• He listens when you speak during councils or dinners, asks your opinion even when others overlook it, and remembers every answer.
• He wants a wife who has a brain to match her beauty.
• He begins treating you as his equal early on. Preparing you to be a Lady of Oldtown.
• He introduces you to household staff by name, explains which bannermen are loyal and which require careful handling, and even asks for your opinion on charitable matters.
• During your walks he speaks about the Citadel, the Starry Sept, the harbor, and the Hightower itself.
• He is loyal from the start. If a lord insults you, Ormund won’t make a scene. He will make sure he pays though.
• Invitations stop arriving for that man. Trade agreements suddenly become more difficult. By the time you notice, your honor has already been quietly avenged.
• Once he is comfortable with you, being with you is one of the only times he feels as though he can truly relax.
• Behind closed doors, the weight of command slips from his shoulders. He’ll loosen the collar of his tunic, pour the two of you wine himself instead of calling a servant, and ask how your day was first.
• His proposal isn’t a huge spectacle, but it is truly sincere and he makes sure that it holds a lot of meaning to the both of you.
GWAYNE HIGHTOWER
• Gwayne is a true gentleman by nature.
• He always offers his arm before a walk, stands when you enter a room, pulls out your chair, and never allows you to walk nearest the street or the edge of a battlement.
• He falls first and everyone notices except you. The servants catch him smiling whenever you enter a room.
• He enjoys dancing with you, even if he’s not exceptional at it. During feasts he’ll always ask for at least one dance.
• He has a great sense of humor and finds joy in making you laugh.
•He believes family is important and makes sure to get to know and become close with yours early on.
• Before every farewell he makes certain you know exactly when he’ll return. He never leaves after an argument without making peace first.
• He is very attentive with letting you know he is always thinking of you.
• Brings you little gifts/trinkets from his travels. Wildflowers picked during patrols, a ribbon from Oldtown’s markets, polished seashells from the Reach’s coast.
• Whenever duty separates you, the first raven you receive is always from Gwayne, usually ending with: “Until I can say these words in person again… know that you are missed.”
contents: novice!reader, slow burn, strangers to lovers, mutual pining, angst, hurt/comfort, religious imagery cw for power imbalance, obsessive behavior, gaslighting, spiritual manipulation, barely proofread, smut 18+ (MDNI): ormund has a scent kink, mutual masturbation, m!receiving oral, thigh riding, dubcon due to manipulation (but everyone is kind of a perv here so it balances out), this is a pretty dark fic so please heed the warnings!!!
( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )
Sometimes you think you were unforgivably damned from birth.
You had been born, as far as anyone could tell you, on no particular night in no particular place to no one in particular who cared enough to claim you. You belonged to nothing more than whatever poison you’d inherited flooding your veins, and the years of constant isolation that had drawn an invisible line between you and the rest of the world.
Everywhere you went, you tried to copy what you understood was expected of you, but humanity had never come all that easily to you. You spent most of your life, instead, feeling like a gown turned inside out, with all of your seams and soft parts showing.
First, it had been the other orphan girls you were raised with in childhood, rows and rows of flocking sparrows in matching tatters of grey and navy. Then it was the septry in the Riverlands, where you’d spent the bulk of your teenagehood; and then it was the handful of minor households you served, scattered along the coast from Storm’s End down to Sunspear. After that, it was Septa Enith — who had known you since you were small enough to be lifted onto a washing stool to reach the basin — who sent a raven to the sept keeping you for the season, imploring you to come to Oldtown.
“Lord Ormund Hightower stands in need of a tutor to assist in his nephew’s instruction,” the letter wrote in the old woman’s perfect script. “If the Mother grants it and your present duties permit, come to Oldtown with due haste, and the Seven may yet make some purpose of you.”
So you had gone to Oldtown the way you had gone to every foreign town throughout your childhood. A ghost wandering a half-gone graveyard, a stranger let loose in another man’s sanctuary — hoping, always hoping, that someone might finally decide you were something worth keeping.
When the city rose finally before you in tiers of sun-bleached stone, with a towering lighthouse crowning its center like a great white candle, you believed that you had only traded one kind of nothing for another — as you had done your whole life.
Septa Enith leads you through the corridors of the tower with her habit whispering faintly behind her. You follow a few paces back with your eyes downcast, dressed in a gown of plain wool that marked your status — lesser, unfinished, a novice still — lacking the septa’s seven-pointed veil you had not yet earned, and allowing your hair to hang loose behind you.
“Septa Enith,” Lord Ormund greets from further inside his office upon her entrance. The room is warm with early-morning light, turning motes of dust aglitter where they drift through the tall stained-glass windows. The air is sweet with the scent of pine logs smoldering low in the hearth, where a young boy lingers — Daeron, you figure, still soft-cheeked with the last days of childhood.
His uncle rises from the great oak desk, full of organized letters and ledgers. He’s tall, broad-shouldered, and handsome to the point of devastation. He comes around the desk, boots padding softly along the cobblestone.
“This must be the girl you wrote me of.”
You sink into a small, practiced curtsy with your gaze fixed on the cobbles. Septa Enith introduces you like a woman would present her own handiwork — that you were traveled and well-taught; a little green yet, but still diligent and pious beyond most girls your age.
But you were not devout, in truth. Not really. The gods were like your parents in that regard: neither one was coming to look for you now. And in the few times you had sunk low enough to beg the gods for mercy, they only seemed to shove more suffering down your throat to keep you from crying out again. But devotion was never the point — a girl so alone in the world, with no dowry and no kin to speak of, had precious few paths laid before her. The grey wool and the seven-pointed star was, perhaps, the only one that would ever choose you back.
With your eyes still lowered, you see only Lord Ormund’s polished boots enter the narrow scope of your downcast vision.
He lingers before you, close enough for you to catch the scent of him — leather, incense, and musky bathing oils. He waits with a polite grin for you to lift your eyes, and raises his brows to his hairline when you don’t.
He ducks his head instead, made of short, dark-auburn curls, trying almost playfully to catch your gaze from below — the way a young boy might peer beneath a table to startle someone hiding there. He leans closer then, enough for you to hear the soft pull of breath he draws in through his nose.
You flinch involuntarily at the nearness of his warmth, before willing your body back into its practiced submission once more.
“Rosewater…” Ormund mutters, almost to himself, as if he were solving some sort of riddle. “And something else beneath it— orris root, I’d wager.”
He straightens then, satisfied with his guess, and waits again for a response from you that never comes.
It was always easier to be quiet, you found, after so many years spent in the company of high lords and ladies who cared not if you lived or died. You had learned to stand so still in a room that you all but vanished from it, refusing to give away even the smallest, truest piece of yourself.
Ormund’s grin grows wider at your silence. His deep, melodic voice is coated in amusement as he quips, “Septa Enith hasn’t sent me a silent sister, has she? I’d hate to think my nephew’s new tutor has sworn off speaking entirely."
“No, my lord,” you answer finally, though the words are swallowed back down again almost as soon as they leave you.
“She speaks!” Ormund chuckles, the sound ringing through the quiet expanse of his office. “A voice like a mouse, yes, but a voice all the same.”
Still, though, you fail to lift your eyes to meet his own. You’re grateful when the man doesn’t press you any further for it, though you can feel a tension that suggests he wants to — like the glimmering heat off a flame. There’s something strangely gentle in his palpable restraint; a simple courtesy that costs him nothing, though he seems to take a private pride in offering it nonetheless.
“You needn’t be frightened,” he tells you, gentler now. “You’ll be treated kindly here. Enith keeps a fair house, as I’m sure you know, and Daeron is no great trial— are you, boy?”
He glances over his shoulder towards the hearth, where Daeron stands with his hands folded behind his back and his eyes watching the exchange with an attentive, green-eyed stare — a future knight in the making no doubt.
“No, uncle," Daeron answers, firm but gentle, and with a deep voice that still fractures slightly with the remnants of boyhood.
Lord Ormund's pink mouth curves into a pleased grin. “Well, what do you think, then? Shall we keep her?"
He poses the question lightly, as if you were a piece of livestock being brought to market. You suppose he means it in jest, or at least, as something far more light-hearted than the words truly sound, but it strikes you deep in the chest anyway.
“If it please you, uncle,” Daeron responds politely.
Lord Ormund turns back to you then, still sporting the same polite grin. His brows bounce with amusement as his pale gaze sweeps your form in a slow, daunting pass.
“Then yes…” he hums to himself. “I think we shall…”
Your days, for the first time since childhood, take a shape that feels almost permanent.
You rise each morning before the sun, kneel through your morning prayers alongside Enith and the other septas in the hush of the sept, break your fast on stale bread and watered wine, and then report to the small, sunlit chambers where Daeron takes his studies. Septa Enith watches every day from her chair by the window, tending to her needlework while you lead the young prince’s lessons, and correcting you only rarely.
Daeron, as you had come to find after weeks within the Hightower keep, was a perfect pupil. He was quick, attentive, and always very sweet. He minds his histories well and his prayers even better, and only rarely drifts his attention out the window toward the training yards where the squires train with blunt swords. But you had been a child once, too, even though it felt a very long time ago now — and you deign to crack his knuckles with the pointer stick the way your teachers had once done to you.
“We’ll start easy,” you say from across the low table, where a scattering of parchment lay between you. “The Hightowers of Oldtown."
“‘An old, just, and true line,'" Daeron recites the text easily, with his eyes fixed out the window and his finger drumming with a boyish distraction. “‘Keeper of the light, guardian of the Citadel and the Faith.' Words: We Light the Way."
“Good,” you hum. “The Tyrells of Highgarden?”
“Words: Growing Strong. Their sigil is a… a golden rose on a green field. They hold Highgarden by right of the Gardener kings— though they were stewards once, not lords."
“The Lannisters of Casterly Rock?"
“Words: A Lannister always pays his debts—”
“A common phrase, yes, but not their true words,” you correct gently, lips pursed to keep from smiling. “Try again.”
“Words…” he trails off, wrinkling his freckled nose in thought. “Hear Me Roar. Their sigil is a golden lion on crimson. They say they're the richest house in the Seven Kingdoms, though Septa Enith says rich men are always saying that about themselves—”
“That was not meant for you to repeat, boy,” the older woman scolds without looking up from her stitching. Daeron ducks his head with a grin pursed to the side of his mouth, and you allow yourself the smile you’d been holding back all lesson.
A steward arrives in that moment, rapping twice along the door frame to announce his presence. “Begging pardon, Septa,” he says with a polite bow of his head, just before his eyes find you. “Lord Ormund has requested your presence in his office.”
“Oh—” Your eyes widen as you glance back at Daeron, then to the half-done lesson laid out before you, and then to the lanky man across the room. “I— We’re still at our studies, ser. Might I come after we’ve—”
“Girl,” Enith snaps, her voice cutting through the room like a whip. All eyes turn to her in an instant. Her wise, watery gaze hardens at you. “Lord Ormund does not wait on the patience of novices. You will go to him now, and you will be grateful he thought to send for you at all."
Heat crawls up your neck from the high collar of your woolen dress. You swallow through the distant shame of being scolded before your own pupil, as if you were a child of Daeron’s own age, and rise with a murmured apology to no one in particular. You follow a few paces behind the steward with your eyes fixed on the floor.
Ormund’s office, you find, is washed in beams of silver-gold from the morning light spilling through the high windows. He stands within the rays with his strong hands clasped loosely behind his back as he gazes out over the tower's long descent to the river below.
The sound of the door clicking shut behind you draws his attention. He turns his head, and the light catches in his sheared curls, turning them a richer shade of auburn.
“There you are,” he greets with a kind smile, motioning to his desk in the center of the room with a broad hand. “Come in. Sit, if you like.”
You do not move from your place. You remain just inside the door, with your head bowed and your hands folded obediently in front of you, the way you had been taught. You say nothing in response until he asks.
“How does my nephew’s lessons fare?”
“Well, my lord.” Your voice comes out smaller than you mean it to, trembling at the edge of each syllable despite your attempts to steady it. “He’s very smart. He’s very clever, too, as I’m sure you already—”
“Come closer, won’t you?” he interjects suddenly, though not unkindly. “I can hardly hear a word from you all the way over there.”
Your slippers pad along the cobbles as you near him with small, hesitant steps, and with your breath caught somewhere in your throat. You stop an arm's length from him before the great stained-glass windows — Ormund closes what little distance remains himself, smothering you in his warmth and the incense clinging to the silver pomander hanging at his sword belt.
His wide hands lift to rest along the outsides of your elbows without warning. You’re perhaps more startled by the gentleness of his touch rather than the touch itself — you can feel the warmth radiating from his palms even through the thick sleeves of your dress. He dips his head the same way he had the first time he met you, trying once more to catch your downturned gaze.
“You needn’t be frightened of me,” Ormund tells you softly, though it did very little to loosen the perpetual knot in your chest.
“I am not, my lord,” you tell him, half-strangled, and wonder distantly if a lie is still a sin if it’s meant to spare someone else the trouble of you.
Ormund says nothing for a long moment. When you dare to lift your eyes, you find that he’s already leaning in — the way he had that very first day. Your pulse falters a beat when you hear him draw a slow breath beside your temple. You go very still, like a trapped animal going quiet in the hope of being spared.
“Lavender,” he muses to himself. “And… beeswax.”
He straightens once more, pleased with himself, and smiles down at you again.
“The motherhouse must be running thin, if you've had to make do with the castle's plain milling,” he quips with an attentiveness that feels borderline intrusive. “I’ll have something better sent along to you at once.”
You say nothing. There is nothing to say to that, you think — nothing that wouldn’t feel like spurring on his kindness, which has started to feel like comes with a debt you didn’t agree to owe.
“Well,” he says in response to your silence, dropping his hands to his sides. The warmth in his strong face returns again, with the negligible tenderness of a lord dismissing one of his middling servants. “I won’t keep you from your duties any longer. Go on back to my nephew— I imagine Enith's grown fond of her needlework again, now that she's free to listen to you instead.”
You drop into your usual curtsy with a“yes, my lord,” murmured beneath your breath. You rise again and turn to go, but Ormund catches you before you can.
He ducks down and presses his mouth to yours in a parting kiss that a great lord might bestow on any woman of his household. His lips are soft and light against your own, but lingering nonetheless — long enough that the peck turns from well-mannered to borderline indecent.
You go rigid at the shock of it, too stunned to do anything more than stand there with your hands clenched into fists at your sides until he pulls away from you again.
“May the Seven be with you, sister,” Ormund says with a kind, untroubled grin, as if nothing strange had passed between you at all.
“And with you, my lord,” you manage through the invisible hand still wrapped around your throat.
It takes the length of the corridor outside for you to remember how to breathe again. You feel the ghost of his mouth on yours for hours after he’s let you go.
Something about Ormund sticks in you like a splinter under the skin. The thought of him grows on you like ivy on cobblestone — quiet and quick and everywhere. It was his unwavering tenderness, you think, or maybe the way his eyes always seemed to linger on you a beat longer than courtesy required, which left something raw and unfamiliar in its wake. Like what little you remember of love in your girlhood, a childhood infatuation that was usually very fickle but always very intense.
It was this same constant turning-over of him in your head that made it so easy to suspect him when your slips began to disappear.
It was a small thing at first — a sliver torn from the edge of your thin linen, leaving the hem pulled and frayed. A rat, you assumed, gnawing for fabric for its nest; or a splintered edge, maybe, from where your trunk had snagged it. And when a second strip vanished, this time cut clean from the chest, you believed it had been a rat then, too.
But then an entire slip had disappeared outright, gone from the wicker basket of unwashed linen, and no amount of searching your small chamber seemed to turn it up.
Septa Enith called you mad when you told her of your suspicions, but you knew what kind of man Lord Ormund was.
You had felt his breath along your temple, heard him murmur rosewater and lavender and beeswax against your skin with the quiet reverence typically reserved for prayer. And, thus, the thought crept into your skull unbidden, shaped like that same warm breath along your skull. Try as you might to laugh it off as foolishness — the overactive fancy of a girl raised with gossiping novices, forever seeing shadows where none existed — the thought did not leave you. And after a time, you understood it would not leave you until you knew if it was true.
And so you lie.
You tell Septa Enith that you were feeling poorly and asked if she could take Daeron’s lessons herself that day. You bore her subsequent scolding with your eyes down and your hands folded — that you ought to have more of a backbone than to let a little queasiness keep you from your duties; that a septa's calling was not so easily set aside as that. You had already memorized the prayers of contrition you would say for it later, kneeling before the Mother to confess the small sin honestly.
But for now, you spend the rest of the morning in your chambers — sitting first upon your bed and then, when that grew tiresome, at the writing desk by the window. You watch the morning light drift across the ancient floorboards and feel more and more foolish by the minute. By midday you’ve nearly convinced yourself that you’ve wasted a perfectly good lie on nothing, and that the missing slips had simply been misplaced; that Lord Ormund had far better things to occupy his time than a novice septa's undergarments.
Then you heard his voice in the corridor, exchanging some brief word with a passing servant outside — “See that the eastern rooms are aired before the Citadel men arrive,” he says.
It would have meant nothing to you at all if it hadn’t been drawing nearer to your bedchambers. Your heart lurches wildly in your chest as you scramble from the desk and into the small adjoining bathing room — easing the door shut until only a hair’s-breadth crack remains. You press yourself against it, scarcely daring to breathe.
A knock comes at your door a moment later. It’s soft and courteous, two sharp raps against the wood, as if to make certain that no one at all was behind it. The heavy door creaks open without invitation. You hear the scuff of boots against the floor and the click of the door easing shut, just before Ormund comes into view.
Through the crack in the door, you watch the man move slowly through the narrow confines of your quarters. The late morning light catches the auburn flecks in his curls as he passes the window by your writing desk. He lingers there for a long moment, studying the things scattered across its surface as if he were already well acquainted with them.
He lifts the smooth river stone you’d kept since childhood, somehow already knowing where to find it, and runs his thumb mindlessly over the smooth edge. As he does so, he dips his head to skim through the parchment scattered there — clumsy sketches, scant prayers, and miscellaneous writings of dried ink.
Ormund touches nothing else. He only looks, cataloging the smallest parts of your life with his eyes alone.
He sets the small stone down with a quiet thud and crosses to the hamper of unwashed linens tucked beside your washstand. He peers inside and, without hesitation, plucks one of your slips from the pile.
Your heart goes still but very loud all at once as you watch the man bring the linen up to his nose to inhale the scent of you upon it — of rosewater, soap, and faintly of sweat. His strong chest rises beneath his emerald doublet as he takes a slow breath in. His eyes fall shut on the long, lingering exhales that follow.
You see only the profile of his broad form from where you stand. He goes quiet and still thereafter with something that seems almst peaceful.
When his hand moves into his trousers, with the linen slip still caught in his fist, you do not move from the doorway. You stand frozen in disbelief while his hand disappears in his pants, while the rest of your slip hangs lazily at his thigh. You scarcely breathe — because your heart has moved so far up into your throat that you cannot, maybe; or because you long to hear the man’s grumbled groan as he works himself hard with his fist.
His adam’s apple bobs in his throat when he tips his head back. His moan comes from the very back of his throat, sounding like distant thunder as it rolls across the quiet room. The pleasured sound feels like a hand between your thighs, where a strange throbbing has started to settle — an ache that longs to be smoothed out.
“Yes…” Ormund groans to himself through a jaw clenched tight.
And, as if spurred on by his own words, you feel your hand reaching down to lift your skirts — and to shove your fingers where the dull pulsing has settled.
Your pointer and forefinger slot wet between the velvety folds of your cunt. You pierce yourself with them slowly, the way it had been down to you by a young knight somewhere between The Twins and Riverrun in your girlhood.
You remember the way he attempted to pleasure you with his fingers, dragging them in and out and in and out of you. And even though you failed to orgasm then the way the knight said you ought to have, you fight now to chase that pleasure warming in the very pit of your stomach now.
You brace yourself against the doorframe with your free hand and watch the man stroke himself with a lidded gaze — with the same violating scrutiny he always seems to watch you with.
You’re no different than he is, a cynical voice screams in the very back of your head. The two of you are made out of the same kind of sin. But even still, you find yourself hunting the feeling simmering in your stomach; a knot pulled tight and threatening to snap.
Ormund tenses in place, bracing himself with a strong hand along your bedframe as his towering body quakes with the tremors of his orgasm. His knuckles go white around the ancient wood, gripping there hard enough to splinter it.
His moan sounds like thunder in his chest — “Fuck…” he grumbles lowly. “Fuck, yes…”
He reaches his pinnacle before you do, and when the aftershocks have subsided and his limbs have stopped shaking, Ormund pulls your dress from his trousers. Something sticky darkens the pale fabric where his fist had held it. You catch only a sliver of the stain before he tosses it back into the basket of unwashed linens.
Your heart slams against your ribcage; hard enough that you worry he might hear it through the door as he slips back out of your bedchambers, just as quietly as he had come in.
You remain in the crack of your own bathing room door long after the sound of his footsteps has faded down the corridor.
You wonder how many times Ormund has let himself into your chambers while you attended your lessons and prayers each day. You wonder how many times he’s pleasured himself using your garments as a rag, and how many of those garments you must have washed without noticing his pleasure stained upon it.
You wonder, even more so, if you should feel more violated by the thought than you do — if it would be such a sin to take pleasure in the thought of being so carnally desired.
You drag your fingers, finally, from the depths of your pulsing confines. The pads of them have started to prune with the slick gathered upon them, shiny with honey and slightly stringy when you separate your middle and pointer finger from one another.
What are these hands supposed to do now? the voice berates you still, while your loins tingle with a lingering pleasure. Because they are certainly far too stained now to pray.
You need a mother to comfort you; a father to shield you; someone older and wiser to cry to, because the skies are empty and no god has answered you yet.
Your attempts to tell Septa Enith what you’d seen had failed you entirely. You had gone to her that afternoon, before the courage could leave you, and found her in the small garden off the sept where she typically took her afternoon needlework. You told her what you had witnessed (and nothing of what your own fingers had done to yourself while you witnessed it).
Her needle stilled mid-stitch. For a moment, you thought she might believe you, as her wrinkled face twisted in shock at your confession. But when she finally spoke, her voice came flat with something closer to anger than alarm.
“So you lied to me this morning?” she asked after several moments of daunting silence.
“Yes. I did,” you answered honestly from where you knelt beside her chair, with your hands clasped in your lap like a penitent child. “And I do mean to repent for it, Septa, for however long you think fit. But I saw him. With my own eyes, in my own chambers. I saw him take my—”
“Oh, enough of that,” she grunted, as if she were dismissing a child mid-fancy. Her face screwed with annoyance as she berated you. “I have known you since you were a girl of seven years. Sniveling and friendless and full of stories that were never true; stories you told yourself to escape the real truth of things. I remember it. The other septas remember it besides.”
You cowered at her words. Her mouth thinned into a tight seam; her watery blue eyes hardened in a way that you had not seen since your earliest, clumsiest days under her instruction — when you were still learning which lies got a girl a slap and which got her days of confinement.
“And now you would have me believe that Lord Ormund — a kind man who has shown you nothing but courtesy since the day you set foot in this tower — has been sneaking into your chamber to steal your smallclothes and use them to… pleasure himself like a lovesick stableboy?"
“I saw it," you repeated, voice cracking with a desperation to be believed. You blinked away the haze of tears burning at your waterline as you begged her. “Septa, please—"
“Enough,” she shoved your pleading hand away and stood, smoothing out her skirts with hands that were not quite steady. “I’ll not hear any more of it. You'll do your penance tonight as you've promised, and you'll pray besides for honesty — and for gratitude, perhaps, that a house such as this took in a girl with no name and no prospects and gave her some purpose at all.”
You stayed where you knelt as the woman moved towards the tower, heavy with the sinking feeling that she was moving to Lord Ormund’s solar to carry your confession to him herself.
“I’d have thought you'd grown past your stories by now,” she scolded without looking back at you.
The summons, which you knew was inevitable, doesn’t come until the sun has dipped low over the horizon — turning the cloudless sky into a mixture of deep orange and dark lavender. A steward knocks at your door and does not meet your eyes when he tells you that Lord Ormund awaits your presence in the castle sept. You had lain through the afternoon anticipating exactly this, but your stomach still flips in spite.
The sept is empty and quiet with the remnants of evening prayer. The air is stale and thick with the scent of burning incense and glowing candles. What little light remains falls through the stained glass in slanted beams of color across the ancient wood — deep red where it touches the Warrior’s carved shield, soft green pooling at the Mother’s feet, and jewel-blue catching the folds of the Father’s robes where he stands in eternal judgment above the altar.
You find Lord Ormund standing near the front with his back to you, and with a leather-bound copy of the Seven-Pointed Star in his hands. His voice is low and even as it carries through the empty nave, reading aloud to no one at all: “…And the Crone raised her lantern, saying: truth is the light by which the righteous find their road, while falsehood is a mist that leads only to darkness.”
He speaks the words as if he knew precisely when you would arrive, and had arranged the moment accordingly to catch you in some sort of trap.
Ormund does not look up when your slippers pad along the narrow aisle. He lets you linger there instead, like a stupid lamb walking itself to the slaughter. The silence grows too suffocating to bear. You feel the weight of the sept pressing down on either side of you — old wood and candle-smoke and the watchful, carved eyes of seven gods who had never once troubled themselves to answer your prayers.
“Septa Enith came to speak with me this afternoon,” Ormund says in lieu of a greeting when he turns finally to face you. His smile is thin-lipped and gentle, if not a little disarming. “She tells me you’ve become… distressed.”
It takes you a long moment to find the courage to speak. The words well up into your throat like bile but refuse to come out, lingering bitterly on your tongue instead. The candles crackle in the silence you leave behind.
“I— I only told her the truth, my lord,” you tell him. And though your voice does not waver, your folded hands start to tremble despite your effort to keep them still.
“The truth…” he echoes, as if he were tasting the word on his tongue for the first time. He saunters down the steps of the altar with the leather-bound book tucked beneath his strong arm. “You believe, truly, that I entered a novice’s chambers without invitation? That I used her garments for something so sinful? That I’ve been… stealing pieces of her garments for my own keeping?”
A laugh leaves him then, warm with amusement.
“Surely, you do not think so little of me as that.”
“I only know what I saw,” you answer and hold his gaze until it feels like a little rebellion. It’s the first time you’ve ever offered him your eye contact so freely, to be sure, and it feels like it costs you something to do it.
“Would you swear it?” Ormund asks, approaching you like a hunter would a prey animal caught in a snare. The candlelight catches in the strong curve of his jaw and the blue of his eyes, carving him out of flickering gold and shadow. “You would swear it before the Father himself. Invoke His judgment upon your soul, should you speak false."
Your mouth opens and closes like a fish out of water until you find the breath to answer. “I… I would never lie before the Seven, my lord.”
“No,” the man hums with a shake of his head, studying you still from a few paces off. Something in his chiseled features turns gentle, or seemed to besides. “I do not believe you would.”
You think the words are meant to comfort you.
They do not.
“But I do believe something else," Ormund continues without his gaze straying from yours. “I believe loneliness makes strange companions of the mind. Wouldn’t you agree?”
You stiffen from where you stand before him, bracing yourself for his following words, which you know are bound to find you like a rod to the thigh.
“You grew up without mother or father. Without kin of any kind, as I’m told,” Ormund rambles with all the tenderness of a man delivering some sad, gentle truth. “A child left alone in such a place learns to invent reasons for the things she cannot understand, does she not? It is not a fault in her, to be sure. It is only what loneliness does to a mind left too long to its own devices."
“I am not a child,” you try to argue, though the words come out more strangled than you intend.
“No,” Ormund grins, devilish enough to squint the edges of his eyes. “But perhaps some distant part of her lingers in you yet."
Your hands clench into fists. Your dull nails bite crescent shapes into the delicate skin of your palms. “I saw you—”
“You've always had a fondness for stories, haven’t you?” he interjects, almost fondly so. “Septa Enith told me as much herself— said that you used to… frighten all the other girls with tales of dragons in the rafters, of shadows that moved on their own in the dark.”
“I was a child then—”
“She said you often mistook the wind for voices; and shapes in dark corners for things with faces,” Ormund continues with a grin, tilting his head until the candlelight pools in the hollows of his eyes. “So tell me, sister, and weigh it honestly, as the Seven would have you weigh it… What is more likely— that a lord of this tower crept into a servant's chamber to steal her smallclothes like a common thief? Or that a girl who has spent her whole life inventing stories has done so once more?"
His words close around your throat like a pair of cold hands. You search desperately for a response but find nothing immediately waiting. Your voice has sealed itself shut around whatever truth you might have offered him, choking instead on the smothering weight of his.
Ormund steps closer and holds the Seven-Pointed Star out between you. His voice comes out sterner this time as he commands, “Read. I’ve already marked the page for you.”
“My lord—"
“Read."
Your hands tremble when they reach for the book he motions towards you. You find the leather still warm from his palms and impossibly heavy between your fingers as they fumble for the scarlet ribbon tucked inside. The thin pages turn heavily, until the inked words swim finally before you, blurred at the edges with time and something hot building behind your eyes.
“Aloud,” Ormund presses at your silence.
Your voice is scarcely more than breath when it finally comes to you.
“False witness is… is a wound upon the soul. For the tongue that fashions lies… distances itself from the light of the Father— and the Mother turns Her face from deceit until repentance is sought…” you swallow hard through a tight throat, fighting the tremor in your voice. You press on before you lose the nerve, and pretend not to notice the weight of Ormund’s stare fixed upon you.
“Let he who bears false tales examine his own heart before… before casting stones upon another. For the Crone's wisdom teaches that the eye deceived is— is no less guilty than the tongue that speaks the falsehood aloud—” You cut yourself off with a shake of your head, a stubborn refusal at Ormund’s plain attempt at manipulation. “I cannot.”
“You can,” the man nods, warm and almost encouraging. “Continue.”
Your voice cracks in two, but you obey regardless — because some well-worn part of you never learned how to do otherwise.
“…And let the penitent seek not to defend his pride, but to humble himself before the Seven. For truth asks no champion, and innocence need fear no judgment,” you continue, voice thick and wet with unshed tears, breath hitching occasionally in your throat. “Bow thy head before the… the Father, confess thy trespass before the Mother… and the Smith shall make whole— that which falsehood hath broken. So shall mercy be granted— unto the contrite, but the stubborn shall… shall dwell in the Stranger's shadow… until the last of their days—”
By the time you reach the passage's end, your vision has dissolved entirely into tears. They burn hot and humiliating down your cheeks and chin until one strikes the page before you could catch it. It blooms dark against the old vellum. You scrub at it with your sleeve, as though you might undo the stain before it set.
“I—I’m sorry," you stammer — to the book, maybe, or to Ormund, or to the Seven watching from their carved and unmoving faces.
The man says nothing for a long while. When he finally speaks again, the sternness has slipped entirely from his voice — replaced by something that sounds, almost, like kindness.
“You’ve carried a great deal on your own, haven’t you?” Ormund wonders suddenly aloud. You peer up at him with your eyes still glittering like stained glass. His hardened face has softened slightly, because of the tears clouding your vision maybe, or perhaps due to a newfound warmth. “You've spent your whole life learning to survive on what you need. But tell me, my girl— What do you want?"
You don’t realize until then that no one has ever asked you that before — not once, in all your years of learning to be small, useful, and no trouble to anyone who might otherwise have turned you out into the cold. The question moves through you like a key turning finally into an old lock that’s long rusted shut.
“I…” you try hard to speak, but your breath catches somewhere in your throat before you can. “I don't know, I… I’ve never…”
You trail off, shaking your head. Ormund ducks down to catch your gaze when it falls away once more.
“Tell me,” he presses gently, brows softly furrowed. “Speak true.”
“I’ve… I’ve never belonged anywhere, my lord,” you confess for the first time aloud. “I don't remember my mother's face. Nor my father's. No one’s ever… ever chosen me before. The only reason the sept took me in was because there was nowhere else for me to go, I… I think that— I’ve always been in… in someone's way. I don't— I don’t even know what I’m supposed to want.”
A laugh sputters from your mouth, all watery and ashamed. You trail off again, so quietly you can barely hear your own voice over the pounding of your heart.
Your face screws into a pained sort of look as you admit to him, “I think… I think I only want someone to— to tell me what to want, what to do.”
The candles gutter along the altar, though no draft has moved through the sept. Your words cling so ardently to the incense-thick air between you that you wish so desperately that you could reach out and put them back in your mouth again — suddenly terrified that you’ve given away far too much of yourself.
Ormund steps forward, close enough to smother you with the warmth radiating from his towering form. He plucks the leather-bound scripture from your trembling hands, closes it with a resounding thud in one broad fist, and tosses it blindly to a pew just beside him without once looking away from you. The book hits the wood like a door slamming shut. Your shoulders jerk as the sound echoes through the quiet sept.
You try to will your hands to stop shaking at your sides as you peer at the man from beneath lashes clumped wet with tears. He spends a long moment staring down the bridge of his nose at you, chest rising and falling with even breaths beneath the clasps of his doublet.
When he speaks again, his words come out low and steady from his mouth — far gentler and far more certain than any god has ever been to you before.
“Kneel,” he commands plainly, needing no further adornment to carry the weight of the word.
You stand frozen before him for several long moments thereafter.
The last color pooling from the stained glass thins now as the sun sinks somewhere beyond the windows — crimson bleeding to rust, green fading to a negligible yellow, blue fading to the color of an old bruise. Above the altar, the Seven look down upon you with nothing but judgment. They offer you no counsel, no rescue, no sign that they had ever been listening to all your years of prayer.
Then, with your cheeks still wet with thick streaks of tears, you clasp your hands tightly together and lower yourself to your knees. They meet the cold wood with a quiet thud, and the chill of it climbs up through your skirts.
Your lowered gaze lifts slowly to the man towering above you. You find no comfort waiting in his strong features. There is nothing behind his light eyes except the flickering candlelight and the same coldness as the Father looking down from his stone alcove — as if Ormund, too, felt owed something you had not yet given.
“There can be no absolution without obedience…” he says without taking his eyes off yours, even as his hands reach for the buckle of his sword belt.
The gold clinks faintly together; the leather hisses faintly when it’s pulled through. At first you think he means to spank you with it — bend you over his knee, lift up your skirts, and whip you bruised. Your stomach twists with excitement at the thought.
A mixture of dread and self-deprecation consumes you a moment later, when he tosses the scabbard aside and reaches for the tie in his trousers instead.
“…Show me the second,” Ormund continues, this time with his fist hidden in his pants, massaging himself there the same way he had in your chambers. “And perhaps I’ll be gracious enough to give you the first.”
Your mouth waters like a starving hound when he frees his cock from the confines of his slacks, tucking the hem beneath his balls. It’s heavy and half-hard in his fist — a shade paler than the rest of his skin, and glowing a faint pink color at the tip. This one is far bigger, far prettier than the cocks you’d seen throughout your teenagehood — when high lords and lanky knights would pull it out for you, “c’mon, just kiss it,” they’d beg, right before berating you when your face screwed in disgust instead.
All that repulsion seems to leave you now. Your mouth parts without further command from him, as if an unconscious part of you had longed to wrap your lips around his cock and taste the glittering spend he’d buried into your slip that morning. Your tongue darts out in a soft kitten lick to collect the pearls drooling from the tip, more salty than sweet.
“All of it now. C’mon…” you hear the man coo above you, like a parent urging their child to finish their supper.
You abide him willingly and take the rest of his cock into your mouth. Your eyes squeeze shut as your hands ball the fabric of your dress into fists, fighting back the gag that rises in your throat as you force yourself to take the entire length of him — if only to prove to yourself that you could, that you would lay the whole of your obedience at his feet for the smallest word of praise from his lips.
Ormund’s head tips back. A mixture of a laugh and a moan rumbles in his throat when the tip of your nose buries in the coarse thatch of brunette hair above his cock, smelling of sour sweat and musky bathing oils. Tears prick at the backs of your eyes like burning embers. His wide hand splays along the crown of your skull, more gentle than forceful, and it feels like an act of clemency.
“The gods weren’t enough for you, were they?” Ormund says, a lazy grin audible in his voice, as his thumb smooths over your hair. “No, you needed someone real to teach you, didn’t you? Someone real to belong to…”
His words make you nauseous.
You feel the urge to puke, but stronger still is the urge to make him feel good. You want to please him and murder him — you want to be obedient to him alone; you want to make him smile; you want to make him proud; you want him to forgive you and hate you and desire you all at once. You want to kiss him all over, and then beat him for making you so unholy, and then kiss him so more, and then let the hounds consume his sin to the bone.
You let him cum in your mouth instead.
“Take it all. There you go…” he praises in murmured slurs, keeping you pressed against him while he tenses above you. You nearly gag when the first drop of his spend stains your tongue, heavy and slightly bitter. “Take it all, and I’ll make you holy again,” Ormund babbles, almost to himself, as he shivers against you. “I promise… I promise…”
He pulls you off him with his fingers twisted tight in your hair, though not quite hard enough to hurt. He stares down at you with lust still swimming in his glassy blue eyes, and you wonder what you must look like from his perspective — on your knees, swollen-mouthed, heavy-eyed, wearing a mixture of cum and saliva down to your chin. The statue of the Father looms just behind him. You pretend not to notice.
“Open your mouth,” Ormund commands before you can swallow.
You do as you’re told, careful not to let the pearl-colored spend drip off of your tongue when you show it to him. Ormund’s chest heaves at the sight, as if it had snatched the breath from his lungs entirely. And then, before you can blink, he kneels before you — holding you by the chin with the hand not knotted in your hair, and kissing you hard enough to swallow you whole.
His tongue swipes against yours to collect his own cum and sighs hard through his nose at the taste of it, a mixture of himself and you. You can taste the ale on his lips and the lemon dessert from his dinner right before he pulls away from you; still close enough to run the tip of his broad nose over the bridge of your nose.
“Have you ever done that before?” he whispers, breath fanning warm against your mouth. You shake your head against him, too breathless for words. “Good…” he hums, then wonders aloud with all the sheepishness of a young boy. “Has anyone ever made you cum before?”
“They’ve tried,” you confess.
A smile curls slowly on his lips at that, pleased by your answer.
Ormund drops his hand from your chin to your dress skirts. His palm is warm and calloused as it creeps up the hem. You hold your breath in anticipation, waiting to feel his fingers slip into your cunt the way yours had done when you watched him pleasure himself. They slip around your thigh instead, digging into the skin hard enough to leave bruises when he drags you suddenly into his lap.
You brace yourself on his broad shoulders at the sudden shift in position, reminding yourself to breathe when the newfound proximity forces him to lift his chin to look at you properly. He keeps one hand on the back of your head and his other on the swell of your ass. His whisper fans across your jaw as he says, “If absolution is what you want… Then claim it.”
Before proper reasoning can take over, you grind your hips up and down his strong thigh, chasing the same pleasure you’d been so close to giving yourself earlier that day.
With your dress skirts now pushed up to your hips, your cunt is able to press fully to his trousers — the delicate skin parts along the fabric with every pass, exposing your sensitive clit to the merciless rhythm. You can already feel the wet spot you’re leaving on him there.
Your broken whine of pleasure and embarrassment echoes throughout the empty sept.
Ormund grins wider at the pathetic sound. “It’s okay, my girl… Take it… You can do it…” he praises lowly, helping you rock your hips up and down his thigh with his free hand. “There is no sin here that I cannot pardon for you. Leave your guilt to me and let go. That’s it… Let it go.”
Your hips lose their rhythm, hopelessly chasing the warmth swelling in the pit of your stomach — a rope pulled tight and fraying, bound to snap at any moment.
“You’re so needy for it now, aren’t you? After you couldn’t pleasure yourself with your fingers earlier? Hm?” he whispers in your ear, then smiles wider when you falter. “No, don’t stop now. Keep going. There you go.
You bury your face in his shoulder and twist your trembling hands in his shirt, choking on the pleasured moans welling in your throat. You feel dizzy and half-disgusted with yourself, as your heart hammers harder with every word from his mouth.
“You thought I didn’t notice, did you?” Ormund hums with an audible grin. “I could hear you whimpering behind the door… You liked watching me using your dress to make me cum, didn’t you? …Hm?”
You nod wordlessly into his neck, and feel the rumble of his laughter there as he chuckles to himself.
“I knew you would… I knew the kind of girl you were when you stepped into my office— the kind who mistook her loneliness for devotion…” he mumbles against you, helping your hips move up and down his thighs when your own rhythm falters. “The kind who prayed for guidance and got only silence in return… Well, the gods might’ve abandoned you, my girl— but I will not.”
You peer at the altar ahead with teary eyes, where all the eyes of the Seven look down upon you as you unravel in your sin. You cum with a fragile whimper in your throat a second later, trembling in Ormund’s lap and holding onto him like a raft while your sensitive cunt drools on his thigh.
“Yes…” the man praises in your ear, smoothing his nose across your temple just before he presses his mouth to the burning skin there. “There it is… Give me all of it, my girl. I can take it...”
Ormund continues his sweet murmurings until the aftershocks have passed – until you’ve gone lax on top of him, with your body heaving enough to melt against his. You want to be soldered to him, just like this, with his cheek against your cheek and his hands in your hair and your cunt to his thigh. Perhaps this was your purpose, you think to yourself, as the last of your pleasure drips onto his thigh. Perhaps the gods sent you here to find religion in the crooks of his body, and Ormund in the crooks of yours.
“Am I forgiven now?” you ask in a small, teary voice. Though whether the question is meant for the gods staring down at you from their alcoves, blurred now by the unshed tears clouding your vision, or for the man holding you through every wave of pleasure and guilt — you cannot say.
“Yes,” Ormund answers instantly, soft mouth brushing the shell of your ear as he smooths your hair from your temple. He feels your body slacken with a breath of relief against him, as if some unbearable weight has finally been lifted from your shoulders. “You will always be forgiven, my girl… So long as you remember that you must kneel to me to ask for it.”
You close your eyes at that, distantly ashamed of the relief blooming in your chest, unable now to tell where the comfort ended and the feeling of captivity began.
FEATURING: Jacaerys Velaryon x fem!reader, minor Aegon II Targaryen x fem!reader
SUMMARY: From the moment you were born, you were faced with the scrutiny of the court—the twin who lived while brother and mother died in a bed of blood. Rhaenyra had always done her best to shield you from its cruelty, so when her son is born with dark hair and dark eyes and that cruelty is turned on him, you vow to shield him the same. It is a promise that would come to shape both of your lives far more than either of you could have imagined.
WARNINGS: fem!reader. TARGCEST (aunt-nephew, half-sibling). reader is a Targaryen (daughter of Viserys & Aemma)—no physical features are explicitly described (silver hair, purple eyes, etc) BUT it is implied through Jace's insecurity that he does not look like her because he references not looking like "everyone else". forced marriage (reader & Aegon). Reader & Aegon are VERY young when they have their kids (14 & 13 respectively), and reader has some complications/health issues following the birth because she was so young/her body wasn't ready for it. Eventual smut. Infidelity (technically—Aegon and reader are both cheating on each other LOL but neither gaf). Jace is wildly unhinged about reader and everybody but reader knows. Codependent relationship. Slight age gap (5 years between reader & Jace)
NOTES: WOWWWW my great step into targcest. This will be 3 parts—this first part is their childhood, the second part is driftmark & the inheritance dispute, the third part is the dance. Lowkey I can't believe it took me so long to write targcest LOLLLL, but it is fitting it is for our prettiest prince, Jacaerys Velaryon, prince of Dragonstone, heir to the iron throne <333 There are some things to note so please read: I adjusted the ages for this fic for convenience purposes, but the general timeline will remain the same. Reader is born in 105, Aegon 106, Helaena 108, Aemond 109, Jace & Daeron & Baela/Rhaena 110, Luke 111, Joffrey 118. Laena's funeral takes place in 120, the inheritance dispute & the Dance begins in 128. When it comes time for the Dance, ages are as follows: Reader is 23, Aegon is 22, and Jace is 18. Comments and reblogs are always appreciated! Love you all!
You were not supposed to be the twin who lived.
Nobody tells you that in so many words, but it is the first thing you learn all the same.
You catch your father staring at you sometimes with an empty look in his eyes, and you know he is seeing the ghost of your mother, thinking that if Baelon had been the one to survive instead of you, he might have been able to justify her death. The lords and ladies of the Red Keep constantly look upon you with polite smiles and carefully chosen words, lowering their voices whenever the topic of your birth is raised, as if you are too young to understand them, even though it was the first thing you ever understood at all.
Such a tragedy.
The queen gave everything.
The prince…
The prince, the prince, the prince—it is always the prince.
A son who never lived is afforded every virtue. He would have been strong. He would have been the perfect heir and the perfect king. He would have united the realm, and he would have spared your father his grief. He is remembered with all the generosity reserved for the dead, and none of the criticism reserved for the living.
You grow accustomed to measuring yourself against a brother you never knew. Every accomplishment is met with the unspoken question of whether Baelon might have done it quicker or better, and every celebration carries a shadow of mourning that you will never escape.
It is only Rhaenyra who has ever looked at you and seen nothing to mourn.
She has never spoken of Baelon as though he ought to have taken your place. She sneaks you your favorite desserts when you are sad, and she wipes your tears before anyone else can see them. When you are too scared to be alone at night, she slips into your chambers with stories of dragons raining fire from the sky and queens who crossed seas.
Your father has always been distant, but you have never minded because Rhaenyra is enough warmth for two parents, and when the whispers of the court become loud enough to reach you, she rolls her eyes and steals you away to the dragonpit or cuts the gossipers down with words sharp enough to leave them speechless.
She is your shield whenever the court would have you bleed, and your sword when distraction alone is not enough. For a little while, that is enough.
Then Jacaerys is born.
You are still young enough to be bundled off to lessons with Septa Elaine, feet dangling from chairs too tall for you, when Rhaenyra places him in your arms for the first time.
You think he is beautiful.
He has a mop of dark curls and bright brown eyes that seek you out in every room. He laughs more readily than he cries, and he reaches for your finger whenever you are near, curling his tiny fist around it as though he has claimed you for himself.
He is perfect—you know it the moment he giggles up at you the first time, but the whispers begin before the bloodied sheets are removed from your sister's bed.
Strong. Bastard. Plain.
The words are spoken with feigned innocence, as though they are not daggers pressed to both his back and your sister’s. For the first time since you were born, the court’s attention shifts to another, and you desperately wish that it hadn't.
You know what it is to have your life measured against someone who is not there, but Jacaerys is measured against people who are.
Your half-brother, Aegon, with silver-gold hair that gleams in the sun and eyes the color of amethysts, every inch the image of Old Valyria from the moment he was pulled from your stepmother's womb. Beside him stand Helaena, Aemond, and Daeron, no less unmistakably Targaryen. Silver hair and purple eyes; four children who look exactly as the world insists dragonlords should.
By the time Jacaerys is born, the image of a Targaryen prince has already been firmly etched into the court's mind, and it is not a little boy with brown curls and warm eyes who resembles neither the princess who bore him nor the husband sworn to be his father.
You recognize the look in their eyes intimately when they turn their gazes on him. It is the same one they once turned on you—a child who has already failed to become what the realm expected of them before they have spoken their first words. You had been the daughter who survived instead of the son who should have. Jacaerys is the son who does not look as though he should have.
Rhaenyra never allows you to bear your burden alone. Before the whispers find you, they find her first. Whenever cruel words are spoken, hers are always sharper. She stands between you and the court so often that most days you hardly realize she’s shielding you at all.
So when the whispers begin to follow Jacaerys instead, you do the only thing you have ever been taught—sharpening words and standing between him and the world whenever you can.
If your sister has always been your sword and your shield, then you will be her son’s.
——————————
JACAERYS, 2; READER, 7; 112 AC
“He really does adore you, doesn’t he, princess?” one of your ladies in waiting, Melynda Darklyn, says with a soft laugh after Jacaerys climbs into your lap at Lucerys’s first nameday celebration. You wind your arms around the boy, relishing in the delighted noise he makes once he’s wrapped in your arms.
Your sister and her husband are sitting at the center of the table, chatting with your father and entertaining the assembled lords while musicians fill the hall with cheerful melodies and servants weave between tables bearing silver platters piled high with roasted meats and sugared fruits. Rhaenyra occasionally looks in your direction, casting a small smile your way when she sees how Jacaerys is tucked against you, fisting the embroidery of your gown tight enough that you fear he might rip some of the tiny pearls from the fabric.
“He has excellent taste,” you answer primly, with all of the seriousness a girl of seven can muster, earning a ripple of laughter from your end of the table. “It certainly has nothing to do with the fact that I let him have his sweets before supper.”
Jacaerys blinks, head lolling against your shoulder, unconcerned with being the subject of conversation. You can feel his small fingers picking at the ribbon tied around your wrist, freezing comically every time you look down at him. Each time you return your attention to the feast, his fingers creep back toward the knot with painstaking care, his tongue peeking from the corner of his mouth in concentration. He glances up at you every few moments to make certain you are not watching before tugging experimentally at the ribbon once more.
You pretend not to notice, smiling lightly to yourself when you hear the triumphant little hum that escapes him as the knot finally begins to loosen.
“His hair really is so dark,” Aegon suddenly says on your left, voice idle as he yawns.
The conversation immediately halts.
You wonder if Aegon knows the gravity of the words he spoke, stiffening slightly from where you’re sitting, enough that Jacaerys seems to sense the shift in your demeanor, lifting tiny hands to your face to squish your cheeks. It’s only when you smile at him that he finally lets go, and he returns to toying with your ribbon.
You look at your younger half-brother from the corner of your eye carefully, catching the bored expression on his face as he absently pokes at his peas, still looking at Jacaerys. You do not know why your father insists on seating him near you during feasts—you desperately wish he would sit with his mother and your other half-siblings. He has spent half the evening kicking the legs of his chair and playing with his food, bothering you with inane questions about whether there is an end to the Sunset Sea and if you think there is such a thing as water dragons or ice dragons.
You see three of your ladies-in-waiting exchange glances, Melynda stiffens slightly as she glances between the princes before her gaze meets yours, riddled with concern, and two lords further down the table quiet down immediately to listen in on whatever Aegon might say next. No one speaks openly of Jacaerys’s… coloring. Not yet, at least. The whispers have remained whispers, traded behind fans and cups of wine, because everyone is unwilling to be the first to give them voice.
So the court waits, each lord and lady wondering who will finally speak the unspeakable.
For one fleeting moment, you can’t help but wonder if the Queen has whispered something into Aegon's ear before the feast, if she has sent him here to say what no grown lord dares so that life might be breathed into the whispers haunting Jacaerys. You would not put it past her—she has always had a certain disdain for you and your sister—but you do not think that is the case this time. Aegon is six, and he hardly has the patience for lessons in High Valyrian, much less the conspiracies of court. Every thought that enters his head escapes his mouth within moments, innocent of the havoc it might wreak.
He is simply a little boy who has noticed that his nephew's curls are brown where everyone else's are silver. The court, however, has spent so long waiting for someone to say too much that even a child's idle observation is enough to make half the hall hold its breath.
Aegon notices the silence at last, mid-motion to tug Jacaerys’s hair. You slap his hand away before he can. His brow furrows, and he glances around the table. He looks from one lady to the next as though expecting someone to satisfy his curiosity. Instead, they busy themselves with their cups of wine and suddenly find the roasted lamb before them intensely interesting.
He frowns. “What?”
“I suppose everyone else is too kind to say it,” you say dramatically, giving Aegon a bright smile as he tilts his head questioningly. “You should not speak on someone else’s hair when yours is so greasy, valonqar.” You reach forward to tug a long lock of silver hard, and Aegon yelps, squirming away. “It only draws more attention to it. Did you not bathe before the feast?”
Little brother.
“I did bathe! It’s not greasy!” he disagrees loudly, lifting his hands to cover his hair. “You’re a liar!”
“Of course it is,” you insist. “Why else do you think no one dares look you in the eye? You should be grateful that you have me to tell you the truth when others would avert their gaze and pretend they do not notice. Say, thank you, mandia.”
Older sister.
“No!”
“Do it, or I’ll pull your hair again, you little wretch.”
Aegon gapes at you and looks around the table for help—unfortunately for him, the only one who might have taken his side, scandalized by your behavior, is sitting on your father’s opposite side, watching the two of you from afar, unable to do anything about it. You give the Queen a faux-sweet smile before raising your eyebrows at Aegon and lifting your hand threateningly.
He shrinks back. “Thank you, mandia.”
You raise your chin proudly, and the tension slips away. The tension eases from your shoulders when you realize you’ve successfully averted the crisis, but the dread you feel remains even as goblets are lifted once more, and conversations that had died on waiting breaths begin again. One lord clears his throat loudly and returns to discussing the harvest with his neighbor, and another asks after plans for hawking.
Around the table, everyone is suddenly very eager to prove they had not been listening at all; as though moments before, they hadn’t been on the edge of their seats waiting for someone to give them a chance to speak what they’ve all been thinking.
Jacaerys gives one final victorious tug, and the ribbon slips free into his hands. He squeals with delight, waving it triumphantly in the air, utterly oblivious to what just took place.
You pluck it gently from his fingers before he can stuff it into his mouth, and he immediately looks up at you, big brown eyes watering, lower lip quivering. He pleads in a tiny, wobbly voice, “Please.”
You raise your eyebrows at him pointedly. You say firmly, “Ivestragon ziry drējī.”
Say it correctly.
He stares up at you, brow furrowing in fierce concentration. His lips part once, then close again. He glances toward his mother for help, but she is much too far to be of any assistance, so his little nose wrinkles as he thinks harder.
“K-k…” he begins uncertainly, fingers curling tight around the sleeve of your gown. You wait patiently, toying with the ribbon. At last, he says proudly, “Kolilus!”
“Close,” you say, tapping his nose, smiling softly when he immediately scrunches it again with a giggle. “Kostilus.”
Please.
“Kostilus!” he repeats, beaming. “Kostilus! Kostilus!”
“Sīr albie,” you praise as you tie the ribbon around his small wrist, watching as he waves his hand in the air trying to show Rhaenyra across the room. “Olvie tolī albie pār aōha qȳbor.”
So smart. Much smarter than your uncle.
Jacaerys spends the rest of the feast showing anyone who will look the ribbon tied around his wrist, never noticing the glances that follow him, and you are filled with a dread that will haunt you for years to come, because one day, someone will find the courage to finish Aegon's thought, and when that day comes, no amount of distraction or childish innocence will be enough to swallow the words back down.
——————————
JACAERYS, 3; READER, 8; 113 AC
“Sleepover!”
You wake blearily from where you’re dozing off on your couch as the door to your chambers swings open, exhausted after a day of flying. Rhaenyra finally gave you leave a few months ago to take flight with Zūgaxes, once she was certain you would not go flying off the large dragon's back the moment he took to the air, and you have spent almost every waking moment with him above King's Landing and the Blackwater. Your thighs are sore, and you barely fight a wince when you push yourself into a sitting position just as a small ball of energy slams into your abdomen, pushing you back down against the couch.
You blink once, a smile instinctively curving your lips when Jacaerys’s face pops above yours, a wide, toothy one spread across his lips as he looks down at you, excited, dressed in his nightclothes and holding his favorite blanket.
“Mandianna,” you say fondly, lifting your shoulders enough to press your lips against his cheeks, biting down lightly to make him squeal happily. “What are you doing here?”
Nephew.
“I hope I didn’t wake you, sweet sister,” Rhaenyra murmurs as she makes her way into your room. She holds Lucerys carefully on her hip—the boy is half asleep, blinking sleepily in your direction before giving you a small smile. She nods in the direction of the couch you’re lying on and asks, “May I?”
You tilt your head curiously and nod, shifting to sit up properly. Jacaerys clambers off your lap to go play with the toys he left in your room the other day, and Rhaenyra sits next to you, smiling at you softly as she lifts a hand to tuck your hair behind your ear. Your eyes are wide and adoring as you look up at her, leaning into the familiar warmth of her hand—you have been so busy flying that you've hardly seen her as of late.
"Look at you, growing up so lovely," Rhaenyra sighs lightly, running her thumb along your cheekbone as Lucerys nuzzles into the crook of her neck. "I heard father was upset with you this morning. What happened?"
You scowl immediately, crossing your arms and looking away. The reminder of the argument sets your mood afoul, throat already tightening with a something caught between irritation and hurt.
"He is always upset with me," you mutter. Rhaenyra raises her eyebrows at you, waiting for you to explain, and you push your bottom lip out into a pout. "I only mentioned that I wanted to fly to Highgarden. Ser Lowen says the flowers will be at peak bloom soon. I should like to see them."
Rhaenyra laughs lightly, and your cheeks feel hot as you keep your gaze averted even as she tilts your face toward her. She strokes your hair lightly and says, "You have only just turned eight, hāedar. You cannot expect him to allow you to fly off on your own across the kingdom."
Little sister.
Your eyes well with tears immediately, and Rhaenyra's expression shifts into one of alarm, shifting Lucerys on her lap so that she might face you fully.
"He can hardly even stand the sight of me, mandia. He could at least let me travel. I do not just want to see Highgarden—I want to see the Wall and Casterly Rock. I want to cross the Narrow Sea and travel the Free Cities, see the ruins of Old Valyria, walk the House of the Undying in Qarth. It is not fair. He cannot keep me trapped here forever when nobody even likes me."
Rhaenyra's expression softens; she tilts her head slightly to the side as she holds your face between her palms, stroking your cheeks steadily with her thumbs. You grit your teeth hard to try to stop the tears from spilling over, but you fail miserably, breath shuddering as you sniffle and choke back sobs.
"Did someone say something to you?" she asks you, lips pressed together and eyes a bit cooler. "Ali—the Queen? One of her sons?"
You shake your head, trying to pull your face away, but she does not let you. "I just—"
You just what? You're lonely? You're tired of the way everyone looks at you? It feels unfair to say that to Rhaenyra, who has always done her best to shield you from it all. It feels unfair to say it when Jacaerys and Lucerys have faced worse from the court these past three years.
It is all unfair, you think miserably. All you want to do is lounge in gardens and snack on oranges with your sister and your nephews. You want to watch as Jacaerys plays with his wooden dragons and finds pretty flowers to put in your hair, as Lucerys naps in his mother's arms, oblivious to the world around him. You want to do it all without the eyes of judgment constantly pinned on the back of your head; you want to do it without the fear that someone, one day, will speak the words that will condemn them all.
"Well, then, perhaps it is a good thing that Jacaerys asked for you, hāedar," Rhaenyra says softly. "I did not realize you were so upset. Were you really planning to spend the night alone?"
"I did not want to bother you," you reply glumly, glancing away to where Jacaerys is trying and failing to gather all of his toys up in his arms, pouting each time he drops one back to the floor.
"You are never a bother, sweet sister. You must come to me whenever you feel like this. I loathe the idea of you being alone," Rhaenyra tells you softly as she leans in to brush her lips against your forehead. "Jacaerys, come here."
The boy immediately pokes his head up from the other side of the room, putting down all of his toys except for the wooden dragon you gifted him for his first nameday. He bolts across the room, tossing himself on Rhaenyra's lap and jostling Lucerys, who immediately starts sniffling. Rhaenyra raises her eyebrows at Jacaerys, who gives her a sheepish smile before he gives Lucerys a hug.
"Sorry, Luke," he says dutifully before shifting to sit between the two of you, holding his wooden dragon in his lap. He gives his mother an expectant look.
"Didn't you want to ask your muña something?" Rhaenyra prods, raising her eyebrows. "Instead of coming in here and demanding?"
Aunt (mother's sister)
Jacaerys's face lights up as he swivels his body toward you, brown eyes bright with delight. "Can we have a sleepover, muña?"
You say, "Ivestragon ziry drējī.”
Say it correctly.
Jacaerys immediately wrinkles his nose and gives Rhaenyra a pleading look, but your sister only gives him a small smile, beckoning him to do as you asked.
"You're so mean, muña," Jacaerys whines, giving you a pitiful look, wide eyes and a pushed-out lip that he certainly learned from you whenever you're trying to convince Rhaenyra to get you extra snacks from the kitchens. Unfortunately for you, it is infinitely more effective coming from baby Jacaerys with big brown eyes and chubby cheeks. He wrinkles his nose as he thinks, a few long moments passing before he tries, "Kostan ēdrugon toliot?"
I can stay over?
You correct, "Kostagon nyke ēdrugon toliot?"
Can I stay over?
"Kostagon nyke ēdrugon toliot?" he repeats instantly, leaning forward, tiny fingers wrapping around your hand. "Kostilus, kostilus, kostilus."
Can I stay over? Please, please, please.
You lean in with a small smile and tell him softly, "Hen rhinka, kostā."
Of course, you can.
Jacaerys lets out a squeal of glee and immediately leaps off the couch to run over to your bed, climbing on top and bouncing happily three times before flopping down and rolling around. Your lips curl up into a smile as your sister leans in to nudge her shoulder against yours.
"Are you truly going to look me in the eye and say nobody likes you when mine own son adores you so deeply?" she asks you quietly. "When I do?"
Your shoulders slump slightly, unable to meet her gaze.
"Jace would be distraught if you left," Rhaenyra continues, undeterred. "He has… been having night terrors. He struggles to sleep through the night. He has tried sleeping in bed with Laenor and I, but nothing seems to be enough to rid him of them. At first, I thought he simply preferred being fussed over, but the servants have made me aware that he does not cry out once during his naps in your chambers. When he wakes beside you, he is… lighter."
You turn to look at Jacaerys. He has managed to wrap himself in your blankets like a cocoon, your favorite stuffed dragon tucked to his chest. Every few moments, he glances over his shoulder to make certain you're still watching him before burying himself deeper beneath the covers.
You hear your sister let out a soft huff of laughter at your side at the sight of him, brushing a sleeping Lucerys's curls away from his forehead.
"I did not know," you whisper, guilty now—not just for wanting to leave and travel, but also for the number of days you've landed in the dragonpit with Zūgaxes to find Jacaerys sitting there waiting for you. For hours, Ser Steffon told you once when you'd asked how long he'd been there. "I…"
"I do not think he does either," Rhaenyra admits, smiling sadly. "Children simply know where they feel safe, and he feels safe with you."
Rhaenyra watches Jacaerys for a long moment as he buries himself beneath your blankets, only the top of his dark curls visible.
She says after a moment, "I should like it if you spent more time with him." You blink and give her a questioning look. She amends immediately, "I know you already do, but… he adores you. There is no one in the Seven Kingdoms whose presence delights him half so much as yours. Every morning, he asks whether you will break fast with us. Every afternoon, he asks whether you are flying. Every evening, he asks whether you have already gone to sleep. Laenor has begun telling him that dragons require princesses to nap as often as hatchlings simply to stop the questions."
You giggle, hand flying to your mouth as you imagine an exhausted Laenor forced to answer question after question—Jacaerys is insatiable when it comes to needing things answered. You once spent two hours trying to answer incessant whys when you told him that dragons could not fly forever without taking breaks, and you know Laenor well enough to know his patience is not endless.
"He is noticing things," Rhaenyra tells you after a moment, voice breaking. "He does not understand why some lords smile at him only when I am looking. He asked me last week why everyone stares at him, if he had done something wrong—I had to tell him that people only stare because he is a prince. That they admire him. I lied to him."
You stare at your folded hands, unable to think of anything to say that would make her feel better. You know she lied because there had been no other choice. What else could she have told a three-year-old boy? That grown men whisper about him behind closed doors? That ladies who smile at him in passing spend their evening wondering aloud whether he has any right to the Velaryon name?
Children should not know such things.
You should not have known that the court would have preferred you dead to your brother.
"He believed me," Rhaenyra says quietly, "but he will not forever, and I dread when that day comes. And it will come. One day he will hear every cruel thing that we have kept beyond his reach, but—"
"I will make them stop," you say immediately, leaning forward and grabbing her hands. Rhaenyra gives you a small, sad smile, but you insist with a nod. "I will, mandia. I will cut them down. Ser Steffon is teaching me the sword, I—"
Rhaenyra blinks. "Does father know that?"
"—I will take the head of anyone who says such things about him. I will feed them to Zuzu, and I'll burn their keeps," you declare, ignoring her question, because no, your father does not know, and you have no intention of telling him. "You do not have to worry, mandia. I will protect Jacaerys and Lucerys forever. And you."
Then, she laughs. It is quiet and watery, born through tears rather than amusement, but it is a laugh nonetheless. A success, you think.
"Oh, sweet girl."
You frown. She says it the way she always does when she does not believe you.
"I am serious," you insist.
"I know you are," she sighs, reaching up to cup your face with both hands, smiling softly. "You are a child. You should not be talking about taking heads and feeding people to dragons."
You frown again, deeper this time. "But I mean it," you tell her again. "I will take their heads, and I will feed them to Zuzu. I will burn their keeps, should I please."
"You are eight, hāedar."
"Then, I will wait until I am nine," you say firmly. "I will grow very tall. Taller than Ser Steffon. Even Ser Harrold."
"I think that unlikely."
"I shall," you say fiercely. "And I shall be stronger than Ser Erryck, and wiser than every maester."
You do not know why Rhaenyra looks as though she's going to cry again as she looks down at you, stroking your hair gently. "So, when you are the tallest, strongest, and wisest princess in the Seven Kingdoms…"
"I will protect all of you," you finish. "Anyone who is cruel to Jacaerys will regret it. And Lucerys. And you."
Rhaenyra's smile softens, and your lashes flutter as she leans in to brush her lips against your forehead.
"Well, if you are so adamant, then I suppose I must believe you." You nod at her words, pleased. "Will you promise me one more thing?" You look up expectantly. "If one day, the court makes him feel alone… find him, please."
You nod immediately. "I promise."
"And if one day the court makes you feel alone…"
You hesitate. "… He is only little."
"He will not always be," she tells you with a faint smile, and your nose wrinkles at the idea of Jacaerys growing older. You like him the way he is now—tiny and cuddly. "Promise me you will let him find you, too."
You glance over to where he's curled up in your bed, fast asleep now, ignorant of the conversation taking place between you and his mother. He is so small, you think doubtfully—you cannot imagine a day will ever come when he will be the one to seek you out.
Still, Rhaenyra has that expectant expression on her face, so you find yourself nodding.
"I promise."
—————————
JACAERYS, 4; READER, 9; 114 AC
"Jacaerys?"
You rise to your feet from where you were sitting with your half-sister, Helaena, on the edge of the gardens in Maegor's Holdfast as a small figure rushes past the two of you. Helaena blinks once, tilting her head to the side as she cradles her beetles between her palms.
"He looked sad," she says quietly. "Do you think he's okay?"
You don't respond, rushing after Jacaerys as soon as he turns the corner, ignoring the eyes of the knights and servants lingering as you push past them. You thought he was supposed to be in the training yard with Laenor today? He was excited about it last night—so excited that he kept you up for hours, asking for tips to impress his father and Ser Criston. So why—
"Jacaerys!" you call again as he turns down the hall, taking a familiar path through the holdfast. Where is he going? To his mother's chambers? To yours? "Jacaerys!"
Jacaerys skids to a stop halfway down the next hall, and you glare at a passing knight whose gaze lingers a moment too long on the sniffling boy. He hurries away, leaving you alone with Jacaerys in the long hall. He lifts his face to look at you, and alarm shoots through you when you see the dark bruise on his jaw.
"Jacaerys, what happened?" you demand, making your way over to him. He rushes toward you, throwing his arms around your waist and burying his face in your stomach. You wrap your arms around him, fingers threading through his thick hair as you hold the back of his head to your body, lowering yourself to your knees in front of him. "Jacaerys."
You pull his face back gently. His fingers clutch desperately at the back of your gown, bunching the fabric in both fists as though he fears you'll disappear if he loosens his grip. He is trembling. He is shaking so badly that he can hardly hold himself upright. Your fingers bite a bit too hard into his shoulders as your hands slide from his face down to his upper arms, forcing him to look you in the eye.
"Tell me what happened," you say furiously, rage already bubbling in your chest, vision tinted red as you squeeze his tiny biceps. "Who hurt you? Jacaerys, answer me!"
Jacaerys lifts a hand to wipe at his eyes, tears stubbornly clinging to his long lashes. The bruise on his jaw makes your stomach lurch. You force your grip to ease as you lift a hand to his cheek, cradling it gently as you brush your thumb over the mark.
His lower lip trembles violently before he whispers, "… I fell."
You stare at him blankly. "Did you?"
He gives you a tiny nod, refusing to meet your gaze. He is a terrible liar.
"I see," you say slowly, eyes narrowing slightly, "and the floor struck only your jaw?"
He sniffles and nods again.
"How curious," you say flatly.
You wonder if it was Aegon or Aemond. You thought Aegon was getting along with the boys, for the most part, but your half-brother has always been fickle and capricious, prone to changing his mind on a whim; and Aemond has taken to the sword, but he has always been careful enough with smaller children, more interested in proving himself than hurting anyone else. You struggle to picture him throwing a careless blow at a four-year-old.
"It must have been a very malicious floor," you say at last, the anger ebbing away at the sight of his mouth twitching up into a small, wobbly smile. "I shall have the castle steward informed. Dangerous stones cannot be allowed to wander the halls attacking little princes."
Jacaerys giggles, lifting his fists to wipe clumsily at his eyes.
"It wasn't the floor," he admits in a tiny voice. "I lied."
You sigh lightly as you brush the last lingering tear from beneath his lashes, leaning in to press your lips against his forehead. You say, "I suspected as much. What really happened, mandianna?"
His gaze immediately drops to the floor. "Ser Criston was teaching me how to wield a sword."
You stare at him for a moment and then ask slowly, "Ser Criston gave you this?"
"He didn't mean—" Jacaerys begins quickly, fumbling for words. "He was showing me, that's all."
"Showing you what, exactly?" you question, voice strained.
Jacaerys withdraws, shrinking a little. He says quietly, "I do not want to get in trouble."
"Iksā dōrī isse qopsa lēda nyke, mandianna," you say, softening your tone, sighing lightly as you brush your lips atop the welt forming on his jaw. Jacaerys clutches at your arms, trying to keep you close."Nyke mērī jaelagon ao naejot ivestragon nyke se drēje."
You are never in trouble with me, nephew. I only want you to tell me the truth.
"He was showing me how to block," he finally says, sniffling again as he presses his face into the crook of your neck. "I was supposed to stop it, but I didn't. He said I should have blocked it, and then went back over to Aegon and Aemond."
You do not reply immediately, rubbing between his shoulders to soothe him, one hand sliding down to his tiny wrist and tinier hands, small and uncalloused, barely able to wrap around the hilt of a sword. Ser Criston is a grown man, you think, outraged. He is years older than Rhaenyra, and he struck Jacaerys.
"How hard did he strike you?" you ask him softly.
"It hurt," Jacaerys says, voice small and muffled. Your eye twitches—a kingsguard striking a prince, Criston Cole gets away with far too much because of the Queen's favor. "He said if I cannot stop a practice sword, I will never stop a real one. I couldn't find father—he was supposed to be there—and mother has been busy all day in court, and I—I wanted you, muña. I always want you when…" His face twists as he searches for the right words. "… when things hurt."
Your expression softens into a smile as you sit back on your heels to look him in the eye. Jacaerys looks at you through wet lashes, bottom lip still wobbling, and you hold his face between your hands, squeezing his cheeks gently until he giggles and turns his face into your palm.
"Well," you say lightly after a moment, "your muña is here. How about we go down to the dragonpit and check on Vermax?"
His face lights up instantly. "Yes! Maybe they'll let me feed him. Do you think they'll let me?" he asks, excited, grabbing your hands and squeezing. Before you can respond, he presses, "Will Zuzu be there? Can we go flying?"
You lean in and lower your voice conspiratorially as you whisper, "Only if you promise not to tell your mother."
"I promise! I promise, I promise, I promise!" he cheers.
You give him a small smile, running your thumb one last time over the welt on his cheek before you rise to your feet and hold out your hand to him. He takes it quickly, entwining his fingers with yours as he takes off in the direction of the dragonpit, and you laugh as he drags you along with him.
Jacaerys forgets all about the bruise and Ser Criston Cole by the time the two of you reached the dragonpit, but you do not.
—————————
JACAERYS, 6; READER, 11; 116 AC
Jacaerys becomes your shadow over the next two years.
He rushes to your chambers before you've even woken, and will linger there long into the evening until his mother finally forces him to return to his own. Some nights, he sneaks back well after midnight because he insists that your room is safer than his, though you suspect he simply sleeps better with your dragon stuffed beneath one arm and your hand draped over his back.
He follows you everywhere.
When Ser Steffon trains you in the yard—now with your father's permission, though you had to put up quite the fight because your father was unconvinced that there was any need for a princess to learn the sword—Jacaerys perches himself on the balcony, his chin resting in both palms as he announces every successful strike as though you had just won a tourney.
"You got him!"
"It is a wooden dummy, Jacaerys."
"But he was losing!"
"The dummy?"
"Yes! He looked frightened!"
When you fly Zūgaxes, Jacaerys waits patiently in the Dragonpit with a book in his lap that never seems to advance beyond the same page. The moment your dragon's shadow crosses the courtyard, he leaps to his feet, waving both arms high above his head before racing to meet you
"How high did you go?"
"Very high."
"Higher than the towers?"
"Certainly."
"Higher than the clouds?"
"Not quite."
"Tomorrow?"
"Perhaps."
When you retreat to the gardens with a book, he appears scarcely minutes later, carrying one of his own. He cannot yet sit long enough to read more than a page or two before asking questions, but he tries valiantly, resting his head against your shoulder as he sounds out unfamiliar words. When he inevitably grows frustrated, you take the book from his hand and read aloud instead—by the third chapter, he is almost always asleep against you.
The servants quickly learn that if the young prince cannot be found, they only need ask where the princess has gone, and he is always there.
Which is why you feel so terrible about what you have to do today.
"Tell me it's not true," a shrill voice accuses from the door of your chambers as you finish packing the last of your bag. Ser Steffon gives you an apologetic look as he holds the door open for the little prince, and you grimace but signal for him to close it and step outside so that you can talk to Jacaerys. "You can't be leaving. Say that you're not leaving!"
"Mandianna," you start to sigh, turning to face him. His eyes are already welling with tears, face red and fists clenched at his sides. "I—"
"No!" he screeches. "You're a liar. You're a liar. You promised you wouldn't leave me. You promised I wouldn't be alone. You're a liar, and I hate you."
"Jacaerys," you say quietly, kneeling in front of him. He has grown over the past year, but so have you—and unfortunately for him, you have been growing faster. Where he once nearly reached your shoulder, the top of his curls now barely reaches your chest. He'll be even taller when you return, you think mournfully—how much will you miss? "Come here."
"No."
"Please."
"No!"
"I only want to talk, mandianna."
"I hate talking to you. I don't want to talk to you."
"Jacaerys…" you sigh again, a helpless feeling tugging at you because you do not want to leave while he's angry at you. You knew this would be a difficult conversation, but you'd hoped to at least leave with one last hug. "I know you are angry, but—"
"You don't!" he cries, stamping his foot so hard the floorboards rattle beneath him. "You don't know anything! Everybody hates me here. They all stare at me and think I don't notice, but I do! You promised you would stay, that I would always have you. You're a liar!"
Your breath hitches as you stare down at the tears tracking down his cheek. For a moment, you are no longer looking at Jacaerys. You are six years old again, yourself, standing in the halls of the Red Keep, wondering why everyone always stares at you, convinced that if you disappear, no one but Rhaenyra would notice.
You had spent years hoping he would never know the feeling.
"I know that they do," he insists before you can speak, as though he already knows you will try to deny it to preserve his innocence, as Rhaenyra has been doing for years. "They look at me all the time. They whisper, and then they stop when you or mother comes. They think I don't notice, but I do." He wipes furiously at his face with the heel of his sleeve. "They don't like me because—because I'm not pretty like everyone else, because I don't look like mother or father or grandsire or Aegon. But you always liked me—you said I was clever, and brave, and you said that I always would have you."
"You do, Jacaerys," you start to say. "I meant it."
"Liar!" he shouts again. "You wouldn't leave me if you meant it!"
You do not have a choice, you want to tell him.
Your father has asked you to go to Pentos to convince Daemon to return. You are not sure the Small Council knows of his request, because he has specifically asked you not to breathe a word of it to anyone, knowing too well how fiercely they opposed Daemon and how quickly they might act to convince him otherwise it if they learned where you were bound.
He thought he was doing you a favor—he remembers how badly you wanted to leave two years ago, and is giving you the opportunity now under the guise of a request from him. You did not know how to tell him that the last thing you wanted to do now was leave when Jacaerys hardly goes an hour without you.
You rise slowly from where you are kneeling, crossing the small distance between you. The moment you lift your hand toward him, he recoils.
"Don't touch me! I don't want you to touch me!"
Your fingers freeze in the air before falling back to your side. Your heart feels as though it is stuck in your throat as you stare at him, watching as he wipes hard at his face again, gnawing at his bottom lip as he fights a sob.
"Okay," you finally say, hand dropping back to your side.
"I don't want you to come back," he tells you, sniffling loudly, refusing to look at you. "I hate you."
You know he does not mean it. You do. Children have so few weapons when they are hurting, and cruel words are among the first they learn to wield. You know this better than most, and yet, somehow, his words still manage to find every wound you've ever been dealt in this keep, salt on open wounds because they are being spoken by the one voice whose opinion matters more than any vicious noble ever could.
Your throat feels swollen, and your chest aches so painfully that you fear you might die. You had imagined this moment so differently. You had imagined Jacaerys helping you fasten your cloak, asking you to bring him back gits and insisting you write him every day, faster even than the ravens can deliver. Instead, there is only a frightened little boy glaring at you through tears, insisting that he hates you and never wants to see you again.
"I'll see you soon, mandianna," you say quietly. "Avy jorrāelan. Kesan sagon arlī gō ao gīmigon ziry."
I love you. I will be back before you know it.
You wait just in case he changes his mind, but he does not answer, turning his back on you as your hand closes around the handle of the door.
It is the first time the two of you have to bid goodbye to one another.
It will not be the last.
—————————
JACAERYS, 7; READER, 12; 117 AC
It has been a year since you departed King's Landing.
Pentos had become a fortnight, then a moon, then half a year, and before anyone quite realized what had happened, an entire year had passed. Your father had sent you to talk to his brother, hoping that you might be able to convince your uncle and his wife to return home. Instead, Daemon had laughed in your face and said you were too small to be so bold, and refused every plea you had bade.
You had failed. The only consolation was that Daemon had immediately not sent you away. He had taken one look at your pinched expression and fisted hands, and he took you flying over the bay and the Velvet Hills. He taught you more about your history than any maester in King's Landing ever had, and filled your head with so many stories of Old Valyria that it had you dizzy with homesickness for a place you've never known, longing for a future you would never know.
Every morning, you would challenge him for Dark Sister, and he would pummel you into the tiled floors of the Prince of Pentos's palace, and every evening, he would make you do it again until he properly beat out the "poor teachings of Ser Steffon"—his words, not yours.
You met your cousins for the first time, too.
For years, you only ever had Rhaenyra, Laenor, Jacaerys, and Lucerys, but Baela and Rhaena quickly latched themselves to each of your arms, showing you all around Pentos, desperately trying to keep you in the Free City with them longer.
Baela had insisted on racing dragons before she'd properly introduced herself, offended when Zūgaxes won by what she declared was an unfair margin. She reminded you so much of Jace, forever at your heels, rarely letting you out of her sight for long. Rhaena spent long afternoons wandering Pentoshi markets with you and her mother, pointing out fabrics she thought would look pretty on you and teasing you relentlessly whenever Daemon tripped you and claimed he was only trying to hone your reaction time as you fell flat on your face.
For the first time in years, your world stretches beyond the walls of the Red Keep and lingering gazes, and yet not a single day has passed without you wondering whether Jacaerys still sits in the godswood, waiting for someone who is no longer there.
When your father finally sends a letter recalling you to King's Landing, tiring of your frolic with Daemon and not wanting to deal with another member of his family joining self-imposed exile, you spend the entire flight back thinking about what you would say to him, wondering what he might do when he finally sees you.
You have imagined him running at you and throwing himself into your arms, and you have imagined him turning his back to you once more. You do not know what to expect from him, so your heart is in your throat when you see him standing with the dragonkeepers as they bring out a sheep for Vermax, dark hair flopping around his face, a bright smile on his face.
In your worst fears, the smile drops when he realizes that you have returned.
You clear your throat and force a light expression on your face as you say, “He is almost big enough for you to ride now, isn’t he, mandianna?”
Jacaerys startles, smile dropping just as you feared, eyes widening as he whips around to face you. He stares at you, blinking once, head cocking to the side—for a terrible second, you wonder if he even recognizes you. It has been a year apart, you try to rationalize to mitigate the hurt. You have grown a lot; your hair is styled in the typical Pentoshi way, and you have spent the majority of the past year basking in the sun. It would not be so far-fetched if he did not recognize you right away, in fact—
"Muña?"
"Jacaerys," you greet quietly, hands behind your back to hide the way they're trembling uncertainly. Is he still angry at you? What if he doesn't— "I—"
Jacaerys is across the vast pit in an instant, a blur of black and red as he charges in your direction. The air leaves your lungs in a whoosh of relief as you dip down to catch him in your arms, lifting him off the dirt floor and swinging him through the air. A noise caught between a gasp and a broken sob escapes his lips as he buries his face in the crook of your neck, arms wrapping so tight around your neck that he momentarily chokes you.
For a long while, neither of you speaks. His fingers clutch desperately at the back of your riding leathers, bunching the fabric beneath his fists, and you hold him just as tight, arms wrapped around his waist and face buried in his fluffy hair.
You have spent an entire year imagining this moment, worrying he might shrink away or turn his back on you, fearing that he might remember only your departure and not the years that had come before it. But he clings to you so tightly that your arm and neck begin to ache, and you have never been happier for the pain.
"I'm sorry," he blurts into your shoulder, words muffled against your neck. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
"Mandianna, you have nothing to apologize for," you murmur, pressing your lips to his temple, and letting out a wavering sigh. "I—"
"I said I hated you," he cries, voice catching over the words. "I didn't mean it. I promise."
"I know, Jacaerys," you murmur. "It's okay."
"I wanted to hug you," he sniffles, words tumbling out, desperate to be heard before the courage abandons him. "I was going to, I really was, but then you started leaving, and I got scared, and I thought maybe if I didn't hug you goodbye, you wouldn't leave, but you did leave. I wished I'd hugged you every day."
You let out a huff, unsure if it's a laugh or a sob of your own. "I'm here now, mandianna. You do not need to cry."
"I thought maybe you weren't coming back," he admits, pulling back just enough to look at you, cheeks damp and his eyes red-rimmed. You brush his unruly curls back from his forehead. He hiccups as he presses his nose into your hand. "I thought I made you mad, and you were going to stay away forever. I wanted to send a raven, but I was scared I would only make it worse."
"I could never be mad at you, silly boy," you murmur, carding your fingers through his hair absently. You give him a small smile, and he gives you a wavering one back—he's missing his front tooth. "I missed you."
"I missed you, muña," Jacaerys sniffles, pulling one hand from where he's clutching the back of your tunic to rub his face. You hum lightly, putting him back on the ground and kneeling in front of him, lifting your own hands to cradle his cheeks between them, thumbs wiping away his tears. He returns to clutching your arms, nails digging into your bicep. "I hated going to lessons with Maester Gerardys, and I hated going to feasts, and I hated training, and I hated everything. I just wanted to sit in the garden with you all day, but you weren't here."
You exhale through your nose as you hold his face gently, watching as he tries to hide it in your palm.
"I tried reading by myself," he continues in a rush, "but it wasn't the same because you weren't there to do all the voices. Mother tried, but she doesn't make the dragon sounds the way you do. It made me mad."
"I brought some books back from Pentos," you tell him with a small smile, hoping to calm him down and dry his tears. You pull him closer so that you can ghost your lips to his temple again. He immediately latches back onto you, arms wrapped tight around you. "I think you'll like them."
"What are they about?" he asks, eyes finally shining with excitement instead of sadness as he pulls back to look at you.
"Dragons, of course," you say with a mysterious smile, and Jacaerys gasps in delight. "How about tonight you help me unpack, and afterward I'll read you the first chapter?"
"With the voices?" he presses.
"Would I ever read a dragon story without the voices?" you ask, mock offended.
He smiles immediately, bright enough to chase away every trace of the tears that had been welling in his eyes. For a moment, he looks exactly as he did before you left—missing tooth, unruly curls, and eyes sparkling with excitement at the prospect of a story.
Then, the smile falters. He says quietly, "I missed you."
Your expression softens as you brush his hair back gently. "I missed you too, mandianna."
His gaze drops to the ground
"Sometimes…" he hesitates, chewing nervously on the inside of his cheek, like he isn't sure if he should tell you this next part. "Sometimes I still went to your room. I knew you weren't there! I knew that, but… it still smelled like you. I slept with stuffed Zuzu instead."
You tilt your head with an amused smile. "Surely it did not smell like me for the whole year, mandianna."
"I asked the servants not to wash your blankets," he blurts out before you can finish your sentence. You blink, brows furrowing slightly. "I thought—I didn't want them to smell different. I missed you. When they smelled like you, I could pretend you were still here."
You tilt your head slightly, letting out a puff of air as you give him a small smile. "Oh, Jacaerys."
He shrinks beneath the tenderness in your voice, cheeks red, suddenly looking embarrassed. "I know it's silly."
"It's not silly."
"I just missed you," he says again quietly, bottom lip trembling again. You reach up and cup his cheek again, your thumb brushing beneath his eye. "I missed you a lot, muña."
"You should have written to me," you tell him softly.
His eyes widen. "I wanted to," he insists again. "I really did."
"What stopped you?" you press, raising your eyebrows.
"I told you," he says with a pout, gaze averting to the side. "I didn't know what to say."
"You could have said anything, mandianna," you answer, pinching his cheek enough to watch it redden, laughing when he squeals. "I would have been happy to hear from you even if you were just complaining about Lucerys stealing your honeycakes."
"He stole them all the time!" Jacaerys says furiously. "And mother didn't do anything about it!"
"How dare she?" you gasp with mock offense.
"I was so angry!" he scowls, puffing out his little cheeks. Then he deflates and looks away. "I thought if I wrote the wrong thing, maybe you would stay away longer, so I just… I talked to your room instead."
You give him a bemused smile. "You spoke to my room?"
He nods once. "I told stuffed Zuzu what happened every day the same way I would tell you, but it wasn't the same," he says quietly. He lifts his gaze to yours, and his eyes are shiny again, but you can tell that he is trying his best not to cry from the way his throat bobs, and he chews at the inside of his cheek. His voice breaks in a way that makes you sick as he holds your hands tightly and whispers, "Please don't leave again. Please, muña."
"I won't," you promise, squeezing his hands gently. "Never again."
"You promise?" he asks skeptically, nails digging deep into your skin.
"I promise."
—————————
JACAERYS, 8; READER, 13; 118 AC
"He's so tiny," you say softly as you lounge with Rhaenyra in her chambers. Jacaerys and Lucerys are in the training yard—you were supposed to go with them, because Jacaerys never likes training with Ser Criston without you there to watch, but the birth was harder on your sister than she is willing to admit, and someone needs to look over her. "Tinier than Jacaerys and Lucerys were."
You poke at Joffrey's forehead, delighted when the boy gurgles and reaches for your finger, and Rhaenyra lets out a soft laugh, a fond expression on her face as she looks at the two of you lying in bed, resting back on the settee a few feet away. You had tried to insist that she should lie down, but she was quite adamant against it, and you are not fond of fighting with her when she struggles to keep herself upright.
"As much as I do adore the way you look after me, sweet sister, I am sure you have more important things to be doing. Were you not meant to sit with our father in the small council today?" Rhaenyra asks with a tired smile, pretending she is not in pain as she adjusts her legs.
You hate the way she winces every time she shifts.
You are certain this is Queen Alicent's fault—you had been furious when you passed Laenor and the boys on the way to her apartments, and he told you that the queen had called Rhaenyra to her chambers immediately after the birth, insisting upon seeing the babe before your sister had even been given the chance to rest. She had walked, bleeding and trembling, barely able to stand after the labor but forced to climb the winding stairs from her own apartments with a newborn in her arms, crossing the holdfast while every servant and noble stopped to stare at the blood trailing after her.
You had not been there—you had been in the sky for hours with Zūgaxes, oblivious even to the fact that Rhaenyra had entered her labors—but you found her immediately afterward. Still, she had smiled at you, even as her face had gone pale with exhaustion, and she leaned too heavily against Laenor when she thought no one was looking.
Maester Gerardys had ordered her to remain in bed for several days, but everyone was more concerned with tiny Joffrey, who was born too small for their liking, so no one noticed that your sister was already wandering around after an hour.
Except you, of course.
"All of your attendants and the maestars are focused on Joffrey," you say simply, sniffing as you raise your chin. "Somebody has to attend to you."
You do not notice the way Rhaenyra's expression changes at your words, snatching away the fluff he tries to stuff in his mouth. You stare down at the boy, a conflicted feeling tugging at your chest. You love Rhaenyra's boys—you do, but…
"Mandia," you say quietly after a moment, shoulders a bit hunched as you glance over at Rhaenyra, who tilts her head to the side curiously. You know that all women are meant to bear their husbands sons—you perhaps, more than anyone, so that the blood of Old Valyria might be passed on—but… "I do not think I should like to have children of my own."
Rhaenyra hums. "I used to think so too, did you know?" she tells you, and you look up, blinking at her in surprise. She nods with a small smile when she sees your surprise. "I was terrified when I found out I was with child the first time. I never pictured myself as a mother."
"Really?"
"Really."
You frown. "But you're…" You glance down at the little bundle wriggling happily in the bed next to you. "… You're perfect at it."
Rhaenyra laughs. "I assure you, I am not," she says with a smile. "I have made more mistakes than I can count."
You sniff. "I have never seen one."
"You had never seen a pufferfish until two weeks ago—does that mean they do not exist?" she teases, reminding you of the argument you got into with Laenor a few weeks ago because he insisted there was a type of fish covered in spikes and you refused to believe him until he dragged you out to sea to show you. Your face feels hot as you look away. "As I thought."
"Still," you say primly, crossing your arms and looking away.
"What made you think of this, sweet girl?" Rhaenyra asks, and you know she wishes to cross the room to brush your hair out of your face, but you scowl at her the moment she starts to move, and she sighs, holding her hands up in defeat as she lies back against the settee. "Did my boys horrify you so much they scared you off children altogether?"
She is teasing, but you frown anyway.
You say firmly, "No. I love your boys. In fact, I do not think I need children of my own when I already have two—three, now—little boys who insist on occupying all my time."
Rhaenyra laughs, tilting her head back. For the first time since you arrived in her chambers, she looks genuinely happy. She says, "Jacaerys would be terribly offended to hear himself counted alongside his brothers."
You scoff. "He ought not be. He is the worst offender," you tell her fiercely, smiling. "He sneaks into my apartments almost every night, steals the snacks I go through the effort of stealing from the kitchen, and has somehow convinced himself that half of my wardrobe belongs to him. I found my favorite cloak in his chambers the other day—I had been looking for it for weeks, mandia."
Rhaenyra's shoulders are shaking, though you think they ought not be because it is not funny in the slightest.
"Oh, hāedar, you misunderstand," she manages between laughs, wiping at the corner of her eye. "He would be offended because you called them your little boys as well. He gets rather cross whenever he's reminded that he must share you with his brothers."
You squint. Last week, Lucerys had fallen asleep against your shoulder while you read aloud in the gardens, and Jacaerys had spent the better part of an hour attempting to wedge himself between the two of you under increasingly flimsy pretenses until you had finally sighed and let him climb into your lap as well.
"You may be right," you concede at last, "but I digress."
"What made you think of this then, if not for my boys?" Rhaenyra asks again, determined to get to the bottom of the issue.
Your shoulders hunch slightly. You busy yourself with fixing the blanket wrapped around Joffrey as you try to figure out how to phrase what you want to say.
"The Queen said something to me this morning," you finally admit. "It is why I've spent the whole day flying."
Rhaenyra's expression shifts instantly, fondness hardening and lips pressed together. "What did she say to you?"
"She said she was glad to hear that I've flowered… I did not tell her, I assume one of the servants must have," you say quietly, playing with your own fingers, unable to lift your gaze to meet hers. "She said that she would speak to the king about—matches."
Flowering means womanhood, and womanhood means marriage, and marriage means children.
Rhaenyra exhales hard through her nose, jaw tightening, and you feel guilty instantly. Your sister has just given birth. She has just given birth and was forced to cross the Keep because Queen Alicent demanded to see the babe, and now you are throwing more issues at her as if she isn't already faced with enough.
"Mandia, I—"
"I will speak to our father, hāedar," Rhaenyra says before you can say anything else, gaze lifting to meet yours. She gives you that familiar, reassuring smile that always puts your nerves at ease. "Do not fret. Your elder sister will handle everything. I will not see you forced to do anything you displease."
You know that she means it. If Rhaenyra said she would move the heavens for you, she would spend every waking second ensuring that it happens. Even so…
"I do not wish to be a burden. I—I know it is a woman's duty to wed and bear children, but I—"
"You are not a burden, hāedar. How many times must I remind you?" Rhaenyra tells you with a soft smile. "Be at ease. I shall speak to father. I—"
The door to Rhaenyra's chambers opens with a loud bang, and both of you startle, gaze lifting just as Ser Harwin enters the room. Rhaenyra blinks once and gives the man a questioning look, and you tilt your head to the side.
"Forgive me, princesses," the man says, dark curls framing his face as he looks between the two of you. His gaze settles on you. "The dragonkeepers sent for you, princess. Zūgaxes is—agitated."
—————————
"Are you upset with me?"
You exhale as Jacaerys barges into your chambers later that night, brows furrowed indignantly, as though to mask the anxiety plain in the way he otherwise holds himself. Your gaze slips down to the way his fingers tremble at his sides and his shoulders are too stiff, and Jacaerys instantly shrinks, hiding his hands and standing straighter.
You glance away, lips pressed together, fingers thrumming against your desk.
"'I waited for you in the garden, but you didn't come," Jacaerys continues, voice pitching in accusation as he comes closer to you. "I waited in the library, but you didn't come. And then I thought you'd definitely come for supper, but you didn't. Where were you?"
"I was busy, Jacaerys," you say, clipped, and Jacaerys freezes a few feet away. You stop yourself from glancing at him over your shoulder because you know the moment you see his bottom lip wobbling, your anger will start draining away. "Perhaps you would be better suited attending etiquette lessons with Septa Elaine. You have clearly missed far too many."
Jacaerys does not answer for a long moment. He asks hesitantly, "What does that mean?"
"What that means, Jacaerys," you hiss, whipping around to look at him. He flinches backward, but you barrel on anyway. "is that I found my half-brother crying in the dragonpit after nearly being burnt alive by my dragon because you thought it would be a good idea to taunt him with a pig."
Jacaerys stares at you for a moment uncertainly, shoulders hunching inward as though to make himself small. He has been mad at you countless times before. If he feels as though you're paying more attention to Lucerys, he will give you the cold shoulder all evening, and if you dare to even hint at missing story time, he'll insist he never wants to speak to you again, then will appear in your chambers after supper, asking you to read to him with the sweetest smile.
You have never been angry at him before.
"It was just a joke," he whispers, voice small. "I didn't—"
"You didn't what?" you interrupt. "You didn't mean it? Is that it?"
Distantly, you know you should not yell at him like this.
He is only a boy—you're almost tall enough to reach your sister's shoulders now and still growing at that, but Jacaerys hardly reaches your chest, cheeks still chubby with fat, giggling at every unfunny joke that Laenor makes. Aegon is likely the one at fault for the prank, miserable wretch, but Jacaerys—
Jacaerys should know better.
Jacaerys knows, as you do, what it's like to be ostracized by the court for something out of his control. Aemond is not your favorite sibling—he is too uptight, clings to his mother so much that it makes you roll your eyes—but to mock him for not having a dragon?
You yourself did not have Zūgaxes until your fifth nameday. Your cradle egg did not hatch, and Dreamfyre, Vermithor, and Silverwing had all rejected you. Zūgaxes had been nigh wild after the years he spent terrorizing the Riverlands following Princess Daenerys's death to the Shivers in 60 AC, having hatched moments before the princess took her last breath. The newborn dragon fled in the chaos after losing the bond as soon as it had formed, and if he had not come to you by chance while you were flying with Rhaenyra, you might be in the same position as Aemond is now.
"Aegon said it would be funny," Jacaerys whispers, bottom lip wobbling. "It was a joke."
"Aegon says a lot of things," you hiss. "He is a fool. If he told you to jump from Maegor's Holdfast, would you do it?"
Jacaerys's eyes drop to the floor. He says quietly, "No."
"You know what it is like to have people laugh and whisper," you continue furiously. "You know it feels like to have people smile to your face and question whether you belong the moment you leave the room. You cry to me because they stare at your hair and your eyes, and you cry to me when people mention that you do not look like Ser Laenor. You know those are not jokes."
Jacaerys flinches. "Muña—"
"No," you snap. "Do you think your uncle feels any different when the whole keep laughs at him for not having a dragon?"
"I'm sorry—"
"Your mother will be queen one day, Jacaerys, and you will be king after her," you interrupt. "Everything you do matters. Every laugh and every foolish prank—every time someone sees you, they are deciding what sort of man you might become."
"I didn't mean it—"
"The lords do not whisper about Aegon the same way they whisper at you," you continue harshly, kneeling in front of him and grabbing his shoulders. He is crying now, fat tears rolling over his chubby cheeks, chest rising and falling rapidly as he tries not to sob. "They already question you, Jacaerys, and it will not stop. Every action you take makes them wonder whether or not you deserve the throne your mother will leave you. They are waiting for you to fail, Jacaerys, they—"
You cut yourself off when Jacaerys chokes on a sob, the sound rips through your anger as though someone had plunged a knife straight into it. His little shoulders shake beneath your hands. He is trying so desperately not to cry that it hurts to watch, biting down on his lip so hard you worry he might draw blood.
What are you doing?
"I'm sorry," he whispers again, tears falling freely now. "I'm trying to be good. I am. I didn't think."
Good will not be enough, you think, but do not say, fighting a sob of your own as you pull Jacaerys forward into your arms, sitting back on the floor and letting him clamber into your lap. He buries his face in the crook of your neck, muffling his cries into your skin.
Good will never be enough. You have watched the court use every careless word he has ever spoken as proof that he is unworthy. You have watched them turn his hair, eyes, and face into evidence against him. They will not stop because he grows older—if anything, they will only become crueler and louder.
And you fear one day that words will turn to swords.
You see the glances exchanged between the Queen and her allies, how every feast ends with another whispered slight and word disguised as courtesy. One day, your father will die, and everything held together by his presence will begin to crack.
Your sister will be queen, Jacaerys will be heir, and there are already too many people who have decided they will never accept either of them.
You are scared.
Perhaps you are imagining monsters where none exist—you have spent years watching nobles smile with their mouths and sneer with their haves, and it has made you cynical. You hope one day the two of you will laugh about how frightened you had been over nothing, but until that day comes, the fear remains.
You tighten your arms around Jacaerys until he lets out a tiny squeak of protest. Then he melts into you, arms looped around your shoulders, sniffling into the wet spot at your neck.
"I do not want you to grow up," you whisper before you can stop yourself.
"Why?" Jacaerys murmurs.
Your eyes slide shut. Because the older he gets, the fewer days remain where the greatest thing you have to worry about is a prank gone too far. You smooth a hand through his curls and press another kiss against his temple.
Instead, you say, "Because I like you just as you are."
He giggles. "I still want to grow up."
"Traitor," you tease, brushing your fingers through his hair as he snuggles into you.
"I want to be brave, and I want to ride Vermax all by myself, and I want to protect mother, and Luke, and Joffrey, and—" He pulls back to look at you, big brown eyes still watery. "—and you, muña."
You smile at him, your own eyes stinging with tears. "I'm the one who protects you, silly boy."
Jacaerys shakes his head so vigorously that his curls bounce. "Not forever," he claims. "One day I'll be big and grown, and I'll have a sword, and Vermax will be bigger than Zuzu, and I'll be the one to protect you."
You exhale softly through your nose, swallowing the lump that forms in your throat. He lifts his tiny hands to your cheeks, squeezing hard the way you always do to him when he is sad, then he leans forward until your foreheads touch.
"Don't be scared, muña. I'll be a good king," he tells you simply. "I'll be kind. I won't do things anymore just because Aegon tells me to."
"I know you will, mandianna," you murmur. "I know."
He bites his lip, twisting nervously in your lap. "Are you still mad at me?" You pull back just enough to look at him properly. His eyes are swollen from crying, cheeks blotchy and damp, fingers clinging to you. He whispers, "I want you to be proud of me."
You lift your hands to cradle his cheeks and say firmly, "I'm always proud of you, Jacaerys. Always. I'm sorry if I was cruel—I was only scared."
Jacaerys wrinkles his nose.
"Then don't be scared, muña," he says firmly. "I'll make sure you never have to be."
—————————
You should have known things would never be so easy.
"Where are my trunks?" you ask as you make your way to where Rhaenyra and the boys are getting ready to leave for Dragonstone. Jacaerys's face lights up from a glum frown when he sees you, and you toss him a wink that he giggles at. You look back up at your sister and say, "I told my handmaidens to make sure they were brought down."
Rhaenyra's brows furrow. "They are coming, perhaps?" she offers, making her way toward you to ghost her lips against your cheeks in greeting. "We are not in a rush, hāedar, do not fret."
But there is a tightness in your chest that unsettles you. Something has been off the past few days—you know it. The Queen always has that small, knowing smile on her face, and your father seemed inordinately pleased with himself. You had thought, maybe, the Queen was just pettily satisfied that Ser Harwin was being sent away and your father was just happy having his third grandson, but there was something—something off-putting that could not let you rest.
"Mandia," you whisper, clutching the sleeve of her gown. Your fingers are shaking. Rhaenyra looks down at your hands, alarmed. "I don't…"
"There you are! To think it would be so difficult to find my own daughter for a conversation," you hear your father say from the top of the steps leading into Maegor's Holdfast.
King Viserys leans on his cane as he makes his way down the steps toward you—Rhaenyra blinks in confusion, lips parting but words escaping them as she moves forward to greet him.
He looks worse, you think absently. Even just walking down the stairs is an effort, his face pale with exertion, sweat beading at his temples. Heaviness weighs on your chest—grief, maybe, but what is there to grieve about a man who has spent most of your life incapable of looking you in the eye?
"Father," Rhaenyra greets with a sad smile. "You did not have to come down to bid us goodbye. You should be resting."
"Nonsense," your father dismisses, squeezing her hand. The Queen Alicent and your half-brother, Aegon, follow behind your father. She looks too pleased with herself still—your heart drops to your stomach. "But it is not the only reason I have come. My dear—" King Viserys turns to look at you, eyes upturned. You think it is the first time he has ever looked you in the eye. "—I would like for you to stay behind."
He reaches out to take your hands in his, passing his cane to a nearby attendant. They are clammy and unfamiliar; you are not sure if you are breathing.
Somewhere behind you, you hear Jacaerys inhale sharply, and to your side, Rhaenyra makes an audible noise, confused.
"Father," she starts, a bemused smile on her face, "I—"
"Alicent—she had the most wonderful idea to unite both sides of the family," King Viserys continues with a breathless smile, squeezing your hands. Behind him, Aegon, who had been bored and looked as though he wished to be anywhere else, starts to squint, realizing something might be wrong. Alarm hits him slower than it has hit you. He looks at you questioningly, but you cannot even bring yourself to meet his gaze. "It is high time we put these petty squabbles behind us, don't you think?"
You cannot feel your fingers.
Your pulse pounds so violently in your ears that you can almost not even hear your father over it. Across the city, you hear Zūgaxes let out a screech, feeling your fear as his own.
"Father," Rhaenyra starts to say, voice riddled with disbelief. "You cannot mean—"
"You and Aegon shall wed, my dear," King Viserys says, squeezing your hands as though this is news that shall delight you. "You are both of age. A marriage between the two of you shall bind the family once and for all. Alicent proposed it only a few days ago—I confess, I do not know why I had not thought of it sooner."
"What?" Aegon blurts out, eyes wide. "Me?"
"Quiet, Aegon," Queen Alicent says sharply, and Aegon silences immediately, gaze darting over to you as though you have any means of fixing this. "It is a fine match."
"A fine match?" Rhaenyra demands, arm extending outward to push you behind her, stepping between you and your father. "They are children. You cannot be serious, father."
Aegon stares at you, and you stare at him.
He is only twelve; you are only thirteen.
You can see the fear you feel reflected in his eyes.
"Alicent tells me that she has bled," Viserys dismisses. You knew it—you knew something was wrong, you knew to be scared. "She is a woman grown, Rhaenyra."
"She is thirteen," Rhaenyra hisses. "Aegon is twelve."
"The King has already made his decision, Rhaenyra," Queen Alicent says coolly. "Would you question it?"
Rhaenyra stares at her in disbelief, a scoff slipping from her lips. She asks quietly, "How could you do this?"
For a moment, something flickers across the Queen's face—her lips become pinched, her gaze flits to the side—guilt? It couldn't be—Alicent is cold and cruel, stone made flesh, she has always hated you and your sister. You must be mistaken.
"Was it not you who offered marriage between your son, Jacaerys, and my daughter, Helaena?" the Queen asks. You blink, unsure if you heard her properly. "Let us bind our families through marriage, as you once proposed yourself."
Your head snaps toward Rhaenyra, appalled. She was trying to marry Jacaerys off? Rhaenyra does not meet your gaze, so you know it is true.
"It is not the same," Rhaenyra says, shaking her head, stepping forward again. She turns to your father, expression clearing of anger and disdain as she gives him a more pleading look. "Father, please. She has only just flowered—she has hardly had a chance to understand what that means. You cannot mean to—"
"Enough, Rhaenyra," King Viserys interrupts, exhausted. He looks as though he's aged decades in a matter of minutes. Did he really expect everyone to be made happy by this news? "I have made my decision."
The pavilion goes quiet, and you cannot breathe. This cannot be happening. It is—it is not possible. You are not meant to marry Aegon, of all people. You would rather anyone else. You would rather take the vows and become a septa. Your gaze lifts to meet Rhaenyra's, but there is a terribly defeated expression on her face—one that you have never seen before. You feel nauseous, bile rising in your throat, lightness in your head.
"What does that mean?" Jacaerys finally asks, breaking the silence somewhere behind you. "What does that mean? Muña is still coming with us, isn't she?"
"Jacaerys," Rhaenyra begins quietly, voice low and unsteady, because if the king puts his foot down, there is nothing she can do. She looks at both of you desperately, because for the first time in her life, your sister does not know what to say. "I—"
"She promised," Jacaerys interrupts, voice becoming a bit shrill—understanding enough from Rhaenyra's tone to know that you will not be coming with him. That you will be breaking the promise you made to him not two years ago. He turns his gaze onto you, eyes blown wide with anxiety. "You promised, you—"
"Jacaerys," you say, barely able to keep your voice steady as you make your way over to him and kneel in front of him. His eyes well with unshed tears, and you lift one hand to his face, brushing your thumb beneath his eye to catch the tears before they fall. You lower your voice, speaking just to him as you say quietly, "Do not let them see you cry. You are a prince of the realm, your mother's heir. You must be brave, remember?"
Jacaerys's bottom lip wobbles as he nods.
"I will not be across the sea this time, mandianna—only the bay. Vermax is growing quickly. You will be able to visit as frequently as you please," you soothe, brushing his curls from his forehead, "and I will be able to come to you."
"But—"
"There are no buts, mandianna," you say softly, and Jacaerys inhales sharply, fighting a sob. "We all have our roles to play. You will be king one day, your duty is to the realm, and mine—" Your voice threatens to crack, before it can, you clear your throat and force a small smile. If you start crying, so will Jacaerys, and he needs to be strong now more than ever. "—and mine is to a husband. I must stay at his side."
"Then I will be your husband, muña," Jacaerys says desperately, fingers clinging to your sleeve. "You can come with us then. You won't have to stay here."
You exhale through your nose, pulling Jacaerys closer so that you can press your lips to his temple, rubbing easy circles against his upper back. He flings his arms around your shoulders and buries his face into your hair to hide his sniffles.
"That is not how it works, Jacaerys," you tell him quietly. His shoulders are trembling, small whimpers in the back of his throat as he tries not to cry. You hold him a bit tighter. "The king has made his decision."
"It's not fair," he sniffles. "You're my muña. Why does Aegon get to have you? He doesn't even want to marry you. I want to marry you."
You laugh despite yourself, because Jacaerys is too young to know what marriage entails, but he says it with the conviction of someone who has never been more certain of anything in his life. You press your lips to his hair before you pull back just enough to look at him. You find him glaring over your shoulder at Aegon with all the ferocity he can muster with shiny eyes and wobbly lips.
Aegon has gone pale, but you do not think it's because of Jacaerys's righteous fury.
"I don't think…" Aegon begins awkwardly, scratching the back of his neck. "I mean, I never—"
"Quiet, Aegon," Alicent says again sharply, and he falls silently immediately, shoulders slumping. She lifts her gaze to Rhaenyra, giving her a curve of the lips that doesn't reach her eyes. "Well, you and yours had best get going. Safe travels, Rhaenyra."
Rhaenyra scoffs and turns on her heel, but Jacaerys's grip on you tightens at the prospect of leaving.
"He doesn't even know your favorite story," he says desperately, as though it might change something, "or that you don't like onions, or that you can only eat two honey cakes before you start feeling sick, or that you can only sleep if there's a candle going. It's not fair. He doesn't know anything. He'll never take care of you."
"Jacaerys—"
"But I can!" he insists, wiping angrily at his cheeks. "I already do. I make sure you eat when you forget, and I bring your favorite cloak when you're cold, and I tell the servants not to wake you if you've fallen asleep reading. I know how."
"Jacaerys, come here," Rhaenyra says quietly, but Jacaerys only clings more desperately, nails digging into your skin. "Jace—"
You look up at your sister. There are tears in her eyes now too, though she does not let them fall. She gives you the smallest nod, an apology, a goodbye, and a promise wrapped into one gesture. This would not be the end of this—she will get the boys settled at Dragonstone, and she will return for you.
"Mandianna," you murmur, cupping Jacaerys's damp face between your hands. "You must go with your mother." You press a kiss to his forehead, then another to each cheek. "Look after Luke and Joffrey, and mind your mother—she is terribly stubborn and will forget to rest if no one reminds her."
Jacaerys fights another sob and nods, but Rhaenyra successfully pulls him away this time. She gathers him into her arms, and he clutches at her desperately, still looking at you over her shoulder.
"I'll come back for you," he promises. "I promise, muña! I do!"
You smile because he needs you to, even as your vision blurs—luckily, he is too far to see the unshed tears.
"I know you will, Jacaerys," you tell him. "I'll be waiting."
summary: you're wed to ser gwayne hightower in one last desperate attempt to unite the realm; but when the war tears the two of you apart, you're taken prisoner by his cousin, lord ormund hightower, where the line between duty and desire begins to blur. (12k)
contents: targ!reader (no physical descriptions), love triangle, enemies to lovers, angst, hurt/comfort, forbidden love, infidelity, canon divergence, cw for brief mentions of attempted assault and smut 18+ (MDNI): fem receiving oral, unprotected sex, ormund has a scent kink
( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )
i. DUTY & HONOR
Your last name was, perhaps, your greatest burden. It was the very walls of your prison; the unseen chain cinched perpetually around your throat. You had inherited the dragon’s blood, it seems, but not the dragon’s freedom — and when Rhaenyra’s fleet sailed across the Narrow Sea to wage war over a throne of swords, it forgot to take you with it. The only home you’d ever known was soon filled with ghosts donned in Hightower green and whispers of your leaving.
You were going to die here. That is a truth you learned long ago. Your only wish was that they’d hurry up and get it over with.
They gave you a husband instead.
Your marriage to Ser Gwayne Hightower was heralded as an act of wisdom, the proof that wounds carved by old grievances could yet be stitched together, with silk ribbons tied around the wrists and a few spoken vows declared before the Sept. It was to be the very bridge that united the green and black. But the bridge burned anyway, and left the two of you behind.
“They wed us to prevent a war that had already begun,” you’d scoffed, already deep into your cups at the feasting table, when Maester Orwyle called the fight to come inevitable.
“No…” Gwayne hummed from beside you, still perfectly temperate, though his blue eyes were heavy with a burden too old for a man of his years. “They wed us so that, when the histories of this moment are written, someone might say that they tried.”
You’d laughed then, loud enough to gain the attention of the rest of the courtiers at the long table — because Ser Gwayne was not entirely wrong, to be sure, but he was far too generous for his own good; generous enough to believe that the effort of your marriage actually meant something in the grand scheme of things.
Gwayne Hightower was a sensible man. He was not outwardly affectionate, maybe, but he was no less kind. There was no great love in your union — not like all the songs and fairytales insist, at least — but there was safety. Security. Stability. His presence often found you like the thick walls of an ancient keep, steadfast against the howling winds of a summer storm. You would find no certainty of your future in war, but being Gwayne’s wife meant, at the very least, that you were still alive today.
That unsaid assurance is perhaps a greater gift than any truly loving marriage could’ve been for you. And, perhaps, it was with that unsaid assurance that you came to admire him, without ever realizing you were doing so — always searching for his face in crowds, waiting every night for the familiar sound of his footsteps to walk outside your chamber doors, constantly watching him from a distance (which has become a most embarrassing habit of yours).
You find him now on the western balcony overlooking Blackwater Bay, where the moon climbs high over shimmering midnight waters. The salty breeze mixes with the scent of damp stone and dying fires from the lantern light glittering in the city below. Gwayne stands alone with his forearms propped on the pale stone balustrade, having exchanged his armor for a forest-green doublet embroidered with winding gold vines. The fading torchlights gild his silken auburn hair, stirred loose by the sea breeze.
You linger just beneath the archway, hidden in the place where the torchlight turns to shadow, studying the slope of his strong shoulders and how they rise and fall with each breath. He looks lonely; lonely enough for your chest to tighten with the want to close the distance between you and slip in beside him. But your feet refuse to move. And whatever affection was warming in your chest before pierces through you like a sword.
“You’re staring.” The suddenness of his voice startles you.
“…You’re supposed to be watching the sea,” you respond, half-shy. He doesn’t look back at you when you emerge finally from the shadows; slippers scuffing the cobblestones, black skirts fluttering at your feet.
“I was,” Gwayne nods.
“Then how could you possibly notice I was standing there?”
He turns to face you then, as you settle on the balcony just beside him, keeping a few feet of careful distance between you like you always did — as if, in your union, an invisible line had been wedged between you and could not be crossed.
The corner of his mouth lifts slowly into a crooked smile. “Because I notice everything about you,” he answers like it’s simple, like he hadn’t just stolen the breath from your lungs.
Heat crawls up the low neckline of your dress, speckling across your cheeks and the very tip of your ears. You turn away, face screwed in a feigned disgust, and busy your hands with an imaginary wrinkle on your sleeve.
“That,” you murmur. “Is a terrifying thought.”
“Well, it ought to terrify you,” Gwayne quips knowingly, bending softly at the waist to fold his arms along the stone railing. “I’ve seen the way you steal the candied slices off of all your lemon cakes just to leave the sponge untouched, you know? Like an utter madwoman.”
“Well…” you huff, face flaring hot at the acknowledgment of being so openly seen by another. “It seems I made the dreadful mistake of marrying the observant man in the Seven Kingdoms.”
“And here I thought that distinction belonged to my cousin,” Gwayne jokes lowly, brows raised to his hairline. “I shall write to Lord Ormund at once and relieve him of the title.”
You laugh quietly through your nose and turn away again. Silence settles comfortably over you once more, filled only by the distant clanging of metal as guards change their shift and the far-off crowing of a caged raven. The night feels impossibly dark, emptier than usual. It feels like an omen of sorts.
“It grows worse, does it not?” you wonder aloud through the breath that catches in your chest, as if you were half scared to even ask.
Gwayne’s thin smile slowly fades. His adam’s apple bobs in his throat. “Aye,” he nods. “I fear it does.”
“I keep… hoping that…” You swallow around the invisible hand tightening around your throat. “That they’ll remember I am your wife before they remember whose blood I carry. I feel it’s the only reason they’ve yet to take my head.”
“Of course, they remember,” he assures you.
“It feels less and less so these days.”
“They’re only frightened—”
“I’m frightened,” you remind him.
The admission lingers between you like the salt water scent hanging in the air. Gwayne studies you for a long moment — he sees the flicker of sincerity flashing across your face right before you turn away from him again, and the way your jaw clenches a second later in regret of saying the words aloud.
He leans an elbow along the parapet to face you fully. And, as if to soothe you, he asks, “If there were no war… No thrones, no dragons—”
“No Hightowers?” you add.
“—If the Stranger himself appeared before you now and offered you another life,” the auburn-haired man continues with a hint of a smile gracing his lips. “What would you do?”
You ponder the question for a moment, eyes zeroed on the navy black horizon ahead as your fingers fidget on the stony barricade. “I should like a farm,” you answer, mouth twitching into an absentminded grin. “Somewhere far away from here. So I could raise chickens—”
“Chickens?” he scoffs a dry laugh, then softens a second later at the sincere look you give him. He swallows hard and nods supportively. “Most ladies would’ve said children, is all…”
“Well, I am not most ladies…” you tell him. “I would have a field of apple trees, and a hundred dogs to protect all my chickens and horses and fluffy cows— you know, the ones that live down in the Reach?”
“Well…” Gwayne croons. “You’ve certainly thought about this, haven’t you?”
“Every day,” you confess. The honesty in your answer strikes him down like a blade; the sorrowful look that heavies your face even more so. The reality of your situation returns to you then, settling over you like gravity’s inevitable weight. You swallow hard before you confess, “I fear they’ll kill me if matters grow worse at Dragonstone.”
“They won’t.”
“You cannot know that.”
“I do,” Gwayne assures you and takes a slow step closer, until the inherent warmth of his skin dulls the bite of the bitter sea wind. He ducks his chin to his chest to chase your gaze, peering down at you with glittering blue eyes. “I swore a vow before gods and men, did I not?”
“So do most men—”
“Well, I am not most men,” he lilts with an air of amusement hanging on the edge of his words. “I actually meant my vows.”
Your eyes soften as they search his face, looking for any hint of hesitation or doubt in his handsome features. You find no uncertainty there; just the maddening, immovable confidence that seems to be stitched into the very fiber of his making.
“If this castle should fall tomorrow…” you whisper to him, eyes narrowing in skepticism. “Or if your family decides that I have become too great a burden to keep here… What happens then?”
“Then I shall stand in the doorway,” he shrugs.
A shocked laugh sputters from your mouth at his boyish conviction. “And if they mean to come through it?”
“Then…” His lips jut softly. “They shall first have to make a corpse of me.”
“You are a valiant knight, Ser Gwayne, but you cannot fight an entire army.”
“Perhaps not,” he replies with a sad sort of smile. “But armies are made of men. And every man who wishes to reach you will first have to face me... As I said… I meant my vows.”
Something in his words strikes a deep sadness within you. No one had ever spoken of your being like it possessed any value worth defending, and now the words come from the very family you were meant to despise.
But even still, for the first time since the ravens brought the tidings of war and the dragons took wing against dragon, you believed him. You believed that, should the whole realm come crashing down around you, Ser Gwayne would likely be the only one left standing at your side when the last stone fell.
And, gods, how stupid you were to do so.
ii. OATHS & ASHES
The news of your husband’s leaving came not from your husband himself.
It came, rather, in whispers at court, slithering through the Red Keep like snakes beneath rushes — passing from Gold Cloak to stable boy to serving girl to scullion. “They say Ser Criston and his knights are marching for Harrenhal on the morrow,” says a thick-accented handmaiden. “Lord Hand means to smoke Daemon from the castle. It’ll be Prince Aemond’s before the next moon, no doubt.”
Your stomach dropped so harshly at the whispers that you nearly retched upon the marble. It was not Gwayne’s leaving that frightened you so, but rather what his absence would represent — he might as well throw you to the hounds himself before he goes, because you were as good as dead with him gone.
Your slippers strike the ancient stone in a frantic rhythm as you turn on your heel to storm back the way you came. The harsh echo of the soles catches the attention of surrounding servants, who flatten themselves against the walls as you hurry suddenly past. Your heartbeat pounds like thunder in your ears, far louder than the bells of the Great Sept that toll the evening hour — the combination of both feels like an ominous funeral knell.
You rush up the winding stone staircase with your crimson skirts gathering in your fists. Gwayne’s chambers sit directly opposite yours, and you find the heavy wooden door is cracked ajar. The hinges screechbeneath your palm when you shove it the rest of the way open without warning. The sight you find on the other side hollows you from the inside out — a travel satchel, laid open along the emerald sheets. Inside, a whetstone, riding gloves, a leather-bound prayer book, a sword belt, a flask.
The careful order of it all feels almost cruel. Chaos, at the very least, would suggest some air of hesitation from the man; a faint pause at leaving you behind. This, however, feels far too final.
Gwayne stands at the head of the bed with his back facing you. His pale hands work with a quiet precision to roll a Hightower-green cloak into his bag. He did not need to turn at the sudden intrusion. He learned the sound of your footsteps long ago.
“I wondered how long it might take,” the man croons distantly. The calmness of his voice, the indifference, sets you entirely aflame.
“Why would you not tell me?” you bite in response.
Gwayne glances over his shoulder at you then. The flickering candlelight turns his hair a more golden shade of Hightower-red, and carves the soft edges of his face out in shadow. He was still every inch the striking knight that the whispers purported him to be — broad as an oak tree, handsome as a saint carved into an altar — but there’s a foreign weariness etched into his features now. It darkens the skin beneath his eyes, turns his gaze a duller shade of icy blue.
“Well, I was going to, of course.”
“When?” The sharpness in your voice could draw blood.
“…Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Your laugh splinters the otherwise silent room, sharper than broken glass. You shut the door behind you with an aggressive hand and close the distance between you, dress skirts billowing wildly at your ankles. “When you ride at dawn? And you meant to tell me when your horses were already saddled?”
“Yes,” Gwayne sighs, lowering the folded doublet into its place. “I thought I might spare you one night’s grief—”
“You’re abandoning me,” you tell him then, as if to translate the man’s words back to himself. You linger at his side, eyes darting wildly over his profile when he fails to meet your gaze. “Just like all the rest of them. You do realize that, right?”
“The king has given orders—”
“Well, it wasn’t the king who stood beside me at Blackwater Bay not even a week ago, was it?” Your voice lowers into a faux-masculine tone, trying and failing to mock him. “If anyone comes for you, I shall stand in the doorway—”
Gwayne scoffs. “Surely, I do not sound like that.”
“—They shall first have to make a corpse of me.”
“Yes… I remember,” he answers through a slow huff of annoyance, stepping back from his travel bag to drag a pair of weary hands down his face. “I was— well into my cups by then, as you well know—”
“Oh, do not cheapen those words now,” you spit, shoving hard at his shoulder. Gwayne’s features twist in offense as his wide eyes glance down at the hand you’d pushed him with, though he doesn’t move an inch. “Don’t dishonor yourself with a coward’s excuse just to make up for the fact that you lied.”
Gwayne’s composure fractures at that. He had spent too much of his life trying to be a good knight, a good man — one that maybe his callous father could be proud of — so he refuses to stomach accusations of otherwise from you.
His icy blue eyes harden into a glacial sort of look, more hurt than truly angry. He lays his cloak into place to face you fully.
“Do you not see that I am leaving to keep the fight from coming here?”
“Do not you see that by leaving me here that I’m as good as dead?” you retort through a jaw clenched tight. “If you do not take me with you, then—”
“Of course I’m not taking you with me!” he scoffs with a crooked smile, like it’s funny to him. “You’d be dead before we made it to the God’s Eye—”
“And I will be dead before this war is won if you leave!” you shout, voice wet and fragile with the unshed tears burning the backs of your eyes. “The fight is already here! The people who wish me dead are in these walls! They pour my wine, they wash my hair, they cook my food, they bow when I walk by and whisper when my back is turned! And if you aren’t here, then…”
You trail off with a ragged breath. Your corset feels suddenly tight against your ribs. You choke back the sob that strangles your throat and blink rapidly to clear the haze of tears blurring at your waterline. You peer up at the man with the sternest gaze you can muster.
“I am… frightened,” you tell him, though your voice cracks into a fragile whisper halfway through.
The anger disappears from Gwayne’s face as quickly as it arrived. His shoulders deflate with a slow huff through his nose as he takes a slow step towards you. His hands release their clenched fists to reach hesitantly for your face. His palms are warm and softly calloused when they cup your cheeks, caressing you with a tenderness he hasn’t shown since your bedding ceremony six or more moons ago.
The quiet half-smile he gives you, then, is weighed down by a palpable sadness.
“To tell you the truth… I have never been more afraid than I am right now,” he confesses in a low murmur, swiping his thumb over the warm apple of your cheek. The softness in his voice threatens to undo you entirely.
“So then don’t go,” you plead in a small voice, grasping at the front of his emerald doublet until the golden vines wrinkle under your grip. “Please.”
“If Harrenhal remains in Rhaenyra’s hold, and if Daemon rallies the Riverland armies, then the war will come here,” Gwayne continues in a painfully steady voice. “I fear I don’t have a choice in the matter.”
“Everyone has a choice,” you tell him, filled with a girlish sort of rage once more. “But, I suppose you’ve already made yours.”
The man meets your scowl with a tired, slightly heartbroken smile. “Please do not make me spend my last night with my wife quarreling with her,” Gwayne jokes quietly, swiping an eyelash from your cheek with the pad of his thumb. “At least leave me with something to hold onto until my return.”
Your tight chest deflates with a slow sigh from your nose. The rage ebbs evenly into grief. “And what shall I have, hm? Considering tonight is very likely my last one alive and all…”
Gwayne laughs. “You are being… catastrophically dramatic.”
Your chest burns with a mixture of rage and desire. He could never possibly understand you, but somehow, he is the only one with the walls of the Keep who ever has. The contrast is dizzying.
“I hate you,” you hear yourself say.
“Perhaps...” Gwayne hums, warm breath fanning across your cheek. “But not nearly as much as you love me.”
Your first instinct is to strike him for the sarcasm in his words; your second is to weep at the truth of them. He kisses you before you can do either.
He ducks down to press his lips to yours in a tender kiss, a mere brushing of your lips. The last time he had done so was beneath the glowing candles of the Sept, following the declaration of your wedding vows. But that was an obligation, a political victory of sorts.
This kiss is far sweeter in comparison. You feel the man heavying against you as he falls deeper into your touch. He opens your mouth with his and flicks the pad of his tongue against yours, like velvet brushing velvet. Your hands tremble as they leave the chest of his doublet to rake through his auburn locks, like silk between your fingers. You sigh against his open mouth at the taste of him — like wine and mint and oranges — sweet enough to get drunk on.
It takes you a long moment to realize his hands have snaked around your waist accordingly. You don’t realize his deft fingers are loosening the tie in your corset until the discomfort in your ribs disappears entirely. Your body acts before your mind, and your arms slither from their sleeves to curl once more around Gwayne’s broad shoulders.
The man folds the top of your dress down until your bare chest is revealed to him. A grumbled moan sounds in the back of his throat as he pulls you back into him with two wide palms along your bare back, pressing your breasts flush against his chest. He thinks, if he concentrated hard enough, he could feel the steady thundering of your heart like this.
“Gwayne—” you whisper against his mouth when you feel something hardening against your hip. Your hands drop from his hair to slide between your bodies, headed for the tie in his trousers to release the stiffness growing there.
He twists you round in the meanwhile, shoes scuffing the cobbles, until the bend of your knees meets the edge of the mattress behind you. He lays you down without once taking his mouth off of yours, with one wide palm splayed along your ribcage and his other cradling the back of your neck.
He pulls off of you with a quiet smack to catch his breath. A small whimper sounds in the back of your throat when his warm body leaves yours, rising to reach down for your skirts. Your bare chest heaves as you sit up on your elbows to watch him fumble with your dress. “Gods above, how many skirts are you wearing?” you hear him complain under his breath. “I’ve faced hedge knights with fewer defenses than this.”
You giggle when he finally pushes the layers of your dress up to your hips. Your thighs spread on instinct, exposing yourself to him. Gwayne’s mouth waters at the sight of your silken folds, already glittering in anticipation. Your chest tightens when he falls to his knees before you.
“What are you doing?” you ask on bated breath.
Gwayne flashes you a love-drunk grin and a pair of glassy blue eyes. His warm palms smooth along the velvety skin of your inner thighs to spread them further. “Call it a knight’s act of service, shall we?” he quips.
His auburn head disappears beneath your bunched-up skirts a second later. Your face twists momentarily in confusion before you feel his tongue slotting in the silk folds of your cunt. He licks a fat stripe up the length of it, until his tongue finds something that makes your hips twitch despite yourself. His mouth closes around the sensitive button, suckling at it with a grumbled moan in the back of his throat.
Your head tips back at the feeling. Your lips part as if to moan, but the electric shock in the pit of your stomach knocks all the available air from your lungs. You feel him laughing against you when your thighs clench suddenly around his head, tighter than you realize.
Gwayne pulls off of you with a quick smacking sound. He wears your slick down to his chin as he flashes you a teasing, glassy-eyed look. “I’d quite like to keep my head, dear wife—”
You say nothing in response to his quip. You just dart a head to the crown of his skull and shove his face back between your thighs.
Gwayne complies without complaint, lapping at the honey you leak for him, until the wet sounds of his mouth fill the quiet chambers. You rock your hips against his face, bracing yourself with the auburn locks you clench in your fist.
His nose nudges the swollen bud that makes you keen, right before he takes it in his mouth again. Your skin buzzes at the foreign feeling.
“Gwayne—” you gasp. A tight feeling settles deep in your stomach, like a fraying knot about to snap. Your back arches off the mattress. Your hand tightens in his hair. Your features screw in a pain look, half-scared at the pleasure welling within you. “I can’t—”
“Mm…” he just keeps moaning against you, letting the vibrations deepen your pleasure. His wide hands smooth up and down your outer thighs when they tremble on either side of his head, clenching around him as your orgasm hits you with a pleasured whine. He laps up every ounce of honey you leak for him, and sighs hard through his nose at the salty-sweet taste of you.
Only when your legs grow finally lax around his jaw does he pull back from your thighs. A smile curls lazily at his rosier, more swollen mouth. The bottom half of his face glitters in the candlelight with a mixture of saliva and cum — you lift your head in time to watch him wipe his mouth with the back of his hand.
“If this truly is my final night alive…” you say through panted breaths, eyes still wide from the shock of your simmering pleasure. “I feel I could finally die a happy woman.”
“I’m glad I could be of service, princess…” Gwayne smiles lazily, grimacing slightly at the ache in his knees as he rises from the unforgiving cobbles. He leans down to lay his warmth back over you. You stop him with a firm hand on his chest.
“I want to be on top this time,” you confess in a breathless whisper, eyes darting back and forth between his.
Gwayne’s brows raise slowly in shock at your sudden display of dominance. The corner of his lip twitches into a smile the same way his cock twitches in his boxers. He nods until the words catch up to him. “As you wish…”
iii. CROWNS & CAGES
You did not weep when they came for you, scarcely a fortnight after your lord husband’s leaving.
Gwayne was gone by first light, perhaps already a league or more away before you stirred awake that morning to the chill of an empty bed. He parted with nothing but a folded scrap of parchment resting where his head had been the night before. In his scrawled handwriting, half-smudged from where his wrist had dragged the ink in haste, he wrote: “Write to me. Don’t die. I’ll build the form for you myself.”
You keep the note tucked safely inside the chest of your corset now, folded so many times that the edges have already begun to soften. You keep it close to your heart like a holy relic, or perhaps, a threat to whatever unlucky son of a bitch kills you first — something to discover on your corpse after they slit your throat, so they’ll know who to answer to upon your husband’s return.
Eventually, the servants ceased asking whether you needed anything, and all your meals came cold. Conversations ceased the moment you entered a room, and doors slammed shut before you could reach them. And then, when word spread that a wild dragon had taken wing not far from here, all eyes of suspicion turned to you — to whom a dragon had never belonged, though the blood in your veins wearied the courtiers all the same. Rhaenyra had already added three new riders to her fleet; she certainly did not need another.
You were no longer a bride, but a prisoner in pretty gowns — it was the Queen Dowager, and your sister by law, who confirmed as much to you.
“I had hoped…” Alicent started slowly, bathed half in sunshine and half in shadow from where she stood before the window in your quarters, watching the distant storm clouds blow in over Blackwater. “That I might never have to ask this of you.”
Her auburn curls swept over her pale shoulder when she turned to face you. Something heavy sat in her round green eyes, as if she wanted you to finish the rest of it for her. But you remained as stoic and silent as ever from where you sat at the small dining table just across from her. Your hands wrung into knots over your skirts, hidden beneath the surface, as you waited for the words of your fate to fall from her lips.
“The council believes that— Should the opportunity present itself, you would attempt to reach the wild beast. The Cannibal, I believe it’s called,” Alicent said. “And through him, Rhaenyra.”
“So…” You sighed, making no attempt to argue the subject. It did not matter whether or not it was true; the possibility was enough to make you a criminal. “The Black Cells, then?”
“No,” Alicent shook her head, half-offended by the suggestion. “Of course not. My cousin, Lord Ormund, he commands the Hightower host. He has agreed to keep you under his… protection for the time being.”
“Protection?” you echoed through a scoff. The word tasted foreign and bitter in your mouth. “What a pleasant name for captivity.”
Alicent’s face flickered with a mother’s sort of sympathy. Her hands wrang together beneath the draping sleeves of her emerald dress.“You will be treated with every courtesy your station deserves, I assure you.”
“If your council means to bargain with me, Your Grace…” you started with a sad smile. “They mistake me for something worth bartering for. Rhaenyra already abandoned e— keeping me hostage will not make her respond to your offered terms.”
“Even still… You would be far safer there than you would be here, whether or not you believe that’s true,” Alicent said. “I know what my brother would wish of me. And Gwayne would never forgive me if I didn’t do everything I could to keep you safe.”
The long journey south smells of wet earth and horse dung. By the time you reach the Hightower encampment — which sprawls across the rolling fields like a second city — your fine silk gown has long surrendered to the dust of the road, and your hands now bear the tenderness of a week spent in the saddle.
Your broad-shouldered escort guides you through the avenue of canvas tents billowing wildly beneath snapping green banners. The air smells of woodsmoke, cooked venison, and salty sweat — the soft breeze carries with it the sound of laughter, barking hounds, clanking chainmail, and shouted commands.
A pair of guards draw back the heavy canvas of the biggest pavilion in the camp. “My lord,” one says to announce your arrival inside, right before the entrance flap closes heavily behind you.
Inside, candles burn despite the lingering daylight, filling the enclosed tent with the smell of beeswax and parchment from the large map covering the long oak table. Pieces carved from ivory and oak mark castles and armies across the whole of Westeros, waiting to be won or maybe burned.
A strange man stands over them with his broad hands planted along the edge, visibly built beneath his ornately decorated armor, and standing several inches taller than the rest of the knights in the room.
Lord Ormund was not pretty like Gwayne, but he was his own kind of handsome, made of sharp edges and strong features. His Hightower-auburn curls are less vivid in color and sheared short. He has his family’s pair of striking blue eyes, too, which feel a little like they’re piercing you when he glances up from his map.
“Leave us,” he commands his guards in a low, melodic voice, keeping his eyes on you as his knights filter out of the tent. Their armor clatters faintly as they go. The man doesn’t say another word until they’re gone.
“So…” he hums, one corner of his mouth lifting upwards. “The infamous dragon bride.”
Your brows bounce at the title. It feels like another chain around your neck. “I suppose I’ve been called worse…” you sigh, studying him with the same curiosity. “You must be Lord Ormund.”
“I must,” the man nods as he rounds the war table at an unhurried pace.
His boots sink into the woven rungs laid across the hard earth with each step. He towers several inches over your head when he plants himself in front of you. He smells of steel and sweat and strongly of incense.
“I expected someone… older.”
His brows raise in amusement. “And here I expected someone taller.”
“Well,” you deadpan, eyes narrowing up at him as your hands clasp behind your back. “I’m sorry for disappointing you, Ser.”
“Oh, I’ve endured far worse disappointments, my lady, I assure you.” A ghost of a smile graces his pink lips as his eyes soften slightly around the edges. “I give you my word. While you remain beneath my banners, no harm will come to you.”
You sigh hard through your nose. “Yes… People keep promising me that.”
“I’m sure they have… But I intend to honor it.” The certainty of the man’s words unsettles you. It’s strange, you find, to be looked at like you were something worth protecting. “And if you require anything— anything at all. You need only ask.”
You nod slowly with a deep exhale, considering the offer. “A quill,” you conclude firmly.
Ormund blinks. “A… A quill?”
“Yes,” you say. “And parchment.”
“For… What purpose?” he laughs.
You glance over your shoulder towards the tent’s fluttering entrance, where the last light of the early evening burns gold against a sea of green banners. You wonder, briefly, how many soldiers outside this pavilion would celebrate if they found you dead on the morrow — how many would mourn, how many would care enough to do anything at all.
You think, perhaps, that in the whole of the Seven Kingdoms, there is only one person who would weep for you. And he was a hundred leagues away.
“So that I may write to my lord husband,” you answer finally. “And tell him that I was right… And that he still owes me a farm.”
Lord Ormund allows you to write to Gwayne that night, and every seventh day after. It was the only thing you could look forward to, since there was little else to do at camp. He had been gracious enough to give you your own pavilion at the edge of the command encampment, close enough for the sentries to watch but far enough away to force you into solitude.
It was clean and moderately comfortable — with a narrow cot draped in a single wool blanket, a traveling chest for the few dresses you were allowed to bring, a wash basin, and a small writing table tucked beneath the only slit in the canvas that permitted daylight. Inside smelled of candle wax, pressed linen, and lavender soap.
Outside smelled of war — of pressed metal from the blacksmiths, of men cursing over burnt porridge, of stableboys tending to horses who fouled the earth faster than they could shovel it. It was cruel, how the world went on while you could go scarcely a step without an escort. Eventually, you became accustomed to feeling a hundred eyes upon your back — most curious, others suspicious, some outright hateful.
The letters you wrote to Gwayne, at least, gave you the illusion of escape. You tended to each with careful precision — melting the wax, stamping it shut, then tying it off with a ribbon — and watched from afar as one of Ormund’s knights carried them toward the rookery. It was not until the twentieth day at camp, when you wandered further than you were typically allowed, that you noticed that none of your messages had been sent. You watched the knight toss the letter into the fire, flinching slightly when the flames sparked beneath the fresh kindling.
It had been four days since then.
And you haven’t eaten once in protest.
It took roughly half that time for Lord Ormund’s patience to run thin. He’s suffered the endless whispers of your attempts to starve to death with an increasing displeasure. He commands thousands of knights beneath his banners, serves as the leader of his house with grace, and yet — he still cannot seem to manage to command one lady to supper. It was absurd. Humiliating. And worse, it invited doubt. What army will follow a man whom they believe incapable of governing his own household?
On the fifth evening, after your breakfast tray went untouched that morning, Ormund opts to bring you your supper himself. He marches through the crowded camp with his jaw clenched tight like a soldier headed into battle. His chainmail clanks with every step. Avoiding the stares he gets from surrounding knights feels borderline impossible.
He throws open the entrance of your tent without ceremony. The canvas snaps sharply beneath his aggressive hand as he ducks suddenly underneath it. The light of the golden evening pours suddenly inside around his towering silhouette before the flap falls shut behind him once more, trapping the two of you inside.
There, he finds you lying on your cot, staring upward at the slit in the pavilion where one lonely shaft of sunlight spills through. Your fingers drift lazily through the rays, as if you were trying to catch it somehow.
Your head snaps suddenly to the side at the sudden intrusion — your hair is loose and unkempt, because no one ever taught you how to do it yourself, and all of your dresses are now wrinkled and stained with dirt. The thin white nightgown you wear makes you look more sunken, more lifeless.
Ormund grasps your tray with one hand and reaches for your small writing desk with the other. He lectures you through the distant pang of sympathy in his chest.
“I have commanded men twice your size—” His boots are heavy on the thin rug as he carries the desk over to you. “I have started sieges, I have broken sieges. And yet—” He slams the table in front of you with a dull thump. You try not to cower under the icy blue glare he gives you. “I cannot seem to persuade one prisoner— a lady, no less— to eat her supper. And I confess, it does very little for confidence in my command. So eat.”
Ormund slams the tray onto the desk. The broth steaming in a small wooden bowl sloshes over. Next to it, strips of leftover venison and a broken loaf of stale bread. Your empty stomach twists painfully with a mixture of nausea and hunger.
“So…” you start lowly, clearing your throat when your voice comes gravelly. You rise from your supine position on weak limbs. The fabric of your nightgown rides up your thighs as you turn to place your bare feet on the ground — eyes dull when you peer up at the man from beneath your lashes. “You admit it, then? That I am your prisoner here?”
His jaw clenches tight. His nostrils flare through a sharp breath. He no longer finds amusement in your banter. “Your status here depends entirely on your pliancy,” he spits, ripping off a piece of the stale loaf. “Now eat.”
You flinch when his fist rears suddenly towards your face, holding the broken bread just in front of your mouth. You blink wildly up at him, features screwed in offense. “…Excuse me?”
“Eat.”
You swat his hand away; it moves scarcely an inch. “I’m not a child—”
“Well, at present, you are behaving remarkably like one,” Ormund argues through a tight jaw. “Now open your mouth.”
You respond with only a glare.
Fury rages through the man’s chest. He wishes wordlessly for the strength of the Mother and the Warrior engraved upon his armor as he offers bitterly, “Or shall I make you?”
You spend a long moment staring up at him with eyes cold enough to freeze wine. You hold his gaze as your mouth parts slowly to accept the chunk of bread he pinches between his thumb and forefinger. He places it upon your tongue with a surprising gentleness, considering the wrath he’d had moments ago.
“Chew,” he commands, glaring down the bridge of his nose at you. Your jaw moves slowly. Ormund nods in approval. “Swallow.”
Your heart lurches into your throat at his order. But you do as you’re told, throat bobbing as the piece of bread goes down. Another piece follows soon after; this time, your lips part before he asks you to do so. Relief crosses over his strong features as he places the food onto your tongue. His shoulders sag with the exhaled breath that it feels like he’s been holding for days.
He looks almost worried for you; relieved, almost, to have fed you. A warm, foreign feeling settles in your chest accordingly.
“I am trying… Very hard to be kind to you,” Ormund confesses, scarred hands twitching at his sides. “So I cannot, for the life of me, understand why you insist on making this so difficult.”
“My letters,” you tell him. “Why aren’t they being sent?”
“The rookery master feared they could be intercepted,” he answers plainly. “I could not risk one falling into enemy hands. I… meant to tell you.”
“When?” you spit.
“When I found a safer way to deliver them.”
A bitter laugh sputters from your mouth. “What curious men you Hightowers are,” you quip with narrowed eyes. “So fond of deciding what sorrows I ought to be spared.”
His brows lower in confusion. “Is that not a kindness?”
His answer lingers between you for several long moments. There was no cleverness in his words, only an honesty that strikes you like a fist to the stomach.
“Aye. I suppose it is,” you answer, clearing your throat when your voice catches.
A strange emotion strangles you, and burns at the back of your eyes as you look down at your dress. Your dull nails pick at a smudge of mud on the fabric that will likely never come off. An embarrassed sort of laugh tumbles from your mouth.
“Perhaps I… I spent so long waiting for someone to hurt me that I no longer remember what kindness is supposed to feel like.”
Ormund nods through a slow exhale from his nose. He glances to the side and walks the short distance to the stool that the table had knocked over in his rage. Your wet eyes follow his form as he walks away and then back to you, setting the chair on the other side of the table. You can feel the warmth radiating from his body, even in the scarce distance between you.
“I’ll admit— A man spends enough time at war, they start to forget that mornings are not meant to begin with fear,” he says, reaching again for the loaf of bread, but this time breaking it in half. “I forget myself, at times, but… if you’ll allow me… I’d very much like to prove to you that I can be kind.”
Your weary features soften around the edges. “Well, I don’t have much of a choice in the matter, do I?” you tell him, with a more sincere smile hinting at the corners of your lips. “I am your prisoner, after all.”
“So you keep insisting,” Ormund quips with his own quiet grin. “But I should rather you thought of yourself as my… responsibility.”
Your heart stumbles a beat. Responsibility felt much safer than hostage, or bargaining piece, or burden. It felt, you’ll admit, like a kindness.
iv. SILK & SWORDS
You fall into a steady routine at the Hightower encampment by the fifth moon of your captivity.
Each morning arrives with the same mournful groan of a warhorn that rolls across the grass green hills before the sun has even broken the horizon. You wake to the distant ringing of hammers against anvils, hounds barking for gristles off the cookfires, and knights shouting for their squires. The first hours were reserved for armorers; the afternoons for drilling knights whose swords cracked together until you could feel them ringing in your skull; and the evenings for songs, laughter, and ale.
Your days, however, remained painfully empty.
Lord Ormund had been kind enough to provide you with greater comforts as the weeks went by — cushioned pillows and heavier woolen blankets for when the nights got colder; sprigs of lavender for your bedside to keep out the stench of man; more parchment and colored ink to busy your hands when the days were especially long. And all of them were especially long. He’d given you his leather-bound prayer book, too, and even though you were not an entirely pious woman, you’d read through it enough times to recite each passage from memory.
The camp has since grown accustomed to your being there, ever since Ormund slackened his metaphorical leash on you — “You’ve had more than ample opportunity to run,” he’d said beneath the scratching of his quill. “Besides, where exactly would you go? No one else would take you.” No one bats an eye when you leave your tent, after three days of relentless rain had finally broken, to pick fresh berries from the brushes along the treeline.
Your crimson silk dress scrubs the dewy evening grass as you collect wild raspberries into a small wooden bowl. The juices stain your fingertips the color of red wine. The sweet scent mixes with the smell of wet earth and mint leaves crushed beneath your slippers. You bend at the waist to parse through tangled brambles, searching for the ripest berries. For the first time in months — years, maybe — you feel almost peaceful.
“Is that a love letter—?”
The voice cuts through the quiet like a blade. Your heart lurches into your throat as you jerk to full height again. The small bowl of berries slips from your grasp and rolls through the wet clover like so many drops of scattered blood. Behind you, you find a vaguely familiar hedgeknight, scarcely ten paces away — made of broad shoulders, broken teeth, and greasy hair that falls to his shoulders.
It takes you an embarrassingly long moment to catch your breath.
“I’m sorry,” you say through a tightening chest. “You… You startled me.”
“Did I?” he hums gruffly, in a voice that borders on amusement.
You cower into the hedgerow behind you as he approaches you, reaching you quickly on much longer limbs. He looms close enough for you to smell the sweat and ale and horse piss on his chainmail, close enough for you to lift your chin to meet his gaze.
His eyes never quite reach yours. They linger, instead, on your chest. “Letter from your lord husband, is it?” he asks, motioning with his head.
Your chin ducks to follow his eyes, where the rough edges of parchment nestled against your chest peek out from your corset. Your hands lift to cover it instinctively. “Yes. It’s a… a letter. From home.”
“Mind if I take a look at it?” he asks, taking another daring step closer. You wince at the sour smell of him. “What does Ser Gwayne write his pretty wife, hm?”
“Please, don’t—”
His hand shoots out. Thick, filthy fingers hook beneath the neckline of your gown, hard enough to stretch the fine silk with an audible crack. You react on pure instinct accordingly, lifting your own hand to strike him before your mind could forbid it.
The sound of your palm colliding with his bearded jaw cracks through the hedgerow like a whip.
His head turns slightly under the blow.
Your breath catches in surprise at yourself.
The back of his hand catches you across the cheek before you can blink. A red-hot pain explodes from your ear to your jaw as your world lurches suddenly sideways. You hit the unforgiving earth below with a huff when the air rushes from your lungs. Coppery blood pools thick on your tongue from where your teeth had cut the inside of your cheek.
“You little cunt—” you hear the man say, right before he catches a fistful of your skirts to pull you back towards him. The fabric screams beneath his hand. The cool evening air strikes your legs all at once when the silk rips up to your thighs.
You kick wildly at the man. Your slipper strikes uselessly against his shoulder. Your fingernails claw muddy furrows through the soaked earth.
“I am— Gwayne Hightower’s wife—” You tell him through panted, fearful breaths. He flips you onto your back by your ankle. Your foot burns beneath his grip. Your head strikes the soaked earth. Through the lack of air in your lungs, you heave, “He will have your head for this—”
“Oh, will he?” the hedge knight laughs with a brown-tooth grin. “‘Cause he ain’t here—”
The hand not holding your squirming ankle reaches for the tie in his trousers.
Then, in a blink, steel sings with a clean rasping sound. Warm blood splashes from your right jaw up to your left temple. For a flicker of a moment, you can’t quite comprehend why — not until the hedge knight kneels suddenly before you, with open eyes that have gone strangely distant. He topples suddenly sideways with his neck bent at an awkward angle, head half cut off and spouting bright red blood.
You blink wildly through the haze of death until you find Ormund standing just behind the corpse, chest rising and falling beneath his heavy armor. His longsword drips crimson onto the grass where your raspberries lie.
Sweat from the long day clings to his dark curls, wetting them against his temples and forehead. Flecks of blood dot his jaw like crimson stars. His blue eyes burn with something fierce, but his voice remains remarkably soft.
“My lady…”
You open your mouth to answer him, but nothing comes out.
Only then do you notice how violently your body is shaking, buzzing with a white-hot fear, as you scan the scene surrounding you — your torn skirts, the blood staining your chest, the dead body at your feet. You stare at the hedge knight’s gushing throat without fully understanding the sight of it.
Ormund reaches you in three long strides. He sheaths his sword without a word before dropping carefully to one knee. He slides one arm under your leg and his other behind your back, hoisting you upward with a pair of strong arms. The scent of blood and earth gives way to the smell of leather, incense, and bathing oils as he cradles you to the broad wall of his chest.
Your trembling hands clench a fistful of the green velvet cape draped along his shoulder.
“You’re safe, my lady,” Ormund murmurs as he carries you back to camp. “You’re safe.”
Your face finds the hollow space between his jaw and collarbone. You’re not entirely sure if you believe the words he speaks, but you know now that you do believe in the man who speaks them.
v. SANCTUARY & SIN
The weeks that followed could be divided into two — the days before the attack and all the days after.
For a time, you startled far too easily. A dropped shield sent you into a panic. A knight laughing too loudly made your pulse skyrocket. And if a pair of bootsteps walked too closely behind you, you lost all your breath before your mind had time to remind your body that no one meant you any harm.
Nights proved harder still. You dreamt of nothing but rough hands and torn silk and crushed berries that smelled so sweet the thought alone made you sick. One moment you were suffocating beneath the sweaty body of a hedge knight, and the next, your canvas door was thrown open while you were choking on a scream.
Ormund stood silhouetted before you, barefoot, with a sword in his naked hand. He’d reached you with haste, after having your pavilion packed up and pitched again not quite twenty paces from his following the attack — “It’ll be easier that way,” he assured you. “If another fool decides to trouble you, I’d rather not have to cross half of Westeros to remove his head.”
His curls were flattened from slumber, his linen shirt unlaced to reveal his broad chest heaving with panic. His sleep-swollen eyes swept every corner of the empty pavilion before they settled finally on you. His steel lowered as he crossed the tent to settle beside you, smoothing a hand up and down your back despite the way your nightgown clung uncomfortably to your sweaty skin.
“We’ll move your bed into my tent,” he’d said. “You’ll sleep there for the time being.”
It was concern disguised as a command. One you could not refuse if you wanted to.
Ormund’s tent was large enough to pass for a modest hall — maps and banners occupied one half, while the other had become something half-resembling living quarters. Your smaller cot was placed opposite his beneath the same sloping canvas roof, separated by little more than a table crowded with candles and books. You would wake occasionally to find Ormund already seated beside the brazier in nothing but a linen shirt, reading dispatches by firelight while occasionally glancing over to see whether you were sleeping soundly.
You pretended that you were, if only to keep on watching him.
But then the late summer storms arrived; and the unforgiving deluge washed over the camp with enough violence to shake the pavilion you slept beneath. Thunder cracked like an explosion closely overhead, and you woke with another frightened gasp before remembering where you were.
Ormund was already awake, as if stirred in knowing that you were scared.
“If you’re frightened…” he murmured from across the darkness. A flash of lightning revealed his blanketed body, and his face half-smushed into his pillow. “I imagine my bed could accommodate two people without either touching the other."
You crossed the space between your cots and climbed beneath his blankets without another word.
You haven’t left his bed since.
The days soon settle into something almost resembling normalcy. Ormund, you find, possesses an absurd fondness for taking care of you — always making sure that you’ve eaten breakfast before he’s started his mornings; delivering his wool blankets to you before you can complain that you’re cold, warming your hands between his calloused palms when he does so; and escorting you through camp with a protective hand splayed along the small of your back.
No one ever cared for you with such deliberate attention before — even Gwayne, as gentle as he was, could only love you from a respectful distance before the war had sent him off. Your husband washed away into memory, into the note left abandoned somewhere on the forest floor.
You did not know whether he still rode beneath banners or if his corpse had been picked clean by crows. You did know, at the very least, that Ormund was here — he was there in the mornings when you woke and each night when old fears crept back into your skin. It was a dangerous thing, you soon realized, to mistake safety for love. Or more dangerous still, to suspect that the two were any different at all.
You watch from Ormund’s bed — freshly bathed beneath your thin ivory slip, with your legs kicking lazily from where you lie on your stomach — as his squire removes pieces of his armor. A sketchbook lies open before you, alongside a collection of colored inks.
“This is what you get for tightening the straps so much,” Ormund hums as Daeron struggles with the final buckle across the man’s broad shoulders.
“Well, you’d like them to remain attached, wouldn’t you?” the boy quips back.
The man smiles despite himself. “You complain more than any squire I've ever met, do you know that?”
“I learned everything from you, did I not?”
When the final piece of armor comes finally free, Ormund dismisses the boy back to his tent. The entrance cover opens and shuts behind the boy, letting in a rush of cool evening air before it closes again. Silence returns to the expansive pavilion, filled only by the crackling of burning candles.
Ormund, left only in his loose dark breeches and a linen undertunic, walks to the round table to pour himself a goblet of wine. “What is occupying you so completely over there?”
“I’m hard at work,” you answer vaguely.
“So I see.” He eyes you carefully over the glugging of the flagon. A faint, unreadable flicker crosses his face. “Writing to Gwayne, are you?”
“No,” you sigh. “I’m drawing you.”
You set the quill into the inkpot and lift the sketchbook to face the man with a girlish grin, which seems to be becoming more and more frequent as the days go by. Ormund’s light eyes squint to study the page. It was unmistakably him drawn in the ink, though perhaps only if one was exceedingly charitable. The proportions are all wrong: his nose is too large, his mouth is too small, one eye sits higher than the other, and he’s missing his left brow.
His eyes flick to meet yours again. “…Is that intended to be me?” he asks, motioning with the goblet in his fist.
“Of course,” you shrug like it’s obvious.
“Well,” he sighs, raising the cup to his mouth. “I had no idea that I resembled that of a rotting turnip.”
You gasp in faux-offense that’s soon overcome by a fit of laughter. “It is not that bad!”
“My lady…” Ormund huffs sympathetically, abandoning his ale to saunter slowly towards the bed. “This could be considered treason— I should confiscate this immediately."
“You shall do no such thing,” you tease.
“Oh really?” he croons, brows raised in amusement.
He lunges for you in an instant. You jerk back onto your haunches with a squeal, cradling the sketchbook to your chest. You dodge each of his attempts to take it with a girlish gracelessness, laughing harder with each of his failed attempts. Ormund smiles at the sound without realizing it, dropping the table of ink to the rug below before clambering onto the bed to follow you.
One final tug sends the book flying across the bed, and the two of you go to reach for it at the same time. The momentum carries you forward until you land clumsily against his chest, knocking the breath out of him as his back hits the mattress, with you squarely on top of him.
It takes you a long moment to realize your precarious position — your chest brushing his beneath your thin slip, noses nearly touching, breaths nearly entwining. Your laughter fades first, but you still do not move. Ormund’s smile flickers, but his hands lift to rest lightly along the arms you use to prop up your weight on top of him.
You can feel each of his warm breaths fan against your chin. You could get drunk on the ale stained on his mouth from the proximity between you alone. Closer by an inch or two and you would taste it on his lips.
“We ought not,” Ormund murmurs lowly, as if he can read your mind.
“Ought what?”
“This,” he answers. His blue eyes flick briefly in the space separating your mouths. “You are another man’s wife. My cousin’s wife.”
You swallow hard at the mention of Gwayne. It had been far easier to forget him, in truth. “I have not seen my husband in nearly a year,” you reply in a small voice. “I do not even know whether he yet lives…”
Pain etches in Ormund's strong features before disappearing behind his usual practiced restraint. His hands tremble with the urge to smooth away the frown between your brows, but he does not allow himself the satisfaction.
“I swore on oath to protect you,” he says. “To serve you in my cousin’s absence.”
You, without possessing a similar self-control, lift a hand to brush a wild curl from his temple. “And do you intend to keep that promise, Lord Ormund?”
He nods against the mattress. “Of course I do.”
“Okay then…” you hum as a smile tugs slowly at one corner of your mouth. “Then serve me.”
You duck down to close the distance between you without a second thought. The tip of your nose grazes the strong bridge of his as you press your lips to his chapped ones, nothing more than an experimental brushing of your mouths. You go to pull away just as quickly as you came, and whatever restraint Ormund had had before vanishes in an instant.
He lifts his head from the tousled blankets to chase your mouth, cradling your neck with a wide hide to draw you back into him again. The second kiss lands with none of the careful uncertainty of the first. This one is slower, deeper, and far more languid. His tongue licks into your mouth, tasting of wine and the mint leaves he always chews after supper. You sigh through your nose to savor it, melting further into his chest.
Your mouths move together with an awkward sort of tenderness, learning one another by the second. Ormund kisses you far rougher than Gwayne ever did — it’s all tongue and teeth and spit, as if he were committing the taste of you to memory: the meat from your supper, the berry from your tea; the guilt from your broken vows, the relief of being found after believing yourself long abandoned.
Your breath catches in your throat when Ormund suddenly takes charge, urging you onto your back with his mouth still on yours. He pulls off you with a quiet smack, wearing your spit on his rosy mouth like gloss.
“Do you want me to stop?” he asks with heavy eyes that dart back and forth between your glassy ones.
You shake your head against the cushions beneath you, features twisting with a pained look at the thought of stopping now.
“Do you understand what will follow? What… vows both of us will be breaking?”
Your eyes glisten as they dance between his blue ones. “The war broke those vows,” you tell him, half-breathless. “Not us.”
Ormund nods wordlessly for a moment, pleased with your answer. “Then open,” he says.
Your mouth parts for him on instinct. He lifts his middle and pointer finger to your lips, wetting them on your tongue, before sliding them in between your bodies. His hand disappears beneath the skirt of your slip. Your head tips back when you feel his fingertips sliding between your velvety folds, brushing your clit before sinking into your waiting cunt.
Your sigh fills the quiet tent, accompanied by the low groan in the back of Ormund’s throat.
“You’re softer than I imagined…” he confesses, almost to himself.
“Imagining me a lot, are you?” you tease on bated breath.
“Yes,” he answers without missing a beat. “I dreamt of how your cunt would wrap around me… of how you’d soak the sheets… of what noise you’d make when I moved my fingers like this—”
A whine catches in your throat when he crooks his fingers just so, nestling the fatty part of his palm flat against your clit. Your hips buck into his hand despite yourself. Your exhaled whine is half-drowned beneath his breathy chuckle.
“There it is…” he praises.
“Fuck me,” you plead, face crumpling under the weight of your need. One hand twists in his hair, while your other fists in his thin white tunic to keep him close. You only vaguely realize how little you sound like yourself as you plead: “I need it so bad, Ormund, please, fuck me—”
The man goes dizzy at the sound of your begging, as if he brought you into his camp, his tent, his bed, to do anything other than serve you.
His fingers glitter with your slick when he drags them out of your cunt. He brings them to his nose, nostrils flaring slightly as he inhales the scent of your musk upon them. You whine at the sight of it — half-disgusted, half-intrigued. You watch with heavy eyes when he brings the same hand into his trousers to fist his half-hard cock fully stiff for you.
It’s a mess of tangled limbs for a moment, as you drag his shirt gracefully from his torso while he attempts to free himself from his breeches. He’s made of tanned skin, toned muscles, and a dusting of auburn hair from his sternum to his stomach. It grows more dense at the root of his cock — which is not quite as long as Gwayne’s, but thicker still and adorned with more prominent veins.
Ormund works himself hard with his fist; the reddened head of his cock leaks pearly drops every time his hand moves upwards. Your mouth waters for a taste. You let him smear it along the folds of your cunt instead.
You curl your arms under his broad arms to splay your hands along his shoulder blades. They flex slightly under your touch as he leans down over you. You tense on instinct when he pierces you with the tip of his cock. “Shh, shh, shh,” he soothes lowly, fighting back his own grunt as you spread so perfectly around him.
He sinks slowly into you, slow enough for you to feel every vein and ridge of his cock as he mounts you until his hips are flush with yours. Your mouth parts. He ducks down to kiss you before a moan tumbles out, swallowing the pretty sound with his mouth.
He stays still against you for several long, agonizing moments. Your hips buck against his in anticipation. “Please move,” you whine, digging crescent shapes into his shoulders with your nails. “I need you so much, please—”
Ormund’s jaw clenches tight. “Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I’ve been inside another woman?”
Your face screws. “I’d rather not hear about your previous exploits at the moment—”
“Don’t,” Ormund spits, shuddering on top of you when you roll your hips into his once more. He grasps your thigh hard enough to dig bruises into the plush skin with the hand not holding himself up beside your head. His light eyes turn glacial in an instant, darting wildly between both of yours. “I won’t… I won’t last…” he confesses.
Your eyes soften around the edges with a faux innocence. “This isn’t going to be the last time you fuck me, is it?”
The crude word falls so effortlessly from your pristine mouth that it makes his cock jerk within your drooling confines. “I don’t want it to be. No,” he answers, half-shy.
“Then I don’t care how long you last,” you assure him with a lazy grin. “You have kept me hostage for nearly a year— Surely, I’m entitled to make some use of my captor while the realm delays the war, am I not?”
Ormund’s resolve crumbles under your permission. He rolls his hips forward and back again, never quite pulling all the way out of you. He groans quietly when you clench around the sensitive head of his cock; and you swallow down a whimper when the coarse hair below his stomach rubs mercilessly along your sensitive clit.
Your head tips back. He falls to the hollow space between your neck and shoulder.
Ormund’s open-mouthed breaths fan warm along your burning skin as he stumbles into a graceless rhythm, thrusting hard enough to make the wooden frame of his bed squeak quietly beneath you.
The pressure on your clit is relentless. You squirm underneath his sweat-slick body, chasing and running from the pleasure all at once. “I know. I know. It’s okay,” you hear him slur against your skin. “Just take it. Just fuckin’ take it— Fuck—” His voice breaks like splintered glass.
He tenses suddenly above you, taut muscles trembling. You hear his breath catch for a moment, right before a foreign warmth pools in the very pit of your stomach. He groans in time with his release, heavying his weight further against you.
You aren’t far behind.
He grinds his hips lazily to ride out his high, smothering your sensitive clit as the warm, wet, sticky feeling continues to bloom inside of you. “Ormund—” you gasp, tensing beneath him.
“There it is…”the man praises as you tremble underneath him, smearing his lips against your jaw until they reach your parted mouth. “There it is— Fuck, that’s it,look at me.”
Your eyes snap open at his command, bleary and heavy-lidded. You ride out the rest of your orgasm with your gaze locked with his glassy one.
The honeyed moment doesn’t last nearly as long as either of you would’ve liked.
“My lord?”
The two of you sober in a flash as the spell between you shatters. Ormund stills suddenly above you, as if pierced by steel. The warmth flees from his features at once, replaced by the hard composure of the commander of House Hightower. You, too, freeze where you lay beneath him — pulse thrumming hard in your throat as the muffled voice drifts once more through the pavilion.
“My lord—”
“Yes, Daeron,” Ormund spits through gritted teeth, nostrils flaring as he breathes through the rage searing in his chest. “What is it?”
The squire hesitates at his uncle’s harsh tone. “Forgive me for the intrusion, my lord…” the boy says carefully, hidden behind the covered entrance. “But a messenger arrived from the river road. He bears urgent word from Ser Criston’s camp.”
You feel your stomach sink — or, perhaps, it’s only the mixture of cum seeping out of your still fluttering confines, soaking the sheets beneath you. You feel unspeakably dirty now, and the lack of regret only deepens the feeling.
Ormund remains motionless above you for a moment before sitting back on his haunches. You shiver at the absence of his warmth, and wince slightly when his softening cock slips out of you. “A letter?” he calls to the entrance, brows lowered. “What news?”
“It is sealed, my lord,” Daeron says. “The messenger said it was to be opened by our hand alone.”
Ormund’s confusion deepens. “And who sends it?”
After another brief hesitation, the voice answers solemnly: “Ser Gwayne, my lord.”
SUMMARY: A prince washes up on the shore outside your cottage, and you must decide whether you’re going to leave him to his fate or save his life. Either way, you know there will be consequences.
WARNINGS: fem!reader, commoner!reader, eventual dragonseed!reader, jace lives, eventual smut, class differences (jace is obviously a prince and reader is a commoner). Reader is not too fond of him at first because she is from Sharp Point. This is a bit of a mix of show canon and book canon in that Jace went to the Gullet to save his brothers and Rhaena still claimed Sheepstealer
AUTHOR'S NOTES: i HADDDD to do a fic for our beloved boy </3 i miss you jacaerys velaryon, prince of dragonstone, heir to the iron throne. I will truly never move on from this death </3 so we need a world where he does not die. I'm saur excited for this because it's my first time writing a reader who comes from a commoner background, AND I finally get to write the dragons ... originally she was not supposed to be a dragonseed, but I just cannot help myself. If I'm going to be writing a hotd era fic, our girl is going to have a dragon. ANYWAY I hope you guys enjoy! please leave a comment or reblog mwah mwah
You wonder whether it is chance or divine intervention that a Targaryen prince washes ashore beside your cottage.
By the time you get to the edge of the sea after catching a glimpse of the corpse from your porch, it is half buried in the wet sand, lying limp at your feet, and there is a lump in your throat that you cannot seem to swallow away.
You do not know how you didn’t notice the sigil sooner.
It should have been the first thing that caught your eye, considering it was only a fortnight past that the Prince Aemond brought the great dragon Vhagar over the town you were raised in and razed it to the ground. The green and gold banners have been flying over the area since, and soldiers from the Reach have been constantly patrolling the roads, seeking out rebels and sympathizers.
You know better than to involve yourself in the affairs of any man that dons the three-headed dragon, you tell yourself, trying to will yourself to walk away from the corpse before anyone can catch you standing near it.
Red or gold, black or green—it does not matter to you, the wars of nobles are graves for common folk, and you have no desire to meet an early one. You have done well enough for yourself since your father passed. You refuse to squander the life you’ve built because a prince washed up on the shore near your home.
The boy at your feet is young, you cannot help but notice—your age, perhaps—dark of hair and fair of skin. At a distance, he had looked like any other body the sea had decided to return, and your first instinct had been to rush toward him rather than avert your gaze and pretend you had seen nothing.
Your hands tremble at your sides, and you have to forcibly still them as you take in a deep breath.
This is war, you recall the soldiers saying when the survivors demanded to know the reason for the tragedy that took place at Sharp Point—mothers with tears in their eyes and no bodies to bury, fathers who had lost their livelihood and the children for whom they built it, your neighbors, your friends. They say Lord Bar Emmon sits on the usurper’s council, so all of the commonfolk who were unfortunate enough to be born beneath his banners have been made to pay the price of his loyalties, allies of a queen they have never seen and casualties of a war they never chose.
This is war, they will tell you the same as they cut off your head if they see you kneeling beside this corpse and call mercy treason. Because it is always the burden of the commonfolk, paying the price of noble quarrels. Princes speak of honor and succession, of rights and oaths and stolen crowns, and it is fishermen and farmers who have to bury their dead. They will not care to hear what you have to say if they think you're affiliated with the Black queen and her supporters, just as the Prince Aemond did not care whether the people of Sharp Point had declared for the Blacks or merely happened to be born beneath the wrong lord.
But now, a prince lies dead upon your shore, and you wonder if this is how it begins again.
You should leave him.
The thought comes immediately, sensible in light of the circumstances, even if it does make your stomach flip. You should turn around and go home, bolt your door, and tell no one what you saw. The sea will reclaim him, or the crabs will pick his bones clean; maybe the patrol will stumble upon the body before the tide rises, and they can parade it through the streets the same way you heard they did to Princess Rhaenys’s dragon.
By the morning, he will be gone one way or another, and you can move on with your life as though you never saw him at all. He will be somebody else’s misfortune, or more hopefully, no one else’s at all.
It is a corpse, anyway. The boy has not moved since you arrived, and his chest does not seem to be rising and falling. There are two arrows through his shoulder, and a blueness to his lips that you’ve only seen in the dead, so—
As though to mock you, he lets out a wet, ragged cough, water bubbling at his lips, lashes fluttering just enough for you to catch sight of dark, hazy eyes that slip over you once before they slide shut again.
You feel sick to your stomach.
He does not stir again. One side of his face is bruised an ugly purple, his dark hair plastered to his brow with seawater and blood. He cannot be much older than you—the traitorous thought crosses your mind again. There is something terribly young about him, lying there half-drowned in the surf, one hand curled weakly into the sand as though, even unconscious, he is still trying to cling to something.
He does not look like a prince, you think miserably. He looks like a boy who is going to die.
The sea foams around your boots, and his body twitches as it threatens to reclaim him—the only feeble resistance he’s capable of in his state. You do not know how he still breathes—the fires might still burn on the Gullet, but the fighting ended days past. How long has he been floating about, dragged around by vicious currents and tossed by waves? It doesn’t even seem as though it should be possible, as though the Seven themselves intervened and—
—and dropped him on your shore, in your hands, and you are contemplating leaving him to die.
The thought is unpleasant, a heavy stone in your chest in place of your heart.
You are not a cruel person. You have cared for gulls with broken wings, and you leave scraps outside your door for the old orange cat that wanders the area. During the winter three years prior, you spent a fortnight nursing a lamb that did not even belong to you because you could not bear the sound of it crying.
And now there is a boy at your feet—bleeding, drowned, scarcely clinging to life—and because there is a dragon sewn onto his chest, you are trying to convince yourself to let the sea finish what arrows and war could not.
His lashes are dark against his cheek. Young, you think again, even more traitorous than the last, no older than ten and nine, if even. There is salt crusted at the corners of his mouth and blood soaking through his tunic in sluggish, rusty streams that stain the pale sand beneath him.
He looks cold—traitor, traitor, traitor.
He looks like a prince, you try to insist. A dragon prince, fire and blood and ruin, dangerous.
Cold. Hurt. Dying.
You need to walk away, you tell yourself again, desperate this time, because the longer you stand there staring at him, the more you fail to convince yourself of the correct path.
A prince's life is worth more than yours, more than your cottage and your little patch of land and the fishing boat your father left you. It is worth armies and dragons and castles and men willing to kill for a name.
If this boy lives, others will come looking for him.
And if the soldiers discover him in your home, they will not ask questions. They will not care that you found him by chance or that you never bent the knee to Queen Rhaenyra—that you could not even tell anyone why one half of House Targaryen wishes the other dead. They will see the three-headed dragon on his breast and the roof over his head, and that will be enough to condemn you.
Worse, the Prince Aemond and the dragon Vhagar could return. You think of Tom, the miller’s son, pulled from the boiling river after dragonfire reached the gristmill. You think of little Grace’s face as she searched the ashes for her mother. You think of all of your neighbors, all of your friends, who hardly survived the first time fire rained from the sky, and you think of all of those who didn’t.
He is not worth it. He is not worth the risk. A prince is only a man born with a special name, there’s no reason you should save him and condemn countless others—he bleeds the same, he dies the same, and when the Stranger comes for him, he is no more spared than any other man.
Except, he didn’t, did he?
He should be dead—any other man would be dead.
Two arrows through the shoulder, half-drowned, tossed upon the sea for days on end—there is no surviving that. Yet he breathes still, ragged and shallow though it may be, his fingers twitching every now and then.
The Stranger came for him and left empty-handed.
The Stranger came for him and left him with you.
Why?
There are no prophecies in your life, no gods whispering in your ear. You are a fisherman's daughter with a cottage by the sea and enough coin to keep yourself fed through winter if the catch is good. You know little of the gods save for the prayers your father taught you as a child and the candles you light for him on his nameday. The Seven did not save your father or your town; they did not save Tom or Grace’s mother or any of the others who screamed as dragonfire turned their homes to ash.
So why? Why this boy? Why this prince? Why should the gods spare a dragon's son when they had not spared children and fishermen and mothers? Why have they left him for you?
You do not have an answer. The only answer before you is a body on the sand, breathing when it ought not to be.
You stare down at him, furious and distressed and so, so unsure. He looks dead again—still as driftwood, cold and pale, stiff. His lips are blue like the dead, and his chest hardly rises and falls. You wonder if you imagined what you saw before. If your guilt conjured a cough where there had been none, if your conscience simply could not bear the thought of walking away even from a corpse.
Slowly, you sink to your knees beside him, damp sand clinging to your knees, the sea foam wetting your trousers. Your hand is still trembling in spite of all efforts to still it. You lift it to his throat, hesitating only for a moment.
If there is life, you will do what you must.
If there is not, you will turn and walk away.
You have never prayed for someone to be dead before.
Please, you think now miserably. Please.
Your fingers brush the skin of his throat—it is cold. He must be cold. So cold, that for a brief, terrible moment, hope flares in your chest, and then—
There is a flutter—it is weak and uneven, so faint that you almost miss it, but it is there.
Your head hangs forward, and you blink away the tears that prick in your eyes, because you know this action will have consequences. You know that there is no going back once you have entangled yourself with dragons. You know that every story told of House Targaryen ends in blood and fire and ruin for everyone foolish enough to stand too close them.
You know that this boy could be the death of you.
The soldiers could discover him. Your neighbors could discover him—as much as they care for you, they fear Vhagar more. If word spreads that a prince of the black faction lives and is hidden beneath your roof, you could hang for it. They could burn your cottage to the ground. They could drag you through the streets and call you traitor.
Worse still, he could recover.
Because then he would not be a half-dead boy on the sand. He would be a prince again. A son of the house of the dragon. He would leave, and the war would continue, and perhaps one day you would hear his name in some tavern and learn that he had mounted a dragon and burned a town much like your own.
The sea rushes forward again, cold water washing over your boots and his legs alike. He does not move. He is so cold.
“Why did you have to wash up here?” you breathe out—frustrated, angry, resigned, because you have never been one to turn your back on someone in need.
His pulse flutters once more against your fingers, and he does not stir.
Then, because the gods have a cruel sense of humor and because your heart has always been softer than your head, you slide your arms beneath the prince’s shoulders and knees.
With a soft curse and the sea at your heels, you gather the dragon prince into your arms and carry home your ruin.
—————————
He is Jacaerys Velaryon, son of Queen Rhaenyra, Prince of Dragonstone, Heir to the Iron Throne.
Three days have passed since you found him on the shore, and he has hardly stirred since you dragged him into your cottage. You have been riddled with anxiety since, jumping at every sound and fearing the worst when someone addresses you. It is only a matter of time—whenever a rider passes on the road beyond the trees or the patrol sweeps down your shore, you think they care coming for him. Coming for you.
You spend the first day trying to keep him alive.
You drag him home, soaked to the bone and half-frozen, laying him atop your bed as you get a fire going and wrap him in your blankets. For a while, you can only stand there staring at him, because it is one thing to decide not to leave a boy to die and another entirely to realize you have no idea how to save him.
You have to cut away his tunic to remove it, and it makes it easier to breathe once the three-headed dragon is out of sight, but then you have to address the monstrosity beneath it—bruises darkening one side of his ribs, yellow and purple and black, cuts everywhere, salt crusting his skin and body a ruin of blood.
You wonder how many rocks the currents slammed him into before he finally washed to shore. The sea around Sharp Point is, well, sharp. Jagged rocks and narrow inlets line the coast, and more than one fisherman has vanished into the sea after his boat drifted too close to reefs beneath the tide.
It is a cruel stretch of sea—crueler still to a boy half-dead and alone.
And then there were the arrows.
The shafts protrude from his shoulders at awful angles, the flesh around them angry and swollen. You cry while removing them, because you have never done something like it before, and your hands cannot stop shaking. A part of you wonders if the gods left him for you so that his blood could be on your hands instead, and you cannot fathom what you’ve done to deserve this.
You expect him to wake once you start removing them. At the very least, you expect him to scream. The first shaft pierced cleanly through his shoulder and is easy enough to ease out, but the second lodged itself deep in the flesh, refusing to budge until you brace your foot against the bedframe and pull with both hands.
It should have been agony—any man would have cried out.
The prince does not so much as flinch.
You remember staring at him afterward, the arrow clutched in your hand and your own cheeks wet with tears, wondering if he had died while you were removing it. You press your fingers to his throat with a panic that borders on hysteria, and you aren’t sure if you’re relieved or disappointed when you feel the fluttering pulse still there.
A traitorous part of you wishes that he had died.
A corpse is a tragedy, but a tragedy can be dumped in the sea and abandoned. A tragedy will not bring more war to your ravaged home.
A living prince, on the other hand, is a catastrophe that you do not know what to do with. Your home has already faced ruin once, and the longer he remains in your care, the more at risk you will be of bringing it upon you all again, because if he is captured in your care, then that means war and blood and fire and more dragons. The whole town, all of the survivors, everyone will be branded traitors to the crown.
But the prince lived, so you can only hope that he will heal quick enough and be gone before you have the chance to regret helping him.
The fever comes on the second day, and the corpse in your bed finally gives to life.
You notice it when you are wiping the blood from his face, and your hand brushes his forehead. It’s as though all of the cold of the sea had fled his body at once and left only fire behind. It’s what you expect of a Targaryen prince, really—the burning heat, closer to dragon than man— it feels more natural than the cold, but you are scared anyway.
You do not know much about treating battle wounds, but you do know about fever.
Your younger brother died of it during a long winter a decade past—no matter how hard your mother worked to keep it at bay, he was dead by nightfall. Your mother passed in the same moon, to the same sickness, as did half of the children in Sharp Point, because fever does not care whether you are young or old, rich or poor, prince or peasant.
His skin is flushed, sweat beading along his brow and soaking the dark hair at his temples as he twists in the sheets violently, threatening to reopen the wounds you just stitched close. His breathing changes too—no longer the slow drags of air, shallow and erratic, like he had spent days at sea only to begin suffocating on dry land.
You fetch water from the well until your shoulders ache. You lay cloths upon his brow and change them whenever they grow warm. You feed the fire, then fear you have made him too hot and let it die down, only to panic that he would grow cold again and build it back up.
Every few minutes, you find yourself pressing your hand to his forehead or his throat, checking for fever and pulse alike. There is never a change—still alive and burning, and you don’t know whether to be grateful or terrified.
At one point, he begins muttering. You cannot make out most of it—the words are slurred, little more than broken sounds spilling from fevered lips. Names, you think. Places, maybe. Some do not seem to be spoken in the common tongue.
Once, very clearly, he whispers, "Mother.”
You have to change the cloth on his forehead afterward and pretend your eyes are not stinging with tears. You curse the gods throughout that second day—you wish that you’d never left the cottage at all the morning you found him, you wish you’d left him to die, you wish, you wish, you wish, as though any of it matters anymore.
You sleep little that night, sitting beside your bed and watching him breathe. Terrified every time his breathing slowed, and equally terrified every time it quickened. You count the moments between each breath until dawn creeps through your shutters, and by morning, you feel like you have lived a lifetime in a single night.
The third day—today—you have to make the trek into town.
You have used the last of your willow bark, and there is only a heel of stale bread left, a few onions, and enough drinking water to last another day if you’re careful. You need fruit and vegetables, more barley, and you have a catch that you never got the chance to bring to the market to trade the morning you found the prince.
You cannot put it off any longer, much as you may wish—the prince needs supplies, and unfortunately, so do you.
You do not like going into town. You have never liked going into town—you have always been fond of your neighbors and your friends, but you were not fond of the way they circle and crowd you whenever you make your weekly appearance for trade. You got overwhelmed too quickly, and you didn’t know how to make an exit without seeming rude, so you ended up staying there for hours when there were many chores you had to get done at home.
Now, it is like a graveyard. The destruction following the Prince Aemond’s attack on Sharp Point has yet to be cleared. The soldiers are too busy with war and patrols, and the survivors are too busy trying to salvage what they can of their ruined lives.
When you enter the town, you can still smell charred flesh and death.
The children usually run to you when you arrive, chattering about the games they’ve played and the rumors they’ve heard, if you saw the wild dragon Grey Ghost while you were out on your boat this week, and you smile and nod along with them. But all of the children are dead now, and you are not crowded by friends and neighbors eager to make conversation with you, because most of them are dead now too.
It is in the market when you overhear green-cloaked soldiers talking about the battle that took place in the Gullet, and you finally put a name to the face of the prince in your home. You try to pretend that you’re not eavesdropping, fingers shaking terribly as you sort through the fruits and vegetables that Wylem carted in from his farm, because you need to know if they have figured out what you’ve done, if they know the prince is in your care, under your roof.
But they only laugh as they speak of dead dragons and a mourning pretender queen. They say the Blacks have lost two dragons, and the bastard prince, Jacaerys Velaryon, is dead. Any man who can find his body washed up on the shore to deliver to the King will see unfathomable riches.
Momentarily, you are angry at yourself because the royals brought this war and have caused all of this suffering, but when your lashes flutter shut, for a split second, you can only picture the haunted look on your mother’s face as she held your dead brother in her arms. You think of Miss Ellyn, who tossed herself into the sea when she found out her son had been killed on the Kingsroad. You think of your friend, Marie, who you found screaming, fisting her infant daughter’s ashes after the burning of the town. You think of them, and then you think of the black queen on her throne, and you feel the same lump in your throat.
Then you remind yourself that this is her doing.
Her doing, her half-brother’s doing, the other nobles’ doing. They brought this war to Westeros, they brought death and destruction, fire and blood, and you force yourself to shake your head and push it all away, trading some of the fish you caught for fruits and vegetables and barley with a watery smile that you’re sure Wylem took notice of.
There are more important things to worry about: if there is a bounty on the prince’s body, everybody will be searching for him. Not just soldiers, the people too—your friends, your neighbors, everyone. Many starve, more struggle, so if there is an opportunity for gold, they will all be on the hunt. You need to burn his cloak and tunic when you get back to the cottage, anything that associates him with House Targaryen.
You nearly trip over your own feet racing back to the cottage, second-guessing every conversation you had in the town. Wylem asked you why you were getting twice as much food as you usually get—you do not remember how you responded.
Did you imply that you had a visitor? Why can’t you remember? What excuse did you give? Did the soldiers overhear? Are they following you? Do they know? Why can’t you remember? You’re scared—you do not think you’ve ever been so scared in your entire life.
You look over your shoulder every five steps, worried that they’re going to come charging after you, demanding you to bring them to the Prince Jacaerys before taking your head. You’re not cut out for this—you’re the daughter of a fisherman. There’s no world where you should be worrying whether soldiers are going to hunt you down for saving a prince.
There are tears in your eyes when you make it back to the cottage, and your fingers are trembling around the bags Wylem packed for you. You shut the door behind you, and it takes you three tries to bolt it properly. When you finally do, you rest your forehead against the wood and let out a trembling sigh.
You—
“Who are you?”
There is a knife to your throat.
You stare at the crack in the wood of your door, breath catching, desperately trying not to move lest you risk the knife slicing through your skin. The crack appeared last winter, you remind yourself, trying not to focus too much on the fact that you can feel the cool edge of the blade. Your friend, Evander, was meant to fix before the next, but Evander is dead now, and you may well be too, if the knife at your throat presses any deeper.
“Answer me, who are you? Where am I? Wh—” the prince—Jacaerys Velaryon, Prince of Dragonstone, Heir to the Iron Throne—falters suddenly, and you can only breathe again when the knife drops from your neck, and you feel the presence at your back disappear. “You—you are a woman.”
You do not turn to look at him immediately, eyes sliding shut as you fight to steady the frantic beating of your heart, drawing one slow breath after another until your shaking eases enough to trust your legs. Your fingers tighten on the bags cradled in your arms before you force yourself to turn around.
Prince Jacaerys Velaryon stands three paces behind you, one hand braced against the edge of your table, pained, pale, barely conscious. He is bare from the waist up, and the stitches you painstakingly worked through his torn skin have pulled loose, fresh blood soaking the bandages and dripping down his chest and back.
You see more clearly in the light of the afternoon sun just how ruined his body is, bruises and cuts—you think his ribs must be broken, you did not notice just how bad off he was when you had him lying in the dim corner where you keep your bed.
For a moment, you forget that you are face-to-face with a Targaryen prince—it is only the boy you dragged in from the sea and spent hours trying to keep alive.
Your lips curve down into a deep frown, brows knitting together. You exhale as you say, “You reopened your wounds. It took me an hour to get them properly closed.”
The prince stares at you.
As soon as the words fly from your mouth, you remember who it is before you. The son of a queen. The heir to the Iron Throne, if one listens to his mother. A pretender's heir and bastard, if one listens to her enemies. You do not know which of them is right, nor do you particularly care. Such questions belong to lords and knights and people with far too much time to argue over crowns.
To the likes of you, prince is title enough for you to keep your mouth shut and your head bowed.
He does not immediately respond, gaze flicking around your cottage uncertainly. Your bed, stained with his blood. The dying hearth. The table where you left out the last bits of the bread, just in case he awoke while you were gone and was hungry. The bandages you left at his bedside. The basin of pink water you forgot to empty before leaving for town.
His lips, dry and cracked, part as he stares at you and murmurs more to himself than to you, “You tended my wounds.”
You hesitate, then nod, swallowing once. “I found you on the shore a few days past, my prince—” Your Grace? What is the proper way to address a prince? My Lord does not seem grand enough for the heir to a queen. Prince feels the safest—whatever he may be, no one seems inclined to dispute that part. “—I… you should probably be resting.”
“I need to know what happened,” he says instead, stepping closer to you. He is too pale, sweat beads at his forehead, dark curls matted to his skin. His eyes are wide and wild, pupils dilated the same way you’ve seen in men mad with grief or fear or fury, moments before lashing out at the nearest person. You find yourself tensing instinctively. “What do you know of the battle that took place on the Gullet? Did Baela make it back to Dragonstone? And Rhaena—she was on that wild dragon, and—my brothers, did my brothers make it back? How long has it been? Where are we? How far is it to Dragonstone? I must return immediately, I—”
The prince only just seems to realize how you’ve drawn away, back pressed against the door to your own home, arms tightening around the sack in your arms whenever he comes closer. His tongue darts out to wet his cracked lips, gaze flicking to the knife he dropped onto the floor and the fear in your face.
Shame crosses his expression instantly.
“I—” His expression twists as he puts space between the two of you again. You wonder whether it’s from pain or from struggling to force out an apology. Both, likely. He continues, “You have helped me—saved my life, most like—and here I am frightening you. I… I thought I’d been captured. I woke in an unfamiliar place. I didn't know where I was. I didn't know if I was a prisoner or if the battle had been lost. I heard the door open and…”
He trails off, and you stand there awkwardly, tension easing slowly from your shoulders. He is still on guard, but he does not seem so inclined to pull a blade on you again. Your lips part to tell him where he is, what little you know of the battle on the Gullet.
Instead, you ask, “Do most enemy strongholds look like a fisherman’s cottage, my prince?”
You are mortified the moment the question spills from your lips—he is a Targaryen prince, they are known for blood and fire and madness, dragons and crowns, and you speak to him as though he’s one of your peers.
Prince Jacaerys stares at you for a long moment, and then, to your astonishment, his gaze flicks around the inside of your home again, and something suspiciously like embarrassment crosses his face.
“I suppose not.”
The corner of your mouth twitches despite yourself, and you let out a soft puff of air through your nose before making your way across the room to place the sack you’ve carried from town onto the table. You will have to sort all of what you’ve got later; for now, you need to get the prince resettled before he opens up any more of his wounds.
You turn to look at him again, faltering when you see the pained expression that crosses his face, so sudden that it steals all the color from his cheeks. His hand shoots to his side, fingers digging into the bandages wrapped around his ribs.
“My prince?” you ask hesitantly, taking half a step forward, arm only slightly extended. It is one thing to carry him to your cottage and treat his wounds while he’s unconscious; it is different now that he’s awake.
Prince Jacaerys inhales sharply through his teeth. He is swaying on his feet, breath gone shallow—he looks as though he’s moments from collapsing hard onto your wooden floor. Still, his jaw clenches and the muscles in his neck tighten as he draws himself upright through sheer stubbornness.
“I am fine,” he insists.
“You should sit, my prince.”
“I am standing,” he replies with a tight smile, as though a bead of sweat isn’t rolling down his temple from strain to remain upright and his lips aren’t trembling with pain.
“Barely.”
The prince blinks as though caught off guard by the response, casting a look that is partially confused, and mostly offended in your direction. Your lashes flutter shut as you brace yourself for a volatile reaction, because he is a prince and you are a fisherman’s daughter, and you are arguing with him as though he is an equal and not one of those dragon-riding royals people compose songs about. You think you must have lost your wits entirely these past few days.
Instead, he shoots back, with all the dignity he can muster while visibly swaying, "I have endured worse."
You stare at the blood soaking through the bandages wrapped around his shoulder, uncertain if you believe him. You say with less heat, "That is not the same as being well, my prince."
His jaw tightens, and you fight a sigh. Gods, he actually looks as though he is preparing an argument.
You wonder, briefly, what your life has become. Three weeks ago, your greatest concern had been whether the currents would ease up enough for you to take the boat out of the shallows to catch some fish. Now, Sharp Point has burned and you are standing in your cottage, arguing with a dragon prince about his injuries.
The absurdity of it nearly makes you laugh, wondering if perhaps this entire ordeal is some fever dream brought on by bad fish and Leila’s uncle’s dubious ale.
Then, Prince Jacaerys’s left leg buckles.
He reaches for the table and misses, injured shoulder slamming into the edge hard enough to wrench a strangled cry from him, and before you can think better of it, you're moving.
You let go of the sack of fruits and vegetables and barley you were keeping steady on your table; it topples over, and all of your pristine apples go rolling across the floor of your cottage, but you barely notice, panicked when you realize that he careening right toward the hardwood floor.
You catch the prince around the waist just as he starts to fall, but he is heavier than you expect.
You brace yourself, convinced that he is going to take you down with him, but you manage to steer him sideways toward the chair beside the table. He collapses into it heavily, breath hissing through clenched teeth as pain flashes across his face.
Momentum carries you forward with him—far, far too forward.
One hand lands against the uninjured side of his chest to steady yourself, the other gripping the arm of the chair. For a horrifying second, you are practically sprawled across the heir to the Iron Throne’s lap. You jerk away so quickly you nearly trip over one of the escaped apples, face burning and hands shaking.
"Sorry," you blurt, mortified. “Sorry. Sorry, I did not mean—”
“I believe,” Prince Jacaerys begins with a grimace, “that was my fault.”
You do not respond, flustered, trying to put more distance between you to calm yourself down. Your gaze flicks back over to him, but he is too busy grinding his teeth as he glances down at his wounds to pay you any mind. You let out a soft puff of air through your nose before you look at the apples rolling about your floor, and then reach for one still on your table—you might have lost some sense over the past three days with the little sleep you’ve gotten, but you are not about to feed a prince food off your floor.
You make your way back over to him and hold the apple out to him. He blinks once at it before his gaze lifts to yours questioningly.
“I do not know when last you ate—a while, certainly,” you tell him quietly. “You should get something in you while I redress the bandages. I’ll cook some stew once I’m certain you’re not going to bleed out.”
Prince Jacaerys exhales through his nose before he takes the apple from you, rolling it between his fingers. You step past him so that you can move the basin of water closer to where he’s sitting, grabbing a clean rag and the bandages that you left next to your bed.
You come to stand in front of him again, hesitating before you motion to the wounds on his shoulder. You ask, “May I?”
His dark gaze flicks up to yours briefly before he nods, and your throat tightens as you shift closer, fingers fumbling a bit as you grab for the edge of the bandages to unwind them from around him. It is much more intimidating doing this while he’s awake, inches away from you, and eyes tracking your every move.
“I found you three days ago, my prince,” you tell him at last, trying to remember all of the questions he asked earlier so that you can busy your mind with something other than the fact that you can feel his skin hot against yours. “Before that, the fighting died another three. In truth, my prince, I do not know how you survived so long at sea.”
Prince Jacaerys says nothing in response. His attention remains fixed somewhere beyond the wall behind you, expression distant. You suspect he is counting the days since the battle, the hours his family has believed he is dead, the minutes his mother has spent mourning him. You keep your gaze trained on his shoulder as you unwind the last of the bandages and set them down on the table.
You press your lips together when you see that the stitches have loosened at the back of his shoulder—where one of the arrows had dug deep, but not deep enough to pass cleanly through. Pulling it free had torn through muscle and flesh alike, leaving a ragged injury that had taken you nearly an hour to clean, stitch, and stop bleeding.
You exhale as you run the pad of your finger briefly over the stitches, trying to figure out if you can salvage what effort you already put in or if you would have to pull them out and redo them entirely.
“And my family? My younger brothers? Baela and Rhaena? Have you heard what has become of them?” the prince asks, and you glance up just enough to see how his jaw tightens when your finger brushes over the wound. “Did we win the battle?”
“I do not know if anyone can be said to have won that battle, my prince,” you answer quietly, tongue darting out to wet your lips as you finally start to get to work at reclosing the wound. Your gaze slips to the side when he finally starts to eat the apple you passed to him. He makes a noise in the back of his throat, as though he’s only just realized how hungry he is. “Both fleets were decimated. The dead still wash up on the northern shore.”
How did Prince Jacaerys make it to your shore, then?
Not for the first time, you have to wonder if the gods themselves placed him directly into your hands.
Most of the rest of the dead have washed up on the northern and western shores of Sharp Point, as it is where the currents run strongest, but the prince somehow made it to where your cottage sits on the eastern shore. If he had washed up anywhere else, the patrol would have certainly found him by now. You've heard they have spent the last several days combing the beaches, hauling bloated corpses from the tide and turning them over with the tips of their spears, searching for the dragon prince they are certain the sea claimed.
Prince Jacaerys’s breath hitches when you tug lightly at the stitches holding the skin of his shoulder together. Already, he’s finished the apple you handed him, absentmindedly turning the core between his fingers while his thoughts remain leagues away.
It is only when the last bite is gone that he seems to notice, and his gaze drifts toward the table. He hesitates, and you think it is almost comical—this is the heir to the Iron Throne, a dragonrider, a prince who has flown into battle, and he looks as though asking for another apple might be an imposition too great to make when he’s been floating at sea for at least a week.
You hold the stitches carefully with your right hand so that you can lean forward and grab another apple from your table to pass to him. His cheeks color slightly when he realizes that you noticed.
“I did not mean to stare,” he murmurs, taking the apple from you and cradling it carefully between his hands. He asks again, “Have you heard what has become of my family?”
You shake your head, focusing on tending to his wounds again. You think that you’ll be able to salvage your work. It is good, you think—you can get him resting and then cook some stew for the two of you. You didn’t eat much yesterday, frazzled by the fever and trying to keep him comfortable, and you’re starting to feel a lightness in your head.
“I’ve only heard what the soldiers say in town, my prince,” you murmur, trying to figure out how to go about speaking the news he certainly won’t take well. The last thing you need is for grief to send him bolting for Dragonstone before he can so much as walk across your cottage without collapsing. If he does not kill himself by straining his body when it is not ready, then the patrols will certainly catch him and have his head—and then yours.
You let out a soft sigh as you tie off the stitches on his shoulder blade and lean down to wet the clean rag before lifting it to his bloody skin. You’re careful around the edges of the wound, trying not to disturb the stitches, working slowly at the dried and wet blood from the curve of his shoulder, over the collarbone, down the length of his back.
You try not to think too hard about what you’re doing.
If you do, it begins to feel far too intimate.
It is one thing to drag an unconscious stranger from the sea. It is another to stand so close that you can feel the warmth radiating from his skin, to brush your fingers across the line of his shoulders. You have spent three days tending him without much thought, because there had been no room for embarrassment while the Stranger lingered at his bedside.
Now he is awake and watching you, and every accidental brush of your knuckles against his skin seems to linger a heartbeat too long. He is a prince of the realm, and you are a fisherman’s daughter—people like you are not supposed to touch people like him, and yet—
You exhale through your nose harshly. You busy yourself with the rag, scrubbing a little harder than necessary at a streak of dried blood along his collarbone simply to distract yourself, and his jaw pinches.
“Sorry,” you say quietly.
“It does not hurt,” he replies—a lie, surely, any man would be in agonizing pain. But maybe not; any man also would have died in the sea. Maybe the rumors are true: the Targaryens are closer to god than man; they do not feel pain or have to fear the Stranger the same way people like you ought to. “What have you heard from the soldiers in town? Where are we?”
“Half a league from Sharp Point, my prince,” you answer, still evading the question, which he seems to realize from the way he glances at you over his shoulder, gaze sharp and accusing. He knows you are withholding something. You exhale lightly through your nose and then say hesitantly, “They say two dragons fell over the Gullet. I could not tell you which.”
“Two?!” Prince Jacaerys demands, immediately rising to his feet, so quickly that the chair scrapes against the floor, and you fear he might rip back open the stitches. He whirls on you, eyes wide, pupils large as coins, and you almost flinch. “Two dragons?”
You swallow thickly as you nod. “My prince—”
“One must be—” His voice catches. He cannot finish the thought. For the first time since he awoke, real grief overtakes him completely. It drains his face of what little color had returned, leaves him staring at nothing as though he can already see the answer waiting for him. “I need to know the second. Whose was it? Which dragon fell?”
It unsettles you how close he sounds to pleading when moments before, you had been wondering whether the stories of the Targaryens’ deism held some weight, because gods do not look like this. They do not stand in a stranger’s cottage with fear plain on their face, hands trembling as they wait for an answer they already dread.
The same lump forms in your throat now that did when you heard the soldiers mocking a grieving queen and couldn’t help your thoughts from turning to your own mother, to Miss Ellyn, to your friend, Marie. For a moment, he is not a Targaryen prince or a dragonlord; you see a son and an older brother. A boy your age who knows there are only a handful of dragons flying over the Gullet, and every one of them belongs to someone he loves.
“I do not—”
“I need to return home,” he says immediately, as though his face isn’t white with pain and his stitches don’t strain every time he moves. His eyes glaze over you as though you’re not even there, and he takes a step toward the door to your small cottage. “Sharp Point—there must be passage to Dragonstone, there—”
Panic flares in your chest when he makes as though to leave. It is noon, and the patrols have become more frequent along the shores outside your cottage. They’ve spent a week carding through the western and northern shores, and they’ve been sending more and more men to the east—you worry they’re becoming desperate. The longer they go without finding a corpse, the more they may fear that there isn’t one.
If they have an inkling that Prince Jacaerys is still alive, they’ll start kicking down doors, and if they start kicking down doors, they will find him, and your life will be forfeit for harboring him.
“You cannot,” you say before you can think better of it, lunging forward as though to grab his wrist, but you stop yourself before you can make a terrible mistake, stopping a hairsbreadth from brushing his skin.
What is wrong with you? you think furiously. You need to rest tonight before you do something you cannot take back. Already you have gotten snide with and you have argued with a prince of the realm—now you have commanded him and nearly tried to seize him. You would have been lucky to only lose your hand in any other circumstance. Had he been standing in a hall instead of your cottage, surrounded by knights instead of rough-hewn furniture, you might have lost your head.
“I cannot?” Prince Jacaerys turns to you, bafflement momentarily eclipsing the fear that had consumed him only seconds before, as though he cannot quite fathom that someone has just told him no.
“My prince, you can scarcely stand,” you say. His gaze drops to where your hand is still hovering near his arm, head cocking to the side and brows lifting, and you snap it back to your chest immediately, heat flooding your face. “You have lost a lot of blood, you have barely eaten in a week, your wounds have only just been stitched again, and there are patrols searching for you every road between here and the sea.”
He continues to stare at you, disbelief riddling his expression. You have the distinct impression that no one has ever spoken to him this way before—certainly not a fisherman’s daughter. You force yourself to press on while he’s silent, hoping to make your point and rid him of this futile endeavor before he gets you both killed.
“The Prince Aemond burned Sharp Point’s harbor. There are no ships capable of navigating the currents of the Gullet, and the water still burns besides. I do not have a horse for you to ride to Stonedance. You could not get to Dragonstone even if you were not hurt,” you insist. “I will return to town tomorrow to try to get more information, but please, my prince, you mustn’t leave. You will only be putting us both at risk.”
For a long moment, you think that he will invoke his title or duty and insist upon leaving anyway, or maybe he will simply walk out the door despite everything you have said, and there is nothing you could do to stop him.
Then, his expression changes, twisting into something pained as he looks away, a shuddered breath escaping his lips. His shoulders, held tense since the moment you uttered the word two, sink ever so slightly. The panic that had driven him to his feet has nowhere left to go, draining from him all at once, leaving only exhaustion behind.
One hand drops back down to his ribs, pain crossing his face. Whatever strength carried him to his feet abandons him just as quickly as the panic, leaving him swaying where he stands. He closes his eyes for a moment, and when he reopens them, the panic has been replaced by a type of defeat that is infinitely more difficult to look at.
You step forward cautiously when you see how his body is trembling, hand hovering uncertainly between the two of you, silently asking permission to help him. Prince Jacaerys stares at your outstretched hand, then at the bed on the far side of the room; you think, for a second, that he will attempt to cross on his own, but then his nostrils flare as he exhales, inclining his head just enough to grant you the permission his pride refuses to voice aloud.
Carefully, you slip beneath his uninjured arm, taking care to avoid the fresh bandages. He is warm—still warmer than he ought to be—and you can’t help but wonder if his fever has returned or if this is just how hot dragon prince’s typically run.
He leans into you only slightly, weight settling lightly against your shoulder—you suspect he is trying very hard not to. The journey from the door to your bed is scarcely a dozen paces, but it feels much longer.
“We were supposed to win this victory for her,” Prince Jacaerys says after a moment, voice breaking, the words slip free before he can stop it. You do not think the admission is meant for you, so you stay quiet. His throat works as he swallows. “We were supposed to—”
He cuts himself off, looking away again as you help him ease back down into your bed. As soon as he is seated, something close to relief crosses his face, lashes fluttering; the pain is still there, but not quite as terrible as it was when he was straining on his feet.
“The fact that you are alive at all is a victory, my prince,” you say quietly, even though you do not think the words will be of any reassurance. “You should rest. The sooner you are well, the sooner we can figure out a way to get you home. I’ll cook up a stew and wake you when it’s finished.”
He exhales again, jaw tightening as he looks away with a resigned expression. You turn your back on him to deal with the mess you made of the kitchen area, grimacing slightly at everything spilled across your floorboards and the table.
“What is your name?” Prince Jacaerys asks you suddenly. “I think I ought to know the name of the woman who saved my life.”
You let a soft breath, glancing over your shoulder at him. He is pained still, but there is an earnest look in his eyes that makes you falter—you remember how close you were to leaving him to his fate, and you have to look away again before he can catch the guilt that crosses over your face.
With a shaky exhale, you give the prince your name, and you cannot help but feel as though your life has irrevocably changed, and you do not think for the better.
————————————
The sea is on fire.
Jace cannot tell where the flames end and the water begins. Ships burn around him, masts collapsing into the waves with deafening cracks; men scream as they’re consumed by the fire, and dragons let out terrible shrieks as they dive low to bring down another ship full of Myrish mercenaries.
He tries to focus.
He chases after the rogue dragon, hoping to kill the rider before the dragon can burn any more of the Velayron fleet—or worse, catch Baela and Moondancer. But there is panic clawing at his chest, and smoke and salt clogging his throat and stinging his eyes. He’s screaming at Vermax to fly faster, to kill the rider, and then—then he sees Rhaena.
He sees Rhaena atop the wild dragon, and she is screaming, crying, desperately trying to get it under control, and Jace is confused, reeling as he yells at Vermax to stop at the last second. He and dragon both diving down away from the chase before Vermax could breathe fire on his cousin.
Rhaena does not have a dragon, he thinks, trying to figure out what is happening, and Rhaena is supposed to be with his brothers, and his brothers are captured by the enemy, and he isn’t sure if Stormcloud and Aegon made it to shore, and there is too much going on, and—
—and Vermax is falling.
Vermax is banking hard, being dragged down into the sea, and Jace’s stomach lurches. He’s yelling—begging—Vermax to fly, and Vermax is trying, he’s trying so hard, wings beating smoke through the air. He shrieks as another bolt catches him in the wing, and Jace feels the pain himself—he feels the pain, the primal fear, everything that Vermax does, because Vermax is his, and he is Vermax’s, and they are bonded, and Vermax is drowning, and the water is so cold, and Jace cannot feel his legs or his hands or his face.
He fumbles as he tries to unhook himself from the saddle, choking on water and air, maybe a sob, as Vermax sinks into the sea, a stream of bubbles rising to the surface as he cries for Jace, slowly disappearing into the dark waters. Jace desperately tries to dive after him, as if he has the strength to hold them both above the sea, because Jace has already lost Luke, and he—he cannot lose Vermax.
Not the dragon who had slept beside his cradle before he was old enough to walk, the hatchling he had grown up alongside, whose neck had once fit beneath his arm, whose first uncertain flights had ended with both of them tumbling into the sandy shore of Dragonstone while his mother laughed herself breathless.
Jace does not know a life without him—he does not want to know a life without him. His earliest recollections are not of nursery songs or wooden swords, but of warm green scales beneath tiny hands and the deep, rumbling croon that had lulled him to sleep when he was scarcely more than a babe.
When Jace learned to walk, Vermax learned to fly; when Jace’s voice deepened, Vermax’s roar had too.
There has never been a Jacaerys without Vermax.
But Jace’s lungs are burning, and he cannot see the familiar green scales anymore, and his body is reacting, seizing and spasming because there is no air left in him and water all around. He does not know which way is up and which way is down, the water is too dark and too cold, and he cannot think, but—but he sees the bubbles. He sees the bubbles, and he follows them, and even as Vermax sinks to the bottom of the sea, he saves his rider one final time.
He reaches the surface with a gasp, gulping the smoky air, and everything hurts. His arms ache, his chest is too tight, his eyes burn, and he cannot breathe, because Vermax is gone. He can feel that Vermax is gone; there is a gaping hole in his chest where his dragon used to be, and Jace does not know what to do, he does not know how to live anymore, and he wants—
He wants his mother.
He just wants his mother.
He hears the cheers before he feels the first arrow, gaze lifting to the sky as he searches for Baela and Moondancer—they are not too far, he thinks, she'll come for him.
And then, there’s a dull throb in his shoulder blade as he pulls himself over a floating piece of driftwood, but he hardly takes note of the pain, because everywhere hurts, because Vermax is gone, because he wants his mother. He turns when he hears the cheering, and he sees the men on the ship, and he sees the crossbows and the bows and the Myrish banners, but he does not see anything at all, really, blinking once, staring.
The second arrow catches him closer to the chest.
And then—then all he remembers is sea.
White foam and bubbles, vicious currents and sharp rocks. He thinks he is dead more than he thinks he is alive, but there is so much pain. There is pain and emptiness, and Jace just wants—
“... prince, the stew is ready.”
Jace startles awake, breath hitching in the back of his throat. His body tenses immediately, because he does not remember where he is—he remembers the sea and the waves and rocks and pain and Vermax, but he does not remember…
The cottage. Waking up alone. The door opening, the fear—was he captured? Where is he? Where are his brothers? Where is Baela? What was Rhaena doing on the wild dragon? Mother, mother, mother—
You avert your eyes suddenly, an awkward expression on your face, and Jace suddenly remembers. He remembers you, the apple you passed him as you tended to his wounds; how he held a knife to the throat of a woman who is risking her own life to save his. He remembers that he is stuck bedridden in the bed of a commoner while his mother thinks he’s dead and fights for her throne alone.
He opens his mouth to apologize—to tell you that he will leave as soon as he is able, that he will ensure you’re properly compensated for saving his life—but he falters when he feels something hot and wet drip down his face.
He lifts his hand to his cheek and wipes at his face, looking down at the wetness smeared on his fingertips. For a long moment, he does not understand—seawater, maybe? But he is no longer being tossed around by the sea. He is warm in your cottage, the hearth burns low and your blankets are tangled around him. He blinks once, and another fat droplet of water rolls from his eye down his cheek.
Is he crying?
Heat rushes to his face so quickly he thinks it rivals the fever. He wipes away furiously, not sure if it’s more or less humiliating that you’re pretending not to notice for his sake, turning your back to him to ready the table.
Jace has wept before, more than most ought to—for the father who taught him fishing and sea shanties, and the other who passed before either of them could speak the truth out loud, for the grandfather he never truly knew, for the brother who felt less like a brother and more like his other half—but never, never in front of a stranger.
Jace promptly clears his throat and pulls himself together. He glances at you, praying that his face does not betray him, an excuse on his lips as takes a deep breath. Then he falters, mouth watering instantly, gaze cutting to the side where you are busy ladling stew into two chipped wooden bowls, back politely turned, as though you never noticed anything at all.
Jace doesn't think he’s ever been this hungry. He has dined in castles all his life—roasted swan, lemon cakes, arbor wines. He has consumed the finest meals Westeros has to offer and found them lacking, but he almost feels dizzy with need and pleasure at the scent of the stew you made.
“It—” Jace’s voice is hoarse from sleep. Embarrassed, he clears his throat again to try to even it out. “It smells good.”
You look at him over your shoulder with a small smile and murmur demurely, “I’m sure nothing compared to what you’re used to, my prince.”
“I do not know that,” he says lightly as he forces himself to his feet, grimacing as pain immediately shoots through his body.
Everything aches—his chest, his shoulders, his legs, his arms, his head. In truth, all he wants to do is curl up and sleep more; he cannot bear to keep going. Not now. Not after Vermax, after Luke, after making such a terrible mistake that he might have cost his mother her throne. His stomach flips at the thought, and he fights a shuddered breath.
He needs to keep going—there is no other choice. He needs to get back to Dragonstone as soon as possible.
You pause in the middle of setting the bowls on the table at his words to give him a questioning look. “My prince?”
“I have not tasted it yet,” he tells you, forcing levity into his tone, because you have saved his life, tended to his wounds, and now stand over a pot of stew you cooked for him, worrying that it is not good enough to satisfy a prince. The least he can do is ease your mind. "It would seem unfair to compare a meal I have not eaten yet.”
You blink at him once, and then you smile slightly—it’s a genuine one, not like the small one you forced in his direction just before—and Jace tries his best to return it as he crosses the small room. He shuffles the last few steps toward the table with considerably less grace than he would have liked.
“Perhaps” you reply softly, waiting for him to take a seat at the table before you do as well.
You do not immediately lift your spoon, and Jace hesitates—for a brief moment, an old childhood lesson surfaces. Do not eat until someone else has tasted it. Feasts at King’s Landing and supper at Dragonstone had been meticulous about such things—cups were poured and tasted before his mother, and plates were sampled before any of them took a bite of their food. The paranoia claws at him and disappears as quickly as it comes.
You had dragged him half-dead from the sea, spent days stitching his wounds and breaking his fever, and gave up your bed so he could sleep comfortably. If you wished him dead, you need only have left him on the shore.
“I never thanked you for what you’ve done for me,” he says at last, fingers grazing the wooden spoon dipped into the broth. “When I return to Dragonstone, I shall speak with my mother. She will see you properly rewarded.”
“There is no need,” you murmur, finally taking a sip of the stew when Jace lifts the spoon to his lips.
The broth is hot enough to sting his tongue, but he scarcely notices. It is a simple meal—carrots and celery, chunks of what he thinks is rabbit. It is the plainest thing he has eaten in years, and yet somehow, the best meal he can remember.
His stomach twists painfully as warmth settles into it, and before he can stop himself, he takes another spoonful, then another, the hunger of the past week overwhelming whatever restraint court etiquette had once led him. It is only when half the bowl is gone that he realizes how quickly he is eating.
Embarrassed, he forces himself to slow, lowering the spoon.
“My apologies,” he says, clearing his throat. “I fear I may have forgotten my manners.”
“You haven’t had a meal in over a week, my prince. You’re allowed to be hungry,” you say with a faint smile.
Jace lets out a half-hearted huff of amusement through his nose, though his smile fades as quickly as it came, returning to conversation to try to force himself to slow down and show a modicum of etiquette before he embarrasses himself further.
“There is every need for reward,” he disagrees, leaning forward slightly to look at you. For the first time since he woke in your cottage, he actually observes you—you cannot be much older than he is, beautiful certainly, but there’s a weariness in your expression that Jace cannot help but feel as though is his fault. “You saved the life of the heir to the Iron Throne. You surrendered your bed, tended wounds that would have killed most men, and risked the wrath of the Greens simply by allowing me beneath your roof. I cannot allow that debt to go unanswered.”
You stare at him for a moment, a conflicted expression on your face, and Jace shakes his head slightly as he presses.
“I do not possess enough coin to repay such a debt myself—” nor, he suspects, does anyone “—but my mother will. You needn't live here any longer if you do not wish to. We could see your cottage rebuilt if the fighting has damaged it, or grant you land elsewhere, if that is what you'd prefer. Whatever you ask, so long as it is within my power, I will see it done.”
You are quiet for a long while as Jace finishes off the stew, but he expects hesitation as you mull over what to ask for: gold, land, a better ship, perhaps. Your gaze drifts off to the side, and Jace’s follows it, faltering when he realizes that you’re looking in the direction of what remains of Sharp Point.
That’s right, he remembers—you mentioned your cottage was less than a league away.
From where he sits, he can just see the destruction through the small window. The town is little more than scorched foundations and splintered timbers now, dragonfire having reduced generations of work to ash in the span of a single afternoon. He cannot look at it for long, stomach twisting so unpleasantly that he fears the stew you just cooked him might come right up.
You stay silent for so long that Jace wonders if you have not heard him, and his lips part to repeat himself futilely.
“We used to think they were beautiful, you know?” you say, voice barely over a breath. “We would watch your family fly from King’s Landing and Dragonstone. The children would cheer and call out the names of whatever dragon and royal was passing overhead, even though they knew you could not hear them.” A wistful smile tugs briefly at your lips, and Jace suddenly feels a rock in his stomach, a heaviness that he cannot seem to push away. “There is a wild dragon in these parts—we call him Grey Ghost. He hunts fish along the eastern shore. I see him frequently when I take my father’s boat out. We lived alongside him for years—sometimes he swoops down close when we have a big catch, but he never bothers us. My father always said he was curious—shy, but curious.”
You exhale suddenly as you rise to your feet; Jace wonders if he should ignore the unshed tears in your eyes the same way you politely did for him.
“Then the Prince Aemond and Vhagar came,” you say at last. “The only thing I want, my prince, is for this war to end, but I know you cannot give me that. If you don't mind, I should see to my father's boat before the tide turns. There is more stew in the pot if you would have it. Then you ought to rest. You'll not heal by arguing with your own body.”
Jace opens his mouth.
He does not know what he intends to say, caught between guilt and indignation, because everybody wants the fighting to end—he does, his mother does. Maybe not Daemon, but why do you say it as though he stands opposed to peace? He did not choose this, nor did his mother. It is not his fault that the Greens usurped his mother's throne.
He desperately tries to formulate an answer, but how is he supposed to respond to that? What were they meant to do? Yield to the usurpers? Stand aside while his mother’s birthright was stolen? Let Luke die for nothing? Should he say that he is sorry for your loss? That his mother would never have done this? That Vermax would never have burned a fishing village? That this was all the Greens? That they fight to avenge what happened here?
That dragons are not cruel creatures, he feels the need to tell you when he sees the disdain on your face—it is the people who ride them. It is the Greens. It is Aegon and Aemond, Alicent Hightower and her father.
His lips are parted as though to respond, but he only finds himself staring at you helplessly.
You incline your head politely before slipping out the door, the cool air rushing briefly into the cottage before it shuts behind you once more. Jace remains where he is, staring into the last of his stew until the steam no longer rises from it, the reality of his situation settling over him—Vermax is dead, Luke is dead, and his mother believes them both lost. He does not know whether his brothers and cousins are safe, if his mother still fights for her crown. He is useless, wounded in a fisherman's cottage, alive only because a woman from a town his family failed to protect chose mercy over sense.
He does not think he has ever felt less like the heir to a kingdom.
⚠︎ PROCEED WITH CAUTION — content will include: fauxcest (daddaughter), daddy kink, corruption, age gap, horror-ish (zombie apocalypse au).
synopsis . . . In a world where 90% of the population is infected, Frank Castle's main mission is to transport you— the cure— to infection control. It's been over twenty years since the initial outbreak, and Frank's dedication to the cure is partially rooted in vengeance, but ultimately lies within deliverance. When he collects you from the lab you were raised in, curious and doe-eyed, it is the beginning of internal conflict Frank didn't even realize he was capable of possessing anymore.
▄︻デ══━一 APOCALYPSE!FRANK ▄︻デ══━一
description . . . The Infected, despite their low brain functioning, know him as The PUNISHER. The rest of the world knows him as The MACHINE. Regardless of the fact there's no difference between Frank and the others, the Infected avoid him like the plague. His sense of justice is twisted and driven by the fact he had to put bullets in between the eyes of his wife, his son, and his daughter.
traits . . . jaded ﹠cut throat. expert marksman. grime under his nails ﹠ rarely ever a shaved face. quiet, logical, ﹠ most definitely traumatized.
ʚଓ BUG!READER ʚଓ
“i got toxins in my bloodstream . . .”
description . . . The only world you've ever known is an infected one. Bred in a lab to create a cure to the infectious disease that has plagued society, they kept you in the dark for your sole purpose in life. In an attempt to keep you as ignorant as possible, you were not offered a traditional education. Instead of being able to read and write, your main method of communicating artistically is through paint.
traits . . . skittish ﹠skeptical. curious ﹠ imaginative. a constant stream of thoughts and questions. attachment doesn't come naturally, emotional regulation is a foreign concept, ﹠ socialization was never prioritized.
❀ ͏᭥ [ MDNI / INBOX / ANONS ] ─ oh i have thoughts. sorry yall i went overboard...1.3k words...oh theres fauxcest btw
[✿] ⁺ RIDING UNCLE POPE'S THIGH <33
Like the house is empty, the only people inhabiting the place are you and your uncle Pope. He's in his usual spot whenever he stays at the Cody compound, sitting in his chair in the middle of the living room. You try not to bother him when he’s wallowing in his own thoughts alone, yk? Scared to push any buttons that are combustible. Your uncle was always volatile when he was going through one of his episodes.
Quickly, you try to speed past him to retrieve your sweater from the couch. Your eyes avoid his as you put on your metaphorical blinders, as if he won’t see you either. Yet, just as your toes hit the base of the couch, Pope speaks. “Where have you been?” he says quietly, making tingles spark across every inch of your body. Your legs begin to go cold as all your movements freeze at the sound of his husky voice.
“I-I was uh—just in my room...” you gulp, hoping that the involuntary small talk wouldn’t go beyond your sentence. But, unfortunately, when you bend down to grab your sweater, something else comes from his lips. “You’ve been in your room all day long," he points out curtly. Your brows knit together in subtle shock. Surprisingly, he’s even noticed your absence, despite him being the reason for it.
“Oh, I…" I didn’t think you were paying attention,” you reply, finally turning around to face his direction. But, looking him in the eye was something you weren’t yet ready for. Staring at your sock-clad feet was far easier than facing him, being under his heavy, dark gaze. “I pay attention,” he grumbles, thick fists still by his sides and feet planted in front of him. The low groan of the ceiling fan only intensifies the fraught churn of your stomach, skin welling up in goosebumps.
Your uncle has struck you speechless. You lost the words you stocked up in preparation for a conversation in the anxious pit in the back of your brain. All you can remember to do is nod and murmur out a quick “I’ll see you later, Uncle Andrew. I’ll be back down when Jay comes home,” and rush out of the living room without looking back.
“Come back,” he orders, voice oddly soft, laced with a sweetness that makes your pores leak. The demand stops you in your tracks, and your grip on your sweater grows tighter. The beats of your heart make themselves known in your throat. His stare bores into the back of your head. There is no way you were able to escape to your room now.
You turn around to face him, obeying his demand. Looking into his light-colored eyes, they seem darker, gaze buzzing the blood in your veins. An indescribable look clouds his irises as he looks up at your beautiful, fretful body. “Come closer. M’not gonna hurt you,” he whispers in a tone that comes off as sarcastic. He knows you’ve got every right to be nervous; he likes how worked up he gets you. An evil tease.
Pope’s eyes wander down your body like it’s on display for him, tracing all the curves of your hips, stomach, thighs, and tits. His glare makes your heart race in your chest, the flutter visible in your chest as you let him ogle all of you to see. The corners of his lips quirked up for a moment before returning to their usual stiffness.
“Sit down.” You obey with hesitance, knowing it’s not the right time to question his authority over you. You start kneeling on the floor, but his hand flies to your wrist before you can get settled. “No. Right here,” he says, patting the muscle of his thick thigh like what he’s telling you to do is normal—it’s not.
“U-uncle Andrew. I-I don’t—"
“Take off your shorts and sit down."
There’s no choice but to listen. Regardless of the wrongness, you want it. Warmth twists in your gut as a wet patch in your panties soaks because of his firm words. Slowly, you nod, pulling your shorts off without a question. Pope wraps his big hands around your waist and guides you onto his thigh, warm and heavy.
Your feet plant on both sides of the legs when you take a seat, gasping out a soft whimper when your covered pussy makes contact with the taut muscle of his leg.
He’s soundless as ever. The only noise coming from him is his low breaths. His head is slightly tilted as he looks at your shaking form; your arms sit awkwardly on your lap, the walls of your throat dry, and your efforts to soothe it are lost when the pope pierces the silence—“You scared of me?”
“No..I"m n-not,” you lie blatantly, swallowing thickly while looking back and forth between both of his eyes. “I see your heart beating…” he says, lifting his hand to touch the spot where he found the erratic pulse.
“I'm..I’m just nervous,” you manage to get out, picking at the skin of your hand, but Pope is quick to stop your bad habit and replace your fingers with his. He holds it tight like he’s trying to draw out your nervousness and calm the anxiety evident all over your body. “Don’t be nervous. I won’t hurt you. I'll never hurt you.” His words are a strong contrast to the lifestyle you’ve seen him live out in front of your eyes ever since you met him.
He lets go of your hand, the weight of his hand resting on top of your hips, grip tightening as he grinds you down on the taut muscle of his meaty thigh. It’s slow and light—like he’s experimenting with you, as if you were his own test animal. You whimper at the sudden friction, hands soaring up to his broad shoulders for support involuntarily. He keeps a hand on your hips and uses the other to wander up and down the curves of your trembling body. He cups your bare tit through your tank top, coaxing out a sharp gasp from you.
Your back arches instinctively when he squeezes the soft mounds, rolling his fingers over the hardened peaks. He takes his bottom lip between his teeth and rocks your hips again. He already feels your wetness leaking through your cute little panties. It makes him throb.
“You like that?” he rasps, tilting his head, slowly letting a heart-fluttering smirk take over his lips. “Y-yes,” you nod rapidly, swallowing harshly as the pleasure builds up in your lower tummy. The furrow of your brow makes Pope’s cock twitch in his jeans, urging him to rock you back and forth on his thighs even more. He squeezes the fat of your hips, grinding you back and forth. You whine, head dropped as the friction on your puffy, swollen clit makes your mind go dizzy with carnality. You know you shouldn’t be enjoying it this much; he’s your uncle. But the grossness of it all makes it even better.
Leaning in, he noses the base of your neck, sucking in a deep breath of your sweet sweat. Your scent hits him like a soft, feather-packed pillow, drawing out a whimper from him. He peppers soft, open-mouthed kisses down your neck and across your collarbone, warmth blooming under skin and straight down your core. You pry your eyes open, fighting off the pleasure that is forcing them shut, and you’re met with the swelled bulge in the tent of his pants. The sight makes you gush through your underwear, and Pope notices right away. “You wanna make me feel good too? Is that it?” he asks, sliding his tongue through the dip of your collarbone and putting your hand over his clothed cock.
[✿] ⁺ your older attending who praises you all the time knowing the effect it has on you.
a/n: sorry i need to get this out real quick bc of this video here -> tiktok !
your older attending who praises you all the time knowing the effect it has on you. jacks a very knowing man. he can pick up on almost anything with just a glance. he thought it was cute that you thought it would get past him. your thing for praise. you weren’t very good at hiding it, at least from him. your eyes would pool up a look of a silent beg for more when he’d tell you that he was proud of your work. that “you’re one of his smartest doctors” and “he’s glad to have you on his team.” he didn’t say that to much people, but he knew that look. pupils blown and bottom lip quivering, brain working to come up with an appropriate response. “t-thanks, dr. abbot. means…its means a lot to me.” you gulped out, twirling your thumbs around each other and holding eyes contact like your life depended on it. you were such a brave girl, he thought. it made him think about your limit. how far could he go? would you be able to take it?
it started off slow. the compliments were more frequent. “nice work, kid. knew you had it in you..” was say quietly into your ear after your swooped in and saved the patients life last minute. you should’ve been running off the high of saving a life, but your attending’s words had you going like nothing else ever had. you wondered if you imagining things, that all of words of encouragement were normal. he probably does that with everyone. nope! jack was surprised with how well you were handling it. although, he could see the pretty mask you put up crumble every time he dropped praise into the palm of your hands. your brows would twitch up every single time, thighs almost squeezing together but stopping before he could notice. but jack always notices. he always knows.
the final straw was when he let the two letter pantie dropper out. he pulled you to the side, feign concern your practices. he told you he just wanted to check in, making sure that you’ve been kept all the valuable information he’s taught you in that pretty brain of yours. “m’so sorry, dr abbot. i’ll make sure to s-stay focused. it won’t happen again i promise.” you mumbled out, but holding your head high to not disappoint the man you looked up to. “it’s okay, sweetheart. i trust you. you’re a good girl…my best.” god, he was fucking torturing you. you eye twitched like your brain short circuit. it was too much.
so, when he’s finally got you in his bed, he knows that you’d cum so fast with just a little bit of sweet words pouring into your ears. “there we go, honey. you’re doin so good. s’perfect for me…you’re so fuckin perfect.” did the trick, causing your back to the arch of his mattress and your nails to digging into the freckled skin of his shoulders. you cried you, throwing your head back in pure bliss as you repeated the only word you could remember. “j-jack!”
SUMMARY: TODAY IS A SPECIAL DAY! TODAY IS YOUR BIRTHDAY. OLLY LOVES YOU MORE THAN ANYTHING IN THE WORLD, AND THAT'S WHY HE WANTS TO WAKE YOU UP THE WAY YOU DESERVE IT.
WORDS: 1302
RATING: GENERAL AUDIENCES
CONTENT: DOMESTIC FLUFF, WIFE!READER, OLLY AND READER HAVE A DAUGHTER
WARNINGS: NONE
You were having a peaceful night, sleeping soundly. You had spent a long night with your husband, watching episodes of a TV series even though you didn't know the series, not understanding anything that was happening. But you were having fun creating your own scenario.
Snugly wrapped in the blanket of your shared bed, you finally woke up to light taps against your arm. You moaned, thinking for a moment that Olly was just teasing you. You were ready to push away the hand that was hitting you until you opened one eye.
“Hi, you…” you murmured, seeing the baby leaning against you, who began to babble.
You turned cautiously, holding the little girl in your arms, before sitting down to hold her firmly against your chest. And, as she snuggled against you, you saw your husband enter with a tray in his hands. He approached cautiously, sat on the edge of the bed before placing the tray on your thighs.
“Good morning, ma’am. Have you ever tasted toast made by a baby?” he asked.
You looked at the slightly squashed toast before giggling and shaking your head.
“No, never before.”
“Well, this is your lucky day,” he said before taking the baby in his arms to let you have breakfast. “"Oh, and I think this isn't just your lucky day..." he added before glancing towards a spot on the set.
You looked in the same place, then saw two toasts with ‘happy birthday’ clumsily written on them using jam.
“It was also done by the baby, that’s why everything’s a bit of a mess,” he explained.
“Hmm, surely it wasn’t my husband who couldn’t write properly?”
“Never.”
There was a pleasant silence as you happily ate the breakfast Olly had served.
“Did she sleep well?” you asked, glancing at your baby.
“Yes. She had just woken up when I was passing by her room,” he replied, nodding. “She’s a big girl now. She sleeps through the night,” he added, tickling the baby’s tummy, who gurgled with joy.
“She’s growing so fast… too fast!” you say, before sighing.
“And she looks more and more like her mom.”
“What? No, she definitely takes after her dad,” you corrected him before taking several sips of juice.
Olly chuckled, shaking his head. When your little girl started to whimper and shake herself slightly, Olly gently turned her so she could see and look at you, making her smile again.
“I think she’s starting to have a favorite parent… always wanting to have you in her line of sight,” he commented jokingly.
“And it’s been you since the day she was born,” you replied.
“Not quite!”
“Of course, of course.”
There was once again a pleasant calm between the two of you, your daughter resting her cheek against Olly while admiring you as you ate. When you had finished eating, Olly got up. Baby in one arm, tray in the other hand, he left the room.
“I’d go to the bathroom, if I were you!” he exclaimed from the kitchen.
“Are you saying I stink?” you asked, standing up, your smile evident in your voice.
“Perhaps!”
You chuckled silently before heading towards the bathroom as Olly had suggested. The room had a few candles and a balloon on the ceiling, the bathtub filled with water.
“Stingy, when it comes to balloons!” you exclaimed, passing a hand through the water, noting that it was still warm.
“I have my reasons!”
You chuckled again, feeling your heart warm as much as the water. You knew he probably had other things planned, and the fact that he was trying to do lots of little things only made you feel more soft.
It was truly true love with Olly. You were made for each other, your relationship was absolutely inevitable. When he proposed to you, you didn't even hesitate to say yes. And when you started discussing having a child, you didn't hesitate either. Everything made sense when the other person was involved. You were both the perfect person for each other.
While you were enjoying the hot bath, you could hear some commotion in the kitchen. You didn't know what he was doing, but it seemed complicated. There were little squeaks accompanied by your daughter's giggling and cooing.
After a while, you got out of the bath. After letting the water drain, you took the time to dry yourself thoroughly before getting ready. You were curious to know what else Olly had prepared, obviously remembering the noises that had been coming from the kitchen earlier while you were enjoying your bath.
When you stepped into the kitchen, you saw the room decorated with lots of balloons and a 'happy birthday' banner hanging on the wall. Olly lifted your daughter into his arms.
“Happy birthday!” he said cheerfully.
The baby tried to imitate him, but only managed to babble and mumble a vague ‘mama’.You walked up to them to gently kiss your daughter's cheek, then your husband's lips.
“Oh, don’t look too far behind me!” said Olly, trying to block your view of the worktop. “Turn around and close your eyes.”
You obeyed as he placed the baby in its high chair. You heard him hurry to move in the kitchen, hearing paper. You were still waiting when you felt Olly's lips kiss your neck several times, his hands tickling your waist.
“Stop!” you said, giggling, squirming under the tickles.
“You can open your eyes,” he murmured.
Olly kissed the back of your neck one last time before stepping back. At that moment, you were able to turn around and open your eyes. A birthday cake and two birthday packages were on the worktop.
“Partially decorated by the little princess,” he said, pointing to the cake.
“So that’s what the noises I heard from the bathroom were…”
“Yes… a lot of sprinkles ended up on the floor,” he replied, scratching the back of his neck. “I hope you’re still hungry… or we can eat it later, whatever,” he added, slipping his hands into his pockets and moving like a shy teenager.
“Well, I suppose we can eat it tonight!”
"But... I still recommend you blow out the candles now..."
While you were blowing out the candles, the little girl was playing with some sprinkles that were on the tray of her high chair. Olly then first handed you the flattest gift.
“From the most beautiful little princess.”
You opened the wrapping paper and saw a framed drawing. It depicted your daughter's two hands, handprints made with paint in your favorite colors.
“Aw! Her first handprints!”
“And this is just for you,” he said, nodding.
“Beautiful,” you said, before kissing the top of your daughter’s head.
“And from me,” Olly said, handing over the second gift.
You quickly removed the wrapping paper and saw a small box inside. You glanced at your husband before opening it. You then saw the most beautiful piece of jewelry you had ever seen in your life, which was also the one you had spotted when you were shopping together a few days ago.
“Oh, Olly! It’s splendid!” you say, placing the box on the table and taking him firmly in your arms.
“That’s all you deserve…” he said, taking you in his arms in return.
You stepped back and picked up the jewelry, immediately putting it on. You couldn't help but kiss Olly lovingly.
"Thank you, I love you…”
“I love you too…”
The rest of the day consisted mainly of attention from Olly, who had decided to do everything himself. You were the queen that day, only allowed to hug and kiss.
Having spent the whole day together, you had finally fallen asleep, all three of you, on the sofa, your daughter snuggled up against you both, one hand clinging to each parent.
"All because my head is full of poison
And my heart is full of doubt
I got toxins in my bloodstream
You tried so hard to suck out
—the cure, Olivia Rodrigo
summary: you’re the ray of sunshine and overly dependable smiling intern the night shift crew has been needing. But a certain attending begins noticing you might need more help than you let on.
wc: 11.7k (a short one sorry guys)
warnings: crippling perfectionism, high-key people pleasing, reader is bright and bubbly to compensate for how awful she feels day to day, one vomiting scene, service dom jack, santos is on nightshift bc i love her and i wanted her in this fic. trinity and dennis and reader r basically siblings, jack’s characterization in this is DEF andrew pope cody-esque panic attacks, mental health struggles, reader is an intern again but i swear it’s just cause i watch a lot of greys and interns r the only stage of medical career i know enough about to write semi-well T-T
acknowledgments: once again a round of applause for @wesandresons for the lovely gif, and @uzmacchiato and @cursed-carmine for the dividers!
a/n: i’m not rlly sure i like how this turned out but oh well @leeknowpegger i hope this keeps you company
masterlist
When you first get to the PTMC, Jack can’t decide what he thinks about you.
He vaguely remembers you— you’d done a rotation here, some time ago. One of the unfortunate ones who’d drawn the short stick and been stuck on the night shift. He has a hazy recollection of your face during an MVC, your jaw hard set and a permanent smile to your face. He vaguely remembers, at the time, the only thing he’d really though was:
Jesus, this kid needs to dial it back.
The sentiment, of course, remains the same when it’s handoff time, and Robby is telling him all about what an awful fucking day it’s been, and of course now he says “Oh, remember that med student you got stuck with awhile back? Smiley-face? You must’ve done something right, because she matched into the ED for her residency. She starts today.”
Not exactly the news an attending wants to hear right after the horror show the day has been so far. Especially when intern/baby resident in question is… charismatic.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Ellis says, her eyes trained on you as you soothe a crying teenager who just got wheeled in. “If you ask me, we could use someone who actually smiles. Bit too dark and dreary in here for my taste.”
“You like dark and dreary.”
She gives him an unimpressed raised eyebrow. “So? We can’t all be doing it. Like, we’ve got Shen, but his is more iced-coffee induced than actual smiling charm.”
“I can be charming when I want to be.”
“No, you can be flirty or suggestive. There’s a difference.”
Jack does not justify her response with one of his own, instead choosing to look down at his tablet and pretend to chart while he listens to how you’re interacting with the patient. The teenager seems to be calmed down, and the parents don't sound frantic or worried.
Maybe Ellis is right. Unfortunately, this tends to be the case fairly often.
He sighs and focuses on the chart he’s supposed to be doing and attempts to wipe his mind of bright smiles and glittering eyes.
—
The PTMC and Emergency Medicine in general was not, actually, your first choice. It wasn’t even your second, or your third.
First was surgical. Everybody wants to be surgical. You wanted surgical. It’s flashy, it pays well, and it’s cool as fuck. Plus, unlike some of your classmates, you actually have the stomach for it (one of the many things that eventually translated well to emergency medicine.)
Second was Ortho. Because bones are cool. Ortho surgeries are fun too, when they’re not arthroscopy after arthroscopy.
Third was any kind of unit like Burn or ICU. A high stress program that wouldn’t let you think, let you run on adrenaline all day.
But then you did your rotation in general surgery and absolutely fucking hated it.
Surgeons are assholes. Surgeons are uptight nerds who like to subject anyone they consider beneath them to cruel and unusual punishment.
Even in during the short duration of your rotation through surgery, it almost killed you. You could practically feel the light in your soul dimming at every pointed comment, every sharp correction, every barked insult and something or other cruel word.
And then there was the PTMC. The stupid ED that wasn’t supposed to fun, was supposed to be grueling and exhausting (especially since you’d gotten assigned to the night shift.) But instead of awful you got amazing, which sucked.
Seems counterintuitive, but it’s true.
You wanted to like surgery enough to power though. But not a single rotation after the ED even came close to measuring up. The speed, the action, the gore, and the kind but firm guiding direction from the attending’s and residents.
Matching into the PTMC was an event actually worth celebrating. As in, you decided to un-tense minutely and splurge on actual champagne that you drank in your apartment while dancing to your favorite music.
And now, you’re here. Determined to not fuck this up. To keep moving, keep going, and be a fucking excellent ED doctor.
Except your attending, Dr. Jack Abbot, one of the reasons you joined the ED in the first place, keeps giving you funny looks when he thinks you’re not looking.
You’re not sure if he’s aware that you know that he’s staring at you. You do have a wider than normal field of peripheral vision, so maybe he doesn’t know that you can still see him out of the corner of your eye?
Regardless of if he knows or not, it’s unnerving. Because he’s your boss. And you know he’s capable of being an incredible doctor and mentor, because you see it every single day.
Just not directed at you.
He’s not really mean, or standoffish, or anything like that, he’s just… not necessarily kind. Not in the way that you see him with the other residents on his service or even with you, during your rotation as a med student.
Hell, he’s nicer to Santos than he is to you.
“Did I like, say something to offend him and I don’t know?”
Trinity makes a face at you from over the edge of the monitor. “Isn’t that more my area of expertise?”
“No. You offend people on purpose.”
“True.”
You prop your head on your hands, resting your elbows on the counter above her. Your keycard, attached to your breast pocket via a red, heart-shaped badge reel is lovingly adorned with pink rhinestones and cute stickers. The pocket itself is filled with several glitter gel pens (and regular pens, just in case.)
“I just don’t get it. I’m nice, right?”
“Disturbingly so.”
“Exactly. The only thing I can think of is that I’ve messed up or something, but it’s Dr. Abbot. He’d tell me if I did. He doesn’t exactly hold back.”
“Do you really need me for this conversation?”
You level her with a look, but she just groans.
“Why do you even care? So what, one guy doesn’t like you, boohoo.”
“He’s not just some guy. He’s my attending. And you might’ve secured your spot here, but i’m all shiny and new. I can’t exactly earn people’s respect if our boss doesn’t like me.”
Trinity doesn’t immediately respond with a scathing remark, which usually means that you’ve made a valid point.
“Should I talk to him?”
She sighs. “I think you’re overreacting. You’ve only been here for like, two weeks? Three? He’ll probably calm down the more you work together.”
“Did he stare at you all weirdly when you first started?”
“Well, no, but that’s because I don’t suck at my job.”
Now it’s your turn to glare.
“Sorry. I guess you’re not completely hopeless.”
You roll your eyes. “Thanks, Trin.”
She scrunches her nose up at the nickname like you knew she would, because she hates it, which makes it one of the only weapons you have against her.
Trinity wasn’t as helpful as you’d hoped, and night shift means no Dana to ask for advice. There’s Dr. Ellis, but she’s pretty close to Dr. Abbot, which means there’s a high chance that whatever you ask her will make it back to him. You aren’t really close enough to Dr. Shen to ask him “Hey, how come Dr. Abbot stares at me when he thinks I’m not looking and isn’t as nice to me as he is to you guys?”
The question is stupid and kind of pathetic, so really, you shouldn’t be asking anybody, but you’ve always been crippled by an intense need to be well-liked. It feels like winning, and it feels good and safe. Safe is good. Safe is great.
Wanting the guy who's essentially your boss to like you is completely rational, right?
You just wish he’d tell you what you’re doing wrong, so you can fix it.
Also, it’s just driving you crazy.
Even if he just legitimately didn’t like you, and made that apparent, it’d be something. You could work with that. You could figure out what it was he didn't like via intense pattern recognitin and fix it. Problem solved!
But he isn't obvious about it. He behaves indifferent and detatched- like you could die tomorrow and he wouldn't care.
It’s the not knowing. If you could just ask him, if he could just give you an answer, then you’d know where you stood, and everything could be fine.
What changed? You want to beg, What happened after my med student rotation? Do you even remember that? What did I do? Where did I go wrong?
It eats away at you over the course of the week. It has been since you noticed, which was pretty much on day one. You don’t show this outwardly of course, because you’re pretty sure you can get through to him and level out the wrong-footedness you feel around him through stubborn determination. Surely, at some point your unwavering nature will win out and he’ll finally see there isn’t anything he needs to hate about you. This is an incredibly healthy mindset to move through life with.
The week closes with an MCI around 5pm, which is just everyone’s favorite thing in the world. The night shift gets called in, minus Trinity, who was already there working a double, and everyone sets in for the long haul. You do your best to focus on the patients and do not at all think about the ease and camaraderie between Mohan and Abbot, because that would be a very fucked up progression of priorities.
Eventually it’s all over— patients are stabilized, some aren’t. Overtime ends with phantom blood on your hands and being strong-armed into drinks in the park afterwards.
You feel awkward, because you don’t work with the day shift people that often, so you’re not really sure how best to be yourself and not come across as weird. Neither of your “safe” people (Trinity and Dennis) are present, so there’s no way in hell you’re going to be capable of relaxing.
You take the beer that’s tossed to you, even though you think beer is gross (why does it taste like that? Why do people enjoy it?) and sip on it excruciatingly slowly, trying to hide a grimace and occasionally chiming in with mentally rehearsed and carefully crafted jokes and comments.
It’s exhausting, and not at all how you wanted to spend your night after an MCI. In a dream world, you don’t have the social backbone of a wet paper bag, and you say no, and you go home to your house and shower, then watch one, maybe two episodes of a tv show, scroll through Pinterest, and then go the fuck to bed.
But for the low low price of much needed rest, you get to drink one of the most disgusting alcoholic beverages known to man and worry if everyone thinks you’re being weird! Yay!
Also. Side note. Minor comment. Little issue.
Jack Abbot is sitting next to you. Like, right next to you on the bench. Because he came late and it was the last spot open. So he’s just right there. Posture loose and open and not at all like he didn’t just help you try to save a girl your age who had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like two hours ago your elbows weren’t brushing, elbow deep in a man’s organs, saving his life.
Jack, unlike you, looks comfortable to be at the park with everyone. He doesn’t look like he’s analyzing conversation to determine the best thing to say next.
Jack isn’t looking at everyone. He’s not looking at anyone. He’s looking at you.
You turn, give him a little smile.
Again.
Maybe he doesn’t know you can still see him out of the corner of your eye. (No, he’s a vet, he’d definitely also have wide peripheral vision. But maybe he thinks that you don’t have it, because you’re not a vet.)
(You’re probably thinking too much about the peripheral vision.)
Jack doesn’t stop staring at you. Instead, he reaches over to where your barely-drunk beer is in your hands, and says:
“Here, give me that.”
And then he just. Takes your beer. Straight out of your hands.
Jesus fucking fuck he so hates you.
—
“He took your beer?”
“Yes,” You groan from the kitchen island in Trinity’s apartment, “He said ‘here, give me that’ and then just took it. He didn’t say anything else to me for the rest of the night.”
She lets out a low whistle. “Maybe he doesn’t like you. What could you have possibly done to make him not like you?”
“I don’t know!”
“Well, you better fix it. Having your attending hate your guts will like, majorly suck.”
“I don’t know how to fix it. That’s what i’m over here for. To brainstorm.”
“I thought you were here to steal the cookies Huckleberry made?”
Dennis peeks his head up from the couch. “Wait, what?”
You wave a hand. “Semantics. Focus.”
“Okay,” Trinity taps a pencil on a notepad, “Have you tried sleeping with him?”
“He’s like, probably over twenty years older than me.”
“So? I know your type.”
You roll your eyes. “As if he’d go after me, Trin. He doesn’t like me.”
“Hate sex is a thing.”
“Name one time hate sex solved the hate part.”
She purses her lips. “Touché. What about like, baking him shit, like Huckleberry does for—“
“Shut up Trinity!”
You both snicker.
“No dice,” You sigh, “I can’t bake for shit. Recipes never have enough context. They’re never specific enough.”
“Two tablespoons of sugar isn’t specific enough for you?”
“You’re not helping.”
Trinity holds up her hands in mock surrender. “To be fair, I never agreed to help. I just said we’d both be here if you wanted to come over.”
“I think you should just ask him.” Dennis pipes up.
He shuffles off the couch and slides into the second chair at the kitchen island adjacent to you. “Dr. Abbot is a straightforward guy. He appreciates honesty. Doesn’t beat around the bush. I can’t imagine him being truly upset that you tried to fix a problem.”
“I want to, but that’s like. Too straightforward. What if—“
“Oh my god,” Trinity moans, “Just ask him. Or fuck him. Do something so I don’t have to hear about it anymore.”
You frown, opening your mouth to object, then close it with a sigh.
She’s right.
You have to just move on. Either deal with it or deal with it by… not dealing with it. Talk to him or don’t.
Easier said than done.
—
It takes two more shifts of unrequited awkwardness for you to finally reach your limit. At a certain point, probably when you almost snapped at him for hovering (doing his job) while you were trying to intubate a patient, you realize that you cannot, actually, just get through to him via stubborn determination.
Damn.
So when you have a second, you corner him in one of the quieter hallways. The conversation has the potential to be horrifically embarrassing and mortifying, so it’s best if there’s no audience.
“Do you have a minute, Dr. Abbot?”
He glances down at his watch, then crosses his arms and leans against the opposite wall.
He doesn’t talk (unnerving, annoying) and his sharp, ever analyzing gaze makes your skin prickle as you cross your hands behind your back and mirror his position, leaning against the wall.
He’s so irritating. He won’t even give you a fucking inch. There’s nothing to go on.
“Did I do something wrong?”
For the first time since you became a resident in the ED, he makes an expression: surprise.
“Why do you think you did something wrong?”
“Because you won’t fucking talk to me!” You hiss, absolutely fed up with Dr. Jack Abbot, “Half the time you only look at me when you think I won’t notice. You don’t talk to me unless it’s required for teaching, and even then, it’s short and stilted. I’ve seen how you interact with literally every other person who works here. I know you can be nice. You’re just not nice to me, and I’d like to know why.”
You pause. “And you took my beer!”
There’s a moment of silence, and then there’s a breathy, almost wheezing sound that takes you a minute to place.
He’s laughing.
Jack fucking Abbot starts laughing.
You honest to God want to kill him.
“Sorry,” He says, eyes sparkling with mirth and shoulders loose, “I can see how all of that can be taken negatively—“
“How else was I supposed to take that.”
Jack levels you with a look, and you shut your mouth. “But it was not my intention.”
He just stops speaking there, like that’s a perfectly adequate explanation and not at all vague and almost more disconcerting.
“So…,” You drawl, “What was your intention?”
Something interesting, a little more heated than just analytical sparks in his gaze, and he tilts his head, eyes flicking up and down your body.
Under the silence and scrutiny, you resist the urge to squirm in place, hands squeezing themselves in an effort to subdue the itch.
“You hate confrontation.”
Your chest feels like a cinder block just slammed onto it. “What?”
“You,” He levels a finger at your chest, “Hate confrontation. You hate it so much that you lie about yourself to people instead of saying things they might not like.”
You laugh nervously, voice high and reedy. “A lot of people do that. I don’t think that’s a crime.”
“It’s not. But it doesn’t exactly make me want to trust you with my residents. With my team.”
“You’re worried I’ll what? Get somebody in trouble? Do something shitty?”
“I’m worried that something is going to happen to you, and you won’t tell anyone about it.”
The hallway grows silent. In this distance there’s beeping, someone shouting orders, a child crying. But not in the five feet of space you, Jack, and the conversion currently occupies.
“Why do all of this?” You gesture vaguely to the space between you two, unwilling to be more specific. He does not deserve the itemized list you assembled in your head.
“I wanted to see if you’d confront me about it or not. Confirm my suspicions.”
“That’s—“ You wrinkle your nose, “Actually kind of shitty of you.”
Jack just hums.
“So what now? Did I prove myself to you?” Your tone is mocking.
He scoffs, “God, you really hate confrontation, don’t you?”
Your skin prickles again. “No.”
“Lying again.”
“Shut up.”
He knows how uncomfortable he’s making you. He’s doing it on purpose. And right then and there, you decide you don’t care what Jack Abbot thinks, because if Jack Abbot is going to be a self-assured asshole, Jack Abbot can go fuck himself.
Your pager going off saves you from verbalizing any of this, and with one last glare, you’re gone.
—
If Jack was an obnoxious lurker before, it doesn’t hold a damn candle to how he behaves now.
He’s just. Everywhere. Around every corner. Driving you crazy.
When you bring this up to Trinity, she looks at you like you’ve finally lost it.
Which. Okay. You probably have. But that’s beside the point! The point is…
…The point is that Jack Abbot is getting on your last nerve and you really don’t have any to spare. Life has been stomping all over the other ones, so the singular nerve Jack is stabbing with his annoying pointed looks and almost lingering touches and stupid little questions (“Hey, that was a rough one, are you alright?”) is just worn out. It doesn’t have anything left to give. You don’t have anything left to give.
But, like you were brought up to do, you keep right on giving. And working. And smiling.
Because it goes a little something like this: There’s no one to pick you up if you fall. You pick yourself up when you fall, and you’ve gotten pretty fucking good at it. All of your friends (read: Trinity and Dennis and maybe Mel) are doctors, which means you all have shitty work/life balance and no one would even be available if you called and said “Hey, every morning I lie awake and stare at the ceiling and convince myself to get up while listening to Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley, after which I will inevitably cry on the bus to work. Would you mind helping me with my laundry?”
Okay. Well. Trinity would probably show up if you asked because once she decides that you’re her friend she’s really intense about it (she’s a bit like a Doberman or some other dog like that, not that you would ever tell her) and Dennis probably would too, but only because he never says no when someone asks for help so it kind of just feels like you’re taking advantage of him. Mel is far too busy juggling being an ED doctor and caring for Becca for you to even think about asking her without feeling intense, soul crushing guilt.
So yeah. You don’t really have a best friend, unless one would count the singular romance book you’ve read so much the spine is completely fucked and the pages are yellow from years of travel and rereading. Counting any book as a best friend is probably very pathetic. But hey, don’t fix what isn’t broken.
So you have a system and a method and crying before and after work every single day is totally, completely normal, healthy, and sustainable. Probably even more so in the medical field, and especially since you’re a PGY1. Interns gotta suffer and all that jazz.
Jack Abbot does not need to make the suffering worse by existing near you constantly. Things are really honestly bad enough.
“Hey,” Trinity grabs your arm as you’re going by during a mellow shift, grip not tight enough to hurt but enough to be a bit past uncomfortable, especially for a girl not used to physical contact, “You good?”
‘No,’ You want to shout, collapsing on the floor in a heap of bones and tears, ‘I haven’t done laundry in so long that I’ve started wearing my cleanest dirty socks instead of washing more. I don’t have the energy to spend my days off doing anything productive, but every time I sleep instead of doing chores the anxiety eats me alive. I can’t sleep at night because the guilt makes me so nervous sometimes I throw up. Sometimes I don’t wash myself in the shower and I just stand in the water until it gets cold. Every day I wake up with the same headache, and then I take medicine for it, but by the time it’s gone I’m going to bed and then I wake up with it all over again. I think my liver is shot from over-the-counter medication usage. Everything hurts. I’m so tired.’
Trinity needs you to be okay. Trinity is too busy and under too much stress to worry about you. She needs you to be okay. Everyone needs you be okay.
“Mhm!” You nod, lips spread wide, “Pretty good day actually, all things considered.”
It’s not a total lie. The headache relief you’ve been taking religiously is kicking in faster than it usually does today.
Trinity scans your face, looking for signs of a lie, and she must find something (not shocking, it’s very hard to pretend that everything isn’t awful when Everything Is Really Awful) because her grip tightens minutely and she does that pursed lip thing she does when she’s worried and about to express it through anger or bitchiness.
“Don’t fuck with me. I don’t want to find out you’re like, doing drugs or something stupid like that. If you’re having a hard time—“
“Trin,” You interrupt, skin prickling uncomfortably as she implies that you’re not capable of handling things on your own, “If I need help, I know I can ask for it. And look,”
You tap your unbroken collection of glitter gel pens still intact in the front pocket of your scrubs. “It’s gotta be a good day. I still got my glitter.”
She wrinkles her nose, but drops your arm. “I don’t even know why you keep those. You can’t use them on like, anything. It’s against hospital policy.”
You shrug. “Glitter is a great motivator and mood elevator. Plus, kids love ‘em.”
You manage to feign something important coming up and duck out of the conversation and then, when the coast is clear, dart into one of the lesser used bathrooms and tuck yourself in the darkest stall.
Even in a hospital, toilet seats are disgusting, but you can’t quite summon any actual disgust as you plop down on the white porcelain, only lightly cracked, and cradle your exhausted head in your hands.
You have to keep going. There is no alternative. There is no other option.
Your chest feels tight and loose at the same time, and your skin feels clammy and wrong. Everything feels wrong. The lights are too bright and the material of your scrubs is scratchy and awful, and the longer you sit in the stall the more you want to throw up.
Someone knocks on the door before you get the chance to move down to your knees and start worshipping the porcelain altar. Assuming it to be Mel, who sometimes has a habit of showing up at the wrong time, you open the stall door to reveal none other than Jack Fucking Abbot.
You stare at him blankly for a few beats, too bewildered to feel sick. “You’re not allowed to be in here.”
“In the men’s bathroom?”
“This isn’t the men’s bathroom.”
“The sign on the door would say otherwise.”
Embarrassment brings the nausea back tenfold. You hold the stall door in a white knuckle grip to keep yourself upright and from hurling onto your boss.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I swear I didn’t do this on purpose—“
Jack raises an eyebrow, his hands folded behind his back. Military man, right.
“Clearly.”
You stumble forward. “I need to go—“
“Woah, down girl. I didn’t knock because I cared which toilet you use. You work here. Use whatever toilet you want. Preferably not the one in the attending’s lounge.”
“There’s an attending’s lounge?”
“No.” He grins, a devilish upturn to just the corner of his lips.
“Oh,” You pause, then catch up to the rest of what he said, “Then why’d you knock?”
“Cause it kind of sounded like you were dying in there, and I’d rather if you didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“The paperwork, for one. Two, Santos would probably shank me.”
“Ah.”
“Also,” He shrugs, “I’d miss you.”
You scoff. “No you wouldn’t.”
“I would.”
“You don’t like me. You don’t even trust me.”
Jack gets this pinched look on his face; his lips pull down, his brows furrow and he narrows his eyes, just a bit.
He opens his mouth to respond when the door bangs open.
Jack doesn’t even look up before he’s barking:
“Find another bathroom.”
“But I have to—“
“Find another bathroom or I’ll cut your dick off.”
The guy grumbles away, but Jack never takes his eyes off you. It’s unnerving— to be the sole focus of his attention.
You’re the first to break the now tense silence of the bathroom.
“That seemed a bit extreme.”
“I’m not a man who does things by halves.”
“No,” You sigh, “I suppose you’re not.”
Jack cocks his head to side, almost predatory. More methodical than anything. He looks at you— really looks at you. Shamelessly drags his eyes up your body, likely cataloguing every mystery bruise, frown line, eye bag, freckle, and all the million lines of exhaustion that seem etched on your very being, right down through the bones and marrow.
He sighs, crossing his arms before leaning back on the opposite wall of the bathroom.
“What am I going to do with you?”
His words instantly have you on edge, bristling at all the unsaid things behind his tone.
“I’m not something to be dealt with. I’m a person, not some fucking—“
“You’re like a stray cat,” He interrupts, “Always hissing. Do I need to win you over with treats? Should I start bringing canned tuna?”
“You’re an asshole.”
“And you’re drowning.”
Just like that, all the humor gets sucked from the room, replaced with the cold, sharp grip of reality. Suddenly exhausted by the weight of it all, you drop back down onto the toilet seat.
Jack gives you a few moments to respond, get angry, or defend yourself, but you don’t. He’s too good at reading you, it seems. What is there to say?
When you don’t speak, he does.
“Did you think no one would notice?”
“No one has.”
“Am I no one?”
You lean back, closing your eyes and awkwardly resting the back of your head against the wall and the back of the toilet.
“You’re nosy.”
If this were any other moment, any other scenario with any other person, you would never ever act so contrary. But you’re tired and Jack seems to bring out the worst in you.
He makes an amused huffing noise. “You’re good at what you do, I’ll give you that.”
“What, exactly, am I doing?”
“Pretending.”
You scoff. “Fuck off.”
“Come on, sweetheart. How much longer are you going to do this to yourself?”
You lift your head off the back of the toilet. “You act like I’m killing myself:”
“You are,” His inclined his head, “Just really slowly.”
You scrub a hand down your face.
“Look. I understand why you think you have to care, but you don’t. I’m just going through a rough patch. I’ll get through them like I always do. I’m not gonna crash and burn or endanger myself or do whatever it is you’re worried I’m going to do, okay? So you can leave me alone. I’m fine.”
Jack doesn’t get to respond, because the second the words are out of your mouth the nausea that’s been churning in your stomach since you made it to the bathroom rises all at once, and you barely have time to slide off the toilet and turn before you’re throwing up hard enough to almost choke.
The worst part is that you forgot to eat lunch so your stomach is woefully, painfully empty. You’re throwing up nothing but bile, throat burning and tears streaming down your face.
“Alright, come on,” A warm hand rubs soothing circles on your back, and if you weren’t busy hurling your guts out, you’d marvel at the feeling and juxtaposition between the Jack you know, who’s all cold indifference, and the Jack currently holding your hair out of your face while you vomit.
“Let it out,” He soothes, hand still rubbing, “Don’t fight it. It’ll be over soon.”
“I hate throwing up.” You choke, coughing and gasping.
“No one does. But you’ll feel better when it’s over.”
Over feels like it’s never going to come. But eventually your stomach stops clenching, you manage to stop heaving, and you’re slumped over the toilet, sucking down gulps of air, sweat beading on your forehead and the back of your neck.
“This,” You mumble in between gasps, “Means nothing.”
You can’t see Jack’s expression, but his response is so quiet you almost miss it.
“Okay.”
You can’t see his face, but you know this isn’t over.
—
Jack sends you home once you’re capable of standing on your own two feet without shaking like a newborn fawn.
(“You can’t send me home.”
“Yes I can. You’re not allowed to come back to work after throwing up in the bathroom.”
“We both know I’m not the only person to do it.”
“Yeah, but I haven’t caught the other people in the wrong bathroom and held their hair back while they vomited.”
“…”
“You only have two hours left anyway. Go home.”)
The problem lies in the fact that the buses aren’t running yet, which means that you can’t, actually, get home. Your house is an hour away on foot. An hour you’d normally be capable of walking, but your phone is almost dead, you’re exhausted, and you still feel a little weak because of the vomiting.
So after retrieving your things from your locker, you find yourself sitting on the little bench outside the PTMC, waiting for the minutes to tick by. If you didn’t bring at least one book with you everywhere you go in case of emergencies (like this one) you probably would have just walked into oncoming traffic.
It’s cold out and your jacket is cheap so you have to burrow into it, hood up to retain any semblance of warmth. It would be almost cozy —huddled in your jacket, watching the city go by, tucked into your favorite romance book— if the shift hadn’t gone the way it had and if a grueling bus ride and half mile walk didn’t await you once the buses finally start running. Waiting for you beyond that is just chores and an empty apartment.
Your fingers tighten on the edges of your book.
“Why the fuck are you still here?”
You jolt in place, cracking your neck over to the side and blinking blearily.
Jack. Again.
He makes an expectant face at you as if to say ‘Well?’ when you don’t answer immediately.
Your eyes dart back and forth nervously, even though you know you haven’t done anything wrong. “The buses aren’t running yet. It’s an hour walk to my house.”
Jack scrubs a hand down his face and curses under his breath.
“How long until your bus gets here?”
You check your phone. Shit. Only four percent left.
“And hour and a half. Maybe a little longer if it’s running behind more than usual.”
He seems put out by your answer, as if the bus’s heavily fluctuating schedule is of personal consequence and offense to him.
“Um,” You start, both uncomfortable at having been caught reading a romance book in public and at the general air of frustration Jack seems to be venting at the moment, “I’m fine. I have my book. I don’t mind waiting.”
Jack just sighs.
“Do you really think I’m just going to leave you out here, in the cold, after you threw up in the bathroom, to wait for the bus, for nearly two more hours?”
You wince. “Well, it doesn’t sound great when you put it like that.”
He works his jaw. “Have you eaten?”
“No…?”
He shakes his head.
“Come on. You’re coming with me.”
—
“I have to admit, this isn’t where I thought we were going.
Thirty minutes later finds you seated on the cracked vinyl seat of a booth in a cheap diner, staring at a menu and rationalizing spending your last $15 on what will probably be mediocre pancakes.
Jack is seated across from you, already two mugs of coffee —black, but oddly enough, decaf— and not even bothering to pretend to look at his menu. He either comes here often or doesn’t care to act like he isn’t staring at you.
Probably both.
“Where did you think we were going?”
Steam curls out of your own untouched mug of coffee —ordered for you by Jack, also unfortunately decaf— and you debate just getting up and running out of here.
Too bad you’re too exhausted to run anywhere. Jack’s probably banking on that.
“I don’t know,” You shrug, setting the menu down, “Maybe to Gloria’s office to write me up or something.”
“What would I even be writing you up for?”
“Disobeying direction? I’m sure you could come up with something.”
The waitress chooses that moment to appear, notepad in hand. “Are we ready to order?”
Jack rattles off his order, and then two sets of eyes turn to you expectantly. Before you can order the single fruit bowl you were planning on getting (the cheapest thing on the menu) Jack pipes up:
“Order whatever you actually want. Not whatever you think is cheapest or easiest.”
The waitress, a middle aged woman who has probably seen much worse than whatever the two of you have going on, just chuckles lightly under her breath.
You hesitantly list the item you’d been eyeing and thank the waitress.
It isn’t until after the menus have been taken and Jack’s coffee re-upped for the third time that you manage to courage to speak.
“You didn’t have to do this, you know.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean,” your fingers curl on the edge of the table, desperate for something to hold onto, “I can’t— It’ll be awhile until I can pay you back. I barely made rent this month.”
“Do you think I would take you to breakfast and then make you pay?”
“Yes…?”
“You’re not touching the bill, kid. I’m a gentleman.”
“Oh,” You didn’t really see that coming, “Okay.”
Jack gets a funny expression on his face, then resumes his drinking coffee and glancing out the window routine.
“So,” You say after a beat, “Was there something you wanted to talk about…?”
The silence just feels so awkward. It’s killing you.
He raises a brow. “Do you want to talk?”
“I’m asking you.”
“And I’m asking you what you want to do. What do you usually do when you come out to eat?”
“I don’t? Eating out is expensive, so. But when I do it’s usually by myself, so I end up just reading.”
Jack gestures to your bag beside you. “Don’t let me stop you.”
“What?”
“Read your book.”
“But that’s— isn’t that boring for you?”
He sets his mug down. “I didn’t bring you here because I wanted something from you. I brought you here because you had a shitty day and it seemed like you could use some cheering up. If reading makes you feel better, then do it.”
You have to look out the window to avoid his gaze. You don’t understand how your perfectly crafted facade just crumbles into fucking dust around him. How he manages to see right through you at every turn, how he manages to uncover every lie and every half truth.
“How did you even know I like diner food?”
“Because I pay attention to you.”
You finally look back over at him, arms folded across your chest; not really defensively, more like you’re trying to hold your entire body together by sheer force of will.
Jack’s lips twitch. Not really a smile, but almost. “You bring it up every time Santos wants to get food after a shift. She always says no, because she hates it, but it never stops you from suggesting it.”
It’s just one detail. One tiny, inconsequential detail that he’s apparently memorized and held onto because to him, it’s important. For some impossible to understand reason, he seems to care.
"Also," He shrugs, "I'd miss you."
You scoff. "No you wouldn't."
"I would."
“Do you hate me?”
Jack looks back at you, seemingly startled by the abrupt question.
“No.”
You take a deep, shuddering breath.
“Okay.”
—
“You did what?”
You wince from your spot lying face-down on Trinity’s couch.
“Not so loud, Trin. I have a headache.”
She ignores you, seated on the floor almost directly in front of you. “So you’ve gone from hating each other to going on a date?”
“It wasn’t a date,” You groan, “We spent almost the entire time in silence. I read my book and he stared out the window and did… whatever it is men like him do when they stare out the window.”
“Brooding,” Trinity says, “He paid. That means it’s a date.”
“No it doesn’t!”
It doesn't. It totally doesn't. Just because Jack said he doesn't hate you doesn't mean he likes you either. There are a lot of emotions in between hate and love. Like toleration, for example. Mild amusement. Exasperation. An appropriate amount of annoyance.
Trinity pokes you on the back of your head, having none of it.
"He likes you. Why else would he willingly hang out with one of us after work?"
"He goes out for drinks in the park sometimes." You mumble.
"Yeah, after an MCI."
What Trinity doesn't know is the events leading up to breakfast at the diner, because that would involve telling her about the whole throwing up from anxiety in the men's bathroom directly after a mini-panic attack because she confronted you about your unhealthy lifestyle (which all just sounds a lot worse than it is), so there isn't really a way to give her the kind of context necessary to get her off your back and dissuade her from her (insanely insane) belief that Jack likes you. Romantically.
"Trust me Trin, he was just being nice. Nothing romantic about it."
It was kind of romantic. Just eating surprisingly good food in the company of someone you don't need to pretend around, enjoying being in the company of another human being without worry or expectation.
Not that she needs to know that.
"Jack doesn't do nice. Have you seen him? What happened to the hating?"
You shrug. "You'll just have to ask him, because I don't know."
You do know. He told you. Explained it.
It doesn't make sense.
Trinity throws her hands in the air dramatically.
"Whatever. You two are impossible."
She finally withdraws, leaving you to wallow in your headache-induced misery by yourself on her couch.
Your phone vibrates on the floor next to you, and you groan, rolling further over to hide yourself in the crack of the couch, shunning the light like the reclusive vampire you are.
Your phone vibrates again.
“Dennis,” your voice is muffled by the couch cushion so it ends up sounding more like ‘denim’, “Can you please see who’s texting me and tell them to fuck off?”
Dennis, who was eating cereal at the tiny table near the kitchen when you first showed up fifteen minutes ago and has pointedly stayed silent throughout the entire exchange between you and Trinity, finally speaks.
“Your phone is two inches away from your hand.”
“I have a headache I don’t wanna look at the screen.”
You feel rather than actually see him roll his eyes, but then there’s the clink of a spoon against a bowl and the faint sound of socked —you’ve genuinely never seen him ever be barefoot under any circumstances, no matter what, he’s always wearing socks— feet as they make their way over to your temporary pit (couch) of despair.
There’s a quiet rustle as he picks up your phone off the floor.
“Oh.”
You whine, dramatic and upset. “What?”
“Um,” He grabs your shoulder, slowly rolling you over and away from the back of the couch, “It’s Jack?”
“What!?” You screech.
You throw yourself up, wincing as you immediately regret it when the pain in your head doubles, take a steadying breath to ignore it, and then grab the phone from Dennis’s outstretched hand.
You turn on the phone and— yep. Sure enough. A text from Jack, complete with the stupid picture of a dinosaur you made his profile picture. Because he’s old.
(It was funnier at the time.)
Somewhere behind you there’s a crash, and then the thump thump thump that can only mean a person running towards you at dangerous speeds for sock covered feet on cheap linoleum.
“Incoming,” Dennis mutters.
“Did I just hear that right?” Trinity gasps, nearly giving herself blunt force trauma via the back of the couch, “Did Jack just text you?”
“I don’t know!” You cry.
“How do you not know! Your phone is right in your fucking hands!”
“I’m tired! Stop yelling at me!”
“Guys!” Dennis shouts, holding up his hands, “I refuse to spend my day off listening to you two argue over the validity of romance with our attending. Give me the phone.”
He snatches the phone without waiting for a response, quickly typing in your password (if there was ever a moment you regret telling him in case of emergency…) and opening the text.
He makes an incredulous face at the phone before saying:
“He asked what you’re doing today.”
Trinity claps once. “Fucking called it!”
“Trinity!” Dennis snaps, before sighing and tapping at your keyboard, “I’m telling him that you have a headache and you’re at our place and to please not text again—“
“No!” You squeal, launching yourself off the couch, arms outstretched, but your legs tangle over each other and you fall and slam, gloriously and beautifully, face first into the coffee table.
“Oo!” Trinity winces, covering her mouth.
“Oh my god!” Dennis balks, “Are you okay?”
“Just give me the fucking phone.”
Peeling your face off, you grab the phone, squinting at the screen and ignoring the black spots in the corner of your vision.
hi, you type, I’m at Trinity and Dennis’s. Did you need something?
You hit send before you can talk yourself out of it.
“We,” You haul yourself to your feet and stagger over to the kitchen table, “Will never speak of this.”
“I definitely am. When I’m the maid of honor at your guys wedding, I’m gonna give a speech and be all ‘you guys, she gave herself a concussion the first time he texted—‘“
“There will be no wedding!”
“That’s just what you think.”
Your phone vibrates again, signaling a response.
Just wondering how you were doing. Surprised to hear you’re not holed up in your apartment reading something.
Ah, sexy old men and their correct grammar and punctuation when texting. Shouldn’t be endearing.
“What’s he saying?”
“Go away!”
You tap out a quick response.
Not today unfortunately lol I have a headache so no reading for me
Isn’t this the sixth day in a row you’ve had a headache? Should I give neuro a call?
You stomach flips.
nooo I’m fine i get them all the time
That’s not exactly reassuring.
I went to the doctor for them awhile ago apparently they’re normal
Who?
if I tell you, are you going to call him and make him send over my chart?
Yes.
Your heart is starting to pound a fluttering beat in your chest, and you hunch over your phone.
then i’m not telling you. it’s fine, really
they usually go away when i take over the counter stuff
So your plan is just to destroy your liver?
pretty much
We need to work on your planning skills.
we?
I’m not doing all the work.
Now stop looking at your phone. Drink some Gatorade and take a nap.
this is a resident apartment there’s no gatorade here just redbulls
Have either of them buy you one. I’ll pay whichever one it is later. Go to sleep. You need it.
You turn off your phone, shuffling back over to the couch and flopping down onto it.
“I’m taking a nap. Jack wants one of you to go buy me a Gatorade. He said he’d pay you back later.”
“He said what?”
—
You end up sleeping the entire day away, which should have screwed up your sleep schedule, but thankfully you live in a state of perpetual exhaustion and are fully capable of falling asleep anytime, anywhere, no matter how much you last sleep. It’s a gift.
Shockingly, the shift you work the next day is actually much easier to survive and your smiles aren’t nearly as forced. Go figure. Who knew that getting an appropriate amount of sleep would be so helpful?
“Somebody’s in a better mood today.” Jack mutters as you sidle up next to him under the board.
“I’m pretty sure I slept for like, fourteen straight hours. Thanks for the Gatorade, by the way. I woke up around hour three, chugged it, and then went back to sleep. No headache when I woke up!”
“Wonderful,” He drawls, “It’s almost like taking care of yourself is actually beneficial.”
“I take care of myself plenty.”
He casts you a sidelong glance, expression pinched.
“When was the last time you drank water without being prompted?”
“That’s different.”
“Okay,” He dips his head, “When was the last time you ever felt truly relaxed?”
You give him a beaming smile, so wide it hurts. “We’re not going to talk about this right now!”
“You started this conversation. I’m trying to do my job.”
You snort. “You’re waiting to see if someone else is going to take the sunburn guy.”
“Are you accusing an attending of cherry picking?”
“Of course not. Just observing, sir.”
Jack’s turned to look at you now, head tilted up, hands folded behind his back.
When you say sir, his eyes flick down to your lips, and then his jaw tightens.
The air suddenly becomes charged, the space between you two filled with something too electric to be air.
It smells like aftershave, hospital antiseptic, wanting, and something that’s distinctly masculine.
You look away first, swallowing hard past the sudden dryness of your mouth.
“You know,” You say, crossing your arms and looking up at the board, “Trinity thinks you like me. Romantically.”
“Mm.”
“I told her that was dumb,” You babble, “Obviously it’s not true, but. She won’t let it go, so if she says something, just ignore her. Or not. Whatever you want.”
“Why wouldn’t it be true?”
You whip your head around so fast you’re pretty sure something cracks. “What?”
“I mean,” Jack’s voice is gruff as he shrugs once, “Is that really so unrealistic?”
“Of course it is,” You sputter, “You don’t like me.”
“I’ve actually never said that. That was a conclusion you came to on your own. I distinctly recall telling you that I don’t hate you.”
“Just because you don’t hate me doesn’t mean that you like me, let alone— like that.”
Jack tilts his head, almost predatory, and all that sharp tension rushes straight back in.
“Like what?”
Something hot and dangerous is starting to unfurl in your chest, untethering from where it was previously lodged deep behind your ribs, out of sight, out of feeling.
“Code Blue en route, ETA two minutes.”
Jack jerks his head in the direction of the ambulance bay. “You gonna go get that?”
“Uh,” You’re pretty sure you’re stroking out, having a seizure, or something, because the only thing you’re capable of comprehending is the fact that Jack just not-so-subtly implied to actually liking you. Romantically.
“Get going then.”
You scurry away, hot all over and absolutely done with emotions in their entirety.
—
The rest of the week is hell on Earth. Perks of being in your twenties.
Things could be worse though!
Kind of.
It’s just that it’s been several days since Jack basically confirmed Trinity’s suspicions on romance and you can’t stop thinking about it. Obsessively.
It’s bad.
Bad enough that when Mel asked if there was any way you could cover her shift, you said yes.
“Okay,” Dennis stage-whispers as you’re downing your third coffee of the day, miserably charting at the nurses station, “I feel the need to ask how bad things can possibly be if you’re covering a day shift.”
“Mel asked.”
Dennis blinks incredulously. “You love Mel, but not enough to work a day shift voluntarily.”
“What exactly are you asking me here?”
“Did you and Jack hit a rough patch or something?”
“Keep your voice down!” You hiss, ducking your head as if you can hide from Princess and Perlah, “And for your information, no. We didn’t. I just wanted to do something nice for Mel.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t need you to believe me.”
Day-shift crawls on in a whirlwind of chaos and a level of dumb-fuckery that can only be achieved from the hours of 8 a.m to 8 p.m. As usual, the place is understaffed, overcrowded, and filled with a lingering sense of impending doom.
By the time night-shift starts filtering in, you’re ready to completely give up and start a new life a sheep rancher in New Zealand. It’s always been the plan if being a doctor didn’t work out.
Jack finds you in the locker room once the handoff is over, sitting on the little bench in the same position Dennis found you in earlier. Face in your hands, heels in your eyes, methodically counting breaths and wondering if that fluttering feeling in your chest is from caffeine consumption or sleep deprivation.
It’s fine. Your fine. Everything is fine.
“You don’t look too good.”
“I’m—“
“Don’t say you’re fine.”
“But I am,” You grit, “I just need a minute.”
“Okay.”
There’s the distinct sound of Jack’s slightly uneven footsteps, and then there’s a warm weight pressed against your side.
You take another shuddering breath that feels less like breathing and more like placing a single brick in a wobbly foundation.
“Shouldn’t you be out on the floor?”
“I don’t work tonight.”
You raise your head just enough to look at him. “You don’t? I thought I saw you on the schedule. Why are you here if you don’t work?”
Now that you’re looking at him and not starburst patterns on the back of your eyelids, you can see that he’s wearing casual clothes, not scrubs, and he doesn’t have his usual army-issue backpack with him.
“I got Shen to cover me. I came here for you.”
Your next breath in almost gets stuck in your chest, air struggling to move past that alive and wriggling thing that keeps moving every time Jack is around.
“What’d you do that for?”
The barest hints of a smile tugs at the corner of his lips. “Dennis called me. He said you’d need picking up after your shift.”
Shame, guilt, and embarrassment flood your veins, turning your blood into sickly-sweet poison that makes your stomach roll and twist.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I have no idea why he did that. You really didn’t have to drive all the way over here, I swear I didn’t tell him to call you or something like that—“
“I know you didn’t,” Jack soothes, voice a rumbly, smooth timber that washes over your permanently-frazzled nerves like a balm, “Which is why I came.”
“I don’t understand.”
Jack stands, pulling your bag and change of clothes out of your locker.
“I’m going to ask you a question, and I need you to be honest with me, so you don’t have to answer it again. Can you do that for me?”
You nod once.
“Words.”
“Uh— yeah. Yes.”
“Good.”
Thank god the locker room is empty— everyone’s either on the floor or already left for their homes.
He closes your locker down, shoulders your bag, and hands you your clothes.
“Is it easier for you to accept help when you don’t have to ask and don’t get the chance to say no?”
It sounds so pathetic, hearing it laid out like that. The ugly guts of you; cut open, laid bare, and marked for research. Exhibit A, the inside of the girl no one ever needed to worry about.
You don’t want to agree. You want to laugh it off, maybe run away from it. Sit up straight, wipe your face, take the bag from Jack and explain that this is all a big misunderstanding and you’re perfectly fine and he can stop worrying about you now.
“Yes.”
Jack doesn’t verbally acknowledge your response besides a single dip of his head, like he knows that if he does anything more it’ll turn your response into a confession and that’s just too vulnerable for the hospital locker room.
“I’ll drive you home.”
“I don’t mean to be this way, you know.”
The passenger seat of Jack’s car isn’t somewhere you’d ever imagined yourself being. Not even late at night or on the bus when you’re pretending to be someone else who’s better at chasing what they want.
“It stopped being intentional a long time ago,” your hands are fisted into the material of your sweatpants, nails digging into the fabric, “It was just the natural progression of things. I like being liked.”
What you don’t say, what becomes an unspoken truth that lingers in the air despite not being verbalized, is the survival aspect of it. Why and how a person fuses this kind of thing to their personality; to their life. The circumstances that makes the natural progression of things end it being better for everyone if you just don’t have needs.
“I know.”
“I know you know, I just… needed to tell you. Myself.”
It’s odd seeing Jack illuminated by streetlights instead of fluorescent overheads. It’s odd being able to watch his hand flex on the steering wheel, watching his forearm tense as he shifts gears in his old stick-shift.
“You like being told what to do.”
Your face heats, but you’re determined not to lose face now. Especially after managing to survive being emotionally flayed open, willingly, by him.
“It feels safe. If I know what yo— someone wants, then I can’t mess it up, and I can relax.”
You can practically see the gears turning in Jack’s mind.
“Makes sense.”
The rest of the drive is quiet, the silence only filled by the sounds of Pittsburgh around you and the gentle crackle of something from the radio turned down too low to hear.
And for the first time in longer than you can remember, you begin feeling something that approaches calm.
Jack doesn’t have any expectations. There isn’t any one particular way he wants you to act or expects you to behave like. There’s nothing he wants you to do.
So you do what you want to do.
You relax.
—
In the weeks following Jack driving you home, there is a quantifiable shift in behavior between the two of you.
He starts pulling back.
It strikes you as odd first, and your natural inclination is to pull back too— to guard the soft, vulnerable bits you’ve showed him in case he throws them back at you.
But then you realize what he’s doing.
Instead of telling you how to proceed on a case when you come to him for advice, he asks you questions and steers you to the answer. He holds back when he’s evaluating a case with you, patiently following your lead and only interjecting when necessary.
He’s making space for you try new things and learn without fear of rejection. Building your confidence bit by bit.
It feels more intimate than sex.
After much deliberation, screaming into your pillow, and Reddit forum searching for HR violations, you decide to get him a card. Because he’s actually been really kind and helpful and he makes you feel like you can actually survive residency.
“What’s this?”
“A thank you card.”
You’re staring at your shoes, eyes flicking up and down between Jack’s face and the floor.
“What for?”
“It says it in the card.”
You scurry away, attaching yourself to the closest patient to avoid seeing Jack’s face when he does finally open it.
But when you look back, he’s just staring at it, a small smile on his face.
—
It’s the card that does him in.
Jack hasn’t made his feelings for you a secret, despite your unwillingness to see him as anything other than standoffish in the beginning.
He came on too strong at first— that was his fault. He didn’t yet understand how imbedded your need ran and how long it’d been since anyone bothered to look deeper.
He’d hoped, at least, that you were letting Whitaker and Santos help, and though you let them closer than most, it was clear you still seemed intent on holding up yourself and everyone around you on your own.
But it wasn’t just that. It was the way you oozed kindness— like it was a byproduct of your existence. He watched you get so wrapped up in being the perfect resident, perfect friend, perfect person, that no one ever stopped to let you know how good you were just by being.
He hadn’t planned on developing feelings or anything of the sort. At first, you’d just been one of his residents. Smart and capable but lacking confidence in yourself to fully commit. Then there was that MCI, and drinks in the park afterwards where he’d painfully watched you sip a beer you clearly hated, and everything just clicked right into place.
He never intends to flirt with you. It just happens. He can’t help himself. He’s a weak fucking man when it comes to you.
And then you bring him a card. A fucking card. To thank him for doing his job as an attending, a job he should’ve been doing better from the start. It has an illustration of bananas on it and says “Thanks a bunch!”.
He knows he’s completely gone, then. He was capable of being in denial before, could delude himself into thinking that what he felt was casual, but the sight of you before him, hands nervously wringing, your glitter gel pens sparkling as they caught the light was just the final nail in the coffin.
He allows himself a modicum of flirting on a day to day basis, mostly because if he couldn’t tease that real smile out of you at least once per day, he’d lose his mind.
Sometimes he takes you back to the diner, especially on longer days where none of your smiles reach your eyes and you start obsessively uncapping and capping your gel pens.
Even though you think it “looks dumb” you’ve also taken to sitting shoulder to shoulder with him in the booth, and he pretends he can’t see you sneaking fries off his plate because he knows how much effort it takes you to ask him if you can sit with him instead of on the opposite side.
Then he starts driving you home during a string of bad weather after you start sneezing from walking in the rain everyday, but even after the storm passes and the weather clears up he still finds you at the lockers, every day, car keys in hand. No matter how many times he does it, you always look so happily surprised that he’s still offering.
As if he’s not wrapped around your finger.
One day, after things have been mellow for awhile, Whitaker calls him and says that neither he nor Trinity have seen you in three days and you called out of work.
So naturally, as a calm and collected man, he showed up to your house.
You’d answered the door after the third time he knocked (which was great, because he was gearing up to force the door open) and you just looked miserable. Your hair was a mess, you head blanket wrinkles imprinted onto your face, and your eyes were puffy.
“Jack?” You’d mumbled, squinting your eyes against the not very bright light in the hallway, “Why are you at my apartment?”
“No one’s heard from you in three days.”
You wince. “I swear I meant to text Trinity. I just have a bad headache.”
His fingers twitch towards a penlight he doesn’t have. “How bad?”
“I don’t know. Like a seven on the pain scale?”
“Jesus— I’m coming in.”
“Nooo,” You cry, but shuffle back from the door and put up very little fight as he ushers you to the couch.
Your apartment is….. exactly as messy as he’d imagined a resident who lives alone would be. For someone who doesn’t drink enough water, there are an incredible amount of beverage bottles and cans littered about.
“Do you have headache relief?”
You gesture to the kitchen. “Cabinet furthest to the left.”
While rifling through your very disorganized medicine cabinet, he spies an orange prescription bottle with your name on it, dated for the previous year.
“Why do you have a prescription for a high level antihistamine?”
“Stop snooping. It’s for my migraines.”
“You’ve had a prescription this entire time and you’ve been taking all that over the counter shit?”
“Stop being mad,” You mumble into the couch cushion, “My migraine meds put me to sleep, so I can’t take them when I’m working. Plus I don’t have any refills left so I save them for when it’s really bad.”
“You called out of work and haven’t left your apartment in three days and you don’t consider this bad?”
“Could be worse. Could be throwing up.”
He sighs. Sets the bottle on the counter, breathes in once, then lets it out slowly. Imagines all the ways he could murder whoever made you think suffering alone for three days is preferable to asking for help.
“I’m going to help you back to bed,” He starts, voice low as he rounds the couch, “And then you’re going to drink some electrolytes, have a snack, and take your meds. Okay?”
The migraine has clearly taken it out of you, because you put up zero fight as he manhandles you to your feet and helps you drag yourself back to your bed.
“M’ sorry my apartment is a mess. I was supposed to clean it.”
“I’m not judging, sweetheart,” He says, tucking the blankets up around you, lips twitching as you make grabby hands for a giant triceratops plushie that looks to be the size of your upper body. “I’m gonna make you a snack, so try to stay awake until I come back. Can you do that?”
“Mhm. I’ll try.”
“Good girl.”
He manages to find a cucumber in your fridge, cuts it into slices and then adds a few pieces of lunch meat for protein. Last but not least, he snags a bottle of blue Gatorade from your pantry.
(He only knows they were there because he bought them for you a few weeks ago.)
He doesn’t make you sit up to eat, but instead scoots you a little ways away from the edge of your bed so there’s space for the plate.
You slowly nibble your way through, taking little sips of Gatorade when he nudges the bottle into your hands.
You finish the cucumbers, eat most of the lunch meat, and drink half the Gatorade before burrowing back into the blankets and declaring yourself done.
“Can I have my sleep mask please? I think it’s on the floor under my nightstand?”
“Of course you can.”
After your face mask is on and the curtains closed, he gives you the correct dose of your meds and gently shuts the door to your bedroom.
He fires off a quick text to Whitaker (he doesn’t have Santos’s number) that says you’re fine, stuck in bed with a migraine, and that he’s handling it.
And then he gets to work.
Two hours later your apartment is clean, your laundry is started, and Jack’s relaxing on your couch, aimlessly watching the news.
He hears the door creak open but knows you hate feeling on the spot, so he keeps his gaze trained on the tv even as he hears the sound of you shuffling over to the couch.
And then you pause.
“Jack.”
“Yes?”
“Did you clean my apartment?”
He finally looks over to you, and when his gaze reaches your face his stomach drops.
You’re crying.
He hauls himself off the couch (he’s thankful that he put his leg back on a few minutes prior) and stops in front of you, arms twitching at his sides with the need to fix, help, to stop whatever it is that’s making you cry.
“What’s wrong? Did I overstep?”
“No,” You warble, voice wet, “I just haven’t had the time or energy to clean in here for so long, and it’s been stressing me out so bad I avoid staying here during my off days. It’s just really, really nice of you.”
You look at him, eyebrows pinched and eyes wide with worry, “I— I’m not sure how to repay you for all of this. I know you said going to the diner was fine, but this is— a lot.”
“Sweetheart,” He starts, bracing one hand on the side of your face, thumb deftly sweeping across your cheek and wiping away the quickly drying tears, “I’m not doing any of this because I expect you to repay me. I’m doing it because I care about you and I want to see you happy.”
You sniff hard. “This is a lot of work, though.”
“I like doing it. I like taking care of you.”
Another sniff. “It doesn’t seem very fun.”
“I told you. You’re like a cat. Had to coax you over and now look at you,” he thumb rubs circles over your cheekbone, “Practically purring.”
You wrinkle your nose. “I don’t know if I like this metaphor.”
“Get used to it.”
You sigh, dramatic and long.
“I suppose I’ll allow it.”
“Oh, you’ll allow it, huh.”
You fold your hands behind your back, rocking back and forth on your heels. “Yes. I’ll allow it.”
“Well, aren’t I lucky.”
Later, when you’re lying on the couch, two movies into what Jack thinks is an unofficial early 2000s rom-com marathon (your favorite genre) you turn to look up at him from your spot tucked into his side.
“This is romantic, right?”
He presses a lazy kiss to your forehead, because he knows how much you like physical affirmations as well as verbal ones.
“Yes.”
“You’re serious about this?”
“You need confirmation?”
“I’d rather have it in writing, but this will do for now.”
He huffs a breathy laugh, tucks you closer to his chest.
“I’ll put it in writing for you later.”
You hum, pleased, and snuggle back into him, letting out a content sigh.
summary: One secret changes everything. As the Cody family’s carefully buried truths come to light, you find yourself caught between running from the people you love and fighting for them. In the end, loving Pope Cody doesn’t just change your life, it changes the entire family. andrew ‘pope’ cody x f!reader / cw: sexual content/smut, abusive relationship (not andrew), bestie!deran trope, not timeline specific, fix it fic, some parts are dark, mentions of SA/grooming, parental abuse, smurf and baz, manipulation, j redemption arc, murder, violence, canon show themes, substance use, drinking, gun use, possessive!pope, jealous!pope, soft boy!pope, discussions of mental health, warnings are chapter dependent. total word count: 74.4k amalia’s love note: finally started a masterlist for this series lol, love yall
doe-eyed running to my tranquility (smut, angst)
After escaping your abusive boyfriend, you get pulled into the dangerous world of the Cody family and unexpectedly become the center of Pope Cody’s obsessive attention. As dark secrets unravel around you, Pope grows fiercely protective, pulling you deeper into his chaotic life until the line between safety and danger disappears completely.
take what you want (smut, fluff, angst)
After a job goes wrong, Pope disappears for four days, hiding his injuries and burying himself in silence. But when you finally confront him, you realize his biggest problem isn’t violence, it’s that he doesn’t believe he’s allowed to want or need anything. So you show him exactly how badly you want him to take what’s his.
i love the sick (angst, dark)
What starts as a simple night watching Lena turns into something far more dangerous when Baz leaves you at Smurf’s overnight. As Smurf slowly tightens her grip, quietly isolating you from the outside world, J is the only one who notices the pattern for what it really is and for the first time, he steps between you and his family. The night cracks open the fragile balance you’ve built with the Codys, exposing a darker, more volatile side of Pope Cody that leaves your relationship hanging by a thread and forces long-buried truths dangerously close to the surface.
all my morals shot (smut, dark, angst)
One secret sends you running from the Cody family, but escaping Pope Cody proves impossible. As buried truths come to light and old wounds turn into reckless choices, you’re forced to confront the feelings you’ve been trying to outrun. Meanwhile, Smurf realizes too late that you’ve become a threat, not because you’re using Pope, but because you’re the first person who truly chooses him. And no matter how hard you run, Pope always finds his way back to you.
mirror (fluff, angst)
Vignettes from your years-long friendship with Deran Cody, and the long-overdue conversation that finally puts the pieces back together.
nothing at all (dark, smut, angst)
A phone call from your father cracks open wounds you thought had long since healed. As you struggle to keep yourself together, Pope shows you the terrifying truth about loving a man who would do absolutely anything for you.
siren sounds (angst)
Smurf draws a line in the sand, and suddenly everything you love is at risk. Forced into an impossible choice, you tell a lie that could cost you everything to protect the person who matters most. As tensions rise, the boys begin piecing together a truth Smurf never intended them to see, and loyalty becomes far more dangerous than betrayal.
queen of nothing (angst, dark, smut)
As the Cody boys begin seeking comfort and guidance from you instead of Smurf, her resentment grows into something far more dangerous. Meanwhile, Pope’s fear of abandonment threatens the future of your relationship just as things are finally starting to feel real. Oh, and where the hell is Baz? Because whatever he’s up to, it can’t be good.
hot take: the patriarchy is so inherent to society that most of the x f!reader fanfiction written for older male characters (joel miller, bullseye, soldier boy, etc) is written by women with internalized misogyny so deep-seated, they’d rather make the reader half the man’s age and fetishize the age gap, instead of aging the reader up for something more sensible and balanced. it just goes to show how men will always be praised for aging, whereas women will be demonized for it, even in the world of fanfiction. even on paper, we exist solely to fulfill fantasies and meet standards that were forced upon us.
edit: y’all need to stop haggling me in the comments idgaf about your age play and freudian relationships... you guys have boiled this post down to controversial age gaps, when it’s about women aging being demonized while men aging is celebrated. date who you want! goon to who you want! i don’t care!
