+18 page for x reader fics. Call me Ophelia. She/her. 27. Obviously, things I post/reblog aren't condoned irl and it's all just be fictional content to enjoy. Currently obsessing over ASOIAF and Animal Kingdom
𓏲ּ𝄢 𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: pregnancy has left you sickened by nearly every scent in oldtown. your only reprieve is burying your face in gwayne’s neck. though your poor husband rarely escapes without his pretty, pale skin thoroughly ravished.
𓏲ּ𝄢 𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐬: smut, romance, cockwarming, pregnant sex, p what p, poor gwayne, his wife is a menace, domestic fluff, 18+ MDNI
𓏲ּ𝄢 𝐚𝐧: in celebration of gwayne finally having a bath in hotd. don’t get me wrong, I would have 100% risked that STI for dirty Gwayne, but now we can all admire that pretty pale neck again….
anways! this is also a little thank you for the unexpected, wonderful reaction i received on my debut gwayne fic! this can be read as a continuation or a stand-alone.
𓏲ּ𝄢 𝐰𝐜: 1.3k (oneshot)
You were barely showing, just the softest swell beneath the silk of your abandoned nightgown, but the pregnancy had already made your stomach squeamish.
Gwayne sat with you in the wide armchair by the open balcony doors, the warm night air billowing the gauzy curtains with the scent of the bay and night-blooming summer flowers. You were settled fully in his lap, arms around his neck, bare skin against his, his cock buried deep inside you and simply… resting there. Warm and full from your first round. Neither of you moved. The slow, steady throb of him against your walls was enough. It soothed the deep soreness pregnancy had left you with, and that restless ache that forever made you want to live in his skin.
Your nose was buried in the pale column of his throat.
You could not get enough of the smell of him. Clean skin, faint traces of the cedar and orange soap the maids used on him, and underneath it the deeper, warmer scent that was purely your Gwayne.
Ormund’s cloying perfumes made your stomach turn these days and the entire household reeked of his potpourri. You kept the windows and doors thrown open all day and night. But your husband’s neck was the one thing in the world that did not make you want to retch.
So you scented him constantly. And took advantage of him as you pleased, ravishing his pretty, pale skin. Your poor husband patiently endured his fate, condemned to spend his days feasted upon, the long column of his neck bitten red and purple for the whole of court to see.
“My dragon love is attempting to eat me again,” he murmured, voice low and amused even as he tilted his head to grant you better access. “I have a meeting with the High Septon in the morning, you greedy, greedy woman.”
You hummed against his skin, the sound making him close his eyes. His Adam’s apple bobbed and you attacked it. Your teeth scraped at the sensitive skin. He hissed, hand tightening on your hip. You soothed the sting at once with soft kitten licks, tongue tracing the indentations you had left.
“Sorry,” you whispered against his skin, not sounding very sorry at all. “You are just so pretty, husband. And you smell… gods, Gwayne.”
You whined as you buried your face again in the curve of his neck, just breathing him in. You felt like Ormund with his damned pomander.
“How am I to survive a whole week without this?” you asked mournfully.
“Stay.” His hand found the gentle swell of your belly and spread protectively over it. “It is far too much strain to ride in your condition.”
“The babe will be perfectly fine—"
“It is too much strain for you.”
He caught your chin and guided your face away from his throat until you were forced to look at him. Green eyes steady, serious. “You are already ill every morning. You scarcely keep anything down till midday. I worry for you.”
You hummed in reluctant acknowledgment and dipped your head again, resuming your slow, wet kisses, tasting the salt of his skin.
“Rhaenyra is with her second child already,” you murmured against his skin. “We want to go together and choose eggs for the babes to cradle with.” Your hand drifted down to rest over his on your stomach. “Oh, how sweet would it be if they were of the same clutch?”
“Very sweet,” Gwayne conceded, though his tone suggested he found the prospect considerably less charming than you did. He tried, but your husband was not born with fire singing in his blood. You could not fault him for not understanding. “But please, dearest, you should make the journey after the babe arrives and you have recovered.”
You answered him by rolling your hips.
A slow, deliberate grind that dragged your slick walls along the thick length buried inside you. Gwayne’s breath left him in a rough exhale and you felt him twitch inside of you, swelling even fuller. His hands immediately settled at your hips, large and warm.
“Again, for me,” he rasped.
You obliged. Up and down, slow at first, savoring every inch of the stretch, the way he filled you so completely even when neither of you was thrusting hard. The armchair creaked beneath you. You were dripping; his seed from the first round already spilled out with every upward slide, slicking his thighs and balls, making filthy wet sounds that filled the quiet chamber. Mixed with the quiet wash of the bay and the soft rustle of curtains, it was obscene.
You whined and he helped you without hesitation. His strong hands lifted and lowered you in a steady, generous rhythm, strong thighs braced beneath yours.
You kept your face buried to his skin, dipping to suck dark marks at his collar, breathing him in like you were starving for him, licking sweat from his skin, biting down whenever the pleasure spiked too high.
“That’s it,” he whispered against your hair, voice strained. “Have what you need, sweetling. Use me.”
You whimpered and clenched around him, his words going straight to the tight coil low in your belly. Your pace turned desperate, grinding harder, faster, chasing the friction of his cockhead against that perfect spot inside you while your sensitive clit dragged against the base of his dark curls on every roll.
“My love,” he gasped, head tipping back against the chair, his eyes fixed on you. “My beautiful love. Gods, I should keep you always like this— soft and lovely with my babe.”
Your pace quickened, hips rolling with growing urgency. The soft swell of your stomach brushed against his abdomen with every downward slide. One of his hands left your hip to cup the back of your head, holding you close so you could keep nuzzling and biting as you pleased. The other remained firm on your hip, helping you rise and sink, rise and sink, until the pleasure coiled tight and bright low in your belly.
You pulled your head back just enough to grip his chin and drag his mouth to yours. Breath mixed. Teeth clicked.
You came with a muffled cry, walls fluttering and clenching around him. Gwayne groaned deeply, hips lifting once, twice, grinding up into you as he followed, spilling hot and deep while you rode out every last pulse.
For a long moment neither of you moved. You stayed exactly where you were: impaled, trembling, staring into his green eyes while you stroked his hair and pressed soft, open-mouthed kisses to his lips. His hands stayed wrapped around your back, holding you gently against him even as his cock twitched with aftershocks inside you.
“That was shameless,” he murmured.
“Was it persuasive?”
Gwayne gave you a long, unimpressed look. You smiled sweetly.
“…You are an unscrupulous woman.”
You squealed with joyous victory, peppering thankful kisses to the scar under his eye.
He ran his fingers through his hair, brushing it from his face, doing poorly to hide his own smile.
“You have my blessing— provided the maesters find no cause for concern.” His gaze sharpened. “And you will rest once you arrive. You will not exhaust yourself attempting to keep pace with your sister, and at the first hint of pain— however slight— you will stay with her and send for me.”
“You make me sound so terribly fragile.”
He pressed a kiss to your left eye, then to your right. “You are what is most precious to me.”
Then he bent to your throat and began repaying your greedy attentions, one lingering kiss at a time.
HOTD masterlist
@ange0o
if you want to be in my tagged for any character i write for let me know :)
𓏲ּ𝄢 𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: for four years you've stolen affection from ser gwayne hightower. kisses pressed to his cheek. fingers buried in his auburn hair. now you're finally betrothed, yet he remains as painfully chivalrous as ever, denying being pulled into an unwatched hallway or even a kiss despite his mischievous princess's every attempt to entice him.
𓏲ּ𝄢 𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐬: smut, p with p, mild angst, fluff, heavy romance, swearing, poor gwayne, reader is a menace, yearning, making out, cunnilingus, thigh riding, 18+ MDNI
𓏲ּ𝄢 𝐚𝐧: reader is targaryen (rhaenyra’s younger sister)—no physical features are explicitly described other than targaryen features (purple eyes and silver hair since i couldn’t resist)
title from freddie fox's droolworthy reading of Keats' La Belle Dame Sans Merci~ link
𓏲ּ𝄢 𝐰𝐜: 8.9k (oneshot)
Gwayne Hightower would not touch you.
It was beginning to feel like a punishment.
He was ever the attentive fiancée. He offered his arm when you walked. He held your waist to help you dismount Dreamfyre, but let go as soon as your riding boots brushed the floor. During feasts, he led you by the small of your back when the crowd pressed too closely, but he never allowed it to settle there. These many years you had been beside him, and he had never even stolen a kiss.
He spent four years before your match as your personal knight. And you had hardly been restrained with your affection for him then.
You pressed kisses to his cheek whenever he did something that pleased you. You threaded your fingers through his auburn hair when he knelt before you to fasten the ties of your riding boots. You touched him at any opportunity. And now that he was your betrothed, your behavior grew tenfold.
You wore your lowest cut gowns, enough to earn disapproving stares from the maids, and leaned over tables when he stood across from you, asking what he thought of your rubies, baring your throat with the peak of your breasts.
A few goblets into any feast, you became a terror. You would catch Gwayne’s hand beneath the table and attempt to pull him toward abandoned halls, empty balconies, shadowed alcoves— anywhere private enough so that he might finally claim what was his.
He always followed where you led him. His fingers would close around yours. He would let you pull him from the hall, his long strides carrying him behind you without protest until the music dulled and the torchlight thinned. He followed until he realized what you planned. Then it was like trying to pull a stubborn mule by the rein.
"Princess…”
"Ser Gwayne." You would wrap your arms around his neck.
He would carefully peel them away. You would press yourself against him and feel, unmistakably, the hard outline of his cock against your stomach. Proof enough that he was not unaffected by you.
Sometimes his eyes closed as though he were praying through some private agony. His breath would leave him slowly through his nose. His large hands would settle upon your hips, warm and tight enough to make you ache beneath the silk.
But Gwayne always stepped away. He always peeled your hands from his clothes and returned you to the safety of the feast like some wayward child who had wandered too close to the fire.
Gwayne was too good a man. Too honorable. A knight who still believed in chivalry when half the realm treated it as a pretty lie told to maidens before men stuck themselves inside. He guarded your virtue more fiercely than you, refusing to take advantage of your wine-softened judgment no matter how you tempted and tormented him. Gwayne never allowed himself to ruin you.
It was the hottest day of the summer when you realized why.
You went to the training yard whenever the weather was warm. When the knights in their exertion would shed their shirts to continue their training. It was improper. This was explained to you endlessly by your ladies, your father, even your sister, but no one succeeded in stopping you. You sat there for hours, watching as sweat ran down his throat and gathered along the hard planes of his chest. His auburn hair darkened at the temples. Broad through the shoulders, lean at the waist, his pale skin flushed from the sun.
You sat beneath a covered gallery with a cup of watered wine and made no effort to conceal your staring at only him.
Gwayne made every effort not to acknowledge it.
But the other knights did not conceal their interest in you. A young knight from the Reach bowed every time he passed the gallery. Another removed his shirt despite having done nothing strenuous enough to justify it. When one of them asked whether you might favor him with your ribbon for his next bout, Gwayne lowered his practice sword and looked at him.
“Ser Roland.”
“My lord?”
“If you possess enough breath to beg favours from the princess, you possess enough to continue.” Gwayne struck him hard enough to send the knight sprawling into the dust. When his opponent rose, Gwayne disarmed him so violently that both wooden swords cracked.
He never looked toward you, but the muscle jumping in his jaw was satisfaction enough. His jealousy was one of the few scraps you had. They were pitiful little things, but they proved Gwayne’s restraint was not disinterest.
When the training ended, you descended into the yard while the men washed and dressed. Gwayne’s shirt lay where he had left it. You only meant to collect it for him. That was all. A sweet, wifely gesture before you were properly his wife.
A ring slipped from the breast pocket when you lifted the linen.
It fell into the dust without a sound. It was gold, old enough that its surface had softened with years of wear. Small, delicate, made for a woman’s hand. A pale green stone rested in its setting, not bright like an emerald but gentle, almost clouded, with tiny filigree vines around the band. It looked like a humble version of your own betrothal ring on your finger set with purple sapphire.
Oh.
For months, perhaps longer, you had noticed him touching something inside that pocket. His fingers would disappear briefly beneath the edge of his doublet, finding something hidden there. You had caught him alone once, holding a small golden object in his palm and staring down at it with such a contemplative expression that you had quietly retreated before he noticed you.
You had wondered what it was. And now you knew. A woman’s wedding ring.
You looked toward Gwayne. He stood beside the well, speaking to another knight as water ran over his bare chest. He did not notice you.
Perhaps she was blonde. Oldtown seemed filled with golden women in your imagination, graceful and pious, with eyes as crystal blue as their waters. Likely she was the daughter of some landed knight, far too low for the son of Otto Hightower. She had to be beautiful.
Like your sister, Rhaenyra, you had been permitted your pick of the eligible men presented to you.
Ancient lords offered themselves beside sons younger than some of their horses. Heirs came from every corner of the realm, gathering at Driftmark until the corridors filled with unfamiliar banners and the stables groaned beneath the weight of their entourages. They waited in a line that curved through the great hall, each man eager for his chance to stand before you and explain why his blood was worth joining to yours.
You had sat on the throne of pale driftwood, made comfortable with plush white furs. Your skin polished with oils and perfume and your hair woven with pearls.
Your father’s advisor sat lower at your side, jabbering endlessly on about advantages in your ear.
The men themselves offered ships, armies, ancient blood, loyalty, gold, grain, any and every resource the crown had want for, they offered at your feet. Young and old praised your beauty, your intelligence, your lineage. You were the fairest daughter of the king. Truly befitting the title Jewel of the Realm. A true dragon amongst women. You rested your cheek on your fist.
One lord promised to give you six healthy sons despite appearing near death himself. Another recited the victories of every knight in his family since the Conquest. A young heir stumbled through a poem about your amethyst eyes, despite never having actually looked at your face since his attention was too caught at your breasts.
Then Gwayne stepped forward and bowed.
Your Gwayne. He was painfully handsome in the green finery of his House and silver jewelry; his auburn hair brushed back from his face.
“My princess, House Hightower has—"
“I accept.”
It was the first time you had spoken since the procession began. Silence spread across the hall.
Gwayne remained bent for a moment. When he lifted his head, his expression was almost comical. His eyes were wider than you had ever seen them, lips slightly parted.
“Princess,” the advisor beside you began cautiously, “perhaps you should consider—”
“Pray, consider what?” you turned on the man sharply. “House Hightower is among the oldest and wealthiest houses in the realm and Ser Gwayne’s father has served faithfully as Hand of the King for years.”
Otto Hightower was the worst of any power-hungry, conniving snake you’d ever witnessed, and his elder brother had only one son, Ormund. A cruel, volatile young man according to what Alicent heard from Gwayne. It was a matter of time before he befell accident and Gwayne would inherit Oldtown in his stead.
You had not spent years dreaming of Gwayne without considering what marriage to him would mean. You were besotted, not a fool.
“Every merchant vessel entering the Honeywine pays for the privilege. Every hold filled with silk, spice, wine, steel, or grain enriches House Hightower before its cargo ever reaches the market. Their wealth may not lie buried beneath a mountain like House Lannister’s, but trade does not run dry.”
You looked back to Gwayne, softening your voice. “I have always longed to see Oldtown. The most beautiful city in Westeros perfumed by endless flowers, I am told, and near enough I would be only two days by dragonback from my most precious sister. I think it a fine match.”
Gwayne looked at you.
You had begged him often enough for stories of Oldtown. Of the Hightower burning against the evening sky. The bells of the Starry Sept. Of the great markets along the Honeywine, crowded with merchants and sailors from half the known world. Of the city in spring and summer, when flowers climbed every wall and spilled from every garden until the streets seemed to burst with them. He always answered you patiently.
Otto coughed into his hand to poorly conceal his delight. He had already been presented and rejected before his son. He stood among the assembled lords looking every bit like a fat cat drowning in cream.
At the time you had thought Gwayne’s reaction adorable.
Now you felt like you were going to vomit—
He would not kiss you because he did not want to.
Gwayne had ceased being your personal protector once the betrothal was announced. A future husband could not stand alone outside your chambers at all hours without inviting questions about your virtue. And you— vain, witless creature that you were— found it romantic. You imagined him restless in his new rooms, him lying awake with the same ache that kept you from sleep.
All the while, he had been touching another woman’s ring through the fabric over his heart.
Suddenly every kindness he’d shown you spoiled beneath the memory of it.
He had been romantic, in his careful way. He remembered which flowers you liked and had them brought to your chambers when the gardens were bare. He stood beneath your balcony in the rain because you had fallen asleep under the covered daybed before dismissing him. He warmed your gloves before winter rides and carried sugared plums in his pocket because he knew you became more foul-tempered when hungry. After you rolled your ankle, he had carried you through half the Red Keep.
That was Gwayne’s particular cruelty. He was too good a man to be careless with you. Too honorable to let his reluctance become unkindness.
He had proposed because his father commanded it.
He was your knight only because he was commanded.
You had seen him joust the day your mother died. Alicent had spoken of her brother, how he was good. He was kind.
You had been lonely, half-wild with grief— you had seen your beautiful mother bleeding out in her bed. His blood in the mud. The unfairness. The helplessness of everything. You fixated upon him like a dragon with prey. You wanted him. You wanted him more than you'd ever wanted anything.
Viserys had always had a fatal weakness for his daughters. Jewels, hawks, gowns, ponies, sweetmeats, if either of you desired something, he rarely found the strength to refuse.
He was only seven-and-ten, already a knight. The scar beneath his left eye a neat line of black thread against pink swollen skin. He spoke his oaths to you. That day onward, his life belonged to you.
Perhaps someone had given the ring to him before he left. Perhaps he had intended to give it back with another promise.
Your stomach lurches painfully and you need to physically hold back the vomit, closing your mouth and constricting your throat.
His back was to you. You dropped his shirt back beneath the tree as though the linen had burned your hands. With no greeting nor blown kisses you turned on your heel.
You returned to your chambers, hand clenched around the ring until your nails drew blood. When you finally opened it, the delicate gold was stained red along one edge.
By twilight, you found Gwayne beneath the Heart Tree.
The sky above the walls had deepened to violet, the last of the sun caught in the highest windows of the Red Keep. Gwayne sat with his back against the pale trunk, his linen shirt only half-buttoned and his auburn hair disordered from the repeated drag of his hands through it. His doublet lay overturned across one knee. The contents of his pockets had been emptied onto the grass beside him
The sight of him scraped away much of the satisfaction you had carried with you.
The goldsmith had worked quickly when summoned by a princess. You had rejected three designs for chains before choosing one fine enough to disappear beneath Gwayne’s clothes, but strong enough that the ring would not be lost again. It was plain gold, without gems or needless ornament. Anything grander had seemed an insult to the modest woman you imagined once worn it.
Now, seeing the strain around his mouth and the bleakness in his eyes, you wished you had not taken it at all. “Gwayne.”
His head lifted sharply.
Relief came too quickly before he mastered it. He rose at once, brushing grass from his clothes, though his attention never left your face.
“My princess.”
You smiled despite the ache beneath your ribs. You had done something kind for him. That was what mattered. You brought the velvet pouch from behind your back and offered it to him. “I have something for you.”
He accepted it carefully, brows furrowed together.
The fine chain spilled over his palm, followed by the ring he had clearly spent the last several hours searching for like a madman. Relief broke naked across his face. His shoulders lowered. His mouth parted on a breath.
“Forgive me.” Your voice came quieter now. “I should not have taken it.”
His eyes rose to yours.
“It fell from your shirt in the yard, and I feared you would lose it. You carry it loose in your pocket as though it were a copper.” You touched one finger to the chain in his hand. “Something so precious deserved better.”
“You had this made?”
You nodded. You would not be cruel enough to let him lose his last piece of her merely because you were a stupid, spoiled little bitch who imagined herself loved.
He looked at the chain again, thumb passing over the links with painful care.
Gwayne had always been good to you. Your blood was not made for gentleness, but he made you wish to be good back.
He was romantic in a hundred small ways. He gave you everything a good man might reasonably give a lady but withheld any single thing that would have allowed you to believe he wanted you as a man.
He slipped the chain over his head and tucked the ring beneath his shirt. It disappeared against his chest, settling exactly where you had intended— directly over his heart.
You looked at his face and wondered what kind of woman could place such grief there.
“She must have been very dear to you.”
Something changed in his expression. Love, certainly. Loss. A tenderness so old and deep that it appeared to have settled permanently into him.
“She was.” he said quietly. “More than I could ever explain.” His hand closed around the ring, “I miss her constantly.”
Something inside you broke like a final cut of a frayed thread. You clasped your hands together so he would not seem them shaking. You smiled once more, though it felt like stretching skin over a corpse. “It is late, I should return inside.”
He stepped toward you. “Allow me to escort you.”
“There is no need.”
“It is dark,” he reached for your hand.
You stepped away before he could touch it. The movement was small, no more than half a pace.
Still, his fingers stopped in the empty air between you. You pretended not to notice, giving a shallow curtsy, “good evening, Ser Gwayne.”
You had never addressed him so coldly in private before and his brows knit.
“My princess—”
You only turned on your heel.
You spent the two weeks before your wedding being haunted by a woman who did not possess a face.
You saw her in every maid with golden hair. Every noblewoman who giggled at something dry Gwayne had said. Every daughter of the Reach who lowered her lashes and found some reason to linger near him.
Sometimes she was blonde and gentle, pale as milk, with a soft voice made for prayer.
Sometimes she was dark-haired and bold. The sort of woman who might have met Gwayne in stables or beneath the shadow of the Hightower, pressing herself against him while he promised her a life he would never be permitted to give. You imagined he liked boldness if it was her.
Sometimes she had a full, romantic body that would have filled his hands beautifully. Sometimes she was slim-boned and graceful, made to stand beside him without making him look like a man burdened.
You imagined him kissing her without having to be begged. Following her into dark halls without stopping halfway to remember his honor. You imagined his hands closing around her waist because she was gentle and he wanted them there, rather than because she had been dismounting a dragon and needed help down.
You imagined him fucking her. The thought arrived most at night, vicious and detailed. Gwayne beneath another woman. Gwayne above her. His auburn hair disheveled through her fingers, his mouth open against her breast, his cock disappearing inside her body.
You became despondent.
The curtains remained drawn in your chambers. You did not rise until later and later in the day. Your meals sat untouched and stone cold or sent back to the kitchens.
Weeks’ worth of unopened gifts all from House Hightower sat piled high and collecting dust. The sent bouquets made your chambers smell of sweet moonblooms and died where they were placed because you would not allow your ladies to put them in water.
Far, far more had already been sent ahead to your soon-husband’s home in preparation for your arrival. You dreaded the thought of seeing any of it. You dreaded ever seeing Oldtown.
Your favorite gowns disappeared into the furthest reaches of your wardrobe. The low necklines Gwayne had once looked away from were replaced by collars worked high beneath your chin. You wore heavy embroidered silk despite the heat and sleeves buttoned at the wrist.
The first afternoon you appeared dressed like a particularly wealthy septa, Rhaenyra had choked on her watered-wine and kept staring like you'd grown a second head.
When you saw Gwayne later in the day, he eyed your gown as well. You gave him the same distant courtesy you might have offered any knight at court. “Good day, Ser Gwayne.”
You did not kiss his cheek. You did not touch his hair. When he offered his arm, you accepted because refusing would cause gossip. Your hand rested lightly upon his sleeve. Nothing more.
You addressed him only when courtesy required it.
Thank you, Ser Gwayne.
That will be all, Ser Gwayne.
You need not trouble yourself, Ser Gwayne.
Within two weeks, Rhaenyra had exhausted both her patience and her sympathy.
“You are ill,” she said, bursting into your chambers, despite it being the midday before your wedding, to find you still in bed. Your wedding gown hung ready for you against your painted screen. You spent the night and morning staring glumly at it.
Your sister planted both hands upon her hips.
“You do not attend the training yard. You have not spoken of your wedding, not with me or the planners. You have not tormented poor Ser Gwayne.” Her eyes narrowed. “And worst of all, you have not even been to see Dreamfyre in three days.”
You groaned, just wishing for her to go away. “I am not ill.”
"I swear to the gods, if you're pregnant out of wedlock—"
You dragged a pillow over your head. “I'm not pregnant, you bloody fool.”
There was a pause and you could feel her gaze burning a hole into your back. “Are you certain.”
“I would first need to actually bed him for that to be possible.”
Rhaenyra crossed the room in several quick strides and ripped the pillow from your face, staring down at you as if it was life and death. “You have not bedded him?”
You glare up at her, face scrunched.
“Your wedding is tomorrow. You have been betrothed for months. By the gods, what have you been doing all this time?”
You rolled away from her.
“Send for him. Have him take you. When the child arrives before the proper number of moons, we can claim it came early.”
You threw a pillow at her. “Are you deranged! I am still a maiden!”
She wore satisfaction like silk having managed to finally rile you for the first time in weeks. She sat heavily at the edge of your bed and laid atop you, her low back across yours. “Tell me.”
You did not want to. But there were no secrets allowed between you. And your sister was a relentless animal. She would remain atop you all day if necessary. She’d lie here till the end of time if it meant you would feel better.
“There is another woman.”
As you told your story, your sister’s expression did not change. You didn’t expect her to understand. She has little interest in your brother-in-law, Laenor, which was hardly surprising considering he possessed even less interest in her entire sex.
“Ah. Well.” She nodded, resolved. “He has always made you too soft anyways. And now the solution is obvious,” her mouth curved faintly. “He will be your husband before the court. In private, you must do as I do. Occupy yourself elsewhere just as he will.”
Your stomach soured horribly again at the thought of another woman in his bed while you were married. But your thoughts moved toward her newest personal knight.
Ser Harwin “Breakbones” had become a frequent presence near your sister. Broad as a fortress wall, smiling too easily whenever she spoke. Due to your sister's scandalous stories, you were far more familiar with the way the man used his cock more than his actual personality.
“Such as your new occupation with Ser Harwin.”
Her smile widened. “Ser Harwin is certainly devoted to his duties.”
“I am certain he performs them tirelessly.”
“He has remarkable stamina.”
You laughed and you saw her face light in the way it always did when she managed to make you laugh. Then you saw the idea form in her head. A devious little spark.
Before you could object, she caught your face between both hands and smashed a kiss against your cheek. It was wet, loud and irritating.
You shoved at her shoulder, wiping her spit off. “Ugh! Get off me.”
“No more of this.” She declared.
“You are not queen yet. You cannot simply command my misery finished.”
She seized you again and smooshed another disgusting kiss upon your other cheek. “Tonight, we are going out.”
Your sister returned after dark. She slipped through the hidden door behind the tapestry without knocking, wearing a rough brown tunic, loose breeches and boots that had been stolen from a stable boy. Her silver hair had been braided tightly and shoved beneath a dark wool cap, though several pale strands had already escaped around her temples.
She carried another bundle beneath one arm.
“Get dressed.”
It was far from the first time the two of you had escaped into the city. Within the hour, your hair had been crushed beneath a cap, your body hidden beneath coarse wool and Rhaenyra was pulling you through the city by the hand. It smelled like piss and roast meat and floral perfume poured over unwashed skin.
You drank first in a tavern where every table was sticky and the ale tasted as though it had been strained through an old boot. Then a brothel where sailors sang were loud and one of them narrowly missed vomiting into your lap.
You would learn later what happened inside the Red Keep.
A maid entered your chambers shortly before midnight and found the bed empty.
She panicked, searching everywhere you may have hidden in your chambers or the kitchens. All your ladies spent years watching you and Gwayne. if you were upset, they fetched him. When you caused mischief, he untangled it. When you disappeared, he always knew where to look. So, frantic, she burst directly into his chamber finding him halfway through removing his doublet.
"My lord," she gasped. "The princess... I—I cannot find her."
For one moment, he simply looked at her.
His mind rejected the words. You had retired hours ago. He had watched you leave the hall, dressed in dark blue, your throat covered to the chin. You had scarcely looked at him all evening.
“What do you mean, you cannot find her?”
The girl began to stammer. “Her bed is empty, my lord. Her ladies thought she was asleep. No one saw her leave, and the window is still locked, and I checked the solar, but she is not—”
“Who entered her rooms tonight?”
“No one, my lord. I swear it.”
“Who was stationed outside?”
“Ser Martyn and Ser Olyvar.”
“And they saw nothing?”
“No.”
“Then either they are liars or imbeciles.”
The maid’s eyes filled with tears at his harsh tone. Gwayne scarcely noticed. Fear had already taken hold of him, cold fingers sinking through flesh and curling around bone. You had been different for weeks. Quiet. So unlike yourself that he had begun to worry you had fallen ill, though every maester he sent to you insisted otherwise. You acted now with perfect courtesy to him. You looked at him as though he were a fucking stranger and it was driving him to madness.
Now your bed was empty.
“Say nothing of this,” he ordered.
The maid blinked. “My lord?”
"You will not wake the castle. You will not summon the guard. You will not speak a word of this unless I command it."
"But the princess—"
"Would be ruined before dawn if the Red Keep learned she vanished from her chambers the night before her wedding."
The words tasted foul. Vanished. The night before her wedding.
He had seen reluctant brides before. Girls wrapped in silk and pearls with red-rimmed eyes. He had pitied them. He never imagined you among them. Not after you had chosen him.
But you had retreated from him. And Gwayne couldn’t understand for the life of him why. He tried everything. He sent flowers, your favorite white moonblooms, roses, violets, and sweet peas till your chambers began to resemble a garden. Every morning your maids carried armfuls of dead flowers out. So jewels followed. Silver necklaces set with sapphire, emerald earrings, rubies meant to lie against the hollow of your throat. You wore none of them. He suffered through two hours with a court poet selecting syrupy verses he knew would make you tease him.
You only thanked him for the politeness shown by House Hightower.
You scarcely left your chambers anymore, and whenever he sought a private word, your ladies intercepted him with smiling excuses. The only place he ever truly saw you was at dinner and he couldn’t bloody well ask why you were no longer trying to entice his clothes off in front of the king.
His last resort, he wore your silk favor around his wrist every morning in the yard. It was almost embarrassing.
A favour was meant for battle or a joust, not an ordinary afternoon in training. The other knights had noticed. One had smiled knowingly before Gwayne put him flat on his back in the dust. Dutifully, he tied your purple and green woven silk to his wrist every morning.
You always possessed some uncanny gift for appearing whenever he removed his shirt. Without fail he would look up from the yard to find you leering over the gallery, licking your lips like a cat— he, your cornered songbird.
But you never came. His heart fell everytime he glanced to the empty gallery and he was mottled with bruises because he kept glancing, failing to notice the blows coming to him.
He knew first where to search.
Dreamfyre’s enormous body rose and fell beneath the darkness of the Dragonpit, blue scales catching what little firelight reached her. When Gwayne approached, one golden eye opened and fixed upon him with displeasure.
He stopped well beyond reach of her jaws. He had known your dragon for four years. That did not make him foolish enough to mistake familiarity for safety.
Dreamfyre released a low rumble that vibrated through his ribs.
“I know,” he said, jumping back, “I very much dislike my being here as well.”
You had not fled the city. You would never have left without your dragon. You loved the beast with a devotion that was purely absurd considering she possessed teeth longer than his forearm and could swallow the both of you without chewing.
Relief came first. Then frustration. He had not spent four years enduring your mischief without learning that when you caused trouble, Rhaenyra was rarely far.
Gwayne closed his eyes “Seven fucking hells.”
The poppy den was warm enough to make your skin damp. Carpets covered every inch of the floor, stained with wine and ash. Smoke curled beneath the ceiling, sweet and burnt, thick enough to soften every face in the room. Men and women reclined against embroidered cushions with glassy eyes while servants moved between them carrying wine and pipes.
Neither of you smoked. You only liked the smell. You had drunk just enough to feel pleasantly warm without guaranteeing tomorrow's misery.
Rhaenyra sprawled beside you with one arm thrown over her eyes and one boot missing. You had no notion where it had gone.
A servant bent to refill your cup. His tunic hung open almost to his navel, displaying a great deal of smooth golden skin. Rhaenyra lifted her arm just enough to watch him leave. “Laenor would like him.”
“Laenor likes anything with a cock and a smile.”
“He is not so particular about the smile.”
Your laughter choked on your wine and burned as it came out of your nose.
Rhaenyra laughed so hard that she rolled onto her side, clutching her stomach.
You did not hear the door open. Gwayne stood at the entrance to the den, chest rising hard beneath his cloak. For the better part of an hour, he had searched every establishment Rhaenyra’s personal guard, Ser Cole, told him of. Dread sitting like lead in his stomach. He had imagined finding you in some alley with your throat cut open. Some filthy bastard laying hands where no man had leave to touch. He had imagined blood staining your silver hair.
He had not imagined you were lying facedown upon a stained carpet, cheeks flushed, drunk off your pretty little arse and laughing with your equally asinine sister
Then you turned your head and your laughter died.
Rhaenyra followed your stare. For several moments, no one moved.
He expected you to rise and come to him with an apology. You’d wear that sweet, sheepish little smile you used whenever your behaviour crossed the thin line between troublesome and outright criminal. You would hug his upper arm, press it to your breast and look up at him with fluttering lashes, telling him it had only been a bit of fun, Gwayne. And, as usual, he'd melt for you.
Instead, you and Rhaenyra looked at one another.
Something silent passed between you. You bolted in opposite directions.
Rhaenyra threw herself through the back entrance, her single boot abandoned somewhere behind her. Her laughter vanishing behind a hanging curtain.
You made it a few steps before Gwayne caught you around the middle.
A startled cry escaped you his arm locked across your stomach, crushing your back against his chest while you kicked uselessly.
“What,” he said against your ear, each word clipped with terrifying precision, “in the seven hells possessed you?”
“Unhand me this instant!” You struggled harder, trying to pry his arm from your waist.
Gwayne only tightened his grip. He had been imagining your throat opened because some Flea Bottom cunt had recognized the silver of your hair.
You drove your heel backward, narrowly missing his knee.
His patience ended.
He bent, caught you behind the knees and you shrieked as he threw you over his shoulder.
Blood rushed to your head. His shoulder dug beneath your ribs with every step as he walked out. You slapped both hands against his back and tried to force yourself upright, but the position gave you no leverage and you hung limp. Your cap slipped free and fell somewhere in the street white hair spilling nearly brushing his boots.
“Gwayne—!”
His hand struck the fat of your arse. It was not hard enough to truly hurt, but it stung even through your breeches, sharp enough to leave you frozen for one astonished breath.
Then outrage flooded you. “You fucking beast!”
Gwayne’s hand remained splayed across the backs of your thighs, keeping your flailing hips pinned against his shoulder.
“Compose yourself,” he said, voice dangerously calm, “If you kick me again, I shall take it as confirmation that the first correction was insufficient.”
“You would not dare.”
“Tonight has already proven that you greatly overestimate my patience.”
You kicked him again.
Gwayne halted. For one silent moment, his hand remained motionless against your thighs. Then he sighed through his nose. “As you wish.”
His palm cracked against your backside a second time. It landed harder than the first, not cruelly, but firmly enough that the sting bloomed hot beneath your breeches.
You gasped. “You—”
“Choose your next words carefully.”
“You sanctimonious cunt!”
You fought him the entire way back to the keep. You pounded your fists on his back and cursed his name, his House, and every Hightower ancestor unfortunate enough to have produced him. You threatened to have him dismissed, exiled, fed like a goat to dragons. When that failed, you informed him with crocodile tears that your ribs were breaking and he needed to put you down. He only huffed and shifted your hips higher upon his shoulder to take the pressure off, and you released a scream of pure frustration.
By the time he reached the hidden passage, his breathing had grown harsh, and sweat dampened the hair at his temples. Still, his hold never loosened. He endured your tantrum until you reached the concealed door behind the tapestry in your chambers. Gwayne shoved the panel open, strode inside, and threw you onto the bed.
You bounced on the mattress with a startled cry. He slammed the hidden door closed and turned upon you. You had never seen him so angry, never at you.
"What," he hissed, "possessed you?"
"It was only one evening."
"One evening in a brothel."
"A poppy den.” You crossed your arms, climbing to your knees on the bed. "Rhaenyra was only trying to give me a night of freedom."
"I do not care if she took you to the Starry Sept.” He looked at you with incredulous anger.
"The night before your wedding you went wandering Flea Bottom," he repeated, running his hand through his hair but saying the words slowly as if to make them sensible. "You could have been recognized. You could have been taken.” He scoffed. “Do you understand what men do to women they find unguarded in places like that? Do you understand what they would have done to you?”
“I do not belong to you yet, lord husband,” You snarled, “You forget to whom you speak, Ser.”
His face hardened. "I have forgotten nothing."
"Then remember our vows are not spoken till tomorrow. Until then, where I go and what I do are of no concern of yours."
“No concern—” His laugh was short and disbelieving. “I have spent the last hour searching Flea Bottom because you vanished from your bed, and you dare tell me you are no concern of mine?”
“You need not trouble yourself. By this time tomorrow, you will have all that was promised to you.”
Something in his expression shifted, though his anger remained. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“My hand. My name. Dragon’s blood for House Hightower.” Your face was inches from his, voice growing colder. “I shall stand beside you before the court. I shall leave for Oldtown when you commanded. I shall spread my legs and give whatever heirs your father expects of me."
Gwayne went utterly still.
You should have stopped. Instead, wounded pride drove the blade deeper. “Is that not enough?”
“Enough?” he repeated.
“You have never wanted anything more from me.”
He looked as if you had slapped him. “You believe that?” he asked.
“I assure you, I will perform my duty as well as you preform yours.”
Neither of you spoke. You only stared at one another, breathing hard. Then something in him seemed to crack, not into anger, but into exhaustion.
“You have not looked at me in two weeks.” His voice had gone quiet in a way that was worse than shouting. “If you cannot bear this match—if you cannot bear me—” He looked at you. “Tell me. Tell me plainly and I will find a way to undo it. I will fall on my sword before I see you miserable.”
Your throat tightened. Whatever anger had been there had quickly vanished. It hurt to look at the despair on his face.
"What would you have of me to ease this wretchedness I have must have done to you?”
You wanted. God you wanted. Just once before everything changed between you. Just once before he ceased to be your Gwayne when he returned to her.
You leaned up and pressed your lips against his. He was as still as a statue. You moved your mouth against his clumsily, pursing your lips together and then rubbing your lips against his. Gwayne still didn’t move. Your heart pounded painfully in your chest and your face flushed with embarrassment. Tears came to your eyes at his lack of reaction. When you pulled away you tried to hide your face from him. “I am so sorry.”
You still held him, your fingers buried in his hair, tears spilling freely down your cheeks. “I tried,” you say. “I swear I tried to be better.”
"I do not understand." You sobbed and tried to release him, but his hand caught your wrists keeping your palms pressed against his face though it was scrunched in confusion. "Sweetling, by the gods, what do you mean?”
“I tried to stop humiliating you. To stop touching you when you did not want me to. I know I have been selfish. I know what your father made you give up for this marriage.”
His brow drew sharply together. “What did my father make me give up?”
“The woman in Oldtown.”
Silence.
“The what?”
“The ring,” you forced out. “The woman whose ring you carry. You said she was dearer to you than you could explain. You said you missed her constantly.”
For one long moment, Gwayne only stared. The misery of the past weeks lay suddenly naked before him. You thought—
Seven fucking hells.
You thought he belonged to another woman.
Gwayne’s fingers tightened around your wrist.
“I cannot—" your words dissolved around your broken breath. “I am not selfless. I cannot while you bed her. Gods watch her have your children. Please, Gwayne— please— I know you do not love me but please I cannot bear that—”
His mouth cut off your choked rambling.
The force of it bent you backward. His hands cupped your face, almost reverent in their gentleness, a startling contrast to the cruel hunger of his mouth. You made a suprised sound and he swallowed it.
For years he had imagined this.
Every night he stood outside your chambers, he imagined opening the door. He imagined finding you beneath the thin summer sheets, your nightgown rucked around your thighs, and finally taking what you had spent years offering him. Honour be damned, to hold you, press his lips to yours and finally bury himself in your slick, soft heat. Every indecent gown you wore he imagined throwing up your skirts and bending you over the nearest table until you forgot to laugh at him.
But you were his sweet princess. His beautiful love, innocent despite being a demon sent specifically to torment him. Despite what you believed, you did not truly understand the ugliness of men. He had spent years protecting you from his own indecency. He could not endure the thought of you looking upon him with fear or disgust if he acted.
But you were sobbing into his mouth because he had been so restrained that you actually believed he loved another, and Gwayne simply couldn't fucking bear it.
He had loved you since he was a squire visiting, unnoticed at the edge of your father’s yard. You had run right past him, silver hair amess, using your ruffled dress as a pouch for your stolen lemon cakes, your sister hot on your heel, not even noticing he existed. He still remembered the sound of your laughter.
Now you dared apologise for keeping him?
You cried harder.
Gwayne shushed you against your mouth, the sound low and ragged as he tried to soothe you but he did not stop. Each sob was cut short by another kiss. His tongue pushed between your lips with none of his usual courtesy, invading you so thoroughly that your fingers tightened painfully in his hair.
You whimpered.
The sound nearly ruined him. He dragged you closer until your thighs struck his, one hand sliding behind your neck to keep you where he wanted you. His tongue moved against yours with vulgar hunger, licking into your mouth. You only opened for him, trembling while he took and took.
When you finally choked on a breath, Gwayne tore his mouth away. Only an inch. Barely enough to let you gasp.
“The woman,” he whispered, kissing the corner of your lips. “Your supposed rival—” Another kiss. “My mother.”
You froze but Gwayne kissed again before you could reply.
“The ring belonged to my mother.”
His mouth moved over yours between each broken word, as though he could not force himself to leave you long enough to explain.
“She died when I was eight,” a kiss to your upper lip. “I loved her.”
You could not stop sobbing, whether from the wine or the relief or violent exhilaration of having his hands finally upon you.
Gwayne muttered an apology against your mouth, though nothing in the way he kissed you was sorry.
You coughed when his tongue pushed too deep. He drew back just enough for you to breathe, lips still brushing yours in small, feverish kisses, unwilling to surrender even that scrap of contact.
“I am sorry,” he whispered.
Kiss.
“Sweetling, breathe.”
Kiss.
You sniffled and turned your face away, overwhelmed by the rough scrape of his mouth tasing of salt from the humiliating tears covering you both.
Gwayne caught your chin. His fingers forced your face back toward him. Then he kissed your tightly pursed mouth again.
“I love you,” he said between kisses, “I love you. I love you.”
You laughed now against his mouth, still trying to kiss him back each time, still with wet cheeks.
"I should go," He said in between kisses, but he made no move to stand.
You didn’t answer, just tugged him by his collar. You couldn’t let him go. Not now, not after this. The only thing you wanted was to spend this night together, in love. You press yourself against his body with frantic, clawing need to be closer, so that you could cut him open and bury yourself inside his skin. Maybe that would finally relieve that ache you felt within you every day. You rolled your hips, desperate and Gwayne immediately offered his leg without thinking.
Acting on instinct, you hitch your legs around him, and gasp at the sensation. His leg against your thighs and your clit rubbing him through the rough material of your trousers. The friction was exquisite and brutal all at once. You rocked against him, unsteady and wild, while his mouth gentled on yours— his hunger seemingly somewhat satiated by the sensation of you against his leg.
But soon the fabric began to burn, chafing your sensitive skin raw. “Gwayne,” you begged, voice fraying. “Please—it’s too rough.” You tightened your legs around him, holding on like you might drown. “I need—”
He understood, ever your valiant knight. He pulled back just enough to lay you down on the mattress, your body pliant beneath his hands. He tugged at your trousers, the burlap scraping one last time as he dragged them down your thighs.
He looked at you and the intensity of it nearly burned. His eyes raked over your slick, flushed cunt, the faint trembling of your naked thighs, the way your knees tried to edge together in reflexive shyness. His mouth fell open as if he’d never seen a woman before. He groaned as if wounded, “Gods be good.”
You giggled, face hot with the embarrassment of being seen for the first time. It was unbearable. You tried to cross your legs, but his palms eased them apart again with effortless strength.
“Don’t stare,” you whispered, throwing your arm over your eyes.
“You’re so beautiful.” Gwayne's gaze was on your face, dark at the cheeks and vulnerable for him.
He settled down between your legs. He kissed your thigh, then turned his head and kissed the other. He ventured higher and gave a soft bite to the sensitive skin and nosed at the spot before running his tongue over it.
He didn't let you set the pace. When you tried to grind closer, he held you still, forcing you to let him savor. He sucked, he licked, he bit gently at your inner thighs, making sure every inch of soft flesh was marked before he even considered giving you what you desired.
“Husband, please”
As if to reward you for his new title, Gwayne brought his mouth to your center, until his nose was hovering above your clit. You felt him inhaling deeply and you yelped. His eyes were shut tight in bliss, as though committing the very scent of you to memory before he pressed a kiss to your mound. “Gods you’re soaked.”
The first swipe of his tongue was unlike anything you could have imagined. You gasped and slammed your hands down on the mattress. "Gwayne."
Gwayne moaned and pressed closer.
He took it slow at first, so slow you could have died from it. He licked at your entrance without ever quite dipping inside, just tasting the slick on his tongue. He kissed at your clit ever so gently, just to feel you shiver and moan under his lips. But when Gwayne finally, finally licked his way from your entrance up to your clit, the bastard avoided touching it directly with his tongue, instead swirling little circles around the pearl just for the sake of making you twitch and grab at his hair needily, practically humping his face the same way you had his thigh.
He didn’t allow you. One broad hand pinned your hips to your bed, still slowly licking up down and everywhere but where you needed him most. You were throbbing now, achingly empty, and Gwayne was only humming softly above your clit and slowly dancing his tongue in the spaces around it. Not content to let you get away from him without some form of punishment it seemed.
“Gwayne,” your fingers pulled at his auburn hair.
His green eyes opened looking up at you—a direct, flat stroke over your clit that made you gasp, your back bowing off the bed, your knees clamping around his ears as a shock of pure sensation ignited along your nerves.
The game was over. Now his tongue worked you in earnest, lavishing attention directly on your clit before straying from his patterns to trace the hooded flesh around it, only to return again with relentless, focused laps.
Obscene wet noises filled the room, making you shut eyes and turn your head away, body singing in pleasure, a delicious knot building fast in your belly.
But he pulled back and you practically sobbed, your fingers tightening in his hair as he said muffled and breathless against you, “Eyes, wife. Eyes back on me.”
He resumed again only after your eyes were locked on him, though your vision was watery.
His lips sealed around your clit, and he suckled on the bead with a careful mouth, not hard enough to bruise, but certainly hard enough to let the tight knot in your stomach peak and crash through you.
You screamed as you came, having to bite the flesh of your lip to keep from waking the entire keep. Your back arching tight and knees slamming shut around Gwayne’s ears. You couldn’t speak but you whined and Gwayne knowingly went back to licking broad stripes with his tongue, soft enough not to overwhelm you.
He kept licking until you pushed his head away, panting as you came down from your release. Watching the debauched act of him licking his lips, wiping off the excess slick with the back of his hand before his cheek rested, haggard on your thigh.
For a moment all you could do was lay there.
"Was that it?" You ask dumbly. "Was that all?"
Gwayne turned his head and gave a bite against your thigh.
"No," you laugh, pushing his head back as he continued placing punishing bites on your delicate skin. "I meant— will you not let me tend you?"
Rhaenyra had explained to you, in graphic detail, every act she knew to preform and you had always been eager to have him in your mouth, but right now, you could hardly remember how to articulate your own name.
Gwayne laughed and lifted his head. "I do know what you mean." He climbed up over your body and collapsed beside you.
Your fingers toyed with the lace of his breeches, but his hand lifted your knuckles to his lips. "Not tonight, sweetling." He took you into his arms and pulled you close.
You huffed at him and he laughed. “Patience.”
“I have waited far too long already,” you whined but were content enough to turn in his arms and tuck your head into his neck. "Can we not just find someone to marry us now?"
He laughed. Gwayne wondered how you would react if he told you that he would take himself in hand and murmur your name, spilling over himself nearly every night for four year.
"I will marry you tomorrow, in the light of the Seven so all may know I didn’t steal you away in the night.”
He pet your hair and you preened. “Fine... but if you refuse to finally bed me afterwards, I shall lock you in with Dreamfyre and let her have her way with you instead."
Gwayne bit back a laugh. "I am at your service, my princess."
You laughed again and as your eyes slowly closed to sleep, you felt him shift out from beneath you, and your hands fisted to his shirt.
"I must go," he said, gently unfurling your hands. "Before anyone wakes."
"No, stay with me," you whined.
He laughed softly. "Soon, my love, I promise."
He kissed you once, twice, four times, before he pulled away from your grip and slid out of bed.
And when tomorrow came, you two stood together before the altar of the Seven, dressed in white and green, the scent of beeswax and fresh flowers filling the sept. Sunlight poured through colored glass, bathing the marble in pools of ruby and sapphire. You cut one another's lips and were one with him, exactly as you had always been meant to be.
HOTD masterlist
small part 2
𓏲ּ𝄢 𝐚𝐧: if you stayed this long, thank you thank you thank you!! this is my first fic i’m posting after a very, very long slump. I have more queued up and more in the works MWAH!
if you want to be in my tagged for any character i write for let me know :)
pious, devout and charming— your knight is hopelessly in love more than ever when you are expecting your first child! however, not everything is smooth sailing...
genre/warnings:
suggestive, pregnancy, lots of romance, arguments, hurt/comfort, brief description of childbirth, sunshine!gwayne and grumpy!reader, targaryen!reader (reader is rhaenyra's younger sister), spoilers! from house of the dragon season 1 and 3
notes:
gif by @/baelcrtargaryen. just gwayne being a protective husband <3 sigh he's so delectable i want to eat him
Despite how your marital bed was rarely cold and the frequency of your nightly activities, it had actually taken you years to conceive a child.
It had come as a blessing because you adored children and Gwayne, who was so fond of his nephew Daeron and had watched him grow up, had hoped for the day you would bear a child of his own to love wholeheartedly—
“You are... truly? A child…?”
And now, that day is finally here.
The brilliant blue of his eyes shone the moment the words left your lips, unblinking, afraid if he had misheard.
But when sweet, ethereal you nodded with the brightest of smiles, he himself was come undone, a breathless, boyish smile breaking across his face then.
“This is— oh, most splendid news—!”
Gwayne couldn’t help himself— he pulled you into his arms and into a searing kiss. It was full of pure, unfiltered giddiness, the kind that had him laughing softly against your lips in boundless joy.
“Oh, Gwayne...” you sighed into him, relief washed over you at how elated he was. You felt so blessed to have such a kind man as a husband.
He cupped your face in his hands, his thumbs gently brushing your cheeks as his eyes bored into yours.
“I love you. I love you. I swear to you and the Seven above, I will do everything in my power to protect both you and our child.”
If he had loved you deeply before, he was enamored to the point of no return now. In the moons that followed, everything blurred into bliss.
To Gwayne, you were akin to a Valyrian goddess, and he was nothing less than your sworn sword— you could do no wrong, and your word was his absolute law.
And mayhaps those old midwives’ tales held truth, or you were just taking immaculate care of yourself. Then again, chances were higher that he was a simple fool blinded by love, but Gwayne could have sworn... ever since then, you were glowing.
Your smile seemed sweeter now, and the way you would place a hand on your growing belly out of instinct was adorable. The fact that you carried his child, and the radiant joy it brought to your eyes never failed to leave him weak in the knees—
—because the Gods know he loves you so damned much too.
“The Princess… she is absolutely radiant, is she not?”
And as it turned out, he wasn’t the only one who had noticed.
The rank-and-file soldiers were in the middle of their daily drills when you passed by the courtyard. A sudden breeze swept through, catching the silk of your gown and sending a few stray locks of your hair dancing across your face. It was a picture of effortless grace— and to a yard full of sweat-drenched men, an absolute sight for sore eyes.
A pair of low-ranking footmen at the back of the line completely forgot their footwork, utterly spellbound.
“Aye,” the second one murmured, his eyes wide and completely glazed over as he watched you walk. “Like a maiden stepping right out of a tapestry...”
Gwayne’s head snapped toward them, the warm smile he had been wearing just a heartbeat prior when he stared at you vanishing in an instant.
“You there!” he barked, his voice ringing across the cobblestones.
The two footmen jumped and turned to him, faces instantly draining of color. Gwayne strode toward them, his chest puffed out, putting on the airs of a proud and arrogant knight.
“Unless you expect the Princess to wield a blade in your stead, I suggest you keep your eyes on your opponent.”
“Y-Yes, sire—”
Hmph. Now they were cowering before him. How did they forget whose wife they had been ogling just now?
“Ten more laps around the yard,” Gwayne commanded to their dismay, his eyes cold as he lifted his chin up. “And if I catch your eyes wandering from your duties again, I will personally pluck your eyes out and ensure you spend your next rotation cleaning Ormund’s chambers... Now move!”
As the panicked footmen scrambled to begin their laps, Gwayne threw them a dirty look, bridled with utter satisfaction.
He turned back toward where you stood, expecting to find you continuing on your way, blissfully unaware. Instead, he found you standing still, watching the entire exchange with an amused sparkle in your eyes— a delicate hand to your lips to hide your giggle.
Gwayne’s haughty expression crumbled. A flustered flush crept rapidly up his neck, staining his cheeks a dusty pink. Suddenly acutely self-conscious of how loud he had been, he cleared his throat and blinked several times, shifting his weight from one boot to the other.
He offered you a sheepish frown, his eyes pleading for you not to tease him too much when you were finally behind closed doors.
. . .
“What has displeased you, hm, husband?”
That night, Gwayne had just stepped out of the bath, his dark hair still damp, and sleepiness softening his usually sharp features as he took his side of the bed. He wore only a loose, simple linen robe, tied haphazardly at his waist.
“Hm...?” he mumbled, mid-yawn, as he turned to you.
However, his sleep-addled mind was entirely unprepared for the sight of you.
Seven save me, he thought, his throat suddenly dry.
There you were, a gorgeous temptress intent to ruin him in your... what was that? An almost see-through loose night gown?
You didn’t wait for him to answer. Instead, you slithered onto his lap, straddling his thighs. Gwayne’s hands instinctively flew to your waist to steady you, his touch warm as you draped both of your hands over his broad shoulders.
“I only ask,” you murmured teasingly, leaning in close enough that your breath fanned over his lips, “because you looked ready to torment two perfectly well-behaved footmen today. Over a harmless glance.”
Gwayne let out a low, rumbling groan, his eyelids fluttering half-closed as he looked up at you.
“They were staring,” he replied in defense. His gaze drifted down your form, lingering on the widening of your hips where his child now grew. “Rather boldly, I’d say. They should use their ungrateful eyes to look at their targets, not at my wife. Not when you are... like this.”
You tilted your head in a mock cluelessness. “Like what?”
“Ravishing,” he breathed, his bright blue eyes meeting yours as his grip tightening on your hips. “Breathtaking. Mine.”
The possessiveness in his voice sent a thrill through you. Leaning up, he captured you mouth in a slow, deeply sensual kiss. You parted your lips instantly to welcome him— and he tasted of mint and warm water.
“Mmhm... ah...” The kiss deepened, growing heavier and more desperate by the second. Your hands slid from his shoulders to wrap around the back of his neck, fingers tangling in his damp hair.
Unable to help yourself, you shifted your weight, slowly and deliberately grinding your hips against his lap.
Gwayne let out a ragged gasp against your mouth. The friction of your body against his through the thin linen of his robe sent a shiver through his spine, his hands clenching tightly onto your hips to guide the rhythm. His skin was a feverish contrast to the cool night air of the room, as he hardened rapidly against you, consumed by the weight of your warmth pressing so directly into his groin—
“Damn...”
He kissed you fiercely now, his tongue tangling with yours as you continued to press against him, humping him with an intoxicating persistence that had him trembling beneath you.
But just as the heat in the room threatened to boil over, Gwayne suddenly stilled you, gently but firmly halting your movements.
He broke the kiss, resting his forehead against yours as his chest heaved, his breathing shallow and labored. His blue eyes watered, dark with desire, searching your face.
“No, darling, we must stop,” he panted. He swallowed, his thumbs brushing soothingly against the side of your abdomen. “I love you more than my own life— but I will not risk the babe. As much as this tortures me... this is as far as I am willing to indulge us tonight.”
You let out a soft whine, resting your chin on his shoulder. You knew he was only acting out of a protective love for you and the child you carried, but the warmth of him was far too addictive to let go of just yet.
“Very well,” you murmured against his neck, nipping softly at his pulse point. “But I have one request.”
Gwayne let out a breathless chuckle, his hands tracing the curve of your spine. “Anything. You know you have only to ask.”
“Take off your robe,” you petulantly poked his chest. “I want to feel your skin against mine while we sleep.”
“A wanton through and though,” he snorted.
“The babe demands it.”
A hopelessly devoted smile broke across Gwayne’s face. “A punishment and a reward all at once, then.”
Without another word, he obliged. Untying the sash, he shrugged the linen robe off his shoulders. He pulled you back down against him, tucking you securely under the velvet blankets. His toned body was solid, warm, and his skin was surprisingly soft to the touch— a comforting weight you could never tire of.
Pressing a tender kiss to the crown of your head, he wrapped his arms tightly around you, his bare chest warm against your back, his hand resting protectively over your stomach as you both drifted off to sleep.
Days and weeks drifted by, and soon, the weight of your belly could no longer be hidden beneath your dresses.
By all accounts, your life was a blissful one. You had a husband who worshipped the ground you walked on, and you were counting the days until you could finally hold the child you had been waiting for. Even for a princess of the Seven Kingdoms, it was the kind of fairy tale most could only dream of.
Still, even the most beautiful tapestries have frayed edges, do they not?
Though Gwayne’s devotion was sweeter than words could say, his constant hovering these days had begun to feel like... a suffocation.
The tipping point had come on a morning when a sharp, fleeting cramp had made you wince. He had been the one who went pale, immediately ushering you back toward the bed.
“You must lie down,” he had insisted, his voice tight with worry. “I will have the maester brew something. No more walking today.”
“Gwayne, it was a momentary ache, nothing more,” you had sighed. “I cannot spend the next two moons staring at the canopy of this bed.”
But he would frown and your heart would lurch, seeing his pure concern for you.
“For my own peace of mind and for the babe, please?”
His fretfulness felt like a velvet cage, even when you knew it came from a place of pure love.
. . .
In a rare event in which you finally managed to slip away while he was distracted with other things, you retreated to the sanctuary of the gardens, the cool breeze a welcome relief against your skin.
But your quiet peace was short-lived.
As you rounded a stone archway, you caught sight of a figure cowering behind a massive marble pillar, his shoulders shaking with silent sobs.
“Daeron...?” you murmured in surprise, stepping closer.
The youngest of Alicent’s three sons and a ward of Oldtown—also, your estranged half-brother, the young prince was unlike his misguided brothers, and you had known him to be a gentle and sensitive soul. Now five and ten, he was thrust into the grueling world of knighthood, all under the watchful eye of your husband’s cousin.
The boy gasped, hastily wiping his tear-streaked cheeks with the back of his sleeve as he stood.
“Y-Your Grace,” he stammered, his voice thick as he tried to put on a brave face. “Forgive me. I... I did not hear you approach.”
“What is it, sweet boy? Why are you crying?” you gently took his hands, feeling your heart twinge at the sight of his tears.
A skepticism settled in your chest. You had seen how Ormund Hightower conducted himself— and you highly doubted his patience with a sensitive young boy.
“Has he been too harsh with you during your lessons?” you asked gently.
Daeron vigorously shook his head, his eyes wide with fear of causing trouble. “No! No, my lord is... he is only doing what is right. It is my fault for I have failed to meet his expectations.”
That arrogant, demanding windbag, you thought bitterly. To place such crushing weight on a child’s shoulders was reprehensible, and you fully intended to have a very pointed, very unpleasant word with Ormund Hightower later.
But for now, your only concern was the boy before you. Taking Daeron’s hand in yours, you offered him a warm, reassuring smile.
“Very well, if you said so... Now, come with me. Let me show you your uncle’s new collection of swords. He truly can never have too many, or so he claims.”
Your attempt to cheer him up was working. Daeron’s frown was replaced with pure joy as you showed him around Gwayne’s hidden stash of blades, and by the end of the day, he was laughing along with you.
“When will the babe come, Auntie?” he asked, looking up at you with a genuine smile. The title slipped out so naturally he didn’t even notice he had reverted to how he used to call you years ago. Even when you were his half-sister by blood, Daeron much preferred to think of you as the wife of his uncle.
“Soon. Mayhaps in six weeks or so.” You patted your swollen belly, and the young prince’s eyes followed your hand, before cautiously placing his palm over the curve.
In that very moment, the child gave him a firm kick, and he gasped, his blue eyes widened in wonder.
“In awe, are you?” you laughed softly, gently ruffling his hair. “Truthfully, sometimes I still wonder how there is a whole living human inside me, too.”
But he didn’t laugh, nor did he pull his hand away. Instead, he looked up at you, his features settling into an earnestness.
“If it is a girl... I promise I will protect her,” he declared solemnly. “I will grow strong enough so that no one can ever hurt her. I will be her champion.”
Your heart swelled at his words, a lump forming in your throat at the purity of his devotion. In certain lights, he did look like Gwayne.
“I have no doubt you will be the finest champion a girl could ever ask for, Daeron.”
. . .
“Where were you?”
You had only just returned to your bedchambers after quietly escorting Daeron back to his quarters, and the very first thing that greeted you was your husband’s scathing tone.
Gwayne stood near the hearth, his jaw tight and his shoulders rigid. His usually warm eyes were clouded with a coldness you rarely saw in him.
“I have been searching everywhere for you,” he stated, his voice thick with suppressed irritation. “You vanished without even telling any of your maids—”
“I was just in the gardens—” you said, your voice already tight with exhaustion, but he cared not of what you had to say in defense.
“Do you have any idea what went through my head? You are weeks away from labor, you’ve been having cramps, and—”
This had been going on for a while, and honestly, a headache was forming in the back of your head. The accusation, piled on top of days of feeling watched and managed, finally broke the last dam of your patience—
“Can you just... not?!”
You followed the impulse in your chest to yell, the volume of your voice echoing sharply.
“I am sick and tired of being treated as if I am an invalid!” you cried, your chest heaving as tears of frustration pricked the corners of your eyes. “I cannot take a single step, look out a window, or even have a quiet moment to myself— without you hovering over me like a warden!”
It felt satisfying to let this go, but then you looked at him, and—
Immediately you regretted raising your voice. Gwayne looked as though you had struck him across the face.
The worry in his eyes shattered into utter heartbreak, his shoulder slumping. His lips wobbled, his gaze dropping to the floor for a moment before he forced himself to look back up at you.
“I...” his voice cracked. “I am… sorry. I did not— I never wished to make you feel like a prisoner. Or to make you feel sick.”
You parted your lips, immense guilt overwhelming you at the sight of him. “Gwayne, I—”
“You are right, I have been way overbearing as of late.
His expression was somber, his eyes repeatedly straying from your face as if looking at you pained him, while he struggled to voice the words.
“I selfishly thought that since it’s our first child, I have to do everything to ensure your comfort. But in my own misguided sense of... righteousness— I failed to consider how you might feel.”
How did you forget that at the core of his very being, he was just a kind man who would sooner offer himself as sacrifice than allow even the slightest harm to reach you?
He offered you a small, bittersweet smile then—one that didn’t quite reach his eyes, which were shining with unshed tears.
“Tonight, I will leave you to your peace and not disturb you, I promise.”
Your heart clenched when he backtracked towards the door. Just before he reached for the latch, he paused, his eyes softening at you with that same, hopeless devotion.
“But if you should ever need anything— a glass of water, a blanket, or... or if the pain returns... please, tell me. Let me do that much for you.”
Gwayne had stood by his word. Ever since then, there was a subtle distance between the two of you.
True to his promise, he no longer invaded your privacy, but his frequent absences made you incredibly antsy. The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on you— for weeks, you had begged for space, but now that you had it, you found yourself restlessly searching the corridors for a glimpse of him.
You craved his warmth. You wanted his solid, comforting embrace, because an unsettling gut feeling had taken root in your chest—a dark intuition that something was amiss, though you couldn’t put your finger on it.
Seeking a distraction to soothe yourself, you decided to spend the afternoon in the gardens, but the summer heat only made you uncomfortable. Deciding you had pushed yourself far too much, you turned to your handmaiden.
“Accompany me back to my chambers,” you instructed softly, feeling the beginning of a cramp building in your abdomen. “I think I need to lie down.”
As you made your way back, your path took you past the oak doors of Ormund Hightower’s private study.
You would have walked right past it, had a certain voice not drifted through the slightly ajar door, freezing the blood in your veins.
“So the King is truly poor in health?” Ormund’s voice echoed from within, entirely devoid of any grief. “I would wager he will soon perish from whatever ailment he is suffering. We must ensure our pieces are perfectly placed on the board the moment he does.”
Your breath hitched. You stood entirely paralyzed, the maid stopping beside you with wide, frightened eyes.
The King. Your father.
You knew Viserys had not been in best health since the last you saw him, but to hear Ormund speak of his imminent death with such casual certainty sent a jolt of panic straight to your heart.
If he died, this fragile peace would shatter. The greens and the blacks would tear the realm apart—
—and both you and Gwayne would be caught right in the center of the storm.
Panic clawing at your throat, you didn’t wait to hear another word. You gathered your skirts and hurried down the hall as fast as your body would allow. Your heart hammered violently against your ribs as the sheer weight of what this meant crashing down on you—
But just as you were about to reach your bedchamber, a sudden spasm of pain ripped through your lower abdomen, so intense it stole the air straight from your lungs—
“Your Grace!” your handmaiden cried.
It wasn’t the fleeting, mild cramps from before— this was a white-hot, tearing contraction that buckled your knees. A cry of agony escaped your lips as you leaned sideways, your hands clutching the curve of your belly as you sank onto the cold floor.
You gasped for breath, but another wave of agonizing pressure rolled over you. The hallway began to tilt precariously, and trembling, you reached blindly down inside your dress when you felt warmth trickling down your thighs— and the sight made your heart stop.
Your fingers were stained a slick crimson. Blood.
A cold dread seized you as your head spun. No, you thought desperately, not the babe. Please, not the babe.
Your vision swam violently, but just as you were losing the last threads of your consciousness, you heard shouts of your name and a strong pair of arms hauled you into his embrace.
Gwayne Hightower. The man who had your heart since you were but a young girl. The man who was besotted enough to court you despite your rejections of him.
He always, always managed to be your knight in shining armor.
He was on his knees beside you, his face completely drained of color, his blue eyes wide with a frantic terror you had never seen in him before.
You could no longer hear the words tearing from his throat, but as the world faded entirely to black, a profound comfort washed over you—
If he is here, then I am safe.
“How did this happen...?”
Your consciousness faded in and out, but you heard bits and pieces.
Gwayne was questioning the maester with his voice cracking more times than not. You knew he was near you as you could feel the constant warmth of his hands gripping yours, trying to pull you back to the surface.
“Oh, my darling,” he whispered against your ear at one point, almost in tears. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry... I should have been there. I should have never left your side.”
When you finally managed to flutter your eyelids open hours later, the morning sun was filtering through the curtains of your bedchamber. The blinding pain in your abdomen had ebbed into a dull ache.
You tried to shift, a faint groan escaping your dry throat, and immediately felt a weight resting against the edge of the mattress.
Turning your head slowly, you found Gwayne.
He was collapsed in a miserable position on a small wooden stool right beside your bed. His legs were awkwardly bent, one of his arms slung over the mattress to keep his fingers intertwined with yours, while his forehead rested against the edge of the sheets. He was still wearing the same doublet from yesterday, now wrinkled, and his hair was a mess.
Even in sleep, his brow furrowed as though he was having a bad dream— the very sight of a man who had spent the night burning himself alive with worry.
Your heart squeezed with a aching tenderness at the sight of him. Ignoring the dull throb in your body, you weakly squeezed his hand, your thumb gently brushing over his knuckles to wake him.
At your touch, he was roused awake. Gwayne sat up instantly, his head snapping up as a ragged breath caught in his throat. His eyes—bloodshot—scanned the bed frantically until they locked onto your open eyes.
“Darling...?” he asked in a hoarse voice, and when you offered him a tired smile, the wall of defense crumbled completely.
He slid off the stool and onto his knees by the bedside as he pressed a kiss on your hand. His broad shoulders shook as a choked, breathless sob escaped him.
“You’re awake,” he breathed against your skin, peppering your hand with trembling kisses. “Gods, you’re awake. I thought... when I saw the blood, I thought I had lost you— I thought I lost both of you.”
“Is—” you croaked, “our babe—”
“You are both fine. For now,” he supplied, pressing one last kiss on the back of your hand before he straightened himself. He let go of you to sit on the edge of the mattress, slipping his strong arm behind your back to gently lift you so you could drink.
Once you swallowed the cool water and sat comfortably, he set the cup down and placed his large hand gently over your belly. A bitter smile broke through his exhaustion when he felt his child kick him.
“Can you just... let me stay near?” he asked then, his blue eyes shone with tears. “I can’t survive a repeat of what I have gone through yesterday. If something were to happen to you and I wasn’t there, it would tear the soul right out of me.”
Despite everything, he had all rights to be furious at you. And yet, here he was— humbly asking for your permission to stay by your side.
Your eyes welled with tears, and you reached out for him blindly. You buried your face into his chest, your hands desperately clutching at the fabric of his wrinkled doublet. He pulled you in instantly, wrapping his strong arms around you and rocking you gently, murmuring soothing sounds against your hair.
“I’m... I’m sorry,” you choked out, your entire frame trembling with the force of your sobs. “I... I was careless—”
“Shh, don’t be,” he shushed, tightening his embrace on you, and you cried harder.
You wept until you had no tears to spare, and when you finally pulled away, you looked up at him through swollen, heavy eyelids.
You love him so, so much. You adored this kind man and his blue eyes and his red hair— and you really wished, with all your heart, that your child would take after him.
“Why are you... not angry with me?” you questioned softly, weighed down by your own guilt.
But Gwayne, as always, only smiled at you, his features softening into that warmth he reserved only for you even at your lowest moments. He gently cupped your face, his thumbs wiping away the damp tracks on your cheeks.
“Have I not spoken these very words to you time and again? How come you always forget them?”
His smile grew incredibly tender as he leaned down to press a soft, lingering kiss to your forehead.
And with his familiar next words, once again, you were reminded once again of what kind of man you had married, and you know exactly how good a father he would be.
“Because to the end of my days... all that I am is yours.”
Your time had come barely five weeks later.
It was a grueling, agonizing ordeal that seemed to stretch on for eternity. Your cries of pain echoed and bled out of your birthing chambers— and anyone who passed by would have their heart broken at the sheer anguish in your voice.
Outside in the corridor, Gwayne was, needless to say, beside himself.
Thoroughly banned from the birthing chambers by the stern midwifes and the head maester, he was a man possessed by helpless terror. His hair a disheveled mess from where his frantic fingers had clawed through it, and his knuckles white and raw from being clenched so tightly in either prayers or an attempt to calm himself.
He had been pacing the length of the hallway since the crack of dawn two days ago, and every time one of your strangled screams echoed, Gwayne flinched, his own eyes burning with unshed tears.
He had faced deaths, had stared down charging knights without a tremor in his hand, but this—listening to the woman he loved scream in agony while he could do absolutely nothing—was a torture that was slowly tearing him apart.
Hours bled into one another. The silence that occasionally fell was almost worse than the screams, leaving him breathless with a suffocating dread.
“She has been in labor for almost two days,” Gwayne rasped, turning to Daeron as if he could soothe his worries. His nephew, though visibly unsettled by your screams, had stayed by his side to offer moral support.
“Two days, and I cannot even hold her hand.”
Ormund paid a brief visit later that afternoon. His cousin had one look at him and patronizingly suggested he go pray in the Starry Sept to calm his nerves. Gwayne’s temper had flared and was about to throw a punch at Ormund’s face if it weren’t for Daeron scrambling to beg him to stand down.
And then, just as he felt he might genuinely lose his mind, a new sound cut through the heavy quiet.
It was a sharp, high-pitched wail. Not yours, but the cry of a newborn babe.
. . .
You thought you would die from the pain alone.
Ever since the terrifying rush of your water breaking, it felt as though your body were being ripped apart from the inside out as you strained and fought to bring forth your child into the world.
And after that one final push that almost had you passed out, the agonizing pressure vanished, replaced by a sudden, hollow lightness and the sweetest of wails.
“It is a girl!” the midwife announced. “Congratulations, Your Grace— you have delivered a healthy, beautiful girl!”
When the midwives placed the tiny, weeping newborn onto your chest, your hands instinctively wrapped around her, shielding her from the cold air of the room. You were entirely spent, your skin slick with sweat and your muscles aching and trembling from the afterbirth, yet you couldn’t take your eyes off her.
This miracle has just come out of you.
As you gently wiped away a stray smudge from her crown, your heart swelled to the point of bursting.
Her little nose and mouth were endearing and closely resembled yours, however there was no trace of silver hair to be seen.
Instead, catching the warm candlelight… were soft tufts of red.
You closed your eyes for a brief moment, thanking the Mother, deeply grateful that she would not look like a Targaryen.
She is, in every way, Gwayne’s daughter— a perfect piece of him and yours to keep.
“Bloody hell— just let me in already!”
You heard his voice then, and the smile on your face grew wider. He would be beyond pleased to see this child.
True to your prediction, Gwayne stormed into the room without ceremony a moment later, his eyes instantly locking onto yours. You were in no state to be seen—sweat-drenched, pale, and thoroughly disheveled—and you instinctively wanted to shrink back from his gaze.
Yet, in his eyes, you had never looked more breathtakingly beautiful.
Cradled securely in your trembling arms was a tiny, squirming bundle wrapped in soft linen. And the sight was enough to almost make him drop to his knees right then and there.
He climbed onto the edge of the bed to pull you gently but firmly into his arms. Hovering over the child he had been eagerly waiting for, Gwayne leaned down and captured your lips in a deep, trembling kiss that tasted of relief and absolute devotion.
“You did it,” he whispered against your lips, his forehead resting against yours as his breath hitched. “Gods...”
Slowly, his gaze drifted downward to the bundle in your arms. The breath left him and he was completely awestruck, the air he usually put on before the court evaporating into nothingness at the sight of this impossibly tiny babe he helped to create.
With a hand that usually swung a steel, Gwayne reached out with unimaginable gentleness. He extended his pinky finger, touching her tiny, flailing hand—
And almost instantly, as if recognizing her protector, the babe’s palm wrapped around his finger, gripping it with everything she had.
“She, oh—” Gwayne froze, shuddering. He stared at her tiny fingers, and then up at the soft crown of her head, his eyes widening as he registered the tufts of copper-red hair just like his.
Seeing how deeply touched he was, your own eyes welled with happy tears. You nudged him softly, whispering the name you had kept locked in your heart:
“Alyrie,” you told him. “Lady Alyrie of House Hightower.”
His mother’s name. The tears Gwayne had tried so hard to hold back during those agonizing hours waiting for you finally spilled over as he turned to you. He let out a wet, shaky laugh, burying his face in the crook of your neck as he held both you and Alyrie close to his chest.
“Thank you,” he choked out, kissing your temple before pressing his lips to his daughter’s tiny forehead. “Our sweet Alyrie... She is perfect. You are both so perfect.”
As you looked at the other halves of your soul, the fragile peace of your bedchamber felt like a beautiful dream. Outside these stone walls, the realm was already fracturing as shadow of the dance of the dragons loomed close— a tempest of fire, blood, and greed that threatened to consume everyone you held dear.
One thing is sure though... both you and him would lay down your very lives to ensure this precious little girl remained untouched by the ash.
a princess wed to a dashing knight should be living a fairytale—but gwayne hightower is also the son of the schemer who would soon plunge the realm into civil war. how long can you resist his charms... when he proves time and again that his affection is as genuine as his honor?
genre/warnings:
arranged marriage, unrequited love, hurt/comfort, yearning, jealousy, mentions of injury & blood, fluff and lots of kissing afterwards, sunshine!gwayne and grumpy!reader, political drama, targaryen!reader (reader is rhaenyra's younger sister), spoilers! takes place in season 1 of house of the dragon
notes:
gif by @/bladeofdreadfort. wc. 4.5k ! hotd s3 is finally here and so does my man gwayne <3 i really loved writing this so i hope you’ll enjoy it!
For the longest time, Gwayne had known that the matter of his marriage were not his to ponder. As the son of the Hand of the King, his future was a tapestry woven by him in a series of cunning, calculated moves.
Yet, he had never truly expected to be betrothed to you—a princess of the realm.
The young princess for the queen’s brother. By every measure, it was a masterful stroke of politics and his father had once again outdone himself. After binding his sister to the king, it was now his turn to seek the heart of the realm’s most coveted maiden after the Princess Rhaenyra.
However, to Gwayne, you were more than just a political alliance. You were a paragon of beauty, the girl haunting his dreams, the princess who has stolen his heart—
But seven hells, were you also one hard lady to entice.
Every charming smile he threw your way was met with an arched, unimpressed brow. Every poetic compliment he rehearsed tasted like ash and shattered against your coldness. You didn’t swoon like the ladies at the tourney grounds, nor did you soften at his obvious attempts to woo you.
Instead, you looked at him as if you could see right through the nervous man underneath.
Your assessing gaze was currently fixed on him from the shade of the courtyard gallery. Down in the dirt, Gwayne was sweating through his padded doublet, trying his absolute best to look formidable as his sword clashed against his squire’s shield—because he knew you were watching.
He has to look good. Your wedding was in three weeks, so he was fighting to impress—determined to give you a show of how your betrothed was as dashing as the realm claimed him to be.
With theatrical flair, he executed an aggressive sequence before driving his squire back with a heavy strike, deftly sweeping the poor lad’s legs out from under him, and sending him sprawling into the dirt with a breathless thud.
Breathing heavily, Gwayne smoothly rested the point of his sword near the fallen boy’s chest in a classic pose of victory.
“You are just dead,” he declared with his signature grin, before turning to where you were.
You leaned against the stone balustrade, looking down at him with an expression of mild, patronizing amusement. He flashed you a hopeful, boyish grin that begged for even a shred of your approval.
And as if deciding to grace him with your presence, you descended down the stone stairs. Gwayne’s smile widened, and he met you halfway as you reached the bottom.
Ignoring the staring stableboys, he dipped his head and took your hand, placing a kiss on it.
“Princess,” he greeted, his dark blue eyes meeting yours with an excited crinkle.
“An impressive display, Ser Gwayne,” you replied, smoothly pulling your hand back from his grasp. He was giddy, about to thank you for the compliment, when—
“I must commend your passion. It takes a truly remarkable knight to exert such effort against a boy half his size who is actively paid to lose to him.”
Gwayne winced slightly, but the grin quickly returned to his face, refusing to let your sharp tongue deter him.
“A knight, no matter the age, must practice for all manner of foes. It shall be a good lesson for my squire to learn,” he countered softly. He had always been a naturally courteous man, but he had been practicing an extra measure of gentleness ever since the betrothal was announced, even when you remained frosty.
He hoped that you would recognize it—that you would see he was willing to bend his pride just for you.
However, you merely lifted your chin higher, your eyes flashing with a challenge.
“Is that so? My, what a chivalrous soul you are. I suppose I shall sleep soundly knowing you are defending the realm with your immense prowess and formidable army of squires.”
One thing he could never truly understand, though... he hadn’t asked for this match any more than you had, yet why did you look at him as you would a liar?
And it hurts because... he remembers how the more innocent, younger you, who had wiped blood from his face, hadn’t looked at him as you do now.
“We are to be married in no less than a moon,” he reminded you, still with a smile. “Tell me, Princess... what must a man do to earn a genuine compliment from his bride?”
You held his gaze for a beat, letting the silence stretch just long enough to watch the slight twitch in his jaw. Then, a devastatingly sweet smile graced your lips as you tilted your head.
“Compliments are but wind, my good ser. If we are to marry soon anyways, what use would flattering you with empty words do?”
Gwayne let out a defeated chuckle. “I shall just continue striving to become a man worthy of your hand, then.”
You had just insulted him and mocked his swordsmanship in the same breath, and yet, somehow, he still found himself tethered to you still.
What a fool he was.
He didn’t give up just like that, of course. Gifts was also Gwayne’s language of affection.
He had commissioned a seven-pointed star necklace for you in Oldtown, crafted from the finest silver and diamond. He had watched his late mother and sister find such profound comfort in it, and so he had believed it would make a fine gift for you.
Yet, now that he presented the gleaming jewelry to you, you were rendered silent.
“You do not like it,” he realized, a note of disappointment building through his usual confidence.
“It is exquisite. Truly,” you started, your voice gentle but lacking the reverence he had anticipated. “But... you must not expect me to wear it often.”
“Is it the design? If it offends your sensibilities, I can have it redone, or—”
“I assure you, I know your intentions are kind,” you looked at him, a certain sternness in your eyes. “It is just a matter of preference, is all. I treasure this necklace from my mother rather greatly, and wearing it is how I keep her close to me.”
The tragic death of Queen Aemma was not so easily forgotten, least of all when you resembled her so much. Gwayne’s smile faltered, the enthusiasm in his eyes dimming when his gaze found the sapphire necklace of Arryn falcon on your neck, a heirloom passed down.
He looked down at the silver star resting in the wooden box, suddenly finding it so plain, before forcing himself to meet your gaze again.
“I just want you to know that... you are in my thoughts, constantly,” he murmured, his gaze rising to meet yours again. “Whenever I see something I consider beautiful, I think of you. I want you to have it. You should know I have no underlying intentions other than that.”
You gave him an appreciative nod, pursing your lips together. “Your kind thoughts are much appreciated.”
So he had failed, again. Sigh.
What better way to impress your betrothed and prove to the entire realm that you were worthy of her hand than by claiming victory at the King’s nameday tourney?
Even you would at least bestow a real smile upon him. That was what Gwayne was after.
Or at least, it was until his gaze drifted to the edge of the battlement grounds where the knights were assembling. There, he saw you.
With Criston Cole.
The sight struck him. You, who usually looked at him with indifference, were attentive, your eyes bright in a way Gwayne had never managed to make them. Cole, in turn, had a reserved smile, his attention entirely locked onto you.
It could have been anyone but Criston—the Dornishman!—Cole. Why him?!
A sharp spike of resentment flared in his chest. He decided right then and there that this cannot stand, and marched towards you both.
“Good day, Ser Criston,” Gwayne greeted with a forced smile, his voice dripping with a courtly cheer that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
Cole returned his greeting, and he turned to you then. “My betrothed, fancy to have found you here. You shouldn’t have to sully yourself with the dirt.”
“I was merely wishing Ser Criston luck in the lists.” As always, the corners of your lips curled into that faux smile whenever facing him. “The competition looks fierce today.”
What about him? You hadn’t thought of wishing him, your own groom, luck?
“Fierce for some, mayhaps,” Gwayne nodded, his smile sharpening as he took another step forward, deliberately cutting off Criston Cole’s line of sight to you. He reached out, his gauntleted hand gently but firmly taking yours.
“But I sure do not fear a crowd of knights of modest beginnings and second sons. And I have hoped that I might find you in the stands later, and you would bestow upon me your favor to assure me of my victory.”
He looked down at you, the forced arrogance in his eyes momentarily cracked. He wanted you to look at him the way you had just looked at Cole, really.
But cruel, relentless you never granted it so easily.
“Your romantic sensibilities are commendable, ser.” You let out a soft sigh, as if lamenting, “but victory is still guaranteed by skill and the favor of the Seven, and not merely from a scrap of silk.”
The rejection was subtle, but in the presence of Criston Cole, it felt like a public execution.
“It is said even a scrap of favor from one’s bride can turn the tide of many battles,” Gwayne replied, his voice dropping an octave as the last traces of courtly cheer evaporated. “Unless, of course, your favor has already been promised to someone else?”
His eyes flicked towards Cole, searching for a reason to draw steel before the tourney even began. And that Dornish wretch had the gall to look at him in the eyes and retorted:
“May the best knight win, ser.”
Your betrothed had become terribly displeased and you knew it. Your hollow smile deepened, you stepped forward and smoothly slid your hand into the crook of his arm.
“No, no. You are free to ask me for it later, of course, my dear.”
Gwayne knew better that the honeyed words held no real affection. Yet, like a moth drawn to a flame, he couldn’t help but fall for it each and every time.
You held his leash, and you knew exactly how far you could play with and stretch it. But as he looked at you, a quiet ache settled in his soul.
Is it truly so wrong of him to seek your heart? How much longer would he have to endure this torment, giving everything while his affections remained completely unreturned?
“From today to the day we breathe our last, all that I am is yours.”
That was the first thing he told you when the betrothal was announced. In a den of vipers, Gwayne Hightower was entirely his own man.
He didn’t possess the calculating ambition of his father, who viewed every living soul as a piece in his game of thrones. Nor was he prudent like his sister, Queen Alicent, whose motto in life was duty and sacrifice.
You know that. You really knew that your chosen betrothed was everything but unkind. He was everything the songs promised a knight should be— genuine, posh, with a touch of arrogance that made him charming. He held you in high regard, and his attempts to make an impression on you were sweet.
Despite how you behaved around him, the truth was... it took everything in you not to fall for Ser Gwayne Hightower.
But he is still Otto’s son. You hated the Lord Hand with every fiber of your being—the man’s thirst for power had already forced your childhood companion Alicent into your father’s bed, turned your sister Rhaenyra into a scheming cynic, and your own betrothal to Gwayne was just another piece of his grand design.
However, watching the tourney unfold from the royal box, your thoughts swirled with guilt and anxiety. In the end, he hadn’t asked for your favor at all. Ironically, his sudden silence unsettled you far more than his persistence ever had.
Looking back on your interactions, the weight of your biting marks pressed heavily against your chest. You had rejected him so many times, using your faux smiles and sharp wit as shields. Every time you remembered the look of hurt that crossed his face before he masked it with a patient smile, a fresh wave of guilt washed over you.
Did he deserve to be punished just for pursuing you? Was it fair to make him pay for his father’s sins?
Down in the dirt, Gwayne rode beautifully, unseating two seasoned knights from the Reach and splitting lances with a Lannister to thunderous applause from the crowd. For a moment, watching his silver and green armor gleam in the sunlight, a spark of pride flared in your chest.
Then, Ser Criston Cole rode onto the field.
The tension between the two men was palpable even from the high stands. They charged— one lance shattered, then a second. By the third pass, it was clear it was a matter of pride.
And on the fourth pass, the collision was catastrophic.
With a terrifying crack that echoed across the grounds, Cole’s lance struck dead center. Gwayne was violently unseated, flung from his saddle to hit the earth with a sickening crash.
A collective gasp sucked the air from the stands. Through the rising dust, you saw your betrothed lying completely still. Cole’s lance hadn’t just broken— it had compromised his armor. His steel breastplate was shattered to pieces, the shards visibly lodged into his chest, dark blood already pooling through the fractures.
Your breath hitched, your hand flying to your mouth in horror.
Six years ago, a similar scene had paralyzed your heart the very same way. Blind to the rules of propriety, you bolted from the royal box. Pushing past lords and ladies, you sprinted down into the arena—desperate to reach him.
The maesters and several squires had already swarmed him, unbuckling the undamaged pieces of his armor with hurried hands. Gwayne was propped up against a wooden barrier, half-conscious, his head lolling to the side as his eyes struggled to hold focus.
“Will he be alright?” your voice cracked, almost shrill, the composed facade of a princess shattered as you hovered over the maesters working on him. “Tell me he will be alright.”
“The steel hasn’t pierced the heart, Princess, but we must move him to immediately to extract the shards,” one of them mumbled, wrapping a temporary cloth around the wound to stem the bleeding.
Gwayne let out a low, guttural groan at the pressure, his eyelids fluttering. Through the haze of pain, he recognized your voice. He knew you were there.
Driven by a sudden, overwhelming surge to comfort him, you dropped to your knees beside him. Your hands were trembling as you reached out, using the hem of your sleeve to wipe away the grime and blood that smeared his pale cheek.
But before your fingers could trace his jawline, Gwayne’s gauntleted hand came up. With a sudden burst of remaining strength, he swatted your hand away—
“Do not touch me,” he rasped.
The words were raw and bitter, dripping with an icy venom you had never heard from him before.
. . .
Gwayne refused to meet your gaze. He pressed his eyes shut, his jaw clenched so tightly the bone practically strained against his skin.
It wasn’t just the physical agony tearing him apart. It was the suffocating, absolute humiliation.
He had lost. He had been unseated and laid low in the dirt in front of the entire realm—and worse, in front of Criston Cole. He couldn’t bear to see the pity in your eyes. He couldn’t bear to look at the woman he loved and see confirmation that he was exactly what you always thought of him: unworthy.
“I’m— fine,” he choked out then. “So... go back to the Keep.”
It was funny how this was the same thing that had happened to him six years ago, during the Heir’s Tourney. He had been brutally unseated by Daemon Targaryen then, and just like now, you had come running to him, wiping the blood from his broken nose with your kerchief.
He fell in love with you then... and he has been in love with you ever since.
The girl holding his heart was a princess, and he had never dared to hope for more, never dreaming his conniving father would actually arrange your hand for him. He had thought it a blessing.
But his pursuit of you the past three moons had yielded nothing but a bitter truth— you despised him.
So he preferred to choke on the blinding pain, to let it consume him entirely, rather than suffer the indignity of your comfort.
You are in love with him.
You had spent weeks trying to resent the circumstances that led to your marriage with Otto Hightower’s son, reminding yourself over and over that he had fractured your family, sowing seeds of rebellion that would break once Alicent’s son came to age, and it would spell disaster upon you all—
But the wounded knight with broken nose six years ago had long since owned a part of your heart, and one week without Gwayne Hightower persistent on your heel, you had found yourself... sad.
“Mrawgh...”
“I’m not lonely,” you mumbled petulantly, brushing a hand against Grey Ghost’s silver scales as the dragon curled up, blinking his golden eyes shut to rest.
To occupy yourself, you spent the days with your dragon in the Dragonpit. Tending to Grey Ghost made the long hours pass faster— he was a recluse and not keen on flying often, but his quiet presence matched your somber mood.
Leaving him to his slumber, you walked away lost in your thoughts, entirely failing to notice how slippery the stone ledge had become.
Your foot caught on a heavy iron ring embedded in the floor. The world tilted as you stumbled backwards, losing your footing entirely. You braced for a painful impact against the stone floor, but a pair of strong arms wrapped securely around your waist, arresting your descent.
A sharp, ragged gasp left your savior’s lips. As you stabilized, you realized your hands had instinctively braced against his chest—pressing right over the bandages of the fresh wound.
“Steady there,” the redhead managed, a strained smile tight on his lips as he gently set you back on your feet. His green tunic made you realize who he was—
“Gwayne!” you breathed. Your hands hovered over him, trembling, almost terrified to touch him again. “Why are you—your wound! I didn’t mean to—”
“I am fine, truly,” he assured you, his voice softening as he offered a warm, comforting smile. “It is but a scratch, Princess. It takes more than a clumsy tumble from you to injure me.”
Just like a hundred times before, Gwayne Hightower sought you out. You could see the sheen of sweat on his forehead and how he looked pale still—
From today to the day we breathe our last, all that I am is yours.
“You are supposed to be resting!” Your voice rose despite yourself. “Why are you here?!”
This wasn’t what you wanted to tell him. You wanted to tell him a lot of other things! Like he was a fool, and that you would forbid him to enter the lists once you two were wed, that you couldn’t bear the thought of losing him—
His blue eyes crinkled with that familiar kindness as he reached out, softly tucking a stray strand of your loose hair behind your ear.
“If I wasn’t here, then you would take a fall.” His voice a soothing balm to your frayed nerves. “I can’t very well let my betrothed hurt herself before our big day, can I?”
This was the first time since King Viserys announced your betrothal three moons ago that you looked genuinely worried for him. It made something inside him burst with joy, even if it was tinged with a bitter aftertaste.
Gwayne’s thumb gently brushed across the back of your hand that was still pressed against his chest.
“Tell me... Is this the only way I could truly have your attention? Must I be grievously injured, a step away from Death’s door, for you to look at me like this?”
Your eyes widened by a fraction. Precious, precious girl. He chuckled softly, a teasing glint brightened his eyes.
Just this once, could he be allowed to be just a little bit cruel?
“Even if you keep looking at me with those beautiful eyes...” he whispered, his smile turning a little wistful, “...my heart might just run out, one of these days.”
He gave you one last, kind smile—a look of affection that no longer held expectations, or reeked of the politics that bound your families. Then, he gently gripped your hand, pulling it away from him before turning on his heel to leave you to your own devices.
When your fingers fell limp into the cold air, a stinging realization pierced through you like a dagger:
Is this how he feels? Is this what he endures every time I evade him? How has he survived it over and over?
As his warmth retreated into the shadows of the Dragonpit, something sharp tore deep inside your chest.
You didn’t want him to go. The walls you had spent weeks building to protect your heart against the Hightower name crumbled into dust. Your eyes burned with tears that blurred his retreating figure.
He was nearly out of the pit when you gathered your skirts, abandoning your pride, and ran after him.
“Ser Gwayne!”
Before he could turn back, you lunged, throwing your pride and your fears to the wind. You crashed into his back, your arms wrapping tightly around his waist, burying your face against his spine. He stiffened, almost flinching—
But then he heard you sob.
“Princess...?” he asked softly. His tone shifted, turning from startled confusion to a protective concern as he carefully turned around within your embrace. He reached up, gently tilting your chin up, only to find your cheeks flushed and wet with tears.
Realizing you were truly, genuinely weeping, Gwayne’s breath hitched in his throat.
He didn’t think. He didn’t let past rejections dictate him. He immediately wrapped his arms around you, pulling you close against his uninjured side.
“Shh, please do not weep,” he said in your ear, his own voice suddenly thick with emotion as he rocked you slightly. “Darling... please.”
Darling. Why did the word sound so devastatingly sweet in your ears? As you clung to him, you realized with absolute certainty that you wanted him to call you that for the rest of your days.
As he held you, feeling the warmth of your hands anchoring yourself to him, the pieces finally fell into place:
Has she... returned my feelings?
When your sobs finally quieted and your breathing turned calmer, you gently pulled back just enough to look up at him. Your eyes met his, and an ache settled in your chest.
He was such a beautiful man. Red hair, blue eyes, with ghost of dimples— still the very same wounded knight you had secretly harbored affections for with all those years ago.
Driven by a clear wave of clarity, you didn’t wait for him to speak. Reaching up, you stood on your toes and pulled him down by his collar—
—and pressed your lips to his.
Gwayne went rigid at your sudden boldness. But as your fingers tangled into his soft hair, any lingering shock vanished. With a low groan, he leaned into you, capturing your mouth in a kiss that felt like the bursting of a dam.
He drank in your sighs, his lips moving against yours with a desperate longing, as if he were trying to memorize the taste of you. He pulled you closer, his hands tilting your head back, anchoring you to him.
“You really are—” he growled against your mouth, his breath hot and ragged, “my utter undoing, Princess.”
Before the words could even fully register, you gasped as he gathered you up and hoisted you backwards, setting you down onto the broad stone railing.
Gwayne stepped between your thighs, pinning you to the ledge as his mouth descended on yours once more, even more ravenous than before. The kiss became a blur of lips, tongues, and breathless gasps—
His hands left your face to map the lines of your body, his palm sliding down the column of your throat to the curve of your shoulders. In his mind’s eye, he was already stripping away the heavy, suffocating layers of your gown, picturing the soft, aching swell of your breasts and the intoxicating dip of your waist.
In less than a week... as soon as you swear your oaths before the Seven, he would be graced by that sight.
Gwayne dragged his lips down from your mouth, leaving a trail of scorching kisses along your jawline before burying his face in the crook of your neck.
“Ser Gwayne—” your voice came hitched, and that what brought him back to reality.
He bit softly at the sensitive skin there, swallowing the fire that was about to consume him. When he finally pulled away to breathe, his lips lingered against yours.
“Well, you did kiss me first, Princess,” Gwayne murmured, his eyes twinkling, voice delightfully raspy as his arms settled loosely around your waist. “If I had known a broken rib would finally get you to kiss me, I would have marched up to Grey Ghost and asked him to toss me by the tail weeks ago.”
“Please don’t,” you giggled, circling your arms around his neck.
“Ah, but think of the romance— a dashing knight, battered and bruised, crawling back from the Dragonpit just to collapse into his bride’s arms.”
A breathless laugh escaped your lips, giving way to a very sweet, genuine smile. To Gwayne Hightower, this was the prettiest you had ever been, and his heart throbbed.
Oh, so she does, he realized, a quiet reverence settling into his soul. She does return my affections.
Gwayne leaned in, pressing a soft kiss to your forehead, finally certain that his heart was safe in your hands.
“You might not know it,” he whispered, “but I have been in love with you for a very long time.”
You looked up at him, your eyes bright with unshed tears, and he met your gaze with a look of such devotion it stole the breath from your lungs.
“So let me say this once again. From before, now and until the day we breathe our last, all that I am... is yours.”
In that moment, you couldn’t have known that the realm would soon be plunged into a senseless civil war, pitting your sister against his in a dance of dragons and blood. You couldn’t have foreseen the ashes, the betrayals, or the heavy price the Hightower green and the Targaryen black would have to pay.
None of that matters right now. All you wanted was to lose yourself in his embrace and savor the fragile perfection of your wedding to the man of your dreams... for as long as it would last.
Tags ✶ uncle/niece incest, mutual pining, religious guilt, devotional penance (self-flagellating), mild masochism, love confession, smut, kneeling, non penetrative sex, oral sex (female receiving)
Wordcount ✶ 3,505
Growing up together in Oldtown, Gwayne now struggles to accept that as you grew into a woman, his feelings changed from brotherly love to unbridled passion. You discover by chance that he has taken to discipline himself as Septons do.
Gwayne Masterlist
Nightly prayers were a ritual as much as they were a burden to Gwayne, one he could not consider forgoing even in his darkest moments. No matter the course of the day, once the sun had kissed the horizon good night, he bathed and kneeled, freshly washed and cleaned, on the carpet, and prayed. He spoke to the Seven as he had been taught as a young child, in private whispers, offering grateful thoughts and praises, and begging for forgiveness for his transgressions.
As all living human creatures, he was a sinner, and of all the sins that could plague men—wrath, greed, jealousy—it was the sin of the flesh that corrupted him. He was the son of the Hand of the King, nephew of the Defender of the Faith ; he had values to uphold and beliefs to defend, but inside him lurked a deep seated shame. He was a lustful creature, coveting the most precious, forbidden thing.
The daughter of his own sister, you.
Once a child in the charge of his uncle Lord Hobert, you were now a young woman of age, with many a young lord in the tower eager for your favor at tourneys.
Every one of their attempts was rebuffed with grace, and every time it settled Gwayne’s mind—it was selfish, to be relieved in seeing you without a suitor, but in the darkest corner of his mind, he coveted your hand, knowing it would never be his.
While you were a Targaryen, he was not, and where he came from, where his blood was born, such an attraction was forbidden and looked upon with repulsion.
Therefore once a week at the least, when his love became too wild and his desire too present, he came to his rooms at night with the intent of atoning. There was a ritual to it ; first he would fold his shirt, then place his knees wide on the carpet, adjust the grip of his hand on the familiar handle, and proceed.
This night was no different. He settled at the foot of his bed and took the whip he had begged the Septon for, many moons ago. The old man had praised his devotion to the Gods, only because he knew nothing of the lusting beast inside of Gwayne.
It was made with a handle of braided cords that split into lengths of the same rope, with heavy knots on every strand, each as long as his lower arm. It looked almost harmless, simple hemp rope, but when whipped across the back, it was brutal.
“Father, give me the wisdom and courage to face this weakness,” he prayed out loud, and braced for the pain that was to come.
The first hit across his back made his breath catch in his chest—for a moment there was nothing, then a line of heat bloomed across his skin and he hissed behind gritted teeth. He never allowed himself to cry out or moan, instead he bore his self-inflicted punishment in silence.
“Mother, give me the grace and patience to bear this burden,” he pleaded, and the second strike hit atop the first, reawakening the pain, a line of fire that made hot tears prickle at the back of his eyes.
As a rule, he disciplined himself with seven hits, and a prayer with each, counting each one aloud. With every strike, a new layer of pain was building atop the preceding hits, and if he did it with enough strength, he was utterly spent by the time the seven strikes had been completed.
Tonight was no exception, and by the time he was nearly done, his knees were threatening to give out. “Warrior, give me the strength to overcome it,” he sobbed.
The seventh hit felt like salvation. He dropped the flogger and fell to his hands and knees on the carpet, but he could breathe again. His mind was clear, and his traitorous cock was soft between his legs—he was relieved of his burden, for a time at least.
Wandering thoughts and wandering eyes were sins alike, as much as touch, you had been taught in your youth by your Septa. Transgressing in your mind and in your heart was deserving of correction, and the Gods were attentive to even those silent sins—and yet there you stood, untouched by any sort of godly punishment, save for being forbidden to love the one you loved.
Growing up in Oldtown alongside your mother’s kin, you had followed a strict upbringing, rooted in faith and the fear of the Seven Gods. However no matter how much you prayed or how long you spent reading scriptures, there was a part of your soul that you could not tame.
Perhaps it was in your blood—after all, many blood relatives had been wed inside the House of the Dragon, brothers and sisters, and uncles and nieces alike. Yet the man you longed for belonged to another house, and to other customs.
The object of your admiration and desire, none other than your uncle Gwayne, was currently showcasing his talent with the sword, in training with his cousin Ser Ormund for all to see. The two men enjoyed practicing in full view and it was always a spectacle you enjoyed.
Despite his arrogance, Ormund did make a good show of himself in tourneys and on the training field, but your eyes always strayed to Gwayne, no matter who he was competing against. It would have been more appropriate for you to admire your cousin Ormund.
While an uncle and a niece was an appropriate match for Targaryens, it did not extend to other houses in the land—here in Oldtown, it would be more than frowned upon, it would be forbidden.
Gwayne was kind and gentle, and had never treated you as an ignorant child. Ormund often took pleasure in reminding you of your young age and lack of knowledge of the world, while Gwayne listened to your thoughts and opinions, and never dismissed them. The two of you shared a passion for the arts, and some sort of understanding about the world around you.
Sometimes there was a glint in his eyes that made you foolishly hope he would one day see you as more than his sister’s child, and that in his instinct to protect you, there was more than mere duty, but the primal desire of a man to defend his chosen spouse.
Thoughts straying on dangerous paths, you watched as the two men charged each other as children would, laughing and forgoing all proper technique. Ormund was agile despite his size, and the man liked to brag, which was how he ended up twirling on himself and hitting Gwayne square across the back—the young man hissed and moaned, cursing him out.
“Gwayne,” you cried out as both threw their practice swords aside and turned to their respective benches, where you followed him. His back to you, he took a linen cloth and dipped it into the basin of water provided, wiping the sweat from his face and the nape of his neck.
“There is a spot of blood on your shirt,” you remarked, and forgoing all propriety, untucked the linen from the waistband of his trousers before he could protest.
The gasp that tore from your throat served as a bucket of ice water across his back, and the flush of heat from his training vanished. He spun around suddenly, but the damage had been done—horror was spread across your graceful face.
“Who has done this to you?” you asked. Across his back, you had seen lashes from a whip, with deeper welts that you could not make sense of, and bruises underneath.
“No one, fear not,” he replied, but it did little to assuage your worry.
“What do you mean?” you inquired.
Gwayne looked at you, seemingly ashamed, his high cheekbones flushed and his hairline as well, pink disappearing into his fiery red hair, and for a moment you thought he would not answer. “I discipline myself, when it is necessary,” he finally replied, quick and sharp, and his answer was almost worse than what you had imagined.
“Prayers ought to be enough, surely,” you protested with a small smile, attempting to ease his embarrassment.
However his answer was curt and severe. “It is nothing I do not deserve. I am sinful and I must atone,” he explained, tucking his shirt back into his trousers and taking his leave without another look towards you.
“No one is without sin,” you said quietly, unsure whether he had heard you, and watched his retreating back, the traitorous spot of blood between his shoulder blade a startling crimson against the white cotton.
That night, you could not find sleep. The sight of the red streaks across Gwayne’s back was haunting you, as well as the admission that he had been inflicting such punishment upon yourself. Knowing you would not rest until the matter was resolved, or at least discussed, you rose from bed and slipped a robe on before making your way to his chambers.
It was quiet in the Tower. Slipping along the hallways without a word, you reached the bachelor’s corridor and knocked quietly, unwilling to attract any attention. Light was coming under the door, yellow and bright across the stones, and you thought candles were still lit—Gwayne was awake. Perhaps he was reading as he was prone to do before bed, or perhaps praying.
As no answer came, even when you knocked a second time, harder, you pressed your ear to the heavy door. It was inappropriate, you were aware, but the afternoon’s confession had taken hold of you, giving you more audacity than you naturally possessed.
What you heard through the door made your heart startle in your chest. The sound was faint but rather unmistakable—the whistling sound of a whip followed by muffled grunts. Tears rose in your eyes and against your better judgment, you turned the handle and entered, closing the door behind you.
In the middle of the room, on the carpet, Gwayne was on his knees, his bare back to the door. It was already streaked with angry welts, his pale, freckled back flushed pink with raised marks. In his right hand, he held a flogger made of corded rope, but before he could deliver yet another hit to his own flesh, you cried out.
“Gwayne!” you called, and he startled, the flogger falling to the floor in a muted sound as he rose and turned, looking frantic.
“I did not hear you come in,” he said almost as a defense—his face was crestfallen, his eyes full of tears, and you noticed with heartbreak that he was shivering in pain.
“I beg of you,” you pleaded, reaching out to him, but he took a step backwards. “It causes me great pain to see you inflict this upon yourself.”
“I must atone,” he protested.
“Then let it be through prayer, good works and charity!” you insisted, looking so earnest he wanted to lean into you. “Whatever burden you bear, I would bear with you if only you would share it with me,” you continued, and your words of friendship only added to the ache in his heart.
“I cannot,” he said once more, but you would not relent.
“Why?” you cried out, and he loathed to be the source of your distress, but he would rather the Gods strike him down where he stood than speak of it and cause you even more anguish. His shame was his own to carry, and he could not stand to burden you with disgust.
“You are the source of my torment,” he finally confessed, his cheekbones flushed red and his eyes full of tears.
Sweet and innocent as you were, you did not seem to understand what he was alluding to. “What have I done that is so terrible that it plagues you so?” you asked. “Please tell me.”
“The fault is not with you but with my treacherous mind,” he explained.
“I don’t understand, please speak plainly,” you pressed, your hand flat against his chest, and perhaps it was the softness of your palm against his wildly beating heart that finally broke his resolve.
Gwayne closed his eyes and sighed. “Please forgive me,” he murmured, and setting his hand atop yours, confessed. “I yearn for you, even though I know I should not.”
“Gwayne…” you murmured, hope galloping in your heart like a horse across a plain, suddenly freed from its reins.
“I desire you, and I cannot rid myself of this cursed affliction,” he admitted.
Eyes wide and mouth dropping open, your gaze did not leave his face as you removed your hand from his grasp—he let you go easily—only to lower yourself upon the floor and pick the flogger up, rising again.
“Then take this and punish me as well, because I am just as sinful as you are,” you said tearily, handing the flogger back to him, but more assertive than he had ever seen you.
With a trembling hand he took it, thunderstruck as you walked to the dinner table while undoing the laces of your night gown. Pushing your hair aside, you dropped the garment until it pooled at your waist, held at your elbows, and bared your back to him, bracing yourself on the edge of the tabletop.
“I desire you as well,” you confessed then, loud and clear, glancing at him over your shoulder. Stupefied, Gwayne approached carefully, his eyes roaming the expanse of your skin with barely concealed greed.
A shudder ran across it as he raised a hand and the tips of his fingers traced the curve of your shoulder blade. Against his better judgement, he dipped his head and pressed a kiss to your shoulder, then the back of your neck. “Punish me, then,” you cried out, and his heart ached—no matter how you begged him, he knew he was at fault, he knew he was the one leading you astray, but he was weak.
The flogger fell to the ground in a muted sound, and then you heard the thudding of his knees on the carpet—you turned and there he was, kneeling, devastation painted on his handsome face.
“Do you think me wicked?” you asked.
“Never,” he replied, quick and certain as though he knew no other truth, and at that you freed your gown from the crooks of your elbows, and the fabric fell to the ground, pooling at your feet.
“Gods have mercy,” he whispered, his gaze following the drop of the fabric and remaining caught at the apex of your thighs, your most intimate place now bared to him.
Leaning against the tabletop, you gripped its edges and waited. He could easily send you away with a single word, or chastise you as an uncle ought to chastise his transgressing niece, but instead he was looking at you like a supplicant looking at a goddess, worshiping the sight of your curves. Slowly he raised his hands and rested them alongside yours, finding purchase on the smooth oakwood.
The first kiss of his mouth upon your core was reverence, a taste of the heavens—his lips were soft and almost shy, afraid to startle you. Instead it spread a gentle heat in your core. You trembled and sighed when he did it again, firmer, lingering slightly.
Attentive to the way your sighs grew deeper, he allowed himself to be bold, and licked across your folds once—you quivered then, one of your hands carding through his bright mane.
“Gwayne,” you gasped like a prayer, and his own desire burst in his core. His cock filled with blood against his thigh.
He licked the seam of your folds once more, pressing at your pearl with a flick of his tongue, relishing how it made you quiver and whine. Slowly, he built a rhythm you thought would drive you to madness, kissing your pearl and pulling it between his soft lips before pressing his tongue past your folds, into the sensitive divot that led into your body. Each of his kisses and each pass of his tongue was making your thighs quiver, liquid heat spreading into your veins, throbbing in your core.
In your pleasure, your hand had tightened in his hair, but the sting at his scalp only spurred him on.
“Please, I need to feel you—” you sobbed when he thought you would finally collapse where you stood, desire and pleasure making you tremble violently.
He knelt back, looking up at you with reverence. His mouth was a gift, and it was a transgression far greater than you would have ever imagined would take place between the two of you, but not enough to sate your hunger.
“I will not take you,” he replied, almost broken. “It would only damn us both.”
“I will be damned if you send me away now,” you protested.
Devout, he rose until he was standing over you, and swiftly took you into his arms and lifted you, your legs wrapping around his slim waist. He walked you to the bed, his length trapped between your stomachs, and you whined, unable to rock back against him.
When finally he lowered you to the sheets, discarding his trousers, you did not let go of him, instead found purchase to grind up into his body, spreading your wetness over his cock.
It was only a facsimile of what he desired most, but the look of rapture on your face made it impossible for him to refuse you. He dipped his head down and captured your lips in a kiss that spoke of all he could not voice, his mouth hot and relentless against yours. You whispered his name against his own lips, kissing him back with as much passion and yearning.
Taking his cock in hand, he guided it to where he most desperately wanted to sheath himself but could not. Biting his lip, he teased the head of his cock between your folds, feeling your wetness and the way you clenched around his absence, the divot leading into your entrance squeezing him. It was the cruelest torture to you both, a taste of what you both desired but could not have.
Only allowing you a taste of the forbidden, he took his cock away, making you mewl, only to find his place against your core, trapping his length between your stomach and his, your pearl caught against it.
He started a desperate rhythm, nearly frantic by moment, sating the hunger that threatened to unravel both your minds, and painfully slow the next, trying to stave off the peak that was rising in him. There was no grace to it and yet you were grinding back against him, lost to it and unable to contain the moans that felt from your lips.
“Gods be good, how lovely you are,” he praised, slanting his mouth over yours for a breath of air at your lips, falling into your embrace further, your knees digging into his waist, your hands curled at his shoulders.
Gwayne hissed when you dug your nails into his sore back, reminding him of the burning streaks there, but the pain only seemed to incense him more. He looked undone, and the sight of him was more arousing to you than the feeling of him between your legs—his skin was flushed the loveliest pink, his freckles standing out like the stars on the backdrop of a dark sky, his eyes wide and wet in wonder.
He swallowed, taken by yet another shudder, and it seemed to you that he was on the verge of collapse.
Once more he guided the head of his cock past your folds, snug against the flesh that prevented him from pushing inside of you, pressing against the limit he had set for you both.
“I love you,” he sobbed, and those three words snapped the tension inside of you like the edge of a knife to a frayed rope. Crying out, you threw your head back as your peak speared you to the very core, pleasure pulsing through you until your ears rang with the force of it.
Gwayne moaned, feeling your core throb around the head of his cock. He cursed aloud, pulling away with barely a split-second to spare and spilled his seed over your belly in hot ropes, unable to restrain himself any longer.
As pleasure rescinded, the reality of his transgression rushed over him at the sight of his seed on your skin, over your womb, and shame pulsed in his chest at how it aroused him. “Gods forgive me,” he said, and you kissed the prayer from his lips.
“We shall pray together then, and earn their forgiveness,” you promised. “However the Gods cannot fault us for the way they made us. My soul calls to yours, and surely that is of their making.”
Gwayne hoped that you were right, and that he was not leading upon a dark path, one that would be your downfall. “As mine calls to yours.”
Dividers by @zaldritzosrose. A special thank you to @/zaldritzosrose and @tumblin-theworldaway who encouraged me to write this!
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summary: Andrew has survived his whole life by wanting nothing. Until Craig introduces one of his friends, and suddenly, Andrew wants everything and more.
word count: 20.7k (yeah kinda lost my mind there)
c.w: age gap implied but not explicit; short suicidal ideation; crying; mentions of blood; light physical injuries; angst to fluff; smut - piv sex, oral sex; praising kink; breeding kink if you squint
a/n: sooooo...took me two weeks. had a breakdown. bon appetit! (and thank you to my wife for proofreading it) I really hope you'll like reading it like i enjoyed writing it.
❤︎ Thank you so much for reading!
If you want to be tagged for the next part, please comment below !
Andrew Cody has never been able to sleep properly.
Nights spent pacing the garden of Smurf’s house, bare feet on the cold ground, counting his steps to keep his mind occupied. It never did. He tried to outrun the memories of his actions, to drown his pain at the bottom of the pool. But on those nights, his torment wore the faces of his ghosts.
First there was Julia, then Cath, quickly followed by Baz. And Smurf. Always Smurf. A cycle of misery that makes his ribcage feel as though it might collapse under the violent pounding of his heart.
Some days, seated at a table with his family, Andrew had felt he could scream until his throat gave out, and no one would have heard. He imagined falling into the pool, slipping under the surface, water closing over his head and staying there, lungs burning just long enough for the noise to finally fucking stop, no one coming to pull him out because nobody would have noticed he disappeared.
There were moments when the thought settled heavy in his bones: he would not survive another day in his family, he didn’t want to. He kept straining toward a bond that no longer reached his end…if it ever did.
Over the years, Andrew had grown accustomed to his role. Weird Pope, Creepy Pope, the family’s guard dog: asking for nothing, obeying to the beatings, the killings and never, never, mentioning the ghosts hunting the corner of his eyes each night.
He remembered Smurf’s voice, years ago. “Pop him a few pills and he’ll follow your commands, baby.” She said it to Baz like it was nothing, like he was nothing. This was before prison, before Andrew felt deep in his bones that the other half of his soul left this merciless Earth without him.
Sometimes he let himself think about Julia, since no one else did. He hoped that at least one of them had finally found peace.
Then, you happened.
And Andrew can’t make sense of it, no matter how much he turns it over in his head, how a girl like you ends up being friends with Craig and therefore, near the Cody brothers: you are sweet, kind, nothing but soft edges, and innocent. Almost like the world has spared you the knowledge of what men like him are capable of.
Whenever you are in the house, his gaze follows you from room to room. He tells himself that it’s vigilance and habit that pushes him to act like that. Except he doesn’t need to memorize the way you tuck your hair behind your ear, or how he can recognize the distinct sound of your footsteps in a heartbeat.
He learns and catalogues each of your reactions: the faint frown of your nose at the smell of a particular brand of coffee (gone from the house and replaced before sunset), the soft curl of your lips whenever you are kindly refusing his offer to make you a sandwich.
(He wouldn’t be bothered if you took a bite of his.)
To see you is a special kind of hell and an indescribable heaven, like pressing on a bruise just to make sure it still hurts.
Lately, you shift the air of the house by simply existing in it. Your laugh, in the rooms where Smurf had once lived, seems to almost cleanse the walls of her memory. And Andrew knows. He knows that’s why Craig is friends with you. Because each day, the sun seems to finally be able to reach the house, even his own room.
It frightens him.
His body instinctively adjusts around your presence, his mind reassessing new rules (the glasses on the bottom shelf so you can have access to them, checking how many drinks you have at Deran’s bar). He memorizes your schedule, notes which books you are bringing with you in your bag, times how long it takes you to get home, parks far enough that you can’t notice his truck but close enough that he can reach you if something goes wrong.
All his life, Andrew had survived by wanting nothing. By hollowing himself out until the obedience Smurf wanted from him fitted neatly inside his ribs, because wanting had always been a liability, a weakness someone could press a knife into.
But now…now that life seems finally good and breathable, that he has the skatepark and his siblings and an almost regular life (if one exists for men like him) without Smurf’s claws on his throat, Andrew finds himself cornered by a simple, terrifying truth: he wants you.
He swallows it. Buries it deep inside, trying to drown it with numbness and even more repetitive actions when you are near: chopping, tidying the house, scrubbing counters that are already clean, fixing hinges that doesn’t squeak… Anything to keep his hands busy so they don’t reach for you.
No, Andrew Cody has never been able to sleep properly.
──────────
You remember telling yourself that the house felt wrong before you ever understood why.
Craig had asked you to come meet his brothers and from his tone alone, you knew it was a big deal. That something was at stake.
You showed up at four sharp, even if he hadn’t given you a specific time (something you would soon realize was typical of Craig), a paper bag pressed to your chest, palms already sweaty. You stood outside for a full minute before knocking, taking a few deep breaths, and stepping over the threshold with a smile as he wrapped you in a hug with his tall frame before dragging you straight into the kitchen.
That’s when you saw him.
Broad shoulders, dark curls on a face held tight, back straight and hands braced on his thighs, his posture so still you almost thought he was a mannequin.
“My brother Pope,” Craig said. “Don’t mind him, he almost doesn’t bite.”
His gaze was already on you, unblinking, steady in a quiet unnerving way, like he was committing every detail to memory, a look so intense it coaxed words out of you before you could stop them.
“H-Hi,” you stuttered, giving your name as you tried to stay composed. You extended your hand toward him, and he stared at it for a moment. The pause stretched long enough for doubt to creep up your spine (maybe he didn’t shake hands? maybe you had already broken some invisible rule?).
You swallowed, blood rising to your cheeks, drawing your hand back to clutch the paper bag as you tried not to stammer on your words. “I brought pastries. I didn’t know what you all would like so…I kind of…guessed,” you hated how small your voice sounded.
He stayed silent, brows faintly furrowed, as if he was processing what you had just said. Then he nodded. “Thank you.”
His tone was quiet, almost a hum, pulled from the depth of his chest, the sound settling low in your stomach, warm and heavy, and your first thought (unwelcome and strange) was how that vibration would feel beneath your palm.
Craig sighed with desperation at the conversation with a quiet “Stop being weird, bro!” while his other younger brother, unbothered, simply ignored the awkwardness, nodded as an introduction and handed beers around.
It was a welcome distraction, the cold liquid sliding down your throat, and buying you time to think on what to say next, but the youngest, Deran, beat you to it, asking you about your job and how good a surfer you were.
“You fuckin’ with me? You live in Oceanside and can’t stand on a board?” he laughed and couldn’t stop the slight condescending tone from his voice. “No worry, me or mister El Craigo here will introduce you to it. You’ll only swallow, like…a gallon of water before you get it.”
“Oh, um…I don’t think…” you tried to say, though it was mostly ignored.
Pope hadn’t looked away once, hand gripping tightly enough on the beer that you could see his knuckles whitening. There was something careful about the way he held himself: still, contained.
Your eyes met his again and you smiled tentatively.
“Um…Pope,” you started, uncertain, the name tasting strange on your tongue. “Can I ask you…”
“Andrew.” He interrupted, the tone firm enough to stop you mid-breath.
You suddenly became aware of your heartbeat, your chest lifting as it rattled against your ribs. Your gaze dropped at the intensity. Had you done something wrong? You suddenly felt foolish for the pastries, for the outstretched hand, for trying so hard, and an absurd urge to apologize rose in your throat, even if you didn’t know what for.
When you looked up, he was already halfway out of the kitchen.
You never finished your question.
Later that night, when you slipped into your bed, the sheets cold but familiar in their welcoming loneliness, you turned from one side to the other, eyes pinched shut without any release to exhaustion, realizing that you couldn’t remember what you had meant to ask.
Only that you wanted to hear his voice, just one more time.
──────────
The house is too loud. It always is when there are people over.
It reminds him of being a kid, hiding with Julia, hands intertwined, avoiding the drunk and high grown-ups. Whispering that everything would be alright. That no one would find them. Not even Smu-
(Bad thought. One. Two. Three. Four. He counts the dents on the kitchen counter.)
The volume of the music is pushed too high for his comfort, a constant buzz under the conversations in the house and near the pool while Andrew stands in the kitchen, hands deep in soapy water, scrubbing a glass that is already clean.
He finished the dishes ten minutes ago, but he is still washing, still drying, rearranging things that don’t need rearranging because it gives him somewhere to put his hands, to put his eyes. Because the alternative is the living room. And you.
(You, in that white dress. He has the stupid thought that you look like an angel and immediately hates himself for it. One. Two. Three. Four. He counts the droplets dripping from his fingertips.)
He tells himself that he is staying in the kitchen because it lets him see everything in the house, because parties mean unlocked doors, strangers who could wander into rooms they shouldn’t be in. And there are the habits he can’t shake off: watching the exits, the unfamiliar faces, counting heads (Deran, Craig, you), noting who is drinking too much, who is getting loud, who might break something.
He dries the same plate twice in a row before setting it down on the kitchen counter and looking up without meaning to.
You are by the couch, perched on the armrest while Craig, bare chest and shameless about it, tells you the story about the time he smuggled a burrito full of drugs across the Mexico border, story he knew you heard a dozen times these past three months. But still, you are laughing, head tipped back, hair falling down your spine (he wonders what they would feel like underneath his fingertips), one hand wrapped around a bottle you haven’t drunk from in a while, like it has more to do with keeping your hands busy while you are listening.
Andrew noticed it the first week he met you.
But the moment your lips wrap around the drink, he looks away and goes back to washing clean and dried plates, hands in the ice water, soap stinging the small cut on his knuckle.
(Good. Something sharp. Something real. Better than counting for now.)
“I bought you a new pair of gloves.”
Your voice is closer than he expected and his head snaps towards you before he can stop it. You are standing at the edge of the counter, smiling, so close that he can smell your shampoo despite the soap and the lingering smell of weed (it’s so clean, so soft, he wants to drown himself in it).
“Why?” He asks, his nostrils flaring at his own bluntness.
You shrug, small. “I know Craig threw your pair away yesterday. And, um… I know you like wearing them when you clean.”
“Why?” his voice repeats, breaking at the word.
Of course, you ignore his question, and he can’t help but spiral (why did you do that? do you realize how much the gesture is affecting him? no one ever cared about his gloves. One. Two. Three. Four. He counts the freckles on your nose.).
“I got the good ones,” you add, beaming. “So the soap doesn’t mess up your hands.”
While your eyes drop to his hands, his are still enraptured on your face, studying every single feature (you really do look like an angel. and you act like one too. maybe you are his salvation. stop, he needs to fucking stop but he no longer knows what to count.).
Andrew swallows what feels like an anchor in his throat because you look like you worry about him (you have done that for a while now, which still baffles him). Nobody worries about him: they worry about what he might do, not whether he is hurt.
“’m fine.” He mutters, not convincingly enough, judging by the look on your face.
You are still looking at his bruised hands and your fingers twitch on the counter like you had the sudden urge to reach for him, like you might take his hand to look at it.
(He has the overwhelming need to know what you would do with his hands in yours. Hold them? Kiss them better? One. Two. Three- would you let his hands run along your hair? He knows what it’s like to touch you when you need help, but he feels that this would be very different.)
“They are under the sink,” you say above the music and Andrew can’t do anything else but stare, not trusting his own voice.
You linger for a moment at the counter and Andrew wants to ask you to stay (in the kitchen, in his life, doesn’t matter), but Craig shouts your name from the living room and suddenly he has some homicidal thoughts. You glance over your shoulder, then back at Andrew, and you look…reluctant.
“I’ll…”
“Yeah.”
You don’t move. Neither does he.
“Thanks.” He finally says, his gaze still tracking every shift of your expressions, trying to burn your smile in his retina, hoping one blink would not be enough to erase it.
“Of course, Andrew.”
Andrew. For you, he is Andrew and that’s all that matters because you are the only one calling him by this name and you make it sound like it belongs to you ever since you first said it by the pool.
With one last little smile, you walk away and his eyes follow you until he knows you have reached Craig but even then, he doesn’t look away, afraid you might disappear, just like every good thing always did.
And Andrew learned, a long time ago, that if you wanted something to stay alive and safe, you watched it. Guarded it. Didn’t blink.
Andrew didn’t blink.
──────────
You stepped outside because the house had started to feel too small, suffocating all at once, Craig and Deran’s voices stacking over each other in the open kitchen, arguing about a job - a part of the Cody brothers’ lives you knew existed but mostly chose not to look at too closely.
You told yourself you only needed a second of quiet, just enough space to breathe properly again after a long day at work full of aggravating customers, meager tips and a coffee spilt by a coworker on your bare legs.
The noise softened once the door closed, letting you draw in a deep breath you hadn’t realized you’d been holding.
“Fucking hell.” You muttered, exhausted by the shouting.
You hadn’t noticed him at first, too busy staring at the pool and ignoring your inner voice telling you to jump straight in the pool fully clothed, a thought that you were soon pulled out of when you heard a sound that didn’t belong to the wind or the trees.
That’s when you saw him, seated at the edge of a lounge chair, head bowed, a skateboard turned upside down across his thighs, one hand spinning a wheel while the other oiled it with slow, precise movements.
“Not a fan of the shouting matches?” you asked, trying not to startle him.
He glanced up, shook his head before going back to the board. “No.”
“So…not keen on loud noises either?”
“No.”
For a moment, you simply watched him, struck by how different he looked when he was doing something he seemed to…enjoy. Less folded into himself, the usual tightness of his posture easing (was it because of the board? the sound of the pool? the absence of his brothers? whatever it is, the view looked precious enough for you to want to capture it).
You lowered yourself onto the warm concrete next to him, your back resting against the lounge chair, knees pulled to your chest, neither of you speaking for a while.
That’s when you noticed his hands: knuckles swollen and red, the skin split near the thumb, a faint line of blood reopening every time the skin stretched.
“They look like they hurt. Y-Your hands, I mean.”
He shrugged without looking at you. “They’re fine.”
Your eyes drifted from them to his profile: from his hazel eyes fully focused on the board to the tight set of his mouth and you caught yourself distracted by his lips for a second too long before forcing your eyes back to the floor, warmth creeping up your neck (don’t think about that, don’t think about that).
“Andrew?”
The wheel immediately stopped spinning. Not gradually, just…stopped.
The entire yard suddenly became too quiet as his face snapped towards you, something unreadable flickering across his face and vanishing just as quickly, and you felt the realization settle in slowly that you had finally said his name after almost a month of avoiding it.
“Do you think I could learn how to skateboard? I…” the words got stuck between your throat and your lips while you searched for the courage to finish your sentence without tripping over yourself. “I mean…I wanted to know if you could help me. Learn it, I mean. If you wanted to. You don’t have to, I just…” (fuck. why? why were you so weird?)
Your fingers picked at the hem of your skirt and pulled on a thread to busy your hands, and from the corner of your vision you caught his brief smile, and the warmth that spread was so shamefully immediate that you bit your tongue until you tasted metal just to keep from blurting out something along the lines of ‘i really, really, fucking love your smile, please do it again so my day goes from moderately shitty to embarrassingly close to perfection.’
“Give me your phone.” he said, and you didn’t hesitate, fishing it out from your pocket, and placing it in his palm.
“There’s no password on your phone.”
“Yeah…I know.”
“It’s dangerous.” His thumb hovered over the screen, nose flaring. “Anyone could get into it. Your photos. Your messages. Your address. Everything is in there.”
You barely heard the end of it, too focused on the pull in your chest as his words kept coming, just for you.
“I haven’t thought about that.” You murmured, feeling foolish while he muttered to himself something that definitely sounded like ‘I did.’
He tapped his number in before going through the settings while you were still struck by his intensity and that he was doing this for you without being asked.
“Six digits. Not birthdates and not something simple like six zeros.” He handed your phone back, his fingers lingering for a second too long before pulling away. “Put one.”
This time you knew it was an order and you didn’t hesitate a second as you followed it, typing something in, suddenly hyperaware of how close he was standing, your shoulder almost brushing his calf, your pulse loud in your ears and a slow, humiliating heat pooling low in your stomach that you refused to think about at the moment.
“Good.” He said after you saved the password. “Text me your work hours.”
“So, it’s a yes? Really?”
He grunted and whether the dusting of crimson over his freckles was real or something you imagined, you couldn’t tell, you were too busy feeling as light as a leaf.
“Yes. And…”
His words were cut off by the screen door banging open, leaning back abruptly just as Craig made his way toward you both with a grin that meant whatever the fight with Deran had been about, he had won.
“Deran agrees for Friday night. And you,” he tapped your forehead. “didn’t hear shit.”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“That’s my girl. Now get your ass in the pool.”
Craig was already running to the pool before you could respond, clothes coming off mid-step.
“I can’t believe this man has a kid. Has you brother always been a shameless nudist?”
“Unfortunately…yes.”
You snorted before murmuring. “Thanks, by the way. For the password thing. And for agreeing to teach me. I promise I’ll only be like…average terrible.”
“You’ll be fine,” he shrugged. Then, quieter, “I’ll make sure.”
His gaze dipped briefly to your mouth when he said it, before snapping back up, and something in your stomach turned warm and gooey, a reckless part of you hoping he might add something else. Or step closer again. But he didn’t, just nodded once, before muttering. “Go.”
“Okay, I’ll leave you to your board, Andrew.”
You made it halfway to the pool before you glanced back. He was still watching, not even pretending not to, looking like a leopard ready to jump. Like if you slipped, he would already be moving.
And lying awake that night, window cracked open and the ocean humming somewhere in the dark, you muffled his name into your pillow, trying to quiet yourself, imagining his hands instead of yours. Andrew, Andrew, Andrew.
──────────
Andrew is used to ending his nights alone because wanting people to stay never goes well for him.
So, when the party finally ends at four in the morning, he does what he knows best: throwing the bottles into the trash, making sure no one is passed out in the backyard or asleep in one of the bedrooms and…cleaning.
First the diving board, even if Craig is still making out on one of the lounge chairs with a girl whose name Andrew can’t remember and doesn’t try to (he knows best). Next, the counter, twice in a row for good measure. Then the sink, while Deran claps a hand on his shoulder with a “Don’t stay up too late, okay?” before heading out.
(One. Two. Three. Four. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. He counts the second you spend in the bathroom.)
He stands in the kitchen for a moment before realizing it might look strange and make you uncomfortable. That’s the last thing he wants.
He rushes back to his room (he wouldn’t exactly call it ‘sprinting’. sprinting would mean he is trying to avoid you. which he is not. not at all.).
He doesn’t bother turning on the light when he decides to lie on top of the covers, fully dressed, staring at the ceiling because he knows that sleep won’t come. It never does.
(One. Two. Three. Four. He counts the cracks.)
Every time he closes his eyes, something crawls up from beneath his ribs and he is once again plagued by his ghost: Julia’s voice, Cath’s smile, Baz’s forgiveness. Smurf’s words cutting straight through him.
He thinks about the pool and how easy it would be to let the water close over his head. How all the voices would finally be silent forever, his own included.
(Bad thoughts. One. Two. Three. Four. He recites the number of cameras in the bank for the incoming job.)
He forces himself to think of something else.
Of you, earlier, laughing at Craig’s story (and the immediate, unwelcome ache in his chest as he wonders if there’s something between the two of you, if this will end the way things always seem to, if you’ll be another Cath: close to him before preferring his brother).
Then he thinks about the way he made you laugh on your first skateboard lesson, all because he wanted to make you feel safe and seen, how the simple feel of your waist had nearly made him press his forehead to your shoulder and beg for you to stay and keep looking at him like that.
He thinks about that night when you called him for help, and how he didn’t hesitate for even a second when reaching for his keys, truck already running before you even finished explaining because the simple thought of you alone somewhere in the dark, waiting and frightened, had felt like acid running through his veins, the kind of fear that made him beg to the sky “Not here, not her, not again. I won’t fail her”.
He presses his palms against his eyes until he sees bursts of purple light.
(Breathe. One. Tw-)
A faint knock against the door makes him freeze.
Nobody knocks in this house, his brothers just…barge in.
He is already on his feet before he realizes it, his hand finding the handle before he opens to find you there.
Barefoot, hair loose and messy, the mascara smudged at the corners of your eyes and the dress wrinkled. Earlier, Andrew thought you looked like an ethereal angel, something untouchable and holy.
But now…now you just look human, real and warm, which is worse because real things like you can stay as well as leave.
“Hey.” You murmur, leaning against the doorframe.
He grips the handle tightly to steady himself.
“Something wrong?”
“I was supposed to sleep on the couch,” you begin, talking with your hands the way you always do when you try to explain a situation, “but signor El Craigo has decided that it’s now his new make out spot with Sam and I really don’t need that image burned into my brain. And of course, I thought about taking his room in retaliation, but I don’t trust his conception of hygiene,”
That makes him huff.
“So…” you add, rubbing your arm, almost shy which doesn’t make sense in his mind because you haven’t been shy with him in a long time with the skatepark lessons or with the ‘hallway accident’ you both had together, “Can I stay here tonight?”
You don’t say ‘with you’ nor ‘in your bed’, but Andrew understands and he is pretty sure his brain short circuits for a second or two.
You didn’t text Deran or try to Uber home. You just came to him. Because you trusted him.
“Yes.” He replies too fast, stepping back from the door.
“You sure?”
He nods to avoid confessing that he would give you the bed. The room. The house. The air in his lungs.
You slip past him into the room, sitting on the edge of the bed before looking back at him and asking gently, “You’re not sleeping, right?”.
“No. Not…not really.”
“Yeah, figured.”
You lie down beneath the covers first, curling onto the side of the bed closest to the wall, leaving him space.
“Don’t think about staying on top of the covers, Andrew.”
The warning in your tone almost makes him laugh so he complies, lying down beside you, fully clothed and aware of every inch separating the two of you.
He stares at the ceiling again.
(One. Two. Three. Four. He counts your breathing.)
The mattress shifts while you slowly roll onto your back before turning fully toward him, your shoulder brushing his arm.
“Sorry,” you mumble sleepily. “’m cold.”
“It’s fine.” He says it like the ghost of your breathing over his collarbone didn’t just set every of his nerves on fire, like he was not terrified to shift even an inch.
After a few minutes, you drift closer in your sleep, chasing warmth without thinking, your knee pressing against his thigh, your hand sliding across the sheets until your fingers come to rest on the fabric of his shirt, right over his heartbeat and for a moment he genuinely forgets how to breathe.
Your palm is so warm, and he is painfully aware that you can probably feel how hard his heart is pounding.
Nobody has ever touched him like this, like he is something safe and out of everything that has happened to him: the underground fights, the prison, the jobs…none of that ever made him feel this defenseless.
His eyes suddenly burn because he wants to turn so much to see your peaceful face, tuck a strand of hair behind your ear, pull you closer to know just once in his life what it’s like to hold something good without destroying it, to press his face into your hair and breathe until the ghosts quiet down, but he doesn’t.
He stays exactly as he is, lying in the dark, eyes wide open, staring at nothing.
(One. Two. Three. Four. He counts your breaths again. Then the seconds between them. He thinks about the fact that you’re here and the miracle of it.)
Sleep doesn’t come, but for the first time in years, the night doesn’t feel empty.
Because you’re here. Warm. Alive. Trusting him.
So, Andrew stays awake until morning, guarding the only good thing that ever chose him.
──────────
You were so, so late.
You had told Andrew on the phone that you would be at his skatepark at 5:15 sharp after work, and it was now 5:42 and you were sprinting the half mile that separated the coffee shop from there, bag smacking against your hip, your lungs burning, already sweaty before you even reached the entrance, trying to slow your breathing with a few useless deep inhales, hands braced on your knees, pretending that you were not seconds away from passing out.
(First lesson and you were already late and a disaster. Great. Very impressive.)
You straightened, wiped your forehead, and stepped inside, scanning the park before finding Andrew, board tucked under one arm, sleeves riding up his biceps, curls messy from the wind and sweat and you were now positively sure that you had some drool at the corner of your mouth (the universe had decided to sabotage you and that was fucking unfair.)
You watched the tiny smile he had as a girl showed him her board, proud and beaming at him like he had personally hung the sun in the sky (no, you didn’t need to think about him being good with kids. you didn’t need to picture him with kids, him gentle, him…stop. shut up.).
The second his head lifted and locked eyes with you, you were pretty much done for. It was ridiculous, really, how one look from him could short-circuit every coherent thought in your brain, how your feet just…moved, carrying you toward him instinctively, dropping your bag by the fence without breaking your stride as he met you halfway.
His gaze dragged over you once: your face, your hair, your chest.
“You ran here?”
“Yes. And I’m sweating…a lot. Please don’t judge me.”
He took a few seconds, a storm passing through his eyes before he added.
“You’re late.”
“I know,” you rushed, your hands quickly moving and your words tumbling over each other like they always did when you got flustered around him. “but a guy ordered for his whole ‘cheaper by the dozen’ family like three minutes before we closed. I’m probably sure he sensed my despair and fed on it.”
A small huff escaped him. “You didn’t have to run.”
You shrugged, eyes to the ground. “Didn’t want you to think I bailed on you.”
You felt it, his head tilting down just enough to catch your gaze again, stubborn about it.
“I wouldn’t. Now you ready?”
“Born ready.” You lied through your teeth.
“You look terrified.”
“I can do both, you know,” you shot back quickly. “I am large, I contain multitudes.”
There was the tiniest twitch at the corner of his mouth. “Okay, Whitman.”
“Y-You know Whitman?”
A pause.
“I mean…not that I don’t believe you or think you can’t read poetry or anything…that’s actually super hot, so good job!” you gave him a thumbs-up, aware you had just lost every ounce of dignity you had ever possessed. “It’s just that last week Craig asked me if ‘Pride and Peace’ was a good book to impress a girl, so…my bar was very low.”
Andrew stared at you for a moment. “Pride and Peace.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s not…”
“I know, I know. But don’t worry, I did a good deed for society and told him not to mention any book ever. You and Deran are safe from now on. You’re welcome.”
And there it was again: that quiet amusement on his lips, the roll of his eyes like he couldn’t help himself, making you feel the stupid and dangerous need to continue to jest (keep talking, say anything, make him do it again).
He shook his head once. “C’mon Whitman. Let’s see what you got.”
You trailed after him without thinking and the first few attempts were…humiliating to say the least: your balance was nonexistent, your feet refused to cooperate, your arms stood uselessly at your sides, and you had absolutely no idea where you were supposed to look while Andrew hovered nearby like he was ready to intervene at any moment.
“I look stupid!” you complained.
“You’re fine.”
“I’m not fine! This is deeply humiliating. I can barely stay upright and there are twelve-year-olds doing tricks behind me! Tricks, Andrew!”
“You’re doing good.”
“I almost died.”
“You didn’t.”
“Socially, I assure you I did.”
Your heart did a stupid little skip when a tiny, amused sound escaped him.
(You could bottle that sound and live off it. You were now pretty sure you would commit crimes for it.)
“Makes sense you’re friends with Craig,” he muttered. “Dramatic.”
You gasped, unable to contain your grin. “Excuse you mister Cody, but I am layered! I am complex!”
He looked unimpressed and repeated “Dramatic.”
You opened your mouth to argue before your foot slipped, the board shooting forward, and for one horrible second you thought that worse than falling off in front of children was falling off in front of the guy you had a crush on.
But you never got to know the feeling before his hands were suddenly there, at your waist, catching you fast and steadying you while you became acutely aware of every nerve under his palms, of his thumbs grazing your hipbones, of his breath brushing your cheek as heat pooled between your legs.
He moved behind your back, still holding your waist before murmuring “Don’t lean and bend your knees.”
(You were starting to suspect he was fucking with you on purpose.)
But still, he adjusted you gently, palms rotating your hips and guiding your stance before kneeling to help place your legs on the board and you couldn’t stop yourself from blurting:
“I haven’t shaved my legs. Sorry.”
“Me neither.” He huffed, his breath warm on your calf and the faintest hint of amusement threading through his voice.
(Was that…a joke? Was he joking? Since when was he doing that? You liked that. You wanted that.)
Andrew pushed himself back on his feet, stepping away just enough for you to feel the sudden absence of his body, leaving you oddly cold, like you had stepped out of the sunlight.
“Try again.”
You nodded, realizing that his joke had somehow shaken the worst of your nerves away, before pushing off, your knees bent like he had shown you, your weight centered and the board rolled.
“Oh my God, I’m doing it! Andrew, I’m really doing it!” you exclaimed happily.
“You are.”
You risked a glance over your shoulder, and he was watching you with his usual careful intensity, hands half-raised and prepared to catch you, like protecting you was the only thing on his list right now.
So (naturally), you did the dumbest thing possible and tested him. Just a little bit. Just to know.
You leaned and let your weight tip forward just enough to know if…
His hands immediately caught you, his hands on your ribs, scanning up and down if you had been hurt, “You okay?”
You swallowed, realizing that you had never doubted a second he would be there. And that settled something warm and terrifying in your chest.
It was not a silly crush, not your friend’s brother that you thought was hot and interesting, no. It was falling. Headfirst, no parachute.
And judging by the way his hands hadn’t moved from your waist yet, you weren’t entirely sure he wasn’t falling a little too.
──────────
You are screaming and he is too late.
He is always too late.
Your voice breaks into something small and terrified, the kind of sound that doesn’t even feel human anymore, and he is running but his legs don’t cooperate, move in slow-motion, the floor stretching longer and longer beneath him and the house smells like chlorine, metal and something sour he recognizes too fast.
You’re in the pool, face down and the water is red. And you are so, so still. He tries to move, to drag you out, but he can’t.
You turn toward him, eyes open and your mouth spilling blood.
“You were supposed to be there, Andrew. Why weren’t you there?”
He jerks awake, his whole body snapping upright while air refuses to enter his lungs, a pain in his ribcage so intense he thinks it might split him open from the inside out.
He doesn’t understand why at first: why his pillow feels cold and damp to the touch, why his throat burns, until he drags a shaky hand across his face and touches something wet, the realization feeling nauseating.
He has been crying in his sleep for God knows how long.
He presses his palms hard into his eyes like maybe the pain will help him, like maybe if he suffers enough the images will disappear. That you won’t be floating face down in the pool, covered in blood, your blood, your voice joining all the others, the same disappointed tone he’s memorized over the years with his ghosts.
(One. Two. Three. Four. He tries to count but it doesn’t work.)
The house is quiet for once, too quiet, and Andrew has this awful, crawling sensation lodged under his sternum, something cold and irrational that he can’t help but spiral into.
(What if…No.)
He is already moving, because lying back down would mean closing his eyes again and he can’t, he fucking can’t risk seeing you like that again, can’t hear the sound of your voice pleading and begging for him to save you when you are already gone, can’t add you to the long list of ghosts that wait for him every night.
Halfway down the hall, he gets as quiet as he can manage, moving through the house like he is on a job, because it feels the same: this sick, urgent need to verify something, to be sure that you are here, that you are safe.
The living room is glowing faintly blue before he even steps in, the light spilling on the floor and he hears it: a narrator speaking about sharks and the distant sound of recorded waves.
You always pick sea life documentaries when you stay over.
He doesn’t know when you figured out he liked them.
He stops at the threshold and sees you: curled on the couch, hidden beneath a blanket and alive.
(Your chest rises. Then falls. Rises. Falls. You’re not floating. You’re not gone.)
His lungs finally unlock and he breathes sharply, the sound loud enough that you look up immediately, like you sensed him there, like you are now tuned to him in a way he doesn’t understand, and your expression softens the second you see his face.
“Hey,” you say, voice thick with sleep. “Everything okay?”
He nods automatically but knows that he can’t bullshit you.
“You don’t look okay.”
“I’m fine,” he manages, but the words come out wrecked and dragged through his throat.
Your eyes examine him slowly and it clicks behind them. “Nightmare?”
(Oh, he hates this word. Hates how small it makes him feel. Hates how childish it sounds. Hates how accurate it is.)
His jaw locks so hard it aches and he can’t force out anything more than a stiff, miserable nod, his nails digging crescent moons in his palms as he braces himself for questions, for having to justify why he is standing there at three in the morning, shaking over a bad dream. But you don’t push.
You just scrub a hand over your tired face before moving your legs and lifting the blanket, creating space beside you.
“Come here.” You mumble, looking at him, patient.
He crosses the room slowly, the couch dipping under his weight as he lowers himself beside you, hyperaware of every inch of distance, of your arm brushing his, of the warmth bleeding through the thin fabric of your shirt, of how close your knee is to his thigh and how easy it would be to accidentally touch.
Your hand bumps his and even if he should pull away, he doesn’t. The contact is small, just skin against skin but for Andrew, it’s the closest to heaven he’s ever been.
Your fingers linger, uncertain, like you’re giving him time to decide, like he is allowed to decide. His thumb moves before he can stop it, brushing lightly over your knuckles, slowly, reverently, like he needs to make sure you are solid and not a trick of his mind. You feel warmer than him.
(Alive warm. Not water cold. Not bloody and floating. Not like in the pool.)
The memory hits so hard it hurts.
He jerks his hand back abruptly, his breathing going wrong again, shame creeping hot and fast because for a moment he wanted something and asked for it, letting the walls go down.
But you don’t comment, don’t tease and don’t pull away in response to his neediness and instead, you shift closer and you help settling the blanket over both of you, your arm following, tugging him in gently, like there has never been a version of this world where he wasn’t permitted to be here.
He stiffens when your hand finds the back of his neck and he wants to reassure you that it’s not because he wants it to stop but because he wants it too much, and he doesn’t deserve it. But your fingers brush his scalp, and suddenly he is nothing but starving for it, leaning toward it instinctively.
You guide him down gently, so gently and he can’t win this fight tonight, his ear pressing against your chest.
The documentary keeps whispering about tides and sharks, but he barely hears it now because all he can focus on is the rhythm under his cheek and the way your fingers keep caressing his curls in slow strokes like you were calming a frightened wild animal.
He wants to move. To slide his arm around your waist. To press his face into your shirt and breathe you. To hold you tight enough so nothing could ever take you away.
But he stays still, terrified of ruining it and breaking something with the weight of his want.
Your fingers drift lower to cradle the back of his head while your other arm tightens around him and pull him fully into you, closing the remaining space between your two bodies. His relief is immediate and overwhelming, pulling a whimper out of him, emptying him of his thoughts.
His chest caves inward on a shaky exhale, his hand finally moving hesitantly until it rests lightly on your waist, barely touching and giving you room to pull away if you want to, but you don’t. You tuck him closer, your chin brushing his hair.
“I’ve got you. You’re okay, Andrew, I promise. I’m here.”
The words land deep and it takes him a moment to realize he is sobbing in your arms, the tears soaking your shirt while he presses his forehead closer to your chest, just to confirm that the heartbeat under him is real.
(One. Two. Three. Four. He counts your heart now.)
“Shh…It’s going to be okay, Andrew.”
The storm in his head – the ghosts, the pool, your voice – slowly quiets for the first time all night, dissolving under the simple, undeniable fact that you are here and breathing under his cheek, speaking to him, comforting him.
And somewhere, between one beat and the next, his body finally gives up the fight, his sobs stop, exhaustion dragging him under gently this time, no drowning, no screaming, just the steady rhythm of you and your quiet voice drifting above him.
“I’m not leaving Andrew.”
He knows that for tonight at least, no nightmare will come at him.
You promised.
──────────
“Fuck, Fuck, Fuck.”
Craig was the worst and you were absolutely going to kill him. Not even metaphorically, but in the sense where you would pick up the nearest heavy object and aim for his head the next time you saw him, if only you were able to find him right now instead of wandering through a house you didn’t know that smelled aggressively of weed and alcohol.
Deran and Andrew would forgive you, you were sure of it, if you murdered their brother under these circumstances. Hell, they might even help you bury the body. Because you could have had a regular evening at home, watching for the hundredth time Shawshank Redemption but no, you had to be alone in a stranger’s kitchen, trying not to panic.
The party had shifted, you felt it about twenty minutes ago.
It had stopped being loud fun and started being loud wrong when little bags started to be passed around, people disappearing in rooms and coming back with pupils blown wide and white powder on their nostrils.
You had looked for Craig. Texted him. Called. Nothing.
You had found someone who vaguely resembled one of the friends he introduced you to earlier, and when you asked if they had seen him, they laughed and replied something about “upstairs with Renn so it might take a while, Sweetheart,” and you stood there for a second, scared. Really scared.
Because you didn’t know anyone there, not really. And you were now surrounded by idiots who were snorting cocaine.
(Okay. Calm down. Breathe. Don’t cry. It doesn’t help your situation at all.)
A guy you didn’t recognize slid a drink toward you with a grin that lingered too long, and the fact that your very first thought was ‘I wonder if he put something in that’ made your decision for you: you were leaving. Immediately. Whatever Craig was doing upstairs with Renn was officially no longer your problem.
The night air hit your face, making you regret for the lack of jacket.
You stood on a sidewalk for a moment, trying to calculate the distance back to your apartment. You were too far, with no car and a phone at nine percent.
“Craig is dead. He is fucking dead. I will kill him myself,” you muttered under your breath as you started walking anyway, heels dangling in your hand, bare feet against the cold concrete, just to put some distance between you and the house.
But the further you got, the louder your heartbeat became, pounding in your ears, the fear crawling up your spine.
Still, you kept walking, arms wrapped tightly around yourself, repeating ‘You’ll be fine,’ over and over to your brain.
(You were not fine. You were alone. In the middle of the night. Walking barefoot down a street you didn’t know. Why were you like this? Why didn’t you just stay? Why didn’t you drag Craig out by his stupid hair to drive you back home?)
You didn’t want to try to call Craig again and waste your last percentage of battery on someone who would not answer.
And before you could talk yourself out of it, before you could rationalize or be embarrassed…your thumb was already pressing Andrew’s name.
(If you called him, he would come. He wouldn’t hesitate. You knew it.)
The phone only rang once before he picked up.
“Yes?”
That was all it took for you: the sound of his steady and low voice to make something inside your chest collapse, the fragile composure you had been clinging to dissolving instantly as you let out a shaky exhale, thanking all the Gods above for Andrew Cody’s existence.
“Andrew,” you said, your voice betraying you immediately with a crack right through the middle of his name. “I-I’m sorry. It’s late, I know. I just…”
“What happened.”
You swallowed, trying to force the tears to back down. “I’m at this party and…and Craig left. I mean…he is upstairs with Renn doing I don’t know what and he won’t answer me. I left the house because it got weird there and I’m trying to walk home but I think that was a stupid idea and I just…”
(You hated how your voice wobbled. How small it sounded. You should have bought pepper spray.)
“I’m so scared.”
In the background, you could hear keys jangling, a door closing and his truck starting.
“Where are you?”
No ‘why’, no ‘what were you thinking’. Just that.
You gave him the street name and the closest intersection you could see, wiping your face with the back of your hand and trying to steady your breathing so you didn’t sound like you were seconds away from a breakdown.
“I’ll be there in five.”
You let out a weak, disbelieving laugh. “It’s at least ten.”
“Five.”
The line went dead before you could argue, the call cutting off abruptly as your screen went black. Dead battery.
You stared at your reflection for half a second on the dark screen, heart hammering while you counted the seconds in your head, hoping that somehow it would summon him faster.
It took less than three hundred for you to see headlights cut around the corner of the street faster than the required speed limit, relief crashing into you. He didn’t even fully stop before the driver’s door was already swinging open, crossing the distance to you in three long strides, eyes sweeping over you from head to toe then past you to the houses.
“You okay?”
You nodded too quickly and he stared at you, jaw locked so hard you could see the muscles twitching. He looked furious.
“Get in,” he said, opening the passenger door, one hand braced on the roof as he helped you climb up into the seat, taking your shoes to put them in the back seat.
You stayed silent, not wanting to know to whom his anger was directed at. It was only once you were down the street that he finally spoke again, eyes flicking between the road and you.
“Did anyone hurt you?”
You blinked at him. “No.”
“Touch you?”
“No.”
“Follow you?”
You shook your head, watching his knuckles tightening around the steering wheel.
“Say anything to you?”
“Just…offered me stuff,” you admitted quietly, wrapping your arms around yourself again. “But I said no. I would never do that. You know I would not.”
You weren’t sure why you felt the need to add that, why you wanted him to understand that you hadn’t been reckless. That hanging out with Craig didn’t mean being like him. That you wouldn’t caught yourself in drugs. You knew better.
The streetlight caught the side of his face and for a split second you saw something raw there before it slipped behind his mask of control. The silence continued to stretch, heavy.
“Are you angry at me?”
The truck slowed to a stop at a red light, allowing him to turn his head toward you fully, eyes dark and intense in a way that made your whole body pulse in response, not from fear but from the weight of being seen.
“I’m not angry at you,” he said, holding your gaze. “I’m angry you were there alone. Angry that my stupid brother left you. Angry that I wasn’t there sooner. But not at you.”
The light shifted to green, but he didn’t move right away. His eyes remained locked on yours, unblinking, making sure you understood the distinction.
“You call me,” he added quietly. “The second you have a problem, you always call me. Okay?”
You nodded, fingers twisting in the fabric of your dress. “I didn’t want to bother you.”
“You don’t.”
And there was something in the way he said it, like he was wounded at the idea you thought you might ever be an inconvenience to him, that made you blush.
The truck finally rolled forward, but the air between you felt different, heavier in a way that you’ll only be to shake off with a cold shower.
You watched the way his shoulders remained tense all the way to your home and understood then that he had come because he had been frightened, that the thought of you alone in the dark had unsettled something in him, and that he had needed to fix it.
And the scariest part was that something warm and traitorous inside your chest responded to that.
You liked that he had been scared.
You liked that he came in less than three hundred seconds.
That he didn’t even hesitate when you admitted you were frightened, he simply moved.
And you liked the way he refused to let you walk barefoot to your apartment, carrying you, as if the idea of your skin touching the cold pavement was something he would not allow.
He didn’t put you down immediately. No, he held you all the way from his truck to your doorway, one arm firm beneath your legs and the other steady at your back, your shoes dangling loosely from his fingers, your body tucked close enough to feel his breathing through his shirt, making you aware of how easily you fit there.
When he finally set you down at your threshold, his hands lingered at your waist a second longer than necessary.
“You’ll be good?” he asked quietly, handing you your shoes, your fingers brushing his in the exchange.
You nodded, incapable of trusting your own voice, because if you opened your mouth, you were fairly certain that something reckless would fall out, something dangerously close to ‘stay’ and you were overwhelmed enough by the urge to step over, to reach for him and press your forehead against his chest just to see if his heart was still beating as fast as yours.
He was still staring at you, something unspoken passing like electricity.
“Good night,” he whispered, the softness of it almost undoing you.
“Good night, Andrew.”
You closed your door slowly, pressing your back against it, listening to his boots on the pavement, realizing that he hadn’t moved until he heard the lock click.
Only then did he walk back to his truck.
You would maybe not murder Craig after all.
──────────
Andrew spends the entire day watching for the moment you are going to change your mind and run from him.
And you don’t act differently when you wake up: you drink coffee while humming along to the songs on the radio, trying to coax a laugh out of him, but he keeps waiting for it anyway: the flicker in your eyes that says you’ve seen too much of him now, that holding him while he sobbed was enough to scare you off for good.
He replays the night while you are in the shower. How he cried in your arms. How your fingers combed through his curls. How you held him pressed against your chest. How he let himself need you.
He wonders if he should apologize, or explain, or at least even just…acknowledge that you saw him at his weakest and that he was thankful it was you.
Instead, he washes the dishes twice in a row to calm his brain, avoiding looking directly at your body when you step back into the kitchen in your coffee shop uniform, hair damp.
(One. Two. Three. Four. He counts the dents on his mug.)
You ask him if he is still taking you to the skatepark after your shift, and he wants to say no. The word sits right there on his tongue, ready to spill, because the park means proximity and proximity means touch and desire which always ends with something being taken away from him.
But you smile at him in such an open and easy way, and if it was something you really wanted to do, far be it from him to deny you after last night when you held him like he was something that could be saved, that was worth saving.
So, he nods and the way your whole face lights up makes him think, not for the first time, that he would probably give you anything you asked for.
That is the part of himself that scares him.
And now that he is finally at the skatepark with you on this late afternoon, he knows that he should be tracking your stance and foot placement the way he always does, but today he notices different things about you instead: how you are not pulling away from him, not avoiding him, how you stand close when you talk, lean into his space without hesitation.
And somehow that unsettles him more than distance would have. Because, if you are not afraid of him, if you are not stepping back after seeing what he is like during his worst nights, then what does that mean?
You sway on the board.
He sees it, but his brain is still half-caught in the memory of your heartbeat under his ear, still waiting for the recoil that doesn’t come and by the time his body reacts, you’re already too far from his reach.
You hit the concrete hands first, palms slamming down on instinct before your knees follow, the skin scraping on the ground with a sound that makes his stomach drop. The impact steals the air from your lungs and for a fraction of a second you manage to hold yourself up before your face strikes the ground with a sickening thud.
Andrew is already moving before you even understand what happened, the board rolling behind you while he drops to his knees so fast, he doesn’t register the sting tearing through his own skin, doesn’t feel the way his jeans split at the knee or how his knuckles scratch raw when he catches himself, because none of it matters to him. He is scanning, assessing and cataloguing the damage, forcing his mind to clear before he dares to touch you.
Your palms and knees are damaged through the torn denim, but it’s the blood beginning to run from your eyebrow that makes him feel abruptly cold. It gathers at the edge of your lashes and runs along the curve of your nose, bright red against your skin, and for a second, the world tilts.
(Blood. So much blood. He knows blood. Knows how to stop it. How to clean it. How to stitch it close. Pope is good with blood.)
The thought lands with cold precision, and even if he hates the name, even if it sounds wrong in his own head, he can’t afford to hate the part of himself that steps forward first right now - efficient Pope, steady Pope, the one who does not panic.
“I’ve got you,” he says, and his voice is low, measured, trying to reassure you the way you reassured him last night while he broke apart against your chest, even though his heart is hammering through his ribs.
Your eyes flutter, dazed, before you try to sit up, but he is already there, placing one hand at the back of your neck and the other on your shoulder to help you.
“It’s okay sweetheart, I’ve got you. You’re gonna be okay,” he murmurs, and there is something almost pleading behind his words that has less to do with your eyebrow and more to do with the memory of the pool and your voice accusing him of being too late.
He swipes his thumb gently beneath the cut to assess its depth, his other hand moving to brace your jaw so you don’t move, and when fresh blood coats the pad of his finger, he feels the familiar switch inside him flips into place.
(His breathing slows. His hands stop shaking. This he understands. This he can control.)
“It’s not deep,” he says after his inspection, even though he knows you’ll need stitches. “You still with me?”
Your hand lifts and finds his wrist, fingers curling around it, and the contact sends something through him that is not adrenaline and not fear but softer that frightens him more because it makes him aware of how much he needs you to be okay.
“I’m fine,” you whisper, though your voice is small.
He shakes his head once, tearing a strip from the hem of his shirt. “Let’s get you home so I can clean this properly, okay? Keep pressure there,” he instructs, guiding your hand back to your eyebrow and pressing it into place.
You nod, and that’s enough for him.
He slides one arm behind your back, his broad palm spanning the length of your shoulder blades, the other slipping beneath your knees to lift you, ignoring the sting of his knees and the sticky blood drying across his knuckles because none of it is important compared to the steady rhythm of your breath brushing his collarbone.
He carries you toward the truck, opening the door and lowering you carefully into the passenger seat, one hand coming up to your jaw, his thumb resting lightly on your cheekbone to make sure your eyes focus on him.
“Stay with me,” he says softly.
Your lips twitch despite the pain. “Bossy.”
He goes to buckle your seatbelt, adjusting the strap and closing the door gently before circling the truck, wiping his bloody hand against his jeans.
While driving back to your apartment, his eyes keep darting to you every few seconds.
“Talk to me,” he says after a moment.
“About what?”
“Anything.”
You take a moment before starting to talk about your day at the coffee shop, just mindless little moments. He doesn’t interrupt, he listens and nods at the right moments. You are grounding him on purpose, he realizes, dragging his thoughts back to something ordinary, something alive.
(You are not in the pool. You are breathing. You are not telling him he failed you. He counts your breaths.)
Inside your place, he works methodically, like he always does when someone comes back from a job hurt and bleeding – controlled, shutting everything else out. He lays out all your medical supplies on your desk with a precise spacing: first gauze then antiseptic, needle, sewing thread…The order is important. Order means control.
You sit on the edge of your bed, looking at him and continuing the pressure of the piece of his shirt against your eyebrow.
“Alright,” he says quietly, stepping between your knees so he can reach your face properly. “Hold still.”
He cleans your palms first, his concentration absolute because his entire world has narrowed down to the square inch of skin beneath his fingers.
“I should have caught you.”
“It’s not your fault, Andrew. Don’t punish yourself for it, okay? I’m fine, I promise I’m fine.”
He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t trust himself to.
Instead, he goes silent and returns to the work in front of him, bandaging thoroughly your hands before taking off your pants and doing the same with your knees, making sure everything stays in place.
Finally, he allows himself to look fully at your face again, examining the cut on your eyebrow and tilting your chin upward with two fingers, feeling your breath ghosting on his lips in the small space between you.
“You’re going to need stitches,” he murmurs.
You study him for a second. “You’re very serious about this.”
“Yes.”
“I’m not dying, Andrew.”
“I know.”
“You look at me like I am.”
His jaw tightens and for a moment, he almost says it. Almost tells you that in his head, he’s already seen that version of you, floating and gone, but he swallows it back.
“Hold still,” he says instead.
He cleans the wound carefully by dabbing away the dried blood, and when you flinch, his free hand comes up automatically to steady the side of your head, thumb resting near your temple, not commenting on the way you lean into that touch.
The first puncture makes you inhale sharply.
“Breathe,” he says low, “Just breathe slow for me.”
You obey, focusing on him rather than the pull of the thread, your eyes locking on his face. He works carefully, tying each stitch with precision, trying not to falter at your gaze and even less at the reckless, intrusive thought about pressing his mouth to your brow to undo the wound.
When he finishes, he doesn’t move right away. He studies the line of the sutures, checks for tension, checks for bleeding or anything he might have missed before studying you.
“You’re okay,” he says, trying to convince himself.
You give him a small, tired smile. “I told you. I’m tougher than I look,” you say before your gaze drops, narrowing as you notice what he has been deliberately ignoring. “Andrew.”
“What?”
“You’re bleeding.”
He shrugs, dismissive, trying to pull his hand back so you can’t look too closely. “It’s nothing.”
“No, it’s not nothing,” you murmur, reaching for him before he can retreat, your fingers tracing carefully over his knuckles, making him go still. “You can’t patch me up and ignore yourself.”
He swallows, and before he can argue, you’re already reaching for the antiseptic with your bandaged hand, fumbling slightly. He catches the bottle before you drop it, his other hand covering your instinctively.
“You shouldn’t…”
“None of that,” you interrupt, and there is a flicker of stubbornness there that makes his mouth twitch despite himself.
You tug his hand toward you, and this time he lets you clean the scrape on his hands. He doesn’t look at the wound. He looks at you.
At the crease between your brows as you concentrate. At the way your lips press together. At the way you treat his injuries as if they matter. No one ever does.
Your fingers tie the bandage clumsily but securely, and when you finish, you don’t let go right away. Your thumb lingers, stroking slowly over the back of his hand. He is not sure how to breathe. The room feels so much smaller now. Quieter?
You lift your eyes up to him and whisper. “Can you stay? Just for a bit. So…we can check on each other.”
He could tell you it’s starting to get late and he was supposed to meet Deran and Craig for their next job.
He could tell you he’ll call you tonight to see how you feel.
But there is nothing in him that wants to leave this room.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I can stay.”
He helps you shift properly onto the bed, careful of your knees. When you lie back against the pillows, you reach for him, fingers curling into the front of his shirt.
It takes him a second of hesitation before lying down beside you, stiff at first, but you roll toward him, your bandaged hands pressing against his chest as you settle close, your head finding the space beneath his chin.
He exhales through his nose before lifting his arms and resting them around you.
After a few minutes of silence, when he thinks you might already be drifting, you murmur. “I like it when you called me sweetheart.”
He presses his mouth lightly into your hair.
“Go to sleep now.”
You nod, your body going slack after a few minutes while he stays wide awake, his hands moving slowly along your spine.
“You scared me,” he whispers into the quiet, once he is sure you’re gone.
His fingers move to brush lightly just above the stitches of your brow.
“I can’t lose you,” he breathes, pressing his forehead gently against yours.
(He counts your breathing. One. Two. Three. Four. Not because he is afraid. But because he simply likes knowing the rhythm.)
When sleep finally comes at him, he knows there won’t be any nightmare.
Because you’re there.
──────────
You did not mean to end up alone with Deran.
In fact, if you were being completely honest with yourself, you had carefully avoided being alone with him since you met, not because he had been hostile to you, but because he seemed to have this unnerving habit of seeing through people and you were not a fan of subjecting yourself to that.
Craig had dragged you to the bar “just for a bit,” (which in Craig language meant ‘indefinitely’) before promptly disappearing with a girl, leaving you at the counter, nursing a soda because you had work in the morning.
Deran was wiping down the bar in front of you.
“El Craigo has already left?” he asked without looking up.
“’Flee’ would be a better word to describe what happened.”
“And so now you’re just…” he gestured vaguely toward you with the cloth, “…miserably contemplating on drowning yourself in your drink?”
“It’s a soda.”
“You know what? That’s so much sadder.”
You exhaled, dragging a hand over your face before saying, “Can I ask you something without you telling Craig?”
That caught his attention immediately, making him glance up.
“Depends how embarrassing it is.”
“It’s not embarrassing,” you protested automatically, then faltered. “Fine. It’s…a little embarrassing.”
“A little?”
“A lot,” you admitted.
He huffed once, almost amused, tossing the cloth over his shoulder. “Fine. What?”
You took a breath, suddenly aware of how absurd this was and how you were feeling like you were sixteen instead of twenty-nine. “It’s…” you cleared your throat. “It’s about Andrew.”
(Fuck. This was so deeply humiliating. But Craig was not an option. He would weaponize the information and never let you live it down.)
Deran blinked once before leaning his forearms on the counter, a smirk spreading on his lips. “Oh, I see.”
You groaned immediately. “Oh, please, can you not react like that? You’re making this worse.”
“I haven’t reacted! I’m just…not quite surprised about this discussion. Come on.” he waved a hand. “What’s your question?”
“It’s just…” you stopped. “I don’t know how to tell if he…”
(Oh my God. You had faced worst things than this. You could finish a sentence.)
Deran tilted his face slightly, with a shit-eating grin that you absolutely hated. “If he…what?”
“If he likes me,” you blurted out in one breath.
The silence fell for exactly two seconds before he let out a short, incredulous laugh.
“You’re fucking with me. Right?”
Your face burned instantly. “Okay, great. Never mind, I’m just gonna dig my gra-”
“Easy tiger. Don’t get your panties in a twist. He’s obsessed with you.”
You stopped, your stomach flipping violently.
“That’s not true.”
“It is deeply true,” Deran replied flatly. “He reorganized the shelves in the kitchen.”
You blinked. “Well…I thought he just liked order.”
“Oh yeah, he does. Trust me, he fucking does. But…not that much.”
You opened your mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
“Surely that doesn’t mean…”
“He drove across town at three in the morning to get you out of a party,” Deran continued, counting off on his fingers now. “He cancels family meetings to go to the skatepark with you. He did his ‘scary stare’ to me the last time I drank in your mug.”
Heat crept up your cheeks as you stammered, throat dry. “B-But he doesn’t…He doesn’t say anything.”
Deran snorted. “Yeah, that’s Andrew.”
“It’s just...sometimes I don’t even know what he’s thinking.”
“Neither do we,” he deadpanned. “Welcome to the family.”
You exhaled, frustration spilling over. “So, what am I supposed to do now?”
Deran considered you for a moment. “Just…let him try to go at his own pace here. He is not good at the whole…relationship thing.” he said, his voice stripped of its usual sarcasm before adding. “And for the record, the way you look at him? Not subtle. Like, at all.”
You nearly choked on your own spit. “I am subtle!”
“I mean, yes,” he conceded dryly. “You are subtle…for Andrew and Craig. So don’t be proud about it. That’s the lowest level of subtility possible.”
“I hate you, Deran.”
“Yeah?” he replied with an amused smile. “Well, get in line.”
There was a pause before he said quietly. “You’re good for him. Just…don’t screw it up. You’re in the tribe now. Which means I have to tell you this…”
You straightened slightly.
“…if you’re not sure about this, about yourself, you go now. Not in a few months. Not after he lets himself think this might be real. You don’t get to backpedal if it gets complicated. He wouldn’t recover from it.”
You shook your head immediately. “I swear, I won’t hurt him. He’s…he’s-”
You stopped, because the word felt too large to say aloud. But Deran looked at you intensely enough for you to finish.
“He’s important. To me. I don’t want to fix him, because I don’t think he’s broken. I like him the way he is. I...I think I wouldn’t recover from losing him too.”
Deran held your gaze for a long moment. “Alright.”
You tilted your head. “Alright?”
“Alright,” he repeated. “You pass.”
“Was-Was it an interview? Are you serious?”
“Yep. And congrats, you got the job.”
You rolled your eyes, but your chest felt lighter than it had in quite some time while Deran smiled, a real full grin, almost boyish, making it easier to see the younger brother under his usual cryptic attitude.
“I forgot what it was like,” he said after a beat.
“What?” you asked.
“Having a sister you can annoy.”
“That’s…extremely sweet of you.”
“Don’t ruin it,” he warned, pointing the towel at you. “I will absolutely deny this conversation ever happened if you mention it to my brothers.”
You laughed despite yourself, shaking your head.
Then, he leaned forward and whispered to you. “And if you hurt him, I’m stealing your car and slashing your tires.”
“O-Okay.”
He had a little smile before straightening up. “Welcome into the family.”
──────────
He has not told you.
No one has told you about the job.
Craig said it wasn’t necessary, that you would make a big deal out of it. Deran said it was cleaner that way, the less people know, the less risk and Andrew didn’t argue, telling himself it was better if you didn’t know the details, better if you didn’t have to sit there, waiting for them to come back and spiraling about what could be happening to them.
He told himself that ignorance would keep you safe.
The screen door slams and your voice, sharper than he has ever heard it is rising against Craig, who’s following you in the backyard like a kicked puppy.
Andrew doesn’t turn immediately from his spot, staring at the water of the pool. He closes his eyes, preparing himself for the loud noises.
(One. Two. Three. Four. He counts the tiles of the pool.)
“You asked me to babysit Nick,” you’re saying, your voice shaking like you are about to start crying, “and you made it sound like it was for a date or something stupid! You didn’t say it was because you were going to fucking rob a jewelry store!”
“Jesus, lower your voice.”
“Lower my voice? How about you shut your mouth you liar!”
It isn’t only outrage in your voice, Andrew feels it. It’s fear. A raw, unfiltered fear for them. For him. And he doesn’t know what to do with that because no one has ever been afraid of losing him. When he went to prison years ago, his family moved on, sold his place and went on with their lives. For them, it was an inconvenience, for him, it was three years in Folsom.
Andrew turns then.
You’re standing a few feet from Craig, hands still bandaged, the thin line of stitches above your eyebrow visible, pointing a finger at Craig angrily while he tries to stay calm, running a hand through his hair.
“It’s not a big deal.”
“You’re breaking into a jewelry store, Craig. That’s not exactly Disneyland.”
“We’ve done jobs for years,” he snaps. “We’re good at it.”
Andrew watches the way your shoulders rise and fall too fast with your breath, the way your fingers flex like you’re resisting the urge to grab something and throw it at Craig.
“You know what happens if you get caught, right? You know what that would do to Nick?”
Craig’s jaw tightens. “We don’t get caught.”
You let out a bitter sound that is half a laugh, half a sob.
“Repeat this in the eyes of your brother, I fucking dare you. That’s not how life works, and you know it. You can get caught.”
Andrew feels the words hit him in the chest and rip something out of him. He doesn’t know when you learn about it. Doesn’t know who told you or the extent of your knowledge about those three years of fights and isolation.
If you know – truly know - why aren’t you running away? Why are you still here?
(He doesn’t understand. He can’t understand. It’s too much. It’s too little. One. Two. Three. Four. He counts the cracks on the floor.)
“We’re not idiots, just trust us, okay?” Craig argues, rolling his eyes.
“You left me alone at a party in a house full of people doing coke,” you fire back, your finger jabbing hard against his chest. “You are the exact definition of an idiot, Craig.”
Craig winces. “We don’t have to do this right now, okay? I already told you I was sorry about it. Pope, back me up.”
Both of you turn toward him at once, the weight of the fight landing on his shoulders. He doesn’t move immediately. Doesn’t speak either. Andrew has never been good at splitting himself in two, at giving his opinion. He was raised to follow orders.
Craig gestures toward you. “She’s acting like we’re amateurs.”
You slap his arm, wincing, forgetting for a moment about your bandage. “Fuck.”
Andrew walks up to you, checking your hand while you keep repeating him. “I’m okay, Andrew. I promise.”
He lifts his eyes to yours, angling his head to catch them, and when your gaze finally locks with his, he holds it, stubborn and unblinking. Your eyes shine brighter tonight than they usually do, so he doesn’t give himself permission to look away.
(You’re about to cry. It’s his fault. It must be his fault. He should have been better. But the voices are too loud. He doesn’t like when it’s too loud. One. Two. Three. Four. He remembers your breaths when you sleep.)
“I just…I thought you all trusted me,” you say, your voice breaking halfway through, fighting back tears of frustration.
Craig’s shoulders drop while Andrew’s thumb strokes over the back of your hand, grounding himself.
“We do,” Craig says, less combative now. “That’s why I asked you to watch Nick.”
“That’s not making me feel like you trust me. It’s making me feel like I’m a convenience.”
The word hangs there, making Andrew feel like he failed something. He has never wanted you to feel like this. He wanted you to be protected.
His gaze doesn’t waver as he keeps your hand in his, stroking over the bandage.
Craig looks between the two of you, seeing the hand, the closeness and mutters, “Jesus, bro, this is the worst time,” under his breath.
“Okay,” he exhales finally, turning fully toward you. “I fucked up. Massively. About the party. About not telling you. About…probably a million other things. I didn’t mean for you to feel unsafe.”
You don’t look convinced.
“Trust me,” Craig adds quickly, throwing Andrew a sideways glance, “I got my ass kicked enough by Pope to regret this party for the rest of my life.”
Your lips twitch a little, trying to keep it contain.
“Now, if you could hand me back my brother, I would be very grateful because we have a job to do, and you have a kid to entertain,” Craig says, rolling his eyes and retreating inside the house.
Andrew doesn’t let go of your hand, refusing to blink and terrified of losing a moment of you. He has the irrational feeling that if he does, something will waver on your face, the moment when you realize what this life looks like and he won’t be able to see his failure in time.
“We’ve planned it,” he murmurs finally.
You hold his gaze. “And if something goes wrong?”
He doesn’t answer right away because he knows the answer to this, and he is certain you don’t want to hear it.
(If something goes wrong, he goes down first. He makes sure Deran and Craig are safe. He doesn’t come home because he won’t ever go back to prison. He prefers to die trying to escape than go back in a cell. One. Two. Three. Four. He counts your eyelashes.)
You are still waiting, searching his face.
“Then I handle it,” he says quietly.
You shake your head, your jaw working as if you’re trying to physically hold yourself together. “Promise me to come back safe.”
His hand lifts before he can stop himself to settle against the side of your face, his thumb resting just beneath your eye, making you go very still, waiting for what he will do next.
His thumb caresses your cheekbone once, just enough to fill his mind with the memory of your skin.
“I won’t let anything happen to me,” he whispers, and he doesn’t know if it’s meant as a vow or a lie he’s trying to force into becoming true. “I promise,” and before he allows himself to overthink it, he presses a careful kiss to your forehead, his lips brushing just above the line of stitches.
He can hear you catch your breath and it makes him pull back, his lips tingling at the contact. He knows it now: if he stays longer, if he lets himself feel the warmth of you, he might not leave at all.
He memorizes the sight of you like this: looking like losing him would break you and it does something unfamiliar to his chest. No one has ever been scared at the thought of him disappearing. No one has ever demanded that he come back.
He turns quickly, putting distance between the two of you before he changes his mind, the promise he made echoing in his head.
He hears it when Deran cuts the alarms. Promise me to come back safe. When he cuts through the back entrance. Promise me. And when Craig tries to improvise. Promise. He is not one to do reckless things but tonight, he is particularly unyielding each time the job almost goes sideways.
He knows you are in the house with Nick, probably pacing the kitchen and waiting to see the outcome of his word. So, when he finally reaches the main display room, he is quick to reach for the highest value pieces that will be cut down and reshaped. No traces or evidence will be left, they have done this long enough to know how to make everything disappear completely.
Andrew’s hand hovers for half a second over a particular velvet cushion before picking up the thin gold chain, a small heart-shaped pendant set in the center. It’s delicate and quiet, reminding him how it feels to bask in your light. He turns it between his fingers once, twice, imagining it resting just below the hollow of your throat, his thumb brushing over it absentmindedly while you are both sitting on the couch and watching a documentary.
He slips it securely into the inner pocket of his jacket, pressing it flat against his chest for a brief second before stepping back into motion and leaving with his brothers without any alarms or police sirens cutting through the night.
And when they get at the warehouse to stash the duffel bags, Andrew doesn’t stay like he usually would to make sure about getting his fair cut of the job. He nods once, quiet, ignoring their snickers and comments about him being ‘down bad’ all the way to his truck.
The house is dim when he enters, a soft glow coming from Craig’s bedroom and before he sees you, he hears your voice. It’s so soft.
“And baby whale swam all the way across the ocean to find mama whale,” you murmur.
He quietly walks up to the threshold to see you sitting on the bed with Nick lying, his eyes dropping with sleep, his thumb in his mouth and clutching to his monkey plushie. You slowly close the illustrated book before pressing a kiss onto the his hair and something expands in Andrew’s.
(You would be good at this. At building something steady. He can picture you pregnant, swelling with a child. His curls and your smile on a being that would never know the kind of hurt he had to go through.)
You stand up from the bed and see him, the relief crossing your face so achingly tender it nearly knocks the breath from his lungs.
“Andrew.”
He nods once, trying to convey his feelings, “I came back.”
You smile, closing the bedroom door behind you and stepping close to him, scanning for injuries the way he did for you at the skatepark. He lifts his hands, showing you his palms.
“I’m fine. I promised you I would.”
Your shoulders drop in a way that tells him you’ve been holding yourself rigid for hours, managing a barely audible, “Thank God.”
His lips tilt upward before reaching into his jacket’s pocket, “Turn around,” before adding a quiet, “Please.”
“Bossy,” you reply, amused, before turning your back to him.
He closes the one last step between you, pulling out the necklace from his pocket, careful not to let his hands shake as he lifts your hair to expose the back on your neck. He fastens the chain, the clasp clicking softly into place and for a second he doesn’t step away, the pad of his thumb grazing at the nape of your neck.
“Andrew,” you whisper, turning back toward him, your fingers lifting to trace it. “It’s…It’s beautiful. Thank you.”
He keeps staring at the pendant who rests exactly where he imagined it would be, then at your mouth before quickly going back to your eyes. You are close enough that he can feel your breath on his face, the world narrowing to the space between you.
He wants to close the distance, to press his mouth to yours.
Instead, he rests his forehead gently against yours, grounding himself with your scent, refusing to close his eyes.
“You should sleep,” he murmurs.
You smile softly and suddenly, Andrew wonders how he can extract a memory and preserve it forever in resin.
Because this moment feels like the dawn of his existence.
──────────
When Andrew was seven years old, the house was already too loud.
Somewhere down the hall a door slammed hard enough to be heard from the bedroom he shared with Julia, who was sitting on the floor with a deck of cards spread between them while he lined them into exact rows instead of playing War.
He liked the rows and the symmetry of it. It calmed him each time the edges were precisely following the pattern of the carpet. With this, he didn’t need to count.
In the backyard, someone shouted about money, making the twins flinch in fear. Julia reached for his hand, and they sat like that for a long time: her fingers curled tightly around his, his eyes fixed on the the cards. (Hearts. Diamonds. Clubs. Spades. Everything will be all right.)
Smurf emerged in the doorway with her bright smile, eight months pregnant with their little brother, tilting her head, “My baby is a strange one,” she whispers to his new stepfather, “But useful.”
Andrew heard it. He didn’t know what strange meant exactly, but he knew it was something you said when you didn’t want to say wrong.
At school, boys kept snatching his skateboard, tossing it across the asphalt because he rode the same loop over and over during recess, memorizing how many pushes it took to reach the fence.
(Fourteen. Fourteen every time. An even number. He liked them. That’s why he always counted till four.)
The first time a boy shoved him and called him a freak, Andrew didn’t respond. Just took back the board and kept doing his loops. The second time, when the board got kicked away and Julia was not there to held his hand, Andrew swung without warning. He couldn’t remember deciding to, just the sound of the impact and how the noise inside him went blissfully silent.
After that, teachers called him difficult, the kids stopped approaching him and Smurf congratulated him with a kiss on his mouth.
At night, when Julia was asleep beside him, Andrew kept staring at the ceiling, wondering something he couldn’t say out loud to his mother or his sister: would anyone ever see that he was trying? Trying to keep himself together so he didn’t explode? Trying to be good? Trying to stop the noises in his head?
-
When you were seven years old, the house smelled like warm cookies.
You were sitting on the couch, your small arms cradling your cousin, afraid to drop her. You didn’t know how to act with a baby. Your parents had sat you down a few months ago at the kitchen table and told you that you were their little miracle, that Santa sometimes forgot things and that maybe it would always just be the three of you – which sounded a little sad until your father had squeezed your hand and told you that three was already perfect.
But it was alright, because now, you had your cousin’s fingers clutching onto your hair, “She’s holding me!” you squealed, delighted and in awe because here, in this house, you were allowed to be amazed and to grow at your own pace.
The day you scraped your knee on the sidewalk, trying to teach yourself how to roller skate, you cried for less than a minute before your mother knelt in front of you, cleaning the wound and kissing the sting away. “You’re gonna be okay,” she said, and you believed her.
At school, you had a best friend who whispered to you how babies were made, and that made you giggle all day, the teacher shaking his head and calling you incorrigible, even though you had no idea what that meant and decided it must be something wonderful if it made you laugh that hard.
And the day you asked what you could be when you grew up, no one laughed. “You can be anything my little monkey,” your father had told you, and you thought about it for the whole day. Because anything was a lot for your brain: a teacher, a vet, a marine biologist. You always circled back to the same answer: something to help people.
And at night, as you looked at your glow-in-the-dark stars on your ceiling, you wondered about other things: would someone look at you the way your father looked at your mother when she was singing in the kitchen, with that love that said I am home?
──────────
Deran’s bar is louder than usual tonight, crowded by sports fans watching a game between Los Angeles and Atlanta. Craig has tried to tell him why it was so important to win at least five times since their arrival, but Andrew’s attention remains elsewhere entirely, watching you from across the room the way he has been watching you for four months now: trying to read something in your posture or in the tilt of your head that could give him an answer.
Because the truth is…he doesn’t know what you are after last night and if what happened in the hallway, or every night you’ve spent wrapped together, mean the same thing to you that they mean to him. He wants to ask, to spill the question out before it eats him alive: what are we?
Andrew hates not knowing. On a job, he knows every camera, every blind spot, every possible way things can go wrong but with you, there’s no map. And he hates that he can’t predict your next move.
You are standing at the bar, ordering a drink, your back half-turned to him and wearing a dress that shouldn’t be allowed to exist in public. It makes his pants grow tighter and has him readjusting on the stool, trying to pretend he isn’t affected while his brother sits three feet away and would never let him live it down if he knew.
And he knows he shouldn’t be staring, but you keep touching absentmindedly the necklace, your fingers tracing the pendant as it moves with your breathing, and before he can stop himself, he’s counting it.
(One. Two. Three. Four.)
You had said thank you last night in a way that felt like you meant something more, had let him secure the necklace around your neck and had met his eyes when you called it beautiful as if you were promising you would always wear it.
Always.
(Oh, how he doesn’t trust that word. Doesn’t trust anything that implies staying. He knows better. He should know better.)
And yet, there you are, wearing it for everyone to see, which does nothing to steady his accelerated pulse, and leaning across the counter to collect your cocktail from Deran. The movement doesn’t reveal much more of your skin, but it still sets ablaze Andrew’s brain, his lips going dry as he tries to resist the urge to walk up to you and beg for you to tell him that he isn’t the only one picturing rings, and a cradle in a quiet house and your head on his chest until he is old and grey.
“You’re not being subtle, you know that?” Craig says, cutting through the haze of his thoughts.
“Don’t start.”
Craig raises his hands innocently. “Jesus, relax.” He immediately reaches for the bowl of peanuts on the table, and Andrew feels his jaw tighten at the thought of how many unwashed hands have touched that bowl already. “Seriously, what’s wrong with you tonight?”
What’s wrong is that he just stole diamonds worth more than all of the jobs he did last year and it doesn’t compete to the way you look with the chain resting against your collarbone.
What’s wrong is that he would give back every dollar from last night if it meant waking up beside you for the next fifty years.
What’s wrong is that he is one second away from walking across that bar and lowering himself at your feet for your hands to baptize him clean, as if loving you were the only absolution worth asking for because whatever heaven exists for a man like him begins and ends with you.
And what’s wrong right now is that a man slides into the empty space beside you, leaning too close and touching your arm to get your attention. You turn toward him politely, your lips curving into the small smile you once called your ‘customer smile’. You had explained it to his brothers and him: that you always kept the worst-case scenario in the back of your mind and that a smile felt safer than a hard no since it could mean the difference between walking away or not.
(Andrew doesn’t know the names or the faces of those who made you feel like that but he wants to find them. He wants to press them on the ground and feel their pulse panic under his thumbs. He wants them to understand what fear tastes like when it turns metallic into the mouth. He wants the air stolen from their lungs the way it must have been stolen from yours when you felt scared. He no longer wants to count. He wants to hurt. To see this man’s blood on the bar.)
Andrew starts walking towards you before he even formulates the thought, shoulders squared, already calculating how much force it would require to grab the stranger by the collar and steer him outside of the bar.
His vision narrows as he sees the stranger laughing, his hand lifting to linger near your elbow as if he was testing whether he can push for more and that makes Andrew’s vision blur at the edges. He is three steps away. Two.
Your eyes find his instantly, and something shifts in your expression. Your hand leaves the cocktail and you smile at him. It’s not the customer smile. No, it’s the real one that unravels him each time.
“Hey, honey,” you say brightly as your arm wraps around his neck and you press a kiss to his cheek, your hand traveling down his side before sliding into the back pocket of his pants, settling against him.
Andrew is almost sure he died at some point on the way there because he is pressed against you and now, he is no longer Andrew or Pope. For a brief moment, he gets to just be honey, and the word makes him happier than any name ever has.
The stranger glances between you. “Oh. I didn’t realize…”
“My boyfriend,” you cut him off with a smile, looking up at Andrew’s face.
His eyes were already on yours, searching for the smallest flicker of fear. Because if the man has dared put some in them, Andrew would dig an unmarked grave without blinking. When he finds none, his hand comes to your waist, his thumb strolling along your hip as he dips his head and presses his mouth above the faint line of stitches on your forehead.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he murmurs, low enough that the word belongs only to you.
He feels your breath hitch against his skin before turning to the man and saying lightly. “No worries, he always gets a little intense about men crowding me,” you tilt your head, thoughtful. “Not sure if it’s the boxing or the prison time. But don’t mind him…he almost doesn’t bite.”
The stranger’s smile falters just enough to satisfy something dark in Andrew’s chest. “Oh, um…yeah. Sorry man, I didn’t know she was taken.”
Andrew doesn’t raise his voice or move, he just stands there with your hand in his pocket, letting the silence stretch until it feels suffocating. “She is.”
“Right. I’ll go back to…the match.”
Andrew doesn’t blink and keeps track of the man’s back until he is laughing again at his friends’ table like nothing happened and only then does he let his focus shift back to you. You, who’s still close and warm, holding onto him like you have no intention of letting go.
His hand remains at your waist as he turns toward you, the movement bringing your faces close enough that your noses almost brush and your breaths mix between you. He lowers his head slightly, almost enough to kiss you.
“You okay?” he murmurs while his thumb keeps its slow movement on your hip.
You nod, your mouth curving up in that smile he loves. The real one. The one that you have at the skatepark each time you manage to stay upright a little longer than the day before: proud, bright and stubbornly pleased of yourself. And he can’t help but think about those lips and the way they said ‘honey’.
(He wants to hear it again. Wants to hear it softly. Wants to hear it moaned in the dark and against his mouth. He wants to kiss them every day for the rest of his life. To learn them. To know how they would part as he pounds into you. Stop. He has to stop.)
He blinks twice, grounding himself in the feel of your waist.
“Andrew. I’m good, I promise,” you murmur, sliding your hand out of his pocket and lace your fingers with his instead, interlocking them. “Let’s get out of here, please. It’s too loud.”
He doesn’t say it out loud, but relief settles at your suggestion. The bar feels too loud, too crowded and the idea of how many unwashed hands like Craig’s have been over the counters keeps coming back at him. So, when you tug gently at his hand and turn toward the door, he follows without hesitation, grateful that you were the one saying it.
The door swings shut behind you and the noise from the bar dulls instantly, reduced to a muted thud. The air is cooler than inside, smelling like the salt of the ocean mixed with your shampoo and he doesn’t understand how he gets to still have your hand in his and your thumb moving across his knuckles.
It’s only when you stop beside the truck and turn toward him that his eyes drop to the thin gold chain resting around your neck. His free hand lifts carefully to brush the chain first, following it down until the pad of his thumb rests over the pendant itself, flattening it against your skin.
“Still got it on,” he murmurs, tracing the outline of the pendant.
(He imagines doing this, years from now. In the kitchen. In bed. In the shower. Adjusting it before you leave the house. Brushing it aside before he kisses the curve of your throat. Seeing it against your skin when you are carrying his child.)
“Looks better on you than it did in the store,” he adds.
Your fingers slide slowly between his, guiding his hand so it settles flat over your heartbeat. He can feel it beating loud and fast under his palm, matching his own.
You tilt your face enough to find his eyes back. “Thank you for what happened in there, Andrew. You were good.”
His eyes slip shut for half a second because he doesn’t trust himself to survive the way you are looking at him, smiling at him with such warmth he shivers of pleasure.
(Good. You think he is good. If that’s what you want, he can be good. He can kneel. He can find how to rebuild himself from the bones if it means you keep calling him good.)
“You shouldn’t say things like that,” he says under his breath.
“Why?”
“Because I’d do anything if you asked.”
Your fingers start to caress the back of his hand. “Anything?”
He nods, his gaze unwaveringly focused on your eyes. “If you told me to walk away from the jobs, I would.”
Your hand pauses against his.
“Andrew…” you murmur, but there’s no panic in it, no immediate rejection. “You know why I wanted to reject him, right?”
He doesn’t answer, too scared of startling the moment with another word.
“You know why I’d reject any other guy in that bar and why I wanted him to know?”
“Know what?”
“That I’m not available.”
“You’re not?” he asks, as his mind races.
“I don’t know,” you say softly. “Are you?”
The question hangs there, in the small space between your bodies, his mind fumbling with a thousand overlapping questions.
(Are you with him? Calling him yours? Defining what this was? Finally answering the question that has been rattling his brain for weeks?)
“Are you available Andrew?” you repeat gently, your hand lifting up to cup his face.
He exhales slowly, trying not to whimper at the contact, shaking his head.
You lean closer, your nose brushing his and your voice dropping lower. “No?”
“No.”
Your thumb traces patterns along his cheekbone and it takes him a few moments to realize that you were mapping his freckles. “How long?” you whisper.
He feels too weak to reply, overwhelmed by the tenderness of your touch. If his heart had not been already yours, he would lay it at your feet right there, so long as you promise to treat him with this gentleness and care for the rest of his life.
“Before the party? When I called you to help me?” he nods. “Before our night on the couch?” another nod. “Before our first skateboard le-?”
“When we met. And you brought pastries,” he replies, on the verge of a sob, shameful to confess that he keeps thinking about you on top of him, under him, any way you want it as long as he could disappear into your light and be drown whole by your grace to wipe out every horror he has ever seen or done for the sake of others.
“Andrew. Honey. Please, look at me.”
He keeps his gaze darted to the ground, like looking anywhere but you might prevent him from saying anything more revealing about the depth of his feelings, before his eyes close on their own instinctively, only realizing a heartbeat later that it’s because your lips found his.
And for the first time in Andrew’s life, that deep pit of misery in his heart goes completely silent, frozen for a flash before kissing you back.
Your lips are warm and a little reckless, tasting like mint and something entirely yours that he knows he will crave for the rest of his life. Your fingers thread into his curls, pulling a groan he can’t control out of him. He moves closer without thinking, his hand sliding along your waist until your back meets the metal of the truck door.
The second he registers the force of it, he pulls back just enough to search your face, to scan for any sign that he has gone too far, but the pause barely lasts a breath before your fingers tighten in his hair, guiding him back down as your body arched into his, slipping his tongue past your parted lips.
You are an oasis and he is nothing but a thirsty man wandering in the dark who gets to finally know what it’s like to drink every drop of it. You taste dizzy and intoxicating and he knows that he has been feeding on scraps of affection all his life and now…now he understands what it means to be full.
He is about to tell you how much sweeter you taste than in his fantasies before you bite down on his lower lip, drawing another sound of his throat.
You tilt your head, your arms wrapping fully around his neck as his drop to your hips, steady and sure, to raise you higher against the door, a gasp spilling out of you that he swallows eagerly and your dress hiking up as your legs wrap around him, denying any space between your bodies.
He feels you pull away for air by an inch or two, making him whine at the loss of contact, but he quickly recovers as he sees the flushed smile on your kiss-swollen lips. “Show off.”
“Yeah?” he asks while one of his arms tightens under you, anchoring your body to the door while the other frees itself to trail up your body and adding a smug, “Yeah,” skimming your inner thigh and marveling at how many sounds he can coax out of you, wondering how much more he’d pull if he could trace his thumb along your heat. But instead, he cups again your cheek, tracing slowly the bow of your lips.
“Dimples,” you murmur.
“What?”
“Dimples, Andrew,” you repeat, delighted, like you’ve just discovered something rare. “I didn’t know you had them.”
(Oh. Of course. You can see them because he is smiling. For real. A real one. Not the tight, guarded version. Not the twitchy one. A full unguarded smile. When was the last time he did that?)
“I do,” he says, trying and failing to smooth it away. “So do you.”
Your eyebrows lift. “I do not.”
“You do,” he insists quietly, shifting his hold slightly to keep his arm secure around you, his thumb pressing gently at the corner of your mouth. “Right there…”
Inside the bar, the crowd erupts in a wave of shouting, making you glance at the door before erupting in laughter, eyes wide.
“Oh, fuck,” you whisper, incapable of stopping your giggles. “I forgot.”
Andrew exhales through his nose, trying to calm the blood pumping hard all the way down his length. He knows that you’ve been feeling him against you the whole time, your hips still rubbing together, and for once in his life, he doesn’t want to excuse himself or feel ashamed of his desires, of how much he wants. He has spent too many nights thinking about how you’d taste, how you’d moan. Too many cold showers to try get rid of his hard-on whenever he was picturing you.
“Maybe…” you murmur against his mouth, pecking soft kisses along his jaw. “Maybe we should relocate.”
He looks at you, at the way your lips are still swollen and glistening from kissing, at your panting and the tremors of your legs.
He nods, lowering you carefully back onto your feet, his hands still trailing along your sides to still have some ways of being connected to you before reaching for the door handle of the passenger seat and helping you in.
He feels, walking around to the driver’s side, that he is still smiling. Dimples and all.
──────────
“Maybe…” you sigh, struggling to keep your composure and pressing kisses along the freckles dusting his jaw. “Maybe we should relocate.”
The intensity of his eyes on you, trailing along your body and taking in your rampant arousal, feels like he is on the verge of taking you against the door. You are pretty sure that if he’d ask you for permission, you’d grant it promptly. You want him. You want to know how long it would take for his unwavering hazel eyes to become pleading wet just by your lips telling how good he is to you.
But he just nods, jaw tight before lowering you carefully back onto your feet, making you bite down a protest at the loss of contact, like even the air feels like too much distance, until you feel his fingertips dragging over your waist.
He opens the door for you and not so long ago, you would have described his current behavior as controlled and cold, but now that you know him…you recognize a man who’s trying to contain himself, like a wild animal finally freed.
(Devour. You want him to devour you. To ruin you. Four months of trying – miserably – to have a date with him and it took only a gross man and a ‘honey’ to get him to kiss you like that and tell you he would quit everything? Fuck. Focus.)
He starts the engine, snapping you out of your thoughts, before pulling out of the parking lot, still smiling. You stare at his profile: the line of his jaw that has now faint traces of your lipstick, the way his tongue briefly drags across his lower lips like he can still taste you and his hand on the gear shift that slowly drifts to your thigh.
Your breath stutters the moment his palm settles just above your knee, the pads of his fingers tracing patterns over it while he keeps his eyes on the road. That definitely doesn’t help your craving for more.
(How much can be a fine for having sex in a car anyway? Andrew has money. Plenty from what you understand so…that would just be a drop in a bucket, right?)
You slide your fingers over his, intertwining them on your lap and stilling his slow, absent movements. He glances at you immediately, probably to understand why you stopped him. But the look you give him is enough to answer his question.
His eyes trail your face a fraction too long before looking back to the road, purposefully, the streetlights passing by a little faster.
“We’ll be there in five,” he declares without looking at you.
“Andrew, it’s at least ten minutes away,” you say, with a barely contained smile.
“Five.”
“I’m timing you, you know,” you smirked, pointing at the car clock.
The truck moves through an intersection just as the light turns yellow - once, then again at the next block – while Andrew doesn’t do so much as blink.
“See?” he says, the hint of a smug smile on his face when the car finally parks home.
You check the dashboard clock. Four minutes.
You shake your head, laughing as you both unbuckle your seatbelts. “Show off.”
Of course, you should know better now, he is not a man to stop there. So, when he opens the door for you before you even reach for the handle, and offers his hand, you should see it coming.
He helps you down carefully and for half a breath you think that maybe this time he’s not going to do it. No, you definitely should know better cause the moment your feet hit the ground, his arm slides behind your knees, sweeping you off while the other moves behind your back.
A breathless gasp escapes your mouth. “Andrew!”
(God you are so fucking gone for him. Is this what it would feel like? Crossing a threshold with him as a young bride? Completely besotted in a white dress? No. Not would. Will.)
He shuts the door with his hip, adjusting you against his chest as your arms loop around his neck automatically, your body relishing his touch as the thought slips out before you can stop it: “I feel like your bride right now.”
His steps slow on his way to the door, just enough for you to notice and wonder if you should just tell him to brush off your stupid words. That you are just drunk (you barely had the time to drink a sip of your cocktail earlier) and tired (you just spent two nights in a row sleeping like a baby in his arms).
The garage light flickers as he reaches the front door. “You are.”
He carries you inside like he’s done it in a million other lifetimes while you are still gaping, mouth wide open at his words. You shake your head a bit wobbly before moving your hand from the nape of his neck to the place on his cheek where you know a dimple is hiding.
“Careful,” you murmur, smiling softly. “Keep talking like that and I might start looking for a dress rea-”
Your words are being cut off by his mouth, kissing you like he is trying to drown in the sensation, tilting his head to fit you better, to take more of you, and you can’t stop the moan passing your lips. It feels like stepping into the fire and realizing you don’t ever want to be pulled out.
Your feet carefully find back the ground as his hands slide along your backbone, fingers spreading between your shoulder blades. His lips part yours with the same confidence he has when he catches you at the skatepark. You feel him everywhere and you still want more.
(Is it ever going to stop? This feeling? This whole tremor that dances under your skin every time he touches you? Every time he kisses you like he means forever?)
He pulls away just enough, heavy breath mingling with yours, hazel eyes half-lidded in pleasure and his nose brushing yours softly with your foreheads pressed together, “We can just kiss. If that’s what you want. I don’t need more. Just you,” he murmured in a broken voice.
The words settle deep in your chest, heavy and large as if they have roots. It makes you want to answer him with your mouth, to kiss him until his doubts leave his bones entirely. You bring your fingers to the bow of his lips and he kisses them gently, one after the other, the softness of it making you tremble.
“Andrew,” you say quietly, smiling despite your racing pulse. “Take me to bed.”
He regards you for a long moment, his eyes moving slowly over your face as though he is searching for hesitation and when he finds none, a smile begins at the corner of his mouth, enough to carve that rare, gorgeous dimple into his cheek. “Bossy,” he smirks before lifting you back by the waist so your legs can wrap up around his waist, walking around the house guided only by his memory since his lips are too busy coaxing moans out of you.
You are almost blacking out from the lack of oxygen when the kiss suddenly breaks. In the soft lighting of his bedroom, you distinguish most of his expression: lustful and bewildered that this is finally happening.
“I want to taste you. Please,” he breaths and you nod, not trusting yourself to reply.
The look that passes through his hazel eyes is hazy, fingers finding the hem of your dress and carefully pulling it up.
“Don’t want to mess it,” he says, folding it neatly on his chair. “You look pretty in that.”
You sit on the edge of the bed, trying not to feel too self-conscious about being only in your underwear, braless as he kneels down to the floor, still fully clothed and face a few inches lower than yours, prying your legs apart.
“Andrew,”
He doesn’t respond, pressing his lips to the inner corner of your thigh and moving further up between your legs.
“You don’t have to Andrew.”
He only lifts his gaze up to yours, unwavering as he continues his kisses, “You don’t want it?”
“I…I’m not saying that. I just…I don’t want you to feel obligated to it. I know it’s not…what men like the most,” you gasp, your hand finding his curls and twisting them around your fingers, making him grunt.
“It’s what I want to do the most, right now,” he says with a sinful gaze. “Can I?”
“Yes. Okay. Sure,” you choke, closing your eyes and lying down as he continues his torturous path, his hands slowly tugging the last piece between him and your pussy.
You don’t think you have ever been this wet with a man. Or a woman. Or anyone at all. Normally, you feel a bit uncomfortable with men going down on you cause they never seem to know what they are doing or are too impatient of having ‘real sex’ to let you finish. But here with Andrew, you are nothing but pleasure, his lips fiddling with you like you are an instrument that he is tuning to his own harmony.
You gasp as his tongue finally probes your folds stopping just underneath your clit, earning from him a low whimper.
“You taste delicious,” he goes, coming up for air by an inch. “Just like how I dreamt,” he adds, making you feel close to delirious.
He lowers his face again, tongue working its way up your pussy again, finally reaching for your clit and rolling over it, making you shudder and writhe on the bed, incapable of keeping your moans down and your hands running through his scalp.
“Andrew, please. Just like that. It’s perfect,” you praise him, feeling how it makes him pick up the pace.
Your last straw is the sight of his face between your legs, eyes burning with nothing but want, his hands used to stealing and hurting now holding onto your legs to keep them open and making you come with a hoarse cry. If there’s a heaven on Earth, you know now that it must only exist in this man. In his hands, his chest, his mouth, his eyes. He is nothing but your sanctuary, your promised land and your altar.
When your orgasm subsides, you feel Andrew crawling over you and pressing his lips against you, making you taste yourself on his mouth as you slip your tongue in it. The small noise of pleasure from the back of his throat is the most delicious sound you’ve ever heard.
“You,” you breathe against him, your lips brushing his, pupils probably wide. “I want you. Like right now. So please…take off those clothes. I love them. Really. But take them off.”
His lips twitches again to the side, “Anything.” as he starts to undress, folding them before going above you, his hard cock pressing against your heat.
His eyes keep searching your face, looking for an ounce of backtrack in your eyes before slowly entering you. That’s when you realize how grateful you are for the previous climax because in any other situation, you would have probably wince at his thickness. Thankfully, he seems to catch on with it - probably due to his gaze not leaving your face and refusing to blink – and takes his time to be fully inside you.
For a couple of minutes, the two of you don’t move, give you the time to marvel at how good he feels inside of you. You know now that you’ll have other days and nights to ask him to stay like this for hours, just to be one.
Andrew presses his forehead against yours, lips brushing yours as he whispers. “I love you.”
The word hums through your body. Love. Love. Love. Andrew loves someone and it’s you. From your scalp to your toes, you can feel it resonating through you. Love. Love. Love.
“I love you, Andrew. My Andrew,” you murmur happily, moving a drenched curl from his forehead. “So good to me.”
His face ends up in your neck, trying to cover his reaction to your words. “You really think I’m good?”
“Of course you are. Look at me, honey,” you say, holding onto his chin to bring back his face close to yours as your legs wrap around his waist. “You are good. You are kind. You keep making me feel safe. And…I’m so lucky to have you,” you add, rolling your hips and making him shiver.
You drink in the sight of him: his sweaty hair sticking to his head, curls messy from where your fingers had run through, the freckles dusting his chest and the traces of old wounds that you’ll ask about one day. But the most important of all is the way he is looking at you – as if he loves you. Because he does. He said it. I love you. I love you. I love you.
You keep whispering sweet nothings into his ear, just to see the flush spreading on his cheeks, his ears, his chest and encouraging his thrusts to go harder, deeper. Soon enough, you are quivering around him, your nails digging in his skin as you bite on his lower lip in retaliation for making you wait so long for this moment.
He lets out a desperate moan. “I won’t…last long. ‘m sorry. You feel so…”
“It’s okay,” you encourage him. “I want you to come.”
He slams his cock one more time and goes. “Wh-Where?”
“In me,” you beg, and you know you have hit the right nerve from the way his whole body trembles.
“Really?” he breathes.
“Please.”
The sight of his body, eyes fighting to not shut tight from the pleasure, mouth pursuing yours, mixed with how good he is making you feel, is too much. Your back arches as you reach your second climax tonight, quickly followed by Andrew, clinging to you as his warm load fills you up. Both of you are gasping for one another, time almost freezing as your eyes are sharing the same thought. I love you. I love you. I love you.
After a couple of minutes, Andrew slips out of you and lays most of his body against your side, putting his head above your breasts, on your heartbeat, intertwining your hands together.
— summary: on your wedding night with baelor, you finally discover from where valarr has inherited that pretty white streak of hair.
— content: +18, smut !!! (minors dni), oral sex (male receiving), happy trails, body worship, praise kink, insecure!baelor, yes his white streak is down there!!!
A/N: shout out to @/vhagars-dementia for putting this idea into my head!
The first time you see Baelor naked, the air catches in your throat and you can sense every inch of your body tingling with thrill.
The atmosphere is electric, heavy with his scent, with longing. He has been lusting after you all through the wedding ceremony, and even worse, throughout the entire time that he has been courting you, so patiently and earnestly.
And finally, the night had come.
Baelor has helped you pull down his pants and smallclothes, and your lips fall open when his manhood springs out, so hard and dripping already, so ready for you.
Sure, the size is remarkable and appetizing to say the least, but the most arousing feature is the trail of little curls that leads to his crotch.
More specifically, the path of white curls that marks the way through his dark hair below his stomach.
Your tongue follows it religiously.
Baelor trembles and moans and grunts in response to your sweet attention, glancing down at you with hazy eyes and a face transfixed with desire and love.
“So this is where Valarr inherited his own little white streak,” you tease, a sly smile peeking out of the darkness as you snuggle closer between his opened legs.
Baelor blushes deeply, suddenly feeling like a shy young boy in love, and is relieved that his embarrassment is obscured by the shadows of the bedchamber.
Even so, his sudden self-consciousness is plain to hear in his low, trembling voice. “You—you don't like it?”
You huff warm air against the sensitive skin of his pelvis, kissing the silvery hairs once again before looking up at him through your lashes, “My Prince, I think it's one of the most beautiful and attractive things you have.”
He flutter his closed eyes, one of his hands sliding down to your hair as your tongue teased the plump tip of his cock, gasping your name under his breath.
“Which one is the most for you?”
You smile lightly at his hesitant question, understanding that the passing of the years and the absence of his former wife has left their mark on him. On his body, on his sense of self-worth. And definitely on his desire to please you, to be worthy of you.
You kiss his tip, greedily scooping up the drops of seed that trickle from his slit, and his thighs twitch beneath your hand.
“Your eyes, your voice, your hair,” you begin to recite, grabbing his cock in your hand so you could drag your tongue all over it, giving yourself extra time to kiss the spot in between his heavy, full balls before heading back up. “And definitely this now.”
Your husband chokes out a small laugh that crawls up from deep in his throat, cutting short the moment when you guide his cock into your mouth, sucking on the tip.
His hand sinks into your hair, tugging gently. “Slowly— slow. That's it. Go easy, yeah?” he pleads in his rough voice, interrupted by pants and grunts. “It's been a while...”
To his pleasant surprise, you do as he asks, taking your time to appreciate him and make him enjoy his own pleasure. Every single time your warm tongue glides over his silver-haired path, you feel a spasm course through his body.
You indulge in the salty-sweet taste of his desire on his skin, feeling his cock throbbing hard in your hand, demanding for more.
And you move up again, tracking the length of his shaft with the tip of your tongue, outlining the veins that bulge beneath the taut skin, all the way back to the white trail that adorns his lower abdomen so beautifully.
You kiss him right there, where the dark hair turns snowy white, a sign of lineage that now belongs solely to you.
“So you do like it...” Baelor teases you from up above, unable to hide the way his back arches and his fingers pull unconsciously at your hair. “Gods—”
“So beautiful,” you keep whispering sweet praises, kissing and petting him. “So pretty, Bae”
When you're finished and you're both trying to catch your breath, tangled up in the mess of bedding sprawled out on the bed, you lean towards him, gazing at him with a dazed smirk, your eyes gleaming with love in the afterglow.
“Do you think my child will have any white streaks in their hair?” you wonder, full of enthusiasm.
Baelor chuckles softly as he looks into your big, bright eyes, and then turns to face you, his hands sliding around your waist to pull you closer to him.
“If they do not,” he coaxes, thumb tracing lazy circles at your hip. “Then, we shall simply have to try again. And again. And again—”
You laugh, breathless, pressing your forehead to his chest affectionately. “Is that your only solution to everything, my love?”
“When the problem is this delightful?” he asks back, delicate lips brushing your hair. “Yes.”
Baelor rolls with you gently until you are beneath him, careful, mindful, his weight supported on his forearms so he does not crush you. And he looks down at you with those beautiful tow-toned eyes, beaming with love and deep affection.
“If the gods grant us a child,” he murmurs drowsily, arms embracing your body as he lets himself fall on top of you, his face snuggling into your chest, “they will be born of love. That much I swear.”
“Then let them have your stubbornness,” you whisper sleepily. “And your white streak.”
He huffs a quiet laugh against your skin, pressing soft kisses on it.
Summary: Prince Baelor finds himself contemplating where his favorite place in the Red Keep could be.
Pairing: Baelor Targaryen x Wife!Reader
Word Count: 2,028
Content: Fluff
Warnings: Brief mention of nudity, implied sexual content (no smut in the fic), Jena mentioned, reader is Baelor's second wife, Baelor is a widow, not really edited, as minimal use of (Y/n) as I could manage
A/N: Soooo I haven't written in, like, literal years. I used to write a lot for a various amount of fandoms, but at one point had hit a slump and nuked all of my writing off of Tumblr. Honestly if it wasn't for @cosmictheo blessing us with Dunk x Reader and Baelor x Reader, I wouldn't have written this. So thank you, Theo, for feeding the fandom and giving me sooo much to think about while I'm trying to sleep lol
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Prince Baelor's answer to 'where is your favorite place to be in The Red Keep?' would change depending on the one who asked. If it were Maekar, the heir to the throne would claim his favorite place would always be in the training yard as the two brothers sparred. If it were the king, he would claim his favorite place was the library- the place he could learn from the past mistakes of the Targaryen dynasty to ensure none got repeated. He had many different answers prepared for many different people, each one meticulously put together to try and be as inoffensive as possible. Yet the truth was there was no finer place in the world than where he currently found himself
In his bed, his legs tangled up in the blankets as he laid with his wife.
"You're thinking again," Her voice came as a gentle warning that caused a chuckle to rumble from his chest. He felt her fingers lift from the curls across his bare chest to instead smooth out the wrinkle that he could only imagine had formed between his brow. Mismatched eyes turn to meet those of his wife as his own hand continues to gently stroke at her shoulder. "I thought.... The purpose of tonight was meant to get your mind off of politics and such, dear husband." She mused; a soft huff of laughter slipping past her lips as goosebumps form along the glide of his fingertips. Baelor's calloused fingers gently wrap around her wrist before bringing her fingers away from his brow, bringing her hand to his lips to press a kiss to each knuckle
"I wasn't thinking about politics." He assured her before propping himself up on his elbow to better get a look at her. His hand slips from her wrist to instead pluck a stray piece of fuzz from her face before finally coming to rest along the side of her neck. The two share a smile, their lips coming close enough that she could feel the rasp of his dark beard teasing her chin. “I was thinking that I am lucky to have a wife as beautiful and loving as you…” He whispered, his tone low and rough with anticipation of what may happen once their lips touch. His nose nudges her own as his grip on her throat tightened enough to tilt her head back; her lips parting in anticipation-
CRACK. BOOM.
The distant sound of thunder is followed by a flash of lightning that makes the dimly lit room appear as if the full moon had granted visage of its brightness before hiding away again. Baelor can’t help but close his eyes and sigh away the flicker of annoyance he felt beginning to take root. He shares a knowing look with his wife once his eyes open, another sigh escaping him as he rolls away from her to stand up.
“Our sons are surely on their way.” Lady (Y/n) softly mused before she stood up as well. Baelor hums in agreement; his lips curling up as the heat of joy replaces his annoyance. Our sons. The ease in which she had said the two words only reaffirmed in his mind that he had chosen well after Jena’s passing. Memories of the loss of his first wife flashes in his mind as he pulls on a comfortable pair of pants and a simple shirt. The memories linger as he walks around the end of the bed to help (Y/n) slip her sleeping gown back on
“I’m sure Matarys is shaking Valarr awake as we speak.” He says, his words shaking ever so slightly with a chuckle as his fingers make quick work of any strings that need to be tied. His arms then snake around her waist to pull her back to his chest so that he could lean down to whisper in her ear. “...I do not think I can ever thank you enough. For treating them as kindly as you do.” He admits. He doesn't miss the way her breath seems to catch in her throat or the way her grip tightens momentarily against his arms
“There is no need to thank me,” (Y/n) assured him as her head turned just enough for her eyes to meet his, “I do not see any reason to be pointlessly cruel. They already lost one mother. I would not deny them another.”
Baelor’s lips press a lingering kiss just beneath her ear before knocking can be heard. Two hesitant knocks towards the lower half of the door and four precise knocks closer to the handle. Baelor presses one final kiss to his wife’s cheek before stepping away from her to turn towards the door. “Come in.” He simply says; the order delivered in the most gentle tone. The door slowly opens to reveal none other than those the future king and queen had already expected.
“Forgive me, Father. Mother,” Valarr began to say as his little brother clung to his hand. Another crack of thunder and lightning pierce the sky, scaring Matarys enough to make his grip on his brother’s hand tighten. Valarr’s brows twitch with a wince as the young prince clearly tries his best to avoid showing signs of discomfort. Baelor’s gaze only softened with the mixture of affection and understanding that passed through him at the sight, knowing all too well what it was like being the oldest brother and being forced to be brave. He blinks the thoughts away as Valarr offered his parents a quick bow of his head
“Matarys is scared.” The eight year old prince finally explained. The four year old in question looks up to his brother with a pout at his weakness being exposed, only for tears to fill his eyes as another thunderous boom makes him step closer to Valarr. Baelor can't help but notice the way both of his sons’ knuckles have gone white from holding on to one another. They were both scared by the storm that the sea had suddenly brought to the Keep.
“You've done a very brave thing, Valarr. Bringing your brother here.” Baelor began to say as he walked over to his sons. One hand falls to rest on Valarr’s shoulder as the other rests atop Matarys’ head, each grip meant to be strong enough to anchor the princes to the stone floor and remind them that they no longer had to be brave. He could hear the bed sheets behind him get pulled back and, for what felt like the thousandth time, he sent a silent thanks to the Seven Gods for granting him both an amazing wife and a bed large enough for nights just like this. “It is late. And I would not dare ask you to brave the halls again.” Baelor promised. Both boys relax ever so slightly before Matarys runs as fast as his legs could carry him to (Y/n)’s side of the bed. As she helps him on to the mattress, Baelor looks to their oldest with a subtle quirk of his brow as two sets of mismatched eyes meet one another
“I’m not scared.” Valarr attempts to claim. Despite the boldness of his words and the determined set of his shoulders, Baelor notices the way his son’s hands began to fidget that they were no longer being used to lead the youngest prince to the room; the motions all-too-familiar to him as he watches his son mimic the way he twists his rings. The boy was eight- not yet old enough to pick up a proper sword, yet old enough to be embarrassed by the fact that he sought out the comfort of his parents when scared. Baelor’s thumb brushed along Valarr’s shoulder as he nods in agreement
“True.” He agreed with his son’s claim to bravery. “However, I plan on telling the story of Aegon the Conqueror. And I fear your uncle’s given me one too many hits against the helm for me to properly remember every detail…” He lets his words trail off to let the opportunity for having an excuse dangle in front of his son. Valarr stands just a little taller at the idea of being able to show off his knowledge of their family’s history before he nods in agreement.
Baelor had yet to even mention Pentos and Tyrosh asking for Aegon’s aid before the soft breathing of his sons reached his ears. The thumb he had been using to stroke the back of Valarr’s hand paused as his eyes glanced across the mattress to see Matarys’ head resting on (Y/n)’s chest; her fingers gently combing through the prince’s hair. Her eyes then meet Baelor’s own to see the peacefulness she had felt reflecting back to her
“...I was thinking of my favorite place.” Baelor confessed, his voice keeping its soft tone as he reached over their sons’ sleeping forms to tuck away a stray strand of hair that had fallen against his wife’s cheek. He watches as the blacks of her eyes grow bigger before finally her eyes flutter shut to savor the touch of his hand cupping the curve of her cheek. “Earlier. When you accused me of thinking about politics.” He adds. (Y/n) lets out an amused hum, her cheek nestling further against his touch just before she opened her eyes once again
“Oh? Where is your favorite place?” She asked, her own voice coming out in a gentle whisper. Wisps of Matarys’ hair sway, yet the two boys remain in the blissful peace of sleep. Baelor looks at their sons once more as if attempting to commit the image deep enough in his mind that it would stay, even after all other memories left. He's pulled from his attempts as he feels a soft, warm hand take hold of his wrist. “Hm?” He hears his wife hum the simple sound of encouragement as her thumb brushed against his pulse
“Here.” He finally admits in a whisper. The single word gets punctuated by a kiss to the streak of silver in Valarr’s dark hair; the eight year old shifting ever so slightly in his sleep in response. Baelor’s eyes flicker towards Matarys’ form before he looks to his wife once more, his mind briefly wondering if she could figure out the depths of his love from a mere look alone. “With our family. On peaceful nights like tonight.” He further explained. The crack of thunder that followed earned him a quick twitch of (Y/n)’s eyebrow as if to silently ask if he were certain tonight could be considered peaceful. He can't help but quietly chuckle as his head nods. “Yes, my love. Even tonight counts as a peaceful night. Because I am with you and our two beautiful sons.” He mused. The smile that his words earn him seems brighter than any flash of light that may dance across the sky. The two seem to silently agree that it was the perfect ending to their night as they both shift to get more comfortable in bed.
“...I would like another.” (Y/n) whispered into the darkened room. She held her breath, uncertain if Baelor had even heard her when her four words were met with silence. After a moment of anticipation she feels a warm hand against her arm, the familiar feeling of his thumb brushing against the soft fabric of her nightgown. “Though we would need a bigger bed.” She mused as the two shared a quiet laugh
“Then I'll make sure to find someone suitable for a commission like that.” The prince promised. There's a soft hum of agreement before a silence finally settled over the room. There’s peace- enough that even the storm from the sea seems to calm enough to become nothing more than a distant rumble. Baelor waits until he hears his wife’s breathing slow into that of sleep before his eyes finally flutter shut as well.
Yeah. Being with his wife and their children was certainly his favorite place- not just in the Red Keep, but in the entire world, in every known continent and the unknown as well.
summary: you take care of lena, clean up around the house, and always leave dinner for him when he gets home late. and among constant and never-ending change, you are andrew's northern star.
pairing: andrew cody x babysitter!reader
word count: 13.3k
warnings: read carefully! age-gap dynamics, reader is said to have recently graduated college, i basically ignore anything from the show that wouldn't make sense in my perfect little world. smut—arm humping, oral sex, penetration, the tiniest bit of breeding if you squint real hard.
author's note: and here she is. also known as shea wants to write about doing things to pope's arms.
you used to complain if someone called you their nanny. you’re just a babysitter. this would not—could not—be your full time job. it’s just so demanding. you love the kids you take care of but the idea of saying that you’re a nanny makes it a little more real. like you wouldn’t be able to get out of this, despite how hard you’re trying.
you just don’t want to be a babysitter forever.
but the first time mister cody introduces you as lena’s nanny, you don’t think you mind it all that much.
babysitters are temporary—girls in high school looking for money to pay for coffee and nail appointments, covering date-nights and overtime at the office.
nannies are permanent—it’s a career. you’re responsible for the kid pretty much twenty-four hours a day. kids with nannies are rich, mom and dad too busy at work to be at home. from the little you deduced, nannies buy groceries and make three meals. they go to doctor’s appointments and organize play-dates with other nannies.
you do some of those things for lena. her uncle tries to take her and pick her up from school when he can, and when he calls to tell you that he won’t be able to make it every now and then, he sounds so sorry about it, you don’t know what you can do to reassure him that it’s okay. lena’s young, she doesn’t care about stuff like that so deeply. and she likes you, which helps matters a lot.
you had finished the last few classes you needed to graduate a couple months ago. before that, you’d have to tell mister cody no, i’m sorry occasionally, something that you really didn’t like doing. he seemed like he had enough going on without the babysitter cancelling.
and besides, after you had told him that your classes were done, you were supposed to tell him that you would be looking for a real job, something with your degree, that he should start looking for a real nanny for lena. you were supposed to politely, yet firmly allude to how you’d been scrambling with classes, finishing assignments in the car in between picking up his niece and after she’d fallen asleep at night. how you missed an important lecture because the pediatrician’s office was running behind an hour and lena’s grandmother wasn’t available to take her.
instead, the second you had met his eyes (which were terribly green and incredibly sad), you had folded, and told him you’d be available whenever he needed. and you thought maybe that would garner you a smile—and you’d been wrong. he had looked your way for about five seconds, muttered thank you, and walked away.
and maybe if you could resist those terribly green and incredibly sad eyes, you wouldn’t have wound up as a full-time nanny. life could always be worse—that’s the motto you’ve grown up with. there are so many worse things in oceanside than spending every day in a pretty house by the beach and taking care of a quiet little girl.
if not anything else, you could start making payments on your student loans, if you wanted. mister cody paid you in cash, and he paid you way too much, probably his way of apologizing for how much you had stepped up in the last couple months. but again, you didn’t really mind anymore. maybe if it was another family, you would care more about finding a real job.
but you like lena. you like her uncle, too, you think, as much as you can like a man who is virtually silent and stares at you like he’s boring into your soul when you’re making dinner. you like him because he’s good with her, you can always tell he’s trying his absolute best, his hardest with her. (it doesn’t help that he’s cute—cute in the way that strays are, like you wish you could fix everything wrong with him and reassure him that he’s doing enough, and tell him to stop staring and just come tell you what he’s thinking instead.)
the first couple months were the hardest. lena wasn’t eating, wasn’t sleeping. she hated school, hated all the things she had still cared for when her dad was alive. you’d tried bribing her with trips to the beach, the playground, ice cream with extra fudge and sprinkles. all the things that kids liked. but she wasn’t just a normal kid—and it seemed that you and her uncle were the only ones who understood this.
you didn’t realize you had such a maternal instinct inside of you. maybe it’s because the other kids you’d babysat in your life had been brats, sticky handed toddlers going through the terrible twos and making your life hell while you were trying to pass your classes. lena is the opposite.
she’s the saddest child you’ve ever met, and you know nothing that you or her uncle do is going to fix it overnight.
but progress comes in stages. the first step had been getting her to want to eat again. you’d sat on the couch next to her, watching a nature documentary that her uncle had probably left playing on the tv.
(he is a whole other can of worms—he doesn’t sleep or eat that much either, and one time you had come in really early to get some work done before getting her to school. he’d been awake, watching something just like this, at five-thirty in the morning. and when you’d asked him when he’d gotten up, he had shrugged, and murmured something that sounded suspiciously close to i don’t sleep. that’s your next mission, because you can only focus on one at a time.)
“you hungry, sweetie?” you didn’t want to be pushy. she wouldn’t like that, would only retreat further into herself. you wanted her to come to you when she was ready to eat. lena shook her head and focused back on the television. “okay. well, if you get hungry later, i’ll eat with you.”
lena says okay in her quiet voice, holding onto a stuffed animal and staring ahead. you wait a couple of hours—there’s always something to do in the house. you clean up, wiping counters and sweeping while she stays on the couch. you check in every now and then to make sure she didn’t fall asleep.
and then, thirty minutes before her new bedtime, she comes and sits on the chair by the dining table while you’re wiping it down.
“can we get pizza?” she asks, and you nod right away.
“of course we can. what kind do you want?”
another thirty minutes later, the pizza’s there, and you’re both eating slices of pepperoni and spinach. you’ve formulated your plan for the rest of the night—her uncle’s still not home, which means you can crash on the couch or stay awake. you decide to stay awake, since there’s no follow up text from him. if he wasn’t going to come home tonight, you’d expect the standard, concise message; won’t be back tonight. is lena okay?
and you’re stupid, because you think it’s sweet that he always asks if she’s okay. like you wouldn’t call him the second something went wrong, like he doesn’t believe that you’d trust him with that information before anyone else. but there’s no texts tonight from the contact you’d saved as andrew cody (lena’s uncle).
lena’s finishing her last slice and you’re cleaning up when you hear it—the rumble of his truck pulling up to the house. then a minute later, footsteps and the front door opening.
“what’s all this?” he asks, and you have to remember to find the words.
you don’t know why that happens when he comes around—you’re usually great with dads. maybe it’s because he looks tired, more tired than usual, at least. his copper curls are messed up, like he’s been running a hand through his hair all night. lena’s uncle is always stiff, but it seems worse today, somehow.
(another thought seeps in, an uninvited guest in your mind, about how you’d really like to take care of him. he just needs some sleep, a little peace of mind. that’s it. you’re still trying to figure out the best way to give it to him.)
“we got pizza, uncle pope,” lena fills in, setting down the last piece of crust you knew she wouldn’t finish.
“there should be enough for you,” you add, smiling at him. he doesn’t smile back, but you’re used to that at this point. and you can tell what’s about to come. “lena, can you go brush your teeth and get your pajamas on for me?”
she nods and climbs off the chair, running into her room.
“it’s past her bedtime,” he starts, taking a few steps closer to you. “and pizza for dinner-”
you interrupt him, even though you probably shouldn’t. you close up the box, setting it on the island and you go back to wipe the table.
“she’s not eating, mister cody,” you put the paper towel down, getting your bearings in order to face him, make the dreaded, never-ending eye-contact. “when kids don’t eat you have to meet them halfway. i thought this was better than her going to bed without eating at all.”
he keeps looking at you. you think you should be a little nervous, but you don’t get like that anymore. flustered, sure, but not nervous—lena’s uncle is just kind of a starer, and you’ve gotten used to it by now.
“i’m sorry. i’ll run it by you next time, i promise. i just wanted her to eat something.” he’s silent for a while, like he’s processing what you said.
“yeah. okay. thanks.”
you smile again, a small one. the kitchen’s clean now, or at least as clean as you can get it. you’re sure that when you’re back in the morning, it’ll be spotless, which you can only assume is one of mister cody’s nocturnal activities. you have a routine before leaving—you say goodnight to lena, make sure you didn’t leave anything behind, and tell her uncle you’ll see him in the morning.
he doesn’t normally say anything back, maybe a grunt of acknowledgement. so you’re surprised tonight, when you grab your bag and your keys and hear—
“have a good night.”
“you too, mister cody.”
+
it took time, but you’ve gotten her schedule better. she eats dinner with you now, whatever semi-healthy thing you can think of with the stuff in the pantry and the groceries you picked up while she’s at school. her uncle leaves money for that sort of thing—an envelope filled with hundred dollar bills. it’s labeled lena’s babysitter in stiff, neat handwriting and he told you to use it for copays and ice-cream and anything else that lena needs. but it feels wrong to use his money when he already overpays you, so you just use your own.
you thought he might not have noticed that the envelope isn’t getting any thinner, until one morning when you arrive and see him counting the notes in it with his head down. now you’re the one staring—watching his arm flex and the muscles move as he flips through the bills. he wears the same kind of shirts every day, short sleeve button-ups, and every day, you are subject to watch his forearms while he does whatever he does. it’s a cruel and unusual punishment.
the worst had been when you needed a box down from the cabinet, the one with the muffin tins and cookie cutters. he had appeared behind you and taken it down for you in seconds, carrying it to the kitchen for you. you had been staring then too, uncomfortable and slack-jawed and wondering why his arms had your mouth dry. (you know the answer, it’s just better to live in denial, you think.)
“good morning, mister cody.” you set your bag down on the sofa, heading inside to get started on breakfast. you open the fridge, taking out a carton of eggs and orange juice and avoiding looking right at him. you don’t need to be flustered before seven-thirty am.
“you haven’t been using this money,” he states. you wish you could figure out what his tone means—there’s no inflections, no emotion simmering behind the words. it’s just cut and dry, stating a fact.
“well, i-” you turn back and look up from the stove and your words die on your tongue. he’s standing up, looking right at you, a fist full of cash like he’s going to make you use it one way or another. a single vein running through his arms tenses. your gaze flickers from it to his eyes quickly, looking at you like he wants you to start listening to him.
“i, um, i had enough.”
“you should use it.”
“but you already gave me a lot, so i-”
“i want you to use it.” the way he says it, it’s not a request.
“right. i-i will. is lena awake?”
“she’s getting ready.”
“great. thank you.” you turn back to the eggs with a flushed face. and even though you’re not facing him anymore, you can tell he’s still staring at you.
“i might not be back tonight.” you turn around and meet his eyes again. terribly green, incredibly sad. you’re too far now to see the brown, but you know it’s there. “i…i’ve got some work. it’ll be late, if i do.”
“thank you for the heads up. i, uh, i’ll crash on the couch then.” you think he might say something else, but you’re not sure. it’s silent for a moment, while you get the eggs onto a plate and hurry into the hallway to get lena.
she comes out first, carrying her backpack. you follow with her hairbrush for once she’s done eating, getting her already packed lunch out from the fridge to sort into her bag. there’s a whole routine that you had learned when you first started babysitting her, and now it’s just a way of life. filling up her water bottle, checking the calendar on the fridge to make sure there’s nothing you’re missing, pulling her jacket from the closet if it’s cold outside.
you get the bottle out, glancing back at her uncle. he’s leaning in while lena takes a bite of the eggs, probably telling her that he won’t be home, and to have a good day, and all the other things you’re sure he says to her. then they hug, and you feel like you’re intruding.
he picks up his keys, which rest in the small blue bowl by the door where yours sit too. and without thinking, you call out after him.
“have a good day at work.” he doesn’t say anything back, but he looks at you before he leaves. you don’t even know what he does for work.
“ready for school?” lena shakes her head no like always.
+
the days are long, but the weeks are short. you bring lena to school, but they have a half-day, so there’s no point in going home for the day if you need to be back in a couple of hours. so you head back to mister cody’s place, focusing your attention on cleaning the remnants from breakfast. you check the fridge, making note of how much fruit and milk you have left, scribbling onto a piece of paper for later. and for once, you listen to him, taking a single bill out of the envelope and putting it into your wallet. there’s other hundred dollar bills in there too, ones you need to deposit.
it hasn’t been making sense lately. a lot of nannies live with their families because it avoids the wastefulness of paying rent for an apartment you hardly ever visit. you pay internet and electric for a one-bedroom that’s empty the entire day. and now that you’re done with classes, you don’t even need to work on anything late at night or even at lena’s house. you carry around a book with you, and you think you’ve even left a couple on the coffee table, just for the future.
you don’t know why you still have your apartment. well, you know why—mister cody has never mentioned you moving in. and he probably never will, because he doesn’t want you to. but it just doesn’t make sense the more you think about it. you show up between six and seven and sometimes you don’t go home until ten. sometimes you don’t go home at all.
after making your list, you rack your head of things you can do to occupy lena’s time today. the library has a weekly reading, and there’ll be other kids there. you like to pick things so she can get some company from kids her age, so she’s not only stuck with you and her uncle all the time.
closer to when school gets out, you get in the car, bringing in your emergency bag with a change of clothes and your toothbrush since you’ll be staying the night. it’s not an entirely uncommon occurrence, which is why the bag, and a couple others like it, is always ready to go. you go to the bank first, depositing everything except the single hundred-dollar bill you took today. then you drive by the park, see if they’re having any of those pet-therapy sessions today. and then finally school to pick up lena.
the rest of the day goes how you planned. you forget how exhausting it is keeping a little kid entertained for hours on end, unsure of exactly what her uncle pope and his brothers do with her sometimes, when you struggle to fill up a couple of extra hours. the grocery store—where you splurge and buy ingredients to make stove-top smores because lena asks and you’ll take your wins where you can get them—then the library, where you take out a couple of books for lena to read at home and smile when she’s talking with some of the other girls there, then the playground for an hour, before home for dinner.
you make spaghetti while she finishes her homework, and review her homework while she changes into pajamas. and then it’s time for the routine she loves so much, just like her uncle, a nature documentary about penguins while you toast the marshmallows on a fork.
an hour later, lena’s asleep in bed, and you’re scrubbing hardened chocolate off the counter next to the stove. you don’t want more work for her uncle when he’s back, and you’ve learned lena’s a heavy sleeper, so you get to cleaning. it’s not like, as pathetic as the thought is, you have anything better to do.
and then about two hours after that, it’s eleven-thirty. it’s right around the latest that mister cody has ever come home, so you’re pretty sure he won’t be back tonight.
the only thing you have to look forward to in your apartment is the shower you take after a long day. you’ll have to make do with the shower inside the room where mister cody sleeps, since lena’s is close to her room and filled with products for an eight year old, and at the very least, you need adult shampoo and soap.
the room is bare—you would have guessed it’s a guest room if you didn’t know better. you’re not nosy, but you look around, trying to see if there’s anything there that makes the room her uncle’s. you know there’s still another bedroom, the one her parents used to share, since lena sometimes goes in there when she can’t sleep. so this was a guest room, and now it’s mister cody’s, and now you’re lurking in it.
besides for a closet full of clean-pressed button up shirts and organized shoes, you can’t discern anything that makes this room his. there’s not a single thing out of place, from the garden-variety decor that someone else had picked to the artwork to the sheets. the bathroom is more of the same, the entire place having that lemon-cleaner smell to it.
you turn the water on and strip, trying to avoid thinking about how you’ll be sleeping on the couch after this. and even inside the shower, you stare at the two-in-one shampoo bottle and the old spice body wash—old spice. who would have thought?—like you can’t believe what you’re looking at. you inhale the scent for longer than you need to. wrap yourself in a clean towel that doesn’t belong to you. brush your teeth with his spearmint toothpaste. and then you open your overnight bag, and find nothing but sundresses and bathing suits.
it’s past midnight, and you’ve grabbed the wrong bag. you need to get up in about six and a half hours to get lena ready for school, and you’re not positive you have the correct bag in the back of your car.
hesitantly, you open one of the dresser drawers. there’s black and white t-shirts folded precisely, tucked in evenly. one drawer up there’s folded socks and boxers.
you chew on your cheek. he did say that he won’t be home tonight. there’s no way he would know you took anything if you ran a load of laundry as soon as you woke up and folded it after morning drop-off. he might not even be home until the afternoon or evening, for all you know.
your tiredness makes the decision for you. the couch isn’t that comfortable, and you refuse to sleep in the shirt and jean skirt you spent all day in. you take a white shirt and black boxers, and then sneak back in for a pair of black socks because the living room is cold at night. and then you set your alarm, turn on another documentary—this one about hummingbirds, wrap yourself in the throw blanket on the couch, and close your eyes.
andrew comes home at quarter to three. it would have been a lot sooner—he doesn’t like leaving you alone here at night with lena if he can avoid it—but he doesn’t always have control over it. a bullet had grazed deran and he’d spent two hours cleaning up that mess, and then they had to organize their splits before leaving. he had to make sure to stay for that—he needs the cash to pay you, rent for baz’s place, money to put into lena’s savings account.
but he hates leaving you alone in the apartment with lena. not because he doesn’t trust you, but because he knows now it’s not safe, not without him there. he likes to get you home early but it’s rarely the case, and then he feels like he should pay you extra since he’s making you drive home alone in the dark.
telling you to stay is a better option. you can sleep in his room—it’s not like he’s going to sleep in there anyways. but he doesn’t say that, doesn’t need the nanny thinking there’s something wrong with him too. so he settles for telling you to stay the night, and letting you decide where you’ll sleep.
you always pick the couch. and sometimes, he’s not back early enough, sometimes you’re already up making breakfast or gone out for the day with lena by the time he’s back.
but tonight, you’re asleep on the couch. he sets down the bag with the cash on the couch, hovering over you. the television is still on, stuck on a are you still watching? screen, covering up a photo of some birds. a breath leaves him when he realizes you’re watching what he always watches. you’re knocked out—he can tell since the front door opening didn’t wake you like it sometimes does. you’ve kicked away the blanket you usually use, and he thinks for a second he should just cover you up and let you sleep.
but he doesn’t. he stands over you, staring at your sleeping form. he doesn’t like it—how pretty you are when you sleep. it’s a distraction that he can’t escape, knows that the next time he closes his eyes, he’ll think of you. that the next time he sits on this couch, he’ll be able to smell your skin. you snore softly, chest rising and falling evenly.
and then he notices it—the plain shirt, black socks with a familiar logo. are those his boxers? and now he definitely can’t look away. he puts the pieces together—your hair is wet, meaning you must have showered and then put on his clothes before coming back out here. if you were going to do all of that, why didn’t you just sleep in his room?
yes, pope decides, he needs you to sleep in his bed. he needs the couch anyways, since he won’t be sleeping, so he might as well bring you inside.
he lifts you carefully, not wanting to stir you accidentally. his shirt is a little big on you, hanging off your shoulder. you stay sound asleep the entire short walk to his bedroom, not stirring even when he sets you down. you must have been really tired, but that makes sense, given the fact that you’ve been out all day with lena.
he thought about sticking a tracker on your car, but the first time he was taking care of lena, after baz, you had shared your phone’s location with him so he could keep track. you had offered it, voluntarily, saying something about how that’s common with babysitters now, and that you never go anywhere without your phone so he won’t have to worry about you leaving it at home.
you thought reassuring him that he would always have lena’s location in his phone would make him feel better. and maybe it had, but he’d never mentioned it again after that day, never brought up if he actually checked it or not.
(it’s not like you would know if he was using it, it doesn’t work like that. deran had explained it to him.) he did check it, pretty frequently, actually. he checked it after you’d leave when he got home, after lena was asleep. he’d watch your little circle drive home and pull into the parking lot of your apartment complex. it wasn’t as bad of an area as it could be, but it wasn’t that safe either. he liked to check it every now and then too, middle of the night, saturday evenings when he was home with lena and you got to leave early or had the day off.
he assumed, somehow, that you’d be in bars or parties at your college, maybe. but when he looks at your location late at night, you’re always at home. he checks other times too—but he’s just trying to keep you safe. (that’s what he tells himself—that finding another babysitter than lena liked and that he trusted would be a hassle. he needs to keep you safe.)
but it doesn’t seem like you like any of that stuff. he’s never seen you drink the beer in the fridge, though you offer one to him every now and then. you’ve met smurf and deran and craig before, like when you’d go to drop off lena before one of your classes, back before you had finished school.
you were smart—he knew that much. that was the kind of good example he needed around lena, someone who had gone through school and finished. he didn’t know what your degree was in, but it must’ve been something smart, something important. you were always typing on your computer and reading books. whatever it is that you studied, he wants someone in lena’s life that can help her with that stuff, stuff he doesn’t know much about, when it’s time.
you were smart enough to turn down every joint or bump that craig offered. you never accepted a drink from smurf that didn’t come from a can that you opened yourself. and baz used to tell him that you were just a local college kid, that you didn’t have any family nearby or anyone to occupy your time, really.
it didn’t make sense—pretty girl like you. he would have thought you had a boyfriend, but if you do, you’ve never brought him around. and if he didn’t live with you or live at that coffee shop you liked that was down the street from your apartment, then he didn’t know if you even had one. maybe he shouldn’t spend any time thinking about your hypothetical boyfriend, but that’s just what comes up sometimes when he thinks about you for too long. like right now.
you look peaceful lying in his bed. your eyes flutter quickly like you’re having a dream, and he sits on the bed next to you, watching you sleep. your hair falls across your face, and his finger twitches. he almost moves his hand to brush the hair away, but he decides not to, settling for just watching you for another minute or two.
the bed creaks slightly when he gets up. no one uses it much, so it’s a little weary. he doesn’t think the noise is anything, but your eyes blink open. the door’s open, light from the living room illuminating a sliver of the space.
he thinks he should get out before you can ask any questions, but he doesn’t, hovering over the bed while you look around.
“andrew?” and god if it doesn’t sound different coming from your lips. you’re too tired to remember that you usually stick with mister cody, which is so formal it hurts. it sounds real, sincere, not filled with fear or anger or anything else. you haven’t even said anything and he thinks he’s losing his mind.
it’s just the way you say it. there’s no question attached, no demand, no sacrifice. just you, making sure it’s him.
“that couch is bad for your back,” he says.
he knows it is, the couple times he tried to lay down and stare at the ceiling. he’s always sore, muscles screaming and joints aching but he knows how to ignore it. he doesn’t think you should start feeling like that. feels angry at the very idea that you would be sore after spending a night on the couch, taking care of his niece, looking after baz’s house. doing all the things that he’s too busy to do.
you take care of things. you do a good job too—figuring out how to get lena to eat and sleep again. making sure her routine doesn’t go awry just because he’s gone on a job all day. you remember things that he doesn’t even know about—activities with kids after school and how the school has soccer practice starting soon. you think a couple steps ahead when it comes to lena, and sometimes, he doesn’t think you see it as a job.
like when you make enough breakfast for the three of you. leave dinner on a plate inside the microwave with a note on the counter. when you clean like it’s your house, make sure things stay in the place they’re supposed to, which is so much harder when there’s a kid around. he’s not stupid—it’s why he gives you so much money each week, shoves an envelope into your hand despite your protests. why the first thing he does after he gets his cut is make sure you get yours.
and as hard as the thought is to swallow, he doesn’t think he could do all of this without you.
“mmh-” you agree, making a soft noise. he wishes he could engrain it into his brain and replay it whenever he wants. “i thought you don’t sleep?” you ask, and he sees your lips turn up into a smile. he wishes the lights were on.
“i try,” he replies, realizing that he’s still hovering over you. he wonders why you weren’t scared the moment you woke up. “sometimes. i try.”
“do you wanna try now?” you ask, whispering. and he goes silent—because what is he supposed to say that?
you reach out in the dark for his hand, and he flinches, taking it back. but you don’t retreat, reaching out again until you’re grasping his fingers.
“try for a couple hours. i set an alarm,” you say, and the way you say it, it doesn’t sound like a bad idea. you have a way of convincing him, or maybe it’s just late and you’re tired, and your sleepy voice isn’t helping matters. nor does the fact that you don’t seem even remotely concerned that you’re inviting him to come sleep on the bed next to you.
you sit up a little, and he regrets even staying as long as he did. you need your sleep, unlike him. you’re still holding onto his hand, and your skin is warm on his. it couldn’t really be, but it feels like it’s burning his, where your palm rests against his, where your fingers twist with his.
“hey,” you start, slow and soft. “don’t think about it. just sleep for a little.”
“yeah,” he says. “okay. a little.”
you move over, and when he lays down—back straight against the mattress, staring up at the ceiling—it’s warm where your body was resting. you’re still holding onto his hand, not letting go. your grip is loose enough that he could free his hand easily, and even if it wasn’t, he could overpower you if he wanted.
but he doesn’t want to. and somewhere between your slow breaths and how you rub his knuckles, running your soft skin against dozens of old scars—because that’s his punching hand—andrew falls asleep.
you can hear it, his breaths getting steady, evening out. your hands stay together in the middle of the bed, between you, and you wonder for a split second how you’re going to deal with this in the morning, how you’ll make sense of this in daylight. the semblance of a professional relationship you had maintained this entire time might turn into dust in a couple hours. and then you breathe in andrew’s comforting scent, clean linen and saltwater, and fall back asleep.
the best thing about this house is the light and the waves. golden rays pour in through the half-way open blinds and you can hear the ocean crashing against the rocks in the distance. it’s the perfect way to wake up, even if it is six-thirty and your alarm is going off in the living room, where your phone must be.
you need to get up. you don’t want lena to wake up from the noise, even though you know she won’t—that girl can sleep through anything. it’s a problem for when she’s older, when she goes to college and there’s no one besides a roommate to make sure she doesn’t miss class. even half-asleep, you smile thinking about it.
and somehow, when you look on the other side of the bed, it hits you that it wasn’t a dream. andrew is asleep next to you, still in whatever clothes he was wearing throughout the day. a short sleeved button up and pants. you’re surprised that he didn’t fall asleep with his shoes on.
he looks very calm when he sleeps. the lines of tension on his forehead and around his eyes are soft when he’s like this, his hair a mess and cheek smushed against the pillow, against your hand.
he’s still holding your hand. it makes a certain kind of warmth rain all over you, flooding you from inside out. he’s on top of the covers and you’re under the throw blanket, and you don’t remember doing that, which means that he did.
an exhausted, half-asleep andrew cody covered you up before he fell asleep on top of the covers. he fell asleep holding your hand and your chest hurts because he won’t wake up holding it still, since you need to go turn that stupid alarm off.
he never sleeps, you know this. he’s never been asleep when you show up early, never heading to bed when you leave for the day. this bed is pretty much always made, sheets never rustled and not a pillow out of place because no one sleeps here. you hope you can start changing that.
you don’t want to pull your hand away from him. it’s so simple, so sweet that you can’t bring yourself to do it. that this whole time, andrew just needed someone to sleep beside him. you rest your head back on the pillow, continue staring, creepy as it is. you’ve never been able to study him like this before, have never been close enough.
the hand holding onto yours is softer than you’d imagined. the veins running through his forearm are thick and tense, even when he’s like this. you think it might be from how tightly he’s holding onto your hand, like even in his sleep he’s worried he might lose you somehow.
andrew cody has freckles—all across his arms and on his hands too. there’s a splatter of them across his nose and cheeks, places where he must have gotten burnt as a kid, maybe when he was lena’s age. the tips of his ears flush pink while he sleeps, and he snores. all things that make you smile, things that are so personal you feel your face getting warm, like you shouldn’t have access to that information.
you need to turn that god-damn alarm off, before it wakes him up. you think you’d rather die than disrupt the few hours of peaceful sleep he’s getting right now. so you wriggle your hand, trying to find the best way to get it out of his grip and make sure you don’t wake him in the process. nothing’s working, even in his sleep he’s thrice as strong as you. the generic alarm tone keeps going in the background.
you lean in, pressing a chaste kiss to andrew’s cheek, whispering that you promise to be right back. and for a split second he moves around, and you regain control of your tingling hand.
the bed creaks a little when you get up, but you do it slowly so it’s not too loud. walk to the couch as fast as your bare feet will take you, looking down and realizing you’re still in andrew’s socks.
(his shirt and boxers too, but you’re choosing to ignore that for now. if someone walked in through the front door in this moment, it would look like you and him were something other than a guardian and babysitter. you think you’d actually enjoy trying to see him explain to his brothers why you’re in his clothes head to toe. you might like this more than you think you did.)
you can hear the ocean again once the alarm is turned off. it’s a beautiful thing to wake up too, you think, pulling open the curtains and looking outside on the street. people are on runs, doing yoga on the beach, watching the sunrise with their dogs.
and inside, andrew cody is sound asleep.
the first part of your day is waking up lena. she grumbles and takes five, sometimes ten, minutes to get up after you go in there. in that time, you set out clothes for her and then head back to the kitchen. you have a habit of making sure her backpack has everything—the colorful pens she’s always telling you about and yesterday’s homework. if she forgot something at home, the school would call andrew, and then andrew would call you, and you hate adding more work to his life. so, you make sure it’s all there before she leaves.
then breakfast—eggs and toast if you’re running late, pancakes if you got there early. it’s seeming like a pancake sort of day.
you make the batter and then pull out the bag of chocolate chips and head back to lena’s room. you use the semi-sweet morsels as an incentive to get her up, which works like a charm. while she’s changing and brushing her teeth, you make three pancakes. two for lena, and the first one you peeled that’s never quite as good is for you.
lena comes to the table to eat her pancakes, and you tell her to stay just a little quieter than usual because her uncle pope is still sleeping.
“really?” she asks, and you feel something inside of you twist in discomfort. as if you had imagined before you met him, maybe he was sleeping, that maybe this was something recent. you smile at lena.
“yeah, sweetie, really.”
you bring lena to school, come back home, and check on andrew—who is still sleeping. you cover him up with the blanket you’d slept under and then make three more pancakes and some scrambled eggs. there’s no bacon in the house or you would have made that too.
you scribble it on the grocery list and then head back inside the bedroom, carefully perching yourself on the edge of the bed and maybe a little too comfortable, too quick, run your fingers through his messy hair. he sighs against the pillow and it makes you smile immediately. you keep going, fingers not stopping until you see his eyes fluttering open. you don’t want to make him uncomfortable, though you don’t want to stop either.
“i made breakfast,” you say quietly. andrew looks up at you, and then to your slept-in side of the bed. he moves, sitting up in the bed and you take back your hand tentatively. his hair is soft like you’d imagined.
he wipes his face with his hands, rubbing at his eyes. and when he looks at you, you feel any prudence that once was inside you melt away. well-rested, sleepy andrew cody, waking up in the bed you shared last night, while you tell him about the pancakes you made for him. you couldn’t have imagined this, for some reason, which makes it feel all the more real.
“what time is it?” he asks, in a gruff, sleepy voice.
“almost nine, i think.” he looks up at you quickly.
“lena?”
“i brought her to school already. you-you were sleeping. i didn’t want to wake you.”
“when did you get up?”
“six-thirty. my alarm. remember?” you do remember telling him about it before you fell asleep, one of the last things you had said in a conversation that feels like it was light-years ago.
“yeah.” you know better than to expect anything right now. he’s always been quiet, sentences curt and expressions relatively blank. you’ve had a few hours to simmer in it—think about what’ll happen tomorrow and next week and what it means to sleep in the bed next to the man whose niece you babysit. he just woke up a few minutes ago.
“well, there’s pancakes. and eggs. there’s no bacon but i’ll go get some later-”
“did you eat?” you catch his eye. perched on the bed next to him, you can see more than just green. brown too, around his pupils. not nearly as sad as they had seemed yesterday.
“yeah. i had one.”
“just one?” you don’t have an answer for that, but unusually confident, you stand up.
“i’ll have a bite of yours if you come eat with me.”
and though you couldn’t have imagined it last night, you end up leaning against the counter with andrew, splitting bites of chocolate-chip pancakes (yours drenched in syrup, his comparably dry as a bone), and luke-warm scrambled eggs.
he washes the dishes, and you put them away. it’s incredibly domestic.
“i’m sorry about your clothes,” you say, sliding a plate back into the cupboard. “um, i’ll wash everything today.” you had to bring it up at some point.
and then andrew turns to look at you. head to toe, he stares, gaze flicking up and down for what seems like eons. you don’t have a guess for why, maybe he’s trying to decide if he’ll accept your apology.
(he’s trying to memorize it, capture it like a picture in his brain, seal it up and hold onto it forever. how you look right now—his white shirt, with nothing underneath, which must be why he can see the outline of your breasts when you turn to put another dish away. his boxers, that you bunched up around your waist, his socks, one rolled up around your ankle and the other halfway up your calf. did you go to the school drop-off in his clothes, too?)
“and i can wash your jacket too, i’m sorry. it was kind of cold and i don’t know where my hoodie is. i-i’m sorry.”
he turns to look at you again. you seem worried, chewing on your cheek, waiting for his answer.
“don’t wash the jacket,” he says, and turns back to the sink. he doesn’t want it to stop smelling like you, but you don’t need to know that.
“yeah. sure. i won’t. sorry again, andrew.”
his heart thuds in this chest at the realization that you might never go back to calling him mister cody.
the two of you finish the dishes. he wipes up the counter while you put away lena’s things, and then he grabs his keys and puts on his shoes. you stand there watching, feeling awfully close to something like a wife watching her husband about to leave her for the day. and when you open your mouth, you can’t stop it from coming out.
“do you know when you’ll be back?”
“i’ll be here for dinner. can you pick up lena?” he doesn’t want to leave you, but there’s about ten texts and three missed calls on his phone that he needs to deal with. when he shrugs his jacket on, it does, in fact, smell like you. it might be enough to keep him calm the rest of the day.
“yeah, of course. well.. i’ll go start the laundry.” a vision of you peeling off your—his—clothes plagues his mind momentarily. “i’ll see you later?” you say, smiling hesitantly.
and without thinking too much about it, andrew comes up close to you, leans in a little awkwardly, and kisses your forehead.
“i’ll see you later.” he leaves you there in his shirt and socks, blinking stupidly at the door.
+
andrew does come back for dinner. you make an attempt at chicken parm at lena’s request, which really just turns out to be a sort of chicken parm-casserole situation, but lena likes it and the garlic bread tastes good, so you will call it a win for now.
while you’re simmering sauce and frying the cutlets, your mind flicks through everything you know about lena’s uncle. he’d never once been anything but nice to you—nice is one way to put it. polite is another. courteous, appropriate, reserved.
one night you had been waiting for him so you could leave, and he’d come home with lena’s other uncles. you had introduced yourself and smiled nicely, and when you left and gotten into your car, it hadn’t turned on. you remember debating if you should go back inside or just call triple a and wait, but somehow, andrew had known something was wrong. he had come out a few minutes later, told you that he would drive you home while his brother stayed at home and that he’d be back in a minute.
he’d dropped you off at home and told you he’d come get you in the morning. and you had slept anxiously that night, wondering what was wrong with your car and how much of a disturbance it would be to andrew to come get you.
but after the two of you had dropped lena off at school—again, disturbingly domestic—he brought you back to the house. and without any words at all, he worked on your car while you sat and watched. you held a flashlight when he needed it, and he said it shouldn’t happen again when he was done.
and you guess that’s the kind of man andrew cody is.
true to his word, andrew comes home in time to eat dinner with you and lena. after dinner, since it’s friday, you let her have a brownie and a half, the ones you’d made earlier that day. you have one too and you offer one to andrew, but he shakes his head, and you’re only mildly disappointed.
you haven’t been home, so you’re wearing one of the dresses from the wrong overnight bag you’d brought here. (your disappointment goes away when you notice that he hasn’t stopped staring at your exposed thighs since the minute he walked through the door.)
lena watches a cartoon before bed and you try to clean up the rest of the kitchen, but it’s hard, since andrew’s done most of the leg-work already. he tucks lena in and you gather your belongings—and true to your word, you did laundry and put his clothes back in the exact place you found them.
(you did steal another pair of socks, but you hardly think he minds now. he kissed you goodbye this morning like he was actually your husband, or something, and every minute you spend in this house washing dishes and scrubbing counters next to him is not helping. he stares at the straps of your dress like he could slip them off your shoulder with his mind, like it’s the only thing he’s thinking about. you don’t mind.)
“she’s out,” he says, coming back into the living room. you’re sitting on the couch, knees tucked to your chest while you change the channel to one of those documentaries you’ve been so fond of recently. you turn to smile at andrew and he comes and takes a seat next to you.
“that’s good. i can go soon.” but you make no effort to move, staring at the screen in front of you. this one is about sea-life, shades of blue flooding ahead of you both.
“you can stay,” andrew says, quiet like always. “if you want.” his voice is deep and gravelly, and the words he says scratch an itch somewhere deep inside of you, and the relief is visible on your body. you sink a little further into the sofa, knees falling next to andrew’s, thighs touching.
“if that’s okay with you.” you whisper it, as if saying it too loudly might make the entire idea crack open and fall apart.
you two stay like that for a while. you don’t know when, but andrew swings an arm around your shoulder, and you rest your head against his chest, collapsing into his comfortable grip. you can hear his heart beating, can feel every breath he takes. his hand brushes the top of your shoulder every time you breath, and his other hand is clasped with yours. you watch schools of fish and pods of dolphins, and you think that any other night, you could fall asleep like this.
“andrew?” you ask, still staring straight ahead. you brush your fingers over his knuckles like you had done last night, and you can feel his hand tense under your touch, until it finally relaxes. “do you want to go to bed?”
“yeah, kid,” he says. “let’s go to bed.”
and you’ll be damned if the domesticity doesn’t kick you in the stomach, sucker punch you in the chest and knock all the wind out of you. andrew turns the tv off, puts the remote back in the right place. and then he picks you up, and you make a quiet noise of surprise, underestimating him momentarily. you should know better.
one hand wraps around your legs and the other around your back, bridal-style (fitting, you think), and he sets you down on the creaky bed. you worry, how loud it’ll be and how you’ll have to be quiet but then andrew hovers over you, nothing but a tiny lamp brightening up the room, and you lose your train of thought.
“you sure you wanna do this?” he asks, that rough voice again. like you’ve thought about anything else for the last twenty-four hours. you nod quickly, bringing your hands to his chest, and then his arms, fingers tracing the sinewy veins and thrumming muscles up and down on both sides. his eyes shut while you do it, breaths getting heavy and deep. but you keep going—it’s only fair. you’ve only thought about it a million times.
“does that feel good?” you whisper, and he lets out a quiet, almost painful groan.
“y-yes,” and you smile, fingers moving on their own while you lean in for the kiss you’ve been waiting for.
andrew’s mouth is hot, and his kisses are like fire. as soon as your lips touch, he pins you all the way down, his body weight on top of yours. he kisses you the same way he had held your hand last night, the same way he held you on the couch, like you’ll slip away if he stops for even a second. your lips start to ache, but you moan quietly into his mouth, letting him swallow them while you still stroke his arms. one day, you’ll crawl into his lap and play with his hands until he’s sick of you, but today, you need to feel him.
you can’t do much from your position, but you can wrap your legs around his waist, one hand going towards his chest to pull at his shirt. he takes it off in one motion, yanking the fabric at the back until it comes off, messing up his hair while he pulls it. your free hand goes there, running through his hair again. you use it to steady yourself, gaining leverage while he keeps kissing you like there’s nothing else for him to do. like his life depends on it. he thinks it just might.
“an-andrew,” you get out in gasps, moving your mouth away for a second. “i need to breathe,” you pant, but he doesn’t stop, kisses your cheek and your jaw and buries his face in your neck. you feel the skin there between his lips, then his teeth, and you grip hard on his arm while he keeps going. you want him to keep going, you want to see the marks he leaves tomorrow and every other day. you want everyone to look at you and know that he’s the one who left them. and you think your wish is about to come true.
your fingers let go of his arms and he groans against your skin—there’s no words but you know he didn’t want you to stop. instead you guide them to both sides of his face, staring up at him and then bringing him back in for another kiss. you think you’d be perfectly content to do this forever, that you could spend hours, days, weeks in bed kissing andrew cody. that you’d be stupid to ever leave this bed, leave this house, when there’s a man here who kisses you like each touch of your lips is a prayer, like he’s here to worship.
he’s not hesitant anymore, not wondering if you’re going to pull away and walk out and ask to pretend this never happened. you keep your hands on his face, and then work down to his jaw and neck, clasping your arms around to keep him in place.
and his mind is empty. he thinks he should know what to do with you, with your labile body flush against his, all the things he’s been thinking about for the last months, if not at least what he was thinking since this morning. you’re still in your little dress, one of the thin straps fallen over your shoulder and dangling on the skin of your upper arm. he pulls away and you whine, another noise he wishes he could capture somehow. it’s a melody, one he wants to keep hearing.
you wish he hadn’t stopped the kiss, and you expect him to lean right back in after you both catch your breath, but he doesn’t. andrew’s hovering over you, eyes fixated on your shoulder, staring intently at the strap of your dress.
“andrew?” you whisper, the hand on his neck rubbing the tense skin there, wondering if you could get your kiss back. “is something wrong?”
his lovely eyes flicker up to you, staring while you swallow and wait patiently. maybe you’d been too eager, maybe he was having regrets—after all, you’re the nanny and he’s the dad and maybe you’d been too presumptuous in assuming that he wanted you as badly as you wanted him—
“no. nothing’s wrong.” you sigh a tiny breath of relief, it comes out before you even notice. but andrew is nothing if not perceptive, and he wraps his hand around your back and lays you back on his bed.
“why did you stop?” you question, flustered and embarrassed as the words come out, sounding like a spoiled child. but you suppose you had been spoiled these last few hours, getting everything you wanted—his hot touch, breathless kisses, the ability to finally see what the veins on his arms feel like under your palm.
he doesn’t answer your question, just flicks his eyes back to your shoulder. and then he leans in, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to the end of your collarbone, tracing more kisses down through the length of your shoulder, stopping when he reaches the skimpy cotton of your dress. you take deep breaths, watching it happen in front of you. he repeats the same with the other side, pulls the strap down like he’s unfolding a gift, kisses your skin like you’re his present. and you think you are.
there’s nothing between you two except your thin dress, and you pull on it eagerly, trying to get it off, when his hands come and stop on top of yours.
“you’ll rip it,” andrew says, fingers going towards the zipper in the back, undoing it slowly.
“i don’t care,” breathless, eager, unable to wait even another minute to get what you want. he pulls the zipper all the down, your dress falling off as your shrug out of it.
and you want another kiss, you want his touch, you want something, anything—but all you get is andrew staring at your naked body. and you think somehow this is worse than anything else, anticipation burning in your belly painfully. your thighs feel sticky and sore and your underwear is soaked through. and all he’s done is kiss you.
“you’re perfect,” he says quietly, and you feel your entire face burn hot. you don’t think you’ve ever felt like this before—and you know how andrew is. he doesn’t lie, he doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean.
you tilt your head up, pressing your lips to his for a moment, a soft kiss in contrast to the ones from earlier.
“so are you,” and you kiss him again, smiling against his mouth. he feels it, though he doesn’t smile back. and when he pulls away, he looks down at you, naked and willing in his bed, smiling up at him and telling him he’s perfect, when you don’t even know half the monster he is. “you are,” you repeat, watching andrew’s eyes as he thinks a million thoughts in his head, carries a million burdens on his shoulders. “even if you don’t believe me. i think you’re perfect.”
you feel cheesy saying it, though you know there isn’t another man in the world who needs to hear it more. you can hear him make a noise of protest, like he doesn’t think you mean it, and incredibly desperate for him to believe you, you sit up.
your hands go to sturdy shoulders while you try to get him to move, until he’s sitting back against the headboard and you can crawl onto his lap. he’s silent, watching you as you do it, exposed body flush against his skin, and yet, you don’t feel scared. you don’t feel embarrassed, or worried. you just want to make him feel good.
you start with a kiss to his jaw. andrew’s body tenses under yours, the slightest bit of contact making him groan and buck up, his hands tight on the soft skin of your waist to keep you both steady. you work your way down to his neck, pressing kisses everywhere in your path.
“do you want to know what i’ve thought about you?” you ask, though you don’t wait for an answer. you kiss down his chest, stopping at the strong muscles of his chest and the old bruises and scars that cover some of them. “i thought that you’re so good at taking care of your family.” you move down to his abs, more kisses, hearing more noises from andrew that you never would have thought he would make for you. he takes shuddering breaths, not replying to you but grunting from pleasure while you keep going. “i thought that you’re so good to me. that i don’t have to worry since i know i can always come to you.” you think of your car and the money he gives you and how you woke up in bed despite falling asleep on the couch.
finally you make your way to the waistband of his jeans, undoing the belt with surprisingly steady hands. he reaches down, his hands covering yours for a moment, but you stare up at him with your glassy eyes, not even pulling the entire belt off, just enough to get you what you need—what you want. and then you undo his zipper, tug down his boxers, and take his girthy length into your hand, stroking up and down while still staring up at him.
“can i take care of you, andrew?” and you don’t realize how it must sound to him, his head thudding back onto the pillow. you press a gentle kiss to his leaking tip, both hands wrapped around his dick and stroking while you wait for your answer.
“y-yes, yes-” and you don’t wait any longer, taking as much of andrew into your mouth as you can fit. you drive your mouth up and down, your hands twisting around the base, everything wet and warm and sticky from your spit. and you think you would do this forever, that you would do this everyday if you could hear the noises he makes and how his body takes the pleasure you give him. you gag around him, feeling his hand snake into your hair, pulling you off gently. you smile up at him, though you’re sure you look like a mess, hot tears running down your cheeks and lips shiny and wet.
but you don’t stop—licking up and down until you bring him back into your mouth. you can feel how embarrassingly wet you are right now, can feel yourself leaking onto your thighs and the sheets, wanting friction as badly as you wanted to make andrew feel good right now. and then you hear it—andrew’s moan, louder than any of the other noises and full and from the chest. he bucks up into your mouth and you take it, ready to hear what he sounds like when he finishes, when he pulls you off of him.
“andrew—” you whine, as though you were the one about to come. he pulls you up, naked bodies pushed against each other, and kisses you until you feel light-headed.
“not until you do,” he murmurs, and you feel dizzy all over again.
“but i’m not done,” still eager to kiss the rest of his body and tell him how good he is, until he starts to believe you. you wrangle out of his loose grip, knowing full well if he wanted to stop, he could have. he could pin you down and do whatever he wanted to you and you wouldn’t be able to fight him, a thought that makes you feel like you’re going to faint. but you resume quickly, starting at his shoulders—stopping to admire all the sunspots spattered there—and starting your journey again, working down his bicep and to his freckled forearm, the ones you stared at whenever the opportunity presented itself, the one you thought about all the time.
andrew doesn’t know about that, and you’re not sure you can bear to tell him. it feels too revealing, despite how you’re naked on top of him, your breasts pressed against him and wet pussy on top of his hard, leaking dick. but sure—that’s what you get nervous about.
you stop and trace all the veins with your fingers, feeling him pulse underneath you, repeating on both sides. he’s got his head tilted back, soft groans filling the empty space between you as you keep going. if they’re this sensitive for him, you can only imagine what it would feel like for you, especially the one leading down to the middle of his wrist—and then the words slip out before you can realize you had said them out loud.
your face goes hot again. he looks up at you a little confused, and you have to stop yourself from collapsing and burying your face into the pillow next to you.
“andrew?” you ask, shy and embarrassed and yet not stopping yourself at all.
“you… you like my arms?” he says, and you feel your face heat up.
but so many things have happened already that you couldn’t have even dreamt about twenty-four hours ago, so you think it’s worth a shot. (that’s a lie. you have dreamt about this, so many times that you’ve woken up in your bed covered in a cold sweat, that you’ve burned through a vibrator and ruined pillows imagining what it would be like to rub yourself against his veiny arms. you guess you’re about to find out).
your fingers trace the length of them again.
“i like everything about you,” you say quietly, understanding just how silly you sound. “but we don’t have to do anything.” you try to cover your tracts, worried you’ve just messed up the incredible time you’ve been having so far littering his body with kisses and feeling butterflies in your cunt from the fact that andrew will be inside of you soon.
“how would you-” andrew starts, and you watch him carefully as he gets out the next few words. “do it? how?” and it’s just cut and dry way he speaks, though it’s really going to your head (and other places) right now.
“well, i-”
“show me.” oh.
you feel yourself pulse and throb in response to his words. even below you, you can still feel how hard andrew is. you try to start positioning yourself, but you must be moving too slowly for him, and you feel his hand on your ass, grabbing you and pushing you up to his chest, face to face. he lays his arm next to you, watching your naked body as you try to balance yourself between it, his free arm on your hip, keeping you steady.
when you lower yourself, just an inch or two, just until you feel the ridge of his forearm and you can decide what to do after realizing that you are, in fact, doing this, andrew curses under his breath.
“fuck, you’re so wet.” he can feel it. feel you, on his arm, leaking, for him. you take a deep breath, pressing your hands against his chest to keep your balance, moving your hips up and down slowly. and your eyes flutter shut because fuck, if it isn’t better than every fantasy you’ve ever had.
you hadn’t known that your pathetic attempts to recreate this at home would have never lived up to the real thing, and now you realize you’ll never be able to go back to anything else but andrew, that no one else could make you feel this way. months of pent-up desire leave your body as you rock yourself against him, finally getting the stimulation you’ve been craving.
when you open your eyes, just for a second, you see andrew, his eyes glued to where your pussy meets his arm, his breaths heavy and deep, like he wouldn’t look away from the sight before him for anything.
and then you feel the veins rub against your clit, and your eyes roll back into your head. you keep going, trying to muffle your moans and sighs, but you can’t get the image out of your head—andrew staring at you, like he wanted this as much as you’ve wanted it, like he needs to see you cum like this. you start going faster, the friction and the slide from your juices making it easier and the veins rubbing at you just the right way—
he leans in, putting one of your peaked nipples into his mouth, flicking his tongue against it, before letting go and repeating the same with the other one. but it’s really when andrew starts talking that you’re pulled over the edge, his hand hot on your back.
“please,” he says, and you feel yourself falling into it, hanging onto every raspy word, so much better than you could have ever dreamed, “-i-i need you to cum for me. i need to feel you, i need to see it, please-”
and you do. you always listen to andrew, all the white-hot tension wound up in your belly releasing, flooding your entire body with the relief you’ve been wanting all night. your body tightens up, stopping, but he moves you with the huge hand on your hip, makes you rub on him all through it, pulling your body like you’re a toy for him.
your mind is empty while your toes curl and uncurl, thighs aching and sore in this position. andrew ushers you towards him, and you collapse on his chest, heaving and sweaty and tired—and the realization hits you that he hasn’t even been inside of you yet.
he kisses you while he has you trapped in his arms, your eyes shut as you breathe him in, moan into his mouth and let him swallow it.
“y-your arm,” you get out, realizing you’re not speaking in coherent sentences. “i’m sorry-”
“why?” he asks, and you shut up instantly. “didn’t know you liked them that much.”
he laughs quietly, a sound you have only heard a few times. you laugh against his chest for a moment, before pulling him in for another kiss. this time, it deepens, and he gets you on your back in front of him before he pulls away. you stare up at him, mind empty and chest heaving, seeing how his eyes stay on your tits, and you reach up, putting your hands on his chest while he hovers over you.
“it might hurt,” he says, and you feel your entire body tighten, your walls clench at his words. there’s nothing but truth behind his statement—it’s not meant to be arrogant or boastful, he’s warning you. it’s going to hurt, you know it is—you could barely fit half of him in your mouth and it took you both hands to be able to comfortably stroke him.
but the way he says it elicits a fire in you, and suddenly you need him now, no matter how much it hurts.
“i don’t care, andrew, please,” you beg, staring up at him. he still hovers, licking his lips and staring at your how tits bounce while you beg him to fuck you—a thought that he cannot process, even with you splayed out in front of him. he brings his arms out, fingers teasing your sensitive nipples until you’re covering your own mouth to avoid being too loud and you think you’re going to black out. (even in the dim light you can see the shine on his forearm from you, and the memory of it takes over your mind like a twister.)
“i have to stretch you out first.” the words possess your body like a demon. andrew takes your knees and spreads them apart, and no matter how hard you try to close them, you can’t compete against him. when he slides in one huge finger, your eyes roll back. he slips in so easily, the noise is obscene. the second finger goes in just as quickly, but there’s more resistance. two of his fingers are at least three of yours (if not more, you think, and then you want to faint again). the stretch is delicious, your pulsing walls realizing that this has been what you’ve been craving all along. that no toys or pillows or fingers of your own could ever compare.
when he slips a third finger in, he doesn’t change the pace. just keeps pushing them in and out of you like you’re a toy he’s testing the limits with, seeing how much you can take before you break. there’s no instructions for you besides to sit back and take it—and your toes curl and your head spins at how good he feels. the stretch hurts, but you want it so badly, you hear yourself crying out and saying incoherent things. you think you see andrew smile from where he is, watching your cunt suck his fingers in, his entire hand coated in your juices.
and when he hovers over you, bringing his tip to your entrance and prodding against you for a moment, you think you’re in heaven. he’s so flushed, tips of ears and his cheeks pink, sweat coating his body, just like yours. you can only imagine how hard he is, how you’ll get to feel how hard he is soon enough. his eyes stay at your pussy, pushing in, just barely, but you need more. you bring your hands to his arms, holding onto him while he slides in, and when you feel him push all the way in—so much bigger than you could have imagined, three of his fingers is nothing compared to this, nothing, nothing, nothing—he’s on top of you and kissing you.
whatever noises you make are tuned out—your ears are ringing and you can’t hear anything besides andrew’s grunts and moans as they come into your mouth. you keep kissing him, pulling on his lower lip and feeling his tongue on yours, but your entire body goes slack when he starts on a brutal pace, pulling all the way out and slamming into you. the bed is creaky, and the only noise besides it is the obscene one—the squelch of your soaking wet cunt taking andrew all the way, the repetitive slap of his skin meeting yours. you feel everything—the pressure of his hands while he holds you incredibly tightly, the fullness in your cunt that makes it feel like you can’t breathe.
and then andrew kisses your lips and makes a noise that makes you leak even more, and you know you’ll be just fine.
“i-i want-” he starts, and you feel him slow down the pace slightly.
“please, andrew,” you beg, and he resumes, fucking into you with an intensity that reminds you how badly he wants you, how long he’s wanted this. it reminds you of every time you caught him staring, every time you smiled at him wondering what he was thinking. and now you think you know—maybe he was thinking about something like this.
“i want another one,” he says into the skin of your neck, feeling him lick the sweat there and kiss the skin. “i want to feel it while i’m inside-” and god if you can’t comply. you want to do every single thing he tells you for the rest of your life, you don’t want to make another decision without andrew cody.
he changes the position, pulling out of you for a second and making you whine again. (spoiled, you think, he’s spoiled me for anyone else forever.) he holds both of your knees up and spreads them wide and wraps your arms around them, keeping them in place. and then he slides back inside of you in one swift movement, making your eyelids flutter shut. he doesn’t get right on top of you, leaving space between you that makes it impossible to lean in for a kiss, and you keep whining, impossibly and irrationally angry that you can’t kiss him, wondering why he wants you like this, when you feel his fingers circle your clit slowly—then quickly.
your head falls back onto the pillow. andrew can feel you pulsing around him, walls clenching every time he rubs your sensitive clit, and that’s what he wants, that’s what he needs, wants to feel you cum around his dick and squeeze him even tighter than you are right now. wants to see how you look completely fucked out, wants to see if you can give him a third. (he’ll get it, he decides, later. he’ll give you a chance to breathe, get you water after this. all the things he would do to take care of you, just like how you deserve, how a husband would take care of his wife.)
because at the end of the day, isn’t that what you two basically already are? you couldn’t be a girlfriend, because you have to get comfortable around a girlfriend.
no, he thinks, watching your fucked-out, flushed body take him like you were made for it. you already know him, know what he likes and doesn’t like, know how to make him feel good like you had been inside of his head already. you have been inside. you’re all he thinks about. that’s a wife, that is something that is forever, what the two of you have.
he doesn’t realize how hard he’s going, how fast, or how you’ve been squealing with your entire body tensing while he was stuck in his thoughts about you. this time when you finish, it explodes through you, the electric current staring from your core and spreading to every finger and toe. you jolt, legs shaking and head heavy, the after effect rolling through you while andrew keeps fucking you, keeps going even though he should probably stop. you’re incoherent, writhing and crying and feeling completely numb and like your entire body is burning all at once.
and when you blink open your watery eyes at andrew, smile sweetly and reach out for a kiss, one that he happily gives you, you say it quietly.
“i love you, andrew.” and you feel his thrusts stutter, his body weight almost collapsing on you. you feel andrew cum, feel it filling you up while you listen to his quiet moans and run your hands over his tense muscles, saying sweet things that he can barely understand in this state.
he rolls over minutes later, not pulling out until you were done kissing him. the room is filled with nothing but your heavy breaths. you need a shower, and you need to sleep.
you curl up on andrew’s chest like you had been on the couch what felt like a lifetime ago. you play with his fingers and he runs his other hand up and down the expanse of your arm. you can hear birds outside—and you know you need to get up soon, but you can’t find any words.
“you think that was enough?” andrew asks, and you look up at him with a confused expression. he looks at you with so much sincerity you feel like crying. your andrew.
“what do you mean?” you ask quietly, still not sure what he’s even talking about. your head is spinning and your eyes are tired—every part of you is tired.
“we can go again after you get some sleep. it might take more than once.”
“andrew?”
“you don’t have to worry about it. i’ll figure it out. i won’t stop until i put a baby in you.”
Pairing: Baelor Targaryen x Reader
Summary: you are a ward at the Red Keep, where Prince Baelor befriends and steadfastly protects you, your bond deepening through shared childhood moments and quiet devotion. as you get older, your love grows, eventually being pushed together by baelors scheming parents, king Daeron and queen Myriah.
w/c: 5.8k
a/n: i would like to thank @glitchinmatrixx for their wonderful prompt which this fic is based on, please go show them some love:) ive done it as a oneshot, but would be happy to do more parts!
Masterlist
The day you arrived at the Red Keep; you were seven years old and dressed like an offering laid carefully upon an altar.
Silk sleeves, heavy with intricate embroidery, scratched at your wrists each time you moved. Gold thread caught the light with every step, glinting in the flames of the great hearths. The colours of your House wrapped around your small frame, shades that belonged to banners and battlefields, not to a child who still longed for scraped knees and dolls.
They called you a ward. They smiled when they said it. You understood the word well enough. You were not visiting, not a guest. You were a living promise, a breathing contract. A thread stitched between Houses so tightly that neither side could cut it without drawing blood.
The Red Keep swallowed you whole. It was nothing like home.
Its corridors were vast and tall; sound disappeared to the ceiling and returned in echoes. Torchlight jumped along the stone walls, never strong enough to banish the shadows entirely. The air smelled of salt from Blackwater Bay and of smoke from a thousand hearths and beneath it all, the thick sour undercurrent of King’s Landing itself.
Three-headed dragons watched you everywhere you turned. Scarlet banners cascaded from ceilings, coiled around pillars, draped across balconies.
Everything echoed. Your footsteps, your breathing, your loneliness.
You tried not to cry. Each morning you told yourself you would not cry. Each night you failed in some quiet corner. The library became your refuge, not because it comforted you, but because it was large enough to hide inside.
It was there that Baelor found you.
He was eight. Tall already, with shoulders that seemed to understand they would one day carry weight. Even grown men softened their voices when he passed. His eyes were mismatched, one blue as a clear summer sky, the other brown like polished oak, and both were too thoughtful for a boy his age.
You were curled into a window nook, knees drawn tight to your chest, a heavy tome open in your lap. The letters blurred across the page as the tears welled in your eyes. You had not read a single word.
He did not ask why you were crying. He climbed into the nook beside you as if it had always been meant to hold two. Without ceremony, he slid a small silver plate between you.
Lemon cakes.
“The Maesters insist these are for the Small Council,” he whispered, voice thick with conspiracy. “But I find the Council… adequately fed.”
You stared at him. Then at the cakes. Then back at him.
A laugh escaped you. Small and startled, but real. Partly because you were bewildered by the situation, and in part because the Prince of the Realm was sat in front of you offering you cake. It broke through your grief like sunlight through cloud.
Relief softened his face so suddenly it startled you more than the joke had.
“There,” he murmured, satisfied. “Better.”
It was the first time the Red Keep felt less like a prison and more like a place that might one day belong to you.
From the far end of the library, King Daeron Targaryen observed in silence. Myriah Martell stood at his side; her hands folded calmly before her.
They said nothing. They did not need to.
They saw the way their son looked at you. Not with duty, not with calculation, but with something quieter. Something chosen.
*
Childhood slipped away in fragments.
At ten, you existed in a strange limbo, too old for toys, too young for power. Your days filled with lessons: lineage traced back through centuries, conquests memorised like prayers, etiquette polished until it gleamed sharp as steel. Needlework so precise it bordered on punishment.
Baelor excelled effortlessly. History clung to him as though it wished to be remembered by him alone. Words obeyed him.
You did not.
He was determined to save you from the Septa’s wroth. Evenings became rituals of patience. Candles burned low over scattered scrolls. His shoulder brushed yours as he guided your trembling hand across parchment.
“Again,” he would murmur, voice steady as stone. “You nearly have it.”
When frustration burned too brightly in your eyes, he would lean back and sketch absurd caricatures of stern-faced Maesters in the margins, exaggerated noses, ridiculous hats, until your laughter broke free again.
He collected that laughter. Guarded it. Stored it away.
Beyond lessons, he mapped the castle for you piece by piece. The kitchens, thick with sugar and smoke. The sept, where sunlight filtered through stained glass in rainbows. The Godswood, where the pale weirwood watched in eternal silence, its red eyes unreadable.
He never hurried you. When courtiers stared too long at the foreign girl turned political pawn, he returned their gaze until they remembered themselves. It became unspoken law.
Where Baelor went, so did you.
*
The first grand ball you attended at the Red Keep was meant to be dazzling. You were twelve. Baelor was thirteen. Which meant you were old enough to attend but still young enough to be overlooked.
The Great Hall had been transformed into a sea of candlelight. The light caught in polished goblets and gilded armour. Musicians lined the gallery above, violins and lutes weaving bright melodies that seemed to float through the air. Lords glittered in velvet and jewels. Ladies drifted effortlessly, dressed in silk.
And there you stood at the edge of it all, stiff with instruction.
“Remember,” your Septa had whispered, smoothing your sleeves for the hundredth time, “you are to curtsy. Gracefully. Speak only when spoken to. And do not fidget.”
You fidgeted immediately. Your shoes pinched. The neckline of your gown felt too high, then too low. Every laugh from the crowd sounded like it might be about you.
Baelor stood beside you in black and red, his doublet embroidered with three-headed dragons in gold thread. He had been lectured as well on posture, on diplomacy, on the art of appearing effortless. He leaned slightly toward you. “You look like you’re about to be executed,” he murmured.
“I might be,” you whispered back. “By embroidery.”
His mouth twitched.
Across the hall, King Daeron Targaryen observed the gathering with a cup of wine in hand. Myriah Martell stood beside him, radiant in deep orange silk that shimmered like flame in motion.
“Watch,” she said quietly.
Daeron’s gaze shifted, not to the dancers or to the lords, but to the children stood at the edge of the hall.
When the first dance was announced. A simple courtly circle meant for the younger attendants. Several noble boys approached you in hesitant succession, each offering stiff bows. You curtsied politely, as instructed, hands folded just so. Before you could accept any invitation, Baelor stepped forward.
“I believe the first dance is mine,” he said evenly.
One boy flushed. Another retreated at once.
Technically, there had been no prior claim. Technically, Baelor had simply decided.
You stared at him.
“You hate dancing,” you accused softly.
“I hate watching you dance with someone else more.”
The honesty of it stole your breath for a moment. You placed your hand in his.
The musicians struck a lighter tune. The younger Lords and Ladies formed a circle, small hands linking, silk brushing silk. Baelor’s palm was warm and slightly damp against yours.
“You are stepping on my foot,” you informed him.
“You are moving unpredictably,” he responded.
“You are leading terribly.”
“I am leading perfectly. You are simply not following.”
You tried to suppress your laughter and failed. It bubbled up bright and irrepressible, breaking the quiet concentration of the dance. A few adults glanced over, amused. You knew your Speta would have been unimpressed and scold you for loosing your composure.
Baelor, determined by your laughter, exaggerated his next step in retaliation for your earlier accusation. The result was disastrous. You collided gently, nearly tangling in one another entirely.
You both dissolved into giggles.
From the high table, Daeron exhaled through his nose in what might have been a laugh.
“They are supposed to be demonstrating refinement,” he said dryly.
“They are demonstrating devotion,” Myriah corrected.
Then the dance ended in uneven bows. Before another boy could approach you, Baelor turned fully toward you and said, “Again.”
“Again?” you echoed.
“We must improve. For the honour of the Crown.”
“You mean for your pride.” You said through giggles.
“That too.” And so, you danced again. And again.
Not every dance was perfect. Once he spun you too quickly and you nearly toppled into a passing lord. Once you forgot the pattern entirely and dragged him the wrong direction. But each time, you found your way back to one another, your hands seeking his instinctively, eyes locking in shared amusement.
At one point, when the music slowed into something softer, you grew uncharacteristically shy. The hall seemed larger then, the watching eyes sharper.
“I don’t like when they stare,” you murmured.
Baelor shifted closer without thinking, angling his body slightly so he stood between you and the worst of the onlookers.
“Then look at me,” he said simply.
You did. And you forgot the rest of the hall existed.
From above, Myriah tilted her head, watching the way her son unconsciously adjusted himself to shield you. The way your shoulders loosened the instant his hand steadied at your waist.
Daeron followed her gaze.
Baelor leaned in to whisper something that made you laugh again, soft this time, private.
“Hm,” Daeron hummed.
“Hm,” Myriah echoed.
“He is thirteen.”
“And already ruined for anyone else,” she replied serenely.
Daeron took a slow sip of wine, eyes never leaving the dance floor. “We should begin preparing the realm.”
“For what?”
“For inevitability.”
As the music crescendos to an end, Baelor attempted a formal bow at the end of the set and nearly lost his balance in the process, his legs tiring from the many dances you had shared. You caught his sleeve to steady him; cheeks pink with laughter.
He straightened, dignity salvaged only by your grip. “Thank you,” he muttered.
“You would have fallen.”
“I would not.”
“You would have,” You giggled.
He studied you for a long second, something earnest flickering behind his mismatched eyes. “Then it is fortunate you were there, my brothers would never have let me live that down”
You did not understand why that made your chest feel warm.
But Daeron and Myriah did.
High above the candles and music, beneath banners heavy with dragon sigils, the King leaned slightly toward his queen. He smiles, almost impressed.
Myriah’s smile was slow and knowing. “They are in love.”
And below them, unaware, you and Baelor continued to dance as though the world had already narrowed just to your hands clasped tightly together.
*
At 16 years old, the summer storms rolled in from Blackwater Bay like an invading fleet. The air changed first it was thick and restless. Curtains stirred though no wind touched them. The sky bruised slowly from blue to a heavy, dark grey.
You had confessed it once, months ago, in an offhand murmur you had hoped he would forget.
“I don’t like storms.” You had not elaborated. You had not needed to.
You hated loud noises. Not disliked. Hated. They stole the breath from your lungs and left you feel small and shaking, seven years old again in a castle too large for comfort.
He remembered.
He always remembered.
That night the storm did not creep, it struck. Lightning split the sky so violently the windows flashed white and the thunder followed not as a rumble but as a crack, sharp and brutal, shaking the panes. The old stones of the Red Keep groaned in the gusts of wind.
You were already beneath your blankets, curled tight as a fist. Your hands clamped over your ears, but it did nothing. The sound came through stone, through wood, through bone. Each strike felt personal.
Another flash. Another crack.
You squeezed your eyes shut and counted between them, breath hitching. One. Two-
The door opened. Not loudly. It simply opened.
Baelor slipped inside as though he had every right in the world to be there. Barefoot. Hair tousled from sleep, dark strands falling into mismatched eyes still heavy. He wore only a loose nightshirt, hastily pulled on, laces crooked.
In one hand, he carried a single candle. In the other, a thick, leather-bound book pressed against his side.
He did not ask if you were afraid.
He crossed the room in three quiet strides and set the candle upon your bedside table. You peered over the edge of the blanket.
“You shouldn’t be here,” you whispered, though your voice trembled on the edges. Another explosion of thunder made you flinch despite yourself. Baelor glanced toward the window as though the sky had insulted him personally.
“I disagree,” he said calmly.
He dragged one of the cushioned chairs from near the hearth to the side of your bed, but after a moment’s consideration, he seemed dissatisfied with the distance. With a quiet huff, he abandoned the chair entirely.
He lifted the edge of your blanket and slid beneath it without ceremony. His feet were cold.
You gasped. “Baelor!”
He ignored your protest, stretching out stiffly at first, adjusting until he was half-propped against the headboard. He pulled the blanket more securely around both of you, sealing the small space into something warmer. Smaller.
Another crack of thunder split the air.
You instinctively pressed closer before you could stop yourself.
He noticed. Said nothing. He opened the book.
“Valyria,” he announced, as if addressing a court rather than a storm. “Before the Doom.”
Lightning flared. His voice did not waver. He read steadily, low and measured, threading his words between each growl of thunder as though competing with it. Descriptions of Dragonlords and of cities carved from flame. His tone was even, deliberate never rushed.
When a particularly violent crash rattled the shutters, you jolted hard enough that the mattress shifted.
Baelor stopped reading. He closed the book carefully, marking the page with his thumb.
“If I am here,” he said, turning his head slightly toward you, “the noise must pass through me first.”
Another rumble rolled across the sky, longer this time, less sharp.
“I do not give the sky permission to frighten you,” he added, as though that settled the matter entirely.
It was absurd. It was said with the quiet authority of someone who fully expected the world to comply. You huffed a small, shaky laugh despite yourself. “You cannot command the weather.”
“I can attempt it,” he replied. “I am very persistent.”
Silence fell between claps of thunder. His shoulder was warm against yours now. You could feel the steady rhythm of his breathing. Each inhale deliberate. Each exhale grounding.
You matched it without realising.
Another flash of lightning came but this time you watched it through the narrow gap in the curtains instead of hiding from it. The thunder followed but dulled somehow. Distant.
Baelor resumed reading, though softer now. The words blurred at the edges as exhaustion crept in, your body slowly relaxing
At some point, your hand found the fabric of his sleeve. You did not remember reaching.
He adjusted slightly so your fingers could curl more comfortably, careful not to wake you. Outside, the storm continued its fury. Rain lashed stone. Wind clawed at towers. Thunder rolled over the city like drums of war. Inside, beneath a shared blanket and the glow of a single stubborn candle, it felt smaller.
Your breathing evened. Your grip slackened. Baelor glanced down once to confirm what he already knew. Asleep.
He watched the window through the next flash of lightning. When the storm finally began to move inland, its anger spent, he did not leave immediately. He waited until the thunder was nothing more than a memory in the distance.
After that night, he came without needing to be asked.
Sometimes with histories. Sometimes with stories of his own invention, outrageous tales where he negotiated peace treaties with storm gods and forced them into civilized conduct. Once with warm milk balanced precariously on a tray and two lemon cakes stolen from kitchens that would absolutely notice. It became ritual.
When clouds gathered, so did he. The servants noticed the candle wax outside your door in the mornings and the fact your bed had been slept in on both sides.
The King noticed. The Queen noticed more.
Neither forbade it.
Some bonds were not interruptions to be corrected. Some storms were meant to be weathered together.
*
For your 17th nameday, you had been gifted a new mare by the King and Queen, she was your escape from courts. The afternoon was honey-warm, sunlight spilling through the canopy of the Kingswood. Leaves rustled overhead, stirred by a gentle breeze that carried the scent of pine and earth. Your mare moved at an easy pace beneath you, her hooves muffled by moss.
Baelor rode at your side, close enough that your boots nearly brushed when the path narrowed. His stallion tossed its pale mane, restless but obedient, as if aware it was expected to behave.
“You’re thinking too loudly,” he said at last, glancing at you sidelong.
You arched a brow. “Is that so?”
“Yes. I can hear it from here.”
“Then perhaps you should ride farther away.”
“Never,” he replied easily.
The path curved, opening into a wider stretch. A squirrel darted across the trail. Somewhere in the distance, a woodpecker tapped its steady rhythm against bark.
You leaned forward slightly, stroking your mare’s neck. “She’s been patient all morning,” you murmured. “I think she deserves to stretch her legs.”
Baelor’s mismatched eyes flicked to you, suspicion already blooming. “Stretch,” he repeated carefully.
“Mhm.”
Before he could say another word, you pressed your heels gently to your mare’s sides.
She surged forward.
The world shifted at once. No longer a quiet painting of green and gold but a rush of motion. Wind tore laughter from your throat as branches blurred past. Your braid whipped behind you.
Behind you came the sharp exhale of Baelor’s startled curse.
“You cheat!” he called, though the sound was half laughter, half challenge.
His stallion leapt into pursuit, hooves pounding hard against packed earth. The rhythm doubled, then merged as the two of you went racing through the forest.
You dared a glance over your shoulder. He was gaining, of course he was gaining, posture low over his horse’s neck, silver hair streaming behind him like a battle standard.
“You said stretch!” he shouted.
“I did not specify how much!”
The path narrowed suddenly, forcing you to duck beneath a low-hanging branch. Your mare adjusted instinctively, agile and sure-footed, weaving between trees with eager grace.
Baelor cut across a curve in the trail, taking the inside line with bold confidence. His stallion leapt a fallen log instead of veering around it.
Show-off.
You leaned closer to your mare’s ear. “Don’t let him win,” you whispered.
She responded with another burst of speed, as if she understood you. For a time, there was nothing but wind and thunder and exhilaration. No court. No whispers. No expectations pressing in from every side. Only the wild rush of movement and the fierce joy of being alive beside someone who matched you stride for stride.
The forest began to thin ahead, light growing brighter.
Baelor pulled even with you at last. He turned his head, grinning wide, the careful prince gone entirely.
“Yield,” he demanded.
“Never.”
He reached out in a fit of giggles and caught your sleeve. You gasped and matched his laugh, swatting at him as your mare surged one final time toward the clearing.
The two of you burst from the trees together, hooves tearing through tall grass, neither horse willing to concede.
You crossed whatever invisible finish line might have existed at the exact same moment. Both horses slowed in reluctant spirals, sides heaving, nostrils flared.
Silence settled again broken only by your shared breathless laughter.
“It was a tie,” you said firmly.
Baelor swung down from his saddle, still smiling as though he had just conquered a kingdom. “It was not.”
“It was.”
He stepped closer, taking your reins before you could protest, steadying your mare as you dismounted.
“It was,” he conceded at last, voice softer now. “Because I decided it was.”
You narrowed your eyes. “That is not how races work.”
“It is when I am future king.”
You shoved him lightly. He caught your wrist before you could retreat, his grip warm and certain.
For a moment, the world felt small again. Just trees and sunlight and the echo of pounding hooves still thrumming in your veins.
“We’ll race again,” he said quietly. “And next time I’ll win properly.”
You smiled, breath still uneven, heart still racing. “We’ll see.”
Behind you, the woods held your secret, it would hold a hundred more moments yet to come.
*
Adolescence crept in quietly.
You did not notice it. The court did. You were ten and seven, more than old enough to be married off by Westeros standards.
What had once been an affection toward the small ward sharpened into something else. Lingering glances. Compliments that stretched too long. Boys who straightened their shoulders when you passed.
Baelor noticed. He told himself it was protectiveness.
The first time a young knight pressed a kiss to your knuckles at a feast, Baelor’s goblet cracked in his hand. The silver split beneath his grip. He stared at it as if betrayed.
Something tightened in his chest restless, unnamed.
That night, Daeron watched him over supper.
“Is the wine to your liking?” the King asked mildly.
Baelor blinked. “Yes, Father.”
Myriah’s gaze flicked toward you across the hall. She said nothing. Later, alone with her husband, she smiled faintly.
“He is beginning to understand.”
“Not yet,” Daeron replied. “But he will.”
Baelor grew quieter after that. More careful. He stopped sitting quite so close. Stopped brushing your hand without thinking. Stopped letting his gaze linger.
The distance hurt more than proximity ever had.
When you left to visit your family, he finally understood absence. The castle dulled without you. Lessons blurred. Council meetings stretched endlessly. He wandered restlessly to the library nook, to the Kingswood trail where you once outran him, to the stables at dawn where you used to steal apples for the horses.
Myriah watched him.
“Send for her,” she told Daeron lightly one evening. “It has been long enough.”
Daeron pretended to deliberate. Then he sent the raven.
*
Baelor was eighteen. A man grown.
The dream came in the thick heat of late summer, when the air itself felt indulgent. The windows of his chambers had been thrown open to Blackwater Bay, but no breeze came. The curtains hung limp. The night was uncomfortable, the air hot and heavy.
Sleep did not take him gently. It pulled him under.
He was back in the Kingswood. Only it was not quite memory.
The light was lower, heavier, the gold sunlight now amber. You rode ahead of him, hair unbound this time, loose down your back instead of braided properly for court. It caught the sunlight like a banner in motion.
You glanced over your shoulder. Smiling.
Not the polite smile you wore at feasts. Not the careful one reserved for lords. The real one, reserved for him alone. You slowed your horse until he drew even with you. No words passed between you. None were needed. The forest was quiet. Expectant.
Then the scene shifted - as dreams do - seamless and strange.
You stood in the library nook. Not seven and small. Eighteen and a woman.
The same window. The same sky beyond it. But you filled the space differently now. Your knees were not tucked to your chest. You sat upright, composed, a woman instead of a child. He approached you.
In the dream, he did not hesitate. He touched your cheek. You leaned into it.
The simplicity of that gesture unravelled him.
Your fingers slid into his hair slowly. You pulled him down until your foreheads touched.
“Baelor,” you whispered.
The sound of his name in your voice shifted something deep inside him. His hand moved to your waist, and it fit there perfectly, almost possessive.
You rose onto your toes and kissed him. And the kiss was not uncertain like in corridors lit by torches. It was hot and breathless, your mouths learning each other without interruption. His hands tightened at your back. Your hand tightened on his dark hair. The library faded away. The dream narrowed to skin and warmth and the sharp realization that you were not a girl beneath his protection anymore.
You were a woman choosing him.
The dream did not stop there. It betrayed him further. You pulled him backward toward the cushions of the nook, laughter low in your throat not girlish but knowing. He followed, until you were beneath him and then over him and then nothing made sense except the press of your body and the sound of your breath catching when he said your name like something sacred.
His restraint, that careful, deliberate control he wore like armour, dissolved completely.
He wanted you. Not poetically. Viscerally.
His mouth traced the line of your throat. Your pulse leapt beneath his lips. Your hands tightened in his shirt, pulling him closer as though there were no court, no crown. Only the two of you.
When he woke, it was with your name on his lips.
The room was dark. The air still heavy. His sheets were tangled around his legs. His pulse thundered violently in his ears, as though he had been running. Sweat clung to his skin. His breath came uneven.
For a long moment he did not move. He just stared at the ceiling.
He could still feel it. The ghost of your mouth, the warmth of your hands, the weight of you beneath him.
And beneath that, something sharper. Guilt.
Not because the desire was wrong. But because it was no longer deniable.
You were not the child in the library. You were not simply the ward under his protection. You were eighteen and so was he.
The wanting was no longer harmless, it had consequences.
He dragged a hand down his face slowly, exhaling through his teeth.
This was no longer the soft affection of childhood. This was hunger and it terrified him how natural it felt.
The next morning, when you approached him in the courtyard. The sunlight in your hair, which was loose down your back, just like in his dream.
“Baelor-”
He looked at you. Really looked.
At the curve of your mouth. The slope of your throat. The way your riding leathers fit differently than they had even a year ago.
Heat flooded him so abruptly he felt dizzy. He turned and fled without a word. Behind him, you stood bewildered.
And for the first time in his life, Baelor Targaryen who feared neither council nor battlefield nor storm was utterly petrified.
For weeks he was undone. Blushing. Stammering. Avoiding your gaze. If your fingers brushed his sleeve, he forgot how to breathe. You were bewildered. He was mortified. And yet he could not stay away.
He saved you a seat without thinking. His gaze found you in every crowded hall. You reached instinctively for his sleeve when corridors grew overwhelming. Love settled between you slowly. Patiently.
Neither daring to name it.
Daeron named it. Myriah confirmed it.
They spoke it through one quiet evening.
“It would be the strongest match we could hope for,” Daeron said,
“And the simplest,” Myriah replied.
“Do we tell them?”
She smiled, her fierce Dornish nature and enjoyment for mischief present in her tone,
“No.”
*
The betrothal rumours were planted carefully. It was expected the heir to the throne was eighteen. A whisper in council. A suggestion at supper. A letter left half-open. The court buzzed.
Baelor heard it from a Lord. He did not ask who the bride was. He imagined marrying another and felt something inside him recoil violently.
You heard the whispers too.
Three days passed. You avoided him. He avoided you.
The silence felt like a wound.
Midnight found you both in a dim corridor, torches guttering low. Both mulling over the prospect of the prince’s betrothal.
As you rounded a corner, you collided. His hands closed around your shoulders. They were trembling.
Silence stretched between you for a beat, eyes meeting, almost desperate.
“Congratulate me,” he said hoarsely.
Your composure fractured.
“I hope she makes you happy,” you whispered. “I hope she is everything I could never be.”
Something inside him shattered completely.
“There is no everything else,” he said, voice breaking. “There has only ever been you.”
The words tore free.
“I did not understand it when we were children. I did not understand it when I could not breathe while you were gone. I understand it now.”
His grip tightened.
“I love you.”
You exhaled like someone breaking the surface after drowning.
“I love you too.”
He did not kiss you. He took your hand. And marched dragging you behind him, holding your hand tightly, as thought he feared you would disappear it you slipped form his grasp.
He marched you all the way to the royal quarters, flinging the King’s chamber doors opened without announcement.
“I will not do it,” Baelor declared, shaking. “I love her. I will not marry another.”
Silence. Then Myriah sighed.
“Baelor,” she said carefully, “who do you believe your betrothed to be?”
He blinked. Realisation dawned.
“Oh.”
Daeron’s laughter filled the chamber.
“The realm is not blind,” the King said. “We simply required you to see it yourselves.”
The silence that followed was not awkward. It was catastrophic.
Baelor still held your hand. His grip had not loosened. In fact, it tightened as understanding spread across his face. His ears turned red first. Then his neck. Then the colour rose fully into his cheeks.
You, meanwhile, stood very still, praying to the gods you could just disappear.
Myriah was most definitely amused. Daeron leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled beneath his chin. “You believed,” he said mildly to his son, “that I would wed you to some unknown daughter of a Reach lord?”
Baelor swallowed. “Yes.”
“And you,” Myriah added gently, eyes shifting to you, “believed you were to be discarded?”
Your voice came out smaller than you intended. “Yes, Your Grace.”
Daeron made a low sound in his throat. Not disapproval. Not quite approval either.
“For years,” he said, “half this realm has wagered on when the two of you would realise what was plain to everyone else.”
Baelor closed his eyes briefly. Myriah rose from her seat in a smooth sweep of orange silk. She crossed the chamber with measured steps, stopping before you. Her gaze was not unkind.
“You were sent here as a promise,” she said. “You have become far more valuable than that.”
She turned to her son. “If you were to wed another, Baelor, you would resent her. The realm would suffer for it.”
His jaw tightened. “I would not-”
“You would,” Daeron interrupted, voice sharp enough to cut. “You are not subtle.”
Silence again.
Baelor looked at you. Not the girl in the library nook. Not the child under blankets during storms. Not the racing companion in the Kingswood. He looked at you as a man who had nearly lost something and now understood its weight.
“I will marry her,” he said evenly. No tremor now. No boyish panic. “Or I will not marry at all.”
Daeron’s brow lifted slightly.
The declaration was not romantic. It was absolute.
Myriah’s lips curved faintly. “You see?” she murmured to her husband.
Daeron studied you for a long moment. Measuring. Calculating. Seeing not only affection but consequence. At last, he nodded once.
“It will be announced at the next Feast,” he said. “Publicly. There will be no room for speculation.”
Baelor exhaled slowly, as though he had been holding breath for years. You had not realised you were still gripping his hand until Myriah’s gaze flicked downward. Only then did you loosen your hold.
“Go,” the Queen said, waving you off with elegant dismissal. “Before he attempts to storm another chamber.”
Baelor did not wait to be told twice. He pulled you into the corridor, but this time he did not drag you. He stopped only once the heavy doors shut behind you.
The torches guttered low.
The castle was quiet.
He stared at you. For a moment, neither of you spoke.
Then he laughed. Almost disbelieving.
“They knew,” he said.
“Yes.”
“They let me panic.”
“Yes.”
A pause.
“I may challenge Father to a duel.”
“You would lose.”
“I know.”
Silence again. The air felt different now. Charged.
“You were going to let me go,” he said softly.
You held his gaze. “I thought I had to.”
His hand lifted, hesitant for the first time in years. It hovered near your face, then settled carefully along your cheek.
“You do not have to,” he said.
For all the years you had slept through storms and raced through forests and danced beneath dragon banners, this felt like the true turning point.
“I would have followed you anyway,” you confessed quietly. “Even if you had married another. I would have stayed.”
His eyes darkened at that. Not anger. Something more dangerous.
“No,” he said. “You would not.”
A princes command. You searched his expression and found no jest there.
“If I had been forced into another match,” he continued, voice low, “I would have broken something. Perhaps the alliance. Perhaps myself.”
The honesty did not frighten you. It steadied you. He was not gentle by nature. He was deliberate and devoted. Fierce in ways the court had only begun to glimpse.
“You will not have to,” you said.
“No.” The word settled between you like a vow already sworn.
Footsteps echoed faintly somewhere in the corridor. Servants moving through distant halls. Baelor stepped closer.
“You realise,” he said quietly, “this changes nothing.”
You blinked. “Nothing?”
“I will still correct your posture at feasts. I will still win our next race.”
“You admitted the last was a tie.”
“I rescind that admission.” A smile tugged at your lips despite yourself.
“And storms?” you asked.
“I will continue negotiating with them personally.” The torchlight flickered across his mismatched eyes. For the first time, neither of you hesitated.
He leaned down.
The kiss was not practiced. Not polished. It was warm and slightly uncertain and entirely real. When he pulled back, his forehead rested lightly against yours.
“You are mine,” he said quietly.
Not ownership, just recognition.
“And you are mine,” you replied.
Above you, banners heavy with dragons shifted faintly in the draft of the corridors.
In the royal chambers, Daeron poured more wine.
“It is done,” he said.
Myriah smiled into her goblet. “It was done the day he brought her lemon cakes.”
Outside, the wind rolled in gently from Blackwater Bay.
⊹ ࣪ ˖ summary: In a city that smells of roses and rot, the north’s future lady meets the dragon prince who moves through court like a storm.
⊹ ࣪ ˖ pairing: baelor "breakspear" targaryen x f!stark!reader
⊹ ࣪ ˖ wc: 5.2k+
⊹ ࣪ ˖ notes/content: stark!reader (no physical description other than the fact you're barthogan stark's daughter); set pre-akotsk so no show spoilers, but post first blackfyre rebellion; strangers to lovers; implied age gap; protective!baelor. Hope y'all enjoy my little side quest before we return to regular scheduling.
read on ao3.
The first thing you learn about the South is that everything is too much.
Too bright, too loud, too hot. Sunlight on red stone, music that never seems to stop, silks that drag over your skin like spiderwebs. You miss the clean hard lines of Winterfell—the sound of wind in the towers, the crunch of frost under your boots, the encompassing rustle of godswoods, and the uncomplicated weight of wool on your shoulders.
Down here, even the air feels crowded.
So does the corridor outside the throne room.
The feast has only just ended, but already half the court is spilling out through the tall doors in a rush of perfume and gossip. Torches spit along the walls, heat pressing down from every direction. Lords and ladies drift in bright clusters, the clink of their jewellery as loud as their laughter. Servants push through with trays held high, cutting through the crowd in practised sweeps. Somewhere ahead, a bard is still singing about dragons reborn while a herald calls out titles over the din.
You are trying very hard to be invisible.
It’s an old northern trick. Head down, shoulders steady, move like a shadow along the wall, a wolf on the prowl unseen but ever watchful. Your father has gone on ahead with the king and his council, leaving you to find your own way back to your chambers. Winterfell’s halls never felt like this. Here, the Red Keep seems to breathe and move around you, full of hot blood and sharper teeth than any wolf. Someone’s sleeve catches on the edge of your own; a jewelled clasp scrapes your wrist, and you jerk back on instinct. You murmur an apology, the words swallowed by the noise, and edge closer to the wall, feeling the rush of bodies pressing past.
That’s when the crowd surges.
The doors behind you open again with a thud, and a fresh crush of courtiers spills out, seemingly all at once. A tall knight in a gilded plate cuts across your path; a lady with a fan like a small battle shield sways into you, chuckling too loudly, flushed from wine. Your shoulder hits stone, and you almost bare your teeth in irritation. The air leaves your lungs in a soft, muffled sound that no one hears. You’re not used to this many people in your space, breathing down your neck, and your neck prickles.
You don’t see him at first, but you do feel him.
A warm pressure closes around your elbow, steadying you before you can stumble. The grip is sure but careful, fingers splayed so as not to bruise. Before you can turn, that touch slides—down, in, claiming a span of you that no one at court has dared to yet.
His hand finds your waist.
Not a greedy clutch or a drag. But a quiet, decisive claim, palm fitting to the narrowest part of you as if it was always meant to rest there. He doesn’t pull; he guides, the way one might guide a skittish mare out of a tight pen. The heat of his body is at your back, a wall as solid as any of Winterfell’s stones, and suddenly the crowd is no longer pressing you into the wall; he is moving you through it.
“Forgive me, my lady,” a low voice murmurs just behind your ear. “There’s more room this way.”
He steps forward, and you find yourself moving with him, his hand a firm point of balance against your waist. People part without thinking; even in the crush, bodies turn, shoulders dip, conversations falter for half a heartbeat as they register who is passing among them.
Prince Baelor.
You’ve seen him from afar, of course.
At the high table during the welcoming feast, back when you first arrived, where the firelight turned his dark hair copper at the edges. In the training yard, in passing, long-limbed and lethal with a spear, moving with the unhurried grace of someone who knows exactly how dangerous he is and has no need to prove it. Beside the king in council, broad shoulders bent over a table of maps, the Hand pin gleaming across his breast. He carries all three faces with him now—the warrior, the prince, the Hand—as he clears a path for you like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
The southern ladies watch you pass with wide, speculative eyes. Their whispers press in around you like heat, and you know full well what they’re thinking.
A northern wolf on the Crown Prince’s arm.
Not his arm, you think desperately, bones quaking beneath your skin. His hand. His hand is on your—
You barely catch yourself before your feet tangle in the hem of your gown. Baelor’s grip tightens almost imperceptibly, fingers curving more securely into the fabric at your waist. Gentle, still, but not in the least uncertain. The contact steals the rest of your breath. You have been shoved and jostled and knocked sideways plenty of times in the past, but this is something different.
This is a man who knows the weight of his own body, of his own strength, and chooses—deliberately—to make you feel safe beneath his touch.
It is ridiculous how your bones seem to melt around that realisation.
By the time your thoughts catch up, he has manoeuvred you into a small side gallery off the main corridor—a little alcove open to the night, its stone balustrade looking out over the black curve of Blackwater Bay. The noise of the court drops away like a curtain falling. Only a few stragglers pass the archway, casting you quick, curious looks before hurrying on.
Baelor steps back. His hand leaves your waist, the loss of it sharp as stepping out of a hot bath into cold air. Your skin remembers the shape of his fingers even as his touch fades, phantom-strong still.
“My apologies,” he says, giving you space, and Gods be good, he even bows a little, as if he hasn’t just steadied and steered you through the throng like you weighed less than a sword. “The crowd was… overzealous.”
You swallow, trying to coax your voice back into existence. You have faced down freezing storms and hungry wolves. You have stood before your lord father’s council and spoken on matters of grain and garrison. None of that prepared you for Baelor Breakspear looking at you as if you are the only person in all of King’s Landing who matters at this exact moment.
“It was…” You clear your throat, the words scraping on their way out. “Thank you, Your Grace. I was managing well enough.”
One dark brow lifts, visibly amused. “Were you?”
Sensation of heat creeps up your neck, and you’re unsure if it’s embarrassment or anger, or both.
He does not resemble the Targaryens of the old songs. No otherworldly silver hair, no jittering violet gaze. Baelor is all warm gold skin and midnight hair already catching a few strands of grey, Dornish sun softened by the formidable Valyrian bone structure. The dragon is in the tilt of his nose, the high cut of his cheekbones, the fine line of his mouth and the steely gleam in his dark eyes.
He looks at you steadily, and you have the unpleasant suspicion he can read more in your silence than you’d like.
“I am not accustomed to so many people,” you manage at last, clasping your hands in front of you so he cannot see them fidget. “Winterfell’s halls are quieter.”
“And colder, I imagine.” His mouth curves, but there is no mockery in it, only curiosity. “Your father has told me tales of snows higher than a man’s head, of wolves the size of ponies.”
“They’re only that big when you’re very small,” you say before you can stop yourself. “Or when the men telling stories have had too much wine.”
He laughs. It’s not loud, not like some of the booming, performative mirth you’ve heard at the feast. It’s low and genuine, like the rumble of distant thunder rolling across the fields in high summer.
“So there are no monstrous beasts lurking in your forests?” he asks.
“Oh, there are,” you say quietly. “They just don’t always have four legs.”
His eyes sharpen on your face. You regret the words as soon as they’re out, but you steel your spine and hold his gaze. The north teaches you to stand firm from a young age; the south seems to require it even more.
“Court can be… trying,” he says after a beat, gentling the subject with care. “Even for those born to it. You’ve only been here a week, my lady. It is no failing to find the noise overwhelming.”
You wonder if he finds it overwhelming, too—the heir to a dynasty unlike any other in the world, the half-Dornish boy who grew into a man caught between too many expectations. You have heard the whispers about his mother’s people, the sneers for his sun-dark skin, the grudging admiration for his skill in battle.
You know what it means to be out of place.
“Winterfell is quiet,” you tell him, surprising yourself. “But it’s a good quiet. Solid. The kind that lets you hear your own thoughts.” You glance back toward the corridor, where the hum of voices still spills past. “Here, it feels like my thoughts are drowned before I can have them.”
Baelor nods, slow, as if weighing your words. “You are your father’s heir, are you not?”
“Yes.”
“Then they will not be drowned,” he says simply. “They will learn to swim. And those who would prefer not to hear them will have to learn to listen.”
The certainty in his tone startles you more than the feel of his hand had.
“You sound very sure of that, Your Grace.”
“I try to be.” That hint of humour returns, dimming the intensity of his gaze just enough to let you breathe. “It is expected of me. People are comforted by conviction, even when it’s borrowed.”
“That seems… dangerous,” you say. “To borrow conviction.”
“It can be,” he agrees with a pleased nod. “So it’s important to borrow from the right people.”
His eyes catch yours. For a moment, the air between you feels as thick as honey and twice as warm.
“And who do you borrow from?” you ask curiously, because your mouth is braver than your good sense.
“From those who know how to stand in the cold,” he says softly, “and do not flinch.”
The world narrows in, down to the shape of him against the torchlit stone, the calm weight of his attention. You have never felt so acutely the distance between your body and someone else’s. A step. Less than that, maybe. You remember the heat of his palm through your gown, the steady line of his fingers, the way the crowd parted as if he carried his own weather with him.
There are worse storms to be caught in, you think.
A shout from the main corridor breaks whatever held the moment taut. A serving boy runs past the archway, chased by another, laughter echoing behind them. The spell shivers and eases, dispelling. Baelor straightens a little, the prince’s mantle settling more visibly around his shoulders again.
“May I see you safely back to your chambers, my lady?” he asks. “It seems I’ve already half-abducted you from the feast. I’d rather not leave you to brave the crush alone again.”
“That’s not necessary,” you begin automatically. “I won’t wish to trouble you.”
Northerners do not like to seem fragile; Starks, least of all.
He tilts his head. “Indulge me, then.”
You hesitate. You can hear the court whispering already, if you close your eyes. The northern lady on the prince’s arm. The wolf at the dragon’s side. Oh, what tales they’ll spin out of the sight of you side by side, and yet…
You are tired of being a story told by others.
“I suppose,” you say, unable to scrub the wariness out of your voice, “if Your Grace insists…”
The grin that answers you is brief but unexpectedly bright, one quick flash of unguarded warmth that softens the stern, strong angles of his face.
“I do,” he says, offering his arm.
You place your hand on his forearm, careful, aware of every point of contact. The fine fabric beneath your palm, the solid muscle beneath that, the way his skin heats the air between you. When you step back into the corridor, you feel the weight of a hundred eyes. You hold your head high, the way your mother taught you before she died. A Stark does not bow to the weather, you remind yourself. Starks are of old blood, steel and ice, everlasting.
When you step back into the corridor, the noise washes over you in a hot wave. Laughter, clattering plates, the distant shrill of a pipe. The torches spit and smoke, scenting the air with pitch and singed dust.
You feel every pair of eyes. Every turn of a jewelled head.
Baelor moves as if he does not. As if the crowd is nothing more than a current he’s long since learned to read. A subtle shift of his shoulders here, a courteous incline of his head there, and the sea parts for him in due deference. The hush that follows your wake is thin but perceptible, like the trail of a blade through water. When a young lord, flushed and unsteady, staggers too close, Baelor’s free hand comes up between you and the impending collision. His palm brushes low at your side—just a ghost of contact at your waist as he guides the man past with a quiet word.
It is almost nothing.
Almost.
Your breath slows in your lungs. Your body knows the shape of that hand now; your bones seem to bow under it like a sword under a smithy’s hammer. The place where his fingers rest for that heartbeat feels branded. He does not look down at you right away. It would be too much, you think, to meet his eyes in the same moment his hand is on your body. Instead, he steers you past another knot of courtiers, past a herald arguing with a servant over spilt wine.
Only when the press thins a little does he speak.
“How are you finding the south, my lady?” he asks lightly, as if making idle conversation in a garden instead of cutting a path through a hall of vipers. “Truly. Not the answer you give my father.”
The honest answer rises, sharp and instinctive, before you can dress it in courtesy.
“It’s… overwhelming,” you admit warily. “Too hot. Too loud. Too much of everything, all at once.” The words taste like snowmelt and iron on your tongue. “The walls feel close, and the sky feels far. It smells of roses and rot.”
Baelor’s mouth twitches. “Rot?” he echoes, visibly amused. “I’m not sure the Master of Whisperers has turned that phrase yet. I’ll be sure he hears it.”
Heat flickers up your neck again, this time at your own lack of tact. “I did not mean—”
“I asked for truth,” he cuts in, gentle but firm. “And you gave it to me. It is… rarer here than you might think.”
He glances sideways at you then, eyes catching the torchlight. There’s humour there, yes, but something else coils beneath it, something like relief.
“What does Winterfell smell of?” he asks curiously, keeping an easy, unhurried pace. “When it is not buried in snow tall as a man.”
The corridor takes a slight bend, opening up, awashed in the golden glow of torches. Your skirts whisper against the rushes; your fingers flex once against his sleeve, steadying yourself more than your feet require.
“Pine and smoke,” you answer, unable to keep the wishful note out of your voice. “Wet stone. Horse and leather and cold iron. The kennels, if the wind is wrong.” Your mouth curves despite yourself. “Wet wool, too, in winter. Everything smells faintly of wet wool.”
“And you miss that?” His tone is faintly incredulous. “Kennels and wet wool?”
You think of empty courtyards glazed with frost; of dark pine branches loaded with snow, bending but not breaking. Of the comforting roughness of your father’s cloak around your shoulders, scratchy and heavy and honest because back home, words and oaths are sacred. The weight of awareness you get whenever you sit next to the weirwood trees, feeling like every Stark whose come before you is pressing their attention into your skin, urging you forward.
“Yes,” you say simply. “Very much.”
His smile softens, the sharp edges of his face easing for a moment into something almost boyish despite the faint brushes of grey you glimpse across the scruff on his face and temples.
“You sound homesick, Lady Stark.”
“I am,” you admit, more bare than you would care to admit. “But I suppose homesickness is easier to bear than being foolish.”
“Foolish?”
“To be offered a place at court and complain that the tapestries are the wrong colour,” you say dryly. “The south has… beauty. Even if it shouts it.” Your gaze snags on a high-arched window, on the spill of moonlight over red stone. “I don’t know yet if I like it. But I can’t say it’s dull.”
A low huff of laughter escapes Baelor. “That may be the kindest thing anyone has said about King’s Landing in years. Not dull. I’ll inform the small council that we can put it on the banners.”
You hazard a sidelong look at him, emboldened by your own honesty. “And what does it feel like to you, Your Grace?” you wonder aloud, scanning the mighty stone structure. “This city. This court. You were not born to it either, not entirely.”
His jaw moves, a small shift beneath sun-browned skin. The hand on your arm remains steady, heavy weight.
“It feels,” he replies slowly, “like standing in a room where everyone is shouting in a language you learned late. You know the words. You know what to say. But some part of you is always listening for a cadence that never comes.”
“Dorne,” you say softly.
“My mother,” he corrects, just as soft. “And the Marches. And the men I fought beside in the Stepstones who never cared what name my grandfather bore. Here, everything is flattery and intrigue. There, it was whether you held the line.”
You imagine him not in a gilded plate but in plain mail gone tacky with salt and blood; imagine that same steady hand closing around a spear instead of your arm, ending lives instead of preserving them. A man who knows the weight of his own strength, and the weight of others’ lives in it.
“That sounds lonely,” you say before you can stop yourself.
His gaze flicks to your face. “It is,” he admits, much to your surprise. “Sometimes. But then, I suppose any place where you must be two things at once is lonely.”
You swallow.
“I know something of that. Stark and heir. Daughter and—” You cut yourself off, teeth closing on the word. Lady. The one who will have to be hard enough for both, a placeholder until you marry and your sons inherit Winterfell instead. “The hall looks very different when you sit in your father’s chair instead of standing before it.”
He hums, a thoughtful, rumbling sound. “Do you miss being only one thing?” he questions, but you can tell it’s not an attempt to pry, and more so genuine curiosity he’s indulging in.
You consider his question properly, rather than offering him the fabricated response that would be safer. You’re nearing the quieter wings now, where guest chambers sleep behind thick doors, and the clamour of court is more blissfully muffled, giving you a moment to hear each other properly.
“I miss,” you say at last, “having room to make mistakes where fewer people could see.”
He laughs again at that, a warm, surprised sound that feels less like thunder and more like the crackle of a hearth catching.
“You may find,” he retorts, a smile in his voice, “that most of us are still making mistakes. We’re just better at pretending they were intentional.”
“That sounds very southern,” you say primly.
“Oh, it is,” Baelor agrees with a low huff. “We dress our errors in silk and call them a plan.”
A smile tugs at your mouth, reluctant but real. “In the north, we bury ours in the snow and pretend they were never there.”
“I’ve heard,” he says mildly, “that the things buried in the north have a way of walking again.”
You meet his eyes properly then, the weight of his words settling between you like a stone dropped in deep water. For a heartbeat, you think you see something there—a question, perhaps, or a warning, or recognition.
“That depends,” you say, voice low, “on what you put in the ground.”
His gaze lingers on you. The world tilts, just slightly. Then he exhales, the moment easing.
“I see,” he murmurs thoughtfully. “I shall try not to offend your gods, then. I’m told they prefer honesty as well.”
“Yes,” you say, fingers tightening briefly on his sleeve. “They do.”
You turn another corner together. The torches here burn lower; the stones are cooler underfoot. The murmur of the feast has dulled to a distant roar, like the sea against cliffs. He slows as you reach the stretch of corridor that leads to your chamber. You recognise the heavy-carved door at the far end, the two guards posted discreetly beyond it—Stark men, standing a little straighter as the prince approaches.
Baelor comes to a halt a few paces short, so you are not under their direct gaze. Only then does he gently disengage his arm, leaving your hand suspended stupidly in the air for an instant before you recall it to yourself. The loss of contact is abrupt, like stepping out from under a fur cloak into naked winter wind. You feel the awareness of him along your skin where he is not touching you.
“Here we are,” he says quietly. “Unabducted, as promised.”
You huff, the sound almost a laugh. “I don’t recall giving you leave to abduct me in the first place, Your Grace.”
His eyes glint. “Ah, but I recall saving you from assault by silk and steel in the king’s own hall. We might call it a kidnapping in your defence.”
You dare a little tilt of your chin. “If you wished to impress a northern lord, Your Grace, I fear you would have to drag me over your shoulder rather than lead me politely by the arm.”
The grin that flashes across his face is quick and wicked, gone almost before it fully forms, a glint of heat entering and leaving his gaze in a blink.
“Duly noted,” he murmurs, and there is something in his tone that makes your stomach dip. “I will revise my tactics should the need arise.”
You hold his gaze, somehow impossibly darker in the shadowed hall, but it does not frighten you. There’s no ill will to be found on his face, and while you’re well aware men can be deceitful and hide their intent well, there’s something in the prince’s expression that eases your hackles down.
For a heartbeat, neither of you moves, your gazes locked.
“Thank you,” you say finally, because Stark courtesy runs as deep as Stark stubbornness. You dip your head in a grateful half-bow. “For your help. And for asking how I fare and not how my father thinks I fare.”
“You are very welcome,” he returns promptly, unblinking as his gaze slides across the planes of your face. “It is… a relief, Lady Stark, to speak to someone who does not answer every question with flattery or a calculation.”
You hesitate, then venture, “You seem to me a man who does many calculations, Your Grace.”
“Oh, I do,” Baelor admits, amused again, skin around his eyes crinkling like he’s pleased you noticed. “But every now and then I like to remember what it is to simply listen.”
Something in your chest loosens at that. “I hope, then,” you say, “that I did not disappoint.”
His gaze sweeps your face again, and you feel it like a touch—cool across your brow, warm along your cheek, skimming over the curve of your lips so swiftly you would have missed it had you not been watching him just as closely.
“On the contrary,” he murmurs. “You have given me more to think on than half the lords I’ve spoken with this fortnight.”
Your throat feels too dry, but you still force yourself to speak. “That seems unwise,” you manage after a beat. “To let a homesick northerner trouble the mind of the king’s Hand.”
Baelor inclines his head thoughtfully. “Perhaps,” he says, a small wrinkle appearing between his strong brows. “Or perhaps that is exactly the mind I should be troubled by.”
The words hang there, a small, bright spark in the dim corridor. You glance away first, pulse thrumming in your ears while you fight to keep your expression perfectly schooled.
“We have kept late enough hours,” you begin, retreating a half step into politeness because you can feel the ground tilting under your feet. “I should not take more of your time, Your Grace.”
One corner of his mouth lifts. “Baelor,” he says, almost too low to hear.
You blink. “…Your Grace?”
“If we are to be honest with one another,” he continues, a glint back in his eye, “it seems unfair that you have given me snow and rot and wet wool, and I have given you only titles. You may call me Baelor when we are not being watched, if you wish.”
Your heart gives a single, startled thud. “That would be… irregular,” you acknowledge faintly.
“Nearly everything worth doing is,” he replies quietly, then his tone gentles. “But I will not press it upon you, my lady. I know wolves walk slowly with their trust.”
You draw in a breath that tastes of stone dust and something else. Metal, maybe, or dragonfire, that these halls still recall from the age when dragons still flew through the skies.
“Then you must allow me a compromise,” you hear yourself say. “It would not do for word to spread that I address the Crown Prince like an old friend after a single walk down a hallway.”
“Of course not,” he says solemnly, though you can see laughter waiting at the edge of his mouth.
“So instead,” you continue, feeling oddly reckless, “you’ll have to endure something only a little less improper.”
His brows rise, waiting patiently. You give him the full weight of your Stark gaze, cool and steady, and bow your head just enough that it could be courtesy or defiance.
“Good night,” you say, every word measured, “my Lord Prince.”
The title should sound stiff, far too formal on your tongue. It does not. It sounds like a jest between the two of you alone, like you’ve taken his rank and wrapped it in something warmer. For a heartbeat, he just scrutinises you. Then that smile breaks over Baelor’s face again—real and surprised and vividly, disarmingly pleased, making him look moons younger. It softens the battle-hardened angles of his handsome face, turns him from statue, a fable, to man, flesh and blood.
“Lady Stark,” he answers, and now it is you who feels seen, the words settling over your shoulders like a cloak sewn to your exact measure. “Sleep well. Try not to dream too unkindly of our rot and roses.”
“I shall do my best, my Lord Prince,” you say dryly. “Though I make no promises about the roses.”
He laughs, low and delighted. It feels like a secret you’ve earned. He steps back then, just enough to bow properly. It is not the deep, sweeping gesture he gives the queen or the king, but neither is it the perfunctory nod you’ve seen him grant lesser lords. It is something in between, tailored to fit this narrow stretch of corridor and the strange, fragile thing that has grown between you in it.
When he straightens, he looks briefly, dangerously as if he might say more, ask more. But the guards at the end of the hall shift, armour chinking, and the spell trembles, coming apart at the seams.
“Good night,” he says again, more composed. “May the gods—old and new—watch your rest.”
You incline your head once more, fingers curled tight in your skirts to keep from fidgeting, then turn toward your door before your resolve can crack.
You feel his gaze on your back all the way to the threshold.
Only when the door has shut behind you, and you are alone with the banked fire and the distant, muffled roar of the city, do you let yourself sag against the wood. Your heart beats high and wild in your throat, like a trapped bird. You cross to the window on unsteady legs. Blackwater Bay lies beyond, a dark, glimmering curve, torchlight from the harbour pricking its surface like fallen stars. The night air that slides in is cooler, but still heavy compared to home. It smells of salt and smoke and something metallic underneath.
You press your palm to your waist, to the place where his hand rested. Your fingers span only half the space his did; the memory of his touch burns in the gap between, forcing a shiver.
It is absurd, how it unsettles you. How a single hand at your waist, a single walk down a crowded hall, a single traded jest—Lady Stark. My Lord Prince—can make the Red Keep feel… altered. Tilted, as if someone has shifted its weight on the hill by a fraction of an inch.
The south is still too bright, too loud, too hot. The air still feels crowded. You still miss the honest cold of Winterfell with a dull ache that never quite leaves your bones. But tonight, when you close your eyes, you do not only see red stone and leering gargoyles and tapestries heavy with dust and history of blood and fire. You see a prince who moved through a crush of bodies as if they were nothing but reeds in a current, who put his hand between you and the world and did not once pretend you were a burden to bear.
You hear his low voice sounding out Lady Stark as if it is a name he chose for himself, not one sewn onto you at birth. You hear your own, reckless tongue calling him my Lord Prince as if the words can both tease and test at once.
Later, much later, you will understand that this was the first time you spoke to one another not as pieces on a board—north and crown, wolf and dragon—but as two people standing in the same crowded, suffocating hall, both trying to remember how to breathe.
For now, you only know this:
In a place that still does not feel like yours, under a sky that feels too far away, someone reached out and steadied you without demanding anything in return.
If dragons can learn to move carefully, you think, fingertips pressed to the phantom mark of his palm, perhaps wolves can learn to bear the heat.
an: ngl I love them, I might be persuaded to do a mini series for them. any thoughts? let me know!
—summary: another night goes by with baelor failing to come to bed, choosing instead to lose himself in his library chamber. tired of being alone, you go in search of your husband, fully intent on dragging him away from his duties and into the rest and comfort he so deeply deserves.
—pairing: baelor targaryen x wife!reader
—word count: 1k
—content: pure fluff, established relationship, very tired husband, domestic intimacy, touch-starved!baelor, cuddling, sweet romance, comforting him as he deserves.
writer’s note: im so obsessed with him </3 english is not my mother tongue, so please forgive me if there is a grammatical error. hope you like it!
It was past midnight; you could tell by how high the moon rose into the dark skies, shining down through your chamber's windows.
When you stretched out a hand toward your husband’s side of the bed, you found nothing but cold, perfectly smoothed sheets.
It didn’t take you long to find him in his usual refuge: the small library chamber of the tower. You leaned against the doorframe, watching him from a distance in silent awe.
Baelor was immersed in a big open book illuminated by the faint candlelight set on his desk, a hand raised to his head, ringed fingers absentmindedly stroking his temple as his thoughts followed the handwritten lines on the page.
In the semi-darkness of the room, barely lit by flame and moonlight, he had never looked more beautiful. His dark hair had always been one of your favorite features on him, and over the years, silver strands had begun to thread through it. Every time you noticed them, something primal stirred within you.
He was so handsome.
His eyes, each of a contrasting color, made him look so close to a Valyrian, to a god. His hands so familiar with your body, his fingers slender and always gentle, so pretty adorned with his rings.
Seeing him like that, in the middle of the full-moon night, you had the sudden, overwhelming urge to—
“You should be resting, wife,” Baelor broke the silence, not even lifting his head to glance at you, aware of your presence the moment your feet stepped into the hallway. If he looked at you now, he knew his concentration would be utterly lost. “And not wasting your beauty sleep on spying on me.”
A tired smile tugged at your lips as you crossed the room. One hand brushed over the warm bricks of the central fireplace, your nails lightly scratching the stone, while the other clutched your fluffy nightgown tighter around your shoulders.
A small shiver ran through you as you caught his sidelong glance, unwilling to miss a single word of his beloved book on how the Wall had been built.
“I could say the same about you, Your Grace,” you shot back, just as you stepped up close to his chair like a stalking cat, sliding your hand over his shoulder to rub it gently. “You’re only wasting your precious time hiding from me in here.”
At your touch, the prince eventually paused his absorption in the tedious book in front of him and raised his head to meet your own gaze, his two-toned eyes softening enormously as they took in the sleepy, lovely look on your face.
“I have to read, I have to stay informed,” he tried to give you at least a decent excuse for having been away from you for so long, sighing softly and leaning back in his chair, spreading his legs comfortably.
You took that as a silent invitation.
Without another word, you sat down on his lap. Baelor’s arms came around you at once, pulling you closer to his chest, supporting your weight easily over his thighs.
You clicked your tongue, slipping your arms around his neck and looking at him fondly, despite your accusatory tone. “And I have to sleep with my husband by my side.”
Baelor let out a soft, tired chuckle, one of his hands giving your backside a playful pat. “The husband you chose is the Hand of the King. He is be a busy man.”
“By day he is the Hand of the King,” you smiled teasingly, leaning in to press a brief kiss to the tip of his nose, pleased to feel his other hand on your face, brushing strands of your hair away from your forehead. “By night, he is mine. And it is already night, Your Grace. Very late.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, darling,” he drew his face closer to yours, stealing a delicate kiss from your lips, tasting the honey you put on them every night to keep them soft. “He is always yours.”
You smiled triumphantly as you stood, taking his hand to coax him up. “Then come with me, my love.”
His other hand never left your waist, sliding just a little lower to your bum once you were standing before him.
He looked up at you as if you were the closest thing to a goddes in this world, as if no dragon’s blood ran through his veins, as if he were not part of the most powerful family in Westeros. No, when Baelor looked at you, he knew paradise must look something like this: your beautiful face gazing down at him with playful, shining eyes, your lovely body inviting him like a spell he could never resist.
Both his hands settled on your hips beneath the thin, fluffy nightgown, guiding you to face him fully as he pulled you closer, trapping you between his open legs and his arms.
Baelor lowered his head to rest it against your stomach, eyes closing in a silent plea for affection.
He was needy. Of course he was—any man would be at such late hours of the night.
Poor thing, so many hours locked away in there without your caresses, your kisses, your body beneath his hands.
“I’m sure the History of the Wall is not more interesting than I am, is it, my prince?” you teased, raising a brow as your fingers slid soothingly through his dark hair.
A quiet warmth kindled in your belly when you saw the strands of gray between your fingers. It was always the gray that stirred something deep and fierce within you.
“Nothing is more interesting than you, my sweetest,” he gave you the answer you had been hoping for, drawing a smile from your lips. His hands roamed with tender familiarity over the backs of your thighs, caressing your skin beneath the fabric of your nightgown, pulling your body closer to his in a warm, much-needed embrace.
“I do need you,” he confessed quietly.
Your expression softened instantly.
Baelor went still beneath your loving touch, glancing at you from the corner of his eye as you carefully unfastened the pin from his doublet. The weight of it came away with quiet ease, resting in your palm for a brief moment before you reached to the desk and set it beside his open book.
“You are only mine tonight, Baelor.”
You leaned down, pressing a tender kiss to his temple, then another to his brow, lingering there to smooth away the usual lines of worry upon his forehead. Your arms slipped more fully around his shoulders, drawing him closer, letting him rest against you however he needed.
— summary: after the trial of seven, baelor seeks safety in the comfort of your arms; because for him, the real victory is not winning the battle, but getting back home to his wife.
— pairing: baelor targaryen x wife!reader
— word count: 1.5k
— content: post-battle care, comfort, domestic romance, established relationship, implied/mild sexual content, nudity, soft!baelor, unspecified age gap, canon divergence (he lives! because we—yes, we—needed that).
The morning is exceptionally quiet and warm that day, the birds are singing outside, and the gentle wind is making the treetops sway under its invisible lead. The world is peaceful.
Ser Duncan the Tall had won the Trial of Seven, much to everyone's surprise, as most believed him to be a mere coward. He proved to be one of the strongest and bravest knights you know. And for that, he had rightfully earned a special place at your husband's court. He deserved no less.
“We should take him with us to Dragonstone,” you suggest to Baelor in a tone as soft as the morning sun slipping through the glass of your bedchamber window.
Baelor breathes heavily, his eyes remain closed as he relaxes in the comfort of your loving care. You run a washcloth across his shoulders, washing away the traces of blood—not his—and mud that have stained his smooth skin.
He had fought exceptionally well. You knew he would. You have the most courageous and skilled knight as your husband.
He looked so handsome in that armor, brave enough to face his own blood for the sake of righteousness. Yet you wished you never had to see him like that again, so far from you, the fate of his life hanging in the hands of the Seven.
“He would make a good royal knight,” he agrees with you, blowing out warm air as your fingers massage a knot in the muscles of his upper back that feels extra strained. “He fought fearlessly.”
“You fought so courageously, Your Grace,” you praise him, so very used to doing it now, that it had become a verbal habit for you. Bending over from behind his bathtub and pressing an appreciative kiss on the back of his neck, easing away the tension and ache.
“I hardly did anything, my love,” he brushes off the flattery with a gentle huff, rising to his feet in the tub, streams of warm water running down his naked, aching body. “Ser Duncan did most of it.”
Your eyes trace the full length of his back, and your pupils grow in response to the sight of water droplets sliding down between his shoulder blades, wishing fleetingly that it had been your own tongue instead.
You flash a gentle smile, though you both know how much you disapprove of his tendency to always dismiss flattery. “Still, you fought as one would expect of the big Baelor Breakspear.”
“Big?” he raises a single eyebrow, his expression melting into a subtle smirk.
“Big,” you confirm, gesturing with your head to the lower part of his body. This makes him roll his eyes, still smiling.
You're already waiting for him on the little ladder by the bathtub, holding his dark bathrobe open by the time he starts stepping out. He smiles in appreciation, his body stretching to get the robe around him properly as you help him.
Once he's right in front of you, Baelor pulls you into his arms, holding you tight and nuzzling his head into your neck, brushing his lips against your shoulder.
“You're all wet, Bae!” you call out, a hint of amusement ringing in your voice as you make a vain attempt to push him away. But your man is so strong and so hungry for your love in the aftermath of such a gruesome battle that he never wishes to leave your side again.
“And that has never stopped you before,” he responds in a hushed, suggestive whisper, his lips lavishing sweet kisses along the skin of your neck. They make a slow, moist path through your flesh, all the way up to reach your mouth, lingering there.
You melt into the kiss, your hands finding purchase on his damp shoulders as the scent of his expensive bath oils and soap fills your senses.
When he finally pulls back, his two-toned, beautiful eyes are soft, reflecting only you.
Sometimes he amazes you, for less than two hours ago he stood on the battlefield, wrapped in that dark armor, caught up in a frenzy of violence and adrenaline, striking down and slaughtering other men with the very hands that now hold you so tenderly. Those same eyes that plot strategies to defeat his adversaries now gaze down at you like a pair of gleaming stars, ablaze with the fires of love and worship and gentleness.
That is your Baelor.
“Flattery will not get you out of a proper drying, my Prince,” you say right against his lips, your hands already reaching for a fresh, thick towel.
Baelor sighs, a sign of deep contentment, and lets you lead him closer to the fireplace, the warmth helping him ease his sore muscles as you dry every part of his body with meticulous care.
He simply gazes at you as you dry him off, appreciating the delicacy with which you still treat him, even after all these years. The way your eyes light up with devotion and fondness when they fall upon his naked form. He is not as in shape as he was in his younger days—although you always remind him that he maintains himself too well, aging like fine wine—nevertheless, you still love him just the same. Perhaps even a little more now.
He loves how your body always yearns for his, always ready to be his, to take everything he has for you.
You are the most gorgeous creature he has ever laid eyes on. Occasionally, he even contemplates that you should be with someone closer to your age, your youthfulness, your free spirit. But you assure him that you don't belong anywhere else but by his side.
He's quite confident that, if this same sequence of events had occurred a few years ago, he would already be fucking you like a feral savage by the fireplace, right there on that damp towel.
He may do so eventually, but he first requires some time to catch his breath.
Since, he is definitely aroused by the sight of you kneeling down in front of him, gently rubbing the towel along his thighs, your face so close to his already semi-hard manhood. You know exactly what you're doing, teasing him like that.
Baelor lets out a low rumble, a combination of pleasure and protest, as he feels the warmth of the fireplace on his back and the much more intense heat of your gaze burning into him from below.
His fingers reach down to run through your hair, not to brush you away, but to anchor himself to reality as his pulse speeds up again, this time for a battle far greater than that of early dawn. That is, to please you.
“You're a wicked little temptress, my lady,” he exhaled, his voice cracking.
You bite your lower lip, holding back one of your devilish little smiles, your hand now busy drying his other leg, trying to look innocent. “I'm not doing anything, Baelor.”
“Liar,” he accuses, his voice vibrating with a hint of feigned reproach and pure desire. “You're a bad girl.”
You chuckle to yourself, a sly vibration that ripples against his thigh as you finish drying his skin. Slowly, you rise to your feet, letting the towel fall to the carpet like a heavy petal, and catch his deep gaze, the one that never fails to see right through you.
Baelor Targaryen is a know-it-all, everyone knew that. But his favorite topic to explore and learn about has always been you.
“If I were a bad girl, my Prince, I would have left you with the blood and mud of battle still clinging to your back,” you whisper, pulling closer until your breasts, bulging out of the neckline of the tight nightgown you're wearing, press against the damp fabric of his robe. “Instead, here I am... taking care of you.”
“That is true. You take such good care of me,” he breathes out the praise, just how you like it, tilting his head to capture your lips once more, this time with a longing he no longer bothers to hide. “Such a good wife for me, hm?”
With his unoccupied hand, he undoes the knot of his robe with a graceful movement, letting the fabric slide off his shoulders.
The warmth from the fireplace casts long, golden shadows across his broad chest, and before you can so much as squeak something, Baelor lifts you off your feet. You let out a small yelp of surprise that trails off into a giggle as your legs instinctively wrap around his waist.
“Baelor, the bed is on the other side of the room!” you complain with feigned indignation, even though your hands are already busy caressing and holding onto his shoulders. “You must rest. The maesters were insistent that you shouldn't exert yourself too much.”
“Fuck the maesters. I can do whatever I please, especially when my pretty wife is pampering me.” he replies in that deep, commanding voice he uses in council, but now tinged with a mischief that only you recognize. “The bearskin carpet is much closer, anyway”
He gently lays you down on the furry rug in front of the fire, and you pull him down toward you so you can kiss him.
Affectionately, he presses his forehead against yours. “All I could think about was coming back to this place. To you.”
“You'll always come back to me, Baelor,” you recite the promise he often swears to you. “You're too much of a stubborn man to ever leave me alone in this world.”
Baelor smiles at that, that crooked smile that you fell in love with years ago, and seals the promise with a kiss that tastes like love and solace. Like home.
