chest as the irony of the situation takes him. “I’m sorry.” He states, setting his mug back down on the table as it turns into hysterics. “It’s just…” he gestures at the crucifix on the wall. Jesus literally staring down over your shoulder as you craft your naughty little scenes.
His eyes are stinging, his ribs hurt and it’s almost impossible to suck in a breath. Your palm comes to rest on his shoulder, squeezing it and he uses the back of his wrist to wipe the tears from his eyes as he looks up at you. He didn’t notice it before, but you are mesmerising, classic English features and a smile that rivals the sun that filters in through the open window.
“I haven’t laughed like that in a long time.” He confesses as you withdraw, picking up your own cup of tea.
“I could tell.” You remark over your mug as you drink from it. “I hear you’re a writer yourself?”
“Poetry.” He submits, sagging into his chair, his chest feeling lighter for the first time in what seems an age. “Although I’m not much of a poet at the moment. Writer’s block…”
He doesn’t say more. He doesn’t want to discuss the reality of what brought him here although he’s sure you’ve heard the rumours.
“Sometimes a change of scenery helps.” Your head turns towards the window, your gaze fixed on a robin bobbing up and down the branches of the apple tree outside. “Sometimes it’s about breaking old habits, finding inspiration in new material.”
That night, after dinner, he does find inspiration when you leave one of your books on the sideboard in the living room after retiring to bed. He’s never read a ‘bodice ripper’ before. He usually prides himself as being a connoisseur of highbrow literature, but he’s intrigued by your work, by you.
He takes it to his room with him and finds himself so immersed in the damn thing that he doesn’t realise he’s almost finished it until the dawn light cascades through the gap in the heavy curtains. The tales you weave, they’re not traditional love stories, or smutty little numbers. They’re clever, insightful, overtly feminist in all the right ways.
When he reaches the sex scene, he intends to skip over it but then something happens, something he’s not experienced throughout the entire year since his wife passed.
He gets hard, very hard.
He tries to will it away but it throbs uncomfortably within in the confines of his pyjamas, straining at the fabric. The cotton sticks to the tip, pre-cum leaking from the slit as his eyes flick over the words on the page. Before he knows what he’s doing, his hand is winding south, slipping underneath the elastic waistband of his pyjamas, fingers wrapping around the girth. He bites his lower lip, supressing a moan as the first tug.
It’s been an age since he’s experienced any form pleasure and his poor body craves it like a man dying of thirst. His grip on the book tightens as he thrusts into his fist, the words conjuring up images of the two of you in all manner of filthy situations.
His mouth on your nipples, licking, biting, sucking as you ride his thigh like a stallion.
His face pressed between your legs, licking up that sweet nectar that pours onto his tongue as he makes you come.
His cock buried deep as he takes you in the kitchen, the sink rattling with very thrust, Jesus watching over his shoulder this time.
He cries out your name as he climaxes, spilling into his fist with white, hot streaks that stain the inside of his pyjamas. He collapses into his pillow as the dawn shines through the book still clasped in his hand as he slips away into asleep.
He can barely look at you when he comes down for breakfast the next morning. There’s already a mug of tea on the table waiting for him, a few slices of burnt toast and jam residing on a plate. A testament to your domesticity.
“You enjoyed the book then.” You comment wryly as you lean against the counter in a white t-shirt and yellow wide legged pyjama bottoms with a positively bohemian pattern stitched into them. He chokes on his toast, a pink flush creeping across his cheeks as he picks up the tea to wash down the crumbs stuck in his throat. “I noticed it wasn’t on the sideboard this morning.”
“Yes, I did.” He finds himself saying, his gaze straying to the kitchen sink, his head full of the rattle it made when he took you on the counter alongside it in his fantasy. “I enjoyed it very much.”
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i finished dalgliesh awhile back and hes so !! i love him omgg. saw that youre writing for him and i was thinking maybe smth soft, like a relatively new relationship and he's still getting used to loving and being loved again. maybe doing smth like laying in bed or cooking or just domestic bc he deserves it <3
OMG YESSSS more soft Adam means more soft meee!! i love him so bad he’s my husband frfr, thank you so much for asking!!
cw: f! reader, older man x younger woman, eludes to smut, FLUFF !! , like tooth rotting fluff, adam is head over heels for reader he just doesn’t know how to admit it
word count: 1.1k
author’s note: lowkey not my best work, but alas i wrote it !! my mental health hasn’t been the best as of late but i’m slowly getting out of this rut and back into my creative groove ( i blame working in customer service causing my mood to tank, as well as working mostly night shifts sigh). EITHER WAY I HOPE YOU GUYS ENJOYYYY MWAHH
A brief moment int the lives of a fresh relationship that Adam doesn’t find himself worthy of.
𝑳𝑬𝑻 𝑴𝑬 𝑩𝑬 𝒀𝑶𝑼𝑹 𝑭𝑶𝑶𝑳 .ᐟ
Warm rays of early morning sunlight washed through the loose curtains of the bedroom, casting everything it touched in an ethereal glow. Yet neither body stirred amongst the sheets, each a stagnant shell of sleep and solitude.
Adam laid on his back, chest bare, a soft splattering of hair decorating his slightly tanned skin. His hair was in disarray, proof of the actions that happened the night prior- he had finally come home from a rather rough case, and you were staying in his apartment for the time being while yours was under maintenance. One glass of wine turned to two, and the next thing he knew you were both a tangle of limbs between his sheets, longing kisses and heated bodies wrapped around each other.
You had been dating Adam for almost a year now- 10 months to be exact, but you weren’t counting. After meeting at a formal dinner with the higher ups, your paths continued to cross- with you being a reporter/journalist and him being a Commander in the Yard, you often were sent out to collect any of the latest gossip that was circling around his current cases. He even humored you once for an interview when he was still Detective Chief Inspector, enamored by the easy flow of conversation that fell between you both.
He told himself he wouldn’t go any further than friendly conversation, you were half his age, at least in your mid-twenties, and he wasn’t in the romance market at the time. Oh, what a fool he was. Now here he lay, turning to his side to look at your soft resting face, cheek squished against the feather down pillow, hair a tangled mess, yet Adam only saw his entire world laying right across from him.
Your eyes fluttered open for a moment before scrunching closed again, a groan of disapproval at the soft light pouring into the room, burying your nose into the soft pillow still tainted with the smell of sweat and the underlying tones of Adam’s clean natural smell. He chuckled softly beside you, shuffling closer as his large hand splayed across your back, peppering kisses along your temple and cheek before he buried his nose against the pulse point of your neck, which was littered with already fading bites he left the night prior.
“What time is it?”
“Just half past 7, love. No need to rush waking, I’m not entirely awake myself.”
His rough morning voice felt like velvet in your ears, the brush of his stubble against your neck further waking you up as your arms circled around his exposed shoulders, hands extended across the expanse of exposed skin. He pressed a quick kiss to your pulse point before pulling back, his nose bumping against yours, forehead just a few inches away from yours as your eyes met, his filled with nothing but warmth and care. His lips ghosted over yours momentarily before they were sealed against yours, the steady early morning rhythm taking you both as he kissed you before pulling away, resting his forehead against yours once again. Warm breath wafted over your lips as he let out a content sigh, his blue eyes shut momentarily before opening once again to lock onto yours.
“What? You’re looking at me funny!”
“What you call funny I call the look of longing. You’re so beautiful in this morning light, my dear.”
“I look like a rat's nest, but thank you, sweetheart. I missed you when you were away.”
“I can tell, I have the marks on my back to prove it.”
This remark earned him a heavy belly laugh from you, turning over onto your back with a hand pressed against his bare chest. Your shoulders shook with the aftershocks of dying laughter, your head turning to the side to lock your gaze with his once more. You began to lift yourself up from bed, the urge to stretch your sore, unused muscles growing stronger by the minute until you felt his arms encircle around your waist.
“And where are you going?”
“The bathroom? I’m sure my breath smells less than pleasant by now, and I’d love some breakfast.”
Adam hummed softly, sitting up behind you before placing chaste kisses spanning from one shoulder to the other before releasing you from his hold. You began your trek to the conjoined bathroom- pulling on your silk night gown Adam bought for you to keep at his downtown apartment for whenever you stayed over. Adam lugged himself up from the bed, running his hands over his face twice and once through his hair before he stood in all his bare glory. Red streaks marked his back from where your nails dug into him the night prior, soon covered by the soft cotton of his deep blue robe, throwing on a pair of loose boxers as he moved to join you in the bathroom. The pair of you brushed your teeth in comfortable silence, your eyes half closed as you sloshed mouthwash around before spitting it into the sink. Adam was still brushing his teeth as you made your swift exit, placing a kiss against his cheek and the side of his nose before making your way towards the kitchen.
The smell of toast and bacon met Adam once he entered the kitchen, your figure dancing between the fridge and the stove, the sonnet of the kettle going off drawing your attention from the sizzling meats in the cast iron pan as you came to turn the heat down on the stove eye where the kettle sat. Your head turned towards Adam for a moment, a quick, easy smile blessing him once more this cozy morning before turning back to the fridge as you began your search for the carton of eggs that sat just inside the door. Adam moved to situate himself beside you, reaching into the cupboard for two mugs, the ceramic clinking together before they were sat on the polished wood, his aged hands reaching for two tea bags, draping them into the cups before moving to pour the hot water into them.
These were the mornings that Adam hadn’t had the luxury to experience in the longest time. He was never in the market to be in a relationship once again- let alone with someone younger than him. Yet, whenever he looks at you, the mess of hair now tied up into a haphazard bun, robe pulled taut against your stomach, and the sunlight washing in through the kitchen windows, he could’ve sworn he had died and was granted entry into Heaven. And he wouldn’t change it at all- even if that meant he would have to depart from you eventually, back to the grind of high risk cases and deadlines that ate at his heels each time his publisher wanted to meet for a quick lunch before bearing down on his need to tour due to the growing popularity of his recent book, which was full of sonnets of love and hope rather than the melancholy of his usual haunt.
content: Adam has been gone for days, and finally returns home, to you.
words: 2.2k
cw: MDNI 18+, p in v, oral (f receiving), fingering, unprotected sex, cream pie, established relationship, porn with little plot.
in the same universe as this, but can be read as standalone.
Adam was tired, limb aching, eyes half shut, and mind hazy tired as he fumbled with his keys, trying to open the door. He had been away for close to five days and it was starting to take a toll on him.
Five days of nonstop stress trying to solve a case.
Five days of staring at evidence rather than something he would enjoy.
Five days without you, which was definitely the worst. He had grown accustomed to you, even if the pair of you did not live together yet. You had a key to his apartment, and you would often spend more time there then not, and when you did not spend the night he would at least have the chance to call you, which had not been a luxury these last few days.
Since your first date you had not spent more than two days without seeing the other. He felt like a young boy in love again, especially when you would make a comment and it would have the tip of his ears turn red and a blush spread across his cheeks. He would have to call you as soon as he made his way inside. Perhaps you would even come over if he was lucky enough.
The man paused slightly as he turned the knob now hearing music filter through the air. He almost thought it was his mind playing tricks on him until he finally pushed the door open, and the sound grew louder.
He paused slightly, as his eyes found the form in the kitchen dancing slightly as they moved from the stove to the counter not even turning to acknowledge him. You were in your own little world as you appeared to be scooping something onto a plate. His eyes moved over your form to a t-shirt that he was almost positive was his and a pair of cotton shorts, moving back and forth with your hips.
You were comfortable, in not only his clothing, but in his house. You had made yourself at home in his life and would not have traded it for anything. He smiled fondly at the sight, hanging his jacket on the coat rack, kicking his shoes off as he made his way toward you. His arms moved, wrapping around you, causing you to flinch slightly. You instantly relaxed at the familiarity as you turned glancing up at him.
“I did not hear you come in,” you said.
He pressed his face to the side of your head, breathing you in as he felt the tiredness that gnawed on his bones moments ago fading rapidly as he held you in his embrace for the first time in days, “I could tell.”
You began to sway lightly, and he followed your movements causing you to chuckle. He pulled away from you as he took your hand in his own, spinning you slightly as you continued to move toward the music dancing around the kitchen slowly. He smiled slightly as your laugh filled the air alongside the tune, as he spun you and pulled you back toward his chest every so often.
“You look tired,” you pointed out, your fingers lightly gazing at the dark circles that rested around his beautiful eyes.
He hummed, reaching up pulling your hand from his face pressing a kiss to your knuckles, then your wrist as he glanced toward you. His own hands moved cupping the side of your face, “I missed you,” he confessed, lowly as if he was scared you would hear the words.
You only smiled at him, “I missed you too,” you assured him, hoping to ease the quiet doubt you knew always surrounded his mind. Before he had a chance to answer or perhaps think any longer you moved forward pressing your lips to his.
His hands immediately moved, gripping your waist as your arms draped over his shoulder pulling him closer. The kiss started innocently until you were gently nipping his bottom lip asking for entry into his mouth to which he gave you without any hesitation. Much like he did with most things. If you asked, you were granted it. He would give you the world. If it was in his power to grant any wish that came it was going to happen.
Your hand moved to his vest, fingers moving with practiced ease as you undid each button pushing it from his shoulder. He let out a sigh of relief as you pulled his dress shirt free as if you were finally erasing the stress from the last few days with each button. Your hands moved quickly as you finally achieved what you wanted and your nails raked against his stomach causing him to shudder slightly.
He knew where this was going, and that was something he very much wanted. To taste you, to feel you, to have your hands ease the tension in his bones, but even then in his core he was still a gentleman. He pulled away for a moment, “Dinner will get cold,” he muttered, but his voice lacked any real conviction.
“Let it. You are finally home and I have missed you.”
He nodded, reconnecting your lips as he now led you back toward the counter, he pulled away for a moment pulling your t-shirt from your body, his mouth began to water slightly as he was blessed with the sight of your bare chest.
His hands moved under the curve of your ass as he lifted you, placing you atop the counter. He made his home in between your legs as his mouth reclaimed yours, his hand moved to palm your breasts. He groaned in your mouth as his fingers brushed against your hardened peaks.
He kissed his way down your neck to the valley of your breasts muttering a quiet, “I am home.” or “I have missed you,” with every time his mouth met flesh. He continued his path downwards, his finger playing with your breast, causing you to let out the occasional breathing moan as you watched him.
His head rested in your lap as he began to kiss your thighs, his free hand curling around the waist band of your shorts. He muttered something that sounded vaguely like “Lift,” but he would not remove his move from your skin so you were unsure.
Nonetheless you lifted your hips and that seemed to be what he wanted as he pulled your shorts and panties free. He groaned at the sight of your glistening womanhood causing you to smirk as you spread your legs wider for him, watching him in anticipation.
“I have missed you, pretty girl,” he groaned, and suddenly you were unaware if he was talking to you or your cunt.
He moved forward his tongue darting between your folds causing your head to tilt back slightly, your hands moving to grip his dark hair. He knelt between your thighs allowing him the small sense of heaven that he still believed in. The one that he knew without hesitation as he worshiped you.
His mouth attached itself to your swollen pearl as his fingers moved up your thigh before you could even process where they were headed; they were already inside you. “Fuck Adam don’t stop,” you begged as he moved them in and out, curling slightly as your gumming walls adjusted to him.
He muttered something, but it was completely muffled and your brian was too foggy from the orgasm quickly approaching to make out what he said. He devoured you as if it was his last meal, and he was positive if it was he would die a happy man. He knew the exact moment your relief claimed you as your thighs began to shake, your nails dug into his scalp further as you cried his name. He continued to use hisfingers and mouth fucking you through it as you soaked his face further, but he did not pull away. Even as you tried to push him away.
“Adam,” you warned, but it came out as more of a whine, as you began to border the line of overstimulation, but you knew it did little as he ignored you.
He continued on his mission, chasing another from you as he was not done with the feeling of your thighs shaking on either side of him. Perhaps he was greedy, but he liked to think he deserved this. To feel you being completely undone to him. The lovely taste of you and beautiful sounds you kept making washed away all the stress and horrors of the last few days.
Tears streamed down your face, his name leaving your mouth in loud cries as he sucked harder onto your clit. It was your undoing, another orgasm washing over you. Your body felt like putty as he finally pulled away, but not before pressing a kiss to your cunt.
He brought his fingers to his mouth, sucking your release from them with a groan that caused you to push your thighs together, to stop your cunt from drooling any further. Your eyes swept over him noticing he was much too dressed compared to your naked form.
You reached forward, tugging at his pants as your hands worked, taking off his belt with one as the other pushed his shirt away from his shoulders, “You got one more in you, pretty girl?” he questioned, as his pants pooled at his
“No,” you lied, but you knew he could see through as you cast him a mischievous grin.
He chuckled slightly, “I think you do,” he countered leaning in and pressing his mouth to yours, reclaiming your mouth as he once again took over all your senses, until the only thing you could properly think of was him.
Your hands moved to the waist band of his boxers, pushing them down to join his pants, causing his cock to spring free, slapping against his lower belly slightly. He felt heavy in your hand as you gave him a few lazy strokes, as he groaned into your mouth. You pulled your hand away as he took over positioning himself in between your thighs. He took a moment coating himself with your slickness before he entered inside you, slowly going inch by inch until his hips were flush against yours.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about you while you were away,” you confessed as he began to rock his hips into you. He lifted your legs higher, causing him to feel deeper. You felt completely and utterly full of him. He was everywhere, as your heart opened up to him welcoming him home with open arms. You wish you could stuff him inside your ribs to protect him from everything and selfishly keep him for only yourself, but you knew that was not possible.
As if he knew exactly what was running through your mind, “I am here now,” he replied, but it came out much more breathy than he intended too, as you fluttered around him at the sound of his voice.
Your nails scrapped against the skin of his back, painting it an angry shade of red, but it only spurred him on as he fucked into you, his tip kissing your cervix, your legs shaking around him as the coil in your belly threatened to snap, as the coarse hair of his base rubbed around your swollen pearl.
“Give me one more, pretty girl,” he commanded, as his thrusts started to get sloppier, as he could feel the heavy ache of his balls wanting nothing more than to paint your walls with his spent. He still needed you to finish one last time before he would allow himself that mercy. He needed you to cross the line before him, and you knew that.
His hand reached down in between the pair of you as it met your clit, drawing circles to match his rhythm causing your toes to curl slightly. It suddenly became too much, too fast. You obliged, giving him exactly what he wanted as your third release of the night came crashing down, drenching you in the ecstasy of relief. He followed not even a moment later, ropes of cum shooting into you, as he buried himself deeper with a quiet groan of your name.
You were completely and utterly full of him. Your heart, your mind, and now your cunt filled with nothing, but him.
His hands moved cupping either side of your face as he pressed your lips together once more. This kiss was soft, filled with the honey of emotions that circled through your heart whenever he would smile at you or you would cause him to blush. It caused a warmth to spread through you different from the one of desire that had been in your veins a moment ago.
The pair of you pulled away only when your lungs screamed for oxygen and you could no longer ignore it any further, “I am glad you are home,” you whisper, your chest heaving against his as you move your head to rest against his shoulder, pressing a gentle kiss to the skin, where his neck connects.
He smiled, turning to press one into your hair, as he thought fondly that home was not his apartment anymore, but wherever you may reside, “Me too.”
nsfw content. masturbation. adam dalgliesh x reader.
When Adam agreed to temporarily teach a criminology course, as a favour to the university’s headmaster, he hadn’t anticipated how vastly it would change him.
It had been quite a few years since the death of his wife and baby, and while many would have moved on by now, as he was told multiple times by both close and distant acquaintances, he had found it difficult to even consider the possibility of starting anew.
Mayhaps, taking this brief position was the beginning of his acceptance of what had happened, that he could not change it but could learn to live again despite it.
Or, perhaps, it was you, with your ambitious inquiries and insightful theories, who sat attentively in the front row of his class every Friday morning, that wove the startling idea that it was time to let the past rest into his mind.
Initially, he hadn’t paid you any significant attention, that is, until every time he asked a question, it was your hand that was shooting up with enthusiasm to provide a response. It wouldn’t have been impressive if it weren’t for the fact that all of your answers were correct.
Adam wouldn’t even have to turn around to face the class to know that your arm was extended, the eager way your foot tapped against the carpeted flooring was all he needed to hear to know you had an answer and you were, quite literally, bouncing in your seat to disclose it.
To not appear unfair or as though he favoured you over your peers, he would have to occasionally ignore your hand to pick another student’s.
At the sight of your disappointed expression, one that he could not help but compare to a puppy being denied a bone, a twinge of endeared fondness would twist within his chest.
He was too old; too riddled and consumed with guilt to willingly add another brick of complications to the weight his aging shoulders already bore.
Yet, as the months passed, Adam found himself excited to read your papers and assignments, because they allowed him passage into a depth of yourself not many had access to, granting him entry over the threshold that held your surface-level reflections and moved further, into the inner thoughts that resided within the deepest recesses of your mind.
He felt truly degenerate when, whilst safe within the confines of his locked office, his calloused, trembling hand had unbuttoned his trousers to wrap around the base of his soft, pulsating cock before he finished reading the rest of your essay.
Adam would tell himself that it was your intelligence he was entranced by, certainly not the way you would tilt your head and squint when you were stumped by the findings of a crime scene, or the way his pulse would jump within his veins each time your smile would be directed at him, or how you would–
“Professor Dalgliesh?” your voice called into the empty space of the lecture room, “I hope this isn’t a bad time?”
With an audible swallow and erupt rise to his feet, Adam shook his head and motioned for you to enter.
“What can I do for you?” his voice was softer than usual; there was nothing he could do to prevent it from turning into a lighter timbre whenever he was addressing you, much to his dismay.
His arms instinctively crossed over his chest, as though he could hide the evidence that his heart was pounding harder and louder with every one of your approaching steps.
“I have a question,” you began, whipping out your booklet and flipping to the pages he had assigned for this week’s reading.
Against his will, Adam found his eyes drifting over the length of your throat, watching the way it moved with every breath you exhaled and word you spoke.
Somehow, he managed to answer each one of your questions to the best of his ability, given the distracted state he was in.
“Thank you, sir.”
His stomach twisted at the sound of the last word leaving your lips, the trimmed tips of his fingernails digging into the expanse of his clothed arm as both a form of punishment and a way to ground himself.
“Of course.”
Adam sent a tight-lipped, polite smile your way just as you bid your final goodbye, turned around, and left the room with a soft snap of the door closing.
He walked over to lock it with a reverberating click before turning to the windows to pull the privacy blinds all the way down. Then, he returned to his desk, unzipped his trousers, and, for the first time in years, intentionally wrought a release from himself with a shaky, uneven groan.
He might have been able to forgive himself for it, if it weren’t for the fact that he had purposely finished across your paper; thick ropes of his cum were now covering your words.
The lack of restraint he showed and the depravity of his actions should have evoked a new wave of self-loathing within himself–instead, he felt a satiated calmness pass over his form.
In that moment, Adam knew there was truly no going back.
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