I want him to be the father of my kids
I'm obsessed
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@midnight036
I want him to be the father of my kids
I'm obsessed
oh my goshhh! i loved the follow up to 7 steps !! 🥹 keep them coming please!🙏 maybe something about the birth, or them being new parents? 🫶
Aerion 'Brightflame' Targaryen x Reader
Summary: A heated argument with him sends you into labor.
Word count: 3k
Took quiet some time but this is for you pookie. You can read this as a continuation of this request or not.
King's Landing smelled exactly as you remembered, salt from Blackwater Bay, smoke from a thousand hearths, fish, sewage, damp stone, and too many people packed too closely together. But beneath it all lingered the sweetness of summer flowers climbing through the terraced gardens, stubbornly blooming above the city's filth as though none of it concerned them.
You had forgotten how overwhelming it was or perhaps distance had simply polished the memory.
The smell hit you the moment the wheelhouse passed through the gates of the Red Keep. Instinctively, you pressed the back of your hand briefly to your nose before deciding that was an undignified gesture for a princess and lowering it again.
Across from you, Aerion glanced up from the letter in his hands. He had been reading the same reports for most of the journey. You suspected this particular letter was on its fourth inspection.
“We can return,” he said, he had been reading and re-reading reports for the last three hours of the journey, as though the words might rearrange themselves into better news if he gave them enough attention.
“We cannot,” you said pleasantly. “You know that.” You shifted against the cushioned seat, or tried to, at nine months along you had, made peace with the fact that your body was no longer entirely your own. The child moved as it liked and your ankles complained regularly. Still, you managed.
The Red Keep rose around you as the wheelhouse came to a stop, and Aerion was already reaching for your arm when the door opened, his hand settled at your elbow, steady and firm.
The days that followed passed in a blur.
Aerion had barely set down his travel cloak before the summons came, Maekar, requesting his presence at the first of what would be many meetings, briefings, discussions that bled from afternoon into evening into the following morning. The rebellion was not yet a rebellion, it was still a rumour with increasingly credible sources, movements of men in the Riverlands, conversations that should not have been had, allegiances tested quietly at the edges, and Maekar intended to deal with the problem before it became a war.
Aerion understood this. He had said so himself, in the brief intervals when he was with you. He understood the urgency; he agreed with his father's decision to act before the situation kept growing.
What he did not seem to understand was how exhausted he looked. You saw it in the mornings first, the dark circles beneath his eyes that had been there when you arrived and deepened with each passing day, staining the skin beneath them to the colour of a bruise. He slept perhaps three hours, perhaps less, and you knew because you felt the absence of him in the bed before you fully woke. By the time you were awake he was already at his writing desk, surrounded by maps and reports, a candle burned to almost nothing beside him.
You saw it in his movements. He was precise by nature, controlled, deliberate, each gesture measured, but under enough exhaustion that precision began to fray. Small things, the way he set down a goblet slightly harder than necessary, the slight tightening around his eyes when someone spoke to him at a volume, he found unnecessary.
His temper had always been a live thing. He had worked, with considerable effort and at considerable cost, to shorten its leash. But a leash under pressure tends to loosen.
You said nothing yet. You watched, and you waited.
You were not present for the council meeting that day. You heard about it afterward, in pieces, from a maid who had it from a steward who had stood outside the doors.
The meeting had begun well, by all accounts.
King Maekar had laid out the intelligence gathered so far, the scale of the rumoured movement, the families implicated, the question of where the rebellion might grow if left unchecked. Several of the older knights had offered assessments, cautious and conservative in the way men became when they had survived enough wars to be suspicious of certainty.
Then Aerion had presented his strategy.
He had prepared thoroughly, you knew this because you had watched him prepare, had seen the maps spread across the table in your chambers at all hours, had woken in the night to find him still working by candlelight, his silver hair loose around his face, his finger tracing routes through the Riverlands with intensity. He had done the work; there was no question of that.
His proposal was bold, decisive, characteristically Aerion. Strike early and disrupt supply routes, force the conspirators into the open before they could unite. But then Ser Duncan the Tall had spoken.
Not loudly, not with any evident desire to undermine, simply in his direct, honest manner. He had identified the flaw. The strategy assumed the rebellion's consolidation point was where intelligence suggested. But intelligence on the ground, Duncan had noted, indicated two separate and apparently uncoordinated movements. Aerion's plan addressed one, but it left the other entirely free to act while attention was directed elsewhere. Worse, it might inadvertently drive the two movements together, forging unity where there had previously been only parallel discontent.
He had offered an alternative, less elegant, but more methodical, requiring patience and a longer timeline. The room had fallen silent, Maekar had considered it and the others followed.
The storm had been building since midday.
You'd watched it from the windows of your chambers as dark clouds crept across the horizon, swallowing the sunlight piece by piece. By the time evening fell there was nothing left of the sky at all, only a low, churning dark pressed against the towers of the Red Keep, and the rain had begun in earnest, wind rattled the shutters hard enough to make them shudder in their frames, and cold drafts slipped beneath the doors.
You had tried to read, after the third time rereading the same page, you gave up.
Nine months pregnant to the day, you had spent the last week adjusting to a new kind of discomfort. The weight of the child seemed lower now, settled deep in your body. Pressure came and went in strange waves, leaving an ache behind that never fully disappeared. The maester assured you it was normal; your body was preparing itself.
That knowledge should have been reassuring, instead, it made everything feel worse. You shifted carefully in your chair and rested a hand on the curve of your stomach. The child moved beneath your palm, slow and heavy.
Aerion had returned from the council chambers in the early evening; he barely moved in over an hour. The flames cast shifting light across his face, catching in his silver hair and painting sharp shadows beneath his cheekbones. He looked carved from stone, one elbow rested against the arm of the chair, fingers curled loosely against his jaw. His eyes remained fixed on the fire.
These days you could read him almost as easily as weather, he had been worse than he had been in a long time. Plans for the rebellion had reached a critical stage. Meetings stretched late into the night. Reports arrived faster than anyone could answer them. Prince Maekar was making decisions Aerion disagreed with, and disagreement sat poorly with him even under ideal circumstances.
You saw it in the tightness around his eyes. In the clipped replies he gave servants who happened to arrive at the wrong moment. In the way his shoulders never seemed to fully relax anymore, as if he expected another problem to appear the instant he looked away.
The problem was that the discipline was running out, you had watched it running out, and had been patient, had given him space, and you had tried in small ways to be steady around him, tried to become one thing in his life that required nothing from him.
“My love,” you said quietly. “What's wrong?”
His gaze stayed on the fire, hard, distant, the flames reflecting in his violet eyes until they seemed almost unreal. You waited and he still said nothing.
“Aerion.”
A thunder cracked, a long, rolling sound that shook the window in its frame, and for the briefest moment, something shifted in his expression, you thought he might answer, a muscle jumped near his temple and he exhaled through his nose.
“Nothing,” he said.
You adjusted yourself in the chair, slow and careful. The movement sent another dull ache through your lower back. One hand settled automatically over your stomach where the pressure had been building all evening. “Don't push me away,” you said. “Talk to me.”
“I said-.”
“I heard what you said.”
Something flashed in his face, the last of the control giving.
“Nothing!”
The word came out sharp and loud and far harsher than anything he had directed at you in a very long time; the rain battered the windows.
You were quiet for a moment.
“I know you're stressed-.”
“You know nothing about stress.” His voice had dropped again, low and venomous. “What would you know about it? You sit here all day, you read and you wait for me to come back and fuck you like a slut every night.”
For a moment neither of you spoke, you looked at him and he was staring at the fire again, jaw tight, breathing fast, and you could see, that he knew. The moment the words had left his mouth, some part of him already knew, the ugly implication behind them.
“You can be an asshole all you want,” you said at last, your voice steady despite the hurt pressing against your ribs. “But I know you don't actually think that about me.”
“Don't act like you know me.” His voice was low, cracking at the edges, just slightly, a fault line beneath the venom. “You don't know what I'm dealing with.”
“Aerion, I'm your wife-.”
“You're carrying my child.” He turned from the fire at last, and his eyes met yours, the fury was still there, so was exhaustion, and underneath both, buried deep enough that most people would have missed it entirely, was fear, raw and desperate. “That doesn't mean I owe you sweetness every second.”
You pushed yourself to your feet.
It was slow, he shifts forward pulled at your lower back, and the familiar ache settled across your hips as you straightened. Still, you rose, because you refused to sit there and let him speak to you like that, you were his wife. You had given him more of yourself than he could possibly understand, and you would not simply absorb his anger because he happened to be carrying too much of his own.
“Aerion.”
You reached for his arm, slowly.
He jerked away, a reflex, already drowning in his own thoughts and he couldn't bear being touched in that moment. He moved his arm and by mistake, a miscalculation, his hand pushed you away.
It didn’t require much force and balance failed you. Your foot slipped on the damp stone. You felt the world tilt, the floor disappearing beneath you. You fell, hard enough on your side to drive the breath from your lungs, enough to send a sharp, frightened sound from your throat before you could stop it, enough to leave you sprawled on the stone floor, one hand pressing flat against stone while the other flew immediately to your stomach.
Then you felt it, the warmth between your thighs, a sudden rush between your thighs, your heart stopped and you lowly looked down, realization hitting you all at once.
You raised your head and Aerion was already staring at you.
He had seen your face, the wide-eyed terror that you could not control, the way your other hand pressed against your belly with a groan that wasn't only pain. You watched the comprehension move through his face. Watched the anger disappear so completely it was as though it had never existed, replaced by something you had never seen on him in all the time you had known him.
Pure horror.
He dropped to his knees beside you so quickly the movement was almost clumsy. His hands hovered helplessly over you, unable to decide where to touch, terrified of making anything worse. His voice when he found it had nothing of the earlier cruelty left in it, was cracked and desperate.
He said your name, coming out in pieces. He said it again, louder, and again.
You felt the world go grey at the edges.
“No.” His voice broke. “No. No, stay with me-.”
He slipped one arm under your shoulders, the other against your back, taking you to the bed with tenderness. He was shaking, you could feel it in his hands, a fine tremor running through the same hands that had wielded swords, reduced to shaking by this one thing, this one moment, this thing he had done without meaning to.
“Guards!”
The shout cracked through the room and through the door and into the corridor beyond, not a command but a plea. The door burst open, weapons were half-drawn before the guards understood what they were seeing. He didn’t even look at them.
“Get the maester.” His voice had gone frighteningly quiet. “Now.”
The room exploded into motion. Voices, footsteps, the fire being stoked higher so that the room blazed with sudden light, linens appearing from somewhere, the sound of running in the corridor beyond. Aerion's hand found yours, cold fingers intertwined with colder ones, he held on tightly and his other hand settled over the curve of your belly. Then he leaned forward until his forehead rested against your temple, words coming out in a whisper, just for you.
“I'm sorry.” His voice fractured on the word. “I'm so sorry.” He said it again, and again. “Forgive me,” he whispered. “Please forgive me.” The same desperate prayer, each syllable trembling and broken.
You came back to yourself in fragments. A contraction rolled through you with terrifying force, dragging you upward from darkness and slamming you back into your body. Your breath came back first, sharp and gasping, and then your eyes, unfocused on the ceiling and the blazing light above you, then the awareness of where you were, what was happening, the sound of the maester's voice somewhere at the edge of your hearing giving orders.
And through all of it Aerion's hand, still holding yours, your fingers tightened around his.
Another contraction hit, harder than the first, and your back arched and your fingers dug into his hand with a force you had not known you possessed, and a moan escaped that you couldn't contain. You heard the maester's voice cutting through the chaos, clear and firm.
Aerion caught your hand to his lips, a kiss against your knuckles, soft, and then another on the back of your palm, his breath warm and unsteady there, lingering like a prayer he hadn't finished saying, his forehead dipped toward your hand.
“It's okay,” you whispered.
His head lifted immediately, and his eyes found yours, the disbelief in his face almost hurt to see. You were pale and soaked in sweat, in more pain than you had known existed before tonight, and somehow you were the one comforting him.
“It's not your fault,” The words wavered but held.
His Adam’s apple bobbed. “It is,” he said, barely above a breath.
“We can argue about that later.” A weak smile touched your lips. “After.”
Something moved through his expression, something he could not contain and did not try to, for once. He turned his face away for a moment and pressed your hand against his cheek, and you felt him breathe, just breathe, the shaking in his hands had not entirely stopped.
“Push, my lady.” The maester's voice cut through everything. “Now.”
You obeyed.
The sound that came out of you was nothing you recognized as your own voice. It came from somewhere animal and desperate, and your body tensed into it like a bow being drawn past its limits, Aerion stayed beside you, steady as stone, allowing you to crush his hand if you needed to.
“Again! Push!”
You screamed and you pushed harder than the first time.
And then, a cry, small, thin, breaking through the storm and the pain and the chaos of the room like a needle through cloth.
The maester lifted the child, small and red-faced and furious, wailing his outrage at existence. Through your exhaustion you caught sight of silver hair gleaming in the candlelight, that was entirely, unmistakably Aerion’s.
Then the maester's expression changed, only slightly.
“Another.” The room froze. “A second babe my lord, and tangled.”
Aerion's hand went cold around yours; you looked at him, is attention snapped toward the master then toward you. The contractions returning, faster now, harder, your body pressing on before you had been given a moment to simply breathe.
“I can't,” you cried, you had given everything you had, there was nothing left in you to give. “I can't do it-.”
“You can.” The maester's voice, firm but not unkind. He wouldn’t dare to do so in the presence of the brightflame prince.
Aerion bent close, his mouth brushed your ear.
“You can do this.” His voice was rough at the edges, still cracking. “My princess. You are the strongest person in this room. You are the strongest person I have ever met-.” His hand tightened around yours. “You can do this. Do you hear me? You can.”
Somewhere inside yourself, you found one final reserve you didn't know where it had been hiding, didn't know how it still existed.
You pushed, your back lifted from the bed, and Aerion's arm went behind you, an anchor, solid and unwavering, bracing you against the force of yourself.
And then silence, the maester working with swift, silent efficiency, and the room holding its breath around him, and no sound from where the second child should have been. No cry came, no sound. The maester's hands moved, one firm touch, once, twice. He leaned down and breathed into its tiny lungs.
Then, a faint hiccup, so small you almost imagined it. One more breath from the master, one more firm touch against it, and then a cry.
Thin and wavering and furious and entirely, completely, overwhelmingly alive. Your eyes filled instantly, tears spilled before you could stop them. Aerion exhaled hard, pressing a hand over his eyes, a single, private instant, and then it dropped. He looked at the two small faces being cleaned and wrapped in the firelight.
The midwife placed one child carefully in his arms and he looked down. Small, red-faced, silver-haired, tiny fists already protesting the world with remarkable determination. And suddenly every wall he had ever built disappeared, there was nothing left of the prince, there was only a father holding his son.
He leaned toward you, slowly, the child cradled against his chest, and pressed his lips to your forehead, careful and gentle, filled with something too large for words.
You looked at the child in your own arms, your bundle of small, perfect outrage, and felt the child in his being shifted gently closer, until two very small faces were inches apart. Both silver-haired, both absolutely, terrifyingly, entirely real.
“Twins,” you whispered, your voice came out hoarse and ruined but you did not care at all.
Aerion looked at you, his eyes still glassy. “Twins," he said.
“They're perfect,” you said.
He looked down at the small face in his arms.
Then, quietly. “Yes,” he said. “They are.” His thumb brushed the baby's cheek.
Neither of you spoke for a while, your head rested against his shoulder, his arm lay around you. The child in your arms had finally settled, his tiny face relaxed into a peaceful expression, you brushed your thumb over his cheek, his skin was impossibly soft, untouched by wind or sun or the roughness of the world.
You could have stayed like that forever.
“How are we going to call them?” you asked, your voice came out softer than intended, almost swallowed by the crackling fire. The question felt delicate somehow, as though speaking too loudly might break whatever fragile thing had settled over the room.
Aerion was quiet for a moment.
“I have been thinking about it for some time,” he said at last. “I was hoping for your approval.”
You lifted your head enough to look at him and his eyes were on the child in his arms, the first-born.
“Tell me.” you said.
He was quiet for another moment.
“Baelor,” he said. “And Maekar.” He was still watching the child in his arms, and the line of his mouth lifted, too sad to be a full smile. “It is my own immaturity that killed my uncle,” he said with and even voice. “Not my father. It was only my fault.”
He turned slightly, and something in his face stopped the protest before it reached your lips.
“I do not need reassurance,” he said. “Nothing is going to change my mind about that.”
You closed your mouth and he looked back at the child.
“But I thought…” His fingers adjusted the blanket around the baby with surprising care. “Perhaps I could give them another chance. In this new life.” He paused. “To be brothers again.”
The tears came before you could stop them and he turned to look at you then. Whatever reaction he had expected, it clearly was not this, his hand rose, he brushed a tear from your cheek with his thumb, slow and careful.
“Why are you crying, my love?” he asked with genuine confusion.
“Because what you're doing is utterly sweet, Aerion.” Your voice trembled despite yourself. “I'm proud of you.”
For a moment he simply looked at you.
“And of course you have my approval,” you added.
A quiet breath escaped him, a soft laugh, it lingered somewhere close to happiness in his chest. He looked down at the child in his arms, Baelor II. Aerion lowered his head and pressed a kiss to the child's forehead, the touch so light it barely disturbed him.
The child in your own arms stirred, a small, restless shifting, one tiny fist uncurling and recurling against your nightgown, Maekar II. The one who had frightened everyone, the one who had arrived second and nearly not at all, and who seemed, in the brief time you had known him, to have inherited his father's particular talent for making an entrance.
A second chance to be brothers again, in a new life.
i love him
oh to be parents with him at a controversially young age
Please please please please more Aerion I am STILL thinking about 7 steps to tame a beast like 2 weeks later, it was SO good
Aerion 'Brightflame' Targaryen x Reader
Summary: Aerion pleases his pregnant wife.
Word count: 3k
a/n: I’m putting my Project Hail Mary fic on pause to write this for you because it’s the first request I’ve ever received, so I’m really excited!!!!! Thank you so much. You can read this as a continuation of Seven Steps to Tame a Beast or not.
The candle on the bedside table had burned low enough that its flame was little more than a trembling golden thread, and you had meant to replace it earlier and never did. You had been reading for the better part of an hour, or attempting to, the words kept slipping away from you, not because the book was dull, but because the night was so uncommonly still, and the weight of him against your lap made concentration a thing easily surrendered.
Aerion lay stretched on his back, his head settled in the cradle of your thighs, one arm folded across his chest and the other resting loose at his side. He had not spoken in some time, you were not certain if he was asleep or simply choosing silence, which was never easy to tell with him. But tonight the line of his shoulders was soft, and the slight furrow he often kept between his brows had smoothed away, and you thought, watching him from the corner of your eye, that he was simply resting.
You reached the bottom of a page and did not turn it.
The fire in the hearth across the room had settled into a slow, amber pulse, throwing long shadows up the stone walls and painting everything in shades of honey and rust. The blankets were pulled up around your waist, thick wool and linen, warm as sleep itself. Your back ached in the low, persistent way it had for the past months, a dull complaint your body had taken to making at night, when there was nothing to distract from it, a constant dull reminder that didn’t quite go away anymore. You adjusted slightly against the cushions behind you and let it be.
Your free hand had found its way into his hair without you thinking about it, it had become habitual, almost absentminded now. His hair was longer than it had been when you met him. He wore it brushed back from his face now, which suited him far better than he would ever voluntarily admit. Silver, almost white in the candlelight, catching every flicker of it like threads of metal. It was softer than it had any right to be.
That had surprised you, once. You could not have said precisely why, perhaps because everything else about him was hard-edged, sharp, deliberate, but his hair lay between your fingers like water.
You combed through it slowly, once, then again, and he did not move, and the candle wavered, and you thought about nothing much at all. You liked it this way, long enough that you could see his face properly when he wore it back, the high structure of his cheekbones, the clean angle of his jaw, and you liked that there was now enough of it to gather in your hand when you chose to.
You turned the page at last, though you had not retained a word of the one before it, and continued the slow, rhythmic movement of your fingers through his hair.
The baby shifted.
Not a kick, just a slow pressure beneath your ribs, heavy and rolling, like something turning in too small a space. You paused, book pressed briefly to your chest, breathing through it until it passed. It wasn’t new anymore, but it still caught you sometimes, the strange and constant awareness that you were carrying something, that your body had become a house for another life entirely.
The pressure eased, so you opened your book again.
“You're a bad influence.” His voice came quietly from your lap, not quite sleepy but low and unguarded in a way he rarely permitted himself during daylight hours.
“Am I,” you said, not a question.
“You make me feel weak.”
You paused in your reading then, though you did not set the book down immediately. The words reached you with a weight he had not put in them deliberately, or perhaps he had, a half-dressed admission, hoping not to be examined too closely. There was no edge in it, no challenge, no invitation to banter, it was simply tired, honest.
You set the book aside.
Your hand moved from his hair to his cheek, and you let it rest there, your palm warm against his face, your thumb settling near the corner of his eye. He did not pull away, he did not move at all, except that something in him went very slightly quieter.
“You're allowed to put the walls down,” you said, your voice was even, unhurried. “With me, specifically.”
He said nothing, but he was listening.
“What you’re feeling is not weakness” You let your thumb trace the line of his cheekbone, light as you could manage. “It’s what happens when you stop bracing for impact. That’s all. You’re allowed to rest.”
A long moment passed.
“I'm not accustomed to it,” he said at last.
“I know.” You did; you had known it for a long time. “I'm not going to hurt you,” you continued. “You know that, and if some part of you is still uncertain of it, it'll work itself out eventually.” A pause. “I have patience.”
Something shifted at the corner of his mouth, not quite a smile, but almost.
“An endless quantity of patience,” he said.
“Someone has to have it.”
He made a low sound in his chest that might have been agreement, and you retrieved your hand from his cheek, and his lilac eyes followed it briefly before he settled again, staring up at the shadows moving across the ceiling while your fingers moved through his silver strands.
A while later, he shifted, carefully this time, mindful of your position. He shifted from his back onto his side, sliding his head on your lap and orienting himself toward you, facing your belly. Your nightgown stretched over the swell of it, the pale linen thin enough in the candlelight to show the round, heavy shape beneath.
Aerion's hand spread over the fabric.
His palm was large, it covered a significant portion of what little of your middle remained unoccupied by child, and he pressed very gently, like he was making sure it was real. Something in his expression had changed with the movement, had shed whatever remnant of guardedness he'd been keeping in place, and what was left was quieter and stranger and not something you had many words for. Tenderness, perhaps, if that word could be made to fit a man who still wore pride like a second skin.
He leaned forward and pressed his lips to your stomach. A single, deliberate point of warmth through the linen, held a moment longer than a passing gesture, and then released. His cheek came to rest against the swell of you afterward, his eyes closing, and his hand remained where it was, fingers spread.
You looked down at him and said nothing, and then the baby kicked.
A solid, sharp movement, unmistakable, you felt it, and his eyes opened immediately, and his hand tensed against you before going still again, and something crossed his face, quick and unreadable, before settling into something softer.
You pressed your own hand to your belly, just above his. The baby moved again, slower this time, a long rolling shift, as though it were simply turning over in its sleep.
“It's been restless lately,” you said, you couldn't quite keep the smile from the edge of your voice. “I feel it's going to have its father's temper. Gods give me patience.”
He lifted his head from your stomach. He looked at you for a moment, that violet gaze, which you had spent a considerable portion of your time to admire, had something warm in his expression that he would not have shown anyone else.
“He will be strong-willed,” he said with amusement on his voice. “But he'll respect you. I won't let him test you like I do.”
You raised an eyebrow. “He,” you repeated.
Aerion settled his cheek back against the curve of your belly.
“Yes,” he said simply. “I can feel it.”
You considered that for a moment and smiled. You could not help it, a small, private thing, and you looked down at him and found he was watching you from his position against your stomach, and the line of his mouth had curved too.
A shared thing, just between the two of you. Your hand returned to where it belonged, working slowly through the silver of his hair.
“Are you excited?” you asked.
The question fell into the silence without urgency and you waited.
“I am,” he admitted quietly. “More than I expected.”
His hand was still against your belly, and the baby had gone still again, settled back into whatever position it had found for itself.
You kept your fingers in his hair, the silver of it caught what light remained and held it, and the movement was slow, repetitive, the same gentle drag of fingertips from temple to crown and back again. He had gone very still under your hands. His attention had shifted somewhere you couldn’t see, but you felt it anyway, pressed close to your side, listening to the small movements beneath
You did not notice him move at first, slowly enough that the shift of his weight barely disturbed the blankets, barely broke the rhythm of your hand in his hair. But then his head was no longer resting against your lap, and the silver of his hair slipped through your fingers and was gone, and you looked down to find him lifting himself up in front of you.
You watched him as he sat up fully, and for a moment he simply looked at you, that violet gaze moving over your face with attention. His hand, which had rested against your belly, slid upward, slowly, until his palm found the curve of your cheek. His thumb brushed just under your eye, light enough that you almost thought you might have imagined it. He drew you toward him gently, leaned in, and kissed you.
Softly, carefully, the kind of softness that still surprised you sometimes, even after everything. A man built of restraint and sharp edges, and yet here he was, taking his time with you like there was nothing else worth rushing toward. The tenderness was not separate from the desire; they existed in the same breath, the same pressure of his mouth against yours, inseparable and quiet.
When he pulled back, it was only by an inch.
His breath fanned warm across your lips. His eyes stayed closed, a second longer than necessary, maybe two, and you watched his face in that brief, unguarded moment, the slight parting of his lips. Then his eyes opened, the violet of them had gone soft, dark and soft and searching, moving over your face like he was looking for confirmation of something he already knew but needed to find in you regardless, checking. Do you feel it too, the love.
You always had.
His breath caught on the way out. Not dramatic, just uneven enough to notice. Like something in him had slipped its hold and didn’t know how to gather itself again. You did not look away from him. His arms rosed, one came around your shoulders, careful and certain, drawing you toward him, the other slid beneath your back, gently, supporting, and he pulled you in. The embrace tightened slowly around you, and you let yourself be gathered into it, your head finding the place where his shoulder met his neck, the warmth of him immediate and solid.
It was the tightest he had ever held you. His face turned into the curve of your neck, right where your pulse moved strongest, and stayed there. His arms did not loosen, then you felt the slight press of his face against your skin, and the even warmer press of his lips, once, against your shoulder, then again, lower, along the line of your collarbone. There was something almost prayer-like in the rhythm of it, though you doubted he would ever think to describe it that way.
Your hand found the back of his head, your fingers threaded into his silver hair, gently, keeping him close, not directing, simply present, and you felt the slight tension in him ease under your hand.
“Aerion,” you said very quietly and his arms tightened a fraction in response.
Then his hand drifts to your breast. The touch is careful through the thin fabric of your nightgown, more tender than possessive. His palm cups you gently, thumb brushing slow circles over the sensitive peak beneath the cloth. There is desire there, unmistakably, warm and steady beneath everything else, but it is tangled tightly with affection, with devotion.
His mouth follows the movement, he presses a lingering kiss over the fabric covering your breast, warm and slow, and then another beside it. His lips remain there a moment longer each time, as though he cannot quite stop himself from savouring you.
His kisses grow warmer, heavier with feeling, less cautious now. The fabric between you no longer feels like a barrier at all, only another thing he must move through to reach you. Meanwhile his free hand slips lower, slowly. His palm glides up your inner thigh beneath the nightgown in feather-light strokes that make your breath catch despite their gentleness. He does not rush, does not demand, every touch feels intentional, exploratory.
He breaks the kiss only to breathe, to look at you. Without speaking, he guides you back against the mattress. One arm supports your weight the entire way down, lowering you carefully onto the bed as though even now he fears handling you too roughly. Candlelight spills across your skin and softens every curve of you beneath the linen. For a moment he simply hovers above you, simply looking, taking you in with quiet awe that would embarrass him if you ever named it aloud. Then he bends his head and begins kissing his way downward, from your collarbone, across the swell of each breast, over the softness of your stomach. He pauses there, right above the child growing beneath your skin. His hand spreads gently over the curve of you, and for one long moment his expression shifts into something almost unbearably tender before he presses another slow kiss there too.
Only then does he continue lower, the heat between your thighs draws him with unmistakable intent now, but even here he remains unhurried. Controlled only by the fact that he wants to savour every part of this. When he finally reaches the place where your body aches hottest for him, he stops and looks up at you through the dim gold light.
“I will take my time with you tonight,” he says softly, voice roughened low with feeling. “You have earned it.”
The softness of your hair brushes against his mouth, wild curls catching against his lips as he lowers himself between your thighs. He does not hesitate, and he breathes you in slowly, deeply. His nose drifts through the curls in a slow, absent motion, lingering there for a moment before his lips follow.
The first kiss is careful and warm. His mouth presses against you through the heat and softness, patient enough to make your breath catch. Then his lips part slightly, and the next kiss lands deeper, more deliberate. You feel the slow drag of his tongue, the gentle pull of his mouth where sensitivity gathers sharpest, and the quiet sound he makes against you sends a pulse through your stomach. He takes his time, always that careful restraint with you now, as though he has learned that tenderness can be every bit as consuming as hunger.
His teeth catch softly for the briefest moment before soothing over the sting with another slow kiss, and then you feel his fingers at your thigh. One slides inside you with aching patience, his breath hitching almost imperceptibly as he feels how warm and wet you already are for him. A second follows soon after, stretching you slowly, and the low sound that leaves him this time is rougher. His free hand braces beside your hip against the mattress, steadying himself there. Not holding you down, but holding himself together.
He watches you while he moves his fingers inside you. Every small reaction draws his attention, the slight parting of your lips, the uneven pull of your breathing, the way your body softens for him by degrees. His fingers move slowly at first, easing in and out with measured strokes, learning the rhythm of your body without forcing it, smooth motions, shallow at the start, teasing more than demanding.
His thumb brushes lightly over the place that makes your hips twitch. You moan softly, and something tightens in his jaw.
Then his head lowers again.
His tongue replaces his thumb with a slow flick that makes your breath stutter outright, and he keeps working you open with his fingers while his mouth moves over you with growing focus. He licks slow circles around the sensitive bud of your core, building heat steadily, his tongue and fingers moving together in maddening rhythm. The tension in your stomach begins to coil tighter, he feels it. You know he does from the way his pace changes. His fingers curl deeper now, more certain, stroking against that place inside you that makes your thighs tremble around him. His tongue grows less restrained, restless against you, and you gasp sharply, one hand tangling into his silver hair without thinking.
You look down at him, as though he felt your gaze the instant it settled on him, his eyes lift to yours.
The sight of him nearly undoes you all over. His pupils are blown wide in the dim candlelight, violet nearly swallowed by black. Strands of silver hair have fallen loose across his face from where you dragged your fingers through it, soft against his flushed cheeks. His lips are pressed to you with reverent concentration, mouth shining with the evidence of your pleasure, and there is something almost devastating in the way he looks at you from between your thighs.
The tightness in your lower belly snaps suddenly, hard enough to steal the breath from your lungs. Your whole-body tenses beneath him as pleasure breaks through you in waves, your cry soft and broken as your fingers tighten in his hair. Aerion does not pull away. If anything, he holds you closer, his mouth deepening against you as he works you through every shuddering pulse of release. His tongue keeps moving gently even as your body trembles and tightens around his fingers, coaxing every last wave from you with unbearable patience.
Only when the trembling finally begins to ease does he slow, one last soft lick, then another, gentler still, only then does he lift his head.
His cheeks are flushed dark with heat. His lips are swollen and wet, shining in the candlelight as his tongue drags slowly across them, savouring you without a trace of shame. Your hand slips from his hair to his cheek, fingers brushing warmly over flushed skin, and his eyes close briefly at the touch.
Then you notice the dark stain beneath the laces of his trousers.
He follows your gaze for half a second before looking back at you with a lopsided smile, utterly unconcerned, as though bringing you apart beneath his mouth had been pleasure enough to undo him completely.
Slowly, he rises over you again and kisses you once more, softly this time, sweet enough to ache.
His forehead rests briefly against yours before he murmurs, low and rough with exhaustion and affection alike.
“Rest, my wife.”
Yes, Doctor
Jack Abbot x reader
Summary: You find your attending on an audiobook app.
Word count: 7k
a/n: Read on AO3 here
The key sticks, like it always does. You jiggle it left, then right, applying pressure at the exact angle your hand remembers on its own, a muscle memory born of too many mornings exactly like this one. It takes a second, then the lock gives with that familiar little click. You push the door open with your shoulder and step inside. The smell hits you first, yesterday's coffee, faintly sour, and beneath it something older, something baked into the place itself. Dust, age, the particular smell of a space that doesn't get enough light.
You close the door behind you and just stand there for a moment, back against the wood, letting your eyes adjust.
The apartment is small in a way that’s hard to dress up when you describe it. Not cozy-small, not charming-small. A studio so narrow that you can touch both walls if you stretch your arms out far enough, and you've done it, once, when you first moved in, half-laughing at yourself. The bed is pushed against the far wall, frame slightly crooked because the floor isn't level, something you confirmed with a marble and too much free time during your first week here. Above it, a window the size of a car door lets in a pale, watery rectangle of midmorning light that moves across the blanket as the day goes on. That’s your clock.
The kitchenette runs along one wall, two burners, a mini fridge that hums a little too loud in the silence, a row of mismatched mugs hanging from hooks you installed yourself because there wasn't enough cabinet space. You found most of them at the thrift store two blocks over, a yellow one with a chipped handle, a navy blue one someone gave away with World's Okayest Dad printed on the side in peeling letters, a plain white one you use every single morning because it's the biggest. The utensil crock next to the stove holds a spatula, a wooden spoon, a whisk you've used exactly once, and two forks more than you need, because sets only come in fours.
The walls used to be cream once. Now they're the colour of old newspaper in the corners, paint peeling near the baseboard in long strips. You taped a print above the bed in the first month, a Hopper painting, the one with the woman reading by the window, light falling across her shoulders. It's slightly crooked and you've never fixed it. You also have a small succulent on the windowsill, Marta, you named her in a moment of post-call delirium, and she is thriving in a way that still mildly surprises you. You have a fleece blanket in a dark green that doesn't match anything else but is the softest thing you own. You replaced the showerhead after three weeks because the pressure was awful. Small upgrades, small acts of proof that this place is yours, even temporarily, even if it barely feels like it counts.
The walls are thin.
Right now, through the wall to your left, you can hear your neighbour’s television. A morning talk show, the kind with laughing and clapping at regular intervals, the same beats over and over until you know the rhythm without actually meaning to. Through the ceiling, footsteps, a rolling chair, a dog that barks once at nothing and then goes quiet. The couple two doors down argued two nights ago, voices carrying clean through the plaster at two in the morning while you lay in the dark and stared at the ceiling and tried very hard not to hear every word. You heard every “word” of the reconciliation too.
You drop your bag by the door and peel off your jacket. Your body is the kind of tired that doesn't feel like tiredness anymore, it's moved past that, something that settled into your bones. A heaviness in your joints, a lag in your thinking, a dullness at the backs of your eyes that no amount of blinking seems to clear. You've been awake for just over nineteen hours. You had three coffees in the last eight, the last one at five-thirty in the morning from the machine on the third floor that spits out something aggressively hot, like it’s trying to prove a point. Your hands are still faintly trembling from it.
You should sleep; you know that. Your next shift is in less than twelve hours.
But here's the thing, and it's been the thing for months now, quietly, consistently, you just can't sleep. Not anymore, not the way you used to, the merciful kind that came in residency when exhaustion was so total it simply erased you. Now there is a period between lying down and unconsciousness that stretches out like bad weather, everything event from the day coming back in pieces. The intubation that went smoothly and the one that didn't. The attending's face when you presented a diagnosis. The family in bay four who kept asking you questions you weren't authorized to answer yet, and the look in the mother's eyes, and the way you had to keep your face very still and professional while something inside you was pulling tightly.
Your mind doesn't slow down on command. You've read articles about shift work sleep disorder, hoping that understanding the mechanism will somehow fix it. It didn’t.
You tried reading. You love reading; you used to fall asleep reading all the time, glasses sliding down your nose, book splayed open on your chest. Now the print makes your eyes ache after a shift, and the effort of following a narrative keeps you frustratingly awake. Knitting, same problem, your fingers are slow and clumsy post-call, you drop stitches, you have to recount, and the concentration required made you even more awake. You exercise on your days off, which helps, but not enough after work.
You'd tried other things, in the privacy of your own head, you'd tried masturbating and it had worked, sometimes, that particular exhausted unwinding, warmth spreading slow from the centre outward, the mind finally going soft and loose. But lately you're too drained even for that. Too tired to engage with anything, including yourself.
So. Quinn.
You found the app by accident six weeks ago, half-asleep at ten in the morning, scrolling through a forum thread with a title you'd rather not repeat, looking for sleep tips from other workers in the same spiral. Someone had mentioned it offhand, buried in a long comment, I know it sounds weird but there's this app, it helped more than anything else. You downloaded it because you didn’t have anything else left to try.
The first night, you felt ridiculous. You lay in the dark with your headphones in and felt the acute, almost physical embarrassment of a grown adult, a medical professional, listening to a voice clearly meant to be soothing in a very specific, very intimate way. Not nothing. You almost deleted it after ten minutes.
You didn't, couldn’t.
The voices on Quinn are not like podcasts. They're not like audiobooks, exactly, though some of them read to you. They're something in between, unhurried, low, paced for the frequency of a tired mind. They address you directly, you shouldn't find that comforting. It should feel manipulative, or sickeningly sweet, or cringe. Sometimes it does, but you fall asleep anyway.
You don't tell anyone. That is non-negotiable.
When colleagues ask what you do to decompress, you say reading. When the charge nurse asks how you're holding up, you say fine, you're managing. When the intern who sometimes eats lunch with you mentions she uses a white noise machine, you nod like that's a thing you've also considered, neutrally, like a person who has normal sleep habits. The idea of someone knowing, of someone scrolling past the app on your phone, of someone asking what you're listening to and you having to explain it, makes something in your stomach twist sharply and unpleasantly. You have no rational defence prepared because there is no version of an explanation that doesn't sound like I pay an app to talk to me softly until I fall asleep, which is exactly what it is.
You are aware of the irony that you work in a field that explicitly validates therapy, coping mechanisms, and asking for help, and that you would still rather chew glass than to confess it.
You cross to the bathroom. The pipes shudder when you turn on the shower, a sound you barely notice anymore, like most of the apartment's quirks. The water takes ninety seconds to warm up; you count them out of habit. Then you step in and stand under it, and the heat works on the tension in your shoulders slowly, the way nothing else quite does. You let yourself stay an extra two minutes. You've earned it.
When you step out, the bathroom mirror is fogged over completely, your reflection gone, and there is something quietly pleasant about that, the few seconds before your face reassembles itself out of the clearing mist, when you are temporarily no one.
You dry off. You pull on an old residency T-shirt, soft from years of washing, and the flannel pants you keep folded at the foot of the bed. You sit on the edge of the mattress and the springs give under you with their familiar complaint. Through the wall, the talk show is still going. Through the ceiling, the dog gives one more half-hearted bark and stops.
You reach for the headphones from the nightstand, the good ones, the thick over-ear kind you justified as a medical expense, roughly, to yourself. They cup your ears and the world compresses immediately, the television and the footsteps and the ambient hum of the city reduced to something distant. You settle back against the pillow and pull the green blanket up.
You open Quinn and scroll absentmindedly until one audiobook catches your attention.
Yes, Chef. The title makes you pause for a second before you tap it, more out of curiosity than anything, and plug your phone into the charger on the nightstand. The screen dims and you settle back against the pillow, pulling the green blanket up to your chest as you close your eyes.
The voice starts.
It's deep. Not in that polished, overdone way some voice actors have. This is something more natural, more measured. The kind of control that doesn’t feel put on, more like something practiced over years. Someone used to be listened to. Someone used to mean what they say. The narrator introduces the premise unhurriedly, narrating a scene in a professional kitchen. You're almost asleep by the end of the first episode. Almost.
And then something in your chest snags.
Something keeps catching. You can’t quite pin it down. Just the cadence, maybe. The way he finishes a sentence. The way the authority in his voice sits there, quiet and steady instead of loud. Your brain keeps brushing against it, snagging like a loose thread. You tell yourself it’s nothing, that this is what tired brains do, reach for familiar thing and draw patterns where there were none.
You keep listening as the second episode begins.
The story deepens somewhere in the middle of the chapter. The kitchen scenes fall away and what's left is two people in a closed room, a conversation that has been circling its real topic for minutes, and the narrator's voice drops a notch, all heat and noise and hierarchy, starts to feel smaller, quieter. The tension between the characters is not subtle. It fills the spaces between words, lives in every pause.
And then, low and close, slightly breathless against the inside of your ear.
“Would you like it if I told you what to do?”
Your eyes snap open.
The ceiling of your apartment is pale and featureless in the grey morning light. For a moment you don't move. Your heart is doing something irregular and unnecessary. Then you sit up, headphones pull taut too fast, the blanket falling away, and you're fumbling with your phone before you've consciously decided to, pulling up the credits with clumsy fingers.
Narrator: Anonymous.
You stare at that for longer than it deserves.
Anonymous. Of course, of course it's anonymous now.
You flip the phone face-down on the blanket and press your palms into your eyes. Behind the pressure, your brain finally does what it’s been trying not to do for the last forty minutes. It lines things up. The cadence. The texture. The way certain words land, quiet and precise, never showy. The way Dr. Abbott talks during handoff when everything’s going sideways and he still gets the whole room to listen without raising his voice. The way he says walk me through it to interns, calm enough that it almost sounds like an invitation. Which somehow makes it worse. You could be constructing a resemblance that isn't there, projecting a familiar face onto a voice because your exhausted brain is lazy, reaching for the closest thing it knows.
Dr. Jack Abbot.
The attending physician, head of the department, YOUR direct superior. A man you have stood beside in trauma bays, have received feedback from in hallways, have watched make impossible decisions with a steadiness that you have, privately and never out loud, found yourself returning to.
It’s not like you’ve never noticed him before. He’s charismatic, attractive in a way that’s hard to ignore. Easy to develop a harmless crush on, something distant, manageable. Just another way to get through long night shifts.
This is different.
This is his voice, maybe, possibly, probably, in your ear, saying things that have nothing to do with patient care and work.
You should delete the app. Or at the very minimum close it, set your phone down, and go to sleep the hard way, the way you have before, when your brain wouldn’t cooperate and you didn’t have the luxury of indulging it. You could pick a different narrator and move on like a normal adult who didn’t just have a small, embarrassing crisis over an audiobook at eleven in the morning.
You rewind it and press play again.
The sound comes back immediately, mid-sentence, warm, steady, and your whole body responds to it before your mind has a chance to weigh in. You lie back slowly. Your heart is still moving faster than it should. Every pause in the narration feels different now, every shift in his tone is legible in a new and deeply inconvenient way, you can hear the breath behind the words, and that shouldn't be remarkable, it's an audiobook, narrators breathe.
You stare at the ceiling with your face warm.
How are you supposed to look at him now, you think, with a clarity that is completely unwelcome.
You will see him in fewer than nine hours. You will stand in the same room. You will receive a handoff, discuss cases, possibly disagree about something in the precise, professional way you have learned to navigate disagreement with him, standing your ground like you've spent months perfecting. You will do all of that while knowing how his moans sound like. You have never once let yourself follow a thought about him past the edge of what was professional and manageable and safely abstract, harmless.
You close your eyes; you don't stop listening. You can’t.
The shame blooms from somewhere deep, curling outward until it fills your chest, your throat, your skin. It’s thick, almost suffocating, but there’s no stopping now. Not when you’ve already gone this far. Not when your body has already decided for you.
You can feel it, the way your nipples have tightened beneath the fabric of your shirt, the soft brush of cotton suddenly too much. Your hand moves almost without thinking, fingers pressing, rubbing slow circles through the material as if that might ease the sharp, electric awareness. It doesn’t. It only makes it worse.
His voice lingers, raspy and rough, echoing in your head like it’s carved itself there. Every word drags across your thoughts again.
Your other hand drifts down, hesitant for half a second before settling where you need it most. Warmth meets dampness, your breath catching as your fingers slide through, already slick, already wanting. You move carefully at first, testing, then with more certainty, tracing the rhythm you know by heart. The one that always works.
Your mind won’t slow down. It loops his voice, his tone, the way it dropped, the way it lingered. It threads through every sensation, tightening everything, pulling you deeper into it.
And you don’t stop.
By the time the audiobook slipped into something more intimate, you were already too far gone to pretend it wasn’t affecting you. Heat had settled low in your body, spreading slowly, steadily, until it became impossible to ignore.
A quiet sigh escapes you before you can stop it, followed by the faintest sound in your throat when his voice falters and whimpers. It pulls at you.
The audio leaves very little to the imagination. The rhythm of his thrusts, the closeness, the unmistakable suggestion of bodies moving together somewhere just out of sight. It’s enough. More than enough. Your mind fills in the rest without permission, building the scene piece by piece, too vivid, too real.
When it finally breaks, when everything tightens and then gives way all at once, it leaves you drained in the best and worst way at the same time. The tension that’s been sitting under your skin dissolves, your body going slack as the weight of exhaustion rushes back in. You barely register pulling the blanket closer, barely notice the lingering echo of his voice fading into the background.
Sleep takes you fast, deep, the kind you haven’t managed in days.
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
A sharp, percussive blast straight through the headphones, still sitting half-on from whenever you fell asleep, and the pain behind your eyes is immediate, the kind that sits right at your temples and spreads outward. You jerk upright so fast the green blanket twists around your legs, and for a couple seconds you don't even know where you are. Apartment, Marta, night, okay. And then you look at the clock.
Your stomach drops through the floor.
Your emergency alarm. The one you set for situations exactly like this, the absolute-last-resort alarm, the one labelled in your phone DON’T BE LATE FOR THIS because you apparently knew, at some earlier and more optimistic point of your day, that you wouldn’t be capable of sleeping well.
Shit. Shit, fuck.
Your phone is half-hanging off the nightstand, the charger pulled loose at some point in the night, the screen reads five percent, letting you down at the worst possible moment. You plug it in for exactly thirty seconds, grab it, shove it into your bag along with the charger, and start moving.
The apartment becomes an obstacle course. You knock your pinkie on the corner of the counter. The mismatched mugs rattle when you yank a clean set of scrubs from the shelf above the kitchenette.
And then a piece of the dream slips back in your mind.
Not the whole thing. Just enough to catch you off guard. The feeling of it more than anything. Close, too close, Abbott’s mouth on yours, slow and certain, the kind of kiss that just takes its time. His hand at your side, warm against your skin, grounding.
You cut the thought off abruptly as cold water hits your skin in the shower like a reset button, grounding, sobering.
You notice how much you must have sweated in your sleep, your body still overheated from exhaustion and everything else tangled in your head. The water helps, but it doesn’t fully clear the lingering tension under your skin.
You're pulling your shirt over your head and simultaneously trying to locate your second shoe and the whole time your brain replaying last night, and it is doing it aggressively, in fragments, like a file that corrupts every time you try to close it.
Can I fuck you now?
You shove the shoe on; there’s no time to think about this.
You're out of the shower in under three minutes, dressed in under five, glasses on, bag over one shoulder, wet hair into a messy bun. You close the door behind you and the key sticks and you don't have time for the lock's particular rituals today.
The rain hits you the second you step outside.
It is a decision the sky has made for you specifically. Cold, heavy, a relentless storm that's been building all day and has finally started. Luckily, it’s only two blocks from the hospital, but luck doesn’t matter much when you’re already fifteen minutes late and the storm has decided to break loose overhead.
The hospital doors slide open and warmth hits you all at once.
You're soaked. Your scrubs are dark at the shoulders, your socks are damp inside your shoes, and your bag has a small spreading patch of wet at one corner that you hope hasn't reached your stethoscope. You put your glasses back on and they immediately fog, you wipe them on the inside hem of your shirt while you're still walking, weaving through the entrance corridor, and you can already hear the unit ahead of you, already feel the particular frequency of a ER braced for a bad night.
They're already at the board.
You clip your badge onto your pocket as you slip into the back of the group, the little enamel cat, black and white, that you bought from the cart outside the pharmacy last week on impulse because it made you smile and you needed something small and harmless to make you smile.
You keep your eyes on the board. You are not ready to look at the front of the room.
“We are the nightcrawlers.”
His voice carries without effort; it never needs to push. It simply arrives, fills the space it needs to fill, and stops. Completely, infuriatingly composed.
“We deal with the weirdest because-.”
The group responds on reflex, a chorus of tired and wired and already half-caffeinated voices.
“We are the weirdest in the wildest of them all.”
You join in a fraction too late. Half a beat behind, your voice trailing instead of landing with everyone else.
You stare very hard at the patient board.
“That's right.”A pause. Something shifts in it, subtle, like he’s taking stock of the room, the storm, the numbers. “Tonight, with this storm, they're really gonna be crawling. Now go get some!”
"HOOAH!"
The sound hits you in the sternum. You blink behind your glasses, which you have now wiped three times and are still slightly fogged at the edges, and you absorb the noise and the movement as the group disperses around you, people already pulling charts, already moving toward their assignments.
You grab a chart, grateful for something to focus on, and turn toward the patient rooms like you have somewhere urgent to be, which you do, conveniently, it’s also away from the front of the unit. You manage two steps.
A light tug catches at the collar of your scrubs, almost gentle.
“Ah-ah-ah.”
You stop before you even think about it. Something in the way he says it, the rhythm, a hint of amusement threaded through.
“You didn't say the magic words.” He says.
You freeze for half a second, back still half-turned, chart pressed to your chest like it might actually help. Then you turn around.
He’s closer than you expected, not inappropriate, of course. This is the ER, people are always close. Still, you notice it immediately, the distance, or lack of it. His expression does that thing, not quite a smile, but close enough that it sits at the corner of his mouth like he’s entertained and trying not to show it.
“Hooah,” you mutter. It comes out wrong. Flat, almost like a question, and faintly embarrassed, nothing like the synchronized delivery of the group.
He tilts his head just slightly.
“I've always wondered how you manage to be late when you live so close.”
There is no bite in it. That's the thing about the way he says things, curiosity and criticism sound the same until you pick them apart, and even then, you’re not always sure. You force a small smile, the professional one, practiced.
“Got here just in time for your speech.”
You don't meet his eyes.
Not once, not for a fraction of a second. Your gaze lands on his shoulder, on the middle distance just past his left ear, on the patient board behind him, anywhere that isn't his face. You're already pivoting before the exchange has fully closed, already moving, using the chart and the direction and the work as both purpose and escape.
The patient room door swings shut behind you and you breathe.
That's how the rest of the shift goes. You are very busy. Genuinely, legitimately busy, the storm has done exactly what he said it would, and the ER is filling steadily with the usual aftermath. Minor crashes, slips, one patient soaked through from a flooded basement. You stay buried in it. Chart to patient to chart. The rhythms of triage and assessment and notes, the comfortable, absorbing routine of the work.
When his voice carries across the unit announcing sandwiches in the break room, ordered for everyone, don't be martyrs you stay at your station. You are not hungry; you are very focused on this chart. The cereal bar from your last shift, the one he'd handed across the nurses' station without looking up from his own paperwork because he'd noticed you hadn't, you tried not to think about that at all. You are fine, completely fine.
Three hours passes, maybe four. The ER has a rhythm when it's busy, a kind of tunnel vision that usually works in your favour, and you stay inside it.
Then, from across the hall.
“Sir, we're gonna get you more pain meds, but you need to shut your fucking mouth.”
Your head lifts automatically.
Bay three. Male patient, forties, the kind of pallor that comes from blood loss and shock, one arm braced against the gurney with a tight, unfocused grip, like someone fighting through pain and losing. Car accident, you register, you'd seen him come in from the ambulance bay, but you'd been with another patient.
“Bobbles, get over here.”
You wince. Not at the nickname, exactly, you've made a kind of peace with it, it's been months, a Tinkerbell’s character name is not malicious, just at the timing of hearing your name in his voice right now, today, this shift, when you've spent four hours arranging your entire body and attention to not cross in his direction.
You go.
The bay is already compressed with movement, a nurse pulling equipment, Doctor Shen assessing, someone calling for imaging. You slot into the space that opens for you and your hands go to the patient automatically, checking, reading, the clinical instincts taking over the way they always do, reliable as a switch.
Shen looks up. “Chest tube.”
Abbot doesn't hesitate. “Agreed.” A beat. “Bobbles, you're up.”
Your head snaps up.
It's the first time all shift that you look directly at him. He's already looking at you. Not expectant, not impatient, the same look he always has when he hands something over. Like he expects you to do it right.
You nod, too quickly.
You turn to the tray and begin to prepare, and you are doing every right thing, gloves, positioning, hands moving through the steps you've drilled often enough to do with some part of your brain parked elsewhere, but your hands are not quite steady. A fine tremor in your right hand that you identify and clamp down on through sheer concentration. Procedure. Steps. Sequence. You know this. You have done this; you are doing this right now.
You feel him step closer. Close enough that you could turn your head and-
His voice comes low, meant only for you.
“Do you want me to tell you what to do?”
The instruments don't fall; your hands don't stop. The room keeps moving around you, Shen on the other side, the nurse calling numbers, the patient's ragged breathing a constant underneath everything. But something in your chest does drops. Because now there’s no question.
It’s the same voice. Not similar. Not like. The same, the exact same texture, the same quiet authority in the undertow of it, the same particular weight on the word want like he's genuinely asking, like the answer matters. You'd heard it last night in the dark with your eyes closed and your headphones on and you'd told yourself you were exhausted and imagining things, pattern recognition, coincidence.
You swallow and nod.
He guides you through it. Step by step, low and precise, the clinical language clean and exact, no deviation from the procedure, and yet now you cannot unhear the register underneath it, the same one, the same frequency. You follow every instruction. Your hands steady themselves through the sheer necessity of the patient in front of you, because whatever is happening in your head has no place in this bay and you know that, and that knowledge is the only thing holding the two halves of this moment apart.
It's not perfect, but it works, vitals start to stabilize. The tension in the room eases, just slightly. You let out a slow breath, shoulders loosening inch by inch. A firm pat lands between your shoulder blades.
“Good girl.”
Your glasses slip. You reach up and straighten them, and a smile is pulling at the corner of your mouth that you didn't authorize, involuntary and slightly helpless.
“Nice job, Bobbles.” Shen, across the gurney, already moving on to the next thing.
You murmur a thank you, general enough to cover both of them. You strip your gloves and step back. You find somewhere to look that is not him. You are fine. You are so completely fine.
You make it through.
That’s the most accurate way to describe the final hours of the shift, not gracefully, not professionally in the way you'd prefer to be professional, but functionally. You answer questions, complete tasks, keep moving. You exist in the same space as Dr. Abbot the way you might stand near an open flame, careful without looking like it, always aware of exactly where it is.
By the time things start slowing down, your nerves feel stretched thin, like something pulled too far that hasn’t snapped yet but could.
The supply room is your routine before the shift ends. That's why you go there, it's something your hands know how to do without asking your brain for much. Restock the basics, make sure the next team walks into a room that works. Your hands know what to do without much input, and right now that’s exactly what you need.
You pull the door shut behind you and exhale properly for what feels like the first time in hours.
Syringes, gloves, gauze in the third drawer. You move through it with the autopilot of repetition, and somewhere in the middle of it, without entirely deciding to, you start doing the thing Dr. King from days shift once told you about half-joking, half serious. Repeat something, even a song works. Regulates the breathing. Parasympathetic response, works every time.
So softly, under your breath, the words start coming out.
“I'm a savage… classy, bougie, ratchet… sassy, moody, nasty…”
The same line. Over and over, a low murmur barely above a hum, because the repetition is the point, the rhythm of it, the breathing it requires. You restock the syringe drawer. You refold the gloves. You let the mantra do its small work.
The door opens and you don't turn around. At the end of a shift, it could be anyone.
“Grab what you need, I'm almost done here.” You say.
The door clicks shut and there’s a pause.
“What's going on with you today?”
A metal tray slips off from your hands to the floor with a loud, reverberating metallic clang that fills the supply room completely and then rings in the aftermath like something guilty. You're already crouching before the echo dies, scrabbling at the floor, gathering, organizing, doing anything that keeps your head down.
“Sorry- sorry-.”
“Hey.” Just quiet, not harsh. “Leave it.”
You leave it and you stand too quickly, bumping into the cart.
“You gonna tell me why you've been dodging me all night like I've got the plague,” he says, voice dry in that familiar way, “or am I gonna have to drag it out of you?”
You don’t answer.
“Because if it's something I did, I'd rather hear it straight.”
“I'm not avoiding you.” You say too fast. Too tight. Even you can hear it.
He snorts, short, unimpressed, somewhere between a laugh and a dismissal.
“Yeah. And I've got two legs.”
Despite everything, something in your chest twists, almost a laugh slipping through before you against your will.
You hear him push off the doorframe, a few steps closer. He stops a few feet away with his hands in his pockets, posture loose, casual on the surface, but concerned underneath. Like he’s not going anywhere until he gets answers.
“Kid.” His voice is even. “You've been ducking behind work every time I walk into a room. Answering me in monosyllables like I'm interrogating you.” A pause. “Did you actually think I wouldn't notice?”
You don't have an answer for that. The honest answer is yes, you'd hoped, desperately, that the size of the ER and the volume of the shift would be enough cover. Clearly not.
His tone softens, just slightly.“Look, if you're pissed at me for something, just say it. I don't bite.”
A beat.
“Hard.”
A smirk. Brief, dry, completely him.
You look at him. That's your mistake. Because up close, in the quiet of the supply room, without the controlled chaos of the unit between you, there is nowhere for your expression to go that doesn't tell the truth. He’s watching you, steady and patient, and whatever you’re trying to hold together starts slipping.
“I'm not mad,” You say.
“Okay.” He waits.
You turn back to the cart, gripping the edge of it, and the words come out before you can stop them. Messy, rushed, like ripping something off fast instead of dragging it out. You explain the insomnia, the app. How you ended up using it, the audiobook you found of him. You leave certain parts out, just to avoid further embarrassment. By the time you finish, your knuckles are white on the edge of the cart and your face is generating its own heat source.
The silence lasts long enough that you risk a sideways glance.
He has one hand over his mouth. His shoulders shift, controlled but not completely. His eyes, above the hand, are not mocking. That's the first thing you check for and it isn't there. What's there instead is something surprised, and something like he’s trying very hard not to laugh.
He exhales through his nose, dragging his hand down his face.
“That's…” He shakes his head once, slowly. “Not how I thought that would come back to bite me.”
He straightens. Something settles in his expression.
“I owed a friend a favour,” he says. “She runs the app. Needed someone to record a few things.” A small shrug. “Didn't think it was a big deal. Definitely didn't think anyone from work would recognize me.”
He looks at you again.
“Hey.” Softer now. “Eyes on me.”
You hesitate, then do.
“No need to be embarrassed,” he says. “Really. I'm not laughing at you.”
It helps less than it should, and he seems to read that plainly on your face, because something in his expression tries to adjusts.
“We should just-.” You move toward the door. “Forget this ever happened.”
He steps into your path. Not fast, not blocking in any way that has urgency in it. Between you and the door, hands still easy in his pockets, his whole posture easy.
“Nah.”
His tone is light. The smirk is back, but there's something different underneath it now, something that's been there since you looked at him and couldn't look away.
“You don't get to drop that bomb and then bolt like it's a gas leak.”
You should say something. You are a person with professional composure, with years of practice maintaining a neutral face in circumstances that are objectively more demanding than being cornered in a supply room by your attending.
You say nothing.
He tilts his head slightly.
“You want to know something?” Casual. Almost too casual.
“Do you want to know who I was picturing while recording all that?”
The room is very quiet.
You become aware of how small it is. The hum of the lights overhead. The faint noise from the unit outside the door. The space between you and him, which suddenly feels much smaller than it should. His gaze stays on you.
Your heart is pounding hard enough to feel in your throat, each beat loud and uneven, stealing any chance of forming words. You can’t speak. You’re not even sure you’re breathing properly, and he notices. He doesn’t miss the shift in your expression, the way your breath catches. His gaze sharpens slightly, and when he speaks, his voice has changed. Expectant.
“Use your words, kid.” He doesn’t move. Doesn’t rush you. It’s clear he’s waiting. He won’t say it for you.
You swallow, forcing air into your lungs, trying to steady yourself long enough to ask the question that’s already burning in your chest. It takes a second, maybe two. Then, quietly, you ask who.
For a moment, he just looks at you, like he’s deciding if it’s the right thing to say.
“You.” The word lands clean, no hesitation, no softening. He doesn’t look away. “I was imagining you.”
There’s a beat where everything seems to stop. Your mouth opens, but nothing comes out right. The words stumble over each other, trying to form something about this being inappropriate, about boundaries, about-
He cuts you off.
“You’ve listened to me moan and now you care about professionalism?” There’s a faint edge of amusement in it, but something darker underneath. He steps closer, just enough to close the space between you, his voice dropping. “Face it, kid. You want this.” And then whatever restraint he had snaps.
He moves fast, one hand coming up to your jaw as his mouth crashes into yours, the kiss hungry, immediate, like he’s been holding back for too long. It knocks the breath out of you. You barely have time to react before he’s pushing you back, your spine hitting the cabinets, the impact jarring as the cart rattles beside you. It’s overwhelming. The heat of him, the pressure, the way he takes without asking again. When he pulls back, it’s barely an inch. Just enough to speak, his breath still warm against your lips.
“-So.” His voice is rough now, dragged raw. “Still want to pretend this never happened?”
And you shake your head.
“That’s what I thought.”
His mouth moves to your throat, leaving sharp, possessive kisses along your skin. One hand drops to your hip, gripping tight as he presses into you, solid and unyielding. He’s all heat, all intent. He drags his mouth down to your collarbone, teeth grazing, sucking at the sensitive skin, his stubble rough against your neck in a way that makes your breath hitch. You can feel the strength in him; the tension coiled just under the scrubs, on his muscles.
“Been wanting to do this for ages,” he murmurs, voice low.
His hand slips under your shirt, fingers finding bare skin, leaving a trail of heat everywhere they touch. You shiver under it, your body responding before you can think. He pushes the fabric up, hands moving over your ribs, your stomach, spreading wide like he’s mapping you out. Then he pulls back just enough to look at you. You’re burning up, dishevelled, breathing too fast.
“God, you’re gorgeous like this,” he says quietly. “All wrecked and panting because of me.” He leans in again, pressing his face into the curve of your neck, inhaling. “Can practically feel how much you want me too.”
You nod, quick, eager.
A low chuckle leaves him, rough and satisfied. He presses into you again, the hard evidence of him unmistakable, and you feel it. His tongue flicks against your skin, slow, deliberate, and you shiver again. Then he moves, pulling you with him, guiding you further into the room, away from the door. His grip on your hand is firm, unyielding.
“Not gonna lie,” he says, voice rough, “I’ve thought about this. Taking my time with you. Slow and deep.” His eyes flick over you, heavy with it. “But right now-.” He lifts you onto the counter in one smooth motion. “Right now, I need you.”
“Please, Jack… just fuck me already.” It’s the first time you say his name and the effect is immediate.
“Jesus-.” He kisses you again, harder this time, biting, all restraint gone. When he pulls back, it’s only to give one command, voice strained. “You don't have to beg me to fuck you, I'm going to. Turn around.”
You do. Sliding off the counter, leaning forward, hands braced against it.
He’s right behind you instantly. His hands on your hips, pulling you back against him, rough, impatient. He groans, low and broken, as if the sight alone is enough.
His belt comes undone with a sharp metallic sound that cuts through the room.
Then he’s there, pressed against you from behind, one hand reaching for yours, fingers locking together as he holds you in place.
“You feel that?” he growls against your ear, dragging himself against your folds, slow and deliberate. “How much I want you? All for you.”
Then he doesn’t wait anymore. He pushes in, deep and sudden, the force of it knocking the air from your lungs. The counter shifts slightly under the impact, a sharp sound echoing in the room. Your reaction is immediate, a sound you can’t hold back, but his hand is already there, covering your mouth, pressing firm.
“Shh…” he breathes, almost amused. “Unless you want the whole hospital to know their attending’s fucking his intern senseless.” He doesn’t slow down. If anything, he goes harder, faster, each thrust sharp, controlled, relentless. “Bet you’d like that though, wouldn’t you?” His voice is rough, right against your ear. “Look at you… taking me so fucking well.” Another thrust, deeper. “Could’ve had you like this weeks ago if you weren’t so shy.” A breathless laugh escapes him. “Guess I owe that audiobook a thank-you.”
He holds you there as everything builds, his grip tightening as you fall apart on him, your body giving in completely. He follows not long after, his forehead dropping to your shoulder, breath uneven as he spills inside of you. For a moment, neither of you moves. Just the sound of both of you trying to catch your breath. Then, slowly, he pulls back. His hands move over you again, this time adjusting your clothes, smoothing fabric back into place. There’s a shift in him now. Still there, still close, but quieter. He fixes himself next, movements more controlled again.
“Well.” He clears his throat, some of that usual composure slipping back into place. “I hope you’re not too tired,” he says, voice steadier now, though still rough around the edges. “Because I’m not done with you.”
a/n: SOMEBODY SEDATE ME!!! I didn't even check the grammar, I just needed to get this off my chest. I promise I'll update Gold-Stained tomorrow <3.
SEVEN STEPS TO TAME A BEAST
Aerion 'Brightflame' Targaryen x Reader
Word count: 14k
a/n: Read on AO3 here
The lords of the Seven Kingdoms had long memories, and pride that clung even longer.
Prince Maekar learned that slowly, one letter at a time. One refusal after another, each dressed in courtesy and sealed with finality. House Tarly sent a courteous refusal, all neat phrases and careful distance. House Rowan said nothing for three months, then finally replied with a claim that their daughter had been promised already. The lie was thin enough to show through the parchment. House Baratheon sent condolences. Condolences, as if a death had occurred instead of a proposal. House Hightower did not answer at all, and Maekar did not press them. Smaller houses followed suit, each with their own reason. A daughter too frail, a daughter already in love, a daughter too young, too old, too recently in mourning.
The reasons piled up, one over the other, until they blurred together.
A year had passed since Ashford Meadow. A year since his son dragged that puppeteer girl through the dirt by her hair and broke her finger. Since he called for a Trial of Seven over an insult most men would have swallowed with their wine and forgotten by sunrise. A year since Maekar stood in the field with a hammer in his hand and felt the weight of his own name shift into something people spoke of carefully, if they spoke of it at all.
Men who had never stood near a tourney field could recount it with certainty, as though they had been there themselves. They told it with small changes, but the shape remained. A prince undone in public.
He had tried threatening Aerion with sending him away, exile him to Lys, he wouldn’t be the last Targaryen to do so. He had tried locking him down. He had tried shame. But after all that, Aerion didn’t even flinch, he endured it too easily, quiet in a way that made Maekar uneasy.
So now he had turned to marriage.
At last, Maekar wrote to Dorne. Your father was not the ruling prince, but from Lord Orran Martell, his brother. Close enough to matter, far enough to manoeuvre. When the letter reached him, he read it once, then again, then a third time, slower. Only then did he allow himself a smile.
The carriage carried the scent of cedar and dust, and the road behind you stretched longer with each turn of the wheels.
Your father had spoken plainly. No softening, no illusions. He laid out the value of the match, the reach it offered, the place it would secure. He spoke as he would to a man he trusted with consequence. That was his way of showing regard.
He did not pretend the groom was good. He did not ask you to pretend either.
You are strong enough for this, he had said. I would not send you otherwise.
He had expected hesitation, perhaps fear, but he had not found it.
You watched the land shift through the narrow window, red stone fading into green, dry air thickening with damp. The world changing in slow increments.
You turned the name over again and again, testing it.
Aerion Brightflame.
You had heard the Ashford story, of course, everyone had. The mercy of the hedge knight that some called wisdom and others called weakness. What stayed with you was not the cruelty itself, cruelty was common enough among men with power and power made men careless with other people.
I am no man, he had reportedly said. I am a dragon.
You found this almost amusing.
Not because it was foolish, though it was. Because it told you something useful. A man who believed himself a dragon was a man who had built his entire self upon a story. And stories had seams, they could be read, they could, if one were careful, be rewritten.
Maekar thought he was sending you to tame his son. You could feel it in the careful tone of his words, you could feel the hope through the careful diplomacy of his acceptance letter, which your father had allowed you to read. The prince wanted a strong wife for his son. A steady hand. Something that might anchor Aerion to the earth before he burned everything around him.
But you intended to do something more interesting than that.
The journey north gave you time, and you used it well. The rhythm of the road settled into your bones, wheels creaking, hooves striking dirt, the quiet murmur of voices beyond the curtains. Long hours where nothing changed except the light.
You let your thoughts arrange themselves without forcing them. That was how it always worked best. Piece by piece.
By the time you reached the Crownlands, the structure of your plan had taken shape. You named it: Seven Steps to Tame a Beast.
King's Landing announced itself in smell before sight, woodsmoke, salt, something sour beneath both. Too many people, too little space, all of it pressed together and left to simmer. The Red Keep rose above it all, pale stone against a dull sky. It looked less like a crown and more like something grown in the wrong place.
The reception was brief, formal and efficient.
Maekar received you himself. He stood solid and broad, the years written into his face in hard lines. His hair had gone mostly to silver. His eyes were sharp, searching, measuring. You held his gaze just long enough, then gave him courtesy and nothing more.
Aerion was not there, you noticed.
STEPT 1. Keep Your Distance from the Wild.
A wild creature does not welcome approach. Every movement is weighed, every sound judged. You do not step into its space uninvited. You do not reach. You watch. You learn the rhythm first. Where it rests. What startles it. What draws its attention and what it ignores. Rush, and it turns. Wait, and it forgets you are there.
You did not seek Aerion in those first days, even if it took some effort.
There were servants willing to arrange a meeting. Courtiers who offered, curiosity thinly veiled. You declined each time, politely, with reasons that could not be pressed. Fatigue, settling in, amild headache.
In truth, you were mapping him. You began where he could not avoid being seen.
Meals.
He sat very straight, almost too straight, not relaxed. Every movement placed with care, hands set just so. Shoulders squared. The stillness was deliberate, the kind that came from control, not comfort. He ate little. Drank more than he should, though he kept it from showing. His eyes moved often. Not restless. A sweep, measured, taking stock of the room without drawing attention to it. He noted everything.
He laughed twice in three days, both times it was wrong. Too quick, it stopped at his mouth and went no further. The men around him laughed as well, they always did. You watched them more than him in those moments. Watched how easily they bent to it. Mirrors, all of them, they gave him back what he wanted to see.
On the second day, a steward stumbled over a name. A small mistake, barely worth notice. But Aerion noticed. His jaw tightened, just once. A brief pause before he spoke, a fraction longer than natural. Then it passed, the steward went on, unaware. You did not miss it, he disliked error. Disliked imprecision. The world, in his mind, should hold its shape. When it did not, something in him bristled.
On the third day, there was a gathering. Music, wine, low voices. People playing at ease.
You took a place near the edge, beside a column. Your handmaid stood with you, quiet, unobtrusive. You spoke when required, smiled when expected, nothing more.
Aerion crossed the room twice. The first time, he did not look at you. The second time, he did. A brief glance, flat and measuring. The kind given to something not yet worth attention. You were already looking elsewhere when it happened. Your focus set just past him, as though he were incidental.
Still, you saw enough. The slight tension at his mouth, the way his gaze held for a breath, then moved on. He knew you were there. Of course he did, and he was not interested.
Good.
Interest that comes too easily is useless. It has no weight; it does not last. Curiosity had to be earned.
That night, you sat by the window and let the city settle into silence beneath you.
He was proud, that was obvious, but there was something under it. Control, carefully maintained. He was not as unrestrained as the stories suggested. It meant the outbursts were not constant. They built. Pressure, then release.
He was intelligent. More than most around him allowed. That kind of mind, left without challenge, turns inward. Finds its own amusements, not always good ones. He had been told he was exceptional for too long. Ordinary things no longer held him.
Boredom, then. Boredom as a spark.
You suspected he had never been met with anything real. Only reflections and performance. That would have to change. You drew your braid over your shoulder, thinking.
You were not satisfied. You never were, this early. But you understood the ground beneath your feet now. Where it dipped, where it held. You had not spoken to him yet; you had barely shared a room. And still, you were closer than anyone here knew.
The ceremony took place at dawn.
Black candles burned low, their smoke thick and sweet, curling into the corners of the chamber. The maester spoke in High Valyrian, his voice steady as he shaped words that had existed long before the Conquest. Pale light slipped through a narrow window, thin and colourless. Maekar stood off to the side, his posture rigid, his expression set in that familiar way of a man who no longer expected much in return for doing what was required.
Aerion arrived on time.
He was dressed as expected, red and black, pale hair brushed to the side. He took his place beside you without hesitation, carrying himself like a man waiting out an obligation he could not avoid. He did not fidget; he was too controlled to do so. Instead, he held still, composed to the point of absence, his attention drifting toward the candles now and then as if searching for something that was not there.
When the maester's words required it, he took your hand. His grip was exact, dry and cold. It lingered only as long as custom demanded, then released at once, as if he had touched something hot and withdrawn before the burn could catch.
You kept your gaze forward and before you let your mind move forward, it was over.
The feast was small and slightly mournful. The kind of gathering where people ate and spoke because it was expected, not because they wished to. The food was well prepared, the wine even more so. Conversation moved carefully, never quite settling.
You were seated beside Aerion.
He spent the early portion of the meal demonstrating how effortlessly he could ignore you. He spoke across you, around you, treating the space you occupied as if it had always been empty. It was not for your benefit, it was for the others, for himself, for the quiet need to show that nothing had changed.
During the second course, he turned his head slightly in your direction, just enough to acknowledge you without granting you the full courtesy of attention.
"You are quieter than I expected. I was told Dornish women always had opinions about everything."
It was not the sharpest thing he could have said. You suspected he was holding the sharper things in reserve, testing whether blunt instruments would serve before reaching for finer ones. You let your fingers rest on the stem of your cup before answering.
"We do," you said. "We simply learn early which conversations are worth having."
Then you returned to your plate.
The silence stretched. You could feel it tighten, like cloth pulled just a little too far. You did not look at him; you did not need to. Beside you, he drank, then turned away, letting the moment dissolve.
Across the table, Maekar was watching. When the music began, it was him who moved first. You saw the decision before he acted. He crossed the room with purpose and spoke low to Aerion. You did not hear the words, but you did not need to. There was no request in the exchange.
Aerion turned toward you. He extended his hand with slow precision, making absolutely certain that every person in the room understood this was costing him something.
"Will you honour me, dear wife," he said, the words shaped correctly, the tone less so.
You placed your hand in his.
The floor was not crowded. The other couples kept their distance, leaving a space around you that felt exposed rather than open. He danced well, you noted without surprise, he had been trained to do everything.
This close, you could see the pale sweep of his eyelashes, lighter than his hair, catching the faint light when he blinked. The depth of his lilac eyes was clearer up close, not just colour but something layered beneath it. He had two scars under his cheek, but his skin still looked almost unreal in its smoothness.
His hand at your waist was the same as his grip during the ceremony, measured, controlled, with no warmth.
“Let us understand one another,” he said, his voice low enough to remain private, though there was nothing intimate in it. "I did not want this. I want you to know that I know what my father intends by it, and I want you to know that it will not work."
You let the music carry you through a turn before answering.
“I know you did not want it," you said. "I did not ask for your wanting. I asked for nothing at all, if you recall.”
"You will want things eventually. All wives do."
"Perhaps." You met his gaze briefly, then let it drift past him. "But I did not come here to want things from you, Aerion. I came because the arrangement was made, and I do not refuse an arrangement simply because it is inconvenient."
His hand tightened slightly at your waist, not painfully, but enough to notice.
"You think you can manage me." he said almost curious.
"I think, that they have been trying to manage you your whole life." you said. "And it has not served you much. I am not interested in managing you. I am interested in being your wife. That means I will keep this household in order, I will hold my place properly, and I will do what is required of me. Whether you choose to be part of that is yours to decide."
Another turn as the music continued.
"But I will be here," you added, quieter now. "That part is not negotiable."
He said nothing after that, but you did not mistake the silence for agreement.
Your chambers had been prepared with careful attention as expected. The fire lit, the bed done, everything arranged with quiet precision. You dressed for the night and sat near the hearth with a book open in your lap, though you were not reading.
You waited but he did not come.
The fire burned low. The sounds of the city shifted beyond the walls, settling into the deeper quiet of night. Somewhere, the watch called the hour and you closed the book.
You were not offended; you were not disappointed. You had already known Aerion would rather spend his wedding night in a brothel.
You extinguished the candle by the window and watched the room fall into shadow.
STEPT 2. Become a Familiar Shape.
Constant presence, always at the same distance, without sudden change. Given time, you stop being something to watch for. You become part of the world itself.
In the days that followed, you made yourself ordinary. It took more care than it appeared. True ordinariness had to be consistent. Too much absence would be noticed. Too much presence would draw the eye. You chose your places and kept to them. The great hall in the morning, a corridor near the training yard in the afternoon, a chair by the window in the library, once, where you read for two hours without lifting your head when he entered.
You did not seek him out and you did not avoid him. You were simply there. Aerion noticed.
At first, it was nothing clear. A pause when he entered a room and found you already in it. A shift in his attention, brief and controlled. The smallest recalculation. He had expected something from you. You could see it in what he did not find. No coldness, no wounded pride, no performance at all.
You gave him nothing to work with. Three days after the wedding, he passed you on the library and spoke to you for the first time since the feast.
“I trust you slept well. I confess I cannot say the same for the woman I spent the night with. She complained I kept her awake until dawn.”
You stopped reading and looked up at him.
“Kept her awake, or kept her waiting?” you asked, tilting your head slightly. “There is a difference, I find, between a man who exhausts a woman and a man who simply prevents her from sleeping. One leaves her satisfied. The other leaves her staring at the ceiling." A brief pause. “From what I have heard of you, I suspect she saw rather more of the ceiling than she would have liked.”
You walked away with your book before he could answer.
You had learned early that a voice could betray a person faster than any blade. Most people used it badly. They made it loud when they wanted to be heard, sharpened it when they wanted to cut. They filled it with weight and urgency, as if force alone could make something true. Your father had taught you otherwise. In his solar, he spoke with the same measured evenness whether he was discussing grain yields or deciding a man's fate. A voice that only rises when threatened, he had told you once, is a voice that teaches people when you can be threatened.
You remembered that.
STEP 3. Let It Hear You Before It Sees You.
A calm voice, used often, without command. No edge to it, no sudden movement tied to the sound. The creature learns the voice first, without reason to fear it. Given time, the sound settles into the background. Familiar, expected, something it turns toward without quite knowing why.
So, you began to speak.
The first time was nothing. A grey morning, the stone still holding the night’s cold. Aerion walked the corridor outside the great hall with two of his usual companions, and you were walking alone, and there was no reason to say anything, silence would have served just as well, would in fact have required less effort, but you spoke anyway.
“The easternmost courtyard is iced over this morning,” you said as you went by. “If you are riding, the south gate will be quicker.”
You did not look at him as you said it. You did not look back after.
Behind you, there was a brief silence, and then the low sound of his companions resuming their conversation. You could not tell if he had answered, it did not matter. The point was the sound itself, your voice, steady, offering something useful and nothing more, left behind in his morning like a small, ordinary fact.
You did this again two days later. And again, after that.
An observation about the kitchens. A remark about a particular courier who had been delayed. Once, on the stairs, a quiet comment about a book you carried, spoken into the space without asking for anything in return.
He said nothing the first time. The second time, he gave you a look, the same one you had seen before, sharp and narrow, weighing, deciding whether what it saw was worth the trouble of attention. The third time, he answered, briefly, as if the words had slipped out before he could stop them.
You counted this as exactly what it was, progress.
The friction came eventually. Midday meal, smaller than the evening gatherings, the kind where people allowed themselves to speak a little more freely. You were seated across from Aerion rather than beside him, which meant you had the less comfortable position of being visible to him rather than adjacent.
He had been in a particular mood all morning. You had seen it earlier, out in the courtyard. A tightness in the way he held himself, a coiled irritation that suggested some earlier conversation had not gone as he'd wished. He kept it contained, but it showed in small places. The set of his shoulders, the way his gaze lingered a fraction too long.
Halfway through the meal, he looked at you directly.
“I saw you speaking with the hedge knight this morning. The boy could barely look at you.”
“Ser Duncan,” You corrected, “Could barely look at anyone,” you said. “He has learned that drawing attention to himself is dangerous. A useful instinct, when one lives in a dangerous environment.”
Around the table, the shift was immediate. Eyes moved away, shoulders shifted, someone found their cup suddenly very interesting. No one wanted to be part of whatever this was.
Aerion's mouth curved, but not warmly.
“You say that as an observation. I wonder if you mean it as a criticism.”
“I mean it as neither.” You set down your knife. “A knight who flinches is a knight who has learned what happens when he does not. That tells you something about where he lives.” You looked at him steadily. “The more interesting question is what it tells you about yourself.”
“I am not in the habit of concerning myself with knights anymore.”
“No,” you said. “But you might concern yourself with the fact that a man who fears you will serve you only as long as he must. Fear is a short leash, and the moment it slackens, the moment you turn your back, a frightened man will not think of loyalty. He will think of himself.” You picked up your knife again. "Respect holds longer. It is less satisfying, I imagine, but considerably more reliable."
The table was very quiet.
Aerion's expression did not change, which was its own kind of change, in the vocabulary you had spent weeks building. The muscles around his jaw held with a precision that was not natural stillness. He was choosing his next words with more care than usual, which meant the previous ones had landed somewhere he had not expected them to reach.
“You speak as though I require your counsel,” he said almost thoughtful.
“I speak because the observation seemed worth making,” you said. “What you do with it is your own concern.”
You returned to your meal.
He said nothing more. But he did not look away for a longer moment than was comfortable, and when he finally did, it was not with a quick dismissal, it was with adjustment.
In the library, three days later, you found him already there when you arrived.
This was unusual. Aerion was not, in your observation, a man who spent mornings in libraries by preference. You entered anyways and took the chair you usually took, near the far window, which had the best light and a view of the inner yard, and opened the book you had brought.
For a time, neither of you spoke. The fire cracked softly. From outside came the steady rhythm of steel on steel, practice in the yard below.
“The Celtigar boy.”
You did not look up immediately. You marked your page, then lifted your eyes.
“The one my father is considering for a trade agreement,” he went on. “You spoke with him yesterday.”
“Briefly.” you said.
“He is not what he presents.” There was something restrained in the way he said it. Irritation, perhaps, or reluctance, as though the act of asking you something, or almost asking you something, cost him more than he was willing to fully account for.
You studied him for a moment. “No,” you agreed. “He is not. His family's debts are larger than they've admitted, and his uncle's position in the city has been weakening for two years. The trade agreement would favour him considerably more than it would favour the crown.
Aerion's eyes moved over your face, his gaze precise.
“You gathered that from a brief conversation.”
“From the conversation, and from the days before it,” you said. “People show where the pressure is, if you pay attention.”
A pause.
“My father should know,” he said.
“He should,” you agreed. “I thought you might be the appropriate person to tell him.”
You let that rest between you without elaboration, the implicit suggestion that this was a useful thing, that you were offering it to him rather than taking the credit for it, that you were treating him as someone worth offering useful things to. You did not dress it in sentiment. You did not soften it into a gesture. You simply left it there, plainly, for him to take or ignore as he chose.
He chose to take it. Not gratefully, not with any acknowledgment of the exchange's nature. He simply gave a short, almost inaudible sound of agreement and turned back to his book.
You had met, in your life, exactly three people who understood the particular discipline of the open hand.
Your father was one of them. A merchant woman in Sunspear who had built a trading empire from a single stall was another. The third was a maester who had served your household for eleven years and who had, in that time, quietly accumulated more influence over its workings than anyone with an official title. None of them had achieved what they achieved through force, or through the performance of authority. They had achieved it through the same mechanism, over and over, they gave things away, then let them go.
STEP 4. Offer Without Expectation.
Something of value left within reach, knowledge, advantage, ease. Then you step back. You do not insist. You do not demand. You do not watch too closely. The creature must come to the thing on its own terms, or the thing carries the smell of a trap. Patience here is not passive. It is the most active thing you can do, the discipline of the open hand, extended and then stilled, asking nothing, waiting without the tension of waiting.
You began small, that was where patterns took hold.
The first thing was almost accidental, simple enough to pass unnoticed.
Over weeks, you had seen how Aerion’s mornings turned. When his correspondence waited in disorder, something in him tightened. It was a small irritation, but it spread, it created a particular friction that compounded into the broader texture of his day. His steward handled it unevenly, some days careful, others careless.
You said nothing about this to anyone.
Instead, you mentioned to the steward’s assistant, a young man called Pell, anxious and observant. You mentioned once, that mornings that begin clean tend to stay that way, as though sharing a general philosophy, and then you moved on.
Next day, the letters were sorted before Aerion reached his study. You were nowhere near him when he noticed. You were in the eastern courtyard, the air sharp enough to sting your throat, walking slow circles over frost-hardened ground.
The second offering was more direct, and more deliberate.
The previous night, you had lingered in the great hall long enough to catch a conversation not meant for you. Two of Maekar’s advisors, careless in their angle, speaking of the Plumm family, a loan, a disputed inheritance, a claim that had the potential to become inconvenient for the crown if left unaddressed. The kind of thing that moved slowly until it did not.
You wrote it down, simply a single sheet of paper, placed beneath a volume you had observed Aerion taking from the library shelves twice in the past fortnight, angled just so, easily visible to someone reaching for the book.
You were gone before he arrived, you did not check if it had been taken. This was the discipline, the open hand, and then the stillness.
He found you in the corridor outside the great hall two days later. The way he approached told you enough, straight line, no hesitation, you knew the paper had been found and used.
“The Plumm family matter,” he said. “My father addressed it this morning. He mentioned information that reached him through unusual channels.”
“Did he.” you said.
“He did not know the source.” A pause. “I did.”
You met his gaze, nothing more. “Anyone listening could have heard it,” you said. “I assumed it was worth noting.”
“You assumed,” he repeated sceptical. “And the assumption led you to leave an unsigned document in a place you knew I would find it, rather than simply speaking to me, or to my father directly.”
“Speaking to your father directly would have made it mine to claim. It seemed more useful for it to be yours.” You said, you were well aware that he needed to slowly gain his father’s trusts again.
“You expect me to believe you want nothing in return.” He said.
“I expect nothing from you,” you replied. “I noticed something that seemed relevant to your interests. I noted it where you could find it. That is all.”
He studied you for a long moment, measuring again, then stepped past you without another word. You turned in the opposite direction and continued walking.
The pattern continued.
Days filled with small things, each one easy to miss on its own. A map left open to the right page before a meeting. A quiet word to a knight whose behaviour toward Aerion had been developing a particular insolence. Not a warning, only a reminder of how quickly favour could turn. The knight corrected himself. Aerion noticed the change; you were reasonably certain he had chosen not to address it directly.
During a meal he caught you refilling his cup before the servant reached it, an automatic gesture, barely conscious, and he watched your hand as you set the jug down.
“You do not behave like someone who dislikes me,” he said.
“I am not certain I dislike you,” you said, truthfully. “I have not yet seen enough of you to decide.”
“You have been living in the same castle for a month.”
“So, my husband has taken to keeping track now?” you said, a light note of teasing slipping in despite yourself. You lifted your cup and took a slow sip, letting the taste of the wine linger as a small, knowing smile curved at the corner of your mouth.
He exhaled through his nose, not quite a scoff he meant to share. He didn’t answer. His gaze lingered, a fraction too long to be careless, as if he were trying to smooth over something that had caught him off guard. There was a faint tension in his face, in the set of his jaw and the stillness of his shoulders, the sort of thing that suggested he was trying very hard not to let any hint of embarrassment show.
Later you noticed he took the map you left on his desk. Maekar’s manner afterward told you enough, less strain and more thought behind his words when he spoke to his son. Aerion did not mention it and you did not either.
The absence of acknowledgment said what it needed to. He would take what was useful, he would not name the source. Pride held that line, but still, he had used it. He had accepted the offering, even reluctantly, even silently. That mattered more.
Which meant the distance was slowly shrinking.
He came to your chambers late on a Thursday, when the castle had settled into its quieter rhythm and the corridors carried only the distant steps of the watch.
You sat at your vanity, drawing the brush through your hair in slow, even strokes, winding you down toward sleep. Your sleeping gown was light, meant for the warmth of the room and the privacy of it, nothing more. Your hair hung loose, longer than it appeared when pinned, falling across your shoulders in a way that belonged to a version of yourself you did not generally allow the castle to see.
The door opened without warning, but you did not turn.
You watched him through the mirror instead. It gave you a clearer view than facing him outright. He stepped inside, then paused when he saw you, or the version of you caught in the glass. Something flickered across his face, quick and unguarded, before he shut it down.
You kept brushing your hair.
He crossed the room at an unhurried pace. No sudden movement, no sign of haste, still, there was weight in it. He stopped behind your chair and rested both hands on its back. In the mirror, his eyes met yours directly, without the usual angle or distance.
You held his gaze and continued the brush stroke to its end.
The silence lasted several seconds. In the mirror you watched him watching you. The loose hair, the gown, the particular version of you that belonged to this room and this hour, and you watched him notice that he was watching, and tighten slightly around it.
“I have been really patient with you,” he said at last, his voice low. “I have watched you move through this household for weeks. The documents, the steward, the arrangements that appear before I ask for them.” A pause. “No one does this without a ledger. Show me yours.”
“I told you I keep no ledger,” you said.
“Everyone keeps a ledger.” The words came sharper now. “Whether they admit it or not.”
You set the brush down on the vanity and folded your hands in your lap, and looked at his reflection. The candle shifted, and for a moment the light caught him differently in the mirror. The closeness of him. The space between you that had narrowed without either of you naming it.
“You are angry,” you said. “Not because you think I want something from you. You are angry because you cannot determine what it is, and that distinction is troubling you more than you would like to admit.”
His grip tightened slightly on the chair, his frown deepened. “Do not tell me what troubles me.”
“Then tell me yourself.” You said. “You came here and opened that door without knocking. If you have something to say, say it plainly.”
“What you have offered me,” he said, and this time the control thinned, sharpened into something colder, “is the manner of a woman who wants something. The oldest trick there is. Every woman I have met wanted things. Every woman in this castle wants things. You-” and here something almost contemptuous entered his voice, directed less at you than at his own inability to solve you “-stand there with your quiet gestures and your useful information and expect me to believe it costs you nothing, that you want nothing from me.”
“I told you I expect nothing from you,” you said, for the second time in your acquaintance “Which is not the same as wanting nothing.”
His eyes narrowed slightly. For a moment, his gaze dipped, catching on the fall of your hair over your shoulder, the line of your neck in the candlelight, before returning to your reflection with more force than before.
“Then what do you want,” he said lowly, moving a strand of your hair behind your ear.
You watched him for a moment. The tension in his shoulders. The way he held himself still, as if movement might betray him. The closeness of him, the warmth of it at your back.
“To see you for what you truly are,” you said, now turning around to look up at him. “When no one is performing fear at you.”
The room went quiet.
He did not move at once. His hands remained on the chair, though you felt the subtle shift in them, the restraint in it. His breathing changed, barely, but enough to notice. His gaze stayed on yours, searching now in a way it had not before.
Then he straightened. His hands lifted from the chair with care, as if he had to think about the motion before making it. He held your gaze for a moment longer, something unreadable passing through it. Then he turned and left.
The door closed with a loud thud behind him.
You looked back at your reflection in the glass. The room holding a trace of him still, something unsettled in the air. You reached for the brush and finished what you had started.
A man like Aerion did not adjust. He did not take pressure and reshape himself around it. His world ran on confirmation, on power answered with submission, on a rhythm that reassured him of his place in it. You had been interfering with that rhythm since the morning you arrived. Quietly, consistently, without giving him anything he knew how to answer.
A disruption like that never passed without consequence.
STEP 5. Survive the First Test of Teeth.
Before any bond forms, there is a test. A feint of violence, a warning, a measure of what you are made of. Not always meant to hurt, but whether to see of you will break or bite back. If you do, is over.
You held this thought in the quiet of your morning as you dressed carefully and went about your day.
The argument started in the corridor outside his study, late in the afternoon, when the light came through the western windows, catching dust in the air, turning it gold. You had passed him with the usual moderate acknowledgment, not ignoring him, not seeking him, the same distance you had maintained for weeks, and he had stopped walking.
“You were in my father's solar this morning,” he said.
“I was,” you said. “He asked my opinion on a correspondence from the Arbor.”
“He asked your opinion on that matter,” Something tightened in his face. “Instead of asking me?”
“He did.”
“You have been very busy these days,” he said, “Making yourself useful, to my father, to every corner of this household except the one that is actually your concern.”
“You are my concern,” you said. “Which is precisely why I do not sit waiting for you to need something."
“I do not need anything from you.”
“No,” you agreed. “You have made that very clear last time we discussed. And yet here we are, having this conversation, which you initiated.”
He turned and walked into his study. Not an invitation, but not a dismissal either, and you followed because the conversation was unfinished.
“You think you are very clever,” he said, moving behind his desk, putting wood and distance between you, like it might help him sort what he could not name.
“I think I am.” you said defiantly.
“You think,” he said, and the voice had dropped into its most dangerous register. “That you can arrange yourself into something that suits you, move pieces across a board you were not invited to play on, smile at my father in his solar, look at me like that, and that none of it will have a cost.”
“I have never believed anything is without cost.” you said.
“Then if you are so clever, you should have calculated more carefully.” He stepped past you, toward the door. “You will remain in this room until I say otherwise.” The words came out with anger and the door shut behind him.
You stood in the centre of the room for a moment. Then you moved to his chair, behind his desk, and sat in it, and looked at the documents arranged across the surface, and began, with the unhurried attention, to read them.
Three days later, in the great hall. You had not sought Ser Duncan out specifically. You had spoken with him before, briefly, like with most people in the Keep, and found him to be earnest, possessing more native intelligence than his manner suggested. He was easy to be around. You were in the middle of an unremarkable conversation about the road conditions north of King's Landing, he had travelled them recently, and you had asked a practical question. You felt the shift before you saw him.
A hand settled at your waist. Firm, claiming, meant to be seen, his fingers pressing into the fabric of your dress. Ser Duncan's expression went still, not quite discomfort and not quite confusion.
“My wife,” Aerion said. “I was looking for you.”
Duncan inclined his head and stepped back. You kept your expression exactly as it had been. Aerion’s gaze lingered on you, then flicked once toward the knight, measuring, assembling something he did not like. The hall had gone quiet.
“Is this a game to you,” he said under his breath. An accusation that had the shape of a question.
“No,” you said.
“Then what is it.” He moved in front of you. “What are you doing with the hedge knight-” He stopped, jaw tightening. “Are you provoking me, deliberately.”
“I was having a conversation about road conditions,”
“Do not.” His voice dropped further. “Do not use that voice with me.”
“Which voice would you prefer then? One where I lie?”
“You know,” he said quietly, to you, only to you. “What he did to me.”
“I know what happened at Ashford,” you said, equally quietly. “As does most of the kingdom-”
The struck came fast. Mid-sentence, mid-breath, in front of the hall and the fire and Ser Duncan's suddenly rigid stillness. The back of his hand across your cheek with a force that turned your head and produced a sound that silenced the nearest conversations.
You straightened. You did not touch your face. You did not look at Duncan, who you could feel in your peripheral vision. You looked at Aerion, directly, steadily, with the same expression you had worn in the study, and you said nothing at all.
His jaw was tight and the hall was watching it all. He gripped your wrist, hard, the mark already beginning, and turned toward the corridor, and you went with him because the scene that would result from not going would cost you more.
In your chambers, he released you without a word and left. The door shut and the lock clicked.
You sat by the window. The light had shifted, pale now, moving slowly across the stone. You looked at your wrist, at the faint marks forming. You were not afraid and you were not angry, so you waited with patience.
Maekar went to Aerion that same evening, of course he did. No one told you outright, but you knew before a word reached you. The servant who came to open your chamber door avoided your eyes, her hands slower than usual on the latch. Raised voices, you guessed. Maekar did not shout often, but when he did, it carried. Aerion would have been made to stand there and take it. For the insult. For making a spectacle of his own wife. For stepping, once again, where he had been warned not to. You could almost hear it. The sharp edge of Maekar’s restraint, the threat beneath it.
You let out a slow breath. This would not help. It would tighten something in Aerion, push him further into himself before it loosened anything at all.
He did not return that night, or the next.
On the third, you woke to the sound of your door.
The room was dark, the fire long since reduced to coals and a faint red glow. The kind of hour when even the castle seemed to pause, caught between one watch and the next. You lay still for a moment, listening to the sounds that followed the door, unsteady footsteps, the sounds of a man navigating a familiar space with less precision than usual.
You had smelled the wine, thick and sour on the air, and something else beneath it, cheap perfume and sweat. You had passed enough doorways in this city to know it came from a brothel.
He moved through the dark toward the bed with care that bordered on effort. Not quite stumbling, but close. You lay still with your eyes not quite closed and your breathing steady and you watched him through your lashes.
He stopped at the bedside. For a moment, he only looked at you.
He was less put together than you had ever seen him, his hair dishevelled, collar open, his clothes carrying the evidence of hours spent in places this castle was not and had not bothered to hide it well. His gaze moved over you, slower than usual, lingering in places he would have ignored in daylight. There was anger in it. That much you knew. But there was something else tangled into it, something the drink had loosened.
Then his hand shot out and closed around your throat.
The force of it drove the breath from you before you could think. His grip was sure, fingers settling with a familiarity that made it worse. The ceiling tilted as your body reacted, instinct rising fast and sharp. His face was above yours, close, and it was not the face of a man in full command of himself. His eyes were bright, unfocused in a way that had nothing to do with the dark. His grip tightened.
You felt the tightness clearly, the pressure at your windpipe, the pulse hammering under his hand. The animal instinct toward struggle that rose in you like a tide and that you identified and still you did not move.
And then, quietly, helplessly, from somewhere underneath the shock and the constriction and the absolute clarity of your own danger, you laughed. Not loudly. Not mockingly. Not shaped for him, not meant for anything at all. It simply came, as if your body had found something in the moment that did not fit the rest of it. Simply absurd and honest and almost intimate in its desperation.
The sound of it, barely audible, stopped him completely.
His hand did not leave your throat, but it stopped tightening. His expression shifted, confusion cutting through whatever had driven him here.
“What are you-” he said. It came out raw, his voice rough, stripped of its usual control. “What are you doing, what are you doing to me.”
You said nothing. You held his eyes in the dark and did not struggle, you did not look away.
“I hate you,” he said. The words came out flat, almost tired, like a confession.“I hate what you do. I hate that I cannot-.” His voice broke across the unfinished sentence. “I cannot find the edges of you. I cannot-.”
His grip loosened, fractionally, and then fractionally more.
Something in his face gave way. The control slipped, not all at once, but enough. His shoulders dipped, the tension draining in uneven pieces. Something beneath the surface rising without permission. His forehead dropped, his weight shifted, and then, with the slow, helpless gravity of exhaustion, he leaned against your chest, his hands still loosely at your throat, his body giving what his pride would not. Choked sobs forming on the back of his throat as his shoulders trembled.
You lay still beneath him. The room held its silence. No voices in the corridor, no movement beyond the walls. Only the weight of him, and the strange, unguarded vulnerability he had not allowed himself before.
Carefully, you lifted your hand. Slow and measured. The way one moves around something that might startle.
He felt the motion before you completed it.
He pulled back at once. Your hand knocked aside, not gently, but not the way he had struck you before either, with less force and more reflex. He was off the bed and standing before you had fully processed the movement, and the reassembly was happening in real time, you could watch it, the walls going up stone by stone, the expression reorganizing, the posture recovering its usual architecture.
He did not look at you as he wiped his tears with the back of his hand, and left.
You lay in the dark for a long time after the door closed. Your throat ached. When you touched it, you could feel where his fingers had pressed, the marks already forming under the skin. You let your hand fall back to the bed. You had survived the teeth.
There is a particular kind of silence that follows a storm.
It is not peace, peace settles. This waits, it hangs over what is left, thin and watchful, as if the ground itself is deciding whether anything will take root again. You lived in that silence for six days. You ate in it, walked the corridors in it, spoke when required and otherwise let it sit around you, like weather that refused to move on.
Aerion was never where you were. Not once, not even by accident.
You noticed the pattern the way you noticed everything else. He left rooms when you entered them, not with obvious avoidance, but with quiet efficiency, but avoiding something nonetheless, something that he had not yet decided how to face. The corridors he had habitually used became corridors he did not use. The hours he had kept became hours he abandoned.
Like he was afraid of you. Not in the way people feared harm. In the way they feared being seen too clearly.
STEP 6. Allow Contact on Its Terms.
The first touch is not taken, it is allowed. A still hand. No pressure. No attempt to hold or redirect or claim. The creature must choose the contact, or the contact means nothing. It is the most fragile moment in the entire sequence the one where everything that has been built can collapse in a single wrong movement. Patience here is not strategy. It is something closer to faith, the belief that what has been established is enough to bear weight, if the weight is placed gently enough.
You dressed with care that seventh night, with a specific kind of nightgown your hair loose again, and went to him.
His chambers were deeper in the keep than yours, further from the outer walls, further from the sounds of the city, the kind of rooms that held heat and shadow in equal measure. The door was heavy. The light beneath it was the particular amber of firelight rather than candle, which meant he was awake and the hour was not the reason.
You did not knock.
The room was larger than you had expected, and sparser. There were maps on one wall, detailed ones, and a writing table covered with papers that had the disordered quality of work abandoned mid-thought. A shelf of books, several displaced at a specific angle with care. On a low table near the window, a cup and a flagon, mostly empty. The fire was high, built up more than the room's warmth required, the kind of fire you build when you want something to look at.
He was standing before it.
He turned when you entered, and the firelight caught his face in a way that daylight had never been permitted to. His eyes carried the particular redness that came not from drink but from something that had happened before the drink. His shoulders, which were always exact, held themselves with an effortful maintenance, but it took effort to keep it that way.
You closed the door behind you. The latch caught with a sound that was very small in the quiet.
“You should not be here,” he said.
“Probably,” you agreed. You did not move further into the room yet. You stood near the door and looked at him across the firelit space between you and said “What is wrong.”
“Nothing that concerns you.” He turned back to the fire. The set of his shoulders said the conversation was over, but the fact that he had not told you to leave said something else.
You crossed the room.
Slowly, without purpose written into the movement. You stopped beside him. Not close enough to require acknowledgment, not far enough to be a withdrawal, and you looked at the fire.
Neither of you spoke.
The fire crackled, wood settled with a low crack, and you waited.
A minute passed, then another. The fire shifted, settling lower in the grate, and in the new configuration of light you saw it, brief, barely visible. A single track of tears, catching firelight, at the corner of his jaw.
You did not look at it directly.
“Aerion,” you said.
“My father-.” he began, and then stopped, like the words had caught on something.
You let the silence hold.
“He saw,” he said with flatness. “The marks on your neck. He saw them. Someone spoke of what happened at the hall too.” His jaw tightened. “He made himself very clear.”
“How clear,” you said.
“In all his wisdom, has threatened me, again, to send me into exile.” The word sat between you. Heavy enough on its own. “He called it a last chance. He has called it that before.” Something crossed his voice that was not quite bitterness. “The words had begun to lose their meaning, but it felt too serious now”
You turned to look at him then.
He was still facing the fire, but the profile of him had changed. The structure of his expression had begun to crack. Not enough for others to notice but enough for you. He looked, in the firelight, less like the man who had locked you in his study and struck you in the great hall and more like something earlier than that, rawer and less certain and considerably more alone.
You reached out. Slowly, with the deliberateness you had promised yourself, no force, no urgency, no claim. Your hand found his and held it with the lightness of something offered rather than taken.
He looked down at it.
“I should have covered the marks better,” you said. “I misjudged the consequence. That was my error, and I am sorry for it.”
“That is not-.” He stopped; his hand had not moved. “That is not what this is about.”
And he pulled away fast. Almost startled by it. With the sudden, electric motion of something that has allowed contact and immediately regretted the allowing. He stepped back, something sharp and unsteady in his eyes.
“Do not,” he said, and the word came out wrong, cracked across the middle of it. “Do not do that. Do not stand there and apologize and take my hand and look at me like-.” He stopped again, breath uneven. “Like there is something worth-.” He stopped again. His hands had closed into fists at his sides and he was breathing with effort. “You do not know what I am.”
“I know what you have done,” you said.
“Then you know enough.” He turned away. “You know I hurt people. You know I cannot-.” His voice fractured. He pressed on through it. “I cannot stop myself… there is something wrong with me. There has always been something wrong with me and everyone who has come close enough to see it leaves or breaks. And you are here, in this room, at this hour, and I do not-.” He stopped.
The fire was the only sound.
“I am a beast,” he said, very quietly. Tears running free down his cheeks. “That is what I am. That is all I am.”
You looked at him for a long moment.
“You are a man,” you said, “who has been told a story about himself for so long that he has stopped questioning whether it is the only story available.”
“It is not a story. It is evidence of everything I have done.”
“Evidence can be read in more than one direction,” you said.
“Do not make me into something I am not.”
“I am not making you into anything.” You held his gaze. “I am telling you that what you are is not to be fixed. That the thing you have been, it is not the only version of you that exists. And that-.” You paused, because the next words required accuracy, and accuracy required care. “You matter to me. Not the prince, not the name. You. What is underneath all of this. That matters to me.”
The room was absolutely still.
He looked at you with an expression you had no entry for in the vocabulary you had built of him, something unguarded, almost frightened, like he has been handed something he does not know how to hold and is not certain he can afford to drop.
Then something gave way.
Not loudly. Not all at once. His breath shifted. His shoulders dropped. Whatever he had been holding together slipped. His breathing changed. You did not move toward him, but you did not need to.
He crossed the remaining distance himself without thinking about it, and then his forehead was against your shoulder and his hands were at your sides without grip, without force, simply present, and he was not making a sound but you could feel the shaking of him and the wetness against the fabric of your nightgown and the weight of him.
You stood very still.
You did not put your arms around him. You did not make any movement that could be felt as claiming. You simply held yourself and let him use it, and the fire burned lower as he came apart quietly against your shoulder without asking permission and without being asked to stop.
You did not know how long it lasted. Long enough.
You raised your hand slowly, slowly enough that he could have pulled away again, enough to be refused, and brought your fingers to his hair.
It was shorter than it looked. Silver-pale and fine, the kind of hair that carried light rather than colour, and beneath your fingertips it was softer than you had anticipated. You drew your hand through it once, carefully, from the crown of his head down to the nape of his neck, where the hair ended and the skin began, warm and taut over the column of his spine.
He did not move away.
He leans into your touch involuntarily, as if starved for contact. His eyes flutter shut, a shudder running through him at the simple gesture. It's a chink in his armour, a crack in the façade he has built around himself. He hates how good it feels, how desperately he craves your gentleness, like something that had been starved for so long it had forgotten the word for hunger until the smell of food arrived. He hates that it's you, a woman he has dismissed as a nuisance, a distraction.
You kept your hand still at the nape of his neck and waited until the tension in him eased, just a little, then you took his hand. He did not resist the guiding.
That told you more than anything else had. Aerion Brightflame, who resisted everything, who turned even small things into contests, let himself be guided across the room, no argument, no pause. Just the quiet, spent compliance of someone who had nothing left to push with.
You lay down and he lay beside you.
For a moment he remained on his back, staring upward, and you could feel the effort in him, his composure still running even now, still attempting to impose order on something that had moved past the reach of order.
Then, slowly, as if testing each inch of the movement, allowing himself permission one fraction at a time, he moved closer. His head found your chest. His arms came around your waist, and the grip that followed was not gentle exactly, it had too much need in it for gentleness, but it was not aggression either, it was anchoring.
“Don't mistake this for weakness,” he muttered, eyes fixed somewhere above you, studying something very far away. “Or tenderness.” A pause. “I merely refuse to let my father's words haunt me alone tonight.”
“All right,” you said.
You brought one hand up to his hair again. The same movement, slow, unhurried, from crown to nape and back, repeated with the consistency of something that asked nothing in return. Your other hand rested against his back, barely any pressure at all.
The fire had burned low and the room was mostly shadow.
“If you much as breathe a word of this to anyone,” he murmured into your chest, his voice rough but stripped of its usual edge, “I'll deny it until my last breath.” His arms tightened slightly, involuntarily. “Stay with me tonight… please.”
“I'm not going anywhere,” you said.
As the night went on, Aerion slowly succumbed to sleep. Something about being held, about your gentle touch, brought a peace he had rarely known. He did not dream of dragons or conquests, for once. His sleep was free of the constant restlessness that usually plagued him. He burrowed into your chest, unconsciously seeking more of your warmth, of your presence.
You lay awake longer than he did. Not from discomfort, too much to process, lying in the dark with their thoughts arranged in rows like objects after a flood.
His breathing had changed, his weight against you had changed. The man who had come apart was now simply sleeping. With his face against your chest and his silver hair tickling your collarbone and his arms loosely maintaining their hold even in sleep, the grip eased to something that felt closer to a choice rather than necessity.
You ran your hand through his hair one more time, very slowly. He made a small sound, low and entirely unconscious, and pressed closer.
You looked at the ceiling for a long time and eventually, sleep took you too.
The room was in the grey-dark of late night, not yet dawn, but the black had thinned to something softer. His breathing had changed again; he was watching you.
His breath caught as he took in the sight of you, soft, vulnerable, beautiful in the unguarded way of sleeping things. A strange warmth curled in his chest, foreign and unsettling. He hesitated. His fingers twitched toward your hair, as if to brush a stray lock from your face, then stopped. He scowled at himself, at this weakness. But the scowl faltered when his gaze lingered on the way your lashes rested against your cheeks, the rise and fall of your breath.
Slowly, carefully, he shifted closer, draping an arm over your waist as if claiming you, not with arrogance, but with something dangerously close to possessiveness. His lips pressed against your temple in a fleeting, uncharacteristically tender kiss.
You opened your eyes. The ceiling was grey above you. Beside you, or rather, around you, Aerion had stilled, as if caught in the act of something he had not meant to do.
“Is something wrong?” you asked quietly.
He cleared his throat, his thumb idly tracing circles on your skin, trying for normalcy, trying to ignore the way his stomach twisted at your proximity.
“Are you comfortable?”he asked.
“Yes,” you said. You turned your head slightly to look at him. “Are you?”
He gave a noncommittal hum, not meeting your gaze. The truth was he had slept better than he had in years, but he was not about to say so. That would imply weakness. He shifted slightly, the arm around your waist drawing you a fraction closer without him seeming to notice. His fingers continued their circles, almost absentmindedly, as though he were lost in thought and the touch was the only thing keeping him tethered.
The grey outside the window had begun its slow migration toward something lighter. The fire was entirely cold now, the room held only the warmth of the bed, of proximity, of the particular heat that accumulates between two bodies in the hours before dawn.
Then awareness settled in him fully. Of the closeness. Of the precise arrangement of you against him, the warmth of your body, the thin fabric of your sleeping gown, the way the hem had shifted in the night to lie differently against your skin. His hand tensed briefly.
He swallowed.
You felt it, the shift that moved through him, the awareness sharpening into something specific, something that did not belong entirely to the vulnerability of the preceding hours. His lips parted, but no words came. He looked at you with an expression caught precisely between irritation and something he could not arrange into anything controllable, frustrated by the evidence of his own body, by the want that had surfaced without authorization.
You could feel it, the warmth of him. The unmistakable pressure of his want against your hip, present and unambiguous, and the particular tension of a man who has noticed you noticing and does not know what to do with it.
Neither of you spoke.
His hand, which had stilled, began very slowly, as though testing whether the motion would be stopped, to move again. Not the idle circles of before. Something more deliberate, more aware of itself, tracing the line of fabric against skin, as if testing whether the moment would break.
You did not stop him.
Not passive, there was nothing passive in the attention you were giving to this moment, to his breathing, to the fractional shifts of his weight and the warmth of his mouth near your temple and the press of him against your hip that had not diminished. But still in the way you had always been still near him, present, available, making no demand and offering no resistance, letting the space between you be defined by what he chose to do with it.
He exhaled.
“You are-.” he began, and stopped, his jaw tightened. He tried again, and the words he found were not the ones he had started with, “This changes nothing.”
“I know,” you said.
“I mean it.”
“I know you do,” you said.
His hand moved again with less hesitation, no longer tentative, something with more intention behind it, and his body followed, shifting against you with the weight of a man who has been resisting something for weeks and has arrived, at last, at the particular exhaustion of wanting and the decision to stop pretending otherwise.
His mouth found your throat, the same throat he had gripped days ago in the dark. You brought your hand to his hair, fingers threading through silver.
Aerion exhales slowly, a controlled breath that does nothing to conceal the tension wound through his jaw, his shoulders, the deliberate stillness of his hands. He's beautiful in his conflict, you think. Unbearably so. That sharp face, that proud mouth, carved for cruelty or for this, and tonight the line between them seems very thin.
He opens his eyes again, his gaze locking with yours again. He looks almost pained, his pride warring with the desire that's quickly consuming him. He wants you. Gods, he wants you so much it hurts, and he hates that he can't bring himself to deny it any longer. He hates how powerless he feels at your touch, how he craves more despite his better judgment. His breathing is ragged as he leans over you, his eyes dropping to your lips. “Stop me. Say... say no.” The words come rough, almost like a plea.
You looked at him for one long moment, you take in the conflict laid bare for the first time, the stubborn pride, the hunger he can no longer hide, the exhaustion of holding both apart.
Then you kissed him first.
He kisses you back like a man drowning who has finally stopped fighting the current. His hands come up to grip your face, not gently, and the sound that escapes his throat is low, rough, barely human. The careful prince, the controlled and calculating Aerion Targaryen, dissolves in the space between one breath and the next. What replaces him is something rawer. Hungrier. Something he's kept caged behind violet eyes and cutting remarks for far too long.
The kiss deepens without hesitation, consuming. His mouth moves against yours with a kind of desperate precision, tasting, claiming, as if he's cataloguing every detail through touch alone. You feel the heat of him, radiating off his skin like fever, like fire, like something that has been burning in secret for too long and has finally found air.
His hands roam your body with a feverish desperation, as if trying to memorize every curve, every gasp, every shudder beneath his touch. His kisses trail from your lips down your neck, nipping and sucking at your skin, marking you as his, branding you in the only way he knows how. His hands grip your hips, pulling you flush against him, letting you feel just how badly he aches for you. He's lost in the sensation, in the fire between you both, consumed by it. He's not gentle about it. He leaves a trail of hot, open-mouthed kisses down your neck, his teeth grazing that sensitive point where your shoulder meets your throat. He wants to mark you, to make you scream his name, to make sure there's no doubt in your mind or anyone else's of who you belong to.
His free hand slides under your nightgown, his fingers trailing up your thigh, leaving trails of fire in their wake. His touch is possessive, demanding, as if he's making up for every minute he's denied himself this pleasure. Your breath hitches as his fingers trace higher, teasing, taunting, every brush of skin against skin sending sparks through you. His lips return to yours, swallowing your gasp as his touch grows bolder, more deliberate. He plays with your breasts, kneading them and pinching at your nipples until you arch into him, your back lifting from the mattress like a prayer. His hands clutch at you, clinging as if you're the only solid thing in the world. He's panting now, his control frayed to the breaking point.
“Gods,” he breathes against your collarbone, “I've been waiting-.” He cuts himself off and bites down instead of finishing the sentence, leaving a bruise.
He buries his face in that spot on your neck, his breath hot against your skin, his lips roaming feverishly as if he can't get enough. Then he kisses down your body, his mouth leaving a trail of hot, wet marks down your stomach, your hip, your inner thigh. His hands slide up your legs, his touch rough but reverent, the touch of a man who has never let himself experience something so wholly, so completely. He moves with the focus of someone who has thought about this, who has imagined and resented and wanted in equal measure.
He pauses for a moment, looking up at you, the desire in his eyes burning hotly as he takes in the sight of you, spread out before him like a feast.
“Gods, woman...” His voice comes out low, cracked at the edges. “You look exquisite.”
Your hand goes to his hair, gripping it, silver-pale between your fingers, and you guide him where the ache pulses hottest. He goes willingly, like a man possessed, his lips tracing a path to the very heart of you. He worships at your altar, exploring you with a fervour that borders on madness, his tongue drawing slow, deliberate strokes against your folds, lapping at the slick heat of you with a thoroughness that makes your thighs tremble. He kisses your core the way he kissed your mouth, thoroughly, hungrily, as if he intends to ruin you for anything else.
He slides one finger inside you, curling, exploring, while his tongue continues its work, finding the rhythm that makes your hips roll helplessly toward him. Then two fingers, stretching you slowly, his pace maddening, his silver head moving between your thighs while his free hand pins your hip to the mattress. He teases. He draws it out with the patience of a man who has denied himself too long and now intends to take his time about the undoing. Every time you feel yourself cresting toward the edge, he eases back, withdrawing just enough, slowing just enough, his eyes flicking up to watch your face with something that looks almost like satisfaction.
The third time he pulls back from the precipice, you take a fistful of his hair and drag him up.
“Now,” you tell him. “Take me now.”
A feral smirk curls his lips at your demand. He rises up over you, his chest heaving, his entire body taut with anticipation. He leans down to capture your lips in a bruising kiss, you taste yourself on his tongue, one hand gripping your thigh, the other cupping your face as if to brand the moment into your memory.
“As my lady commands,” he growls against your mouth.
He shifts his hips, pressing himself against your entrance. Then, with one sharp thrust, he buries himself inside you, filling you completely, claiming you in every way possible. The moment he's sheathed inside you, a ragged groan tears from his throat, half pleasure, half disbelief. His forehead drops against yours, his breathing ragged, his fingers digging into your hips as if he fears you'll vanish.
“Gods,” he chokes out. “You feel so- warm. So tight.”
He's barely coherent. That, more than anything, undoes you.
His hips roll against yours in slow, deliberate strokes, each one deeper, more possessive than the last. He watches your face, memorizing every gasp, every flutter of your lashes, as if this is the only thing that's ever truly mattered. His eyes, those violet eyes that have looked at you with contempt and hunger and everything in between by now, are dark, pupils blown wide, and he doesn't look away. He watches you as if watching you is a compulsion he can no longer afford to deny.
“Look at me,” he rasps, when your eyes begin to close. “Don't you dare-.”
And you do, you hold his gaze.
His jaw tightens. Something moves across his expression that he doesn't have the composure left to conceal, something raw and frightened and ferocious all at once. His strokes deepen; his grip hardens.
Then he flips you, without warning, rolling you onto your stomach with the ease of a man accustomed to taking what he wants. The mattress shifts beneath you. His hands find your hips and drag you up to meet him. One palm presses flat between your shoulder blades for a half-second, then slides up, fingers winding into your hair, pressing your face into the pillow.
His lips find your ear, his voice low and rough as he whispers, “I won't be gentle, sweetling.”
It sounds like a warning. It sounds like a promise.
“I don't want you to,” you answer.
The sound he makes at that is almost feral, something ripped from somewhere deep in his chest that he would never willingly give you in daylight. His fingers dig into your hips as he takes you with a force that borders on brutality, each thrust deeper, harder, driven by pure unrestrained need. His lips drag across your shoulder, teeth sinking into your skin to stifle his groan as he loses himself in the heat of you. He releases your hair so both hands can grip your hips, holding you in place, as if he fears you might slip away if he doesn't, his fingers leaving half-moon marks you will feel for days.
His pace is relentless. Desperate. Driven by a hunger that has been building since the first moment he looked at you and hated that he wanted to keep looking.
“I can't-.” you gasp, the pleasure coiling impossibly tight.
“Come for me,” he growls, the words bitten off, rough and low. “Come on- I want to feel you. All of you.”
And you do, you shatter. Your whole body arches into it, trembling beneath him, clenching around him, and you hear his sharp, broken exhale, feel the way his rhythm stutters.
His release hits him like a storm, violent, consuming, unstoppable. His body tenses, his fingers digging into your flesh as he spills inside you with a ragged groan, his forehead pressed between your shoulder blades. For a moment, he just breathes against your skin, his chest heaving, his muscles trembling with the aftershocks.
Then, slowly, he collapses over your back. His weight settles, heavy, present, real. His lips move against one of the bruises he's left on your shoulder. Then another. Not in apology, Aerion Targaryen does not apologize. But in something. Acknowledgment, perhaps.
Neither of you speaks.
His arm slides around you, not tenderly, but with a kind of quiet insistence, as if placing himself between you and something invisible. You feel his heartbeat against your back. Fast, still. Then slower. Then slower still.
The silence stretches. It does not demand anything from either of you. His breathing deepens, but his grip does not loosen. You close your eyes.
Sleep comes for you both like a tide, not gentle, not kind, but inevitable. The way all true things are.
STEP 7. Never Cage What You Cannot Break.
A beast is not tamed by taking away its fangs. That only makes it weaker, and weakness is not the same thing as trust. It is tamed, if it ever is, by giving it a reason not to use them. It stays because it chooses to. It stays… because it chooses to.
The manse Maekar had given you sat at the edge of a quieter part of the city, near enough to court to satisfy obligation and far enough to breathe in peace. It was smaller than the Red Keep, less grand, but that suited the both of you. No one had said so out loud, yet it was clear enough. The walls were warm stone. The windows faced east and caught the morning light instead of shutting it out. Lavender grew along the outer walk, planted by someone before your time, and it had survived the winter with a stubbornness that felt almost personal.
Inside, signs of a shared life had gathered in slow, ordinary ways. His books beside yours on the shelf. Your embroidery frame positioned near the best window, which he had moved without comment one afternoon when he noticed the light falling wrong. A second cup on the table by the fire, already poured.
None of it was dramatic, all of it mattered to you.
You settled deeper into the chair, adjusting your weight carefully. The pregnancy sat heavy in your lap, in your lower back, in the way you rose slowly from chairs and descended stairs with one hand trailing the wall. Seven months had left their mark. Your belly was full and round beneath the loose linen of your gown, warm to the touch, occasionally shifting with the insistence of someone who had not yet been born but already had opinions on its own.
You pressed a hand briefly to your side where the movement was. A flutter, a press. I know, you thought at it. I know you're there.
The fire crackled. Across the room, Aerion sat at the writing table with his back half-turned to you, working through correspondence with the focused quiet of a man who had learned, slowly, imperfectly, to channel his energy into something productive rather than destructive. Candles burned at either side of the table. His silver hair, longer now, caught their light and held it.
He had not spoken in some time. Neither had you.
The silence was not tense. That distinction still struck you sometimes, even now, the difference between his silences then and his silences now. Before, quiet had been the space between provocations, the held breath before a storm. Now it was simply the room at rest, two people existing in the same warmth, without the need to perform that fact.
Your needle moved through the embroidery. A branch. Leaves in pale green thread, stitched slowly because you no longer rushed things that deserved to be unhurried. You had learned that too, somewhere along the way, though you weren't certain when. Perhaps it had been a lesson you taught yourself while teaching him.
“You've been rubbing your back for the better part of an hour.”
His voice came without him turning. Your hand had drifted there without you noticing. You lowered it. “I'm fine.”
“I didn't say you weren't.”
You went back to the embroidery and the scratch of his quill resumed.
You looked at the back of his head for a moment, at the set of his shoulders, the long line of his spine. He was still proud in his posture. That had not changed, nor would it. But there was something different in it now. Less like a man braced for attack. More like a man who had simply grown comfortable inside his own frame.
Maekar had expressed quiet satisfaction, the last time you had attended court. Not in words, the prince was not a man for words where a look would suffice. But satisfaction nonetheless. You had understood it without needing it explained. So had Aerion, which had caused a complicated expression to move across his face, something between pride and the ghost of old resentment, before easing into something closer to acceptance.
He was still Aerion. He could still cut with a word when he chose to. His patience was a thing learned rather than natural, and it occasionally showed its seams. Two weeks prior, at a supper that had run overlong, he had said something to Lord Peake's second son that had made the table go briefly silent. But he had stopped there, he had not pursued it. He had reached instead for his wine and redirected the conversation with a deliberateness you recognized, because you had practiced that deliberateness in front of him, repeatedly, until he understood what it looked like.
He was not fixed, he was better. There was a meaningful difference.
The fire shifted, throwing new shadows. You set down the embroidery and pressed your palm flat against the side of your stomach, feeling the weight of it, the warmth. The child moved again, long, slow, like something turning in a dream. You breathed around it.
The scratch of the quill stopped.
You did not look up immediately. You felt, rather than saw, the moment his attention shifted, the feeling of being observed by Aerion, which you had long since learned to recognize. It was different now too.
You looked up.
When you looked up, he had already turned in his chair. He was watching you with those violet eyes of his, pale in the candlelight, and there was something in his face he had learned to hide less well over time. Not because he had grown careless. Because keeping it hidden had begun to cost him too much, and he had finally decided, with the quiet certainty he brought to every important thing, that it was no longer worth the price.
Then he rose from the table.
He crossed the room at an unhurried pace, the way a man walks when he has already made up his mind. When he stopped in front of you, his gaze dropped from your face to your hands, then to the rounded curve beneath the linen. Then he knelt.
Not in surrender. Not in show. One knee to the floor, steady and deliberate, bringing himself level with what he meant to honour. He reached out, and his hand, the same hand that had once gripped and demanded and taken, settled with impossible gentleness against the side of your stomach.
He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the fullest part of you.
He stayed there a moment, forehead resting lightly against you, his hand curved around the life you carried. His breathing evened out. His eyes were closed. He did not speak at once, and you did not ask him to.
Then, very quietly, without lifting his head, he said, “I love you.”
You looked down at the top of his silver head, at the broad line of his shoulders bent in a shape that was not quite defeat and not quite humility, but close enough to make your throat tighten. You thought of the man who had once watched you across a banquet table with cold, assessing eyes and found nothing in you worth his attention. You thought of all the months between then and now. The arguments. The patience. The slow, stubborn work of remaining.
You reached down and touched his face gently. He looked up at you. The candlelight made his eyes very bright.
You held his gaze and said, simply, “I love you as well.”
No strategy in it. Just the truth, spoken in the same quiet room where you had spent months learning each other's silences.
He turned his face and pressed one more kiss to your stomach, almost habitual, as if he had already developed the instinct, then rose slowly and settled himself on the arm of your chair. His hand remained at your side, warm and present. You returned to your embroidery. His shoulder rested against yours, and he did not move away.
The fire burned low. The night spread softly around the manse.
Later, when he had drifted into sleep beside you and his breathing had gone slow and even, you lay awake in the dark and thought about the whole path that had brought you here.
Seven steps, written out with the clean, measured certainty of someone who understood that hearts, even difficult ones, had their own structure. You had approached him with respect for what it was, patience for what it could become, and no illusions about the process between.
But somewhere in the long careful middle of it, something had shifted that no guide could have anticipated, or perhaps the guide had always known it and simply not named it. The method had worked. But the method had not been the point.
The point was that he had changed.
Not because you had fixed him. Not because you had caged him or diminished him or stripped away the things that made him difficult. He was still proud. Still sharp. Still capable of the particular cold cruelty that had earned him his reputation, though he used it less now, and never against you.
He had changed because he had chosen to. Because somewhere in the accumulated weight of all those quiet days and careful moments, something in him had found a reason.
And he, Aerion Targaryen, the Bright Prince, the man they called Brightflame for the way he burned, had stayed too.
His hand rested over yours in the dark, light and warm and present.
The beast doesn't need its fangs removed, you thought, closing your eyes. It just needs something worth protecting more than it needs to bite.
Sleep came, slow and complete, and took you both with it.
THE END.
I just listened to “Yes, Chef” by Shawn Hatosy, and the only thing I’ll say is HOLY FUCKING AIRBALL. It was like reading smut, but with Jack Abbot’s sexy voice
Literally me what
Do you guys wait until you finish a fic to post it, or do you post it as you're writing it?
I don't know what to do. Because I finished Gold-Stained before slowly publishing it, but I have a new idea in mind and I don't know if I should publish it while I'm writing it and alongside Gold-Stained, or write it and wait until I finish publishing Gold-Stained.
What should i dooooo
everyone rejoice, Ao3 is back
she was so excited to meet him. me too, girl
UGH this is so satisfactory!!!!
I'm really proud of myself for finishing this. I've been through a lot lately, and it seemed like all my problems took away my inspiration for writing. I have like five unfinished fics (around 20k words each) because of this block I had, but I'm happy I finally managed to get out of it. If you're going through something similar, keep pushing yourself, keep trying, and eventually you'll get there <3
i fear i might have a type
dream rotation fr


