raven 🕊️

girlblog (20)

[lanadelrae-wrld]

welcome to lanadelrae-wrld!

get it…lana del rey’s world…my name is raven so my nickname is rae…get it………

i’m pursuing writing and screenwriting, so creating these fanfics is kind of my way of trying new styles and having fun with it!

also follow my letterboxd 😁

FINN WOLFHARD

don’t worry, i’ll make you worry

cherry flavored

my funny valentine

MIKE WHEELER

good luck, babe!

can’t catch me now

lover you should have come over

FINN BENNETT

AERION TARGARYEN

how to build a better boyfriend (series)

BOBBY FRANKLIN

how to build a better boyfriend (series)

something very bad is going to happen

PETER PRIOR

SHAWN HEARD

VALARR TARGARYEN

my way

[brightflamer]

to be alone with you

- ser gwayne hightower x rhaenyra’s daughter!reader

synopsis. Ser Gwayne Hightower is tasked with escorting you, the sole daughter of the newly anointed Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen, across the Reach and into the Crownlands as part of a deal securing amnesty for House Hightower. Along the way, you realize you do not hate him as much as you thought. contents. smut, angst, slowburnish, reader is rhaenyra’s eldest daughter (around the same age as aegon) and silverwing’s rider and is so spoiled that she has never seen a baby chick before, enemies to lovers, mutual pining, grief, show elements but also canon divergence, sex pollen, oral (f recieving), fingering, p in v, loss of virginity, multiple orgasms, cum eating, bath sex, reader is comically oblivious at some points, gwayne needs you so bad a/n. 13.5k words wow big day for me, spoilers for the show?, inspired by a request i got (thank you very much anon wherever you are), inspired by the film lady chatterly’s lover at some points, takes place directly after jace dies and rhaenyra takes the throne

It was a glum day, the day you were told your brother was dead, and you were alone with the usurper’s uncle. The dread—that feeling that something was just wrong—settled deep in your stomach before the words came out of his mouth.

The Hightower army had found you many months prior, nearly deceased following an attack on your dragon, Silverwing. You had told her to fly home to Dragonstone, to leave you, and you have lived off of the hope that she made it back safe.

They took you as prisoner that day, and in spite of all you thought of them, they did not treat you too horribly. You believed it was like preparing a pig for slaughter, though, so you never wavered in your loyalty to your mother. You would die as a Black. It was not going to take the threat of death to let a word of the Green agenda come from your mouth.

Surprisingly, it was your cousin, Daeron, who offered you the most kindness. He was the only person you could yield to in the entire Hightower base. You could only pray he wasn’t relaying every conversation you’d had back to the Lord Ormund Hightower.

Everyone else treated you like you were common. Specifically Ser Gwayne Hightower.

He was rude—and vain—and arrogant. He was irritating. When he would try to make conversation, you would always end up in a fight. And it was just your luck for him to be the one instructed to take you on a multiple-week-long journey from the Reach and back to your rightful home in the Red Keep.

He was the one to tell you that your mother had taken King’s Landing back. You assume your mother saw it fit to have the Queen Dowager’s brother be the one to accompany you, because maybe she has something in store for him when you make it there. Perhaps a beheading? He could do without the ability to speak.

Then he was the one to tell you that you would join her in King’s Landing. That you were finally going home. It was the only thing to come from his mouth that made you joyful.

You overheard chatter that by you departing the Reach as soon as the letter was received, and by you making it back unharmed, House Hightower would be granted something close to immunity for their role in the war. You knew it was something a lie. Your mother and stepfather would never let the Green beasts live with what they had done—not only to you, but to her son too. To your mother herself.

The thought of what your mother might be doing to the Dowager Queen now gave you anxiety from being excluded. You should expect that they’ll be calling for Daeron’s capture too, though perhaps you will be able to put in a good word for him—get him sent to the Wall instead of hanged.

Speaking of Daeron, he was already somewhere distant when you had finished gathering your belongings, even though the things you owned in the encampment were scarce. You had said your goodbyes to each other not long ago—he claimed he had to prepare for something with Lord Ormund, and that he would not be available the next morning, for your departure.

You were, as expected, ready to leave. You had wanted to lie down and rest so that the next morning would come sooner, but Ser Gwayne had called you into his tent for one final word.

“There was something else written in the letter. Something I believe should have been saved for a calm moment, such as this,” he begun, and held up the refolded parchment which illustrated the clemency that would be provided to House Hightower upon your safe return to King’s Landing. “Would you prefer to read it, or shall I?”

The glint in his eye was one of compassion. You did not like it.

You shifted uncomfortably under his gaze. “Proceed.”

He raised his brows, pressing his lips together before giving a heavy sigh and opening the parchment back again. The fingers that gripped either side of it seemed to waver. His eyes quickly found the line he had so desperately wanted to read.

He inhaled a heavy breath. “The Prince of Dragonstone and heir to the Iron Throne Jacaerys Velaryon was slain in battle against the Triarchy Fleet. He was struck down by crossbow fire alongside his dragon, Vermax, in the waters off the Gullet.”

Gwayne let his hands drop slowly, and he sealed the parchment back. He looked back up at you.

Your head was shaking back and forth. Denying his words, maybe. The movement had come naturally, and you could not stop it.

“Is this a jest?” you exhaled a small laugh, hoping it would work to quell the distress already coursing through your veins.

You knew it was not a jest.

You knew if the war did not end soon then he would die in some violent, gruesome way, but to hear it confirmed was something entirely different. To hear it confirmed by a Hightower was something worse. The primal need for the man before you dead, perhaps in such a way your own brother was killed, washed over you in an instant.

He remained silent at your question. "It pains me, though your brother's death does not alter our course,” he said instead. “We shall depart at first light.”

It pains him?

You will show him something that pains him.

There was a lengthy distance between the two of you already, but you quickly closed it as you rushed across to smack him across his cheek.

Your hand stung, yet you did not wait for his reaction. Instead, you turned on your heel and left the tent.

Jace did not hit you until the fresh air did, and you let yourself shed the tears that you had pushed back into your sockets. The tears that you could not—would not—let fall in front of the enemy.

day one

You never liked Gwayne. He was arrogant, and he would treat you as if you weren’t the daughter of the Queen—or more importantly to them, the granddaughter of King Viserys, and the niece of their usurper.

The ride up the roseroad so far had been silent. He had tried, but you did not speak a word in response. It pains me, he had said, and then he practically told you to get over it and go home! He is moronic, and conceited. It pains you that you have to make this journey with him.

If need be, you could be doing this by yourself. You’re fierce enough to ride alone—gods, you’re essentially already riding alone, Gwayne’s useless self.

Your brothers taught you to be fierce, in spite of their age. Jace had always insisted on letting you spar with them in the yard of the Red Keep, and you learned quite well from it. You certainly couldn’t beat a knight with your skills, but it had helped you gain a certain confidence that princesses tend not to have.

Aegon had never liked you practicing with them. Neither did Ser Criston. You did beat the usurper once—caught him off guard and swept him out from under his feet—which must have bruised his ego in the process, as he felt it just to push you to the ground when your back was turned right after. That earned him a clout in the ear from Ser Harwin.

You chuckle to yourself recalling the memory—specifically Aegon’s stupid face when he realized who had hit him, and more specifically when Ser Harwin did not get in trouble for it—and you notice Gwayne looking at you in your peripheral. The smile is wiped clean off of your face.

“Does something amuse you?” he mutters.

When you look over to see him, he is glowering at you, his upper lip lifted with judgment.

“I understand you may not have many fond memories to look back on when times are tiresome, but I do.” You look forward at the road ahead.

He scoffs out a laugh. “I have many fond memories.”

“Tell me one,” you counter.

All you can hear is the wind blowing through the trees. Ser Gwayne Hightower, the parentless knight, no recollections to look back on fondly.

Gwayne sucks in a breath. “I do not have to.”

“That is what I thought.” You smirk to yourself, and lightly kick the side of your horse, forcing it forward and ahead of him.

day two

You were unsure if you should speak the words you did, but they had just slipped out at a certain point.

“I take it you did not care much for Jace.” Your gaze had already been trained on the head of your horse. It seemed hard to look anywhere else.

You and Gwayne had been mindlessly trekking forward all morning, both of your eyes still heavy with the slumber that you had lacked, sleeping in an inn on top of stiff beds.

“What makes you say that, princess?” he asks.

“You are a Hightower. Your sister is the Dowager Queen. Your nephew is the usurper. You kill for them—” you look over to him. He has been staring at you the whole time, and he looks quite furious.

“I believe you will find I do not have much of a choice in the matter,” he interjects sharply.

Your head shakes. “Everyone has a choice.”

He huffs. “What do you reckon I do? Desert my army? Get caught and hanged for treason?”

“I would.” You look back at the road ahead. “I should.”

Gwayne sighs, and returns his attention to the road as well. “We both have duties, my princess. Duties one cannot simply run from once they get to be too demanding.”

“Essos is said to be nice this time of year.”

A short laugh escapes him. “Essos is said to be nice all times of the year.”

You let out a heavy, deflated sigh. “Would it not be nice? I’m sure they don’t care about who we are there. We could be free. You could be a sellsword, and I…” your thought trails off. You cannot think of what you would be somewhere like Essos.

“You could be a scribe,” Gwayne says sincerely.

You nod. “I could.”

The idea of a life in Essos, perhaps with Gwayne, seems appealing at the very moment. The lack of sleep much be getting to you.

It does seem nice. Abandoning your name, as much as you are loyal to it, could be the best decision that you have made. He seems to want the same, if you convince yourself his words weren’t just tactical, some way to earn your empathy so that you will convince your mother to spare him once you reach the Red Keep.

If the war would not come to an end with her taking of the throne, you would have to escape there yourself. And if Gwayne wanted to come with you, if he was still alive by the time you left, you might just be willing to take him with you. Silverwing—who had surely made it back to Dragonstone—was large enough to saddle two.

day three

The inn you would stay in tonight would be much worse than the last. Not only because of the stiff beds, but because of the lack of them too.

Gwayne knew of the ones that would not ask any questions while not costing all the coins in his possession. So far they had been shit, but they had been true to their history of keeping quiet with matters that did not concern them, as far as you both knew.

You would remain outside with your cloak hood pulled tight over your head and your body facing a wall until Gwayne would come fetch you to take you to the room.

He would refer to you as his squire to the innkeepers and guests who questioned your presence. If they had questioned your demeanor, he would call you reserved and paranoid. Nobody had asked anything past that, but if they did, he was prepared to tell them that you had been tormented by some childhood event.

When Gwayne had taken you to your room that night, you had not expected to be faced with a singular bed.

“Have you gotten your own room?” you had asked, not realizing until you had drawn off the cloak from your head that there was only one mattress before you.

Gwayne only shrugged. “It was all that remained. The innkeeper told me that puppeteers are traveling in town, and all seem to be staying here.”

You could not contain your fury at the thought of sharing a bed with him. Or making him sleep on the floor. “How many fucking puppeteers are there?” you demanded, body tense with unreasonable anger.

He scoffed out a laugh. “My princess, it isn’t exactly the largest inn.” He had already begun shucking off his armor, as well as ridding himself of his gambeson and chausses. “You will live. I will sleep on the floor.”

“Are you sure? Can’t you speak with the innkeeper?”

“There is no need to draw any more attention to us. And what, princess, will you be sleeping on the floor in place of me?” he mocked, already in knowledge of the answer. “Do not fret over it. I have slept in worse places.”

You were silenced at that, and had called him for help with undoing your dress. The whole ordeal was strangely impersonal. He had done it the night before, and you felt nothing. Perhaps it be the exhaustion both of you had carried.

The two of you had retired to your respective sleeping areas shortly afterward, both clad in just your smallclothes.

Later that night, you found yourself wide awake, shivering in the relentless cold that seemed to break in past the shut windows.

Gwayne had been sleeping on the floor furthest from where you were lying on the bed. You assumed he was sleeping as well, but it was strangely silent. You had expected to hear the soft breathing of someone consumed by their slumber, though all you heard was the whistling of wind outside.

And your heart still held unpleasant sympathy for where he had been forced to rest. If your thoughts were true, he was not sleeping at all.

“Ser?” you whisper.

“Is something wrong?” you hear from below.

You smile at his voice. No, at being right. You do not smile at his presence, you smile because you like being right. You rolled over then, the mattress groaning beneath you, to stare at the dim expanse of the side where he lay.

“Are you comfortable there, on the floor?” you question, smile piercing through your words.

He scoffs. “You jest, princess, but I have no doubt that this floor is just as soft as the mattress you lay on.”

You were hit with a flurry of breathless laughter at his words. It must be your lack of sleep. You could hear him chuckle too after some point, but both of you had been slowly silenced as the seconds passed until you could only hear the commotion outside again.

Perhaps you should invite him to sleep alongside you. You are not without mercy. Of course, it would be strictly unromantic, not like how a wife and her husband might find one another on restless nights such as this one.

“Would you like to put that to the test?” you say without a second thought.

Gwayne clears his throat. “I would not want to invade on your solace, princess.”

“There is plenty of room for you.” You crawl across the bed to see him.

Your eyes find him as he thoughtlessly fiddles with the edge of his chemise, and as he freezes once he meets your gaze.

You beam down at him again. “And it would bring me solace, knowing you were sleeping the slightest bit easier.”

“Are you sure of it?”

“I am.” You think it is the sleep deprivation deluding you. You would never act like this normally. He can sense it too.

He slowly rises from his position on the ground, and multiple bones crackle once he stands.

You roll back over to your side of the bed, watching as he joins you. He seems tense, especially as you join him under the covers.

The two of you lie in bridled silence, neither one of you able to fall asleep. A chill runs through you from the temperature, and Gwayne’s head swivels to look at you.

You turn over on your side to meet his gaze, expecting him to say something. He does not, and looks back up at the ceiling instead.

Your brain, clouded by the fact that you are simultaneously freezing cold and devastatingly fatigued, opens, then pauses as you search for the words.

“Are you cold as well?” you mumble.

Gwayne shrugs nonchalantly. “Slightly.”

You chuckle mirthlessly. “I am.” The sheets suddenly feel rough against your skin. “More than slightly.”

“I can ask the innkeeper for another quilt.”

His earlier words flash back to you. “There is no need to draw any more attention to us,” you repeat.

You see the corner of his lip turn upward. “What do you reckon I do, then, princess?” he asks, and you reach out to touch his arm.

The muscle quickly tightens under your hold.

“You’re warm.” You move closer to him. “If we lie close together, we might just make it through the night.”

That is how you ended up huddled next to Ser Gwayne Hightower for the rest of the night.

You were unaware of the fact that he was lying frozen next to you, and that he did not get a wink of sleep, especially as you mindlessly slung an arm around his middle in your slumber. And as your nipples, solid from the cool breeze that had seeped in through the windows, brushed up against him as you shifted throughout the night.

day four

Gwayne had stopped to relieve himself when you heard them.

The myriad of chirps from some kind of birds had caught your attention, and you had jumped from your horse in an instant, following the sound.

You found yourself on the edge of an open field, behind some bushes, as you looked down to some small yellow birds that weren’t flying away. You deduce that they must like your presence.

It wasn’t long before Gwayne anxious voice interrupted your calm, calling your name just moments before stumbling upon you.

“What are they?” you whisper.

“Chicks,” he responds, in a normal tone. At your silence, he continues, “baby chickens.”

“Truly?” you question, head cocked to the side, watching them.

Gwayne stares at you. “Have you… never seen chicks before?”

“No, only…” you turn your head to him, “chickens.” You shrug.

He shakes his head with a theatrical sort of despair. It would have seemed real if the corners of his lips were not upturned.

“You truly are a princess,” he mutters, and crouches down to the ground.

You stoop down alongside him, watching as the chicks run past one another, chirping quietly.

“Can I touch one?” you mumble.

He gestures with a chin toward the chirping bunch. “Go on, then.”

You reach down to one of the animals, but you can’t quite seem to get a good grip on it. You don’t really try to grip it. You do not find the chance to. Instead, your hand just lingers hesitantly above the crowd of them.

Gwayne’s hands come down to meet yours. He grabs one of them, effortlessly and gently, cradling it in his hands.

Your hand is still lingering beside his, still in a motion as if you were going to grab one, as he did, so he brings the chicken in his hands to yours. You bring your free hand to join the other and cup them together.

He lets one hand release the chick into yours, and it comes down below the two of your hands as if to hold it steady. The other covers the chick to prevent it from jumping out of your hold.

The hand that is under yours touches it, and urges it to close. “Gently,” he murmurs, and you’re holding the chick on your own now, gently and effortlessly, just like he was.

His hands withdraw from yours. He watches as your lips curl up, a pure joy that he had yet to ever witness fill your face, do exactly that. His own mouth mirrors something similar.

You shudder nervously as the chick twitches around in your grip. It comes out half in the form of small chuckles and half in struggled exhales.

Your brows draw together. It seems impossible to relax them, and you feel a panic settle in at nothing in particular. Perhaps it be that your brothers are dead, maybe because you are with a man that you have such complicated and mind-boggling feelings for, or that you were just held as a prisoner for the Greens, and that man is a Green, he is the Green, the Hightower Green you have been conditioned to hate—

Gwayne has stopped smiling. You feel tears running down your face. The chick flies out of your grip once you try to see it closer, and you try your hardest to catch onto your breath, to catch it as it runs from you, but you cannot. You are sobbing before you get any sense to stop it.

“My princess?” he leans closer to you, a wavering hand inching dangerously close, and you push yourself from off the ground. He follows.

“I’m sorry,” you manage through heaving breaths, smoothing down your now wrinkled dress. Why are you apologizing? You do not know why you are apologizing. He is a Green. He should be apologizing to you, for being on the side of the war that killed your brothers—oh, gods, your sweet brothers. Your sweet, young, desperate, dead brothers.

“It’s all right,” he mumbles. His hands, still, are reaching toward your arms, yet not touching. Never touching. Just hovering near yours, always, like he wants to touch you, but he doesn’t.

You wipe your eyes, but the tears keep falling. You mutter something again. Sorry, you hear yourself say again, and then your body moves for you. You wrap your arms around his neck in an embrace so tight you might be strangling him.

He stumbles back slightly, arms still hesitating beside you, and then finally you feel it. He folds them gently around your waist. As gentle as he held the chick.

“Don’t cry,” he comforts.

You do not obey. You would if you could, but for now, you remain in his hold. You, regrettably, enjoy it.

day five

Gwayne did not like to see you cry.

He had first seen it the moment you realized you were captured by the Hightowers. You hadn’t been conscious enough when they found you to care about where you were being taken. He hadn’t enjoyed the sight then, not as his belligerents did, and he does not like to see it now.

He was the one to convince his fellow commanders to spare your life and to instead take you as a hostage. He was the one to have you held in a tent next to his own in the encampments with his two most upstanding soldiers posted outside, and not in those grimy cages fit for animals. He was the one to have you ride your horse directly next to his when on the road with the rest of the army—much to your dismay—as to prevent any dishonorable conduct from occurring. He would never tell you these things, of course, but they live with him.

Gwayne would tell himself that he did all of these things because it was right, that he would do it to any other female prisoner-of-war, given the shocking lack of honor among his knights who vowed to defend it. He had done a good job separating the wheat from the chaff when he became a commander, but there were only few he truly trusted to never harm the young, an innocent—and those who cannot protect themselves. Like you.

You liked to put on a front. And it somewhat worked with others, but not with him. He wishes it would, for some odd reason. Maybe he would not see you the way he does, if it did. He would still treat you with mercy, but it would not be to the level it is. He would never have accepted your hug. He thinks he would have pushed you away.

He wouldn’t have, but he believes he would have.

Since he had finally felt your touch the afternoon previous, the road to the Red Keep had been as quiet as the first day of your journey together. He suspected you had been embarrassed after letting him see your emotions, as you had been combative toward him every day since you had woken up from your comatose state.

He had expected it to come at some point, the unveiling of your feelings, but not in that way. He had expected to hear you sniffle from beside him while on your horses. He would have stayed silent, and he would have let you cry. He believes he would have let you cry on your own if you hadn’t come to him for comfort first.

The fact that you did had brought him joy. It made him hopeful, in some strange way he did not feel himself familiar with.

“You are betrothed to Lord Samwell Blackwood, are you not?”

You look at him, puzzled. “He has been with the Stranger since the war begun.”

Gwayne nods curtly. “So I’ve heard.”

“Then why have you asked?”

He inhales a heavy breath. “I feel it my duty to tell you of this.” He clears his throat. “Before your mother took the throne, there was word among our commanders to betroth you to your cousin, Prince Aemond.”

“You jest.”

“I do not.”

You cock your head to the side, wetting your lips. “And what did you have to say in the matter?”

“That is unneeded for you to know.”

“Why? Because you encouraged them to?”

His voice picks up immediately where you left off. “No, because I fought against it.” He scoffs a laugh. “The One-Eyed Prince is… he is mad.” At your gawking laugh, he turns his head to you. “You must know it too. He is simply and utterly mad.”

“You are his uncle.” You would never tell of his treasonous words to any other, but you feel you must remind him.

“Are you going to betray me and inform my army of the fact?”

“I do not have loyalty to you, though I will not speak of the words to another.”

“Good. Now you tell me something in confidence,” he presses.

You shake your head at the sheer audacity of him. “Why would I do that, ser?”

“What else will we converse about? It is a long and arduous road ahead of us.” His eyes peer into yours, and you feel a sudden urge to tell him everything you have ever kept from him.

“Alright then,” you look to the sky in mock ponder. “When I was young, I would pray to the gods each and every night for a gallant and true knight to take me away from the Red Keep and off to some distant land. There was this one knight, he had belonged to our Kingsguard, who I absolutely adored.” You sigh on the memory, oblivious to the fact that a true and gallant knight was riding right alongside you. “I was just a girl then. It was a silly dream. And the gods do not always play in my favor.”

Were you jesting? Or were you truly so oblivious?

“Do you remember his name?” he asks.

“It has lost me. But I remember his face. He was gorgeous, that one, and very gentle, too. Back then he was the same age as my brother is now.”

He does not let you sit with the fact that you mentioned your brother as if he were alive. “That’s quite young, isn’t it?”

You nod. “Indeed. He was the youngest of every knight in the Keep. Perhaps the youngest in history.”

“What happened to him?”

You exhale a breath, and look down to your horse’s head. “He was in the fire that killed Ser Harwin. I do not know why he had been called to Harrenhal, and I suppose I shall never know. Are you yourself betrothed, or married, ser?”

He huffs. “Gods, no. I was, and remain, of little use as a political pawn for House Hightower, my father being the second son.”

“Therefore if you were to wed, you would do so for love,” you state.

“I suppose so.”

day six

The hood of your cloak was pulled tightly over the upper half of your face, seemingly ritual for whenever you made it to inns, and you felt a tap on your shoulder.

You turn, expecting to see Gwayne, but in his place stood a knight in armor, donning a Hightower sigil on his gambeson.

It is your luck to see Gwayne rushing up from behind him to fetch you.

“Squire, let us retire to our room, yes?” he says, and you nod eagerly, pulling the hood further over your face. The two of you attempt to move forward, and you make it past the knight—

“That is no squire,” the man interjects, grabbing onto your wrist, stopping you. “That is a girl.”

Gwayne steps in between you and the knight, forcing him to release your joint from his hold. His gaze flicks down to the man’s gambeson.

He takes a step closer to him and lowers his voice. “If it pleases you, she’s my distraction for the night, ser. Not worth your notice.”

The knight clears his throat, and Gwayne steps back.

“Blessings upon King Aegon.” He smiles, turning back to the inn entrance.

His hand guides you forward, lingering on the small of your back, surely for the sight of the knight behind you. And then it trails down, over the curve of your back end, and you feel the slightest grip onto it before the door behind you closes, and his hand immediately falls away.

The walk to your room is silent.

Gwayne swallows painfully once you make it to your room.

“I’m sorry—” he begins.

“How may I distract you tonight, ser?” you interrupt, smiling stupidly at his lie, and he sighs one of relief at your lack of offense.

He breathes out a laugh, and swiftly moves to shed himself of his armor. He has been struggling on his own each time he has done so. You only noticed it the last night, and offered help, but had been rejected.

You would not ask this time, you would simply do. Your fingers were desperate and untrained in their efforts, but they did the trick in time for him not to deny you, and he was rid of the metal captivity.

You turn as he does, ridding yourself of your heavy cloak and pushing your hair out of the way of the laces of your dress. He pulls them loose without a word, and the warmth of his body behind yours would surely prove the most effective thing of the night, you decide as you gaze at the thin quilt on your bed.

As your gown slides down your body, you can hear the shuffling of Gwayne removing all but his linens behind you. If you took just a step backward, you would be touching him.

“It is a terrible coincidence, the Hightower army resting here,” you mumble, your hands fiddling with the light cloth around the your wrists.

“It is,” he agrees solemnly.

You retreat from his warmth and sit on the edge of your bed, your back up straight and your fingers clasped together in your lap. You weren’t particularly tired this night. Maybe it be from the surge of adrenaline at the knight outside, and it had already raged through your limbs, rendering them restless the moment the door to the inn had shut behind you.

Gwayne’s hand was close to you then, to an area you regarded as most private among you, a maiden. The memory of it twinged deep in your stomach. It was an unfamiliar feeling.

He had joined you in sitting on the edge of a bed, albeit his own. His own stature had mirrored yours. All tense and surged with the possibility of a fight.

“It is rather cold this night,” you mutter.

Gwayne nods curtly. “It is.”

Your gaze lowers to watch your fingers be relentlessly picked on by those of the other hand. “I fear one of those knights will bust through the doorway, and take me away with little fight, you being so far from me,” you whisper. The night was silent enough for him to hear it.

“I fear the same.”

You look up at him. “If he were to do so, it would certainly raise suspicion if your whore was sleeping in a bed adjacent to yours.”

He takes a turn to meet your eyes. “If you wish to sleep in the same bed as I, you need only ask.”

Your tongue darts out to wet your lips. “May I sleep in your bed tonight, Gwayne?” you muster.

“As you wish, my princess.”

day seven

Your horse stops before you instruct it to.

In the distance lies a field of flowers, pink and purple, some yellow, and all illuminated by sunlight. It was nearly time for it to set.

You cannot still be in the Reach, you think. It has been much too long, but thank the gods if you are. What a sight to see.

You want to see it closer. Gwayne will be okay with it, you declare, and you hop off of your horse and begin walking in the direction of the field.

“No, princess,” he says, exasperated. “We cannot go off trail again.”

“The flowers,” you breathe. “It is beautiful.”

The scent in the air is intoxicating. It is rather pungent, the closer you get to it, and the air seems more sultry than just moments before.

You remove your cloak from your shoulders, letting it drop behind you as you continue forward. It is the slightest bit relieving from the heat, but your body quickly acclimates to it again, and the sweat begins beading. It is no wonder. The sleeves under your dress are long. It makes you question why you decided to wear such a stupid thing, in this climate.

Once you make it to the field, it envelopes you. The fever. It starts in your lower abdomen in a heavy thrum and travels up the rest of your body.

Where is Gwayne?

You turn around. He is just a few steps behind. He has been trailing behind you the entire time. It was hard to notice, with the pull of the meadow, but now that you are here, he is all you can think about. All you can focus on. You do not like that.

His hair illuminates in the sunlight, much like the flowers. Your skin tingles.

He froze in his movements the moment you did. You continue further into the field. His feet fall in step with yours, and you think you can hear his breathing, all shaky and uncertain.

You make it to an empty patch of the meadow, and stop once again.

“Ser?” you turn back to face him. The scorch of the sun worsens with each passing second. Sweat gathers on your brow. “My dress... please… help me get it off.” You raise a timid arm to your back, accepting defeat once you find yourself unable to reach the laces.

Gwayne’s thumb twitches toward you. His forehead glistens. He must be burning too.

You spot the clench of his jaw, and take a wary step toward him.

“Stop—” he holds a hand out, body turning away from you. “Do not move. Please. Just stay there.” He avoids your gaze.

“What is it?” you ask. You know what it is.

You know what he is feeling, because you feel it too. It presses hard and deep in your abdomen, and it just wants to be relieved. You want to be relieved. And Ser Gwayne Hightower looks rather handsome in this light, surrounded by the pink and purple—and was it red?—flowers. He seems close to pouncing on you like a wild dog. Gods, may he?

He had always been alluring. May it be your frustration that you could never have him in the way you wanted that made you so combative, or the fact that he is a Green—it is probably both, but neither seem so important now. Not when you feel the heat of a thousand suns burn through you, all the way to your core, and then all over again.

The man himself looks close to releasing in his braies just by looking at your face. It brings you some ease, yet also further discomfort, to know that he feels the same as you. You had blocked out the idea, seeing yourself as delusional and unrealistic for thinking he would ever show any form of attraction toward you.

“Gwayne—” you exhale, though it releases itself in the form of a groan. “It is sweltering.” You bend over to clutch the end of your dress, and you are close to pulling it off yourself, if fate was willing. Something halts you.

“Please, don’t.” His voice sounds pitiful. It is all low and whiny. “I do not know if I can handle that. Not now. Not when… fuck.”

You want to keel over and die.

You release the cloth from your grip and let the dress fall back down. You rise back up, slowly, and flatten down the wrinkled fabric of your middle with your hands.

Your lips tremble. “What do you want to do?”

“I am unsure.” He still cannot look you in the eye. “It is impure, and unchivalrous for me to be thinking of you this way.”

“I am all right with it.” It is then that you realize how you sound. Desperate for a Green, as if you were a common whore, which is probably what he thinks of you as. At least he tries to fight it. You should fight it too. You are fierce enough to fight whatever it is that is welling up inside of you.

Your eyes are squeezed shut, and the shame tries to conquer the hunger—but the hunger wins in the blink of an eye. The blink of your eye, in fact, as you look back at Gwayne.

“We cannot,” you mumble. “We should not. I am a maiden. You are the opposition. We cannot.” You repeat the words to yourself, over and over, like a mantra. If the shame did not prevail, perhaps distraction will. Your eyes shut tight again, and you repeat the words. We cannot. We should not. You are a maiden. He is the opposition.

We cannot, we should not, you are a maiden, Ser Gwayne Hightower is hard by simply standing in your presence—

Your eyes snap open, and you find that you are standing directly in front of him. You must have been inching closer to him with each sentence you repeated.

Your gaze flicks down to his crotch. Sure enough, your thoughts did not lie to you. Perhaps your dragon blood has given you the gift of prophecy.

He finds it appropriate to look at you, finally, and you realize how close you are to one another.

In specific—how close your lips are to one another. So, so close, yet so far. You almost want to give in, and you lean just a little closer. He stays still, though when you stop moving, his head moves closer too, close enough that you can almost feel his breath fanning into your own mouth.

Your noses are touching, that is how close you are. You could just slot your lips right onto his. It would be so easy, so incredibly simple, if you would just move forward, just a little—

His hands reach up to cradle your face in his hands, thumbs on either side grazing your cheekbones. They move down your face, down to your lips, and one of the thumbs strokes over the bottom lip. And he closes the gap.

You feel his lips envelope yours first, and then you feel his tongue inch into your mouth. Your lips close over one another’s, and he moans. Ser Gwayne Hightower is moaning into your mouth, and it feels like you have been sent to each of the seven heavens and back again. Your head is pushed backwards with the force of his kiss.

Your hand reaches around to brush over his nape. His hands travel further down your body, one finding itself wrapped around your waist, the other petting your breast over your dress. It seems that the true touch of it pacifies him, as it allows you to push deeper into the kiss, letting your tongue slide into his mouth.

You only break away to lower yourself to the ground. He follows, as though the answers to every challenge in his life were held on your lips. He hikes your dress up your legs, your smallclothes with it, until they both pool at your waist.

He lifts two fingers to his mouth, coating them in spit before reaching down to your bare cunt and thrusting them inside. You let out a shrieking moan, letting your head press into the dirt below you and thrashing back and forth in pleasure.

“Look at me,” Gwayne instructs. You let your eyes lock onto his, you try, but the deep press of his fingers inside of you makes it hard to focus. His lips, hanging open, hover just above yours, and he moves forward to bring you and he together again.

It is breathing moans into each other’s mouths and pathetic, desperate mashing before you finally get the hold onto his lips, or perhaps him onto yours. His fingers cease, and slip out swift enough for it to go unnoticed for a single moment.

He breaks apart from your mouth, and wastes no time in sliding himself down your body. The disappointment at the loss of his fingers does not last long, as his lips lock onto your cunt.

Gwayne snakes his arms under your legs and he yanks your body closer to him. Your fingers curl in his hair, and he only laps harder at you.

“Y—yes, ser—” you cry, your thighs squeezing his head, clit pulsating under the assault of his tongue.

He breaks away for just a moment, big blue eyes locking onto your weak ones. “Not ser. Gwayne. My name is Gwayne.”

And he dives back into you, gathering your wetness on his tongue in a torturous swipe from bottom to top, one that earns a sweet little whine from the depths of your throat. It reminds him, in that moment, of the sounds you would make when you did not get your way back in Oldtown—the sounds he would shamefully think of as he fucked his fist late at night, the sounds that he would repent about for thinking and acting on with such humiliating vitality, and more importantly, for not regretting any of it in the slightest.

The sheer relief you get from his mouth onto yours is unlike anything you have felt before, because you have not felt it before. You had heard word of the act in song, and in gossip spread around by your ladies-in-waiting, but to experience it was the greatest decision you ever made. A true, gallant knight between your legs, satiating the hunger that spread in your loins and his alike, yet he is only focused on your release now, latching his tongue on your clit and sucking hard.

His fingers graze your folds and glide around the edges, already slick with your wet. One finger probes, just the slightest bit, and you shudder at the contact.

You let out a loud cry as it presses itself fully inside, without warning. Perfection, you think you hear him say. The words vibrate on your clit, agonizingly so.

His finger pumps in and out of you, and his mouth works on your cunt all the same. The fire in your veins only grows stronger as your climax approaches.

Your fingers tug and pull on his hair, and somewhere in the middle of your gratification a second slim finger of his joins the first, pressing deep into your cunt as they allow him.

The sounds coming from your mouth you do not think you have ever made before. They approach from deep in your lungs and are hoarsely ripped from your throat.

It creeps closer, that unfamiliar thing called release, and your walls tighten around his fingers. Gwayne only sucks harder, and pushes his fingers further into your cunt, his knuckles pressing into your folds.

The feeling floods your body in an instant. It feels prickly, for some odd reason, and it nips your limbs, but blissfully so. Your brain feels fuzzy, and you cannot think of anything but him. It is a way that makes you crave for it immediately once it ebbs.

You let out a little sob once his fingers slip out from inside you. You didn’t know you were crying, and a few stray tears fall from your eyes before you realize.

Gwayne licks a stripe up your cunt, collecting whatever fluids he procured down there into his mouth and swallowing them with the gulp of a man who might just be dying of thirst.

He is up your body and has his wet lips on yours by the time you tear yourself away from the sight. It is then that you feel how truly hard he is under his linens. His cock presses against your spent core, and he nearly jerks back at the contact.

“Gwayne,” you breathe, and his head shoots up to look at you.

“What is it, sweet girl?” he mumbles, suddenly winded by the sweet sound of his name on your tongue.

“I want you to fuck me.”

He is frozen solid at your ask. Your arousal on his mouth glistens with each slight twitch upward. “You’re sure of it?”

You nod, but it is not enough.

“Tell me,” he commands.

“I want you to fuck me, Gwayne, how else must I tell you?” you reply impatiently, and grind your hips up to feel his hardened cock brush against you once more.

Both of your hands come up and intertwine themselves behind his neck, preventing him from straying any further—pulling him down to you, in fact, so you can grind up on him some more.

You lift your head from the ground to try and capture his lips into a somewhat calculating kiss, but his strength prevails, and his head softly twitches back before your mouth can get hold on his.

You fall back, defeated, but his hand comes to hold your wrist, and he comes down to close the gap. He chuckles into your mouth at your desperation, and you only kiss him harder, as if you were trying to become one with him.

His hand rubs up and down your wrist for a moment, before he reaches down to release his lower half from his linens.

You take a hand from off his neck and reach down to meet his own, searching around for his cock. You get a firm grip on it, stroking it up once. He lets out a shuddery moan, and his hand finds your wrist once again—not stopping you, but guiding you, perhaps.

He pumps himself with your hand, and you let him for only a moment, before overpowering his gentleness and guiding his length to your cunt. The tip of it glides on your folds. You could die right here, and it would be okay.

Gwayne pushes into you with a wounded groan, his jaw hanging wide open. You, on the other hand, nearly shriek.

He rocks himself out of you slowly, then back into you almost sluggishly.

“Is this all right?” he manages through strangled breaths, and you nod fervently, using the hand still on his neck to push his head closer to yours.

You mean to kiss him, but his forehead lies on yours instead. You’ll take what you can get.

He presses swift pecks on your cheeks, on your nose, and on your lips as he gains momentum. Your eyes flutter shut, but his hand comes up to press a few light smacks to your cheek.

“I said to look at me,” he grunts. “I want to see your eyes—“

You open them back up at that. They’re glossed over again, with tears, and you’re glad that Gwayne does not take it as pain. There was pain, but it is long gone. He kisses the droplets as they fall from the corners of your eyes.

It is utterly intoxicating, the drag of his hips. He seems to lose himself in the feeling too. Wave after wave of constant pleasure washes over you with the somehow gentle slam of him into you.

You babble incomprehensible speech, just as lost as he is as he, slack-jawed as he fucks you. His eyes are focused on your face, your face saturated with sweat, for a single twitch of anything at all, yet he finds nothing. Nothing but rapture, as he believes it should be. He brings his hand back down to your clit and strokes it so delicately, but it brings you sweet relief all the more.

You feel it cresting again. Up your spine, down your legs, dumbing your brain into mush, prickling at the back of your neck. “Gods, Gwayne—Oh, gods, I’m gonna—“

You don’t finish the sentence. It hits you, you cum again, so hard around his cock, and it isn’t long into your perfect bliss before he is pulls out, spilling his seed onto the bunched-up cotton of your dress.

You feel as though you are one with him. It is like your flesh melts into his. Your sweat certainly does, especially as he joins his forehead with yours again, all sticky and damp.

“I am deeply sorry—” he says in between quick kisses, “to have taken your maidenhood.”

You shake your head softly. “If it shames you so, I can raise a proposition of marriage to my mother once we get back to the Keep.” He laughs at that, unknowing you were not telling a joke.

Still, you breathe out a chuckle.

day nine

The communal bath that you had found yourself in was satisfyingly empty. Since Gwayne had taken your maidenhood two moons previous, you had been desperate for it to happen again, and again, and perhaps a thousand times more, though you resisted the urge to ask outright while in the inns.

Now, though, seemed like the perfect moment to do so. You could clean yourself properly for the first time in weeks, and then dirty yourself all over again with the satisfaction of your mutual sin.

He had already undone the laces of your dress for you, and you stepped out of the gown that dropped to your feet, eager to feel the warmth of the water envelop your skin. And for him to join you. So that you could see—and feel—his bare body, properly. You had already shed your linens by the time you made it to the water.

You had retreated to the further side of the bath, so that you could watch as Gwayne undressed himself. It was nicer like this, being able to take in his body for the first time, as he stripped off his gambeson, then his chausses, and then, finally, his smallclothes.

His figure was very unsurprisingly robust. The light of the countless candles surrounding the baths set for quite the intimate atmosphere.

You bit back a smile as he inched closer to the bath, stepping inside with a heavy sigh of relief. The Hightowers did seem to prioritize cleanliness. Perhaps they place it next to godliness. Gwayne certainly does not seem to mind, given how keen he was to eat your cunt until you came undone on his tongue.

He threw his head back with a shuddering sigh once he finally sunk into the water. You watch as the grime expels from the surface of his body in one fell swoop, becoming one with the rest of the stream.

“Have you something to say?” he questions, a brow darted upward at your uncharacteristically blissful expression.

Your cheeks flushed, a harder, content smile crossing over your face. “Just observing.”

“Must you observe so far?” he mutters.

“I must,” you sneer, giving a firm nod.

His eyes flick down to your bare breasts, sat warped on your chest under the soft wave of the water.

He quickly averts his gaze to the center of the bath once you perk them forward with your arms.

“I am truly apologetic,” he starts. “For taking your maidenhood. ‘specially in such an unclean place, where anyone could have seen us if they had simply come to probe into the noise.”

You scoff. “Would you have preferred it happen inside the walls of some dull inn?”

“I’d have preferred you comfortable.”

“I was comfortable. I am comfortable.”

At his silence, you push yourself off of the wall and glide over to him. He sits frozen as your chest brushes against his arm.

“Are you a maid, ser? Well—were you a maid?” you question, feigning a look of innocence.

“I haven’t been a maid for a long time, princess.” His head hangs low.

He lets you grip his arm and guide it between your legs. “Are you ashamed of the fact?”

“I am ashamed that I am not,” he mutters, seemingly unfazed as you grind your cunt against his wrist. You let out a low moan, your breath wavering before you realize his lament.

So you release his arm from your hold and straddle his hips, placing your hands on each of his shoulders. Your chest is eye level with his face. It seems to be the only thing that can bring his head back up.

You can feel his cock hardening below you as you rock back and forth against him. He watches your face that stares down back at him—both of your jaws are slack, and you breathe heavy pants into each others mouths, gaining some semblance of pleasure from the act.

But it is not enough, no. It is never enough.

You take a hand from his shoulder and reach down to grip his length, guiding it into your walls at once. You push down unto him with a sweet little cry, one quickly silenced by his lips on your own.

His kiss is just as tender as you remember it being, amorous flowers aside, and you hum into him. A hand cups your cheek and he tilts his head, his tongue breaching the plush of your lips, just exploring.

Your fingers curl around his nape as you thrust, up and down, up and down, and he concurrently rolls his hips back and forth.

“Fuck—sweet princess—” he moans once he breaks apart from your mouth.

You gasp and shudder, and he reaches his head up to kiss all over your face. Your eye, the brow bone above it, down to the highest point of your cheek on the side of your face, then to the corner of your lip, and then he cranes his head down to kiss you on your neck. You throw your head back to allow him access.

Once he reaches your sternum, he darts his tongue out first when attaching his lips to it. “Oh, gods,” you whimper into his hair.

“Ser? Gwayne—” you can't quite speak, the words near dying on your tongue. “Are you mine, Gwayne? Tell me—” your hips slow, and his only speed up. He begins fucking up into you, and another moan rips through your throat.

He nods fervently against your neck, lifting his head back up to see you. “I am yours, princess. Fuck—” his hips stutter, though he relents.

It does not give you solace. If he is yours, how long shall he remain so? Until the gods rip him from your grasp—which would be soon now, with each tread of your horses closer to the Red Keep.

His hand slides up to your ribs as if to stabilize you, and he wraps it around your middle. His forehead drops to your shoulder, raising with each jolt of your body upward, the constant slam of his cock up into your cunt and then out again.

You know few things now, except for him. Your walls clench around him, and he nearly ceases at that. You continue in his ministrations, rocking back and forth onto him, savoring in the way his length hits you in the spot that makes you feel near the brink of climax.

“I love you.” You think you hear yourself say. And he just watches you, as you chase your peak, so blissfully unaware of the words that just came from your mouth. Your sweet mouth.

Gwayne reaches a hand to cradle your head, and push it closer to his, so that he can take your sweet mouth into his. It is less of a kiss and more of two mouths pressing against each other, but you accept it either way. The two of you pant raggedly against each other, and you feel your core tighten with each deep press of his cock inside of you.

He can feel it too. It is more of threat than satisfying, the idea of spilling his seed inside of you, but you seem to not care. You might just not know. If you were true to your word of your maidenhood—he does not care if you were or not—you must be pitifully unknowledgeable on the subject.

He remembers word of you being betrothed to some high lord widow who had died on the frontlines of battle when the war first broke out, fighting for the side of your mother. Then, once you were captured, there was word of you marrying one of his two younger Targaryen nephews. The thought of you being kept as a prisoner for Aemond sends a shudder through his body, and he rids himself free of the idea as his orgasm approaches closer.

“My princess—” he tries. You do not notice. You persist in your pursuit of release, and he grips your jaw gently, catching your attention. “Look at me.”

You nod at nothing in particular, mouth hanging open and mewling needy whimpers as you oscillate on his cock.

“I cannot—I cannot cum inside.” He lets out a strangled moan as you begin grinding faster than just moments before, as if encouraging him to do so.

“Why not?” you breathe.

His head nearly lulls back as he staves off his own release. “You could get with child.”

You grip his hand and lead it to your breast, and he lets himself fall for your entrancement, kneading it between his fingers. Your nipple is caught between two of them, and he presses them together just the slightest bit too hard, earning a wince from above him. It makes him realize he has been regrettably neglecting them this entire time.

“My breasts are sore.” You inhale sharply. “I shall bleed soon.”

Ah. In that case—

Gwayne dips his hands back into the water, finding your hips to guide them, delighting in the way your moans grow more and more fervent as his cock drags against your walls.

It approaches swift, and you do not have any time nor stamina to warn him of it. You wonder if he can sense it.

Just as quick as it came, it washes over you in an instant. Your muscles clamp down around him, and he moans loud into your shoulder—you soon feel a warmth deep in your womb, the warmth of his seed. A minuscule part of you hopes it will take.

Shortly afterward, he lifts your bodies from the water, carrying you with your legs wrapped around him. His cock has slipped out of you, but the kiss he places on your lips distracts you from the loss.

You push his chest, separating your mouths, and wrap your arms around his neck. “Let us leave together, Gwayne. Silverwing is large enough to saddle two. You could be a sellsword, and I a scribe—I your wife. I shall give you children, if it is what you desire. We can spend our days in rest and tranquility, like this.” Your breath still hasn’t caught.

It is a moment of silence before Gwayne finds the words. The dubious words, though the ones that provide enough hope to settle you. “Perhaps, my princess. Do not worry yourself with eventuality.” And he sets you down on the marble just above the bath. Your calves dip back into the water, and it is then you realize that they are aching.

He kneels down into the water and takes your legs over his shoulders. You feel the stretch in your thighs, equal parts from their growing soreness and the length of his shoulders. His release begins seeping out of your cunt from the pressure of it all.

He presses a kiss to the inside of your knee, then to the inside of your thigh, and then finally to your clit. His head dips down to your opening, and he sucks.

It becomes more like he is kissing, or eating you, at some point. You cannot tell. The pleasure has already gotten to be too much, and you are writhing under him.

His arms wrap around your thighs and he pulls you closer to his mouth, and you loudly and embarrassingly moan, your fingers rake through his hair, gripping it tight when his nose brushes against your clit.

You haven’t discovered his objective, but thank the gods for him. It is somewhat relaxing and simultaneously frustrating for him to be lapping away mindlessly at your cunt.

“Please, Gwayne, let me cum—” you beg, all breathless and crestfallen, and his eyes flick up to you. He finds you are the most spoiled thing he has ever met, yet also the most beautiful. He thinks, in that moment, that he truly should consider being taken as your husband.

He nods once. “As you wish.”

And his mouth is replaced by his fingers. He pumps them into you, a relentless pace, and his lips find themselves back onto you, but now on your clit.

He laps at you and rocks his fingers further inside, getting your folds all slick and glossy with both your own and his own arousal, as well as his own saliva.

He curls his fingers deep in your cunt, in that spongy spot that once sheathed his cock, and it is enough to bring you to climax before you realize it.

You swear your vision goes black for a moment as you cum, and the bliss fills your body over the irritation. It was embarrassingly fast how quickly he brought you to absolution, but you did not have enough might to let it wash over you the way your orgasm had.

Gwayne looks up at you with those big blue eyes of his, now glossed over. The lower half of his face is sheen with your cum—his cum—and he pants and lifts himself up to join you on the marble, his strong body glistening with the damp of the bath.

You think you might faint.

day fourteen

Tonight’s inn had been the nicest of all fourteen. You and Gwayne had jointly decided for it to be the last of your stops, and that you would make the journey the rest of the way there without sleeping.

It was not long to King’s Landing. As much as you had longed to see your mother, and to be home again, the thought of what would happen to Gwayne in the coming days was a thought too harrowing to bear.

But it had lingered in your mind since the field. Certainly he could not leave you, having taken your maidenhood. Your mother would find a way. She knows what it is like to be infatuated with someone you should not be infatuated with. She knows Gwayne. As a soldier for the opposition, yes, but she knows him all the more.

If she has held mercy for his sister, she would certainly hold mercy for him, especially given the situation at hand. The situation of you being in love with a Hightower, and him having bedded you—well, fucked you in a field, then in a bath, a few scattered moments along the road of him lapping at your cunt, or sticking his fingers there to cull your nerves the nights you were too tense to sleep. Your mother coddled you enough before you were taken hostage, and she would certainly do more once you are back with her.

Gwayne seems to sense your restlessness. You have resorted to single bed rooms in the inns, given the underestimated lack of coin he decided to bring with him. He has been able to pick up on your behavior for the last few days—noting to himself how much you lack sleep the closer you get to King’s Landing—and he has always been able to get you to talk about it. Tonight, you seem not wanting of his perception.

He turns over to face you. “Are you feeling well?” he asks.

You look to him for a moment. “I feel fine.”

Propping himself up on one arm, he maneuvers himself closer until he is hovering above you, as he stares down at where you lie. “You mustn’t need to lie.” His voice is soft.

Your lungs expand with a heavy breath of air. “I do not wish for you to leave when we return to the Red Keep. You told me that we would talk about it, and we never have.”

He brushes your hair behind your ear with his free hand. “What would you like to talk about?”

“I want us to wed.”

Gwayne stares into you. And then hangs his head low with laughter.

“I am serious, Gwayne. If you swore fealty to my mother, the rightful queen, she would show you mercy. I have no doubt she has shown it to your sister, and to your niece and her daughter too.” His smile was wiped from his face sometime as you spoke.

“You cannot be certain of that, though, can you princess?” he mumbles, raising his head back up to cock it to the side.

“I cannot.” You begin picking at the skin around your fingernails.

Gwayne places a hand over them, stopping you. “The agreement was for me to bring you, unharmed, to the Red Keep. And then I would leave, or they would have my head.” His hand envelops one of yours.

“My mother would not let them have it, if I simply tell her.”

“You speak lightly of a heavy thing, my princess.” He squeezes your hand a bit tighter. “If you so much as suggest that the Hightowers are anything less than treasonous vipers, your mother’s council will smell a captive who has learned to love her cage. You are her only daughter, yes, and she adores you. Therefore, if she discovers how thoroughly I have failed to keep my distance, amnesty will be the last thing she grants my house. It will be fire and blood, starting with my head on a pike.”

“She knows what it is like to love someone forbidden to her.”

Gwayne grins at your words. “She also knows she must satisfy her council,” he says softly.

As much as it pains you, you realize he is right. Yet he still remains as handsome as ever in the dark, and his lips are glossed over, looking so plump and lonely.

“Will you kiss me?” you mutter, and kiss you he does. His mouth is just as soft as you had imagined, and he is still so tender and hesitant in his ministrations you almost feel a want to take over.

Your lips are pliable, though, and part for him almost instantly. The hand that held yours comes up to cradle your cheek, and your legs open up a spot for him to slot himself into.

You are grateful for the loss of layers in spite of the outdoor elements—which have been terribly cold nearly the entire journey—as they give you easy access to the growing length in Gwayne’s linens.

He breathes a low groan into your mouth when you reach a hand under the fabric cuff of his waist to grip his cock. You pump him in a slow rhythm, and he nearly falters completely, the arm propping him up above you buckling and lowering him to his elbow.

The hand cradling your face moves to your own core, and he hastily hikes your shift up your thighs. His fingers find your cunt, pressing his thumb to your clit and stroking it.

The two of you breath and pant into one another’s mouth, the speed of both of your caresses increasing as your moans do.

“Would you—” Gwayne pants, “like me inside?”

You nod eagerly, and pull your hand from his cock. His own hand ceases motion on you, and he uses both arms to gather your body and flip you onto your stomach. The featherbed mattress bounces with the movement, and you reach your hands behind you to pull your shift up entirely to your middle, perking your ass up toward him.

Gwayne has already rid himself of his smallclothes in the meantime. He places a hand right above your backend, stabilizing both you and himself, and lines himself up with your cunt.

He leans his body over yours and presses soft kisses along your spine, pushing himself inside of you with a long groan. You let out a needy one all the same.

“Keep moving—” you beg, letting the top of your head fall to the pillow below you. He hums in response, and begins thrusting slowly, still hesitant.

It is a stretch, but a welcome one nonetheless. It is easy to lose trail of your thoughts with the drag of his cock in and out and the press of his chest to your back, the song of his pretty little grunts and groans singing in your ear.

He wraps his arms around your middle, one hand gripping a breast through the soft cotton of your shift. You flick your hair away from your neck, and his lips quickly find the spot, tipping you into absolute bliss.

One of his arms, the one not clutching your chest, sneaks down to your core, and he begins rubbing your clit with a seemingly endless vitality.

The other pushes the two of you up so that you are both standing on your knees. Your hands extend to his head behind you, pushing it closer as you awkwardly crane your neck so that you can join your lips with his in what may be the sloppiest way they have ever met each other.

His fingers continue their assault on your pearl, and his hips rock into you, and it all feels so much. So good, yet so much. Your chest rises and falls rapidly with each slam of his cock into your cunt, the strength of which also makes his head bob slightly into your kiss, coating the area above and below and beside your lips with his own spit.

There is little surprisingly little build-up to your release. It comes quick, like the tide coming in to take away a shell from the shore. It seems to tear through you, lighting up every nerve in your body, pulled straight from your breathless lungs and your racing heart and illuminating your frenzied brain with nothing other than euphoria.

He is still pumping in and out of you, seemingly chasing his own release. You feel a warmth deep in your overwhelmed cunt, and you know he has come, his body slowing entirely. He breaks away from your lips with a soft little cry, and you simply look at each other for a moment as your breath returns to the both of you.

In this moment, you think Ser Gwayne Hightower is the most beautiful creature in the world.

“You are more than a beauty,” he says in turn. You grin at him, still breathless, and join your lips together once more.

day sixteen

When you arrive at the gates of the Red Keep, Syrax and Caraxes are posted on the battlements.

You look over, and Gwayne seems as if he might just curl up and die. You scoff out a laugh at the sight, and he immediately straightens his back.

Open the gates, yells some guard from behind the wall, and the gate begins to part, grinding against the gravel below.

You will see your mother today. For the first time in months, you will see your mother. Will she be different? Is she a different person now that she is on the throne? More importantly, will she be a different person now that her eldest son is dead? You wonder if they have burned the body yet, or perhaps even set it out to sea. He could not become a Targaryen, as he would never become King—the gods would not allow it, so history will remember him as a Velaryon. It would only be fitting for his body to be released into the water.

You should tell her about this. She must be so overwhelmed with all of her recent duties, she may have forgotten about the fact. Is little Joffrey still in the Vale? Surely, mother must have sent for his return by now. He is too vulnerable there on his own, no matter who he is with.

When you blink hard in an attempt to settle yourself, you realize your horse has been guided inside the walls of the Keep, and Gwayne is helping you off of your horse. His hands are on your waist, and you jump down with a grip on his wrists to stabilize you. Yet your eyes are not on him—they are on any entrance, every door where your mother could come out of.

He sighs, and you finally glance at him. His hands hesitate to leave their spot on your middle. “You are home, and you are safe, my princess.” And then his arms drop back to his side, as if ashamed he let them linger for a moment too long.

“Must you go?” you breathe out a chuckle, trying to lighten the mood that seems to deepen with each passing moment.

His hand reaches for yours, and his voice is lower now. “It is the deal.”

For some reason, your heart seems to shatter. It feels odd and disheartening, knowing that he in this moment has a harsher effect on you than anything before.

Your expression has dropped, and Gwayne must be able to see it. His hand grips yours tighter, and he sucks in a breath, his head dropping to avoid your gaze. Your gaze, which quickly wells with tears. You are confused as to how this would have been the outcome of your journey together—and you are unsure if you are glad of it, or instead disappointed in yourself for not realizing that this is what would always happen.

You lower your voice too. “I do not want you to go,” you say, and your hand finally reciprocates Gwayne’s affection. You clutch it, tight, hoping it may get through to him.

It does not. His head does not lift, not even a single bit. You think you can see his brows furrow.

“I have done my duty, my princess,” he mumbles.

Hundreds of solutions flow through your mind in an instant. He could stay, swear fealty to your mother, and he could be yours. He could be your sworn shield and protector. He could be yours, if he would only say yes.

You open your mouth to say it, but nothing comes out. The words die on your tongue.

“Stay,” is what you can manage. “Please, Gwayne.”

His head tilts up, but he still averts his gaze from yours. Something else, something in the distance, catches his attention. It catches yours too. Two heads of familiar lengthy silver hair—your mother and her husband—inch closer to you and Gwayne.

The hand that held onto his was already back at your side. You must have done it without thought.

“Mummy,” you mumble. And she smiles.

She inches closer to you, seemingly dumbfounded that the sight before her is real. “Sweet girl,” she says, and you feel close to crumbling.

You want to step closer, to close the gap between the two of you, but you cannot bring yourself to leave his side.

But Gwayne is by your side one moment, and gone the next. He is pulled away by the gold cloaks, and it is with little struggle. He lets himself be pulled away. He lets himself be pushed out of the walls of the Keep, and he watches as you stand and stammer all bewildered and reaching to plead his forgiveness to the queen.

The gate closes on him once his horse is by his side.

day thirty five

You have not found much use for yourself since you have returned to the Red Keep. Neither has anyone else.

The war still rages on. It reminds you of the promise you had made to yourself, to leave if it did not end, to leave with Gwayne to Essos. He would be a sellsword, and you a scribe, under the protection of Silverwing.

It seemed a better life, a freer life, you and he on the road together. Being locked away in your chambers of your own volition, anything seemed better.

But Gwayne had abandoned you that day. He had let himself be carried away, and your mother had ignored your pleas of his fealty. It seemed nobody was on your side.

You had only wished for peace. Whatever had grown in place of it had taken your brothers away from you, and Gwayne, too, in some way.

If the war had not gone on, perhaps you could have met him another way. Perhaps he would have been your betrothed. And you could love him the way you wanted to, the way you should have since you woke up in the encampment with him by your side.

He had protected you all those months ago, you had come to realize. The violence of the men who fought under his command would have harmed you more than the words that came from his mouth when defending himself in your stupid fights, the ones you would feed into when he forced you to ride alongside him as the soldiers would march further into the Reach. The words that you replied with when he would anger you, when he would attempt to get close to you.

You should have let him get close to you when he tried. Your need for survival had prevailed then and you took every attempt as some sort of tactic to manipulate you to his side.

But Gwayne had no side, as you swiftly figured out. He wanted out of his cage seemingly as badly as you did, but he did the intelligent thing—the thing he warned you he would always do—and returned to his people, to those he swore loyalty to.

These days, it feels you have no people. Your mother is always off attending to her royal duties, your stepfather and cousins assisting her. And you have no brothers left to bond to. Joffrey is still too little, and too shy, to converse with. The others, your half-siblings, are just a few years young.

If the Hightowers had left you for dead that day, you think you would be more comfortable in the arms of the Stranger than you do in this seemingly haunted home. Your maidenhood would be untainted, and your memory would live on as tragic and loyal. You had left to fight for your mother’s cause after all and you would have died for it then, gods willing.

A piece of you wants to hurl yourself from a window for the treasonous thoughts you have had, but you just want peace. You want peace and freedom. Most of all, though, you want Gwayne.

You can only hope he wants you too, wherever he is. You will wait, and you will bide your time until the war is over—if you live until then. And you will take Silverwing and fly to him, and you will be with him, and you will exile yourselves to Essos. You will dream of that outcome until it happens.

Something deep inside you says it will.

[lanadelrae-wrld]

watching black doves… cole atwood you fine ass man god i love when finn bennett is on my screen #letmeknow 👀👀👀

[gekkehuiz]

I miss finn bennett

[valarrtheyoungprince]

A Reason to Return

Pairing: Valarr Targaryen x Reader ​Synopsis: Valarr has never confessed because he assumed there would be time. He believed their closeness was permanent and that no marriage arrangement could be made without him hearing of it first.

Part 1

By sunrise, the fields beyond the King’s Gate had become a kingdom of silk.

Pavilions crowded the green in long, brilliant rows, their peaks crowned with carved beasts and snapping standards. Golden lions strained against crimson cloth. Silver trout swam upon rippling blue. Direwolves, roses, suns, stags, falcons, krakens, and towers rose above the gathering multitude as though every proud creature in Westeros had descended upon King’s Landing to witness men batter one another beneath the summer sun.

Merchants had arrived before dawn. Their cries mingled with the piping of flutes, the ringing of smiths’ hammers, and the restless clatter of horses being led toward the lists. Boys ran between the tents selling meat pies and bright ribbons. Women carried baskets of flowers. Squires hurried past with polished shields, fresh lances, and armfuls of mail.

The air smelled of grass, horses, charcoal, hot bread, and expectation.

You stood at the entrance to the royal viewing gallery while your father exchanged courtesies with three lords whose names you had already forgotten.

They all wished to be seen speaking with him.

They all wished to look at you.

You had dressed carefully for the opening day, though you had pretended otherwise when your maids fussed over you that morning. Your gown bore the colors of your house, the sleeves embroidered with silver thread, the fabric fine enough to announce your rank without appearing ostentatious beside the royal family.

It was armor of another kind.

Your father had taught you that before you were old enough to understand why noblewomen required armor at all.

“Smile,” he murmured without turning his head.

“I am smiling.”

“You look as though you are considering which of these men would be most satisfying to poison.”

“Then I am smiling as Mother used to.”

His mouth twitched.

The expression vanished when Lord Edwyn Hightower approached.

He was courteous enough to bow deeply. He was handsome enough that half the court called him so, broad-shouldered and fair-haired, with the pale green eyes of his mother’s family. His doublet was white velvet, worked with a tower of gold thread over his heart.

He brought you a gift.

Again.

“My lady.” He presented a small carved box. “A trifle from Oldtown.”

Three days ago, he had brought you pearls.

The day before that, a book of songs copied by septons in the Starry Sept.

At the welcoming feast, he had spoken at great length about the chambers his future wife would occupy in the Hightower and how she might wish to decorate them.

He had not asked whether you wished to live there.

He spoke as though the matter had already been decided by wiser people and only awaited the tedious formality of your agreement.

“My lord is too generous,” you said.

“Not nearly generous enough.”

His gaze moved over your face with the calm satisfaction of a man inspecting a prize he expected soon to own.

Your father accepted the box on your behalf.

“The first riders are gathering,” he said, perhaps sensing the tightness in your shoulders. “We should take our places.”

Lord Edwyn offered you his arm.

Before you could decide whether refusing him before half the court would cause more trouble than enduring him, a roar rose from the lower field.

You turned.

The knights of House Targaryen had emerged from their pavilion.

Black-and-red armor shone beneath the new sun. Dragon wings curved from helms. Rubies glimmered at sword belts and sword pommels. Squires in scaled leather carried shields painted with the three-headed dragon.

Valarr stood among them. Even from a distance, you knew the shape of him.

You would have known him if every knight in Westeros had been dressed in the same black plate. You knew the breadth of his shoulders and the stillness he wore before a contest. You knew how his right hand flexed when the old break in his wrist troubled him. You knew the slight tilt of his head when he listened to advice he had no intention of following.

He stood beside his father, Prince Baelor, listening as the king’s master-at-arms traced something in the dirt with the tip of a lance.

Valarr appeared composed. And others would have called him calm.

You saw the way his jaw had gone rigid.

He was anxious.

He had always become quiet before entering the lists. As a boy, he had filled the hours before training with boasts and laughter. As a man, he had learned to place all his fear beneath a prince’s polished courtesy.

You had once asked whether he was frightened of being hurt.

“No,” he had said.

“Then what frightens you?”

He had looked at you for a long moment before answering.

“Failing where everyone can see.”

Below, one of the knights said something that made Prince Baelor laugh.

Valarr did not.

Then he looked toward the gallery.

He found you at once.

The change in his face was so swift and complete that it struck you like sunlight breaking through a cloud.

His stern mouth softened. His eyes warmed. The tension in his shoulders eased as though a hand had reached inside his armor and loosened some hidden knot.

He said something to his father. Prince Baelor glanced toward you. Then Valarr walked away from the conversation.

The master-at-arms called after him. One of the squires hurried to keep pace. Valarr ignored them both.

Lord Edwyn still held out his arm.

Valarr’s gaze dropped to it.

The warmth left his expression.

He climbed the steps to the gallery with the sure stride of a man approaching a battlefield he meant to claim. His armor made each footfall heavy, yet nothing about him appeared encumbered. His hair, shinning beneath the sun, had been pushed back and away from his face. A half-cloak of black silk hung from one shoulder, fastened by a ruby dragon.

He bowed first to your father.

“My lord.”

“Prince Valarr.”

“My apologies for stealing your daughter before the heralds begin.”

Your father raised one brow. “You presume she is yours to steal.”

Something sharpened in Valarr’s eyes. “Only for a moment.”

Lord Edwyn’s smile remained pleasant.

“His Highness must be eager for reassurance before the lists.”

Valarr looked at him.

“I had not realized reassurance was among the gifts Lord Hightower brought to court.”

The words were perfectly courteous. The tone was not.

Your father cleared his throat.

You stepped forward before either man could transform the morning into a quarrel between a dragon and a tower.

“You ought to be preparing, my prince.”

“I am prepared.”

“You are missing one gauntlet.”

Valarr glanced down at his bare left hand as though surprised to discover it.

“My squire has it.”

Twenty paces away, the unfortunate boy stood holding the gauntlet and looking uncertain whether he was permitted to interrupt.

You folded your hands before you.

“What do you need, my prince?”

Valarr’s expression changed again.

Not enough for anyone who did not know him to understand. Only the slightest narrowing of his eyes, a moment of uncharacteristic hesitation.

He looked almost young.

“When we were children,” he said, “you gave me your favor before my first contest.”

You stared at him.

“I gave you a strip torn from the hem of my gown because you would not stop begging.”

“You told me it would make me invincible.”

“You were nine.”

“I won.”

“You struck Matarys in the mouth with a wooden sword.”

“He yielded.”

“Because he was crying.”

“He still yielded.”

A faint smile touched his lips. Then it faded.

“Will you give me another?”

The sounds of the tourney seemed to recede.

You became aware of the noblewomen seated nearby, of the queens and princesses not yet arrived, of Lord Edwyn standing close enough to hear every word.

Valarr had ridden in tourneys for years.

He had accepted favors from royal cousins when duty required it. Once, in Lannisport, a dozen maidens had thrown ribbons beneath his horse’s hooves. He had tied none of them to his arm.

He had never asked you. Not since childhood.

“Why?” you asked softly.

His eyes held yours.

“Because I want yours.”

“You have admirers enough to cover your armor in silk.”

“I did not ask them.”

A dangerous hope lifted its head inside you. You forced it down.

“Does a prince of House Targaryen truly require luck from me?”

Valarr stepped closer.

The black steel of his breastplate nearly touched your gown. He lowered his voice until the words belonged only to you, though the court watched with avid attention.

“Not luck.”

His gaze moved over your face as though committing it to memory. “A reason to return.”

Your breath caught.

For a moment, you could not move.

Then you reached into the small purse fastened at your waist.

You had brought the ribbon without admitting, even to yourself, why you had done so.

It was narrow, embroidered by your own hand in the colors of your house. You had spent three evenings working tiny silver leaves into the cloth, telling your maid it was meant to edge a handkerchief.

Valarr watched you unfold it. The composed prince disappeared. Something vulnerable entered his face.

“You made it,” he said.

“A poor thing compared with what other ladies might offer.”

“I would know your stitches anywhere.”

“My prince, you mock my skill.”

“I treasure its consistency.”

You gave him a reproachful look, and his smile widened.

When you held out the ribbon, he did not take it. Instead, he extended his bare left arm.

“Will you?”

You ought to have handed it to his squire. You knew that.

Instead, you stepped closer and tied the favor around the black plate protecting his forearm. Your fingers brushed the leather straps beneath. The armor was warm from the sun.

Valarr stood utterly still.

You tied the knot twice.

When you finished, his gloved hand closed gently around your wrist.

“Here?” you whispered.

He had made no attempt to conceal the ribbon beneath his vambrace. It lay bright and visible against the black steel.

“Here.”

“Everyone will see.”

“That is the purpose.”

Your heart gave one painful beat. He released you slowly. The herald’s horn sounded across the field.

Valarr bowed to your father, then to you. He offered Lord Edwyn nothing beyond a brief inclination of his head.

As he turned away, your father said, “Prince Valarr.”

Valarr stopped.

“If you carry my daughter’s colors into the lists, do not disgrace them.”

Valarr looked back at you.

“I never could.”

//

By the time you entered the royal gallery, everyone had noticed.

Whispers moved through the tiered seats faster than wind through summer wheat.

Valarr had taken your favor.

Valarr had asked for it.

Valarr wore it openly.

The queen’s ladies looked at your arm as though expecting to find some visible mark where he had touched you. Princesses leaned close to one another. Young maidens who had spent the previous evening discussing which knight deserved their favor now watched you with narrowed eyes.

Your aunt sat beside you and arranged her skirts.

Below, Valarr mounted his black destrier.

His squire fastened the missing gauntlet. Prince Baelor spoke to him with one hand on the horse’s bridle. Valarr listened, but when he settled his helm beneath his arm, his gaze rose toward the gallery.

He found you.

His thumb brushed over the favor tied around his wrist.

Your aunt made a quiet sound.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

You turned to her. She smiled without kindness.

“You are both intolerable.”

Before you could demand an explanation, trumpets sounded. The first jousts began.

Valarr’s opening opponent was a knight of House Mallister, a broad man on a grey courser. They took their places at opposite ends of the field while servants lowered the barrier between them.

Valarr put on his helm.

For a heartbeat, the dragon prince vanished behind black steel. Then he lifted his lance.

The crowd roared. The horses sprang forward.

You had watched Valarr ride in the lists many times. You knew the cadence of his charge, the lowering of his shoulder, the final shift of the lance before impact.

The first pass struck with the force of a thunderclap.

Valarr’s lance crashed into the painted eagle at the center of the Mallister knight’s shield, splintering the wood from rim to rim. The impact tore a roar from the stands. The Mallister rocked violently in his saddle but managed to remain seated, his horse stumbling several paces before he pulled it back beneath him.

Valarr took the answering blow near the edge of his own shield.

His body jerked with it.

For one terrible instant, you saw his left shoulder twist too far and remembered the old injury there—the one that stiffened during winter rains, though he denied it whenever you noticed him favoring the arm.

Your fingers tightened around the carved rail before you.

Valarr remained mounted.

He rode to the far end of the lists as though the strike had meant nothing, black-and-red armor gleaming beneath the summer sun, his posture proud and controlled. Anyone else might have believed he felt no pain.

You knew better.

You saw the subtle roll of his shoulder. The brief flex of his fingers around the reins. The careful breath he took before turning his horse.

They wheeled for the next pass.

Before Valarr returned to his place, he lifted his head toward the royal gallery.

He did not look to his father waiting beside the lists.

He did not seek the king’s approval or acknowledge the nobles shouting his name.

He looked for you.

The knowledge landed inside you with almost as much force as the lance had struck his shield.

Valarr found you quickly.

He always did.

In crowded halls, across torchlit courtyards, among hundreds of bright gowns and noble faces, his gaze had always found yours with such ease that you had long ago begun pretending it meant nothing.

You could no longer remember when you had first learned to do that.

Perhaps you had been sixteen, when he returned from Dragonstone and walked past two princesses to ask why you had changed the ribbon in your hair.

Perhaps you had been younger still, watching him search the training yard after his first victory until he saw you perched on the wall.

It had always felt like being chosen.

Only for a moment.

Only until the court reminded you that being found was not the same as being claimed.

Your eyes met across the field.

Valarr’s hand shifted on his lance.

Then, slowly, his thumb brushed across the favor tied openly around his wrist.

Your favor.

The narrow strip of cloth seemed impossibly delicate against black steel.

He turned his horse toward the barrier.

The herald lowered his arm.

Valarr charged.

The second collision filled the air with the crack of breaking wood. Both lances shattered, fragments spinning beneath the horses’ hooves. Valarr bent low against the impact, holding his seat through strength and instinct.

The Mallister knight recovered more slowly.

As they received fresh lances, Valarr looked toward you again.

This time the glance was briefer, stolen beneath the lowering edge of his visor.

Still, you understood it.

He was checking that you remained there. As if you might leave before he returned. As if your watching mattered more than the thousands gathered around you.

The third pass ended the contest.

Valarr’s lance struck squarely against the Mallister’s shield. The other knight was lifted from his saddle and thrown into the dirt with a violence that sent dust blooming around him.

The stands erupted.

The sound came like a wave breaking over stone—shouts, applause, the pounding of feet against timber. Men lifted their cups. Women waved ribbons from the gallery. Somewhere behind you, a maiden screamed Valarr’s name with enough enthusiasm to embarrass her entire house.

Valarr did not immediately raise his lance.

He brought his horse around the fallen knight first, circling until he saw the Mallister move. Only when the man pushed himself onto one elbow did Valarr incline his head to him in acknowledgment.

It was such a small thing. Most of the court would not remember it.

You would.

You remembered every small mercy Valarr tried to conceal beneath pride.

Only then did he lift the remains of his lance toward the royal box.

He saluted the king.

He saluted his father.

The expected courtesies.

Then Valarr turned in the saddle. The broken lance moved away from the royal dais. Slowly, unmistakably, he pointed it toward you.

The cheering changed. You heard it happen.

What had been admiration for a victorious prince sharpened into something more curious and intimate. Whispers broke beneath the applause. Heads turned from the lists toward the gallery, following the line of the shattered lance until every interested gaze found you.

Valarr’s hand rose to the ribbon around his wrist.

His fingers closed over it.

Not a fleeting brush this time.

He held it against the black plate as though reminding himself it remained there.

As though reminding you that he had carried it through every blow.

Your breath caught painfully beneath your ribs.

You wanted to look away. You could not.

The cheering seemed to strike your body from every direction, vibrating through the wooden gallery and into your bones. Heat climbed your neck. Your heartbeat became so loud that for one foolish moment, you wondered whether those seated beside you might hear it.

Valarr was making a spectacle of you.

No.

Not of you.

For you.

There was a difference, though you scarcely dared name it.

Lord Edwyn sat two places beyond your father. You felt him lean closer before he spoke, catching the faint scent of the expensive oil he wore in his hair.

“A bold display from Prince Valarr.” His voice remained pleasant.

Everything about Edwyn was pleasant when others were listening. You kept your gaze fixed on the field. Valarr still held the lance in your direction.

“He rode well,” you said. It was the safest answer you could manage.

Edwyn gave a quiet laugh. “He performs well.”

The distinction was deliberate.

The words slipped neatly between your ribs, seeking the most vulnerable place.

You turned your head.

Lord Edwyn watched Valarr with an indulgent smile, as though observing a talented mummer amusing an easily impressed crowd.

When he met your gaze, the smile deepened.

“Princes understand spectacle better than other men,” he said. “They are raised to know precisely where to look and what gesture will earn the loudest cheer.”

Your stomach tightened.

He wanted you to doubt it.

Worse, some fearful part of you was already eager to help him.

You had spent years teaching yourself not to mistake Valarr’s affection for intention. A hand at the small of your back was friendship. His remembering your favorite flowers was habit. The way he always found you in crowded rooms was merely familiarity.

And this?

A ribbon displayed before half the realm?

A broken lance turned toward you?

Perhaps Edwyn was right. Perhaps it was only another charming gesture from a prince who had never been forced to understand what such gestures cost the women receiving them.

You looked back toward the lists before Edwyn could see how deeply the suggestion had struck.

Below, Valarr finally lowered the lance.

His squire came to take it from him. Another man reached for the reins, but Valarr remained mounted long enough to pull off his helm.

Dark hair fell untidily across his forehead, damp with sweat. His face was flushed from effort. There was dust along one cheek and a tightness around his mouth that told you the strike to his shoulder had hurt more than he would ever admit before the crowd.

The moment the helm was gone, he searched the gallery.

Not the king. Not Prince Baelor.

Not the noblewomen who leaned over the railing with favors dangling hopefully from their hands.

You.

Always you.

His gaze moved across the seats with growing impatience until it found your face.

Something in him eased.

The hard line of his mouth softened. The fierce concentration in his eyes gave way to a warmth so private that it seemed impossible the entire court could be witnessing it.

Then he smiled.

It was not the brilliant, princely smile he offered the stands—the practiced curve of his mouth meant for cheering crowds, visiting lords, and songs that would be sung of him tomorrow.

This smile was smaller. Uneven at one corner.

Almost boyish.

It carried no triumph. Only relief.

There you are.

You felt the words as clearly as if he had spoken them beside your ear.

You knew that smile.

You had seen it after childhood punishments, when he escaped the septa and found you waiting on the servants’ stairs. You had seen it when he returned from his first long journey and discovered you in the welcoming hall. You had seen it through fevers, bruises, arguments, and years in which the two of you had become so thoroughly woven into one another’s lives that you had stopped noticing where friendship ended and longing began.

It was yours.

At least, it had always felt like yours.

The thought came so naturally that it terrified you. Because smiles were not vows. A prince could find you in every crowd and still marry another woman.

He could carry your favor through a tourney and later place his cloak around the shoulders of whichever bride best served his house.

He could love you in a hundred small, silent ways and never choose you in the one way that mattered.

You hated yourself for hoping.

Hated Edwyn for making you doubt.

Most of all, you hated Valarr for looking at you as though there had never been anyone else, when he had never once given you the courage to believe it.

//

He came to your pavilion before his second match.

By then, the lower grounds were thick with visitors. Servants carried trays of wine and cold meats between the tents. Musicians played near the merchants’ row. Knights who had finished their first contests drank with friends while squires hammered dents from armor.

Your family’s pavilion stood near the royal enclosure, large enough to hold a table, cushioned chairs, and a curtained private chamber at the rear.

Your father had gone to speak with one of the king’s councilors.

Your aunt had gone in search of lemon cakes.

You stood alone for the first time that day, staring at the carved box Lord Edwyn had given you.

Inside lay a golden chain set with pale green stones.

A wife’s gift.

Not formally.

Not yet.

But clear enough.

You closed the lid as footsteps approached.

Valarr entered without announcement. His squire followed with an armful of armor straps and a look of resignation.

“You are meant to wait outside royal tents unless invited,” you said.

Valarr pulled off one gauntlet with his teeth. “This is not a royal tent.”

“It belongs to my father.”

“He likes me.”

“He tolerates you because your grandfather is king.”

“He tolerated me before that.”

“You once put a frog in his bed.”

“I was seven.”

“You were fourteen.” Valarr removed his helm and passed it to his squire.

His hair clung damply to his forehead. A faint flush lay across his cheekbones. Without the helm, he appeared less like the perfect knight painted in songs and more like the boy who used to climb the Red Keep’s walls to reach your chamber window.

His gaze fell upon the carved box. “What is that?”

“A gift.”

“From whom?”

“You know from whom.”

His mouth flattened.

The squire cleared his throat. “Your Highness, the fastening beneath your pauldron has come loose.”

“Then fasten it.”

“I cannot reach it while you are wearing the gorget.”

Valarr looked at him.

The boy looked back with the patient misery of someone accustomed to royal unreasonable demands.

“I must fetch a narrower strap from the armorer,” the squire explained. “If Your Highness will wait—”

“I will assist him,” you said.

Both turned toward you.

Valarr’s squire looked relieved enough to kiss your hem.

“I shall return at once, my lady.” He fled.

Valarr watched him go.

“You frightened him, my prince.”

“He lacks resolve.”

“He has served you for four years.”

“And still flees at the first opportunity.”

“Perhaps he values peace.”

“Then he chose the wrong prince.”

You moved behind Valarr.

The left pauldron had shifted, leaving the leather fastening twisted beneath the edge of his gorget. You worked your fingers beneath the plate.

“You are too warm,” you said.

“I have been wearing black steel beneath the sun.”

You pulled the strap tighter than necessary.

Valarr hissed.

“Do not be difficult.”

“I am standing obediently while you attempt to strangle me with my own armor.”

“You were thrown from a horse at twelve because you refused to tighten a saddle strap.”

“The horse disliked me.”

“The horse was wiser than most.”

He laughed softly. The sound vibrated through the metal beneath your hand.

You had almost worked the stubborn fastening into place when Valarr said quietly, “Your hands are trembling.”

Your fingers went still against the leather.

For one humiliating heartbeat, you could feel every slight quiver he had noticed—the betraying unsteadiness in your fingertips, the tension wound through your wrist, the way you had been holding your breath whenever the edge of the armor pressed too close to the injury beneath.

“They are not,” you said.

Valarr gave a soft sound that was not quite a laugh.

“They are.”

“It is an awkward fastening.”

“You have fastened it before.”

“When we were children.”

The answer came too quickly.

You lowered your head and resumed working, though the strap was already nearly secure. Better to busy your hands than let him see your face.

There had been a hundred such moments when you were young.

You fastening the buckles on his practice armor because his squire had been late. You wrapping linen around his scraped palms after he fell in the yard. You kneeling beside him in the grass while he insisted that a swollen ankle was nothing and that he could still outrun Matarys if given the opportunity.

Back then, your concern had been permitted to show.

You had been children. No one had watched the way you touched him or counted how often he sought you after every hurt. No one had measured tenderness against marriage prospects or whispered that a girl’s affection might make her foolish.

Now every kindness had consequences.

Valarr’s voice softened.

“You worried then.”

You pulled the strap tighter.

“I did not.”

He exhaled as the armor drew firmly against his shoulder.

“That was needlessly cruel.”

“You complained it was loose.”

“I did not ask you to punish me with it.”

“You have survived worse.”

“Usually with less enthusiasm from the person tending me.”

Despite yourself, the corner of your mouth threatened to lift.

You pushed it down.

Valarr had always known how to draw a smile from you when you least wished to give him one. It was one of the many small powers he possessed over you without seeming to understand that he possessed it at all.

You flattened the leather beneath the plate, careful not to brush the tender place near his collarbone.

“I was never worried,” you said again.

The lie sounded thinner this time.

Valarr became very still.

“You have worried for me since we were children.”

The teasing had gone from his voice.

You swallowed.

“You have given me ample reason.”

“I know.”

His voice had changed. There was something in the way he said it that made your fingers falter.

The teasing warmth remained, but something deeper moved beneath it. Something too tender to examine safely.

You drew your hand away, intending to step back before he could see how deeply those two words had affected you.

Valarr turned.

The movement was sudden enough that you nearly collided with him.

One moment, you were standing behind his shoulder with the armor between you; the next, you were caught in the narrow space before him, close enough that the black steel of his breastplate brushed the front of your gown.

Your breath caught.

His body blocked the light from the pavilion entrance. Heat radiated from him through layers of linen, leather, and sun-warmed plate. The faint scent of steel, horse, and the soap he had used that morning surrounded you—familiar enough that it stirred memories you had spent years trying not to treasure too openly.

Your hand remained against his shoulder.

You had forgotten to remove it.

The other had become trapped between you, your fingers still curled around the loosened end of the leather strap.

Neither of you moved.

Valarr was close enough for you to see every detail that distance usually softened.

The tiny pale scar beneath his lower lip, left from the day Matarys had thrown a wooden cup at him during a quarrel over a hunting dog.

The faint shadow of sleeplessness beneath his eyes.

A small bead of sweat at his temple, caught in a strand of silver-gold hair.

You knew every mark on him.

You knew which scars came from the training yard and which from recklessness. You knew the line across his ribs that a boar’s tusk had made when he was sixteen. You knew the slight crook in the smallest finger of his left hand where it had healed poorly after he refused to let the maester set it twice.

You knew him so completely that sometimes it felt like another form of grief.

To know a person in every private detail and still have no claim upon him.

Valarr’s gaze moved over your face. He looked down at your mouth.

Your heart stopped.

The curtain behind you opened.

Lord Edwyn entered.

“My lady, your father said I might—”

Valarr stepped back.

The absence of him felt abrupt and cold.

Lord Edwyn’s gaze moved from your hand on Valarr’s armor to the prince’s face.

“I see His Highness is receiving very personal assistance.”

You lowered your hand. “Prince Valarr’s armor required fastening.”

“There are squires for such work.”

Valarr picked up his gauntlet. “And yet she did it better.”

Lord Edwyn’s smile thinned. A tense silence stretched between them.

Then Valarr took your hand. Before you could react, he turned it palm-down and bowed over your knuckles.

“I shall endeavor not to disgrace your colors.”

His lips did not touch your skin. His breath did. When he straightened, his eyes were still on you.

“Watch me.”

He left without acknowledging Lord Edwyn.

You stood frozen.

Lord Edwyn waited until the pavilion curtain fell behind him.

“You indulge the prince greatly.”

You looked at him. “He is my friend.”

“A married woman cannot maintain childhood friendships as she did when she was a girl.”

“I am not married.”

“No. But your father and I have spoken at length.”

“Then perhaps you ought to marry my father.” His brows rose.

You heard your own sharpness too late.

Lord Edwyn recovered quickly. “I admire spirit in a woman.”

“I am relieved.”

“Within reason.”

The warning lay beneath the courtesy.

You drew yourself upright. “Then I pray you find a reasonable woman, my lord.”

His expression hardened.

Before he could answer, the herald announced the next riders.

You swept past him.

//

Valarr won his second tilt.

Then his third.

He rode with precision rather than flourish, breaking lance after lance against shields painted with boars, wolves, and burning trees. He took one blow against his chest that drove him back in the saddle, but he regained his balance before the crowd could gasp.

Each time he passed your section of the gallery, he touched the favor.

By midday, the ribbon had darkened with sweat and dust.

A lady of House Redwyne intercepted him near the edge of the field after his fourth victory. She was famed for her beauty, with auburn hair and a gown the color of summer wine.

Before half the court, Lady Redwyne stepped into Valarr’s path and offered him a chain of golden roses.

It was a beautiful thing.

Each flower had been shaped from delicate links of gold, its petals set with tiny garnets that caught the afternoon light and burned like drops of dark red wine. It must have cost more than the yearly income of some landed knights. Draped between the lady’s pale hands, it glittered against her wine-colored gown as though it had been fashioned for no purpose except to rest upon a prince’s black armor.

Around her, conversation faded.

The heralds fell silent.

Even the musicians faltered, the final notes of a lively song trailing uncertainly into the summer air.

There were moments at court when everyone understood, without being told, that they were witnessing something intended to become a story.

This was one of them.

Lady Redwyne was beautiful, wealthy, and unmarried. Her house commanded ships and vineyards and influence enough to interest any royal family. More than one court gossip had already suggested that she would make a fitting bride for a Targaryen prince.

She smiled up at Valarr with the confidence of a woman who had seldom offered anything and been refused.

You could not hear what she said.

The crowd stood too thickly between you, and her voice was meant for Valarr alone. Yet you saw the graceful inclination of her head. The way she lifted the chain just high enough to make her intention unmistakable. The faint color rising prettily into her cheeks as the court watched.

A favor.

Not merely a ribbon tossed beneath his horse or a flower pressed playfully into his hand.

Something costly. Deliberate.

Something worthy of a prince.

Your fingers curled against the fabric of your skirts.

The ribbon tied around Valarr’s wrist suddenly seemed painfully small.

You had made it yourself by candlelight, bending over uneven stitches while pretending to your maid that it was meant for nothing important. The cloth was narrow. The embroidery imperfect. One of the silver leaves leaned crookedly because you had pricked your finger and lost patience with it.

Against the Redwyne lady’s chain of golden roses, it looked like what it was.

A foolish little thing made by a woman who had loved him too quietly for too long.

For one humiliating instant, you wished you had given him something finer.

Something that would not appear childish beside gold and garnets.

Something that might explain to the court why he had chosen to wear it.

Valarr listened while Lady Redwyne spoke.

His expression remained courteous. Attentive. The perfect prince receiving admiration without embarrassing the woman brave enough to offer it.

Then he smiled.

Your heart sank before you could stop it.

You knew that smile. It was the gracious one he used at court—the warm, controlled curve of his mouth that made visiting ladies believe they had briefly captured his full attention. You had watched women carry the memory of it for entire evenings.

Valarr inclined his head.

Then he shook it.

The movement was gentle.

Unmistakable.

Lady Redwyne blinked.

A ripple of surprise moved through those standing nearest them.

She laughed lightly, as though he had misunderstood her—or as though his refusal were merely a playful hesitation she could charm him into abandoning. She raised the chain once more, letting the golden roses spill between her hands.

Perhaps she believed no man would refuse twice.

Perhaps no man ever had.

Valarr’s smile faded.

Not into coldness.

Into certainty.

He lifted his left arm.

The sunlight struck the black steel of his vambrace.

And there, tied plainly around it, lay your ribbon.

It had already gathered dust from the lists. One edge had begun to crease beneath his gauntlet. The silver embroidery was modest beside the golden roses, the cloth so fragile that it looked as though one hard blow might tear it away entirely.

Valarr displayed it as though it were a king’s ransom.

He did not hide it beneath his armor.

He did not glance apologetically toward the court.

He raised his arm until no one could mistake what he meant.

I already bear a favor.

Not the richest.

Not the most elaborate.

The one he had asked for.

Yours.

Lady Redwyne followed his gaze to the ribbon.

Her smile faltered.

Only slightly. She was too well-bred to allow humiliation to show plainly before so many watching eyes.

But you saw it.

You saw the moment she understood that Valarr was not refusing the beauty of her gift because he was shy, or courteous, or unwilling to burden himself with another token.

He was refusing because accepting it would mean replacing yours.

And he would not.

Your breath lodged beneath your ribs.

Valarr spoke to her then, his voice too low for you to hear.

Whatever he said was kind. You knew it from the gentling of his expression and the respectful bow he offered afterward.

He would not shame her.

That, too, was part of who he was.

He could have laughed. He could have turned the refusal into another triumph and allowed the crowd to enjoy the embarrassment of a proud woman brought low.

Instead, he gave her dignity while denying her completely.

Lady Redwyne lowered the golden chain.

Valarr bowed once more.

Then he gathered his reins and rode away.

For several heartbeats, the court remained suspended in silence.

And then every gaze in the gallery turned toward you.

Your aunt leaned close. “What did he say?”

“How would I know?”

“You are the keeper of all knowledge regarding Prince Valarr.”

“I cannot read lips across a tourney field.”

“I suspect he said he already bears the only favor he wants.”

Your pulse fluttered.

“You enjoy tormenting me.”

“Not nearly as much as the two of you enjoy tormenting yourselves.”

You refused to look at her.

Below, Valarr dismounted. He glanced toward you. Even from that distance, his amusement was obvious.

You ought to have been annoyed.

Instead, you smiled.

His face brightened in answer.

Lord Edwyn saw.

For the remainder of the afternoon, he scarcely spoke to you.

Valarr noticed that too.

//

That evening, the Great Hall shone with a thousand candles.

The tourney’s first feast was intended to honor visiting lords and victorious knights. Musicians played from the gallery. Servants carried boar glazed in honey, lamprey pies, roasted swans, and bowls of summer fruit between the crowded tables.

Valarr sat below the dais with his parents and brother.

You sat with your family several tables away.

Ordinarily, he would have found a reason to come to you before the first course ended.

He might have claimed your father wished to discuss horses. He might have asked whether your aunt had brought the cyvasse set she always carried when traveling. Once, at a feast in Storm’s End, he had crossed the hall to ask whether you remembered the name of a dog he had owned at six.

Tonight, he remained in his place.

Lord Edwyn sat beside you.

That, you suspected, was the reason.

He had arranged it with your father.

You understood the politics of the gesture. House Hightower possessed wealth, influence, ships, and blood ties across the Reach. Your own house would benefit from the alliance. Your father had not commanded you to accept Edwyn’s courtship, but he had begun speaking of duty more often.

“You would like Oldtown,” Edwyn said while servants poured wine.

“I have visited twice.”

“As a guest. It would be different as its future lady.”

Your fingers tightened around your cup.

“You speak with great confidence.”

“Our fathers find the match favorable.”

“Our fathers are not the ones being wed.”

“No. They are merely responsible for ensuring we do not allow childish sentiment to overcome good sense.”

His gaze moved toward Valarr.

You followed it despite yourself.

Valarr was watching.

The instant your eyes met, he looked away.

Prince Matarys leaned toward him and said something. Valarr answered without expression.

Edwyn smiled. “Princes are accustomed to being adored.”

“Prince Valarr has never asked for my adoration.”

“Has he not?”

“No.”

“Then perhaps he merely enjoys receiving it without obligation.”

The words struck more deeply than you wished.

You knew Edwyn meant them to.

“He is my oldest friend.”

“And one day he will marry a princess.”

Your stomach tightened.

Edwyn continued in a quiet, reasonable voice.

“A Targaryen prince does not choose a wife because she tied a ribbon around his wrist. He chooses for blood, armies, and the wishes of his king. Whatever affection exists between you, he has never spoken for your hand.”

You looked across the hall.

Valarr’s attention had returned to you. He saw the hurt you had failed to hide.

His chair scraped against the floor.

Prince Baelor caught his arm before he could rise. Valarr looked at his father.

Baelor said something low.

For several heartbeats, they regarded one another. Then Valarr sat back down.

The movement should not have hurt. It did.

Edwyn watched the exchange. “As I said.”

You turned to him. “You presume much from silence.”

“In courts, silence is often the clearest answer.”

You placed your cup on the table. “My lord, I am tired.”

“The dancing has not begun.”

“I did not say I was tired from dancing.”

You rose.

Your father looked at you but did not stop you.

As you left the hall, you felt Valarr’s gaze follow you all the way to the doors.

He did not come after you.

//

The next morning brought archery.

Valarr did not compete. Princes and knights gathered along the edges of the field to watch the bowmen test their skill against painted targets, swinging rings, and bundles of reeds thrown into the air.

You sat beneath your family’s pavilion, grateful for the shade.

You had slept poorly.

Dreams of black armor, green eyes, and golden towers had followed one another through the night.

Valarr arrived late.

He wore a black doublet rather than armor, the favor tied around his wrist.

He had washed it. The dust was gone, though one edge had begun to fray.

He stopped beside your chair. “Good morning.”

You kept your gaze on the targets. “Your Highness.”

When you were alone, you almost never used his title.

“You left the feast.”

“I was tired.”

“No, you were upset.”

“You were watching closely for a man who remained across the hall.”

His jaw tightened. “I would have come to you.”

“But?”

“My father asked me not to create a scene.”

“And sitting beside me would have created one?”

“Sitting beside Hightower would have.”

Despite yourself, you looked at him. Valarr’s expression was calm, but his eyes were not.

“He did nothing to you.”

“He spoke to you as though you belonged to him.”

“You could not hear us.”

“I saw your face.” You looked away.

“What did he say?”

“It does not matter.”

“It matters to me.”

“Everything matters to you when it concerns me, except what ought to matter.”

Valarr frowned.

Before he could question you, Edwyn approached with two cups of chilled wine.

He gave one to you.

Valarr stared at it.

“Prince Valarr,” Edwyn said. “I feared you would spend the morning recovering from yesterday’s exertions.”

“I have endured worse.”

“You ride again tomorrow?”

“The melee begins after midday.”

“A dangerous contest.”

“So I am told.”

Edwyn sat on the bench beside you without being invited.

Valarr remained standing.

The arrangement placed him above both of you, silent and pale-haired, with the dragon of his house stitched across his chest.

Edwyn turned to you.

“My mother has written. She asks whether you prefer chambers overlooking the Honeywine or the harbor.”

Valarr’s face went blank. You felt the warning in that blankness.

“I have not agreed to live in either,” you said.

“She is eager to welcome you.”

“She is premature.”

“Perhaps. But preparations for a great marriage require time.”

Valarr spoke. “What marriage?”

Edwyn looked up. “The one our families are discussing.”

“Discussing is not agreeing.”

“No,” Edwyn said. “But nor is it meaningless.”

Valarr’s gaze moved to you.

“Have you agreed?”

The question was too sharp. Too public.

Several nearby nobles had fallen silent.

You set down your cup. “No.”

Relief flashed across his face so openly that even Edwyn saw it. Then Valarr seemed to realize how much he had revealed.

His shoulders stiffened.

Edwyn smiled. “I am confident time will bring agreement.”

Valarr looked at him.

“I would not be.”

The archers loosed.

A dozen arrows struck painted shields.

The crowd applauded, but beneath the pavilion, no one moved.

Edwyn’s voice cooled.

“Your Highness speaks boldly regarding a matter between our houses.”

“And you speak boldly regarding a woman who has given you no answer.”

“Her father welcomes my suit.”

“And a lady is not her father.”

The words startled you.

Valarr had been raised in the same world you had. He understood contracts, alliances, and the obedience demanded from noble children. He had never mocked those obligations, though he had occasionally cursed them.

Edwyn rose.

“Perhaps the prince should concern himself with his own future bride.”

Valarr’s eyes narrowed. “Perhaps you should concern yourself with keeping your teeth.”

“Valarr,” you said.

His gaze snapped to you. You saw the anger there. And beneath it, fear.

You lowered your voice. “My prince, walk with me.”

He obeyed.

You led him away from the pavilion, past the archery stands and into a narrow lane between tents where the noise of the crowd softened.

The moment you were alone, you rounded on him.

“What are you doing?”

“Preventing him from speaking of you as though you were furniture being moved into his chambers.”

“You threatened him.”

“I advised him.”

“You advised him regarding his teeth.”

“A man should value them.”

“Valarr, you cannot behave this way.”

Valarr’s expression cooled. He looked away, jaw hard.

A cheer rose from the archery field. You watched his fingers curl into fists.

“You have been strange since yesterday.”

“I have been riding in a tourney.”

“You have ridden in twenty tourneys.”

“Not with Hightower sitting beside you.”

The answer emerged before he could stop it.

Silence fell.

Valarr stared toward the distant banners.

You studied the line of his profile.

“You are jealous.”

His mouth tightened.

You expected denial.

Instead, he looked at you. “And if I am?”

The words passed between you like a flame leaping from one candle to another.

Your anger faltered.

Valarr stepped closer. His voice lowered.

“If I am jealous of the gifts he brings you, of the way he looks at you, of every time he speaks as though your future has already been placed in his hands—what then?”

Hope returned, fierce and dangerous.

You hated it. You hated him for awakening it.

“What right have you to be?”

Pain flickered across his face. You pressed on before courage abandoned you.

“You have had years, Valarr.” His name came out unsteady.

“Years of finding me in every hall. Years of sitting beside me at feasts and walking with me through gardens and behaving as though no other man should stand too close. Yet you have never offered me anything beyond friendship.”

“That is not true.”

“Is it not?”

“No.”

“Then tell me what you have offered.”

He opened his mouth. Nothing came.

You laughed once, though there was no humor in it.

“That is what I thought.”

His expression changed.

“You know what you are to me.”

“No. I know what I hope I am to you.”

His eyes searched your face.

“You cannot resent another man for seeking what you have never asked to have,” you said.

The words wounded him. You saw them do it.

Valarr took a step back as though struck. “I did not know you wished me to ask.”

Humiliation burned through you.

“Do not be cruel.”

“I am not.”

“You believe I have spent half my life waiting for you to notice me?”

“No.” His voice roughened. “I believed you knew.”

“Knew what?”

Again, he had no answer he could bring himself to speak. The space between you seemed to widen.

Trumpets announced the final archery round.

You folded your arms over yourself. “You should return.”

“I do not want to leave this unfinished.”

“Then finish it.”

He stared at you.

For one suspended heartbeat, you thought he would.

His lips parted.

Footsteps sounded at the end of the lane.

Prince Matarys appeared, accompanied by Valarr’s squire.

“There you are,” Matarys said. “Father is looking for you. The melee pairings have been altered.”

Valarr did not look away from you.

“Valarr,” Matarys repeated.

At last, Valarr stepped back.

He bowed with painful formality.

“My lady.”

Then he left.

You remained between the tents long after he disappeared.

//

The second day of jousting began badly.

Valarr’s first opponent struck him squarely in the chest.

He remained mounted, but the blow splintered his lance and drove him hard against the rear of his saddle.

You rose halfway from your seat.

Valarr wheeled his horse. He did not look toward you.

On the second pass, he struck too high. The lance glanced off his opponent’s helm.

A murmur moved through the crowd.

Valarr rarely made mistakes.

Prince Baelor stood near the barrier, shouting something you could not hear.

Valarr turned his horse.

This time, he looked at the gallery.

At you.

His expression behind the open visor was unreadable.

You wished you knew what he needed.

A smile?

A warning?

Forgiveness?

You placed one hand over your heart.

A gesture from childhood.

When he had first begun training with blunted lances, you had watched from the yard wall. Each time he grew frustrated, you pressed your hand to your chest and breathed slowly until he matched you.

Valarr saw.

His shoulders lowered.

He closed his visor.

The third pass shattered his lance against his opponent’s shield.

The other knight fell.

The crowd erupted.

Valarr did not celebrate.

He rode to the end of the field, dismounted, and went directly to his father.

They spoke briefly.

Then his next opponent entered the lists.

Ser Arlan Fell was older, heavier, and known for striking hard enough to injure horses. He rode beneath the crowned stag of Storm’s End, his armor dark blue and gold.

The first pass broke neither lance.

The second struck Valarr’s shield near the center.

He swayed.

The third came too quickly.

Ser Arlan’s lance struck beneath the rim of Valarr’s shield.

Valarr was thrown.

He hit the earth with a sound you heard even through the roar of the crowd.

The world stopped.

His horse ran on without him.

Valarr lay in the dust.

Once, when you were fourteen, he had fallen from a tower stair and broken his wrist. You had reached him before the maester. He had been pale with pain but laughing because your face frightened him more than the fall.

Now he did not move.

You were on your feet.

Your father caught your arm.

“Wait.”

“He is not rising.”

“The healers are coming.”

Below, Prince Baelor ran onto the field.

Valarr’s squire reached him first and dropped to his knees.

The crowd had gone silent.

Someone lifted Valarr’s visor.

His face was white.

Your restraint broke.

“Valarr!”

Your voice carried farther than you thought possible.

His eyes opened.

He turned his head toward the gallery.

Toward you.

For a heartbeat, he lay still.

Then he planted one hand in the dirt.

Prince Baelor tried to stop him, but Valarr pushed himself to his knees. He swayed. His father gripped his shoulder.

Valarr looked up at you.

You had forgotten the court.

Forgotten your father’s hand on your arm.

Forgotten Lord Edwyn watching from three seats away.

“Do not,” you whispered, though he could not have heard.

Valarr rose.

The crowd exploded into cheers.

He lifted one hand.

The favor around his wrist was streaked with dirt.

Only after he had shown you he could stand did he allow the healers to lead him from the field.

Your knees weakened.

You sat because you could no longer trust them.

Lord Edwyn leaned toward you.

“You reveal too much.”

You turned on him.

“I beg your pardon?”

“The court sees where your loyalties lie.”

“My friend might have been killed.”

“A woman rumored to be considering marriage should take care which man’s name she cries before the realm.”

Your fear sharpened into fury.

“I have accepted no marriage.”

“Not yet.”

“Nor will I, if you speak to me again as though concern is a flaw requiring correction.”

His eyes hardened.

“You mistake indulgence for freedom.”

Your father heard.

He rose slowly from his chair.

Lord Edwyn seemed to realize his error.

“My lord, I meant only—”

“You will leave my daughter’s presence,” your father said.

The Hightower heir’s face went rigid.

People were watching.

He bowed.

“As you wish.”

After he left, your father sat again.

His gaze remained on the field.

“You have not refused him.”

“I did not know refusal was still required.”

“Until today, I believed he might improve upon closer acquaintance.”

“And now?”

“Now I believe you were correct when you advised him to marry me.”

Despite everything, a startled laugh escaped you.

Your father looked at you.

Then his expression softened.

“Go to the prince.”

You stared at him.

“The court—”

“Has already heard you call his name before ten thousand people. Let them watch you walk.”

//

Valarr was in the royal pavilion, arguing with the maester.

“I am not concussed.”

You pushed through the curtain.

Valarr turned. Relief crossed his face.

The maester looked between you.

“Perhaps my lady can persuade His Highness to remain seated.”

“I have never persuaded him to do anything sensible.”

“That is not true,” Valarr said.

“Name one occasion.”

“You stopped me from throwing Matarys into the well.”

“He was six.”

“He had burned my boots.”

“They were ugly.”

“They were dragonhide.”

“They were still ugly.”

The maester sighed. “I shall fetch more bandages.”

He left you alone.

Valarr sat on a low stool with his armor partly removed. His hair was damp. A bruise had begun to form along his cheekbone. One sleeve of his linen undershirt was torn, exposing a scraped shoulder.

You crossed the space between you.

“You fool.”

“I am well.”

“You did not move.”

“I was winded.”

“You did not move.”

His teasing expression faded.

“I heard you.”

Your throat tightened.

“Everyone heard me.”

“I would have risen sooner had I known you intended to shout.”

“You were unconscious.”

“Briefly.”

“You could have broken your neck.”

“But I did not.”

“You cannot answer every fear with the fact that the worst did not happen.”

Valarr studied you.

Your hands had begun to tremble again. He reached for one. You pulled it away. The hurt in his face made you regret it at once.

“You frightened me,” you said.

“I know.”

“You looked at me before you stood.”

“I needed to see you.”

“Why?”

He seemed surprised by the question.

You closed your eyes. Everything between you had become too raw. Every kindness felt like a confession he refused to finish.

When you opened them, Valarr was looking at your face with unbearable tenderness.

“I withdrew from the contest,” he said.

You stared at him. “What?”

“The healers advised it.”

“And you listened?”

“You were frightened.”

The simple admission struck harder than any grand declaration might have.

Valarr loved riding.

He loved winning.

He had spent weeks preparing for the tourney.

“You withdrew because of me?”

“I withdrew because continuing after being senseless would be foolish.”

“You have never allowed foolishness to stop you.”

“No.”

His thumb brushed the edge of your ribbon.

“Only you.”

You looked away before hope could undo you.

“The final rounds are tomorrow.”

“I remain qualified. I may ride if the maester approves.”

“You just said—”

“I withdrew from the remainder of today.”

“Valarr.”

“I will be careful.”

“You cannot promise that.”

“I can promise to remember that someone waits for me to stand.”

Silence filled the pavilion.

You reached for the cloth beside the washbasin.

“Sit still.”

He obeyed.

You dipped the cloth in cool water and pressed it carefully to the cut on his cheek.

Valarr watched you.

“You are angry.”

“I am terrified.” Your hand paused.

He lifted his own hand, slowly enough that you might pull away. His fingers closed around your wrist.

“I am okay.”

The words hung between you. The curtain opened before either of you could answer them.

Prince Baelor entered. Valarr still held your wrist. You stood between his knees, tending his face.

Baelor’s gaze moved from his son to you.

“I see the maester found a more effective threat.”

Valarr released you.

“She is not threatening me.”

“Not yet,” you said.

Prince Baelor’s mouth twitched.

He turned serious as he looked at Valarr.

“The melee begins tomorrow after the final jousts. You will not enter unless the maester clears you.”

“I know.”

“And if you are struck from the horse again, you are finished.”

“I know.”

Baelor’s gaze shifted to the ribbon around Valarr’s wrist.

Something thoughtful entered his expression.

“Your mother wishes to see you.”

Valarr stood reluctantly.

As he passed you, his fingers brushed yours.

A stolen touch.

A familiar touch.

One that suddenly felt like a promise neither of you understood.

//

[the-darklings]

SHUTTER SPEED — BOBBY FRANKLIN.

pairing: camboy!bobby franklin x f!reader summary: you're two months behind on rent and terrence knows a guy. the said guy is annoyingly pretty and cocky. it's only downhill from there. contents/warnings: 18+, explicit smut, discussions of sex work/adult film industry, financial desperation, power dynamics, oral sex (f receiving), breast sucking <3, spitting, vaginal sex, dirty talk/praise, hair pulling, filming during sex, bobby franklin's mouth (this is its own warning lol). notes: Inspired by this ask, and the 20+ of you who flooded my inbox asking for more. Can be read as a standalone but could also be read as alt universe to my better bobby series.

✶ better bobby series.

"So Terrence told you what I do."

It's not a question.

Bobby Franklin sits across from you in a vinyl booth at Moreno's, which is the kind of diner that serves coffee the colour of motor oil and bacon that's either raw or carbonised and nothing in between. It's 9 AM on a Thursday. You're eating eggs because eggs are cheap and the rent was due six days ago.

He'd walked in with a swagger that bordered on offensive. Bobby Franklin doesn't strut. Because that would require effort and effort would compromise the relaxed swagger.

He moves through space like it's already made room for him. Like rooms rearrange themselves slightly when he enters. Leather jacket despite the California heat, sunglasses pushed up into sandy hair that's a mess in a way that probably took zero minutes to achieve, a thin chain necklace catching the light at the hollow of his throat, and—you'd spotted this immediately, against your will—a small silver hoop in his left ear. He'd slid into the booth across from you with the ease of someone who's never once wondered whether he belongs somewhere.

You'd been here for twelve minutes already. Sitting. Sweating. Running through a mental list of reasons this was a terrible idea and arriving at the same conclusion every time: the rent. the rent. the rent.

"He mentioned it." You push the eggs around the plate. They're overcooked. Everything at Moreno's is overcooked. "He said you were—that you make films."

Bobby's mouth twitches. "Films." He takes a mouthful of the motor-oil coffee. Doesn't flinch. "Yeah. I make films."

He's watching you. You can't help but notice that Bobby doesn't stare the way other men stare, heavy and obvious.

He watches. There's a difference. Staring is passive. Watching is a skill.

You can see it in the way his eyes move: cataloguing, framing, composing. Those eyes. Pale blue, sharp, amused in a way that suggests he's always in on a joke nobody else has heard yet. They land on your face and stay there with an intensity that makes you want to look away and also makes you want to never look away and you're not going to think about that right now. Even in a shitty diner booth with fluorescent lighting and a crack running through the formica, Bobby Franklin is looking at you like he's already thinking about angles.

"And you're—Terrence said you do everything yourself? Shoot, edit, all of it?" you croak out, forcing yourself to swallow a mouthful of coffee.

"I don't trust anyone else with the camera." He says it the way other people say they don't trust anyone else with their car keys. Flat. Non-negotiable. His fingers are wrapped around the coffee mug and you notice—you're noticing too much, you need to stop noticing—the veins on the back of his hands, the way the leather jacket sits on his shoulders like it grew there, the silver hoop catches light every time he tilts his head. "It's a one-man operation. Well." The twitch again. Almost a smile. "Usually two-man. One behind the lens, one in front."

You nod. Push the eggs. Your fork makes a sound against the plate that's louder than it should be because neither of you is talking and the diner is mostly empty. The jukebox in the corner is broken and has been broken since Reagan. Your knee is bouncing under the table. You press your palm flat on your thigh to stop it. It only partially works.

"How behind are you?" Bobby drawls.

Your head snaps up. "What?"

"On rent," he clarifies patiently. "Terrence said you were in trouble. How behind?"

He leans forward when he asks it and the chain shifts against his collarbone and you catch a breath of him leather and something underneath, warm, clean, just skin—and your stomach coils.

You're nervous. You're nervous and attracted and the two are braiding together into something that makes it hard to hold your fork steady.

This would be easier if he were sleazy. If he looked like what you'd imagined when Terrence first explained the arrangement. Some greasy guy with a moustache and a waterbed. Instead he looks like this. Sharp jaw and piercing, amused eyes and an earring, a chain and a full mouth that does that little twitch and you're in so much trouble.

You put the fork down. Two months. You're two months behind because the temp agency dried up and the waitressing gig fell through and you've been living on ramen and the leftovers your neighbour leaves outside her door in tupperware containers that you're pretty sure are meant for the stray cats but you're not proud enough to care anymore.

"Two months," you admit, staring down at the eggs. Not looking at him. Looking at him is becoming a problem.

Bobby whistles. Low. Through his teeth. "Well shit. Landlord breathing down your neck?"

You scoff, swallowing down the bitterness. "He's past breathing. He's at written notices."

Bobby leans back in the booth. The vinyl creaks beneath him. He's got one arm stretched along the back of the seat and the other hand wrapped around the coffee mug and the morning light from the window is hitting the side of his face and you think, abstractly, the way you'd think about a painting in a museum: he's beautiful. Sharp angles. Pale eyes. Cali tan and an ease in how he slouches in his seat.

"The money's good," he says suddenly, tongue poking his cheek as he drags his attention back towards you. "That's the first thing. I'm not gonna bullshit you. It's not Hollywood money, obviously, but for Santa Clara? For a couple hours of work?" He tilts his head. "It'd cover your rent. Easy. One shoot."

You stare, unblinking. Sceptical. "One shoot."

"One shoot."

You pick up the fork again. Put it down again. Your fingers won't stop moving.

"Look—" Bobby leans forward. Elbows on the table. The leather jacket he's wearing creaks with the movement, and he's closer now and the watching has intensified into something that feels less like a camera and more like a hand on your skin. "I'm not trying to pressure you into shit. Terrence vouched for you because I asked him if he knew anyone and he said he knew a girl who was real smart and broke and—"

He stops. Mid-sentence. The watching goes still. There's a shift in his expression. A loosening, a slip, the mask of professional detachment developing a crack.

"Shit," he says softly. Almost to himself. "You're pretty. Real pretty."

You bristle. The flinch is automatic. A full-body tightening that starts in your shoulders and works down, because you know this game, you've played this game, the compliment that's actually a crowbar, the flattery designed to pry you open. Men in diners don't tell you you're pretty because they mean it. They tell you you're pretty because they want something and that something is usually between your legs.

"Don't do that," you say sharply. Your voice is harder than you intended.

Bobby blinks. The crack in his expression widens and what's behind it isn't a game. It's surprise. Genuine, unperformative surprise, the kind that creases the corners of his eyes and makes him look younger than however old he is.

"Do what?"

"The—flattery thing. The buttering up. I don't need you to tell me I'm pretty to get me to agree, I already—" Your throat tightens, and you knot your fingers in your lap, setting your jaw. "I'm already here. I'm already desperate enough to be sitting in this diner talking about—so you don't need to—"

"Hey." His hand comes up. Not touching. Just a gesture. A pause button. "I wasn't buttering you up. I was just—" He runs a hand through his hair, clipping his sunglasses. He looks, for a half-second, almost flustered. "I was looking at you and it came out. That's it. That's the whole thing. You're pretty and my mouth moved before my brain did and I'm—" He picks up the coffee. Takes a long sip. Sets it down. "Sorry. Professional hazard. I notice faces."

You stare at each other in silence.

He wasn't mocking you.

The realisation lands with a warmth that starts in your chest and spreads to places you weren't expecting.

He wasn't mocking you. He was sitting across from you in a vinyl booth and the light caught your face and he thought you were pretty and he said so because his mouth was faster than his filter. And now he's drinking burnt coffee to cover the fact that he's embarrassed about it.

"Okay," you say quietly.

He pauses, cup halfway to his mouth. "Okay?"

"Okay, tell me the terms."

Bobby sets the coffee down. The professionalism clicks back into place but the tips of his ears are still pink and you file that away somewhere warm and private.

"I shoot everything at my place. My equipment, my setup. VHS. I've got two cameras, one static, one handheld. The handheld's the one that matters. That's the one I operate." He taps the table with his index finger. Rhythmic. A habit. "I edit everything myself. I distribute through a guy I know in the valley who handles the duplication and the mailing list. You never have to talk to him. You never have to talk to anyone. Your face, your name, none of it goes on the packaging unless you want it to."

"What name do you use?" you ask, curious despite yourself.

"For me? Bobby." He shrugs. "I'm not creative about it."

"And for—"

"Whatever you want. Pick something. Pick nothing. Some girls just go by a first name. Some make something up. One girl I worked with went by the name of her landlord's dog. Said it felt like revenge." The almost-smile again. "Point is: it's yours. The whole thing is yours. You say stop, I stop. You say no to something, it's no. I don't push. I don't coerce. I don't do anything you haven't agreed to beforehand and if you change your mind halfway through, the camera goes off and we're done. No questions. No attitude."

He says all of this in the same tone he'd use to explain how a camera works. Methodical. Clear. Like he's said it before and means it every time.

"How much?" you ask.

He tells you.

You put your fork down carefully because the number he just said would cover two months of rent and groceries and the electricity bill that's been sitting on your kitchen counter turning into a small paper monument to your failure.

"One shoot," you say again, making sure.

"One shoot," he echoes with a nod. "Couple hours. You walk out with cash."

Hope and desperation surge up your spine, working your tongue. "Cash?"

"I don't do checks. Checks leave paper trails and paper trails make people nervous." He drains the last of the coffee. Grimaces. Apparently even Bobby Franklin has limits and Moreno's coffee has found them. "You don't have to decide now. Think about it. Call me."

He pulls a napkin from the dispenser and writes a number on it in handwriting that's surprisingly neat for someone who looks like he's never filled out a form in his life. Slides it across the table.

You look at the napkin. Look at him. then back at the napkin.

You pick it up, folding it neatly.

"Tomorrow," you say. "I can come tomorrow."

Bobby's eyebrows rise. Just slightly. Then he nods slowly. "Tomorrow works."

He pays for your eggs. You don't argue. You should argue but the rent was due six days ago and the eggs were $2.15 and the pride you'd normally spend on "I can pay for my own breakfast" has been liquidated to cover more pressing debts.

At the door of the diner he holds it open for you. Not performatively. Just does it. And when you pass him your shoulder brushes his chest and he smells like that warm thing again, the underneath thing, and his pale eyes track your face one more time and he says "See you tomorrow" in a voice that's dropped half a register and the warmth in your chest migrates south and you walk to your car thinking fuck, fuck, fuck, what am I doing?

You're covering rent. That's what you're doing.

That's all you're doing.

His apartment is above a furniture store.

You stand on the sidewalk for four minutes before you go up. The building is nondescript. Beige stucco, iron railings, a set of stairs on the outside that lead to a door that needs painting. There's a cat on the landing that looks at you with the serene judgment of a creature that has never once had to worry about rent.

You envy the cat greatly.

You're wearing a sundress because you didn't know what to wear and the sundress felt like a compromise between "trying too hard" and "not trying enough." You changed three times.

The first outfit was too casual. The second was too much. The sundress is yellow and you hate that you care what colour it is.

You knock.

Bobby opens the door and the first thing you register is that he's not wearing the leather jacket.

T-shirt. White, thin, cropped in a way that shows the shape of him underneath and is making it difficult to maintain eye contact. Jeans slung low on his hips. Bare feet on the hardwood. His hair is damp from the shower and pushed back off his face and without the sunglasses holding it up you can see the full architecture of him.

The jaw, sharper in natural light than in the diner's dimness. The earring. The chain, sitting in the hollow of his throat, rising and falling with his breathing.

He looks good in his own apartment. Relaxed in a way he wasn't at Moreno's, the professional edge softened into something more lived-in.

He leans against the doorframe and says, "Hey. Come in" and the drawl is thicker in the morning.

You're going to be professional about this. You're not going to think about his forearms, which are now visible because the t-shirt sleeves are short and his arms are lean and tanned and there's a vein running from his wrist to his elbow that you're staring at. Stop staring at it.

The apartment is small and clean and full of light. Not the fluorescent light of the diner but real light, California morning light, pouring through windows that face east.

There are photographs on the walls, black and white, and you realise after a second that he took them. They're good. They're better than good. A bridge in fog. A woman's hands. A street at night, wet, reflecting. He has an eye. You knew that from the diner, from the way he watched, but seeing it on the walls makes it real.

Bobby Franklin has an eye and he uses it for this and also for what you're about to do and the cognitive dissonance of "artist" and "adult filmmaker" is something you're going to have to sit with.

"Coffee?" he asks, padding toward the kitchen. Bare feet on linoleum.

The t-shirt rides up slightly when he reaches for a mug on the top shelf and there's a strip of skin above his waistband and the muscle that cuts along his hip and you look away so fast you nearly give yourself whiplash.

"Please."

He pours you a cup. You stand in his kitchen and drink it and it's good. Your hands are shaking and the cup rattles against the saucer and you set it down before he notices except he's already noticed.

"Hey," he calls out, leaning against the counter. Arms crossed. The t-shirt pulling across his chest. His stare is piercing, amused, reading you the way they read you at the diner except now there's nowhere to hide behind a menu and a plate of eggs. "We don't have to do anything today. We can just talk. Get you comfortable. No pressure."

"I'm fine," you force out.

He gives you a sceptical once over. "You're shaking."

"I'm fine and I'm shaking. Both can be true."

His mouth the twitches, the almost-smile that you're beginning to understand is Bobby's version of a laugh. A contained one. Controlled. Like even his amusement is something he runs through a filter before letting it out. But his eyes crinkle at the corners and the amusement reaches them and it's warm, genuinely warm, and some of the tightness in your chest loosens.

You talk.

He asks you questions. Mercifully not invasive ones, not the peeling-back kind. Surface questions. Where you grew up. How you know Terrence. What music you like. And you find yourself answering, not because he's charming (he is) but because he's easy. Bobby Franklin is easy to talk to in a way that contradicts everything about his sharp jaw and pale stare and the fact that there are two video cameras set up in his bedroom that you can see through the half-open door.

He listens the way he watches: completely, with his whole attention, like whatever you're saying is the only thing happening in the world. And he's funny. Dry, quick, a deadpan that sneaks up on you.

You laugh at something he says about Terrence and his face creases in a way you haven't seen before. Surprise. Pleasure. Like your laugh was an unexpected pleasure.

He tucks it away fast, smooths the expression back to amused neutrality, but you saw it. You saw it and it made your stomach warm.

An hour passes. Your hands stop shaking. You've stopped noticing the cameras through the doorway. You've started noticing other things.

The way he gestures when he talks about photography, loose and animated, the only time his cool composure fully drops. The way he licks his bottom lip when he's thinking. The way the chain shifts against his throat when he laughs. The pale eyes that keep finding your face and staying there a beat longer than conversation requires.

You're attracted to him. This is no longer a thing you can file under "irrelevant." This is a thing that is happening in your body, in the kitchen, in the warm light, and it's making the prospect of what comes next feel less like a transaction and more like something you might actually want and that's more frightening than the cameras.

He shows you the bedroom eventually.

It's not what you expected. No red lighting, no satin sheets, no sleazy backdrop. Just a bed—queen, white sheets, a quilt that looks like it came from someone's grandmother—and two cameras. One on a tripod in the corner, aimed at the bed. The other on the dresser, smaller, a different angle. Both VHS. Both off.

"The one in the corner is the wide shot," Bobby explains, standing in the doorway behind you. Professional. Tour guide. "It runs the whole time. Catches everything. The one on the dresser is for close-ups. I adjust it as we go. The handheld—" He nods toward a third camera sitting on the nightstand. "That's the one I use. That's the one that makes the money."

You nod, staring at the bed. The white sheets. The grandmother's quilt. The two dark eyes of the cameras. Your pulse is loud in your own ears.

"I'm sorry," you blurt out, not looking at him, still staring at the bed. "I'm being weird about this. I've obviously never—I haven't done anything like this before and I don't know how to—"

He kisses you.

His hand is on your jaw first, angling your face toward him. Gentle but sure, the confidence of someone who knows the effect he has and is choosing to use it kindly. And then his other hand comes up. Both hands cupping your face now, his palms warm against your cheeks, his thumbs resting along the line of your cheekbones, and his mouth finds yours.

The first press is soft. Almost chaste. Just the warmth of his lips settling against yours, testing, asking. You inhale sharply through your nose, and he catches it. Absorbs it. Tilts your face up with those hands and kisses you deeper.

Bobby's mouth opens yours. Coaxing, slow.

His bottom lip drags against yours, the faintest graze of teeth, and then his tongue follows. Warm, unhurried, curling against yours in a way that makes your knees actually weaken.

You've kissed people before. This is not that. This is Bobby Franklin kissing you with both hands cradling your face like you're worth holding and his tongue moving against yours with a patience that suggests he could do this for hours. Just this. Just the wet slide of his mouth on yours and the taste of good coffee and the way your breath mingles when he tilts his head and changes the angle and finds something deeper.

His thumb strokes your cheekbone. Back and forth. This light, rhythmic brush while his tongue curls against yours, while his bottom lip catches between your teeth and he makes a sound—small, low, a vibration you feel more than hear—and your hands are on his chest. When did your hands get on his chest?

You can feel his heartbeat through the white t-shirt, fast, faster than his relaxed composure suggests, and the knowledge that Bobby Franklin's heart is hammering while he kisses you makes you dizzy.

He tilts his head the other way. Your noses brush. The tip of his against the side of yours, a small warm nudge, almost playful.

He kisses the corner of your mouth. Your bottom lip. Takes it between his and sucks, gently, and your fingers curl into the fabric of his t-shirt and pull and the sound you make is swallowed by the warmth of him.

He pulls back.

Not far. An inch. Maybe two. His hands still on your face. His thumbs still on your cheekbones. His forehead nearly touching yours and you can feel his breath on your lips and his eyes are right there. Those pale, watchful, bright eyes, scanning your face. Reading you. Making sure.

Your lips are tingling. Your whole body is tingling. You're standing in a stranger's bedroom being held by the face and kissed like you've never been kissed before.

"Was—" Your voice is thin. Wrecked. He kissed your voice right out of you. "Was the camera rolling?"

Bobby smirks.

Up close, from two inches away, with his hands still warm on your face. One corner of his mouth lifting in that lazy, crooked, insufferable way. His eyes half-lidded. And it goes trough you like wildfire, flooding your nervous system with liquid heat.

"No," he answers huskily, his thumb tracing your cheekbone one more time. "Just felt like doing that."

He holds your gaze. One beat. Two. Three. Letting the smirk settle. Letting you feel the weight of it—the fact that he kissed you off-camera, off-clock, for no professional reason.

The fact that his heart is still hammering under your fists and his pupils are blown wide and he kissed you because he wanted to. Because you were standing in his bedroom apologising for being nervous and he looked at you and his mouth moved before his brain did. Again.

"Still okay?" he asks, softer now. The smirk gentling into something warmer.

"Yeah." Breathier than you want it to be. Your hands still in his t-shirt. "Yeah, I'm okay."

"Good." His hand drops from your jaw. Trails down your arm. Fingertips only, light enough to raise goosebumps, tracing the inside of your wrist where the pulse jumps. "I'm going to undress you now. Slow. Before the cameras go on. Just us. That alright?"

You nod.

He starts with the straps of the sundress. Easing them off your shoulders one at a time. Not pulling, guiding. His knuckles graze your collarbone and you shiver, his eyes tracking the shiver down your body with an attention that makes you feel like the only light source in the room.

"You wore yellow," he notes conversationally. Like he's remarking on the weather while his fingertips trace the neckline of your dress. "Looks good on you. Warm. Shows off your skin."

The dress pools at your feet. You're standing in his bedroom in your underwear and the morning light is on you and Bobby is looking at you the way he looked at you in the diner when his mouth got ahead of his brain.

"Pretty," he murmurs. Like he can't help it. Like the word just falls out of him when he sees you. His thumb traces your hip bone above the elastic of your underwear. "Real pretty."

This time you don't bristle.

He reaches past you. Flicks on the tripod camera. A tiny red light. Then the dresser camera. Another red light. Two eyes, open, watching.

"Don't think about them," Bobby says, his mouth near your ear. His hands settle on your waist, warm palms on bare skin. "Don't think about the cameras. Don't perform. Just feel me. Can you do that?"

You jerk your head. "I can try."

"That's all I'm asking." His lips brush your ear. Down. Along your jaw. The corner of your mouth. His hands slide up your ribcage and his thumbs trace the underwire of your bra and you exhale, shaky, and he catches it. "There you go. Just like that. Stay with me, yeah? I got you."

He unclasps your bra with one hand. Practiced, efficient, but the way he peels it away is anything but. Reverent, almost, easing the fabric off like he's unwrapping something valuable. The air hits your skin and your nipples tighten. Bobby's gaze drops and his jaw flexes and for a moment, just a moment, the professionalism wavers. His throat moves on a thick swallow.

"Lie down," he instructs, a little rougher than before. "On the bed. On your back."

You lie down. The sheets are cool beneath you, the quilt soft. on your skin

The light from the window falls across the bed in a warm band and you're naked except for your underwear and Bobby is standing over you still fully dressed and the power imbalance should feel wrong but it doesn't because his eyes are eating you alive and his hands are clenched at his sides and you realise, with a jolt that goes straight through you: he's holding himself back.

This is Bobby exercising control. This is what it looks like when he wants to touch something badly and is making himself wait.

He picks up the handheld camera. Lifts it to his eye. And something shifts in him. Visibly. The control locks in, the professional takes over, and he's Bobby-behind-the-lens. Steady. Composed. Seeing everything.

"Touch yourself," he says. Director voice. "Just your skin. Nothing heavy. Just run your hands over yourself. Get comfortable."

You do. Your own hands on your own body, palms skating over your stomach, your ribs, the swell of your breasts, and it feels strange and exhibitionistic but then Bobby says "gorgeous, just like that, you're doing so good" and the praise lands in the pit of your stomach like a lit match. Your back arches. Barely. Just enough.

"Yeah," Bobby breathes from behind the camera. "That's it. That's perfect. Look at you."

He films you touching yourself for what feels like hours and is probably three minutes. Then he sets the handheld down on the nightstand. Red light still blinking, and he crawls onto the bed.

Not between your legs. Beside you. Lying on his side, propped on one elbow, his face level with yours. Close enough that you can see the flecks of darker blue in his irises and the faint scar on his chin and the way his throat moves when he swallows. Still dressed. T-shirt. Jeans. Bare feet.

"Keep going," he murmurs, watching your hands on your own body. "Don't stop on my account."

Your hands move. Over your stomach. Up. And Bobby's hand joins them. One warm palm laid flat against your sternum, between your breasts. Not groping.... just resting. Feeling your heartbeat through your ribs.

"Fast," he notes. His thumb strokes the valley between your breasts and you shiver. "Slow down. You're rushing."

You do as he asked, your hands sliding over your skin with less urgency and more intention. Bobby's hand follows, learning new terrain, the dip of your waist and the flare of your hip and the soft give of your stomach where you've always been self-conscious and he presses his palm there like he's making a point.

Like that spot, specifically, is worth his hand.

Then his mouth replaces his palm.

He starts at your throat. A kiss. Open-mouthed, warm, the press of his lips and the faintest edge of teeth. Then your collarbone. The notch at the base of your throat where your pulse is hammering. Down. The flat of his tongue dragging along your sternum, tasting the thin sheen of sweat that the California morning and your own nerves have produced.

His mouth is unhurried. Exploratory. He's not kissing you so much as he's mapping you with his lips, charting the terrain the way he'd scout a location before a shoot. Finding the light, finding the angles, finding what works on you.

His mouth finds your breast. Kisses the swell of it. The underside, where the skin is softest. And then his lips close around your nipple and he sucks—not hard, not gentle, somewhere in between, a warm wet pressure that sends a bolt of sensation from your breast directly to your cunt and your back arches off the mattress.

"Oh."

Bobby hums against you. A sound of satisfaction. His tongue circles your nipple, flattens, flicks.

His free hand slides up your ribs and cups your other breast, thumb rolling across the peak, and the dual sensation—mouth and hand, wet and dry—makes you reach for him. Your fingers find his hair. Sandy strands, still slightly damp from the shower, thick between your fingers. You grip. Pull.

Just... needing something to hold onto while his mouth does this to you.

The pull makes Bobby groan. The sound vibrates through your nipple and into your chest and your hips lift off the bed involuntarily, pressing into nothing.

He feels it and his mouth tightens. Pulls harder. His teeth graze the sensitive peak and your fingers clench in his hair and you tug, genuinely tug, trying to pull him up, pull him to your mouth, because you need to kiss him, you need—

He doesn't let go.

His mouth stays locked on your nipple, sucking with a focused intensity that borders on stubborn, and you're pulling his hair and he's groaning and he will not come up, will not release, and the wet heat of his mouth is making you clench around nothing.

Your thighs press together, your hips rocking against air, seeking fullness, friction, anything, and Bobby—Bobby, who is supposed to be a professional, who is supposedly in control of this situation—reaches down with his free hand and cups you between the legs.

Just cups you. His whole palm, warm, pressed against the soaked cotton of your underwear. Just holding the heat of you in his hand while his mouth works your nipple and your fingers twist in his hair and the sound that comes out of you is breathy and too high.

"Bobby—please, I need—"

He releases your nipple with a wet pop that you feel in your spine. Glances up at you, his lips swollen. His eyes heavy-lidded and dark and his hand still cupping you, pressing against the damp fabric, feeling the heat seep through.

"Need what, baby?" Low. Rough. His fingers flex against you, palm grinding just slightly against your pulsing core, one small movement of pressure through the cotton. "Tell me."

"Touch me," you plead, trying to press closer. "Actually touch me."

His fingers slide under the elastic. Find you bare. Find you soaked. And the sound he makes—a sharp exhale through his nose, almost a hiss—is the sound of a man who knew what he was going to find but is still wrecked by the reality of it.

"Jesus." Barely a whisper. His fingers parting your folds. Not penetrating yet, just circling your clit. Just petting. Long, feather-light strokes through the slick of you, up and down, spreading the wetness with an aching patience that makes your hips chase his hand. "So wet, baby. This all from—was this from my mouth? From me sucking on you?"

You nod. You can't speak. His fingers are petting you like he's got all the time in the world and no intention of giving you what you need. Long strokes. Root to tip. Parting you with two fingers and letting the middle one drag between, barely touching your clit, just enough to make your thighs shake.

"Pretty little pussy," he murmurs, and the words shouldn't work.

They're filthy and crude and you've heard variations in the tapes you've watched that made you cringe, but Bobby says them the way he said "you're pretty" in the diner. Like a fact. Something he can't help observing. Like your body laid out in morning light is a view he needs to narrate. His fingers keep petting. Lazy. Wet with you, making you drip onto his grandmother's quilt.

Then his mouth starts traveling south.

He kisses down your stomach. Your hip bone. The crease of your thigh. Hooks his fingers into your underwear, drags them down, tosses them off the bed without looking. Parts your thighs with both hands, spreading you open, and the sound he makes—not a groan this time, something lower, something guttural, a sound that vibrates in his chest—is not for the camera.

You know this because the camera is on the nightstand and he hasn't touched it and he's not angling for a shot. He's just peering down at you. Spread open in the morning light. And that sound is coming out of him because he can't stop it.

"Fuck," he whispers, his thumbs pressing into the crease of your thighs. "Okay. Okay."

He lowers his mouth to you.

Bobby eats you out the way he kissed you earlier. Unhurried, thorough. Long strokes of his tongue that start at your entrance and drag upward, tasting the length of you, and you feel his groan against your cunt when the flavour hits and your whole body shudders.

He circles your clit with a pressure that's devastating in its patience. He's not trying to make you come fast. He's tasting. Exploring. Learning what makes your hips jerk and what makes you gasp and what makes your fingers find his hair again.

You fist both hands in those sandy strands and pull and the sound he makes—rough, grateful, hungry—vibrates against your clit. Your hips buck and his hands tighten on your thighs. Holding them apart, his thumbs stroking the soft skin in counterpoint to the filthy things his tongue is doing.

He's found a rhythm now. Flat, wide strokes punctuated by the pointed tip of his tongue flicking your clit in a pattern that your hips start chasing, lifting off the bed, grinding against his mouth, and he lets you. Lets you ride his face with his hands gripping your thighs and his eyes closed and his entire world narrowed to the taste and the sound and the wet.

"Bobby—oh my god—"

"Mm." Against you. His mouth full of you. His tongue pressing flat, licking you open in a broad swipe that makes your vision swim. "Taste incredible. Could stay here all fuckin' day."

He could. You believe him. He looks like he means it. Settled between your thighs like he's found the only place in the world he wants to be.

You tug his hair again and his moan is muffled against your cunt and you feel it everywhere, the vibration traveling through your pelvis and up your spine, and you pull harder and his tongue presses harder and the feedback loop is building. Your hands in his hair and his mouth on you and the wet sounds and the moans and you're close, you're getting close—

He pulls back with a wet, slick sound.

You whimper. The loss of his mouth leaving you throbbing, aching, empty.

"Not yet." His chin is wet, his lips swollen. Bobby's eyes are glazed and dark, the professional gone, replaced by something feral that's been living underneath the cool-boy surface and is now looking at you like it's deciding whether to devour you. "Not yet, baby. Want to be inside you when you come. Wanna feel you, yeah?"

You moan in response, dizzy. And your moans are real. That's the thing that's changing the temperature of the room.

You're not playing them up, not pitching them for any microphone, not performing the breathy exaggerated sounds you've heard in the tapes you've watched out of curiosity and mild horror. You're just reacting. And it's affecting him. His breathing has changed. His hips are pressing into the mattress in a grind he can't seem to control and you realise he's hard.

He's been hard for a while. He's been eating you out with his cock straining against his jeans and he hasn't touched himself once.

Bobby sits back on his heels. Pulls the t-shirt over his head in one motion. His chest is flushed. Lean, not bulky, the body of someone who lifts camera equipment for a living and forgets to eat regularly. The belt buckle. The zipper. The happy trail of hair dipping dangerously beneath the belt buckle. He pushes the jeans down and kicks them off and he's—

your mouth goes dry.

Bobby Franklin naked is a problem. Bobby Franklin hard is a crisis.

He sees you looking. The smirk returns. That lazy, insufferable lift of one corner of his mouth. "See something you like?"

"Shut up."

You sit up. Grab his hips. Pull him toward you and the surprise on his face—genuine, unperformed, the mask cracking again—is worth everything.

He stumbles forward on the mattress, knees sinking into the sheets, and your hands are on his stomach, his ribs, dragging your nails lightly down his sides and he hisses. His cock twitches and you feel powerful in a way that has nothing to do with cameras or money.

"How do you want me to fuck you?" His voice is gravel. Wrecked. He's peering down at you with his hands cupping your face, thumbs on your cheekbones, and the professionalism is a memory. "Tell me."

"From behind." No hesitation. The words tumbling out before your brain can edit them. "I want—on my stomach, I want you behind me, I want—"

Bobby's eyes go wide. His whole face flushes harder. Cheeks, ears, the V of his throat. He drops his head against your shoulder and laughs. A real laugh. Rough and bitten-off and disbelieving.

"Shit, baby." Muffled against your skin. "Can't say stuff like that to me. Can't just—" He lifts his head. The flush is gorgeous on him, spreading down his neck. "Yeah. Fuck yeah. Turn over."

He flips you. Firm and purposeful. His hands on your hips guiding you onto your stomach, lifting your hips until your ass is raised and your face is in the pillow and you feel exposed in a way that's terrifying and thrilling.

"Look at you." His hands on your hips, sliding up. Over the curve of your ass. Both palms cupping you, squeezing, spreading, his thumbs tracing the cleft while he breathes hard through his nose. "Every angle. Every fuckin' angle. 'S not fair."

His hand draws back. Comes down on your ass. Not a slap, not quite, a firm pat that's more proprietary than punishing and the sound it makes in the quiet bedroom is obscene. Your hips jolt. He does it again. Lighter. Smoothing his palm over the spot after, kneading with a hum.

"Could cover you like this," he mutters, stroking the curve of your ass with both hands, spreading you again, looking at you from behind with an expression you can feel even though you can't see it. "Just—stay right here. Just like this. Prettiest goddamn thing I've ever shot and I haven't even started the camera yet."

He reaches for the handheld. Turns it on. Red light. Frames the shot—you on your stomach, your hips raised, the curve of your spine. His hand still on your ass. Claiming. Warm.

He sets the camera on the mattress, angled up. Reaches for himself. You hear it. The wet sound of him spitting into his palm, the slick stroke of his fist over his cock, and then he's behind you. The hot thick length of him pressed against you, nestled between your folds, and he groans and you groan, and he doesn't push in.

He rolls against you.

Long, grinding strokes, his cock sliding through the slick mess of you, dragging across your clit with every thrust. The head catching at your entrance and pulling away. Over and over. Using the length of himself to stroke you, to tease you, to coat himself in you until the sound of skin on wet skin fills the room and your fingers are clawing at the sheets.

"Feel that?" His chest pressed against your back. His mouth against your ear. "Feel how hard you got me? Been like this since the diner. Since you sat down in that booth and looked at me with those fuckin' eyes. Thought about this. Thought about what you'd feel like."

His hips roll. The head of his cock catches your entrance again, presses, almost, almost—

"Bobby, please—"

His cock throbs against your core. "Tell me."

"Fuck me. Please." You suck in a shaky breath. "I need you to—"

He spits again. You feel it, warm, landing where his cock meets your cunt. His hand stroking himself once, twice, spreading the slick. And then he notches himself at your entrance and pushes in.

One long stroke. All the way. Your body opening around him and his groan matching yours. Colliding, two raw sounds meeting in the air and becoming something bigger than either. He bottoms out and holds you in place, and you feel every inch of him, the stretch, the heat, the fullness, his forehead dropping against the nape of your neck and he breathes "oh fuck" against your hair and his whole body shakes.

"God—you feel—" He can't finish. His hips twitch, involuntary, the tiniest thrust that pulls a gasp from both of you. "Baby. Baby, you feel—"

He starts moving. And the control lasts about thirty seconds.

Thirty seconds of measured strokes. Finding the angle. Professional. Thinking about the shot, the camera on the mattress, the red light.

And then you push back against him with a greedy sound, meet his thrust with your hips, grinding onto him, taking him deeper, and you moan. Really moan, the sound that's been building since he put his mouth on your nipple and refused to let go, and something in Bobby snaps.

His hand grabs your hip. His other hand braces on the mattress beside your head. And he fucks you.

Not the controlled version. The real version. The Bobby Franklin that exists underneath the smirk and the camera and the professional detachment. Hips driving into you with a force that shoves you into the mattress, that punches the air from your lungs, that turns your vision white around the edges. Sweat beading on his chest and dripping onto your spine. His breathing ragged, broken, gasping against the back of your neck in hot bursts.

And you're both gasping, coiling, pushing into each other blindly. Your hand reaches back, finds his hip, his thigh, pulling him deeper, harder, your fingers digging into the muscle and he groans like you've wounded him.

His hand finds yours, laces your fingers together beside your head, pressing your joined hands into the sheets, and the intimacy of it cracks something deep in both of you.

"So good," he's babbling against your spine. His mouth open, dragging wet kisses between your shoulder blades. "So fuckin' good, squeezing me so tight—can you hear that? Hear how wet you are? Hear what you're doin' to me?"

You can hear it. The obscene wet sound of his cock driving into you, the slap of his hips against your ass, the creak of the bed frame that he's going to have to explain to the furniture store below.

"Bobby—" Your voice is gone. Shattered, croaking. "Bobby, I'm gonna—I can't—"

"Yeah you can." Growled against your ear. His teeth grazing your earlobe. Biting down. "Cum for me. Wanna feel it. Wanna feel you squeeze my cock so tight I can't fuckin' think—"

He lets go of your hand. His fingers fist in your hair. Gathering the hair, wrapping the strands around his fingers. And he lifts your head from the pillow, arching your neck back, turning your face toward the camera on the mattress that's still rolling, red light blinking, catching everything.

"Show them," he murmurs against the shell of your ear. "Let 'em see how pretty you look when you cum for me."

You fall apart.

The orgasm rips through you. An earthquake, seismic and structural that starts where he's buried inside you and radiates outward.

Your mouth opens on a moan that you don't recognise as your own voice, wanton, cracked, genuine. There's no performance, no production, it's pulled from somewhere primal and raw inside you. And Bobby feels it. Feels the clench and the shake and the sound and his rhythm breaks, shatters, his hips slamming into you without finesse, chasing his own end through the aftershocks of yours.

He comes with a loud, greedy moan, a gruff sound of laughter caught in his throat. This breathless, incredulous sound, muffled against the back of your damp neck, like he can't believe what just happened to him. His hips jerk again, pressed flush against your ass. His hand loosens in your hair, fingertips grazing your scalp.

His body shudders against yours in waves that slow and gentle and eventually still.

His lips find the shell of your ear. Warm. Spent. Still inside you.

"With a moan like that," he rasps, kissing the curve of your ear, "and a pussy that grips me that tight?" He laughs against your skin. Loose. Golden. The real laugh, the unfiltered one. "Shit, baby, you're gonna be famous."

You laugh too. Into the pillow. The sound surprising you. The lightness of it, the ease. The fact that you can laugh, right now, naked and sweating and thoroughly ruined in a stranger's bed with two cameras rolling.

You're laughing because he's funny and because the sex was extraordinary and because you came to this apartment expecting something transactional and clinical.

Instead you got Bobby Franklin's mouth telling you you're pretty like he couldn't help it and Bobby Franklin's hands holding yours while he fucked you and Bobby Franklin laughing against your neck like making you come was the best thing that happened to him all week.

He pulls out, slowly, carefully, making you shiver at the loss, and collapses next to you. Reaches over and clicks off the handheld. The red light dies. The static camera in the corner is still running and neither of you moves to turn it off.

Bobby lies on his back, chest rising and falling. Staring at the ceiling with the expression of a man whose professional boundaries have just been comprehensively violated by his own want.

"So," he says to the ceiling. "Same time next week?"

You turn your head on the pillow. He turns his. Pale eyes. Flushed face. Hair wrecked. That almost-smile.

"Same time next week," you agree, still breathless.

The static camera runs for another four minutes before Bobby remembers to turn it off.

In the footage—which he will watch later, alone, ostensibly for editing purposes—you can see two people lying side by side on white sheets, not touching, not talking, just breathing, and at the 2:47 mark the girl in the yellow sundress starts laughing again and the boy with the camera reaches over and takes her hand and doesn't let go until the tape runs out.

He doesn't use that part in the final cut.

He keeps it anyway.

[lanadelrae-wrld]

how to build a better boyfriend, bobby franklin & aerion targaryen

bobby franklin x reader, aerion targaryen x reader

aka, you’re step by step guide on curating a better boyfriend!

STEP ONE: acquire a bullshit boyfriend

🎞️ you meet bobby completely by accident and you’re immediately enamored by him. well, him and his never ending fountain of weed. after six months of hooking up and getting high, you find yourselves making it official.

STEP TWO: meet bullshit boyfriend’s random doppelgänger

⚔️ you meet aerion a year later in your communications class. it takes you a while to get used to his uncanny resemblance to your boyfriend, but the stark personality difference pulls you out of your daydreaming.

STEP THREE: have bullshit boyfriend do all the bullshit things in front of his doppelgänger

🎞️ bobby cannot get his shit together. luckily, aerion doesn’t mind stepping in where your boyfriend falls short. aka, bobby fails to come to your showcase and aerion has no shame in making him feel bad for it.

STEP FOUR: tell bullshit boyfriend that his doppelgänger does nice things for you

⚔️ aerion spends the next few months doing nice things to you, acting really out of character. you don’t hate the fact that you indulge in this, especially when it makes bobby look so miserable.

STEP FIVE: make bullshit boyfriend jealous

🎞️ bobby clings tighter to you after aerion makes him look like a chump. one thing leads to the next and, now, you’re sharing blunts and beers with aerion while bobby watches across the hall.

STEP SIX: redirect focus to all of bullshit boyfriend’s shortcomings

🎞️ after a week of radio silence, you get into the worst argument with bobby. aka, you rip him a new one. you wanted to hope for the best, it’s better that you don’t.

STEP SEVEN: dump his ass

⚔️ you’re not being manipulated by the hotheaded, platinum haired doppelgänger of your boyfriend. at least, you hope you’re not.

STEP EIGHT: get with doppelgänger

⚔️ it takes you like two weeks to get with aerion. he’s hotheaded, from a rich family, and everything you hate in a person. but, boy, is he pretty and he says all the right things.

RESULT: men ain’t shit

🎞️⚔️ aerion fails to realize how you got them is how you lose them. interestingly enough, they both don’t care how you play them.

extras?

🎞️ has anyone seen my bullshit boyfriend?

[lanadelrae-wrld]

i just posted part four to this! sorry, it took longer than usual!!!

[lanadelrae-wrld]

how to build a better boyfriend, bobby franklin & aerion targaryen

bobby franklin x reader, aerion targaryen x reader

STEP FOUR: tell bullshit boyfriend that his doppelgänger does nice things for you

aerion spends the next few months doing nice things to you, acting really out of character. you don’t hate the fact that you indulge in this, especially when it makes bobby look so miserable

bobby and you reconciled after the events of your showcase. it didn’t take much for you to just roll over and ignore how hurt you were. much to aerion’s annoyance, wherever you went, bobby followed.

“where’s your shadow?” aerion asked you when you entered the library. you still don’t really understand how you and aerion got closer, but it was a welcomed surprise.

you look around, “don’t know, don’t care.” you shrug your shoulders. he raises his eyebrows at this, still staring at you. “we fought, he got drunk and was flirting with kat in front of me.”

his eyes look straight into yours, you start to feel goosebumps form and a chill go through your body at the eye contact. he looks at you up and down, before returning to your gaze. “and you haven’t let this guy go because?”

“he’s just so pretty,” you say with a bored tone.

“i have his face, leave him and just be with me,” he says it in a sort of joking tone, but his face screams business. you can’t tell if he’s joking or not. “i can do what that chump does and more. i show up when it counts.” he says this to remind you of the showcase, not that you needed reminding. “i’m genuinely all of the good things about bobby with no bad qualities,” he says, smugly.

“oh i can think of a couple bad qualities you have,” you smirk. he raises his eyebrows to make you continue. “for one, you’re self centered, bordering on narcissistic. two, you’re kind of a raging cunt. three, you’re a brat. four, you-”

he interrupts you. “name one time i was self centered and please elaborate on how i’m a ‘raging cunt’” he asks you.

“just now, you were being self centered just now. or, maybe, that was just you being arrogant. but saying you’re basically bobby if he was a better boyfriend makes you look cocky and arrogant and really self centered. also, i called you a raging cunt because the first time i met you, i called you ‘cunt dracula’ to anyone who would listen.” you shrug your shoulders and watch as his jaw drops.

“cunt dracula?” he asks.

“yes, and not the good cunt.” he laughs at what you’re admitting. “don’t laugh, this isn’t a good thing. a lot of people actually hate your guts, they just fuck you because you’re hot.”

“so you think i’m hot.”

“you have my boyfriend’s face, i would hope i think you’re hot.” he holds intense eye contact with you after this. you feel your heart beating faster, it’s like he’s slowly invading all of your senses. you feel heat rise to your cheeks, forcing you to look away first. “whatever, anyways, can you take me to clark’s empire or whatever? bobby won’t and kat is working there right now and i wanted to visit her on her lunch break.”

he rolls his eyes and sighs loudly. “i guess, let’s go before i change my mind.”

“thank you!” you chirp, a smile gracing your face. he just shakes his head and helps you pack up your stuff, holding your books for you. you let him lead you out to his car and wait for him to finish putting everything in the backseat.

he drops you off at kat’s work, and she’s waiting for you outside already. she waves at him as he drives away. you walk over to her and she leads you inside to the break room. you say hi to clark as you pass his office. the store is kind of unsettling, it feels abandoned despite the three of you occupying space inside.

you and kat are talking about stupid crap when clark walks into the break room. “hey, kat? that kid with the camera, can he shoot some stuff for the store? we need more advertising.” he looks at her, rubbing his hand down his face.

“bobby?” you ask both of them. clark nods, looking at you. “since when does bobby come here?” you ask, half joking, looking at kat.

she has a guilty expression on her face when she answers you. “sometimes he visits when it’s slow. i complain a lot about how creepy it is when i do inventory.” she’s watching your face, waiting for any sort of reaction.

“how often is this?” you ask, looking down at your hands. by now, clark is realizing he revealed something he shouldn’t have. “he comes when you’re creeped out? just, out of the kindness of his own heart?” you don’t believe this. bobby has never done anything like that for you, he didn’t even show up to an important event for you. for kat, he’s just going for no reason?

her eyes widen at the implication she put out there without knowing. “no! nothing is happening with us! i would never do that to you, i promise.” she reaches for your hands, “i just know that he’s been shitty and i know i shouldn’t reach out to him for company when i’m at work, but i never know who else to call.”

“you can call me,” you say, softly.

“i’m sorry,” she whispers. “nothing is happening between bobby and i. i just didn’t want to tell you because he started being flirty with me at that party and i didn’t want you to think something was going on when there wasn’t.”

you nod. “i just would have rather known. i would have liked to know the first time he came here to keep you company.” she’s nodding her head, furiously. you look at the clock, realizing that aerion would be picking you up soon. “whatever, it’s fine. i’m not mad at you, i’m more mad at bobby. why’s it so easy for him to be there for you, but not me? i’m his girlfriend.” you stand up, leaving.

“are we okay?” she whispers before you leave.

“honestly, not right now.” you leave the break room. you say bye to clark as you exit the store and beeline for aerion’s car.

he looks at you, and can already tell that something is off. “what happened?” he asks, putting the car into reverse.

“bobby comforts kat.” you say. “she gets creeped out at work and he goes to her, easily. no fight, just goes.” tears start to fill your eyes. “he’s never done that for me. not when we first started dating, not even to make up for when he’s a shitty boyfriend. he just never does that for me.”

he watches you from the corner of his eye as tears start to fall. he actually feels angry at bobby, before he just felt smug and triumphant that he was bringing you joy while bobby kept being a sore spot. but watching you cry, actually full on sob at the fact that your boyfriend is actually capable of being a decent lover, just not to you, made aerion feel a rage he hadn’t felt in years.

“he’s a fucking bum. you know that, right?” it’s like the rage made his mouth loose, he can’t stop himself from saying what he’s always thought. “you have actual goals, things that are going to bring you far in life. bobby, he’s genuinely nothing. he weighs you down and you let him.” he scoffs, grabbing a pack of cigarettes from the center console and lighting it. “it’s actually pathetic, i’m sorry. someone has to be honest with you because clearly no one else is.”

you sniffle. aerion’s words, as harsh as they are, make a lot of sense. bobby bristles at the mention of a future between you two. bobby doesn’t do small acts of affection outside of sex and making out. bobby doesn’t comfort you when you want him to. “i know,” you whisper. “but i love him. i don’t know what to do.” you put your face in your hands.

aerion puts his hand on your thigh, comfortingly. his cigarette hangs in his mouth as he pulls the car into a parking lot. “first, we’ll eat. then, i’ll take you to my place. bobby doesn’t deserve to see you cry over him anymore.” you look up and you realize he drove you to the restaurant that had just opened up a few weeks ago. you, kat, and bobby were supposed to try it together. you realized you don’t care about them right now.

it’s at this time that you finally realize your appreciation for aerion. he’s rude and he’s brash and he doesn’t sugarcoat his words, but he’s never lied to you. he’s belittled you and your bullshit boyfriend and your best friend. he’s thought you to be stupid and pathetic. he’s also proven to be the most genuine person you’ve met at college. he’s genuine in the way he cares about you at your lowest, he’s genuine about wanting to better himself to prove himself to his family, he’s genuine about the way he thinks you deserve better than you allow yourself.

“i’m going to use the restroom,” you say to him after you tell him your order. you get up and ask a staff member where the restroom is and follow the directions they give you. you don’t even realize you left your phone at the table.

aerion does. he stares at the metal brick as if it offends him. it does, especially when it starts vibrating and lighting up with bobby’s contact photo. against his better judgement, he reaches out and answers it. “she’s busy,” he says into the phone.

“where the fuck is she, man? you were supposed to take her home after she left the store and kat told me she left like half an hour ago.” bobby scoffs from the other line. aerion can imagine the annoyance on his face rather than actual worry. the thought makes him angrier.

he sighs into the phone. “do you love her?” he outright asks bobby. he hears bobby’s breathing stutter into the receiver. aerion waits for bobby to answer, he doesn’t. “right.” he scoffs. “that’s why she’s not coming home tonight. you don’t deserve to see her after all this crap you put her through.”

“aerion-”

he cuts bobby off. “don’t worry, i’ll take care of her for you. do her a favor? don’t call her tonight. she knows about you and kat.” aerion deliberately ends the call after that. seeing that bobby doesn’t call immediately after, he knows that bobby’s heeding his warning.

“alright! did you order yet?” you ask when you sit back into the booth. he shakes his head and you fake cheer, looking at the menu. “i changed my mind, can i get a different drink?” you ask him.

he looks you dead in the eyes and asks “why the fuck would i care what drink you got?”

you put your hands up in defense, “my bad, your majesty, just wanted to make sure.” he scoffs and looks down at the menu before looking at you inquisitively. “oh yeah, i was thinking about getting a martini instead.” you tell him.

“get whatever you want, i’m paying either way.”

“no, i can get my own food aerion. don’t worry about-” he cuts you off with a stare, you feel silly again. you forget that aerion has a trust fund behind his name, you still feel bad when he does this. “i don’t want it to seem like i’m taking advantage of you,” you admit.

“you’re not. just order the fucking cocktail.” he dismisses you. you smile softly, you know him well enough now. his dismissal, at least when it’s directed towards you, is his affection trying to break through. it’s his way of telling you to do whatever you want when you’re with him, that you’re safe. you smile again at the thought, this was a safety net you’re not used to having.

“thank you,” you say to him. he just hums and waves a waitress over.

[lanadelrae-wrld]

what i’m currently working on outside of “how to build a better boyfriend”

[lanadelrae-wrld]

my new additions to the wips list

[theladysoleil]

Even Dragons Bleed ||

POSSESIVE!AERION TARGARYEN X WIFE!READER

□ summary: Aerion Targaryen has always believed himself above all, a true dragon who needs no one. Yet beneath the arrogance lies something far more fragile. A bunch of wine reveals the truth he hides behind his pride.

□ word count: 2.1k words

□ warnings: Alcohol consumption, Aerion is his own warning duh, ooc aerion, Possesive and Obsessive behaviour, some sexual implications (not full on smut but still 18+), no beta we die like baelor.

□ a/n: I suck at summaries, took me half an hour to come up with that. This idea came to me at 3 am, and i decided i need to write this before i write my Valarr series. Also, Thank you so much for all the love on the Maekar fic. My ask box is open if you wanna chat. I am also thinking of opening my requests after my dissertation review is over. Hehe.

Discover my other works here

The moon hung high in the starry sky, its pale light spilling over Summerhall and slipping through the windows of your chambers. The music and laughter from the feast had long since faded, swallowed by the quiet of the moonlit night.

A single candle flickered beside your bed as you lay awake, your thoughts drifting back to the evening.

You had been adorned in the best jewels and fabric the realm could offer, and every head in the hall had turned when your arrival was announced.

Your husband, who had escorted you to the Hall, had a smirk adorning his face. Pride flickering in his violet eyes.

Once, you were the most desired woman in the realm.

And now, you were his.

To Aerion, you were not merely his wife, you were an extension of his. Every glance, every praise directed towards you, he claimed as his own.

Why wouldn't he?

He was the dragon.

And you were his treasure.

Something that belonged to him.

So everything that was yours...was, in truth, his as well.

Even praise.

You turned onto your side and smiled when you recalled what Aerion had whispered in your ear at the high table.

"All these lesser lords...," Aerion whispered, his lips brushing the shells of your ears as he leaned closer, "are undressing you with their eyes, my treasure."

Goosrbumps had risen immediately at the feel of his warm breath against your ears.

"But," His hands settled on your back. Fingers idly playing with the laces of your gown, "the one who truly gets to undress you...is me."

A soft nip at your earlobe had stolen the rest of your composure.

All you can do is clear your throat and have a sip of the wine, willing your racing heart to settle.

To anyone watching, it would have seemed nothing more than a husband conversing with his wife.

But to you, It had been enough to unravel you where you sat.

That evening, you had danced till your feet ached. The taste of wine still lingering sweetly on your tongue.

And when the night had started to worn you down, and as the men got rowdier with the sun setting, you have decided to retire to your chambers.

With a polite curtsy to your good-father and a chaste kiss pressed to your half drunk husband's lips, you had taken your leave.

And now, here you were. Awake.

Thinking of the two years of your marriage.

Your father had always been an ambitious man, but not a cruel one.

So When the ravens arrived, bearing a proposal of betrothal between you and Aerion, he had asked for your opinion.

You had decided to be the dutiful daughter, and said yes. Though your hands had trembled when you did, hidden neatly behind your back.

This, you told yourself, was how you would repay your father.

The initial days of your marriage weren't pleasant. Aerion was a man who deemed everyone beneath him.

You were no exception.

But time and patience, had taught you his nature.

You learned which words pleased him. Which silences soothed him.

Which glances held his attention just long enough to keep his temper at bay.

And in return, he had deemed you his treasure.

Something to be guarded and cared for.

Though he would never admit that, not in words at least.

To Aerion, he is only caring for you like one cares for their personal belongings.

But you knew better.

You had seen it in the way his gaze lingered too long, in the way his touch tightened just a fraction too much and in the way something fierce and unrelenting burned behind those violet eyes.

Possessive. Obsessive.

And with each passing day, it only grew stronger.

He would never name it. But you could.

Love.

The kind that consumes until there is nothing left to claim.

The creak of the door pulled you from your thoughts.

A drunk Aerion stumbled into the chamber, his steps unsteady. His eyes were hazy with wine and his face carried that familiar, sharp edged smugness.

"Bunch of lowlifes," he slurred, making his way towards the bed. "Think they can… talk to ME." His voice rose, almost indignant. "The blood of the dragon."

His hands fumbling at his doublet, tugging at it impatiently as he stood before you.

"Wifeeeee" he dragged the word out, "Here you are."

You pushed yourself up onto your knees on the bed, facing him.

"Husband," you said softly, reaching for his hands and easing them away from the tangled laces. Your fingers took over, working them loose with practiced ease.

He made a low, approving sound, his gaze dropping to your hands, that were working diligently at his laces.

"These lords really think," he muttered, his face twisting with distaste, "they are worthy enough to drink with me."

You let out a small, amused breath, "they probably wanted to win your favour, husband."

The laces loosened, and you helped him shrug the doublet from his shoulders, leaving his chest bare.

You place your palm there, rubbing at his chest slowly, soothingly.

"After all," you added, a faint smirk tugging at your lips, "you are the dragon."

Aerion stilled at that. Then the pride returned quickly and reflexively. A smile curved his lips.

"I suppose…," he murmured, leaning down towards you, "that is true, my treasure."

His fingers caught your chin, tilting your face up.

His eyes hazily blinking down at you, the violet hue holding you in your place.

His lips met yours.

The kiss was demanding. Possessive.

Your hands slipped around his neck as he tugged lightly at your lower lip, a quiet groan escaping you. He answered it with a satisfied hum.

He guided you back onto the bed, following as he deepened the kiss, pressing you into the sheets.

Then he pulled away just enough to shift, straddling your hips, careful not to crush you beneath his weight.

He looked down at you.

There was something intense in his gaze, something that made your breath hitch and stomach pool with warmth.

But then, it vanished.

His expression shifted, the smugness draining into something uncertain. He squinted slightly, his tongue pressing against the inside of his cheek, his breathing uneven, as if caught in some intense thought he could not unravel.

A frustrated sound left him.

He dragged a hand through his hair and then, without warning, collapsed beside you, his face half-buried in the pillows.

It took you a moment to catch up, and a frustrated sigh left you.

"Husband?" you asked, turning your head towards him.

No response.

"Is everything okay?"

Silence.

"My dragon?"

That seemed to have caught his attention.

He turned his head slightly, looking towards you.

Your eyes widened at what you saw.

Your proud and arrogant husband had a small pout on his lips.

You pinched yourself. The pain was real, so this cannot be a dream.

The Aerion "Brightflame" Targaryen... was pouting.

His gaze drifted from your face down to your arms. His hands followed, settling there, his touch unexpectedly gentle as he rubbed slow, absent patterns along your skin.

"They talk about you," Aerion muttered suddenly, his voice quieter now, rougher.

You stilled slightly, "Who does, husband?"

His fingers tightened just a fraction, his eyes locked on your wrist. For a while, he did not say anything.

"The voices," he said, breaking the silence, "...in my dreams."

You bit your lower lip, unsure how to reply.

You knew your good-brother was plagued by dreams.

Was it the same for your husband?

But he had never spoken of it before.

And you did not know how to face this side of him.

You hated that.

Aerion’s gaze lifted from your arm to your face, his hazy violet eyes locking onto yours.

Slowly, he released your arm, his hand rising to cradle your cheek. His thumb resting, almost absently, against your lower lip.

"They say…," he began, his expression tightening, "that i am weak for wanting you."

Your heart clenched.

"That a true dragon does not need anyone."

His grip on you tightened, his breathing growing heavier as he shifted closer, his body pressing into yours, the body heat bleeding through the fabric of your nightgown.

"And," he continued, his voice dropping dangerously low, "they have never been wrong."

A shaky breath left you.

You knew how to handle his anger. His arrogance.

But this version of him was unfamiliar.

“Husband, I-”

He cut you off.

"Even those lesser lords believe it," he murmured, something softer flickering in his eyes. His hand slid from your cheek to the nape of your neck, holding you there.

"That you do not belong to me."

"That I do not deserve you."

"But...", his lips curved slowly, that familiar, smug looking smirk returning.

"This time," his thumb pressed lightly against your skin.

"They are wrong. Even the voices lie."

"You are mine," he murmured. "You chose me."

His grip tightened slightly at your neck, not painful, but firm.

Your breath grew uneven, your hands pressing against his chest as you lay on your side, caught between his weight and his gaze.

"They are wrong," he said again, but this time, it lacked conviction.

His gaze searched yours, something uncertain creeping in.

"…they are wrong," he repeated, softer this time. As if he needed you to confirm it.

You let out a slow breath before lifting your hands to his face, cradling it gently between your palms.

The realm called your husband mad. Cruel.

And you knew that, yet a part of you loved him still.

Perhaps that made you just as twisted.

But in this moment, he was not the prince the realm feared.

He was simply a man, too proud to ask even drunk…and yet desperate to be reassured.

"Aerion," you began, your forehead resting against his, "I am yours."

For a moment, his breath got caught. An uncertain and unguarded expression flickering in his eyes.

"I do not know of the voices," you said carefully, "but i do know that the lords are wrong."

Your thumbs brushed gently over his cheeks as your nose nudged against his.

"You deserve me more than anyone," your voice dropping low, his breath warm against your lips, "It is me...who does not deserve you, my dragon."

"No," his words came sharper this time, immediate.

"You are my treasure," Aerion said, his gaze hardening again, "and the treasure belongs to the dragon."

You smiled faintly at that, nodding.

His gaze lingered on your face, searching just a moment too long. As if he were trying to find something he could not quite name.

Then, slowly, his grip shifted. His hand slid from your neck to your waist, pulling you closer.

He buried his face in the crook of your neck, his eyes falling shut.

Your chin came to rest atop his head as your fingers slipped into his hair, combing through it in slow, soothing strokes.

He let out a hum in approval.

"One day," he murmured against your skin, his breath warm, "I will show them… that I am a true dragon."

"I know you will, husband."

He hummed again.

After a moment, you felt the soft press of his lips against your neck.

And then-

"You are the only one who truly understands me, my treasure," Aerion rasped, his voice thick with sleep.

A pause.

"I love you."

Your hand stilled in his hair.

You lay there, unmoving, the words echoing in your mind.

You had long made peace with the fact that your husband was not a man for gentle confessions. Pride ran too deep in him for that.

Your heartbeat quickened, and you bit your lower lip to stop yourself from giggling like a maiden.

You knew he would forget this once he wakes up tomorrow and the effects of wine wears out.

And even if he did remember, he would never speak of it again.

And you were wise enough not to tease him for it.

You exhaled softly and pressed a gentle kiss to the crown of his head.

"I love you too, my dragon."

His breathing had already begun to even out, his hold on your waist settling down.

You allowed yourself a small, quiet smile.

You found you rather liked him like this.

[theladysoleil]

The wolf he chose masterlist ||

VALARR TARGARYEN x FEM!STARK!READER

□ summary: The North was never meant to change the course of Valarr Targaryen's life. He expected nothing more than political alliances, careful smiles and an eventual betrothal that suited the crown. Instead, he found a woman who wields weapon and that some choices cannot be made for crown alone.

□ tropes: slow burn, he fell first and harder, hurt-comfort, No use of y/n, no physical description of reader, reader is a badass and can fight.

□ a/n: This series will probably have 10-15 chapters, and i will try my best to keep the updates weekly.

⤷ Chapter 1

⤷ Chapter 2

⤷ Chapter 3

⤷ Chapter 4

⤷ Chapter 5

⤷ Chapter 6

⤷ Chapter 7

⤷ Chapter 8

⤷ Chapter 9

⤷ Chapter 10

⤷ Chapter 11

⤷ Chapter ?

...

⤷ Appendix (Family tree & Some Character Profiles)

[targaryenstar]

omg i would love like a more fleshed out scenario of a jealous ‘just friends’ valarr, like reader has just been on a date with someone else but it’s valarr she’s spending her night with. but he doesn’t wanna have her just during nights anymore 😣😣

if this doesn’t even make sense then i’m sorry!!! xx 💘

WHEN DID YOU GET HOT? — VALARR TARGARYEN.

SUMMARY just friends wasn't cutting it anymore.

NOTES had to stop and start writing this because it kept turning me on SORRY, literally obsessed with these two.

WARNINGS 18+, smut, fingering, valarr talking so sweet to reader, shitty date, pining, mention of masturbation (m).

PREV.

MASTERLIST

Just friends. That was all you were, that was all you had been. Lying to your friends and family, cutting your contact shorter than what felt right just to reaffirm yourselves of your friendship. But it hadn't stopped either of you.

Valarr would still pull you onto his lap when your friend group had gathered for a movie night, Aerion being the only one to make a joke of it. But it hadn't stopped you from settling against his chest, from his hands drawing shapes on your thighs, from stealing a few kisses when your friends would leave the room.

And yet you remained just friends.

Valarr wouldn't dare touch the state of your friendship, as selfish and boyish as it sounded, he didn't want to make it weird or lose the feeling of you around his fingers, or the taste of you on his tongue. So if he had to spent the rest of his life suffering shitty dates, just to end up in your bed for the night, it was a fate he was willing to take.

But it was torture, listening to you talk about this new guy from work, who asked you out for some drinks. Jack, a charming guy who found a joke in everything, who had staggered you on your first day when he so confidently told you how pretty you were. And now, Valarr laid against the headboard of your bed, watching you get ready for Jack to ogle at you for hours.

"This skirt," you gestured to the one wrapped around your hips, before holding up a hanger with a much shorter, denim one, "or this one?"

Valarr frowned in decision, both looked unreal. Both had him ready to lock himself in your bathroom and rub one out, but he was here... as a friend.

"Bend over for me." His voice was soft, yet commanding. And who were you to defy your good friend?

You turn to face away from him and slowly bent over, the bottom of your ass immediately starting to show. You knew it, you could feel his eyes burning over your flesh.

"Too short, I can see your ass already." Valarr declared with a stiff voice, hands now subtly over his semi-hard manhood. He could feel his ears growing warm, feeling like a teenage boy all over again. How could you still make him feel so nervous, despite having been inside you rather frequently?

"What if I want him to see my ass?" You joked, your suggestive tone sending him over the edge. But he only tensed his jaw, his mind too wired on the image of your ass to find some witty remark.

He swapped between scrolling through his phone and looking up at you, as you rummaged your closet. Even in the space between your usual self and your dolled-up self, he found you unreal. Hair pinned up to maintain its shape, traipsing around your room in nothing but your skirt and a bra, face inches from the mirror as you applied your makeup.

You were ready, the time creeping closer to seven, when Jack said he would pick you up. And Valarr had stood, stretched his arms above his head, to which your eye had noticed. Immediately. Any flash of skin, you were already looking, drooling, mind rampant with both thoughts and memories.

"I'm gonna shoot off," Valarr spoke, his hand resting on your waist in passing, as you near hugged your mirror. The fleeting contact tightened the knot in your stomach, and your body took control to stop him from leaving.

"Do I look good?" You asked, gazing up at him with your hand on his chest. You had damned him, to a night of torture. Looking so good, for someone else, for someone who hadn't known you well enough to truly savour you.

His hand connected with your waist once more, an amused smirk lifted onto his face as he tried to find the words to say.

"What do you think?" His voice was low, restraining more than he let on. The image of you in just your skirt was enough to have his evening plans made, but your eyes looking up at him, your hand on his chest, your seeking of his approval, had him well and truly fucked.

You only smiled back at him, pressing a small kiss to his jaw before letting him leave. The lipgloss on his jaw had weight to it, lingering even on his drive home, as he sat in his driveway looking through the rearview mirror at the shimmering, pale pink lining his jaw. He was shackled to a night of torture, of wondering what the fuck this Jack was saying to you.

It was a total bust. Jack was charming, made you laugh, and that was where it ended. You knew he liked fishing, hiking, took his Mother out for coffee every Sunday morning, used to smoke and now only does so when he's stressed, is allergic to dogs and most other furry animals, oh, and only fucking talks about himself.

Not once did he ask you a question, or stop himself from talking to see what you enjoyed doing, or turn his phone over as it buzzed every two minutes. It felt like some form of cosmic revenge, for what, you wouldn't know. It felt like someone, somewhere, had prayed for this date to be truly awful, to waste your evening, your outfit, your laughter on some narcissist.

You excused yourself from Jack for the bathroom, digging into your purse for your phone.

"Valarr," you whispered into your phone, the man having answered after one ring, "save me."

You heard his chuckle on the other end, and a few shuffling sounds. You pressed your back against the stall door, eyes closed, willing him to speak, to be your salvation from this awful date.

"Valarr—"

"I'm coming, baby. Hold on." He laughed, completely unaware of the damage he was doing to your arousal. Your few cocktails had shattered your inhibitions, you couldn't even force a smile, you were well and truly bored of this man.

"Want me to stay on the phone with you, hm?" He asked, coaxing you from your mind, bringing you back to the toilet stall you were hidden in. Ten minutes had passed and you were still gone, Jack sat on his lonesome in a booth.

"No," you huffed, "I should probably ditch this asshole."

And ditch him, you did. You had feigned some excuse about your sister in a crisis, and that you would rain check. Jack had offered to get your taxi fare, which admittedly was nice. But you managed to shoo him away before Valarr's car appeared.

The car was the perfect warmth, with soft music playing, and Valarr looked good enough to eat. His arm flexed as he turned the steering wheel, eyes gazing over at you every so often, drinking you in. The drinks had enticed your arousal, especially Valarr calling you baby. But even completely sober, Valarr matched your own arousal.

It remained a challenge to focus on the road, when your cleavage was staring back at him. When your thighs were exposed because of the skirt he said was too short. When your body was angled in such a taunting way, only furthering him into madness.

"Can we go to yours?" You suggested, fingers dancing dangerously over his thigh. And he could do nothing but sit and let you do it, let you lean over the centre console and rest your head on his shoulder. Your hot breath sent chills up his spine, and sent the blood charging to his manhood. Your effect on him was unlike anything he'd ever witnessed before. So simply fatal.

It was not long before Valarr had opened the car door for you and walked with you to his room, hand clamped over your mouth so as not to alert his Father and brother of your presence. They both loved you, would welcome you over for dinner and games nights whenever you wished, but Valarr would not explain your outfit, and he certainly would not explain what he was about to do with you in his room.

You fell onto his bed in a fit of giggles, his lips leaving trails of wetness as he dragged down your neck. Working towards the cleavage that had been staring back at him all night, with his tongue calculated in travelling over your soft flesh. The sounds you made had him thrusting into you, vexed at the clothes between you.

His fingers dove under your skirt, pulling your panties aside to sink into your wetness. The way your eyes rolled back had been enough of a reward for him, to hover above you and watch your face coming undone for him.

"Tell me about your date." He spoke, his soft command had you ready to do anything for him. Even tell him the shortcomings of your date as Valarr made you feel good.

You froze, nervous as you looked up at Valarr. It was Valarr, your best friend, the man who had seen every side of you, who crumbled your mask the moment you met. Why did you suddenly feel such anxiety as he fucked his fingers into you?

"Come on, talk to me," he urged, taking his other hand to smooth your hair from your face. So affectionate, so caring, so Valarr.

"He—" You struggled with the steady movement of his fingers, curling into you, your throat fighting between words and moans. "He didn't ask me anything."

"No?" His tone dripped with condescension, pulling the high closer to you, for you.

"H-he didn't compliment me." You added. Now you were just mad, even with Valarr making you feel good, you felt like an idiot for giving Jack a chance. "Not once."

Valarr wore a wicked smirk, Jack's failures had been his to kiss better. "Aw, he didn't tell you what a pretty girl you are?"

You shook your head, hips quivering as he detached to quickly add a third finger. The reunion of contact had your back arching off his mattress, stifling your moans to hide from his family who were only a few doors down from his.

"You want me to compliment you?" He asked, the smirk still plastered to his face as you lost control of your senses around him. He didn't falter in his rhythm, not even once.

You nodded, simple, unmistakable.

"Use your words for me."

"Yes," you whimpered, rocking your hips up to take more of him. But his fingers were already buried to the knuckle. "Compliment me."

His other hand, once woven into your hair, took hold of your jaw. To inspect you, to take in every beautifully familiar part of you. The way your eyes looked up at him like you knew nothing else, the way your eyebrows tilted upward so fondly of him, the way your lip sat between your teeth.

"You're so beautiful, baby." He cooed down at you. "There's not a man alive that deserves you."

It was the truth, himself included. It was painfully obvious the moment he had you coming on his fingers, on him as he was stuffed inside you, on his tongue. How could another man experience how perfect you looked, sounded, tasted, felt? He had counted his lucky stars for being the one to do it to you.

His grip on your jaw remained, your cheeks flushing as you grew close to your high. He could feel it, he knew it all too well. He learnt you, what made you feel good, what had you making those pretty sounds for him.

"You're such a sweet girl," he breathed, "letting me make you feel good like this, hm?"

Your moans faltered, coming out akin to whimpering and crying, for him. It had all been for him. It stroked his ego, to have someone of your caliber giving him such a reaction. But you had ruined any other girl for him, possibly forever. It burned his chest to think of that truth.

"You like that?" His soft words were lulling you to your release, your abdomen tensed to anticipate the high, but he continued on with his curled fingers and poisonous words.

"Valarr—" You cried, eyes screwed shut as the release tore through you. White hot and blinding. His hand still held your jaw, perfectly angled for him to witness your undoing. A memory burned into his mind, never to be forgotten.

"That's it, baby." He whispered, your jaw released from his fingers, swapped for drifting through your hair. It clung to your forehead, melded with light sweat, and he had smoothed it all back for you. So gentle in the aftershock of desire, so sweet, so Valarr.

You whined as he pulled his fingers from you, an easy smile gracing your face. You took his soaked hand in yours, bringing his fingers to your lips, and taking them in your mouth. His lifted eyebrows and slightly agape mouth spoke for him. He held his tongue, near professing his love for you in that moment.

"You're trouble." He smirked, ejecting his fingers from your mouth to replace them with a ghostly kiss. "

He expected nothing of you, your enjoyment paramount to him, but he ached against his jeans. Throbbing, willing to release for the third time that night. But he would savour it, until your next terrible date.

[lanadelrae-wrld]

keeping up the “valarr is a brat” theme with my valarr fic i’m working on 😇😇😇😇😇😇😇😇😇

[lanadelrae-wrld]

yearn white boy yearn is all i can say about the fic im cooking up

[lanadelrae-wrld]

something very bad is going to happen, bobby franklin

bobby franklin x reader

“are you sure he’s the one?” that question haunts you. you were so sure that bobby was your soulmate, but thing after thing keeps happening and now you’re questioning everything.

+ i changed some things…also, i didn’t write about the soulmate curse thing because…i got lazy BUT i may write a second part to this!!!

“will you marry me?” bobby whispers in the kitchen one night. he’s on his knee in front of you, a velvet box and shaky hands held up to you.

you feel a tear run down your cheek, you’re frozen in shock. finally, after registering the puppy dog look in his eyes, you enthusiastically nod. marrying bobby was something you knew would be in your future, he was the only person who had ever made you feel ready for marriage.

over the next few months, you both spend time planning what you want your wedding to look like. originally, you wanted something super small and intimate. if you had it your way, it would be just the two of you, kat, and his family. the celebration would probably be just you guys signing the paperwork and having dinner after.

his family had other plans. their version of small and intimate was your worst nightmare. it was you both, kat, his immediate family, extended family, and everyone they’ve ever interacted with. you felt more embarrassed when they kept asking you questions about inviting your family, you had none. you had kat, your best friend.

fuck it, whatever, you just wanted to marry bobby. and if marrying bobby meant having an empty bride’s side and a super full groom’s side, then so be it. you spoke to clark about taking time off to have your wedding, and a honeymoon (maybe). he just nodded, swatting his hand, telling you to just go get married already. kat already knew the date and how long you were gonna want her there, taking into consideration her own financial needs.

the next day, you’re packing up your stuff and heading out to his family’s cabin. you’re only going to be there a week before the wedding, meaning three days without kat to be a buffer between you and awkwardness. three days until the bachelorette dinner, that you hope and pray is going to be a calm event (it won’t be).

after five hours of driving, you both stop by a rest stop to use the bathroom. you walk into the restroom, pausing at the peculiar sight of flies crowding around one of the stalls. you walk forward, cautiously, and look into the stall. the sight makes you want to throw up, suddenly losing all urge to pee. you run straight to the car, where bobby is waiting for you.

he takes in your freaked out appearance and asks you if you’re okay. you swallow and nod, telling him to drive. you grab a joint from your bag and light up, feeling the effects of the weed calm you down. you hand him the joint and he takes a hit, looking between you and the road, still concerned.

what seems like forever is only five more hours on the road before you finally reach another stop. it’s a bar, you laugh at the absurdity of it. you and bobby are stopping at a bar before going to see his family. he tells you to order him a beer while he goes to the bathroom, and you’re left alone waiting.

it takes a second for a strange chill to settle in your bones, but you try to ignore the rising feeling of dread that settles into your mind. it’s quiet in here, but it’s a bar and everything feels out of place. you feel like the walls are watching you and remembering something that it refuses to let you in on. bobby is in the bathroom, the bartender is a woman, and you’re alone at a table watching the janitor mop.

the janitor is an older gentleman, he doesn’t seem to be the reason for your sudden chill. at least, he wasn’t until his gaze locked on you. you frantically look at the bartender who is looking at you before walking to the back. you check toward the men’s restroom to catch a glimpse of bobby leaving, he’s complain about there being no paper towels and grab his beer from you before kissing you on the forehead and drinking it. you both will smile at each other, you hugging his arm to yourself before you drive the next three hours to his family.

none of that happens. instead, the bartender stays in the back and bobby is still in the restroom. you’d be more worried if he hadn’t eaten that suspicious salad from the diner, and if the janitor wasn’t making his way to you. you stand up, trying to create more distance, walking to the jukebox in the back. suddenly, a hand reaches in front of you and hits the jukebox. you flinch, grabbing the car keys between your fingers, ready to hit.

a song plays, one you remember. it’s a distant memory that comes from this song, you can’t place where you’ve heard it from. you turn around, looking at the janitor, now face to face. “this is a good song,” he tells you. you’re looking at him with wide eyes, bobby’s beer abandoned on the table you walked away from. you’re still looking around. he looks you up and down, settling on the hand gripping your keys, at the ring in your finger. he grabs the hand and you feel frozen. “are you sure he’s the one?”

the door to the bathroom opens and you hear bobby’s loud complains. you blink and suddenly the janitor is gone, empty space replaces where he once was. bobby grabs the beer from the table and drinks it without a second thought before turning to look at you. “you good, babe?” your face is frozen in shock, confusion lingers in the back of your mind.

are you sure bobby’s the one? you never had a second thought that bobby was going to be the guy you spend the rest of your life with. “i’m okay,” you whisper. your tone and the look on your face makes bobby really not believe you.

“what’s with the song? it’s creepy, here let’s change it.”

you shake your head, “we should go.” you walk to meet him halfway, grabbing the beer and taking the last sip of it before walking the glass to the bartender, or at least where she should have been. “i want to go.” you let out, shakily. bobby just nods and offers you his arm to hold as you guys walk back to the car. “i can drive, you should sleep.” he nods again and goes to the passenger seat. you let out a shaky breath and look back towards the bar, you swear you can make out the shadow of the janitor from the window. you don’t let yourself think about it more before driving away.

three hours later, you finally arrive at his family’s cabin. “we just drove thirteen fucking hours, how the fuck are we still alive?” bobby asks you when you park the car. you laugh, delirious, and shake your head. “let’s leave our shit, i need to fucking sleep.” you just not and let him lead you into the house. it’s dark, and you’re both trying to be quiet and not wake people up.

the lights turn on and you let out a shocked gasp. right in front of you was the creepiest painting you’ve ever seen. “did they seriously paint over the first wife?” you ask when the image finally registered in your brain. you trace over the figure with your eyes, the second wife of bobby’s brother is on the painting. that space was previously occupied by his first wife, who no one will speak about.

two days later, and you’re desperately calling kat. “kat i fucking need you here, i’m gonna go fucking crazy.” you’re pacing around the room, taking shaky drags of the joint. “like i will pay you to come here early and witness this crap, they’re fucking driving me insane.”

“what happened? last i heard was the painting thing,” she asks from the other side.

“they put me in the mom’s wedding dress and started cutting it and making alterations,” you start. “and then they took my necklace from me and won’t give it back and i even searched the room and it wasn’t fucking there anymore.”

“wait, sorry, back up. dress? i thought you had a dress? and you’re necklace, like your mom’s necklace? as in the last thing you have of her before she died?” kat interrupts.

“yes! that exact one, and i can’t fucking find it and bobby said i probably misplaced it. like that doesn’t even sound like me.” you take another drag, “and it’s been so weird. before we got here, we stopped at a bar and this old guy asked me if i was sure he was the one and then disappeared from existence.”

kat hums from the other side, “i’ll ask clark if i can take the rest of the week off, i’ll fly to you and i’ll keep you company and try to keep you sane. i needed to get in early anyways because a storm was supposed to hit soon and i don’t want to miss your bachelorette.” you just hum in agreement, trying not to lose your cool. “babe,” she starts, “are you, though?”

“am i what?” you ask softly.

“sure he’s the one? i get it if you’re having pre wedding jitters and it could be making everything feel more overwhelming than it is. but also, if you’re having doubts, it’s not too late to call it.”

“kat, i’m sure. i promise, just get here. please.” you beg her.

“i will, i promise.” with that the phone call ends.

you put your phone on the dresser and sit on the floor, holding your legs close to you. kat coming earlier than she was supposed to makes you feel better. the last couple of days have been a genuine nightmare, making you feel more alone than ever. tears start to fall from your eyes before you know it and you can’t do anything to console yourself.

you don’t know how long you’d been sitting there before bobby comes in and hastily pulls you into a soothing hug, asking what happened. you don’t tell him about the crazy dress stuff, just that you felt lonely and kat was coming early. he just sat there with you and rubbed your back until the tears stopped, kissing your forehead sporadically.

“i think i have something that will make you feel better,” he whispers. “you have to close your eyes and hold your hand out, okay?” you smile and close your eyes, nodding your head and holding your hands out.

you feel a cold chain hit your palms, a charm flopping in your hands. you don’t even need to open your eyes to know what it is. you open your eyes and break out into a huge grin, “you found it!” you laugh, throwing your arms around his neck.

he nods, putting one of his hands on your cheek to rub the tear tracks with his thumb. “yeah, my sister found it. she said she remembered you wearing it when they were helping you with something.” you continue staring at your moms ring on the chain in awe. “i’m glad kat’s coming, i know my family can be a little…much, so i’m glad she’ll be here.”

kat comes the next day, thank goodness. you find this out by surprise when bobby and kat jump onto the bed to wake you up. “surprise!” kat yells in your face. you’re face is frozen in shock, confused as to how she got here so quickly. “you were texting crazy and i got a same day flight, it was late as fuck, but i’m here. my best friend is getting married!” she celebrates.

bobby is watching your face light up with joy, “you were in on this?” you ask him, he nods. you grab his face and pull him into a kiss. “thank you,” you whisper, before kat pills you from the bed and you both start jumping up and down together.

there’s a knock at your room’s door. you open it to find bobby’s sister, holding an envelope with your name on it. your heart stops when you read the name of who it’s from. “yeah, i thought you said your parents were dead, so who is this?” she waves the envelope in your face before you grab it from her hands.

bobby groans from the bed and walks to where you and his sister were standing, “can you not mind your business? just because we have our relationship with our parents doesn’t mean everyone else does.” he’s grabbing her by the shoulders and pushing her out of the room.

“i’m just saying! do we really want a liar in our family?” she pouts, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “i don’t.”

“you are the liar in our family,” bobby scoffs out. “i lie, you lie, our brother lies, mom and dad lie all the time. get over it and get out.” he shuts the door in her face. he takes a second before looking at you, you’re still holding the envelope, a tear in your eye. “are you okay?” he whispers to you.

you look up at him and nod your head. your hands shake as you open the envelope, kat next to you as she rubs your back. you hadn’t spoken to your dad in years, not since you turned 18. you’re 22 now and about to be married. you take in a sharp breath when you see what the mail is. in bold, red letters, one question is on there: “is he the one?” the red is bloody and awful, it makes you nauseous. you turn the paper over and realize that it’s an invitation to your wedding, one you never sent. one you would never have sent.

bobby sighs, his throat bobbing as we swallows. “look, i know how you feel about your dad,” he watches as your gaze hardens and you start to shake your head. “try to understand why i did this, please. i had my whole family coming, you had kat, no offense kat.” she put her hands up defensively when bobby said her name. “and i know you wish your mom could be here, but your dad can! i spoke with him on the phone-”

“you what?!” you and kat interrupted his ramble.

he closes his eyes and takes in a deep breath. “i know, i shouldn’t have done that behind your back.”

“you really shouldn’t have! my dad is none of your business, he wasn’t your business when we met and he isn’t your business now! that is a man who has done irreparable damage to my life, and you wanted to invite him to our wedding?” you take a step back from bobby, holding the invitation up and turning it for him to read the red words. “this is the man you wanted front row while we said our vows?”

he’s staring at the invitation, the words written in red. “why is he asking if i’m the one?” you barely hear bobby whisper. “am i?”

“are you?” you whisper back. “my soulmate wouldn’t have done this behind my back.” suddenly, you’re thrown back into the bar, your memory of it. you remember the old man who asked you if bobby was the one, you think back to the horrible sight at the first rest stop. you’d been getting red flag warnings from every angle to not marry bobby, they’re making themselves apparent now.

“i need a drink,” you look at kat. “we’ll be back, but i need a fucking drink.” bobby just looks at you, devastated. he nods and you grab kat’s hand to leave. “we’ll be back, and then we can talk.” you take the keys to the car and walk outside. it’s starting to cool down, the dark clouds approaching closer and closer as the days go by. a storm, probably on your wedding day, another beautiful sign to pump the brakes.

before you realize it, you’re driving back to the bar with the strange janitor. “hey, i thought you wanted a drink? we just passed the bar?” kat is pointing out of the window.

“not that bar,” you say. a stray tear falls down your cheek, kat just sighs and grabs your lighter and a joint before lighting up. she offers it to you and you take it, inhaling deeply. “i need to figure something out. the bar, the janitor. he asked me the same thing that my dad did on the invitation, i have to know what’s going on.”

kat just nods, rubbing your shoulder. “we’ll figure it out, what’s the worst that could happen? worst case scenario: you end the engagement and stop the wedding? we can always abandon him and live on a farm, just you and me?” you laugh at her words, you’re glad to have your best friend with you. “seriously, don’t worry too much. it’s not like the world is going to end if you marry bobby.”

oh how wrong she was about that.

[lanadelrae-wrld]

can we talk about how yummy delicious finn bennett is though like 😍

[lanadelrae-wrld]

am i shamelessly reusing the same photos… YES DA FAWK

[lanadelrae-wrld]

get into the groove boy you’ve got to prove your love to meeeee

[lanadelrae-wrld]

keeping up the “valarr is a brat” theme with my valarr fic i’m working on 😇😇😇😇😇😇😇😇😇