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BOTH HANDS AND A GENTLE MOUTH ! ─── baelor targaryen

summary: baelor takes in a naive handmaiden out of kindness, but soon finds himself developing feelings for her that he knows neither rank nor crown would allow. (4k)

characters: baelor targaryen / fem!handmaiden!reader

contents: yet another fix it fic, forbidden romance, power imbalance, angst, hurt/comfort, so much yearning, pre and post trial of seven, canon divergence cw for mentions of injuries, smut 18+ (MDNI): ring/hand kink, fingering, finger sucking, post-injury sex, cockwarming

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Baelor could not quite place when his profound admiration for you turned into a desire he could hardly stomach.

You came to him, a year or more ago, as a young handmaiden who had only served ladies in Dorne — sunkissed, sparkling, and shockingly naive. The nobility you’d arrived with had inherited the more highborn Targaryen servants, upon her marriage to the Crown Prince’s nephew, Aelor.

Baelor was at the feast on their wedding eve when they discussed what would come of you — of whether they should ship you back to Sunspear or leave you to your devices in King’s Landing and hope you landed on your feet.

It weighed endlessly on his conscience for a reason he could not name. His father always told him that he was much too soft for his own good, and he didn’t truly understand what that meant until he found himself taking on an inexperienced handmaiden as part of his staff.

You doted on him like you would the ladies back in Dorne instead of like a future king, because it was the only thing you knew how to do. You dressed him, pampered him, managed his chambers when he was away, and kept him company when he was alone. Baelor had not the heart to correct you — he was endeared by your naivety, and grew to long for it whenever you retired to your chambers for the night.

You nicked him once, while trying to place his Hand pin on his coat, and it felt strangely like a kiss.

“You’re very kind, Your Grace,” you’d said, voice still trembling, even after he’d dismissed your rambled apologies. “I’ve been beaten for less back in Dorne.”

Baelor’s chest flared with anger at the thought, but he covered it quickly with a gentle smile, half-hidden behind his greying beard. “It was only an accident… It would be ungallant for a prince to beat someone for a mishap— or at all, in truth.”

“As I said,” you hummed, bowing your head to hide your smile while you adjusted his silver pin with more careful fingers. “You’re very sweet, Your Grace.”

“Sweet, am I?” Baelor scoffed. “I fear you would be the only one to think so, my girl.”

The term of endearment spilled effortlessly from his mouth, and had for some moon turns since. You were too lowborn for any real titles, but the absence of such in conversation felt strange to him. He did not mean for it to sound as possessive as it did, though your stomach warmed at the thought of belonging to him in some way.

“Well, it’s a good thing I’m the only one that matters, then, isn’t it, Your Grace?” you’d quipped with a wider grin and a sparkling look in your squinted eyes.

Baelor got the feeling that it was custom for you to joke with your ladies in such a manner, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that your words were a prophecy of some kind. Like you knew, as well as he did, that you were going to become a much bigger part of his life than he’d planned.

“Aye,” he grinned. “That you are, my girl…”

Somewhere between now and then, the veil had slipped, and he could no longer distinguish his want for you from his need. He found himself tethered to your very existence, bending to your gravity like the tide and the moon. It sometimes felt like he lived only to be touched by you; the uncertainty of the rest of the world slipped away whenever your fingers brushed his skin.

Even now, he has to fight back a shiver as you slide his rings on one by one — with far more gentleness than should likely be allowed, in the very most literal sense.

Baelor watches you in the long mirror propped in the corner of his chambers while you stand at his side, plucking the silver jewelry from the small table beside you with a precision that feels almost methodical.

His eyes fall over your messily fixed hair, as if you’d done it in a hurry or slept in it the night before; then to your dress sleeve, which threatens to slip down your shoulder, that you make no move to raise again; and to your heeled shoes, peeking beneath the skirt of your dress, which you had kicked off to rest your feet and think he doesn’t notice.

But there is nothing about you, he’s found, that would not capture his immediate attention.

“This is a new arrangement,” Baelor observes as he peers down at his hand, now adorned in a different array of silver than he’s used to. You’ve switched the usual pattern of them; added a couple new ones and a few he’d forgotten that he had.

“Aye, Your Grace,” you nod with a proud, sheepish smile as you slip the dark dragon insignia ring — which belonged to his grandfather many years ago — down the middle finger of his left hand. You cradle his wrist gently in your free one and absentmindedly trace the ridges of his knuckles with your thumb. “I dreamt of it last night and wanted to see how it looked…”

Baelor grins, and with a teasing squint in his brown-blue eyes, wonders aloud, “Dreaming of my fingers often, are you?”

Your wide eyes snap to his glimmering, mismatched ones in an instant. He watches your shy smile fade in a flash, ebbing into a frightened sort of look — because he has had a way of plaguing your dreams, for a while now, really; and his sudden inquiry on the matter makes you feel nothing short of utterly caught.

“Sorry, Your Grace. That was— That was inappropriate of me,” you stammer and turn away. Baelor mourns your touch when you drop his hand to face the table on your other side. You go to pick up one of the rings there, but have since forgotten which one you’d had in mind, and how to use your hands. “I shouldn’t have— I just meant that—”

“I only jest, my girl, I assure you,” Baelor says with a breathy laugh. “I am not much to dream about, I know.”

You roll your eyes at his self-deprecation, which turns into a squinted look when you glance at him over your shoulder.

“Of course not, Your Grace,” you answer drily, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Because the Crown Prince of the Iron Throne isn’t the most eligible bachelor in the Seven Kingdoms, after all.”

Baelor flares hot under his all-black grab while you pluck another ring from the table — a dark silver paired with a Targaryen ruby in the center. He hopes the embers tingling suddenly in his skin don’t show as red on his face when you turn back to face him.

“Well, most women aren’t exactly searching for an old widower with two kids, are they?”

You shrug, with your lips thinned into a tight line, as you reach again for his left hand. You cradle his palm with your own as you slide the ring onto his barren pointer finger.

“Well, I presume many old widowers with two kids aren’t future kings, Your Grace,” you hum. “And most future kinds aren’t usually so handsome.”

“You flatter me,” he dismisses with a shake of his head.

“Isn’t that my job, Your Grace?” you giggle and turn away again.

Baelor’s eyes narrow at your profile.

“Is that it, then?” he wonders aloud, then smiles at the confused look you give him in response. You try hard not to cower under the weight of his crooked smile and the suspicious glint in his brown-blue eyes. “Are you only so sweet to me because you feel it is your job to do so?”

Your eyes widen, caught again.

You swallow and calculate your next words carefully. “Well, anything otherwise would be… inappropriate, Your Grace, would it not?”

“Aye,” he nods. “It would be…”

You avert your gaze and fumble with the weighty Hand pin left on the silver tray in front of you. Your clammy fingers tremble faintly when you turn back to him, weaving the needle through his black coat.

Baelor watches you with an unwavering gaze, silently praying that you’ll nick him with it like you did the very first time — so that he can be coddled by you, maybe, or so he can bleed and feel an ounce of release.

“’Tis a shame, is it not?” he hums distantly. “A king is allowed only two things: his lady wife and his whores. Anything in between could start wars, history proves. If you were highborn, no one would think to look at us twice…”

The gravity of his words — the confession that lies within them — hits you like a punch to the stomach. It threatens to steal your breath the same way.

“Would you, Your Grace?” you hear yourself ask, voice trembling, as you press the silver pin to his chest. Baelor’s brows raise in an expectant look, and you struggle to find the courage to repeat yourself for several long moments. “If I had been born a lady, I mean… Would you look at me twice?”

“I do already,” Baelor confesses with a gentle smile and a tender look in his mismatched eyes, tilting his head towards the door. “It is only out there that I cannot.”

“So…” you trail off and swallow hard. “If we’re alone, in here, then…”

“Then I presume what the rest of the kingdom doesn’t know wouldn’t hurt it.”

You try to meet his smile with one of your own, though in your sudden stupor, the corner of your lip only flickers faintly upward. “Aye. I guess you’re right, Your Grace.”

Your fingers freeze on the silver sword on his chest when he lifts a ringed hand, reaching slowly for your face. Your breath hitches when his fingers, warm and softly calloused, meet your burning skin. He swipes an eyelash from the apple of your cheek with a touch far gentler than you thought any man could possess.

He lingers there, just against you. Your heavy breaths entwine as the anticipation crescendos within the cobblestoned bedroom.

“Are you going to kiss me, Your Grace?” you ask, already made breathless and heavy-eyed by the thought alone.

Baelor shakes his head.

“No. I’m not,” he mutters, though the heavy look in his glimmering eyes says otherwise. “Not until you say so, anyway…”

You flare hotter when his fingers trail slowly down your cheek and over the curve of your jaw, like he’s memorizing how your skin feels under his touch.

“Nothing happens until you say so,” the older man assures. “If you want me to stop, give me the word, and I will speak naught of this ever again.”

You swallow hard.

“And… If I don’t want this to stop?” you wonder on bathed breath, as the pad of his thumb traces gently over the curve of your bottom lip. Baelor’s lidded eyes train there, and his mouth waters for a taste of you.

“Then you need only give me a sign… And I will give you whatever you want…”

Your mouth parts gently. You go to say something, but the words get hung in your throat. You tilt your chin and press a chaste kiss to the pad of his thumb, instead — peering up at the man from beneath your lashes as you test the newfound waters.

Baelor’s brown-blue eyes turn glassy under your touch in an instant, and your stomach swims with a warmer feeling. With a bit more confidence than before, you wrap your lips slowly around the tip of his thumb — which you had trimmed and buffed for him the night before. You can still taste the sweet oil you’d rubbed onto his nail beds when you suck gently at the digit, without ever once taking your eyes off the man in front of you.

You pull away a moment later with a low pop, wearing a spit-slick mouth and a mischievous half-smile. “Is that enough of a sign, Your Grace—?”

His wide palm smooths across your jaw and around the back of your neck before you can properly get the words out. He pulls you closer with a suddenly firm hand, pressing his lips to yours before you can blink and kissing you like he’d swallow you whole if he could.

You moan when he licks into your parted mouth. His tongue feels like velvet against your own, and tastes of mint leaf, blood oranges, and flat cakes from an early breakfast. Your trembling hands reach for the silver chain keeping his cloak in place and tug at the chain to pull him closer. You exhale hard through your nose when his greying scruff scratches at your delicate skin.

Your lips click faintly when Baelor pulls away, far too soon for your liking. He smiles with your spit on his mouth when you try hopelessly to chase his kiss.

“When I asked, earlier, if you had dreamt of my fingers…” he trails off through labored breaths, nudging the bridge of your nose with the tip of his. “You looked frightened… As if I had caught you in some secret… Is that a fair assessment, would you say?”

You nod, not trusting your voice enough to speak.

“And what was I doing with them?” he asks, eyes darting back and forth between both of yours. “In those dreams of yours?”

Your kissed mouth opens to answer him, but nothing comes out for a long, embarrassing beat.

Baelor’s lips curl slowly into a sympathetic grin.

“Show me,” he commands; he pleads.

Your hands shake when they reach for his ringed one, still cradling gently at the back of your neck. Your fingers wrap around his wrist right before you step away from him, just to tug him with you across the expansive room. Your boots slip from beneath the skirt of your dress as your bare feet pad across the cobbles to the made bed against the wall.

You tilt your chin to keep his gaze as you sit gingerly on the edge of it. The feathered mattress, topped with silk and velvet made of Targaryen red, dips under your weight. You lift the thin skirt of your dress to your thighs with one hand, while your other guides Baelor’s between your legs. He smells of leather and something sweet when he towers over you, peering down at you from the chiseled bridge of his nose as his fingers near your warmth.

Your mouth parts with a gasped breath when his middle and forefinger trails over the velveteen edges of your cunt, now blanketed in the thin layer of silk you leak for him. He traces slowly down your labia and up again. You twitch on instinct when he nudges your sensitive clit, and his mouth lifts into a slow half-smile.

Your grip on his wrist tightens as the pad of his middle finger dips into your pulsing entrance. “Please…” you hear yourself beg. It fades into an airier breath when he pierces you slowly with the digit. You coat his skin in a layer of honey that allows him to slip inside you with ease.

He exhales hard through his nose, in what you think is meant to be a laugh, as he smiles lazily down at you.

“Look how easily you open up for me…” he murmurs in a soft, melodic voice. A whimper sounds in your throat when he slides his finger out and back again. “Imagine how well you’ll take my cock…”

Your lip flickers into a dazed sort of smile. “Do you imagine me taking your cock often, Your Grace?” you tease despite your audible breathlessness.

“Aye,” Baelor nods once. “I do.”

He presses his thumb hard to your swollen clit, bending at the waist to swallow your moan with a searing kiss before the guards outside can hear it. He presses you back into the mattress, which feels like it might swallow you whole, and cages you beneath his broader body while he pulls an orgasm from your body with nothing but his fingers.

You have to change the sheets again when he’s done with you.

And he attends the following council meeting with his fingertips pruned and smelling of you.

When Baelor needed help donning his armor that foggy morning before the Trial of Seven, he called upon his trusted handmaiden, as he had done for many years. You dressed him with all the obedience of a hired servant, but carried an air of stubbornness with you that came with loving him as deeply as you had come to.

You were more than his maid by the time you arrived in Ashford — you were the woman who shared his bed when the nights were quiet and empty, the woman who caused the future king to refuse to ever court another. You loved him like a wife, even though you knew the title would never be afforded to you. Baelor always joked that you were as stubborn as one, too, which is precisely why you heavied the room with your silence as you dressed the man in steel armor a size too small for him.

“You’re trembling,” he’d observed as you loosened the clasp on his dragon-crested chest plate.

“Apologies, Your Grace,” you said in a detached monotone.

Baelor only grinned, because he knew you only saved such formal titles for when he’s gotten himself into trouble. “You don’t have to fear for me, my girl— I’m fighting my brother and the King’s Guard; neither will bring harm to me, I assure you.”

“And what if they do?” you’d asked with venom coating your every word. “If you get hurt— If you die on that field— What will come of me?”

“Well, there are plenty of highborns in need of handmaidens—”

You shoved him hard by the shoulder — perhaps the only lowborn in the entirety of the Seven Kingdoms that could do so without punishment — and met his furrow-browed look of confusion with a hardened scowl.

“Do not patronize me, Baelor— Don’t assume that I’m only worried to be out of a job when you know…”

You trailed off with a gasped breath, not entirely sure of what words should follow.

Baelor heard you anyway, even in your silence.

“Aye. I know,” Baelor nodded, soft eyes glittering in the orange candlelight. “And that is why I’m coming back when this trifle is through— You’re not getting rid of me that easily, my girl.”

You could not save him from the stands when the trial commenced and the battlefield turned into a blur of merciless blows; nor were you permitted into the barracks when Aerion yielded and the opposing sides received treatment in separate camps.

You created quite a stir with your cries, and the hysterical curses you spat at the knights keeping you out. You know it’s bound to be discussed in whispers on the morrow, but you can’t quite bring yourself to care about it now.

You and Baelor don’t share a word upon his return — because you don’t think you can open your mouth without crying, and his distant shock is still slow to wear off. You undress him with numb hands that tremble at the sight of crimson blood, and the blooming, plum-wine colored bruises that decorate his pale skin.

You prepare a scalding bath with healing oils and ease the man slowly into the steam. You have to change the water twice before it finally runs clear, untainted by swirls of pink-red blood.

You kneel beside the tub and press a warm cloth to his spine, where a dark bruise turns black at the very base of his neck. Baelor shivers at your gentleness, and at the droplets of silken water that rush down his back. You watch the tendons in his freckled shoulder twitch under the skin. The carnage painted like watercolor along the canvas of his back and ribs makes you feel like crying all over again.

Baelor’s heavy head lifts at the sound of your sniffling. He grimaces at the ache in his neck when he turns to look at you. The pained look etched across your features stings physically at his chest — like a lance to the sternum times a thousand.

“Oh, my love,” he coos, voice laced with exhaustion. “Don’t cry, my girl— Don’t cry.”

He lifts his hand from the water to reach for the one bracing yourself on the edge of the tub. You notice his knuckles are bruised when he cups your fingers in his palm, dragging them to his mouth to press his lips over the delicate skin — not kissing you there exactly, just feeling you.

The rag in your other hand splashes when it falls from your fingers and into the water. You splay your hand over his freckled shoulder to coax him closer before pressing your cheek to the crown of his head. He smells of tea tree oil and clean soap, but the scent of blood still lingers in the grey-black strands.

“I’m sorry,” you whimper in quiet sniffles.

“Don’t apologize, my love,” he whispers against your knuckles.

“I was— so frightened for you,” you confess through gasped breaths. “I thought for certain that your brother’s mace had—”

“Do you feel this?” Baelor mumbles against you, right before he presses a chaste kiss to your knuckles, and smooths his grey scruff over the delicate skin when he turns to look at you. You sit back on your haunches with your features contorted in a confused look, which he meets with a tired smile. “I am here. I’m alive. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Do not do that to me again, Baelor,” you tell him, suddenly hardened.

His quiet smile grows.

“I do not plan on it, my girl, I assure you,” he hums in a melodic voice.

He tilts his bearded chin in a silent plea for you to kiss him. You bend over the tub’s edge to meet him halfway, and fight the urge to cry when your lips lock with his chapped ones. You kiss him once, twice, and then a third time until you lose count. Baelor speaks through each of them.

“I plan on— Returning home with you— And marrying you— In front of the prettiest weirwood tree in King’s Landing— And letting all the rest of it fall where it may—”

Your mouth is softly swollen from his kisses when you part from him. Your heavy eyes flit back and forth between his brown-blue ones, lidded and glimmering with fatigue and contentment. Your brows lower in a worried sort of look — because he had told you, not too long ago now, that marrying anything lower than a lord’s daughter could start a rebellion across the kingdoms.

“Is that wise, Your Grace?” you murmur with an audible waver in your voice.

“No,” Baelor hums with a shake of his head. “But let’s do it anyway.”

Warm water stains your skin when his wide hand smooths across your cheek, dragging your mouth back to his. He kisses you harder this time, deeper, sliding his tongue between your lips like tasting you removes the remnants of war from his mouth. You cradle his jaw and neck in gentle hands while his free one curls around your shoulder, dampening your dress as it reaches down your back to unknot the tie in your corset.

You rise from your kneeled position to loosen it the rest of the way. You slide your arms from the sleeves and let the thin fabric pool at your feet with a soft thud when it hits the cobbles. You try not to cower at the glint in Baelor’s mismatched eyes, as if he were seeing you for the very first time in that moment — discovering something new within your naked body that he had seen a hundred times over.

You take his hand and step gingerly into the bathtub with him. The steaming water feels like satin against your cool skin as you sink down into it. Baelor’s palms splay over your ribcage to keep you steady when you straddle his scruffy thighs. You keep the bulk of your weight on your knees when he tries to pull you closer.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” you tell him, cradling his neck in gentle hands.

“You couldn’t,” Baelor whispers.

You brace yourself on his shoulders, careful to avoid his bruises there, as you reach into the silken water and between your bodies. There’s a dull cut on his ribs, likely from where his armor had dug into his skin from a blow from an enemy lance. You’ll have to fight him to let you tend to it later, you know; but for now, you cup his half-hard cock in your gentle palm and massage him there until he’s fully stiff in your grasp.

Baelor’s grumbled sigh fills the quiet bathroom. He tilts his head back and struggles to keep his eyes open as you shift on top of him. Your breasts rise from the top of the water and press against his scruffy chest when you pierce yourself with the bulbous head of his cock. Your quieter whine fills with his soft groan when you sink fully on top of him.

You go to rock your hips over his thighs, but his hands on your hips tighten to keep you still.

“Stay like this…” he pleads through bated breaths. “Just for a little while…”

Your cunt flutters around him at the thought, though your chest still tightens with worry. “What if someone comes in? What if they see?”

Baelor just grins, dizzy with love and the evasion of death. “Let them see.”

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