Nilou

[niloujournals]

Argumentative Antethical Dream girl ‹𝟹

☓﹕ᵔᴗᵔ nilou | 20s | she/her | nsfw | dead dove | mdni

english is not my first language, please be kind and patient while correcting me ♡

favs: aki hayakawa, dean winchester, gojo satoru, gwayne hightower, aerion targaryen, jacaerys velaryon, aemond targaryen, sanji, monkey d. luffy

i sometimes talk about my exprience with rape and incestuous abuse so please be aware.

[niloujournals]

Older brother Daeron letting you smoke with him but since it's your first smoking weed you keep coughing. He can clearly see it in your eyes that you're slightly scared too and he makes a joke about you chickening out and since you're stubborn, that only makes you want to prove yourself to him more. When he sees you aren't giving up, he pulls you into his lap so he can comfort you and instead of letting you smoke it directly he just shotguns it into your mouth. Eventually as you both get high the shotgunning turns into making out and ends with you dry humping each other and him groping your tits till you both cum in your pants

[lovebugism]

✶ — THE WRONG THING !

summary: on the eve of your arranged marriage to baelor targaryen, your childhood best friend, daeron, indulges you in one final night of defiance before he loses you for good - and baelor does not take kindly to learning that his nephew has taken his future bride to a brothel. (6k)

characters: daeron targaryen / fem!reader, baelor targaryen / fem!reader, maekar targaryen

contents: friends to lovers, arranged marriage, angst, implied age gap, so much yearning, depressed!daeron (fork found in kitchen), also baelor would absolutely talk you through it cw for vague mentions of ocd and smut 18+ (MDNI): public sex kinda, fingering, dry humping

( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )

You were to be wed on the morrow, and Daeron sank into his cups.

He had long lived in the folly that he would marry you someday — his first ever friend, and the only girl he ever dreamed of. But then the crown fell into great debts to your father, who managed all the gold mines from Oldtown to Summerhall; and the only way the king saw to foot the bill was to wed the man’s daughter to his own heir.

By all accounts, you were taking your betrothal far easier than your best friend. You had no other choice but to keep your wits about you, to plaster an artificial smile on your face and mindlessly agree to everything everyone ever told you to do, or to think. Even now, you let Baelor Targaryen — the husband you did not ask for — give you a tour of the newly decorated throne room where you would have your reception — which you had no say in.

The orante sea of Targaryen red and Highgarden gold blur together, along with Baelor’s words, as you avert your gaze to your hands, where you scratch fresh marks to your already raging nail beds.

“What do you think about it, princess?”

You only vaguely hear Baelor’s words through the metaphorical cotton in your ears. You blink hard and whip your head to face him, smiling before you’ve even registered his question. “I think it’s beautiful, Your Grace— Your mother did a wonderful job decorating.”

“While I appreciate the compliment, my lady, I was referring to our… arrangement,” Baelor corrects with a polite smile, half-hidden behind his greying beard. He slows to a stop in front of you, and you catch a whiff of the musky oils he’d bathed in — a stark contrast to your much lighter, floral aromatics.

“Oh. Right. I think— I think that it’s…” You stumble over yourself to find the words; not the ones you want to say, perhaps, but the ones you’ve been groomed to. Baelor ducks his head to flash you a patient look, and your cheeks flare with embarrassment. “I think that it is wise, Your Grace. If our marriage can ease the crown’s debts, I’m glad to be of service.”

“Is that you speaking, my lady?” he presses with a soft squint in his blue-brown irises. “Or your father?”

Your breath stutters. “I— I’m not sure what you mean, Your Grace.”

“What is it you want, princess?”

Your mouth parts to answer him. But, before you can stutter out a response you only halfway mean, the sound of chair legs scraping the cobbles rings through the expansive room. Your heads whip in tandem in the direction of the raucous noise, where you find Daeron trying and failing to catch himself on a table by the door.

He’s well drunk despite the early afternoon, wearing the ale in his wild golden hair, glassy blue eyes, and flushed red cheeks. He struggles to readjust the ornately decorated bench he’d run into with sloppy hands. It takes him several seconds too long to notice the looks he’s getting in response.

“My apologies…” he slurs, pink lips curling into a sloppy grin that doesn’t match the solemn look in his light eyes. “I seemed to have— Lost my way…”

“Aye. That much is quite clear,” Baelor sighs, much too used to his nephew’s antics by now.

The boy had always favored his ale, but never quite this much. He’s been haunting the halls of the Red Keep for some weeks now — the Kingsguard once found him in a ditch off of Flea Bottom the day it was announced Baelor would be wed to you, all bruised and bloody from the fighting pits. He hasn’t been fully sober ever since.

“Apologies, princess,” Baelor murmurs to you. “Do forgive my nephew.”

“No forgiveness needed, Your Grace—”

There’s another grating scrape, followed by a dull thud of a heavy body hitting the ground as Daeron trips over his graceless feet. He groans when he hits the unforgiving ground, writhing with only his long legs visible from your view of him.

Your features crumple with a mixture of annoyance and sympathy as you look on at the drunken boy. “I should take him to his chambers before he hurts himself—”

“The knights can escort him, my lady,” Baelor tells you.

“He’s much too fragile for that,” you quip with a tender smile. “And as I said— I don’t mind helping, Your Grace.”

Daeron doesn’t make it easy for you.

He never has, in truth, but least of all now.

He smells of musk and sweet ale as he falls heavily to your side, forcing you to carry the brunt of his weight as you help him back into bed. He falls heavily onto the feathered mattress, limp and unmoving. You exhale an exasperated breath and reach for his legs to situate him properly on the unmade sheets.

“Why must you make everything so difficult?” you huff.

Daeron’s head lolls against the pillows, golden hair sitting wildly around him.

“Why must you wound me so?” he argues in indistinct slurs. His glassy, red-rimmed eyes blink slowly up at your towering figure. He musters a trembling grin at the confused look you give him in return. “We both know it is not my uncle you want, petal…”

His eyes flutter shut as he lifts a sloppy hand to his face, trying and failing to find the rogue strand of hair clinging to his lashes.

“What I want doesn’t matter, Daeron,” you sigh and help him brush the golden tress back behind his ear.

Your breath catches in your throat when the boy’s warm hand wraps suddenly around your wrist, fingers warm and gentle as they linger on your wild pulse. He peers up at you with a pair of wet, ocean-colored eyes and murmurs quietly, “I don’t matter?”

“You know that isn’t what I meant,” you whisper and jerk your hand from his grip. “The decision is already made. The hall is already decorated. I’m getting married whether I like it or not—”

“You could always change your mind,” Daeron lilts, as if it were so simple. “And it would all be done with…”

“Not all of us are allowed to be so selfish, my prince,” you mutter bitterly and turn on your heel, heading the short distance for the pitcher of water and bowl of dates left on the table by the balcony. “Some of us actually have to think about other people from time to time.”

Daeron scoffs sloppily, folding his lanky hands across his lean stomach. “I think about other people,” he argues like a child.

“Do you?” you hum with a palpable lack of enthusiasm, beneath the sloshing of water you pour for him in a chalice.

“Aye, my lady… You,” he answers, smiling lazily when you glare at him over your shoulder. “I dream only of you— My Flower of Highgarden.”

“The Flower of Highgarden,” you correct him of the silly nickname that’s haunted you since birth, and walk the water and dates back over the drunken boy. You leave both at his bedside, with an air of distance about you that makes his chest ache. “I am getting married on the morrow, Daeron. It’s happening. So please, get a hold of yourself— if not for your sake, then for mine.

The evening air outside the Red Keep swells with the scent of sage and fresh flowers. A silken breeze rushes through the skirt of your dress as you lean over the balcony, bathing in the sweet scent down below, where the smallfolk leave bouquets and handmade trinkets by the castle’s entrance.

“I don’t understand,” you murmur to the man beside you, with your gaze still lingering on the shuffling crowd. “We don’t do this in Highgarden.”

“It’s custom for people to leave their blessings the night before a royal wedding,” Baelor explains. “Though, to be true, I have never quite seen it like this… They have taken quite a liking to you, it would seem.”

The kind smile he gives you makes your cheeks flare red-hot. You despise his attention as much as you crave it, desperately so. You fake a smile and swallow hard, picking again at the scarred skin of your nail beds from where your hands rest on the balcony. “Well, I am— pleased that the realm is, Your Grace—”

Your breath catches in your throat when Baelor’s wide hand splays suddenly over both of yours, effectively ceasing your assault on your delicate fingers. You peer timidly at him from beneath your lashes and cower at the warmth in his mismatched eyes.

“You are the most comely girl at court,” he tells you, gutwrenchingly gentle, as his fingers smooth over the red marks on your skin. “Why must you destroy yourself this way?”

“Apologies, Your Grace,” you murmur shyly, clearing your throat as you slide your hands from his grip, clasping them behind your back. “It’s a habit I haven’t quite been able to break, it would seem…”

Baelor softens and takes a step closer, pervading the scent of the late evening with his mixture of leather and musk. “I understand that… that I am not the husband you wished for,” the man starts slowly, calculating each word from his mouth. “But I will do right by you, princess. I can assure you of that.”

“I know you will, Your Grace. You’re a good man,” you say with an honest smile. “Even if it was not what I desired, I am no less pleased that it turned out to be you, Your Grace—”

“Baelor,” he corrects with a soft grin, taking a step closer and swiping an eyelash for your cheek. Your skin flares when his hand lingers there. You wonder if he notices.

“Baelor…” you repeat, far more timidly in comparison.

His mouth parts to speak, but he stops himself short. A flicker of confusion dances over his scruffy face before he wonders aloud. “Pardon my forwardness, my lady, but… Have you ever been kissed?”

Thoughts of Daeron flash instantly across your mind at his question. He’s always there in some way or another, stashed somewhere within each of your fondest memories — how he held you when you were younger; how he kissed you, how he touched you.

But that was all make-believe, you figure, a game of house you knew was always bound to end.

So you shake your head against the man’s softly calloused palm and answer, half-truthfully, “Never in a way that mattered, Your Grace…”

The answer seems to please him as his kind smile slowly returns.

“May I?” he offers vaguely.

You know you can’t say no. You’re not sure if you want to. So you nod and whisper back, “Of course…”

You tilt your chin to meet him halfway when he ducks down to kiss you. His beard tickles your delicate skin, a rather foreign sensation compared to Daeron’s shaven face. His lips are thinner than his nephew’s, too, tasting of sweet mint leaves and bitter whiskey. It’s different — good different — and you finally forget to be nervous as you reach suddenly for his bearded jaw.

Baelor freezes against you when you lick into his mouth, with far more expertise than someone who had never been kissed before. It surprises him as much as it excites him; the notion that there is still so much he doesn’t know about you. You catch him smiling softly to himself about it when your kissed lips part with a quiet click.

Your glassy eyes widen into a not-so-subtle look of shock at yourself. You bring your trembling hands back down to your sides again. “Forgive me, Your Grace. I— I forget myself—”

“No. Don’t apologize,” the man murmurs in an achingly gentle voice that does not match the fire in his blue-brown irises. “If you apologize every time I kiss you from now on, you’ll be spending a lifetime doing so, won’t you?”

His words, the solemn promise in them, make your stomach do a backflip.

“Aye,” you nod on bated breath. “I guess so…”

You’re still reeling from the adrenaline rush of kissing a somewhat stranger — both your soon-to-be husband and future king — when you return finally to your chambers. Your heart lurches to a fluttering stop at the shadowy figure you find lying in your bed, bathed in a golden sea of flickering candlelight. You exhale a relieved sigh when you find it’s only Daeron making himself at home in your bed, but you are still no less aggrieved to see him this way.

“What are you doing here?” you snap and quickly close the door behind you.

“Waiting for you, of course,” the now mostly-sobered boy responds through a groan, stretching out his tired limbs as if he’d just been sleeping. His thin chemise rises up his torso when he folds his arms behind his wild head, revealing his pale skin and the tuft of golden hair trailing down into his trousers.

“You’re not supposed to be in here,” you argue. “What would people think if they saw the two of us in here like this?”

“Who cares?” he scoffs with all the carelessness of a young prince, smiling wider when you scowl at him. “We know the truth of it— What anyone else has to say on the matter doesn’t concern the two of us.”

“That’s because no one ever taught you that it’s not about the truth of it,” you spit and storm his way, yanking your silken sheets from beneath his dirty boots. “It’s about perception. And you know your father would be cross if he found you in here—”

“My father is always cross,” Daeron scoffs.

“Only because you make him so.”

“Tell me, petal…” the boy begins, swinging his long legs off the mattress and peering up at you with a pair of glittering blue eyes. “Have you ever done the wrong thing?”

Your eyes narrow. “I’m looking at him,” you deadpan.

“Ouch,” he grimaces, grabbing at his heart over his baggy tunic. “But I presume I deserve that…”

“Aye. You do.”

He reaches for your hand when you try to turn away, wrapping his warm fingers around your smaller ones to keep you in place. “Come with me. To Flea Bottom.”

“Flea Bottom?” you repeat with an incredulous twist to your features, scoffing out a faint laugh. “Why would I go to—”

“To do the wrong thing,” Daeron finishes for you, tender with a lingering hope. “With me.”

You shake your head and try to pull your hand out of his, but he only holds you tighter. “I can’t, Daeron…”

“Live for yourself for a change,” he tells you, begs you. “Just once. And I will never speak to you of my heartache again, I swear it.”

By all accounts, you probably should’ve known by the subtle glimmer in his soft blue eyes that he only met trouble. Maybe that’s why you went with him in the first place, you think, for a bit of trouble — god knows, that’s all he’s good for. But, even still, you let him dress you in his trousers and baggy shirt, removing any remnants of your status, before stealing you away to the labyrinth that is Flea Bottom.

He keeps your hand clutched in his larger one as he leads you through the unpaved streets of twisted alleyways, reeking of stables, mud, and baked bread. You laugh like a pair of children as you chase gracelessly behind him, forgetting for a fleeting moment that you are to be wed on the morrow — that you will soon be expected to become a wife and a mother before the season is through.

Eventually, the loud chatter and swirling smoke from flickering fires gives way to something quieter, dimmer; smelling of sweat, sex, and soft perfume. Daeron tucks you into his warm side as you duck into a narrow hall, where moans and cries of pleasure bounce off the cobblestone walls. Your footsteps stutter in shock.

“You didn’t tell me you were taking me to a pleasure house—”

“Aye. I didn’t,” Daeron hums with a lazy grin. “Because you wouldn’t have agreed to come otherwise…”

The brothel is dark, lit only by rogue torches growing slowly dim on the walls. The naked bodies surrounding you on either side are bathed in shadow. The hand not clutching the back of Daeron’s cloak rises instinctively to cover your eyes, shielding them from the lurid sight of sex that sits everywhere you look.

“No. Don’t,” Daeron says and reaches for you with his free hand, curling his lanky fingers around your wrist to gently urge your hand from your face. “I want you to watch— To see what it looks like when you take what you want…”

Your eyes are slow to part from his lighter ones. You glance tentatively all around you — at the woman riding the face of a man on a nearby couch, of another man sandwiched between two masculine bodies by the wall, of two women caressing their naked bodies with gentle touches. It’s completely and utterly scandalous. And you can’t bring yourself to look away.

“No princes, no thrones…” Daeron whispers with his mouth pressed to your ear, and his chest against your back. “No debts, no weddings… Just—”

“Fucking?” you tell him.

“Pleasure,” he corrects. “So, ask yourself, petal, and be truthful… What do you want?”

It’s a simple question. One you couldn’t answer if you wanted to.

You want to be queen, like your father always groomed you to be — you want to marry Baelor, to be rich and powerful and idolized. But another, not-so-distant part of you yearns to be without responsibility and consequence — you want to be with Daeron in some far-off place by the sea, you want to fuck and drink and travel the world and never stick around long enough to learn anybody’s names.

You want all of it. And even though you know you cannot possibly have it, you try hard to take it anyway.

You reach out for Daeron and cradle his shaven jaw like you’re holding the sun in both hands. You drag him to you and press a searing kiss to his mouth, wasting little time in tasting him as your tongue licks suddenly between his parted lips, entwining with his own like velvet twisting with velvet.

Daeron grumbles a moan against you. He slides his warm hands beneath your borrowed shirt, up your stomach, and over your ribcage. He leaves faint trail marks along the skin of your back when he scratches his dull nails down your spine. You shiver against him, and he smiles into your kiss — inhaling your gasped breath when he pushes you suddenly into a cobbled wall, breaking the impact with a hand behind your head.

His mouth pulls away from yours with a low smack, lips swollen and rosy and shining with your spit. His eyes are heavy-lidded as he traces the bridge of your nose with the tip of his.

“What do you say, My Flower of Highgarden?” he slurs, panting hard against your mouth. “Are you going to take it?”

“Depends,” you challenge on bated breath. “Are you going to give it to me?”

The blonde boy nods, with a pink smile blooming lazily on his mouth. “Aye… I am.”

He ducks down before you can blink, kissing you hard enough to bruise. He swallows each of your quiet moans as his fingers creep toward your borrowed trousers, loosening the knot there with eager hands. Your fingers wrench the thin fabric of his tunic into fists to keep him impossibly close while his sneak beneath the hem — past your stomach, over a tuft of coarse hair, and down towards where you need him most.

You coat his middle finger in a thin layer of honey when it slots between your velvety folds, whimpering when he nudges softly at your sensitive clit.

“I can feel you throbbing,” he slurs against you. “’S like a heartbeat…”

“Please…” you sigh, though you’re not sure exactly what you’re begging for — please don’t tease me, please make me feel good, please fuck me.

“I’ve got you…” Daeron murmurs, panting against your mouth and swallowing your moans when his long finger slips finally inside you. His lip quirks into a crooked smile at the pretty noise you make for him.

You only vaguely feel him rutting against your thigh, pressing his stiffening cock against you to ease his own ache while he continues to pleasure yours.

“I’ve got you… Let me have it…”

Your moans fill the shadowed hall, and entwine with all the others.

You scrub the remnants of the sinful night from your body and prepare to become a dutiful bride by early morning. You’re still buzzing from the adrenaline rush as you writhe restlessly beneath your silk sheets. You can almost still feel Daeron’s fingers inside of you, if you think about it hard enough, as well as the outline of his hard cock pressed against your outer thigh, from where he’d gotten off humping your leg like a hound.

You revel in the night as much as you mourn it — pleased to have experienced it at all while simultaneously grieving that you’ll never be that girl again; and still a little surprised that you got away with it at all.

Almost.

A quiet knock from a delicate hand echoes through your expansive, pitch-black bedroom. Your heart lurches into your throat — a fleeting horror that turns into ice-cold panic in your veins a second later. You rise slowly, propping your weight on your elbows, and gazing wearily at the shadow looming beneath your door.

You swallow hard and pray your voice doesn’t shake as you call out, “Come in.”

The heavy door creaks open. A sliver of golden light from the torches in the hallway fills the room as one of your handmaidens shuffles in, gaze averted and hands clasped together. She curtsies and clears her throat, “Pardon me, my lady— but the Lord Hand has requested your presence in his study.”

You hope it’s still too dark for her to see the look of fear that flashes across your features. “The hour is quite late…” is the only thing you think to say, with an audible waver in your voice.

“Aye, my lady,” the young girl nods with an apprehensive gaze. “But he said he was urgent.”

“…Alright, then,” you nod once and hold your breath until the maid scurries off back the way she came. She closes the door behind her with a dull click, and the room returns to a velvet black darkness, with only your trembling breath to fill it.

You’re still in your thin white slip when you make the long trek to Baelor’s study, weaving through the candlelit maze of the Red Keep with two knights flanking you on either side. They work for your father, sworn to protect you and you alone, yet you can’t help but feel a bit like they’re leading you to a slaughter now.

They open the double doors of the expansive study for you and remain just outside of it while you saunter slowly in — slippers scuffing the cobbles like your feet are made of bricks, sweaty hands picking at your worry-worn nailbeds. You wear the guilt all over, like a bad dog with blood on its muzzle.

The fear in your stomach blossoms something fierce in your chest when Baelor’s eyes meet yours from across the way, sitting at his desk with Maekar and Daeron standing just before him. The older men are still in their day garb, made of Targaryen red and black, while the blonde boy remains in the baggy tatters he’d taken you to Flea Bottom in.

Daeron wears the sin all over still, hardly bothering to wash it off his skin, lest some of you go with it.

You cower on instinct when their gazes snap suddenly in your direction. You know you’ve long been caught, even when Baelor gives you a kind smile as you approach him.

“Thank you for coming, my lady,” he says in a gentle voice and sets his quill into the inkpot at his side. “I know the hour is late. I hope I did not disturb you.”

“Of course not, Your Grace,” you assure him and clear your throat when the words get stuck there.

“I thought it prudent to make you aware of some rather… troubling accusations,” the man continues with a knowing glint in his brown-blue eyes, flickers of candlelight dancing in his gaze. “You and my nephew were spied, some hours ago, beyond the walls of the Red Keep, engaging in behaviors that were… unbecoming of a woman of the court…”

“So we snuck out and drank a bit of wine,” Daeron laughs at your side, not yet showered and still reeking of sex and ale. He glances at you with glassy eyes and a lopsided grin before turning back to Baelor. “It’s hardly enough to warrant such arbitration, wouldn’t you say, uncle?”

“You were seen defiling the princess the day before her fucking wedding,” Maekar spits from the boy’s other side, jaw clenched tight behind his silver beard. “You’re lucky I’m not shipping you off to the Free Cities to make a man out of you.”

“Right,” Daeron scoffs. “Punish me for going to a brothel by sending me to the sex capital of the Seven Kingdoms— Ow!”

Maekar’s ringed hand slams hard into the back of the boy’s wild head. He grimaces, rubbing at the crown of his golden tresses with a pale hand.

“Do you not deny it?” Baelor asks you, with a suspicious squint in his gaze, as if he were distantly hoping you would.

“No, Your Grace,” you mutter with an averted gaze, etching new marks onto your delicate fingertips. “I did sneak out—”

“She lies,” Daeron blurts before the words have properly left your mouth. “She did not leave of her own volition, uncle. I forced her out… Wouldn’t take no for an answer…” Daeron’s drunk slurs trail off as he turns to flash you a lazy grin and a pair of squinted eyes. “Better a liar than a whore, right, petal?”

“Watch your tongue,” Maekar scolds from his other side.

“But there was no defiling, father, of that I’m sure,” Daeron continues anyway, head swiveling as he turns to face the other man. His smile widens beneath the strands of blonde hair hanging over his eyes. “I only used my fingers—”

“You idiot,” the father hisses, scooping his son up by the collar of his shirt and dragging him back towards the entrance.

Daeron’s stumbled footsteps echo in the otherwise silent study as he staggers behind him on graceless feet. He’s all but thrown out the door when Maekar swings it open again, only to slam it shut behind him with a booming thud a second later.

The sound rings through the suffocating quiet that you and Baelor are soon left alone in — the kind of quiet that snatches all the air out of a room; the kind of quiet that makes it suddenly very hard to breathe.

“Does he speak the truth of it?” the man wonders after a few long moments, with one arm propped along the arm of his chair and the other folded along the table’s edge.

You inhale a wavering breath.

“He does, Your Grace,” you murmur, lacking the courage to meet his eyes. “I had not planned it— Nor did Daeron, I think— It was simply the circumstances of the moment in which we found ourselves in that—”

“Did you like it?” Baelor interjects your rambling, which he knows is only full of the words you’ve been conditioned to say, and not the ones you truly mean.

You falter at the simple question. “I-I’m not entirely sure what you mean, Your Grace—”

“I’m entirely sure that you’re entirely sure what I mean,” the man hums with a kind smile, chair creaking under his weight when he slouches further into it. “Did you like being undone in a pleasure house like a common whore?”

His words, foreignly brash, and his eyes, foreignly hardened, make your stomach do a backflip.

“I… I don’t know—”

“You never do, do you?” Baelor mutters with a sympathetic squint to his mismatched eyes. “You’re always so concerned about what everyone else wants— What everyone else thinks of you— That you never learned how to form your own opinions…”

You shift uncomfortably before him, feeling utterly dissected under his prying stare and grimacing when you dig a fresh mark onto the skin of your pointerfinger.

“So I’ll ask you again, princess,” the man continues, leaning forward in his seat and never once taking his eyes off you. He peers at you over the flickering candles and repeats, more slowly this time. “Did you… like it?”

You swallow hard and nod once.

“Yes,” you hear yourself say on bated breath. “I think I did…”

“What about it did you like?”

You struggle to catch your breath, more so to find an adequate answer.

“I think that I— I just spent so much time worrying about my duties as the… the wretched Flower of Highgarden,” you laugh bitterly at the stupid nickname. “That I forgot what it meant to feel good. That I was allowed to feel good, and suddenly I was surrounded by people just taking what they wanted, and I felt so…”

“Free?” Baelor finishes for you, brows raised to his hairline.

“Powerful,” you correct, squinting like the word is half-foreign on your tongue.

Something flickers in his brown-blue eyes, something more than just the candlelight, as if he were finally seeing you for the first time.

His chair legs scrape the cobbles as he rises slowly to full height, rounding the table in measured strides, ambling towards you like a predator stalking its prey.

“Is Daeron who you want?” he asks with lowered brows. “Is that where your loyalties lie?”

“My loyalty is to the crown, Your Grace—”

You clear your throat and tilt your chin to meet the man’s gaze when he towers over you, smelling of leather and the old books he spends most of his days studying. Your breath stutters when he suddenly reaches for your face.

“Don’t answer from here,” he murmurs lowly, tapping gently at your skull. His pale pointer finger trails down — past your cheek, over your jaw, and down your thrumming pulse — until it rests along your sternum, just over your racing heart. “Answer from here.”

You inhale a wavering breath, glassy eyes darting back and forth between his unblinking ones.

“In a… In a perfect world…” you start in a trembling voice, struggling to keep the man’s gaze as you turn instead to your reddened nail beds. “Daeron and I would take off for Sunspear or Casterly Rock— Somewhere by the sea, where the sun is always shining— And the world would just be the two of us, fucking and drinking and loving all we want…”

Baelor’s brows perk at your sudden brashness. “Then why don’t you?”

“Because this is not a perfect world,” you answer plainly, half-morose. “And I’m not so selfish as to pretend that I don’t have my own duties here…”

Baelor’s lip quirks in a gentle smile beneath his greying beard as he exhales a laugh through his nose.

“A trait rather befitting for a future queen, perhaps…” he hums and points his mismatched gaze to the silk bow sitting at the chest of your slip, tracing it with the tip of his pointerfinger.

“Despite my… regrettable actions…” you trail off, just barely able to meet the man’s gaze as you peer up at him from beneath your lashes. “My racing mind did inevitably run into thoughts of you, Your Grace…”

“Really?” he hums. “Pray tell.”

“Daeron asked me what I wanted, and I thought first of you,” you confess. “And I realized I had grown quite attached to the thought of becoming your wife. Of ruling beside you— some many years on, of course, but— The sheer thought of it made me… It made me feel like I could conquer worlds.”

“Aye,” Baelor nods, with a fire in his brown-blue gaze that matches your own. “We will.”

He’s kissing you before you can blink, pressing his mouth to yours and cradling the back of your neck in a calloused hand, urging your jaw upward with his thumb. He steals the breath from your lungs under the weight of his searing kiss, as fierce and merciless as taking a bite out of an apple. It’s all tongue and teeth and spit — a passion you weren’t sure a man as wooden as Baelor was able to give, or otherwise cared to.

A string of saliva connects your mouths when he pulls away from you. Baelor smiles softly to himself when you try hopelessly to chase his kiss, swiping the thread of spit away with the pad of his thumb when it clings to your chin.

“Did you cum?” he asks you, then follows quickly at the look you give him. “When my nephew fucked you with his fingers at a whorehouse— Did you cum?”

His prying gaze darts rapidly between your glassy one as you struggle to answer — unsure of whether to be honest or to tell a feeble lie in hopes of placating his ego. You decide, finally, to tell the truth.

“Yes,” you answer and nod once into his hand.

“And I trust it will be the last time?”

“As you command, Your Grace—”

“Baelor,” he corrects.

“As you command, Baelor.”

There’s a twinkle of subtle mischief in your gaze that makes his lips curl into a quiet smile. He leans down again, and you think he’s going to kiss you, but he only traces the bridge of your nose with the tip of his.

“You are not as soft as the tales would tell it, are you? Flower of Highgarden,” he hums in a melodic voice, breath fanning over your mouth. “Gentle, yes. But not soft.”

“What’s the difference?” you whisper, and he feels the breath of it over his bearded chin.

“A soft person wouldn’t dare touch a knife, would they? But you… You’d kiss my forehead before pressing a blade to my neck— That’s gentle,” he explains, walking you backward with meandering footsteps that rhyme with your own.

Your breath catches in your chest when the backs of your thighs collide suddenly with the edge of the table. It scrapes once on the cobbles, and then again when Baelor urges you suddenly around with a firm hand on your elbow. He spins you away from him and presses you further into the wooden edge with his chest flush against your back.

“And I am— The idiot who would thank you for slitting my throat…” he mutters in your ear, scruff scratching at your neck as his calloused hands crawl up your thighs, pushing up the hem of it as they go. “As long as it meant you touched my skin…”

His wide palms trail over your hip bones, up your stomach, and past your ribcage. They settle finally under your breasts, just lingering there, and you wonder if he can feel the way your breathing stutters beneath them — if he can feel the way you fight the urge to grind your ass against his cock.

“Is this wise, my lord?” you whisper, nose brushing his bearded jaw when you peer hesitantly over your shoulder. “Our wedding is at dawn— They’ll be expecting a bedding ceremony—”

“Aye. They will. And you can pretend to be the sweet, virgin wife for the people on the morrow all you want,” Baelor hums, reaching for his belt with one hand to undo the buckle there. “But there’s no use in pretending when we’re alone, is there?””

Excitement stirs in your flaring chest and down into the pit of your swirling stomach, throbbing somewhere in the depths of your loins the same way you had for Daeron. You keep his stare when he pulls his half-hard cock from the confines of his trousers, mouth watering for a taste of him.

“No… I suppose not,” you say on bated breath and let Baelor fuck you stupid in the middle of the candlelight study — moaning his name within the cobbled walls, mere hours before you recite your sacred vows before the gods.

[lovebugism]

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

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

characters: baelor targaryen / fem!handmaiden!reader

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

( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Baelor’s eyes narrow at your profile.

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

Your eyes widen, caught again.

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

“Aye,” he nods. “It would be…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Baelor shakes his head.

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

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

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

You swallow hard.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You nod, not trusting your voice enough to speak.

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

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

Baelor’s lips curl slowly into a sympathetic grin.

“Show me,” he commands; he pleads.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Aye,” Baelor nods once. “I do.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Baelor heard you anyway, even in your silence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His quiet smile grows.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You couldn’t,” Baelor whispers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

[honeyroots]

18+. tw incest, mentions of abuse/grooming. this is sad. DEAD DOVE.

winchester!sister!reader who has a complicated relationship with sam and dean because john sheltered you. winchester!sister!reader who had a codependent and obsessive relationship with john that sam and dean didn’t know about. when john dies and you’re forced to hunt with sam and dean, it’s clear just how badly their father did a number on you. when they’re on a hunt and you’re trying to do your own thing, dean is strict— john’s little soldier, “i’m dad now, you understand that? he’s not here anymore so i’m the next best thing, and when i give you orders, you follow them.”

this command flips something in your brain, and later when they’re in the motel while sam is out grabbing them dinner, you take it as an opportunity to sit on your big brother’s lap. dean is confused at first, where did this sudden affection come from? when you starts pulling at his belt buckle, he’s stilling your hand by grabbing it with his own. “woah— hey, hey! what’re you doing?”

“thought you said you were dad now?” you look at him with a perplexed gaze. why is he stopping her?

“yeah, i did say that but… did dad let you do this?” dean’s stomach turns. the thought of his father and his sister nearly makes him sick, but the rejected look on your face is putting him in a tough position.

“uh huh,” you mutter, whining gently as you squirms your hand in his, “dad loved me so much. i was his special girl! just like mom.”

guilt consumes dean. the fact that this seems so normal to you, that in order to feel your brother’s love, you need to cross these boundaries is absurd. but dean isn’t a psychiatrist, dean isn’t a therapist, and dean has only ever been a big brother to sammy, which means he only knows how to put his siblings first. he went to hell for sammy, after all.

“what do you need from me?” dean questions, letting his sister’s hand go as he brings his other hand to caress her cheek. “tell me.”

[niloujournals]

Older bf! Baelor cleans the melted ice cream drop that runs down your chin with his finger. He almost always wakes first and prepares breakfast, making it a personal mission to make sure you eat something before going to work or school. shopping with Baelor is the best experience ever, doesn't matter if it's grocery for your apartment or just clothes and stuff, he buys you everything that you look at and carries everything and spend as much time as you want. He's busy most of the time but if it's decided that the day is gonna be spent with you he won't rush you for anything. He's a super healthy person so if you have unhealthy habits such as smoking, he won't force you out of it or shame you about it, But he will try to get you to quit one way or another.

[niloujournals]

moden! Jace would be spoiled in a rich family that is deeply corrupted and enables his every action. He's be slightly neglected because his mother is busy with business and stuff.. the perfect bully

[lovebugism]

⋆˚꩜.ᐟ DEVIL'S LAND ─── baelor targaryen

summary: when your father loses the war for the iron throne, you're shipped to the red keep and married to the future king to keep the peace. while you waste away in a gilded cage, baelor tries to convince you that you're more than just a hostage. (4k)

characters: baelor targaryen / wife!reader, maekar targaryen, aerion targaryen

contents: arranged marriage, enemies to lovers, power imbalance, angst with a happy ending, hurt/comfort, a lot of yearning, canon divergent (almost blackfyre rebellion-esque except it takes place much later and w different house) cw for mentions of war, death, grief, blood and gore, brief mentions of suicidal ideation smut 18+ (MDNI), slightly dubcon because of power dynamics

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The feasting hall is filled with the lack of you. 

Your ghost sits in the empty chair next to Baelor’s; an absence he should be used to by now, but one that still weighs on his chest like steel all the same. He cannot remember the last time you supped with him, now that he thinks about it, or the last time you broke your fast with him at sunrise. You hardly ever leave your chambers, and when you do, you’re either alone in the study or hidden in the farthest edge of the expansive gardens out back.

You live your life in King’s Landing in solitude. Baelor can’t quite figure out if that’s what you truly want, or if the isolation is what you think you deserve.

“Do we know if the girl has taken so much as a bite since she came to us?” Baelor’s father, the king, asks from the head of the long table.

“Do we know if the girl is even aware that the war is over?” Aerion scoffs from the opposite end, with his mouth still full. He wipes the salty juice of meat from his chin and jokes aloud, “She spent so long eating nothing but grass and horseflesh, perhaps she no longer has a taste for real food— Ow!”

He winces under his father’s harsh hand, when Maekar reaches around to slap at the back of his silver head.

“That’s because she was actually fighting a war,” the older man deadpans with a heavy scowl. “Not simply playing at one in drunken jousts.”

Despite your family’s treason, the Targaryens couldn’t help but feel a strange sort of sympathy for you — Maekar and Baelor mostly, along with Daeron, who, in his drunken rambles, said he often dreamt of you bathing in dragonfire (“That’s just because you’re a pervert, brother,” Aerion had said.) 

It was not you who waged the war after all, but rather your father; and you were all that was left to pay for his sins. No one else seems to see it that way, though.

“She lost her home. And her family with it…” Baelor’s soft voice cuts through the tension in the candlelight dining hall. He slices through his steak with a knife and fork, if only to perform the act, because he had long lost his appetite waiting for you. “Surely, we can’t expect her to feel at ease here so soon.”

“She’s been here for five moons turns and married to you for four,” his father argues, soft but still strikingly stern. “Your mother was pregnant in half that time.”

Maekar makes a noise of disgust in the back of his throat. “Please, father, continue talking about bedding my mother at the feasting table— I wanted to lose my appetite anyway.”

Baelor is sent to fetch you a moment later, not under his father’s command, but the king’s. 

“Make her understand that she is not just your wife, but the Realm’s future queen. And that certain duties are required of her,” he’d said, firm but not entirely unkind. “We have been gracious hosts, yes, but she was brought here to be made an example of. Surely she knows by now that our courtesy is not a kindness she is owed.”

He finds you in the gardens, where he’s learned that you spend most of your evenings, on the farthest end where the tiger lilies grow. It was the sigil of your house, of which you are now its only remaining member. 

You’re already awaiting his arrival in the center of the wooden gazebo, having heard his footsteps on the cobbles and the greetings he shared with your handmaidens around the bend. You stand at the center of it with a large book clasped to your chest and smile when you see him, though it doesn’t quite reach your eyes. 

“Your Grace,” you greet with a bowed head.

“I think we’ve moved past the need for such courtesies, princess. Call me Baelor,” the older man hums with a tender smile. The steps of the wooden structure creak under his weight as he rises to meet you — a pretty girl donned in a dress of black velvet, as if you were waiting for another funeral. “Did the handmaidens summon you for supper?”

You nod once and tilt your chin to keep his gaze when he stands before you, weathered hands clasped behind his back. 

“They did, Your Grace.”

He tilts his chin and gives you a stern look, made of raised brows and glimmering brown-blue eyes.

You clear your throat and correct yourself. “They did, Baelor.”

“Then why are you still hiding yourself out here, my lady?”

His mismatched eyes soften around the edges as they flit back and forth between both of yours. A kind smile hints at his mouth beneath his greying beard. The one you give him in return is much sadder in comparison.

“We both know nobody wants me there, Your Grace,” you tell him.

He flinches slightly, chin jerking, as if your words have offended somehow. “Surely you know by now that isn’t true. It was my brother who was asking after your whereabouts, actually— As was my father.”

He doesn’t tell you that that’s only partially true.

He thinks you already know, besides.

“Well, it was your nephew who stole my clothes in the shower this morning,” you confess with a cynical grin and something sad swimming in your eyes, as your fingers fidget on the leather-bound book between them. “I heard him laughing as he ran off down the hall with them. And since no one would retrieve a fresh dress for me, I had to walk back to my quarters naked.”

Baelor swallows through the anger that rises like bile in his throat. “I will see to it that he is properly reprimanded, princess, I promise you—”

“And what of the cook who spat in my oaten porridge this morning before handing it off to me, Your Grace?” you ask with a dry laugh. 

“Who?” Baelor blurts, features hardened in a flicker. He smells of leather and musk and a freshly cooked meal when he takes a slow step closer to you. “Tell me who it was, and I will have them punished—”

“It won’t change anything,” you shrug. “I come from a family of traitors, Your Grace. I will be sneered at wherever I go until the day I die—”

“I will protect you from them—”

“If you punish one of them, you’ll just create a thousand more,” you say with a laugh, though there is very little humor inside it. “I know this marriage was arranged to make you seem merciful, but you really should’ve killed me with the rest of them— It would’ve been kinder, Your Grace.”

Baelor softens again at your confession and fights the urge to comfort you physically. The hands behind his back tighten into trembling fists instead.

“I don’t expect you to feel at home here so soon, my lady, but I do hope with time—” He cuts himself off when you scoff a humorless laugh. His brows lower in confusion; his lip flickers upward in a faint half-smile. “What is it?”

“Don’t pretend like I’m anything other than a prisoner here, Your Grace,” you tell him.

“You’re our guest,” Baelor corrects, firm but strikingly tender. “My wife—”

You laugh like he’s said something funny. 

“Well, excuse me, Your Grace, but the three of those seem to be mutually exclusive in my experience.”

Baelor falters. His chest flares with a white-hot feeling, like a sword shoved into his chest and twisting. The war has already taught him what that sort of carnage feels like, and he feels his hurt pooling like blood in his mouth just now. 

He doesn’t know why your words hurt him so, only that they do — only that they shred any remnants of hope that he could have a somewhat happy marriage here with you; that he could have learned to love you as he did his first wife.

His softness slips away just as his silly daydreams do. His kind features harden in an instant as he tells you in an unfeeling monotone, “Your food is getting cold, my lady. There’s a plate waiting for you in the feasting hall— where the king is eagerly anticipating your arrival. It is not wise to keep him waiting.”

He leaves without another word.

You stay in place and try to catch your breath when he’s gone.

Dinner goes about as well as any feast surrounded by your captors possibly could. 

You stomach a small bite of steak, if only to please the king sitting to your right, but start to feel sick almost instantly. 

The charred edges remind you of the bodies they burnt on the battlefield, piled on top of each other, far too many to bury. The savory juice pools warm on your tongue, and you can’t help but think of the blood, which sat heavy in the air the early morning your father lost the war he started.

You sit silent, clouded by thoughts of war, between the men who saw your family slaughtered. No one addresses you for the majority of the dinner, not until the king sucks cabbage from his teeth and wonders aloud: “Is it not past time you gave your prince another son, my lady?”

You think he says it to be polite, or to start a cordial conversation with you, though it only makes you feel sicker.

Baelor huffs a faint laugh. “Let us not spoil our meal with such talks, father—”

“I pray for it every day,” you answer in a quiet monotone, always so meek in your way, but never once taking your eyes off the older man at the head of the table. “In the Godswood outside of the Keep.”

Baelor’s head snaps in your direction. A palpable look of confusion twists his scruffy features as his mismatched eyes dart over your profile. “Truly?” he hears himself ask.

You nod once. “Just as I pray for the king’s long, healthy reign, Your Grace.”

The quiet venom in your words does not go unnoticed.

You turn away without another word, and no one bothers to speak to you for the rest of dinner. 

You think you’ve gotten away scot free until you’re summoned later that night, after you’ve long traded your heavy black dress for your cream night gown. You’re tying the silk lace at the chest of your slip when your handmaiden knocks and slips inside — a young girl from Lorath, who had also lost her family in the war. She is, perhaps, the only person in the entirety of the Seven Kingdoms who doesn’t look at you like you’re a total traitor.

“Princess?” she greets in a low, accented voice.

“Yes?”

You turn to glance at her over your shoulder and find the girl fidgeting awkwardly in the entryway. “It’s Prince Baelor. He has requested your presence in his chambers.”

Your heart stops and does a backflip as it plummets to your stomach, where it sits like a leaden weight and makes it very suddenly hard to breathe. 

Baelor requesting your company in the feasting hall, or in the study, or in the gardens was one thing — but him requesting your presence in his quarters was entirely another.

You clear your throat and turn away, hoping that your handmaiden doesn’t notice the flicker of fear that passes over your features in the mirror. “At this hour?” you ask, voice trembling.

“He insisted, princess,” she tells you.

You do as requested and make way to his chambers. You are in no position to turn him down — you are his property, after all, in more ways than one; as his wife, in the eyes of the Seven, and as his prisoner, but the rule of Targaryen law.

Baelor had been nothing but kind to you, to be sure. By all accounts, you got lucky in receiving him as husband, instead of any other Targaryen heir or your head on a pike next to your father’s. You’re still alive, yes, but not quite living; still alive, but not quite free.

You’re escorted down the cobbled corridor to his quarters by your handmaiden and a white-cloaked knight. The oak is hard against your knuckles when you knock on his chamber door; the golden knob is heavy in your fist when you swing it open following his muffled command. You find Baelor standing at the round table by an open window, pouring two goblets of wine, still clad in his all-black day garb.

“You weren’t sleeping, were you?” he asks in lieu of greeting.

You shake your head as you walk to his side, white slip flowing behind you. “No, Your Grace.”

“Baelor,” he corrects with a kind smile and a pair of glimmering eyes. He’s already had a few cups before you got here; you can see it in his glassy gaze, smell it on his breath. 

Your fingers shake when they reach for the chalice he passes you.

“No, Baelor,” you say.

You bring the golden-rimmed cup to your mouth. You still haven’t quite gotten used to the taste of Tagaryen spirits — they’re far too bitter, you’ve found, too dull. But even still, you tip your head back and down the contents in three swift swallows. 

You feel the burn trail from your throat, to your chest, and down into your stomach. You revel in the way it prickles at your skin as you set the cup back to the table, wiping your slick mouth with the back of your free hand.

Baelor watches in silence as you head for the made bed across the room. You reach for the tie in your nightgown in a movement that looks utterly mechanical — like you already know what’s about to happen, like you plan to get it over with as soon as possible. 

His stomach ripples with excitement while his chest flares with hurt.

“Could we not have a decent conversation first, princess?” he wonders with a quiet smile, that he hopes covers the pain in his eyes. “I don’t see any reason why this cannot be cordial.”

You glance at him over your shoulder. Zero emotion graces your features as the edges of your slip inch down your collarbones. The urge to cry was beaten out of you some moons ago; not by Baelor’s command, or even the king’s, but you were tortured for it nonetheless. This is what your lord husband doesn’t seem to understand — just because he has been nothing but kind to you, does not mean the rest of the world has been.

“There is plenty reason, Your Grace,” you tell him in an unfeeling monotone, moments before your nightgown pools around your bare feet with a quiet thud, leaving your form utterly bare and kissed by candlelight.

You try not to feel dirty when his hands are on you. You try not to think about how many people he’s killed with them — how many of your brothers and cousins died under his sword before they lost the war. You try not to think about how utterly gentle Baelor is with you despite such carnage, as he guides you slowly into the center of his bed. 

His body is lean and muscular when it presses on top of yours, burying you further in the crimson silk and cashmere blankets below. You can feel every inch of him on top of you, and you hate it — you hate how much you like it. 

His scruffy legs slot between yours before he pierces you with his long cock, of which you can feel every ridge and vein as he fucks slowly into you. You can feel the minimal pudge of his belly as it presses into yours, and his heart drumming wildly behind his hairy chest when he smothers your breasts against his sternum. His fingers are warm and calloused as they trace up your arms and wrists and palms, entwining with shorter ones and pressing them into the pillow on either side your head.

He’s in you, on you, and all over you.

It’s maddening.

So much so, that you struggle now to distract yourself as you normally would. Usually, you’d add up all the stars you could see through the window across the room, or the cracks in the cobbles in the ceiling. You lose count quickly now, though, through Baelor’s whispered grunts in your ear, which fan warm across your skin and leave chills pebbling in their wake.

“Gods,” you hear him grumble. “You feel so good around me—”

He buries all of his moans into your neck, as if he were ashamed of them; as if he were ashamed of how good he feels. Something about it makes your stomach swirl with a newfound warmth. You can feel it leaking out of you now, and drenching the sheets below. You can hear it, even — in the faint schlick, schlick, schlick sounds every time he punches into you. 

Your hips jerk when the coarse hair above his cock presses harder against the most sensitive part of you. Your breath catches and leaves in a high-pitched yelp before you can stop it. You burn red-hot with embarrassment a second later.

“Sorry,” you squeak out, chest heaving. “I’m sorry.”

Baelor halts his thrusts and pulls his head back for the first time in several minutes. His brown-blue eyes are glassy and heavy-lidded; his scruffy face is flushed and glowing with sweat; his thin lips are rosier now from the sloppy kisses he’d pressed absentmindedly to your neck. 

You didn’t know he was so beautiful before now.

“Don’t apologize,” he assures through panted breaths. He brushes a rogue hair from your temple and softens when you flinch on instinct, as though surprised by the sheer tenderness of his touch. “You can feel good, princess— It’s supposed to feel good.”

No, it’s not, you want to say. I shouldn’t like this. I shouldn’t like you.

“Do you want to keep going?” Baelor asks.

You nod wordlessly despite yourself; not because you’re his wife or his property but because, for the first time, you want to feel him.

You squeeze your eyes shut when his hips roll back again. You can still feel his stare on you when he pushes back into you, watching your features crumple under the sheer weight of your pleasure. 

The pressure on your clit is unrelenting and only builds in time with the speed of his measured thrusts. A foreign feeling rises in the pit of your stomach accordingly, until you can feel yourself choking on it, like you’re moments away from bursting entirely.

“Stop—” you hear yourself say, though the word gets lost in a gasped breath. You repeat, louder this time, “Stop! Stop.”

Baelor abides without question. He stills on top of you as his pleasure-stricken features flood with panic almost instantly, worried he might’ve hurt you in some way.

“What?” he pants. “What is it?”

“It’s—” you start but cut yourself off a moment later, unsure of what to say, or why you had even stopped him in the first place. “It’s… It’s too much.”

“What is?”

You shake your head against the pillow, eyes wide and wild as they dance between his mismatched ones. “It feels… too good…”

Baelor exhales a heavy sigh of relief.

“Aye, my lady,” he nods with a quiet laugh. “It’s supposed to. I want it to feel good for you.”

You say nothing, just tighten your fingers around the ones still holding his.

“I can tell that it does. Feel good for you, I mean…” he confesses, voice low and melodic, as he tilts his hips back again. “You’re getting so much tighter around me—”

He clenches his jaw and grunts quietly when he pushes back into you. A quiet whine sounds in the back of your throat as your head jerks against the pillow, an involuntary motion spurred on by your pleasure.

“—Can barely move for how tight you’re squeezing me,” he moans through a breathy chuckle. His heavy eyes dart wildly over your blissful features, screwed together in a pained look that he knows is anything but. A lopsided smile quirks the edges of his mouth. “I think you’re already close for me, aren’t you, my lady? I think you’d cum for me the second I commanded it of you, wouldn’t you?”

You swallow hard, not trusting yourself to speak, or to otherwise form any intelligible turn of phrase. You hold tighter to his hands and clench your thighs around his hips, nodding wordlessly in response.

“Do it then,” Baelor tells you, so low it sounds almost like a growl. “Let me have it— Let me feel you.”

A squeal gets lost in your throat when his thrusts pick up speed again. The merciless pleasure begins to suffocate you, almost terrifyingly so. You couldn’t run from it now if you tried, not pressed beneath his body like this. The only thing you can do now is take it.

Baelor holds you while you cum, coos softly in your ear the entire way through the twitches of your orgasm: “That’s it,” he praises, choppy between his thrusts. “That’s it. So good for me— No, no, don’t stop— Give me all of it, sweet girl. Yes… That’s it…”

You’re left trembling beneath him as your high comes and goes. You hardly realize that you’ve slipped your hands out of his larger ones to wrap them around his pale shoulders — digging crescent shapes into the freckled skin, keeping him pressed impossibly close to your shuddering form.

You only vaguely feel his fingers on your buzzing skin as he wipes a tear from your temple that you hadn’t realized was there. You blink the burning haze from your eyes as you peer up at the man above you. Your heaving chest warms at the smile he gives you, quiet and utterly tender.

“See?” Baelor hums, petting you softly by the hair. “This doesn’t have to be all bad… We can be happy here, can’t we?”

The urge to cry wells suddenly in your throat. And it’s strange, because you don’t feel all that sad at the moment. Instead, you feel quite hopeful — for the first time since the war started, you finally feel like your life is one worth living.

“I don’t know…” you answer on an exhaled breath, leaning into his calloused hand when he presses it gently to your burning cheek. Your wet eyes dart back and forth between his brown-blue ones as you confess, “But I think I want to be…”

[goldenhoneyedwine]

Wrapped around your finger...

The events of this blurb take place after "In the palm of your hand..." but this can also be read as a standalone blurb. Content tags are canon divergence, reader uses she/her pronouns, no physical description of reader, smut, fluff, pet names, unprotected sex, yearning!!!!, loss of virginity, reader continues to walk him like a dog, dry humping (aint nobody dry), p in v, cream pie, hyperspermia thank you for reading <3

It's hours later when you return to the castle. Even though your body feels weary, still you buzz from the feeling of accomplishment and practically bounce down the halls to your bedchambers. Gwayne paces in front of your doors, and follows on your heels into the room. When you said "later" he must have took your words as gospel, faithfully making himself available hours later. "How was your meeting with the Septons?" He asks, as the door closes behind you. You notice his hair sticks up wildly in some places; either he was raking his hands through it while he waited or never bothered to fix the traces you left earlier.

"It was wonderful. Very productive." You beam at him. "On behalf of House Hightower, I pledged five thousand gold dragons to be sent monthly to aid the poor. The Septons were so pleased!"

Gwayne’s mouth hangs open, rendered speechless.

"And I met some of the orphans that directly benefit from our donations. Such little angels!" You set your prayer book down on your desk, and prompt him, “You did say I was allowed to pledge five thousand, husband?" You raise your eyebrows expectantly waiting his answer.

He sputters. "I said five hundred."

An airy laugh escapes you. "Oh, I must have misheard you. But it’s no consequence to House Hightower, being one of the wealthiest in the realm." You shrug innocently. "Right?"

Your husband’s eyes bulge in shock. How is he going to explain to his Master of Coin the tenfold influx of charitable giving leaving the Hightower coffers? That his wife cares too much for orphans and he could never tell her no? That's the truth of it, as pathetic as it sounds, but the Master of Coin would understand if he saw her.

You sit on the chair next to the fire, and begin to unlace your boots. This pulls Gwayne from his self pitying stupor. His wife must be assisted, doted on, even now. He eases onto one knee in front of you, batting your hands away from your muddy boots. "Here, let me." Reverently, he pulls your skirt up over your knees, taking care to linger his palms over your calves. Then, he works the laces, gently loosening them so your boot can slide off your foot. He switches to the left boot, repeating the actions dutifully.

"You don't seem angry at me." You comment. Like earlier, you rake your fingers through his auburn hair to fix it, moving it away from his face, pulling ever so slightly at the scruff of his neck.

His head hangs, lulled by your ministrations. He presses a soft kiss to your bare knee. "I can't imagine ever being angry with you." His large hands knead into your calf muscles, easing the strain you felt from walking around the Oldtown today.

"Never?" you challenge, smile tugging at your lips.

"Could I ever be angry at those huge doe eyes looking at me?" He muses, hands moving higher slightly to massage into your knee, savoring each second you allow him to kneel before you "No, I don't believe it is possible."

You hum in approval. "Gwayne?"

His gaze flies up to meet yours, and you can see him holding his breath, hanging on to your every word. Blue eyes widened expectantly at the sound of his name from your lips.

"Would you help me with something?"

"Anything" he breathes.

"Will you help me undress? I walked through the mud earlier, so I need to change."

Gwayne nods his head harder than he ever has in his life. Lost for words, he leans back on his heels, to give you space to stand and step away from the chair. You turn your back to him, so he can access the ties down the length of your spine. Like the boots, he works the knots patiently, savoring every contact that his fingers make with your back. He feels like he is opening a gift that he has been waiting his whole life for, and doesn't intend to rush the precious packaging.

Once the laces are loosened down your back, you turn, lifting slightly on tip toe to peck the side of his mouth. "Thank you, husband. That would have taken me twice as long to wrestle with by myself! Now I need change and prepare for dinner with my ladies."

Gwayne feels as if he has been wounded, slapped, or perhaps stabbed. Pain shoots through his chest, but all he can do is whimper, "No." His head hangs against your shoulder. "No, you cannot leave again. You just can't." The blood has rushed to his cock, leaving nothing for his reeling brain. Gwayne is at the end of his rope, tormented by your smell of sweet rose soap and wide eyes. Every time he believes he has you, you manage to dart out of his grasp at the last possible second. It’s not eloquent, or particularly convincing, but he must do something to slow you down. He kisses your neck, pressing fast, open mouth kisses. Grabbing blindly at your backside, he paws at your body without the restraint usually possessed by a knight of the realm. "Dove, I will die if I have to wait any longer."

You can't help but laugh at his dramatic claim. And the jerky way that his hands, callused from the sword, clumsily pull at your dress and every handle of your body tickles. Coordination, and his sense, have been tossed out the window. The poor man looks ready to be put out of his misery, you decide. Also, the pulsing in your center is getting hard to ignore, likely spurred by the way his pretty eyes twist in agony. So your slender fingers begin to work the buttons of his shirt. "Husband, there's no need for tears." You tease. "If you wanted me, why didn't you just say so"

He laughs, but it sounds more like a choked sob. Were you a deer in the forest, luring him blindly on a hunt he was never meant to complete? Or maybe he had been the prey all along? It was starting to feel that way. But if this position he finds himself in leaves no cause for complaints, as you tenderly open the fastenings of his shirt. You lift on tip toe to kiss him, to soothe the torture of your honorable husband. He groans in approaval, stepping forward so your backside bumps against your desk. He tastes like salty tears, and cloves, which you've noticed he ocassionally chews to sweeten his breath. Gwayne kisses you hungrily, nothing like your lips meeting for the first time in the Starry Sept, tongue scraping against your teeth, claiming your mouth as his own. When you finish the last button of his shirt, you run your fingers up and down his bare chest. Your touch sends shudders down his spine, causing him to involuntarily buck his hips towards yours. Desperately, he undresses you next. His hands work the chemise up your torso, and only breaks away the kiss to lift it over your head, before meeting your lips once more.

His hands hold your lower back, pulling your form into him as close as possible. One callused palm holds your arse, allowing him to roll his hips against your cunt. It's impossible not to feel his erection straining against his pants, brushing against your center again and again. The fabric grows damp, the combination of both your arousals mixing, filling the space. Gwayne shudders a shaky breath into your neck, mouthing at the underside of your jaw, mummering "Oh my sweet girl, thank you." You chase his motions, locking your ankles to hold him flush against you. Something strange, a new feeling, hooks behind your belly, as he snakes a hand in between the tight space between you. "Let me, please dove." His fingers fumble, then find his target to circle your clit. The feeling sends a jolt through you, a small suprised hiccup leaves you.

The sound encourages him to pet into your bundle of nerves, his callused fingers dutifully slipping over your slick folds. The pressure to your sensitive cunt, and the friction of his cock against your center swirls into an intoxicating combination. His fingers are coasted with slick, and his pants are beyond soiled now, the dampness spreading with each passing drip from his leaking cock.

"Inside." you choke, voice coming out hoarse, wrecked, and totally surprising to your usual composure.

"Inside? Have you ever-?" he asks.

"No" you confess. "But it doesn't matter. I want you." Your fingers fumble at his pants, tented by his cock.

Never had three words ever brought him so much relief. Gwayne nods dumbly, convinced by nothing other than your hands loosening the ties of his pants- a sight he feared might only exist in his own imagination "Inside, yeah.” He confirms, and hastily shucks them down, only enough to let his cock spring free. He sighs as it finally hits the cool air, soothing the angry heat that builds at the head. He pulls your arse closer, angling your hips better for him to meet them.

His cock slaps against his bare stomach, smearing the skin with precome, and you press against it. The feeling of your sensitive folds brushing the hardness pulls the string even tighter in your belly.

"I won't let it hurt, I promise" He mumbles against your neck, guiding you to grind up against the velvet skin of his erection. His cock slides easily against your folds, pressing against your entrance. When Gwyane finally presses in, a choked groan rumbles through his core. He chases the feeling, swallowing your mewls, and letting your wet heat envelop him inch by inch. Slowly rocking his hips, not pulling out too much, just letting your bodies stay connected.

"Is that good, dove?" He kisses your ear tenderly.

"Yeah" you squeak, fullness leaving you lost for words. You hook your chin onto his shoulder, threading your fingers into his long hair, pulling your husband even closer into you.

As your fist tightens in his hair, he cannot help his eyes rolling back in his head. "Gods, you're so perfect." As Gawyne's rutting quickens, he once again presses his fingers to your clit, drawing quick figure eights. His pelvis knocks against yours clumsily, chasing the quickly approaching orgasm threatening to spill. He is so deep inside you, the head of his cock knocking repeatedly into your tender walls, sending shivers down to your toes. "Come for me, sweet girl. Please come.” He begs, and a final press against your clit brings your peak crashing over you. Your legs tremble around him, as heat floods your veins. The thought crosses your hazy mind to question why you were so insistent to run from him, to torment him? The answer was so obvious before, but now it escapes you.

Your stomach muscles clench and spasm, tightening the vice-like clutch your body holds over his cock. "Huh-uh- thank you-fuck" his dampened forehead leans against your neck as Gwayne spills. You feel his cock jerking deep inside you, flooding warm heat nearly up into your ribs. His fingers hold you, almost tight enough to bruise, to stay sheathed on him as his cock sputters, threatening to fill you past the point of overflow. He pants, as his breath slowly comes back to a normal pace. Tenderly, he kisses your jaw and corner of your mouth, nudging your face up to look at him, instead of at his cock leaving you, and come leaking onto the desk. "My perfect wife."

You roll your eyes at his fawning compliment, but still wrap your arms around his shoulders. Gwayne's cock gives another twitch at the sight of you blinking your huge eyes up at him. Your eyes are glassy, blissed out from your peak and exertion, and framed by doe-like lashes.

"Must you leave for dinner now?" He pleads, blue eyes widening in hope that you stay.

Whatever plans arranged with your ladies could be easily rescheduled, but you wrinkle your nose as if deep in deliberation.

Gwayne's mind is already hastily planning his next move, for when you reply that you must leave. He will offer to help you clean up, bathe, as any doting husband would. He will touch you, eat your cunt, draw peak after peak out of you. Keep you in this pliant, placated state so you lose track of time and forget about every obligation you committed to and-

"I can reschedule" You chirp, swinging your legs from where you perch on the desk.

The answer suprises him, and sends a melting sensation of relief down his spine. Still, he thinks, he'll probably just go with his original plan just to be safe.

[imnotcryingyouare1]

If it's not too much can we get more of the marry me fic? Did reader and aerion actually got married i've been thinking about it since reading it 🤧🩷

The dragon

Italics is high valyrian

Less cracky! Peak lover boy! Kinda short and thank you for the ask 🩵🩵🥰🥰 marry me

“We shall have a valyrian wedding, with red and black flowers lining the aisle and your dress will be blue with yellow accents to represent Stormfrye.” Aerion says the day after you arrive at Summerhall. The king agreeing a wedding would be a good idea, he wasn’t the keenest on you marrying Aerion but valarr already being married and Aerion begging made the decision for him. “What type of cake do you want?”

“I don’t mind, my prince.” You say sat in the gardens with him and stormfrye, the girl napping in the sun on her back loving Aerion scratching her tummy. The dragon taking to him quicker than anyone else.

“Call me Aerion, husband or my dragon.” He says wanting you to call him your dragon, just as you are his.

“I’ll call you Aerion.” You say still waiting to get to know the man it’s been decided you’re marrying. He does seem a bit crazy but a nice crazy.

“Is there anything you want for the wedding?” He ask having planned the whole thing in only a few hours, you getting married in a moons time.

“I don’t want a bedding ceremony.” You say, the thought of it making you uncomfortable.

“That’s fine you’re mine anyway.” He says simply kissing stormfryes large tummy while hugging her. “Are you looking forward to muña and kepa getting married my little dragon?”

-

“What are you doing?” Aerion asks when you meet in the hallway, him wanting to take you on a date. The wedding happening in two days time.

“I’m going for a quick fly, stormfrye is getting stressed with all these people arriving.” You explain, also finding the amount of people overwhelming looking forward to when it just you and Aerion, the both of you moving to dragonstone soon so Sormfrye has somewhere safe to live.

“Give me a few minutes and I can join you.” He says excitedly kissing your cheek before running off, to get ready so you can still have your date just with stormfrye also present.

“Um, ok?” You say watching him run off towards the kitchens. “I’ll meet you in the gardens.”

-

“I’m ready, I’ve packed us a picnic.” He says dressed in his riding gear, giving Stormfrye a scratch and talking to her in high valyrian. “Are you excited my little princess?”

“That’s sweet of you.” You say smiling at him as he joins you on stormfrye, wrapping his arms around your waist kissing your shoulder as he does so. “You ready? Fly Stormfrye.”

-

“Thank you.” You tell Aerion as he rests his head in your lap, looking like a happy cat as you scratch his head. Stormfrye playing by throwing something before going to fetch it.

“For what?” He asks never having felt so content and happy. You not having left his side since you arrived at summerhall, him teaching you high valaryan and just spending time together.

“Being so kind.” You say smiling down at the man who’s practically purring in your lap, loving attention.

“Huh, I’ve never been called that before.” He muses giggling when Stormfrye drops her toy onto his chest for him to throw.

-

“We look so hot.” Aerion says coming up behind you as you’re stood looking at yourself in your wedding dress his arms around your waist. “We’ll have beautiful hatchlings.”

“What if our children’s eggs don’t hatch?” You say, having worrying about it since the king brought up your future children and marrying your daughter to Valarrs son. Nether children even existing yet.

“They will, but if they don’t we’ll still have Stormfrye and I’ll still have you, my dragon queen.” He says placing a necklace on your neck, kissing your shoulder as he does so. The necklace having a dragon charm on it with an A engraved on a charm next to it. “You’re my everything.”

-

“What are you doing?” You ask half asleep seeing Aerion sneak out of bed to grab something, him only so visible because of the fire. Him turning quickly holding something close to his chest before slowly making his way back to the bed.

“This is brightflame.” Aerion say showing you the old toy dragon who’s red and clearly well loved. “Mother made him for me and I can’t sleep properly without him.”

“Hello brightflame.” You say to the toy, happy he’s opening up to you even more as this dragon is obviously very important to him. But also feeling guilty as he only told you because you found him. “Why isn’t he in bed with us?”

“You don’t mind?” He asks anxiously playing with the dragons wings.

“Why would I mind? You can cuddle both of us.” You say holding your arms out to him so you can cuddle. The both of you having gotten even closer over that last few moons of marriage. “I’m falling in love with you, my dragon.”

[niloujournals]

Gwayne is such an abuse bait it's not even funny

[niloujournals]

Aerion x twin sister! Reader makes so much sense cause i genuinely belive a twin would be one of the few people that Aerion would consider as his equal. He'd still be mean and horrible to you of course cause you refuses to be what he wants you to be and it angers him.

He might not admit it, but the fact that you seem to have inherited all the goodness of the world, while he's trapped within his own madness and cruelty angers him. He wants you to be just like him and belives your kindness is facade, no matter how many times you prove him wrong.

He won't admit it even to himself, but all of this comes from a place jealousy and insecurity and a sense of betrayal. You're his twin, his sister and his other half. You should be the person who understands him most and yet you couldn't be more different from him. It breaks his heart. Makes him resentful and angry. Makes him want you to tear you in two peaces, just to seek shelter in between your ribs so maybe he can feel an ounce of your peaceful soul.

[breesfics]

WHY IS HE HERE?

pairing: modern!aerion targaryen x fem!reader

summary: there were many things you expected when you got into a relationship with aerion targaryen. of course, none of those included his youngest brother, aegon — or egg, as he liked to be called — and how he began interrupting any sort of alone time you had with your boyfriend, all because he ended up liking you so much.

w.c.: 3,6k

c.w.: no use of y/n, aerion is always two seconds away from kicking egg's ass bc he doesn't leave you alone, probably (definitely) ooc aerion and ooc egg, egg is an ipad kid, not rlly a serious fic I wrote this for gits and shiggles

a.n.: first fic on tumblr so im intimidated lol. english is not my first language so forgive any mistakes and typo. not proofread.

THE MOMENT YOU GOT INTO A RELATIONSHIP WITH AERION TARGARYEN, you knew what it would involve, more or less. More than one of your friends and acquaintances — some of his, even — had reached out to you to ask if you were sure of what you were doing, and saying he wasn't exactly... well, the most gentle person.

As much as you appreciated their worry, it was unnecessary, something even they had come to realize after seeing how Aerion was with you.

He was as loving to you as he was not to everyone else, and though you somehow tamed the rushes of anger that always coursed through him, he still had a rather minimal tolerance for the rest of the world. Including his brothers. Especially his brothers.

Especially Aegon.

The youngest of his brothers had become an issue neither of you had expected prior to him meeting you.

It had taken some time before Aerion decided to introduce you to his family, and seeing as you weren't one to push, the most his brothers knew of you for exactly four months after you officially got together was your name — after Aerion accidentally left his phone on the table, and a notification from you revealed your name to Daeron, who saw no appeal in protecting his brother's privacy.

And when Aerion texted you one night, asking if you'd be okay with meeting his family — so they'll finally get off my ass about this, he had said —, you saw no issue with it, and thus a dinner was planned.

The instant the two of you entered his dining room, your eyes had gone over each attending member of his family: his three brothers, his two sisters, his father, his uncle, and his two cousins. And the air was knocked out of your lungs.

They all had an unnatural kind of beauty to them. Most of them shared Aerion's silver hair and purple eyes, but even those that didn't appeared to come from another world.

Aerion had cursed under his breath, muttering about how if he had known half the family would be called, he'd have bailed on this whole thing. But you had maintained your composure, painted a smile on your face, and met his family with forcibly-steadied hands and a thumping heart in your chest.

In retrospect, there really had been no need for you to stress over this so much. As intimidating as the Targaryens were, they were all mostly nice and very charming to be around, and in the blink of an eye, you'd found your place among them.

But credit must be given where it was due. If it hadn't been for the youngest boy, Aegon, you would have taken a lot longer to get comfortable.

His seat had been directly to your left, and he had chatted your ear off all through dinner. All the names, relations and little fun facts you knew about the Targaryens came from him. He had even ended up pulling his iPad beneath the table to show pictures of the events he was telling you all about.

Aerion hadn't shied away from expressing his annoyance at the extravagance of the dinner, which nobody showed any surprise to. He mostly stuck to your side, chatting with you in the brief moments Aegon's attention was elsewhere.

Regardless, the dinner had gone well, and with this particular milestone out of the way, the two of you could finally relax and enjoy each other's company the way you so loved: privately and without shame.

However, Egg didn't seem to have gotten the memo.

"Oh, not this again —” Aerion hissed as he returned to the large living room of the Targaryen home — castle felt more accurate to you, but oh well — with a bowl of popcorn in one hand and two drinks in the other. He stopped in his tracks right at the doorway, when his eyes found the little figure sitting next to you, which had not been there when he left five minutes ago. "What the fuck is he doing here?"

Your eyes widening at his words, you opened your mouth to scold him for swearing in front of the nine year old, but said nine year old merely perked up at his brother's voice and turned his head around to look at Aerion from where he sat on the couch.

"Did you bring my chips? I left them in the fridge."

"No! Get out!"

Even you flinched at the volume and tone of his voice, so it was no surprise when Egg leaned back in his seat, his arms crossed over his chest, a sad pout twisting his young features. And in spite of how much you enjoyed being alone with Aerion, you felt a tug at your heartstrings from the sight of the expression on his face.

Wincing, you glanced at your boyfriend, a pleading look in your eyes. "Well..."

"No."

"Just this time."

"You said that last time."

"He's already here."

"He's always here!"

"Aerion."

"No. Not happening."

Silence fell upon the living room, your eyes meeting Aerion's purple ones with determination. Obviously, you understood where he came from, but you couldn't help it. Egg was such a sweet little boy, and he was always so nice and adorable that you couldn't help but cave to his every wish.

And five minutes later, the three of you sat in front of the TV, Egg in the middle happily munching on the popcorns from the bowl on his lap, often turning to you to share his thoughts about the movie.

"Why Egg?"

"It's short for Aegon," he nodded vigorously and looked away from you.

"Yeah, I figured that part out —”

Like any normal person with a functioning brain, you loved making out with your boyfriend. He was hot, and you were in love with him, so it wasn't like it was a chore for you. Nor was it for him, based on the blurry, heated memories that suddenly came to mind.

Maybe doing it out in public was less understandable, though. But after he had placed all the shopping bags you'd handed him over the afternoon in the backseat of his car, he had pulled you into short kiss, which then became a long one, and somewhere between that and now, it had turned into something else.

Neither of you noticed when Aerion's phone began vibrating in his pocket for a couple of minutes. And when he finally did realize, he had to pull his hands out from under your shirt to declined with an irritated huff.

Then he paused, glanced at his screen for a few seconds, huffed again and answered the phone.

"No fucking way," he ended up spouting after a few back and forth between him and whoever was on the other side of that call.

"He'll be fine there for a few hours." He argued again, "There's all the teachers, and toys, and all the shit kids play with."

Oh, it had to be about Egg.

“Dad —! Can’t you ask Daeron—?” He paused again, listening to his father, and without another word hung up the phone and shoved it in his pocket once more.

Holding back a laugh at the sheer rage painted on his face, you leaned against the car and cocked an eyebrow. “So? What was all that about?”

“My father’s meeting ran late. He’s asking me to pick Aegon up from school.”

“Okay, then.” You nodded, your body shifting to reach for the handle of the passenger door, but Aerion grabbed your wrist before you could do so.

“It’s Aegon.” He insisted, as though it would somehow change something about the situation.

You frowned, slowly nodding. “Tiny nine year old boy, silver hair, purple eyes, looks a lot like you? Yeah, I know the one.”

Rolling his eyes at your tone, Aerion let out a breath filled with annoyance. “I don’t have time to drive you home before picking him up.”

“I know.”

“So he’ll be in the car… with us… for the whole journey back home.”

“I also know that.”

And then his patience ran out, and he groaned, narrowing his eyes at you. “I’m saying the little shit will be glued to your ass.”

Which… yeah. True.

You didn’t mind, because Egg was still as sweet as he was when you first met him. Aerion did mind, however, since he was the one left out whenever the two — three — of you hung out together.

“You’re not jealous, are you?”

“Of him?”

“Yes, Aerion, of your nine year old brother.” You giggled, crossing your arms over your chest. “Seriously, though, you don’t have to be so mean to him. We’re always together. What’s the issue with him sometimes crashing with us?”

To this, he had no answer. He just rolled his eyes to the sky in this irritating yet charming way he did and released your wrist. He opened your door without a word, closing it behind you before walking to his side of the car.

“If it hadn’t been for that bastard, I would’ve won the game.”

Choking on your water, you turned to Egg with wide eyes, “Aegon!”

“What? The bastard cheated! All facts.”

“Oh, do you think they have the lemon sweets? You know the ones.”

Aerion frowned, briefly glancing at you before looking back at the road. “I don’t know, I’ll check when we get there.”

“Ooh, can I come?” Egg peaked his head in between both of yours, eyes sparkling with excitement. “Please?”

“No.” Aerion grumbled before using his hand to press against Egg’s face and push him back in his seat. “Shut up.”

Relentless, Egg turned to you. “Please?”

“No.” Aerion answered in your place.

“I didn’t ask you!” Egg scoffed from the back, glaring at the back of his brother’s head.

“I’m driving, and if I have to drag your puny little ass home by the ear, I will. Now shut up.”

Perhaps the whole reason the Targaryen house sat surrounded by gates and greenery was so strangers wouldn’t witness Aerion dragging Egg by the arm across the driveway, the young boy having planted his feet in the ground and screaming bloody murder for the whole world to hear, the way you did right now from the passenger seat of Aerion’s car.

You hadn’t gone to Aerion’s house in quite some time, you realized. There was no need to ask Aerion why he suddenly insisted on sleeping over at your place, or going home to yours, or him crashing over in your bedroom whenever he was free.

Were you complaining about your Egg-free life? Not really. Or at least, not right now, when Aerion lied on top of you, stealing your words with his mouth, barely letting you come up for air.

Definitely not right now.

You could've stayed there, in this situation, until the world imploded on itself. Nothing could bring either of you out of this bubble you'd formed around yourselves; that was how good you currently had it.

But right as his touch left flaming paths on your flesh as his fingers mapped out every inch of your skin, your phone began vibrating.

Not once.

Not twice.

But repeatedly, until you couldn't discern one notification from the next.

"Damn it," you sighed, closing your eyes as the moment between the two of you slipped right through your fingers. Aerion didn't raise his head higher than an inch above yours, but the annoyance coming from him was almost palpable.

You reached your arm out towards your nightstand, where you could vaguely remember having dropped your phone on some time ago. The light that suddenly blinded you as you lifted it from where it sat face down made you wince, and you used your free hand to rub your eyes.

do you want to play with me?

i'd ask daeron but he's asleep on the rug

he's boring also

you're nto

not

are you sleeping?

you haven't been at the house in a long time

did you breka up with aerion?

break

"Why the fuck do you have his number?" Aerion breathed out, exasperated at the texts. "Since when does he even have a number? He's nine."

Shrugging, you began typing a reply on your phone. "He got my number from your phone. And he just likes telling me about his day. He complains a lot about the kids in his class. Doesn't like them much."

With widened eyes and a raised eyebrow, Aerion sat up on your bed, letting the coldness of the room rush to you now that he wasn't acting as your personal blanket.

"What? So this is a common thing?"

"It's not that bad. He FaceTimes me on his iPad mostly, then he'll talk about his day while I do my homework, that's all." You told him, lifting yourself up on your elbows.

"Does my dad know about this?"

Nodding, you shrugged again. "Yeah, Egg's iPad uses your dad's phone number. He doesn't mind, so long as Egg doesn't uses it too much. He even says it's safer that way, since he doesn't have to watch him to make sure he doesn't sneak out again."

“I... don't know how I feel about this whole thing.”

“Well it’s not just him. I play online scrabble with your dad sometimes. and Aemon sends me book recommendations every other day.”

Aerion paused, "What?”

"Why is he bald, by the way? Can I ask?"

"Daeron drunkenly shaved off half his head one night. Then it looked awful, so we had to shave off the other half. Look."

Unsurprisingly, the boy displayed in the 0.5x pictures didn't seem to car about the admittedly horrifying hairstyle he currently had. With Maekar looking exasperated in the background, Egg smiled and gave a thumbs up to the camera.

Aerion woke up to find your half of his bed empty. No sound came from the bathroom, and with the sheets being cold, he assumed you must've been out of bed for some time.

While part of him felt something akin to relief from how comfortable you were with his family and in his home — sometimes too much, he thought to himself as he remembered you admitting to playing online scrabble with his father —, it also came with the borderline hatred from how comfortable they were with you.

People usually don't have to share their girlfriends with their families, do they? Why does it feel more like they tolerate him just so they can spend time with you.

Especially the youngest, insolent rat whose face had brightened up when Aerion had asked if you could spend a week here while your building was being fumigated. He hadn't even cared when Aerion roared at him to stay the fuck away.

As expected, it had been hard to find some alone time with you, because wherever you were, your shadow was not far behind. You didn't mind, of course, because the little rat turned into the sweetest, most innocent boy that's ever lived whenever you were in the vicinity, which immediately made Aerion out to be the bad one of the story.

The tiny fucker was a manipulative little shit, and Aerion will find a way to prove it to you.

After a brief shower to wash the night away, Aerion made his way down to the kitchen, hoping you'd be there. Fortunately for him, the first thing his eyes latched onto upon entering the room was your figure.

You sat at the counter, back to him, eyes on your phone.

Approaching, he hummed and wrapped his arms around you, leaning down to bury his nose in your hair. "How long have you been up? I thought you'd be worn out after —”

Eyes going round, you jammed your elbow into his gut, immediately shushing him. Aerion groaned, one arm flying to press against his stomach, where he'd taken the brunt of your strength. "What the fuck?"

Without a word, you nodded towards the fridge, and he could only follow your gaze. The fridge was open, which he hadn't noticed, and —

"Ugh, why is he here?" The words came out in unison from the two boys as soon as Egg peeked his head from behind the fridge's door and met his gaze.

Pinching your lips to hold in a laugh, because surely Aerion would hate you if you pointed out just how similar the two were, you merely lowered your phone to watch whatever was about to unravel.

"I was here first!" Egg countered, closing the fridge with a pie in hand. "Go back to whatever hole you crawled out of."

"I will stab you—"

"You can't keep letting him stick to you. Be on my side for once. Otherwise he'll never leave you alone."

"He just likes me because I play video games with him and I buy him food. He's not a bad kid," you laughed, but made a mental note to try and be less indulgent to the young boy.

As good as your relationship with Aerion was, it was bound to come to an end. You had been broken up for a week when the knock at your door came.

A week of lying in bed with a gaping hole in your chest.

A week of scrolling aimlessly through the pictures of the two of you on your phone.

Mostly a week of mourning how good it had been, and how good it would've been if only the two of you didn't argue so often.

The idea of interacting with a Targaryen for the time was so far out of mind that you didn’t expect the sight that befell you upon opening the door. Though, maybe you should have.

“Egg? What are you —”

“You can’t break up.” He hurried out, as though if he didn’t say everything at once, he’d never be able to. “Please, you have to come back. The house is so boring without you, and Dad says I’m not to contact you because Aerion is my brother and I have to stick by him. But I don’t want to stick by him!”

“Honey, it’s one in the morning, how did you get here?”

“I took a cab.” He panted, swallowing his saliva.

Later on, he gulped down his second glass of water as he sat on your couch. Your eyes hadn’t strayed from him at all, except for the brief moment you had used to text his brother. Of course, you knew he enjoyed your company and he thought of you not as his brother’s girlfriend but as his sister. But to come knocking at your door in the middle of the night to beg you to stay with his brother…

Yeah, you hadn’t fathomed he’d ever consider doing that. And yet.

“I didn’t think you cared so much about Aerion and his feelings.” You let out, part of you wondering if you should ask Egg how Aerion has been this past week, though you decided against it. You weren’t about to pull a nine year old boy into your issues, no matter how hard he tried,

But Egg just frowned, confusion filling his features, “Aerion? What are you talking about?”

No, you were the one frowning. Thinking back to his rapid little speech when you opened the door to find him, you questioned him again. “What were you talking about?”

Egg raised both hands as he shrugged, the way he always used his entire body to react. “I don’t care about Aerion. I just don’t want you to leave the family. But don’t worry about it. Even if you don’t want Aerion back, I’ve got a plan. What do you think about Daeron?”

Somehow, you were even more confused than you thought could be possible.

But independent as he was, Egg didn’t need a reply from you to keep the conversation going. “Father said I have to take my brother’s side now that you’ve dropped him. But if you got with Daeron, then I wouldn’t have to choose Aerion, because you’d still be in the family. Get it?”

Again, no reply from you apart from the gaping expression you gave at his words.

“If the drinking bothers you that much, I’m sure I can set you up with Valarr.”

And thank God for the sudden, incessant knocking at the door. Aerion was here, evidently, and he seemed pretty pissed.

“You fucking rat!” Aerion roared when his eyes found his brother sitting on the couch. “How did you even get out of the house? How did you get here?”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

Wrong thing to say, because Aerion’s eyes widened before he started making a beeline for the couch.

As the boy screeched and jumped behind the couch, you grabbed Aerion’s arm to pull him back, wincing at the situation. God, you should be sleeping right now. “No violence inside, please.”

“My dad’s livid!” Aerion added loudly, anger seeping through his voice. “His room was empty, and the window was wide open. He thought someone had taken him. Unfortunately not!”

Egg peeked his eyes from behind your couch, glaring at his brother. “Hey, I’m doing you a favor! I was trying to get her back for you!”

“What?” He turned to you, but you only shrugged. Though you did notice how Egg’s explanation wasn’t entirely truthful, you didn’t point it out to Aerion. He was mad enough at him already without the knowledge he was trying to set you up with other people.

Growling, Aerion reached out and grabbed Egg’s collar, dragging him towards the door while mumbling an apology to you under his breath. The only thing you could hear as you closed the door was the two boys arguing.

But truth be told, if the young boy hadn’t found his way to your place and forgotten his jacket, you likely wouldn’t have called Aerion again, which led to the two of you sitting down and talking about your relationship, and if you got back together some time later… well, Aerion didn’t like the reminder it was all thanks to Egg.

this idea was stuck in my head for so long I'm just glad I got this out lmao. I also had no idea how to end it so the ending is lowkey rushed sorry

please let me know if you enjoyed this, I rarely post the fics I write so I'd love some feedback!!! and also let me know if you can see that my knowledge of how romantic relationships work is limited lmao

thank you for reading!!!!

[roxxmo]

ormund hightower who vehemently opposes every marriage prospect that is proposed for his sweet, innocent ward. who scares off all potential suitors and berates you if he even catches a glimpse of you talking to one. who shames you, forces you to recite scripture from the holy books until you’re in tears, begging for forgiveness. ormund hightower who insists he performs pussy inspections weekly to ensure your maidenhead is intact and will reward you for being so faithful with his tongue.

SEND TWEET

[catbayunthestoryteller]

Good Intentions

Pairing: Maekar Targaryen x f!reader

Summary: Maekar is trying to provide a good life for his new wife by removing himself from her company and offering alternatives. He fails. Warnings: a bit of angst because of pining, a bit of smut.

The morning light cut through the high, narrow windows of Summerhall with a pale, wintry insistence, and Maekar Targaryen, prince of the Seven Kingdoms, found himself staring at the ceiling of a room that was not his own. It was decorated with painted vines, a delicate feminine touch he had never bothered to notice before. The bed linens smelled of lavender and something else, sweet and warm. The weight on his arm was the source of the latter.

You were curled against him like a dormouse seeking warmth, both your hands wrapped around the corded muscle of his forearm as if he were a lifeline in a storm. Your cheek was pressed to his shoulder, lips slightly parted in the ease of deep, trusting sleep. A strand of your hair had escaped your night braid and lay across his tunic.

Maekar did not move.

He was a prince, a warrior, a man who had crushed rebellions beneath his mace and watched men die without flinching. But this, the soft, contented curve of your mouth, the way your breath puffed in tiny, even waves against his sleeve, paralyzed him. He cast his mind back, desperately trying to remember when exactly his careful, honorable plan had crumbled to dust. It was the previous night. It had been a fool's errand, a mission of pure and unparalleled idiocy disguised as magnanimity.

For months, he had constructed a cage for you, gilded and sprawling, and called it a marriage. After the death of his first wife, the mother of his children, the very concept of a new bride had felt like a betrayal, a picking at a wound that had barely scarred over after years. His brother, King Aerys, had insisted. The match was politically sound. You were from a fine lineage, a daughter of a loyal house, and your dowry was a collection of trade agreements and land rights that made the court accountants rub their hands with joy.

And you. You were a pretty thing: young, sweet, blinking up at him at the Sept with your big eyes, he had noted absently, and a slight pout on your mouth. He recognized that pout now, not as petulance, but as a sign of deep concentration, an unconscious expression you wore when you were trying very, very hard to be brave.

At the wedding feast, you had tried to engage him in conversation, your voice a soft, hopeful melody against the droning noise of the hall. He had grunted in response, complaining about the seasoning on the boar. You had blinked, then smiled, a small, tentative thing, and said, "Perhaps the kitchens will do better with the lemon cakes, my prince. Would you like me to ask them to bring some?" Deflecting his rudeness with a kindness so artless and sweet it had made his teeth ache.

He had taken you to Summerhall, the seat of his power and the monument to his own complicated legacy. He gave you servants who curtsied low, spacious rooms filled with sunlight and tapestries you seemed to admire, and a generous allowance that could have purchased a small fleet of ships. He had daughters, Daella and Rhae, who were delighted with you, finding in you a new playmate, a doll who could speak and laugh and teach them new embroidery stitches. His sons were a different matter. Aerion was a burning star of chaos somewhere in Essos, Aemon was at the Citadel, chaining himself to books, and Daeron…Daeron was usually never counted. The thought of his eldest, a dissipated dreamer, brought a familiar, leaden weariness to his gut. But the girls were happy, and you were occupied.

He thought he had it all handled.

Everything was provided, he had reasoned, watching you from across the courtyard one afternoon as you and Rhae chased a butterfly. You were a young maiden. His idea of a comfortable existence was good service, a sturdy roof, a well-stocked armory, and a couple of friends with whom to share a flask of strongwine. He had assumed, in his colossal, self-absorbed ignorance, that your needs were the same.

Until he started to see it. The quiet sigh you suppressed when he answered your sweet inquiry about his wellbeing with a noncommittal grunt at the dinner table. The way your eyes, those big, expressive eyes, would track a young knight in the yard as he laughed with his comrades, not with lust, but with a kind of wistful, academic curiosity. You were studying a creature you had never encountered. Daella, his sweet daughter, was already starting to enter that phase of mooning over singers and sighing at sunsets, a phase he dreaded with every fiber of his being. And you, his wife, a lively girl not much older than his own children, were saddled with a grumpy man whose range of communication with her was limited to tactical assessments of mutton and grunts about the weather. You were drowning in comfort and starved of life.

He could commission solutions. Jewelry? A cascade of sapphires appeared on your vanity. New dresses? Bolts of lace and silks in hues of deep green and amethyst filled your wardrobes. Rare books? He had a first-edition history of the Rhoynar, bound in pale leather, delivered to your solar. You had been effusive in your thanks, your pout melting into a radiant smile, but the smile never quite reached your eyes. The problem, he realized with a cold, hard jolt, was not resources.

The problem was romance. He couldn't morph himself into a handsome young knight with a carefree disposition and light humor, the kind of man who would compose a song for you, who would bring you a wildflower he’d picked on a reckless morning ride, who would whisper sweet, foolish nothings in your ear. He was Maekar Targaryen, a blunt instrument, a man of duty and gristle and a simmering, constant irritation at the world.

His poor wife. You were left to smile and giggle quietly at his dry, caustic remarks about a visiting lord’s speech. And you seemed genuinely amused by them, your laughter a soft, surprised ripple of sound that made him pause, mid-chew, in confusion. You were so deprived of pleasant company that you took what you could get from him, poor sweet thing. The realization had made him want to kick himself.

So, he had formed a plan, a scheme that, at the time, had seemed the pinnacle of rational, self-sacrificing genius. He went through his guards the next day under the guise of a brutal, unforgiving drill. He had them running siege patterns, sparring until their padded armor was dark with sweat, watching them like a hawk. He found the one he was looking for: Ser Elyas, a bastard from the Reach. He was honorable, sharp as a blade, and handsome in that sun-kissed, broad-shouldered way that maidens were supposed to swoon over. His laugh was easy, his temperament unruffled.

"Ser Elyas," Maekar had rumbled, his voice a low thunder. "You are being reassigned. You are now the personal guard to my wife, the princess. You will see to her safety at all times. You will accompany her on walks, attend her in the gardens, and ensure no harm befalls her."

He had made it clear to you on your wedding night that he had no intention of bedding you. It was a statement of fact, delivered not out of cruelty but out of a misguided sense of honesty. He had seen the flash of hurt in your eyes, quickly masked by a composed, brittle acceptance. So, naturally, he reasoned, after some time spent in the company of the charming Ser Elyas, you would come to love him. It was a natural, tragic story. A handsome knight and a neglected princess. He had practically gift-wrapped a discreet, passionate affair for you. It was the least he could give it to you, a substitute for the husband you had probably imagined, a way to satisfy that aching, youthful urge for romance that he, a man carved from stone, could never fulfill.

Yet, from what he observed over the following weeks, the plan had failed with spectacular precision. He would watch from a high balcony as Ser Elyas, in his gleaming plate, offered you his hand to help you over a damp patch of grass. You took it with polite, distant courtesy. You would exchange a few words, an occasional jest that made the knight chuckle, but your expression remained serene, unmoved. Maekar, a veteran of countless campaigns, knew the look of a soldier performing a duty. And your nights, as the quiet reports from your maids confirmed, were spent solely in your rooms. No secret knocks, no furtive shadows slipping from your door at dawn.

He was at his wits’ end. What did you want then? He had given you everything your station and age could desire. What would wipe off that pretty, unconscious pout off your face? Perhaps, he had finally conceded, if he talked to you. A novel concept for a marriage, he knew. He would go to you, and perhaps, in a moment of unguarded frustration, you would let your grievances slip.

The previous night, he had gone to your chamber. Your maid, a timid wisp of a girl, nearly dropped her mending box when she saw him at the threshold. "Leave us," he had commanded, and she fled. You had been seated by the fire, a book open on your lap, and you looked like a startled doe at his unexpected presence, your body going rigid, your eyes wide.

"My prince," you had said, your voice a breathless question.

He had felt like an intruder in his own wife's space. "I…I came to see how you were faring," he had managed, the words feeling foreign and clumsy on his tongue.

You recovered quickly, your innate grace taking over. You poured his wine yourself, and offered him a plate of fruit and honey cake. "I am well, my prince. Truly. The book you sent is fascinating. The accounts of the Rhoynish are almost unbelievable." You were making conversation. You were making it easy for him. And so you spoke for a while. It was surprisingly pleasant.

He found himself relaxing into a chair, debating the tactical blunders of the Valyrian conquest of the Rhoyne, and you had listened with rapt attention, asking pointed, intelligent questions that surprised him. You had a mind, he realized with a start. A sharp, curious mind hidden beneath the pout and the big eyes.

But he didn’t catch any clues. No lamenting a lack of knights, no forlorn sighs about the gardens, no veiled complaints about his absence. Just you, being…pleasant. So, eventually, he rose to leave. "It is late. You should rest."

The change was instantaneous. The spark of animation in your eyes died, replaced by a stricken, hollow look, as if you were wondering what you had done wrong. Your fingers tightened imperceptibly on the spine of your book. "Of course, my prince. Thank you for your company."

He hesitated. He was a man of military precision, and the sudden, palpable drop in your mood was a tactical variable he hadn't accounted for. He was already in your bed chambers. What kind of husband left his wife's bed chamber right before going to bed himself? A churlish one. A neglectful one. The servants would talk, of that he was certain. The walls of Summerhall had ears and mouths. But he did not care what servants would see or say. Their gossip was the chaff of court life. The thought that stopped him cold, that made his feet feel nailed to the floor, was simpler. He owed you basic courtesy, did he not? He had denied you everything else. He could not deny you the simple, public dignity of a husband who shared your bed for a night.

Before he could overthink himself out of it, he gestured to the bed. "Move over, then."

Your eyes, if possible, grew even wider. "My prince?"

"I will not sleep in my boots," he said gruffly, sitting on the edge of a chaise and beginning to unlace them. "I will stay. Just to sleep." He made a promise to himself then, a sacred oath. He would lie down with you, and he would speak to you until you fell asleep, so you would not be insulted by a silent, rigid vigil. Then, he would leave. He had been insulting you for months by refusing to do his duties as a husband, and this small act of presence would at least be a temporary salve on a wound he had no intention of healing.

He lay down atop the covers, fully clothed in his tunic and breeches, a stiff, awkward pillar of a man. You slipped under the furs with a rustle of linen, lying rigidly on your back. The silence was deafening. Maekar cast about for something, anything, to say. "Tell me more about the Rhoynar," he commanded, his voice a little too loud in the quiet room.

And so you did, your voice soft and hesitant at first, then gaining strength. You spoke of the legends, the songs of the Mother Rhoyne, the giant turtles that were said to be gods. He listened, inserting a dry comment now and again that made you giggle, that beautiful, rippling sound he was growing dangerously accustomed to. He stayed, and continued speaking to you about the defensive layout of river cities, the logistical challenges of moving a legion through marshland, until your words began to slur, your breathing deepened, and your face went slack with peace. He had done it. He thought he would leave when he was sure you were deep in sleep. He would just wait one more minute. Just to be certain. The fire had burned down to embers. The room was warm. The scent of lavender was soporific. And that was the last thing he remembered.

Now, it was morning. The maid’s insistent knocking on the door was a relentless, chipper assault on his senses. He was still fully clothed, his tunic creased. And you were curled up next to him, clutching his arm as if it were the most natural, obvious thing in the world. The knocking roused you. You stirred, a small hum of contentment escaping your lips before your eyes fluttered open. Your gaze, hazy with sleep, traveled up his arm, over his chest, and settled on his face. The reaction was not one of surprise, or at least not the kind he expected. It was pleasure. A deep, luminous, bone-deep pleasure that transformed your features. You were smiling. A shy, pleased smile, as if you had just woken from a beautiful dream and found it still real.

"Good morning, my prince," you murmured, your voice thick and honeyed with sleep. There was a newfound confidence in it, a possessiveness that hadn't been there before. "Are you to have a busy day? I thought I might join you, if it were permitted. Perhaps I could assist you with your letters?"

Maekar found himself staring. The words were simple, but the meaning behind them was not. His plan, the handsome guard, the neglected lady, the grand affair, it all crashed down around his ears in a shower of broken, idiotic pottery. He realized his mistake with the force of a warhammer to the chest. You thought your husband was finally coming around. The gift, the miraculous, improbable gift you had wanted all along, was not a surrogate. It was him.

You wanted this. Him. His presence. His attention. His dry, sarcastic remarks. His tactical critiques of ancient river warfare. His grumpy, unyielding, solid self.

All this time, you had wanted him.

He felt a strange, tight sensation in his chest, a feeling he hadn't allowed himself to entertain for many, many years. It was a seed of warmth, cracking through the cold, hard stone he had meticulously built around his heart. He cleared his throat, his voice emerging as a low, rusty rumble.

"You can join me," he said, the words a surrender. "If you wish."

The pout was completely gone now. The smile that remained in its place was brilliant, a sun emerging from behind a lifetime of clouds. It was a smile just for him. And for the first time since he had been forced to take a new wife, Maekar Targaryen didn't feel saddled. He felt, with a terrifying, exhilarating certainty, that he was about to be completely, irrevocably unhorsed.

The days that followed that first, accidental night established a new rhythm in Summerhall, one Maekar found himself falling into with a disquieting ease he refused to examine too closely.

You had asked to assist him, and Maekar, a man who had never refused a direct request from a lady in his life out of sheer, blunt propriety, could find no reasonable grounds to deny you. You appeared in his solar the next morning, freshly dressed in a gown of pale yellow that made you look like a spring daffodil, and settled yourself in the chair across from his great oaken desk. He expected you to be a distraction. Instead, you proved infuriatingly useful. Your handwriting was elegant where his was a cramped, soldierly scrawl.

You sorted his correspondence into neat piles: urgent, routine, and the one you tactfully labeled "probably insincere flattery from lords who want something." He had let out a surprised bark of laughter at that, and you had beamed at him as if he'd just crowned you Queen of Love and Beauty.

This became your habit. Mornings in his solar, you with your neat piles and your quiet, intelligent questions about the running of the lands. Afternoons, you would walk with him along the battlements, your hand resting lightly on his arm as he pointed out the defensive improvements he was making to the eastern wall. You listened with genuine interest, asking about murder holes and arrow slits with a curiosity that was wholly unfeigned. Evenings, you dined together, and your sweet inquiries about his wellbeing were no longer met with grunts. He found himself actually answering you, describing the frustrations of a dispute between two minor landed knights or the irritating news from court. You would nod, your brow furrowed in thought, and offer observations that were often startlingly perceptive.

And every night, the same delicate, unspoken negotiation occurred.

The first time it happened outside of your own chambers, you had been in his rooms. It was late, the fire burning low, and you had been reading aloud to him from a treatise on dragonlore while he sharpened his dagger. Your voice had grown hoarse, and he noticed the way you rubbed at your eyes with the back of your hand. He could not, in good conscience, send you shuffling down cold corridors to your own chambers. The very idea was absurd. What kind of husband kicked his own wife out into the night like a stray cat?

"The hour is late," he had said, sheathing his dagger with a decisive click. "You will stay here."

You had looked at him with that expression again, the one that was half hope and half caution, as if you were afraid of misinterpreting his words. "Here, my prince?"

"In my bed," he clarified, the words coming out more gruffly than he intended. "I will take the chaise."

But you had looked so stricken at that suggestion, your face falling in that way he was growing to dread, that he had found himself amending the plan. "Or I will join you. The bed is large enough. It is not seemly for a prince to sleep on a chaise in his own chambers."

It was a flimsy justification, and he knew it. But the way your expression brightened, the shy, pleased smile that curved your lips, was worth the internal grumbling. He lay beside you that night, a careful distance between your bodies, and spoke to you about the properties of Valyrian steel until your breathing evened out into the soft rhythm of sleep. He awoke to find you pressed against his side, your head on his shoulder, one of your hands resting over his heart as if counting the beats.

This, too, became your habit. You clinging to him in sleep like a limpet to a rock, and Maekar waking each morning to the scent of your hair and the warm, trusting weight of your body against his. He told himself it was for your dignity. He told himself it was a small kindness, a basic courtesy. He told himself many things, and believed none of them.

Then there was the incident with the lamprey pie.

A lord from the coastal holdings had sent a gift of lampreys, and the kitchens had prepared them in a rich, heavily spiced pie. You had eaten only a small portion, politely complimenting the flavor, but within hours you were taken ill. Maekar was in the yard overseeing a drill when your maid came running, her face pale as milk.

"My prince, it is the princess. She is unwell. The maester says it is the lamprey, that it has irritated her stomach something fierce."

He did not remember crossing the castle. He only remembered the cold spike of fear that had lanced through him, the way his heart had hammered against his ribs with a violence that had nothing to do with exertion. He found you in your chambers, curled on your side in the great bed, your face waxen and beaded with sweat. The maester was there, a fussy old man who was doing far too much hand-wringing for Maekar's liking.

"She will recover, my prince. It is a mere gastric disturbance. But she must eat to keep her strength up, and she refuses. The princess will not touch the porridge."

Maekar looked at the tray on the bedside table. A bowl of plain, unappetizing porridge sat there, cooling and congealing. You were facing away from it, your eyes closed, your pout firmly in place.

"Leave us," Maekar commanded. The maester and the maids scurried out like mice before a dragon.

He sat on the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping under his weight. Your eyes fluttered open, and you looked at him with such a mix of misery and embarrassment that it made something twist painfully in his chest.

"I am sorry," you whispered, your voice thin and reedy. "I am being foolish. It will pass."

"You will eat," he said, reaching for the bowl.

"My prince, I cannot. The very thought..."

"You will eat," he repeated, and this time his voice was gentler, an unfamiliar softness creeping in despite his best efforts. He scooped a small portion of the porridge onto the spoon. "Open your mouth."

You stared at him, those big eyes glassy with discomfort, and for a moment he thought you would refuse him. But then you parted your lips, a tiny, obedient gesture, and he carefully slid the spoon into your mouth. You swallowed with visible effort, your face scrunching up, and he immediately had another spoonful ready.

"Good," he said, the praise awkward on his tongue. "Again."

He fed you the entire bowl that way, spoonful by painstaking spoonful, his large, calloused hands surprisingly steady. He did not rush you. He waited between each bite, murmuring gruff words of encouragement that felt foreign and strange, like a language he had never been taught. When the bowl was empty, he set it aside and reached for a cloth, dabbing gently at the corner of your mouth.

Your eyes were wet, but you were smiling. That smile. The one that made him feel like a hero from a song, when all he had done was feed you porridge.

"Thank you, Maekar," you breathed, using his name without his title for the first time. It hit him somewhere deep, a blow he had no armor for.

"Rest now," he ordered, his voice rougher than he intended. "I will stay."

He stayed. He lay beside you, fully clothed, and let you curl into his side. He stayed until your breathing steadied and the color slowly returned to your cheeks. He stayed even after that, watching the firelight play across the ceiling, feeling the steady rise and fall of your chest against his, and wondered what in the seven hells he was doing.

But still, still, he put off the matter of bedding you.

It was not that he did not want to. The realization had crept up on him with the slow, inevitable force of a rising tide. He wanted to. Gods help him, he wanted to. The sight of you in your thin nightdress, the way your hair spilled across the pillows, the warmth of your body pressed against his each morning, it was testing the limits of his resolve, which had never been particularly strong where matters of the heart were concerned. He had simply never had his heart involved before.

But to bed you would be to open a door he was not certain he could close again. He had built his life around duty, around the cold, hard certainties of obligation and honor. He had loved once, and loss had carved a hollow in him that he had believed was permanent. You were filling that hollow, day by day, smile by smile, and the sensation was as terrifying as it was intoxicating.

He was a coward. Maekar Targaryen, who had faced down rebel lords and laughed at the prospect of single combat, was a coward when it came to his own wife.

Then came the night of the kiss.

It was an evening like any other. You had spent the day in his solar, helping him draft responses to a particularly tedious batch of petitions. Dinner had been a quiet affair, just the two of you, and you had made him laugh, actually laugh, a deep, surprised rumble of sound, with a wicked impression of a pompous lord who had visited the previous week. You had retired to his chambers, as had become your custom, and he had told you about the Dragonknight's campaigns in Dorne until your eyes grew heavy.

"Goodnight, Maekar," you said, your voice soft and drowsy.

And then you kissed him.

It was not a forceful kiss, not a demand or an invitation. It was a brief, gentle press of your lips against his, as natural and unthinking as a breath. A goodbye. An act of simple, uncomplicated affection. You pulled back, your eyes already closing, and nestled into your pillow with a contented sigh, as if you had done nothing of any particular note.

Maekar lay frozen, staring at the canopy above him, his heart thundering in his ears.

You had kissed him.

This was his fault. The thought careened through his skull like a loose cannon on a ship's deck. This was entirely, unequivocally his fault. He had done this. He had planted this notion in your head, watered it with his attentions, and now it had bloomed into something he could no longer ignore.

A fortnight ago, you had been helping him remove his heavy outer tunic after a long day of inspections, your small fingers working deftly at the clasps. It had been such a wifely gesture, so intimate and so natural, that before he had known what he was doing, he had leaned down and pressed his lips to your brow. A brief, chaste kiss. A thank you. He had not even realized he had done it until he saw the way you had frozen, your eyes wide. He had cleared his throat and muttered something about the fire needing more wood, and the moment had passed.

But you had taken that kiss, that single, thoughtless gesture, and drawn a conclusion from it. You had decided, in your sweet, hopeful way, that your husband wanted you to initiate affection as well. That he was too reserved, too gruff, too locked within his own silences to ask for what he wanted. And so, with that gentle, trusting kiss, you had reached across the chasm he had placed between you and offered him a bridge.

Did he want you to? The question burned in his mind, insistent and demanding. Did he want you to kiss him goodnight, as if it were the most normal thing in the world? As if you were truly husband and wife in every sense?

He certainly was not complaining. The ghost of your lips still tingled on his, and his body was reacting in ways that were entirely inappropriate for a man who was supposed to be letting his wife sleep. He was not complaining at all. That was the problem.

He should be complaining. He should be panicking. Because this, this sweetness, this trust, this quiet, domestic intimacy, led inexorably to one conclusion. You would expect children now. The thought hit him like a splash of ice water. Of course you would expect children. A princess, a wife, a woman who had been raised to understand that the bearing of heirs was a fundamental part of her duty. And you would want them, he realized with a jolt. You would want his children. Not out of duty, but out of genuine desire. You would want a babe with his silver-gold hair and your eyes, a child you could hold and nurture and love.

Gods be good.

He turned his head on the pillow to look at you. You were already asleep, your face peaceful, your lips still curved in that small, contented smile. You had no idea of the earthquake you had just set off in his chest. You had kissed him and promptly fallen asleep, trusting him completely, utterly unaware of the crisis you had left in your wake.

Maekar stared at you for a long time, watching the steady rise and fall of your breath, the way your lashes cast delicate shadows on your cheeks. His mind was a whirlwind of duty and desire, fear and longing, the cold echoes of past grief and the warm, insistent pulse of something new.

He could not keep putting this off. He could not keep lying beside you, night after night, pretending that this was a mere courtesy. He could not keep telling himself that he was doing this for your dignity, when in truth, your dignity was the last thing on his mind when he felt the press of your body against his in the dark.

But not tonight. Tonight, you were asleep, and he was a coward still. Tonight, he would lie here and listen to you breathe and feel the warmth of your kiss still burning on his lips.

Tomorrow, perhaps, he would be braver.

Or perhaps, he thought grimly, you would kiss him again, and the choice would be taken out of his hands entirely. The thought was not as unwelcome as it should have been.

The kisses continued.

Every night, without fail, you would bid him goodnight with that same gentle, fleeting press of your lips against his. It was never demanding, never lingering. It was a question posed in the softest possible terms, a door left slightly ajar, an invitation he could accept or decline as he saw fit. And every night, for the first several nights, Maekar accepted it the same way: by remaining perfectly, rigidly still, a statue of a man enduring a pleasant but bewildering assault.

He felt you withdraw each time, felt the tiny, almost imperceptible slump of your shoulders as you settled back onto your pillow. You never said anything. You never complained. But he knew. He was a dull rock, an unresponsive lump of granite, and he was hurting you with his passivity. The knowledge gnawed at him, a persistent, guilty ache that followed him through his days and haunted his waking hours.

The fifth night, something in him snapped. Simply, as you leaned in to press your customary kiss to his lips, he found himself moving. His hand came up, rough and calloused, to cup the back of your head. And he kissed you back.

It was not a passionate kiss. It was not the kiss of a man swept away by desire. It was a careful response, a returning of pressure, a silent acknowledgment. He felt your startled inhale against his mouth, the way your body went taut with surprise. When he pulled back, your eyes were wide, your lips parted, and there was a look on your face that made his chest constrict.

Expectation. Hope. A question that had been waiting, patient and trembling, for an answer.

Maekar looked at you, at your big eyes shining in the firelight, at your kiss-swollen mouth, at the delicate line of your collarbone visible above the lace of your nightdress. He thought of all the nights he had lain beside you, rigid with restraint. He thought of the way you smiled at him, the way you laughed at his dry remarks, the way you clung to his arm in sleep as if he were the only safe harbor in a storm.

He resigned himself. The decision came not with a sense of defeat, but with a strange, liberating clarity. He did not want to become the object of your resentment. He could not bear the thought of those eyes looking at him with bitterness, with the slow, corrosive realization that your husband was a man who denied you not only his affection but the most basic experiences of womanhood. You were young and full of life, and he had been keeping you in a gilded cage, feeding you porridge and kissing your forehead as if you were a child rather than a wife.

"You deserve pleasure," he said, his voice low and rough, the words feeling as if they were being dragged from some deep, hidden place within him. "I have been remiss in my duties."

Your breath caught. "Maekar..."

He moved before he could lose his nerve. His hands found your waist, and he lifted you as if you weighed nothing, settling you onto his lap with a decisive, careful motion. You were warm through the thin fabric of your nightdress, your body soft and pliant against the hard planes of his chest. He could feel the rapid flutter of your heart.

"I will not take what I have no right to claim," he said, the words a rough murmur against your temple. "But I can give you this. Let me give you this."

His fingers found the hem of your nightdress, and he pushed it up slowly, giving you time to object. You did not object. You only watched him with those enormous eyes, your hands resting on his shoulders as if you did not quite know what to do with them. He touched you gently, so gently, his battle-roughened hands moving with a delicacy that surprised even himself. He explored the soft skin of your thighs, the curve of your hip, the dip of your waist. He learned the shape of you by touch alone, his gaze fixed on your face, cataloguing every flicker of expression.

When his fingers found the center of your heat, you gasped, your head falling back, your fingers digging into his shoulders. He moved with slow, patient circles, learning what made you sigh, what made you shudder, what made your hips buck involuntarily against his hand. He was methodical in his attentions, as he was in all things, and he brought you to the peak with the same focused determination he might apply to a siege.

You shattered against him with a cry that was half surprise and half relief, your body arching, your hands fisting in the fabric of his tunic. He held you through it, his free arm wrapped securely around your waist, anchoring you against the storm of sensation. When the tremors subsided, you slumped against his chest, breathing hard, your face buried in the crook of his neck.

He gave you a moment. Then, with the same gentle efficiency, he rearranged your nightdress, lifted you from his lap, and placed you back onto the bed. He drew the furs up to your chin and pressed a kiss to your forehead.

"Sleep now," he commanded, his voice a low rumble.

You blinked up at him, your expression dazed and soft and so full of something that looked terrifyingly like adoration. "But you..."

"This was for you," he said, cutting you off with a firmness that brooked no argument. "Rest."

You slept. He did not. He lay beside you in the darkness, his body aching with unfulfilled need, and told himself that this was enough. He had done his duty. He had given you pleasure without complicating matters with his own involvement. It was a tidy solution, a clean, surgical strike. You were satisfied. There was no need to get himself fully involved.

This, too, became a habit.

Every few nights, when the expectant look in your eyes grew too pronounced to ignore, he would pull you onto his lap and touch you until you came apart in his arms. He learned the rhythms of your body. He knew the spot just below your ear that made you whimper when he pressed his lips to it. He knew the pace that made you clutch at him desperately, the slower, teasing touches that made you gasp his name like a prayer. He gave you pleasure as a general might distribute supplies to a besieged city: regularly, efficiently, and with a steadfast refusal to partake himself.

He thought you accepted this. He thought you understood the unspoken terms of this arrangement. He was a fool.

It was a quiet evening, the fire burning low in the hearth, the castle settling into the deep hush of night. He had just returned from a grueling inspection of the eastern watchtowers, his muscles aching, his mood as dark as the storm clouds gathering over the mountains. You were waiting for him in his chambers, a book open on your lap, a cup of warmed wine already poured and waiting on his desk.

You were always waiting for him now. The thought should not have warmed him as it did.

The night's ritual had been completed. You were nestled against him, your body still humming with the aftermath of pleasure, your breathing slowly returning to normal. He was preparing to settle you back onto your pillow, to pull up the furs and press his customary kiss to your forehead, when you spoke.

"Maekar." Your voice was soft, hesitant, but there was a thread of steel beneath it that he had learned to recognize. "May I ask you something?"

"You may," he said, his guard instinctively rising.

You were silent for a moment, your fingers tracing idle patterns on the fabric of his tunic. Then, you lifted your head to look at him, and the expression in your eyes made his heart stutter.

"Why do you not want anything for yourself?"

The question hung in the air between them, simple and devastating. He opened his mouth to deflect, to offer some gruff platitude about duty and obligation, but you did not give him the chance.

"Every night," you continued, your voice still soft but gaining strength, "you give me such pleasure. You are so gentle, so careful, so attentive. But you never…" You hesitated, a flush creeping up your cheeks, but you pressed on with the same determined courage you had shown since the day you arrived at Summerhall. "You never let me touch you. You never seek your own release. It is as if you believe you do not deserve it, or as if you think I am not capable of giving it."

"You are capable," he said, the words escaping before he could cage them.

"Then why?" Your pout was there, that unconscious, pretty pout that he had come to know so well. But it was accompanied by a look so loving, so open and earnest and full of desperate hope, that it struck him like a blow. "I could learn. I could learn how to please you, if you are willing to teach me. I am not afraid. I want to be a true wife to you, in every sense."

He felt something cracking inside him, the carefully constructed walls he had built around his heart beginning to crumble. "It is not a matter of teaching," he said, his voice strained. "There are…consequences. You are young. You should not be burdened with..."

"Children," you finished for him, and he was stunned into silence. "You are worried about children."

It was not the only thing, but it was the easiest to admit. He nodded stiffly.

You took a deep breath, and he watched as you gathered your courage, your hands clasping together in your lap. "If you do not wish for children," you said, your voice steady despite the tremor he could see in your fingers, "I can drink moon tea. We can postpone the idea. I have spoken to the maester, and he has assured me it is safe when used sparingly."

Maekar stared at you. You had spoken to the maester. You, his sweet wife, had gone to the old man and asked about moon tea. The image was so absurd, so unexpectedly bold, that he almost laughed.

But you were not finished. "I would like to have a child someday," you continued, and now your voice grew softer, more wistful. "One child of my own. No matter a boy or a girl. And I would raise it with the best of my ability, with all the love I have to give. But…" You reached out, your small hand coming to rest on his cheek, your thumb brushing the line of his jaw. "I would like to have a life first. A marriage. A husband who does not treat me like a delicate piece of glass that might shatter at his touch."

Your eyes were wet, but you were smiling. That smile. The one that had undone him from the very beginning.

"I want you, Maekar," you whispered. "I want my husband."

The walls crumbled. The last defenses fell. Maekar Targaryen, prince of Summerhall, breaker of rebellions and terror of his enemies, looked at his young wife and realized he was only a man. A man who had been fighting a losing battle against his own heart for longer than he cared to admit. A man who loved his wife.

He loved you. The truth of it was a physical thing, a weight in his chest, a fire in his blood. He loved your laugh, your pout, your clever mind and your gentle hands and your infuriating, wonderful habit of clinging to him in sleep. He loved your courage, standing before him now and baring your soul with nothing but hope to shield you. He loved you.

"Gods be good," he breathed, and then he was moving.

His hands found your waist, and this time there was nothing careful or clinical about the touch. He pulled you against him, crushing you to his chest, and his mouth descended on yours in a kiss that was nothing like the chaste, hesitant presses of lips you had shared before. This was a surrender. A desperate, hungry admission of everything he had been too stubborn to say.

You gasped against his mouth, and then your arms were around his neck, your fingers tangling in his hair, and you were kissing him back with an enthusiasm that made his head spin. When he finally pulled back, you were both breathing hard, your faces inches apart.

"You foolish, stubborn man," you whispered, but your voice was thick with tears and joy. "I have been waiting for you to understand."

"I understand now," he said, his voice a low, wrecked rasp. "Forgive me. For all of it. For the neglect, for the distance, for the guard I foisted upon you like a fool..."

"You gave me Ser Elyas?" Your eyes widened, and then a surprised laugh bubbled up from your throat. "Oh, Maekar. I thought he was just a very attentive guard. I wondered why he kept trying to recite poetry at me."

Maekar groaned, dropping his forehead to yours. "I am an idiot."

"You are my idiot," you corrected, and the possessive warmth in your voice was his final undoing. "My husband. And I believe you owe me a proper wedding night."

He looked at you, at the mischievous glint in your eyes, at the loving curve of your smile, and he felt something he had not felt in many, many years. Hope. Joy. A future unfolding before him that was not merely duty and endurance, but something bright and warm and achingly beautiful.

"I owe you much more than that," he murmured, and he lowered his mouth to yours once more.

a/n: Liked the fic? You can donate on Ko-fi, your support helps me write more: https://ko-fi.com/catbayunthestoryteller <3

[niloujournals]

Aerion needs to give you a reason for coming back to him despite him being really toxic and bad for you other than the special attention he gives you sometimes if he's feeling nice enough and that's the reason he's good in bed and specially good at eating pussy

[erwinsvow]

and i've been cold without you — b.t.

summary: as battle-hardened as baelor is, he is no match for his alluring young niece.

word count: 14k

pairing: baelor targaryen x niece!reader

tags: canon typical targcest (uncle x niece). reader is the daughter of an unnamed brother (not maekar!). typical aerion shenanigans, baelor is down bad and won't admit it, reader is a menace, smut—oral with f receiving, breeding (because yay! <3), it's all happy by the end. invented ladies in waiting for reader because it's fun and i wanted to talk about house mallister. valarr and kiera mentions <3. maekar knew all along...

original post that inspired this! | ao3 link

you are the worst challenger baelor targaryen has ever faced. 

and unluckily for him, he does not get to meet you bloody and steeled on the battlefield. nor face your tongue in the cunning and wily words of the chambers where the small council gathers. 

it would be easier, he imagines, if you were an adversary in that regard. anything else would be easier. he would rather ride back into war and rebellion than attempt to face your true nature.

as battle-hardened as baelor is, he is no match for his alluring young niece.

a lovelier girl, baelor thinks as he stares at you from across the hall, i have never seen. 

it is hard enough to tear his eyes away from you at any given moment, though he forces himself to as soon as you meet his gaze. 

he had not thought his brother’s death would have hoisted unto him an entirely new set of grievances. he had promised to keep you safe, promised his brother on the death bed that you would want for nothing, that you would always be cared for and watched over.

baelor did not realize when he made that promise that you had intended for him to be the one to fulfill it. 

the responsibility falls solely on his shoulders—trying to honor the last wishes of his kin. you had been beside yourself with grief, he recalls, wearing those dark colors of mourning that did not suit you for months on end. 

perhaps it was a bit selfish of him. he should have been preparing himself for the matter of your betrothal and the alliance it would create for the crown many moons in advance. it was not only his burden as hand but rather his duty as your uncle. 

he had the power to ensure that the match he secured for you would not be one of misery and pain. he knew of several suitable candidates, and had thought he would, when the time was right, ensure that only the most genteel and kind would be introduced to you.

someone that you might wish to begin your new life with, far away from king’s landing.

perhaps it all went astray when he decided to delay the matter further and further. you were in no state to entertain suitors, not when you were grieving the loss of your father. and besides that, you had not expressed any interest in the issue when maekar had brought it up to you. 

instead you had looked at him. and what was he to do once you did that? 

you employed your strongest two soldiers, the most reliable ones standing at the front of the cavalry—your lovely, sad eyes that had all but blinked at him once or twice and that incorrigible pout. he was felled immediately.

you had come close to kiss maekar’s cheek first, as you bid them goodbye and took your leave for the evening. 

and then you had come towards him, and it felt as though time itself had slowed down for mere moments. he watched as your soft hair fell against his shoulder, as the overwhelming scent of your skin turned his thoughts into dust. and then you pressed your soft lips to his cheek, smiled, and left.

black silk swished by your ankles as you left, the dark red stole you often wrapped around your arms covered by the cascade of your hair. he could make out the image of the three-headed dragon you had embroidered on the fabric yourself. 

you had been so proud of your work that you’d come to show him and your father when you’d finished with it. 

moments after he saw ser donnel leave to escort you back to your chambers, he had told maekar that the matter of your betrothal would be readied when baelor deemed it time.

“she must marry, eventually,” maekar had said, running a hand over his beard. “better to prepare her now than to indulge her.”

“i am not indulging,” baelor had quipped back, a little too aggressively. he takes a long drink of his wine.

maekar had stared at him in confusion, raising an eyebrow, perhaps even suspicious, he now thinks.

“of course not. you would never do such a thing.” 

maekar’s thoughts go unsaid, surely something about you’re lucky the gods did not bless you with a daughter. you would never be able to say no to her. 

he takes another lengthy sip from his cup.

of course he knew the matter of your marriage was important. so important that it had somehow usurped all his other responsibilities, had somehow become the only thing he thought of when his mind was left to wander. 

but the idea of some haughty lannister or cold arryn getting their hands on you while you were still mourning seemed completely out of the question.

yes, he concludes, trying and failing to set the thought aside once and for all. it is more prudent to wait. to allow time for you and for him… to find you the best match he can. 

another selfish thought rears its head inside of him, even when he merely notices you thanking a knight of the kingsguard or making polite conversation with the lords of the court during a feast. 

you are a princess of their house. perhaps only a bargaining chip in the eyes of the small council, but he would not let them waste your chance for happiness on some alliance for soldiers and grain. 

you are a princess of their house and he is a prince, the thought reminds him, traveling through until it has spread from the inside out. it was a tradition of their family to marry princes to princesses. 

even from before the conqueror’s time—young ladies of the house could be wed to brothers and cousins and uncles, if it was so arranged—for honor, for their noble blood.

his father had never much cared for such traditions and nor had he. when it had come time to arrange valarr’s marriage, they had sought out an alliance to strengthen the crown’s relationships.

bloodraven whispers of slighted great houses, mulling over the stolen opportunity to put a noble daughter of the realm in the queen’s chair one day, when he was gone and valarr would rule. 

they sought you as a consolement. for you to sit besides their sons, for their lineage to have royal blood, to establish a relationship that might advance their house for generations to come.

perhaps that is why he is so adamantly opposed to answering questions about the offers for your hand. he’ll not sell you off and send you away, the last piece he has of his brother, to acquiesce a petty lord. 

if only he was, indeed, selfish.

he was not greedy either, though the thought of making you his wife so that he might protect you from all the world lingered in his mind almost daily. it was more potent, even, after two or three cups of wine. it would plague him when he tried to sleep, a tantalizing vision of you resting beside him.

naked and content, perhaps, the voice whispers in the back of his head. clear-headed or drunk, he cannot silence it. or wrapped in silks. sleeping soundly, with no tears or sadness. carrying his child, and thinking of a new life to bring into this world instead of those who have left it…

he has to tear himself away from the thought. it is entirely improper.

it does not leave him, and only comes back stronger when you are seated at the dinner table with your cousins.

baelor does not much like the way aerion has been looking at you as of late. 

at these dinners, with his father at the head and baelor right beside him, you are seated between valarr and aerion on the other side of the table. 

you talk politely with his son, asking no doubt of kiera, who is not present as she recovers from another babe she has lost. you smile gently at valarr, and tell him how you will pray for his wife’s fast recovery.

you ask aemon of the latest book he is reading, no doubt borrowed from the maester’s extensive collections. you ask aegon of his latest qualm with his brothers. you have even been so successful as to elicit a smile from your uncle maekar from time to time. 

but when it comes to aerion, your smiles fade quickly. you try not to look at the boy if you can avoid it, even when he pesters you by touching your hand or interrupting you. 

and baelor is staring again. 

it is hard to look away as it is, even more so when he wishes he might do something to protect you. you avoid aerion’s gaze but baelor sees how lecherous it truly is. 

another thought begins to haunt his mind—that of the day that aerion demands your hand for himself. even baelor could not deny that it would be a perfectly reasonable request—he is only your cousin, both borne of mothers from different houses. you would stay in king’s landing with your family, which would certainly ease your mind, he assumes. 

but despite all of that, even in the face of logic and sense, baelor decides he shall never give aerion your hand. his nephew is entirely unworthy. unlike, perhaps—

the thoughts had been the hardest to bury when he is alone with you. as crown prince, baelor has always possessed a great deal of admirable traits.

immunity to your charm is not one of them.

the way you fixate your lovely eyes on him when he is speaking, as though nothing in this world could be more important than whatever he is saying.

the way he has your full attention whether it is to speak about the courses at dinner or the latest small council meeting and the headache he had after it, or of the new taxes imparted recently on grain in king’s landing and highgarden.

you do not care about grain, he knows, and yet, you reply eloquently, offering him some insight or perspective he has never considered, before awaiting his response as you blink at him.

and he has never been one to fluster and stutter his sentences. not even when he was but a green knight or a newlywed, when there was nothing that seemed so important to focus on as jena and what she was saying.

you must bring it out of him. you seem to be able to take possession of his mind and enter it in a way that he can only name as sorcery. 

when you mention in passing that aerion has been bothering you, the boy is sent to summerhall within a matter of days. when aegon seeks your help convincing his father to allow him to squire, you are the first to bring it up at the dinner table, weaving the thought into conversation until you are sure that it has taken hold in his brother’s mind. 

baelor even finds himself agreeing with you, being convinced easily and quickly, even more so when you smile so sweetly at him that it muddles his mind. you say uncle quietly and rest your hand on his shoulder and he all but runs from your solar, leaving you behind, giggling at him no doubt.

what’s worse is that whatever charm you possess, it is rivaled only by your tenderness. 

he watches you play with rhae and daella, even though you have lady’s maids of your own to keep you company. you entertain your young cousins whenever they ask. you guide them away to the peace and quiet of your solar when his brother is yelling at his nephews, or when some violence has broken out in the training yard. 

when you ask him for things, it is rarely for the purpose of your own satisfaction. 

often it is silks and laces to make new dresses for the girls, some new toy for the children of the ladies at court, a commissioned painting to gift to kiera for her nameday, depicting the scenery of the tyrosh for her personal solar.

and for everything he thinks and knows of you, he should have guessed that he would be unable to deny your request. 

not when you recall the anniversary of jena’s passing each year and try to ease the pain his family still feels so deeply. you have the lemon cakes she so loved made and served with dinner, smiling with his sons, and then at him, and just for a few moments, a day that has always been so terrible is made slightly better.

but marriage has made you into another creature entirely. 

it has been only three moons since baelor had stood with you in the sept and covered your shoulders with the black and red cloak.

you had told him at the feast later in the day that you had been working on your wedding cloak, embroidering glimmering red dragons and the words of the house in high valyrian, for almost the turn of a moon.

“were you pleased with my work, husband?” you had asked, blinking those lovely eyes at him and watching as he lost all train of thought. 

baelor had nodded, picking up his goblet and nearly draining the entire thing empty. he did not realize how quickly you would adjust.

he had gone from uncle to husband in a matter of hours. your father might roll over in his grave if he could see you now, looking like a true targaryen bride, seated beside him at the high table, his father and mother only a few seats away. 

they had simply been pleased that baelor wished to marry again at all. he would assume something else—though perhaps it was obvious to others that you were among their favorite of the grandchildren and their prized eldest granddaughter—but their contentment had seemed genuine. 

they ate and drank and laughed, and the lords and ladies danced, and baelor swallowed hard as he was persuaded to lead you to the floor of the hall. you dance beautifully, you always have, and he recalls a time where you had begged your father for an foreign instructor. he had not listened, and you had come to ask your uncle baelor instead.

needless to say, the new instructor was on their way to king’s landing before the turn of the week—

“husband?” you had quietly asked then, gazing upon him with a sort of expression that he has never seen on your pretty features before. “what are you so lost in thought about?” 

“nothing of importance, niece,” he had replied curtly, before spinning you around the room as was expected of him. 

baelor tried to deny it—he tried to deny all of it. 

how beautiful you looked as you danced in his arms, how warm your skin felt against his, how sweet your scent was. you spoke to him sincerely and he responded in half-sentences and frayed thoughts, the wine taking over his senses, perhaps.

but as he returned you to your seat, breathless and giggling, he had decided then and there. he could not be swayed by your charm when it came to the matter of marriage. 

maekar had come to claim your next dance, and you had glanced at baelor quickly before accepting his hand, your eyes silently asking for permission. he had nodded, watching you then turn to your other uncle with a beaming smile. 

no, baelor had thought, this marriage cannot truly be of your own choosing. he did know the full length of the truth, and he would not ask you, but he knew you well enough to ascertain that some part of this was a farce. 

perhaps you wished to avoid the grim future that awaited you—for there was no doubt in baelor’s mind that aerion would have pestered him for your hand one day. or you wished not to leave the comfort of the red keep and your beloved cousins, abandoning them all to join your husband and your new family. 

of the options presented to you, he knew you misliked both. he had not expected you to some up with another alternative entirely, nor had he thought that he would accept it so easily.

persuasion, it seemed, was your esteemed general. 

you talked your way into and out of most anything you desired, and reflecting back, baelor believes he should have been more prudent. he cannot escape your charm, but he could have left the matter to maekar to sort out. 

perhaps he would have had an easier time convincing you that a marriage in the reach or riverlands would be much more suitable than what you had proposed.

or perhaps, the thought he cannot escape pipes up to remind him, you would have asked for maekar’s hand in marriage instead. then you would have been no longer his niece, not his wife, but rather his goodsister. 

his fist had tightened around the neck of the goblet at the mere thought, his eyes watching maekar dance with you. you were smiling at him, but as soon as baelor’s gaze found you, your eyes locked with his in an instant. 

baelor looked away quickly.

no, he decides in that very moment, he will not torment you by making you fulfill whatever duties you believed you had as his wife. he would allow you your freedom, leave you to do whatever pleased you, and he would not make you suffer because of his own uncontrollable lust and lechery. 

you were his niece before you were his wife. his duty, as he promised your father, was to protect you, not to force you to an early death in the birthing bed by giving you his seed. 

the thought was difficult enough to remember that night—the men of the feast had hoisted you up, carrying you to his chambers while shouting bawdy words of ribald. they had delivered you in just your tattered smallclothes, and you had been waiting for him on the bed.

you had not seemed so nervous as he thought, but perhaps only because you knew he would never harm you. 

at least, he supposes, he can find peace in that thought, that he protected you from a worse fate on your marriage night that many others suffered through.

even drunk on the sweet nectar of your cunt, baelor had forced himself to remember his vow from earlier. it was hard to do so, and perhaps the only thing harder was his cock, but he set aside the thought entirely.

that night, the first night as husband and wife, he had felt you peak against his mouth once, and on his fingers second. and finally once you were completely exhausted and boneless, sunken into the messy, wet sheets and gripping onto his arm as though you might fall away without him steadying you, he had slowly entered your weeping cunt and claimed your maidenhood for himself. 

even that night, he had finished on the soft skin of your belly, refusing to fill you with his seed. 

in your exhaustion, he thinks perhaps you did not even notice. by the time he had helped to clean you and bring you a cup of water, you had drank but a sip and fallen fast asleep against him. 

that night, he had laid awake, staring at the ceiling of his chambers, listening to the slow rustling of the wood burning in the fireplace, and decided this would very well be the first and last time he bedded you.

he had two healthy children and an heir and he had no need for another, especially not when it could be so dangerous for you. 

maekar’s beloved dyanna had perished bringing young rhae into this world, and she had been perfectly healthy during her previous five births. even jena had struggled bringing valarr into this world, and the maesters had told him it was scarcely an easy thing, even worse when it was the lady’s first child.

he looked over you, asleep in his arms, snoring softly with your hair spread out over his pillows. the scent of you might never truly leave these sheets and furs. 

and he vowed that he would fulfill his duty as your uncle and set aside his desires as your husband.

baelor never spells out his decision to you fully. if you are hurt by it, you do not show it.

(or rather, he does not notice.)

baelor keeps your interactions concise when he can. with maekar and his children off at summerhall shortly after the wedding, you had taken to eating meals in the solar with him.

he would arrive shortly before the maids began serving food, removing his cloak and sitting beside you as a serving girl pours him a cup of wine.

“how was the small council today? do you have another headache?” you ask gently, and thank the servant as she pours wine into your goblet next. the girl—who you addressed by name, as willa—smiles brightly at you before resuming her place by the wall.

“no, i am well.” 

the briefer baelor’s words are, the less you have to go off of. he does not wish you keep you engaged in conversation, or make the time longer than it needs to be. surely you wish to retire or partake in one of those activities you loved before your marriage. 

he often sees your latest embroidery project perched on a table by the fire in your solar. there are books there as well, thick volumes of targaryen history and a thinner book he recognizes as daeron the first’s retelling of the conquest of dorne. it is a favorite of his, the first account of dorne, his mother’s homeland, and he has read it cover to cover several times over.

a thought creeps in and he pushes it away—perhaps resting in bed with the fire blazing, since you are certain to get cold without it. you resting in his arms and breathing softly, resting your lovely eyes and keeping them hidden from him as he reads to you. he wonders what it would take to—

baelor blinks.

perhaps you merely wish to fill your time with other company. he often saw you with kiera in her solar when he is searching for valarr or with your lady’s maids in the gardens. it is not surprising to him that you would prefer their company.

“husband?” you ask quietly, and he turns his head. 

he has been so lost in his thoughts that he had not noticed you awaiting another response from him. when he looks at you, his heart begins to beat faster. 

you are always lovely, but perhaps lovelier still when your expression is filled with concern for him. you look as though there is nothing more important than understanding whatever thought is plaguing baelor, and discussing it until his mind is at ease. he thinks of the many ways you might be able to help ease him, and yet—

but he cannot let the thought linger for long. he asks of your day and listens to you recount it—filled with the very same activities and people that he suspected. 

you sound perhaps a touch lonelier without maekar’s children to help fill your day, but the quiet of the keep is enjoyable in its own way. 

once you have finished eating, he kisses your forehead chastely, and tells you that he is returning to his work in his study. 

even there, you continue to plague him. the way the yellow silk of your dress clung to your skin. how your hair fell around your face. the way you held his hand for a mere moment before he moved it away, your skin warm and soft, your breasts heaving with each breath—

he pushes his chair and stands up, taking a turn of the room and ending up breathing in the cool night air on the balcony. he thinks he might be able to relieve the hot tension and desire building in his chest and traveling lower with the distraction, but to no avail. his work sits incomplete on his desk.

it’s not until he takes himself in his hand later that night, in the darkness of his private chambers, thinking of the night of the wedding, stroking his manhood faster and faster as he thinks of how you had mewled under him as he took you—

he finds release, but he feels no relief. only a sense of propriety that seems to be fading the longer he thinks of you. and then, in the sheets that still smell of your skin, he sleeps.

-

“i require but a moment of your time, niece,” baelor says as he enters your solar. 

you are seated in the armchair by the fireplace, but you put down your embroidery—another dragon, he imagines—at the sound of his voice. you do not stand up, but you look towards him.

your maids look wide-eyed with concern, until he waves his hand to dismiss them. the door shuts as they step outside. 

“good morrow, husband,” you reply sweetly as always, smiling. “would you like tea? it is too early for wine but i can request-”

“no, i require nothing but an explanation. what is the meaning of this?” he clutches in his hand a piece of parchment, spelling out a list of your latest expenses, given to him by the master of coin at the small council meeting in the morning

lord penrose had looked at him with an odd sort of expression, a mixture of pity and amusement, when he had handed him the rolled up letter. 

baelor was not an impatient man. he was not prone to anger, either, but he felt his fist tighten around the paper and his jaw clench as he read the scribbled ink.

“the meaning of what, husband?” you ask innocently. you rise from your chair, setting aside your embroidery. you walk closer to him and he feels his resolve beginning to quiver. 

you wear a pretty gown of blue silk, a color that seems familiar to him for some reason, with a low neckline that he cannot remove his eyes from. he would not deem such a dress appropriate, but you are in the peace and quiet of your solar, with no one but maids for company. baelor’s jaw tenses again at the thought of ser donnel watching your skirts swish behind you as you had entered the room today, as he stood guard by the doors. 

usually, you cover your shoulders with that stole he is most familiar with. it does not seem to be found today. he stares at the bare skin there for entirely too long before looking upon your face again. you are standing closer than he realized.

he takes a step backwards, and he notices displeasure flick over your normally warm expression, if only for a moment, before returning to the sweet smile he is so familiar with.

if he had blinked, he would have missed it.

“lord penrose gave me a detailed account of your recent expenses,” he begins, the words coming out sternly. “two hundred gold dragons on white silk and myrish lace? another hefty amount on a seamstress and tailor in king’s landing? my niece, i-”

your face changes at once. the lovely smile melts away, replaced with a mispleased pout of your perfect lips. your eyebrows furrow and your eyes look at his with a mixture of concern and sadness.

baelor begins to regret his words instantly.

“are you cross with me?” you ask quietly, taking another step closer to him. your hands rests by your side but they move slowly, until your palms are pressed flat against the velvet of his doublet. “i did not mean to upset you.”

he can feel the warmth of your skin through the layers of cloth, he thinks. you are so close that the familiar, fragrant scent of your skin has taken hold of all his senses. the last time had been the night of—

he moves his head, trying to shake it slightly before looking back at your doleful eyes. his resolve begins to slip away slowly.

“not… upset, entirely. i-i spoke harshly. i only meant that-” baelor loses track of the thought as he stares at you. you look as though you are a child being scolded. “it is not proper, princess, to spend such an amount on clothes.”

“i understand, husband,” you reply solemnly, your expression unwavering.

“if you desired something, i merely wish you had told me first.”

“i did not wish to bother you with such frivolous requests. i thought that perhaps you would be pleased with my new gowns.”

“i…” baelor trails off. the one you wear now is particularly captivating. how can he be upset, when you had done it for him? 

yes, something in his mind tells him, a princess of the court, wife of the crown prince, no less, should not only be clothed in old dresses. 

it is a small thing to him, but perhaps an entirely different matter for you. there are ladies of the court, perhaps who might be your ladies in waiting one day in the distant future. he supposes you have to have something new to share with them, and take part in influencing some of the fashions of court.

though, he admits plainly, the lords of the court would thank him if their wives began dressing in this fashion. 

he would thank himself, if you began dressing like this—

“husband?” you ask again, your eyes widened while you await another answer.

“forgive me. i was… distracted,” he confesses, and your seize your opportunity.

you press your hands further into his chest, taking another step closer. 

“i did not mean any harm,” you begin, locking eyes with him. “i sought the merchants in king’s landing for a reason. i wanted different silks that i might support a great deal more families than just the ones the steward prefers. and i thought, perhaps, by commissioning new dressmakers, the ladies of court might seek them out too. i only wanted to help…”

well, he had not thought of it in that manner. 

there was no harm in the action. a bit of gold in exchange for the goodwill and support of the crafters and vendors of the city. you were right—the ladies of court would follow in your example, giving work to feed hungry families.   

“i… forgive me. i should not have taken that tone with you.”

“you should not apologize, husband. in fact, i am most grateful for an opportunity to speak with you before we dine. might i show you some of my new dresses? i would like to wear it at supper,” you say, but he swallows uncomfortably.

resisting you when you are fully clothed with your stole is a task he deems difficult enough. listening to you change your dresses behind a partition while you come out to show him the many options, each more revealing than the last is…

near impossible.

“i must return to my study for another meeting, niece. but i will see you at dinner,” he says, and presses another kiss to your forehead, his hands coming up to cup your cheek before departing. 

you bite the skin of the inside of your cheek, deep in thought as he leaves.

-

perhaps a few days later, baelor is seated in the armchair of his study. there is still dozens of documents for him to review, a proposal for the small council that needs to be finished before the afternoon meeting tomorrow, and it is nearing the hour of the owl. 

he has finally been able to rid himself of the image of you and whatever silky smallclothes you might be wearing underneath your new dresses, in order to finish some of his work. 

they must be even smaller than he imagines, though, if your dresses reveal so much soft, flawless skin to him without them making an appearance. 

(rid himself of it, he thinks, by releasing into his hand every night since. you are a haunting vision of blue silk, and he imagines how you might look wearing that very dress while he fucks you over the table in—)

there is a knock on the door. it is late, too late to be anyone but a knight of the kingsguard or his manservant preparing his chambers for sleep.

“enter,” baelor says, not looking up from the parchment spread across the desk. he reads the small words slowly, sleep growing heavy in his body. something about new taxes on imported fabrics and treaties between—

“it is very late, husband.” baelor turns to look at you in an instant.

his shoulders relax as he sinks further into his chair. you look just as he would have imagined at this hour—your hair slightly mussed, your expression sweet yet tired. in the dim candlelight that illuminates his study, you look closer to a goddess paying him a visit.

but he is no praying man.

his eyes travel down from your face, where you bite your lip hesitantly while awaiting his reply, to your nightgown and the soft, pale robe that covers it. with it untied, he can see what waits underneath—pure white silk, the color of stars, with lace around the neck. it stops just before your ankles, and he can see the slippers you wear if he sits up a little taller. 

the fabric feels delicate just from gazing upon it. you would be comfortable to sleep in it, no doubt. this must be one of the new gowns you had commissioned, because he has never seen clothing for sleep look so lovely and enticing.

you make your way closer, stopping beside his desk.

“it is almost the hour of the owl, niece. what are you doing awake?”

“i could not sleep,” you confess, running your fingers across some of the papers that lay cluttered on the surface of the bureau. “it evades me. i am not sufficiently tired.”

you glance up towards him, and the resolve, which has already been battered and beaten to near death by the strength of your forces—namely your bleary, beautiful eyes—begins to shake, as a newly anointed knight facing battle for the first time might.

“you should rest, princess.”

“i do not wish to rest.”

perhaps the silence of the castle and the lull of the night has made you braver and bolder than the young woman he thought he knew so well.

you move quickly, to perch yourself against his lap seamlessly, as though he was a seat made for you only.

your hand comes to stabilize yourself against baelor, fingers wrapping around the thickness of his muscled arm. he moves faster than you, wrapping both of his hands securely around your waist to steady you, taking in, finally, how thin the fabric of your nightgown truly is. he releases a shuddery, painful breath at the thought that follows.

he can feel the heat of your skin and how your flesh yields in his grip.

he has not felt you in so very long. your soft skin in his hands and the aroma of your hair, jasmine and something else he cannot name, make him dizzy with want.

he has tried so hard to make all the interactions chaste and short, and here you are, offering yourself to the predator, a misguided, sleepy creature of prey. 

his prey.

you trace the skin of his cheek with your soft fingers.

“you are not eating enough,” you say quietly. baelor holds back a quiet laugh.

“spoken like a true wife.”

“i am your true wife,” you reply with a tone he cannot quite place. “will you not come to bed with me? i have so missed your company, husband,” you purr.

he very nearly shuts his eyes at the sound. when his eyelids open again, you are staring at him with wide, doe-like eyes, blinking in eager anticipation. 

“niece,” baelor warns in a low voice. “i-”

“wife,” you correct again.

“i have much work to complete before i can retire,” he lies, knowing that the moment you leave him, he will be unable to finish writing even another sentence.

such is the strength of your power over him. even when you are not beside him, his mind can think of nothing else.

“can it not wait until the morning? i should like to sleep beside you,” you whisper, laying your head down on his shoulder. 

he looks down the length of your back, your thin excuse of a robe abandoned on the ground, the silk of your nightgown shining and shimmering in the candlelight. he notices how it stretches across your skin, revealing curves that he should not be looking at, how easily the fabric might be torn into two if he only pulled—

reality floods his veins as though someone had emptied a barrel of ice water on his skin. 

perhaps you are lonely, and truly, that is his mistake—he has tried his best to resist temptation by limiting the tempting interactions entirely.

with maekar and his children gone, you have no one to keep you company. it’s only natural you would seek him out, even in this state, because you wish to speak with someone else besides your maids. you have always been a unifying feature of their family, preferring to spend time with them rather than alone.

yes, that must be it, he concludes as you rest against his body, adjusting your legs to get more comfortable. 

your smooth skin brushes against his manhood—which is only growing harder with each passing moment—and he brings one hand to your thigh to stop you from moving any further. he soaks in the satisfied feeling when he feels your limb still under his touch.

this must all be borne of a loneliness you possess and a desire for company. he can easily remedy that—many of the lords of the court have daughters and wives and sisters who could be brought along to be your companions. 

it does not quite feel as though his idea will work when you are curled up so comfortably against him, fitting together as though you and he are two parts of a whole. 

but he shall have to try, regardless. he will not defile and debase you any further. you shall be allowed at least that much respect.

you make a soft, sweet noise of sleep against him. he feels you nuzzle your head against his shoulder further. you end up burying it into the crook of his neck, sighing softly, and he soaks in how your breath feels against his skin. 

“you should sleep, princess,” baelor says quietly into your ear. 

he cannot help it—everything seems much more intimate under the veil of darkness. all that he has tried so hard to push away in the daylight returns with a tenacity he did not expect.

something speaks up, the part he tries to keep silent. it calls him a fool—reminds him that he has a lovely creature, bound to him before the gods, that seems to desire him, desire his company. and all he has done is push her away time and time again.

the two sides begin to battle it out—his moral thoughts that somehow always travel back to the day he promised your father he would protect you and the perverse ones that tell the others to be quiet and please his wife, to give in and make her every wish come to fruition.

“i will,” you begin softly, the words said into his ear, a lustful shiver rolling over his muscles at the sound. “if you join me.” 

he exhales a deep breath, filled with both guilt and regret, and he knows you can hear it.

“i cannot. come, i shall escort you back to your chambers.” 

you sigh too—one of pure frustration, as he helps you stand up. 

baelor’s fingers barely skim the bare skin of your shoulder, bringing the fallen strap that was hovering on your arm back to its rightful place. then he picks up your robe and wraps it around you gently. 

he offers you his arm to lead you back to your chambers. you have a difficult time letting go.

“husband, i-”

“sleep now, niece. we shall talk during the day tomorrow.” 

“but i-” baelor turns his beautiful, mis-matched eyes towards you and the sentence dies on your tongue. you shall still have the last word, however, and so you hold onto his arm and lean in for a kiss before he can turn away from you.

he makes your knees weak without even trying.

baelor’s mouth is warm and his lips taste of sweet wine, no doubt the cup he was nursing before you entered his study.

in truth, you had slumbered hours ago, falling into sleep after baelor had left your chambers following supper. you wanted to be awake at such a time that you knew he would still be in his study, all alone.

your plan had, for the most part, failed. though you had gotten closer than previous attempts, and though it had been wonderful to feel his hands on your skin once more, he was still being too pious for your liking, too reminiscent of his namesake.

your hands are still wrapped around his arms, digging into the muscles as you feel baelor returning your kiss. you whimper into his mouth, surprised by the rough feel of his beard against your skin and his tongue touching yours. but the kiss itself is still surprisingly gentle, just as the ones on your wedding night had been. 

you had thought your teasing might earn you a glimpse of a different side of your husband, but it seems that you were mistaken.

no matter. you will accept each victory, no matter how small. 

and most unsurprisingly, he pulls away first. 

his lips look swollen and pink, and your own tug into a pleased smile at the image before you. baelor runs a hand over his beard, sighing, looking at you as though he is unsure of what he will do with you.

good, you think. let me be plagued with dreams of my kisses. 

“i bid you goodnight, my husband,” you sing sweetly, leaning your feet forward on your toes so that you can press one of those chaste kisses he so loves to his cheek. 

then you enter your chambers, leaving him in the corridor.

-

baelor thinks of nothing but your startling kiss and how your nightgown looked in the dim light of his study. 

the gown—if it can even be called that, since it was merely a few scraps of thin fabric stitched together—has been the only thing on his mind for days on end.

he tries ardently to distract himself by setting up meetings with lords mallister and santagar and tyrell to have them bring ladies of their family to court to serve as your companions. he speaks with the men for too long, asks questions that are irrelevant, and tries to prolong the encounter just so he is not left alone with this thoughts.

one thought in particular—namely the softness of your lips, a soldier rising through the ranks as he wins battle after battle.

and despite all of that effort, even days later, he finds himself unable to think of anything but the scent of your skin and the ease with which you climbed into his lap.

a lesser man might even think that you wanted him.

he tries, and fails, to cast the thought aside entirely. 

you, on the other hand, have not been thinking of anything else. baelor tells you when he joins you for dinner later in the week that he has arranged for your ladies-in-waiting to come to court earlier than he had planned. 

he tells you their names and their lineages, their relation to his small council and the relationships their families wish to maintain with the crown. 

but you pay little attention.

again, your husband has spurned you. 

you thought you were strong enough to deal with this rationally. that baelor was only being distant because you were newlyweds, because he did not want to seem eager. 

but you’re no fool, either. your little stunt in his study proved what you already knew to be true. your husband desired you, he just wouldn't allow himself to act on his desires. 

now he wishes to keep you complacent with noble ladies that will no doubt ask you questions that you have no answer for—such as when your husband planned on getting you with child and when the court would have another little prince or princess running around.

no matter what else happened, you knew you needed to take the issue into your own hands if you wanted a resolution. 

if you wanted your husband’s seed, you will have to go seek him out and make him give it to you. 

baelor does not meet you for dinner the following evening. he is in his study with his father and maekar, who is visiting from summerhall. 

he left the children behind, much to your displeasure, but brought along daeron and aerion. hardly a fair trade, you think, though the thought feels tainted. you have nothing against the elder, but the second-born is another deal entirely.

the boys had begun their morning sparring with your other cousins—or rather, your step-sons—in the training yard. you had walked by on the way to the gardens with your ladies, the lot of them giggling at the muscles and sweat of the boys below.

it is only aerion and matarys doing the sparring now. 

in the garden, daeron seems to be taking a nap in the sun, perched on one of the benches by the trees. valarr is taking a turn about the gardens with kiera, who is finally feeling well enough to come outside and enjoy the fresh air. 

seeing the way the two of them hold each other, the way their love and admiration for the other was so palpable to all of you, made your heart ache. 

yes, you wanted your husband to please you and give you a child of your own. but you also wanted that. 

love and affection and tenderness. 

the worst of it, perhaps, was that you knew baelor was incredibly capable of it. he was not at all like the lords you feared you would have been married off too—cold and cruel and devoid of kindness. baelor was overflowing with love for his children and his family. 

you were spoiled, perhaps, you think as you sulk in the shade with your new ladies. you were so used to his love and compassion growing up that you had only expected it to further grow as the moons of your marriage passed. 

now your husband seems to have nothing but proper concern for you. everything he does, everything he says, it is apparent that he wishes you to stay safe and well. he will not even touch you, perhaps for fear that he will break you, living up to his nickname after all, you suppose.

you bite into cherry and let the tartness linger on your tongue. lady bethany mallister, the daughter of the lord of ships, picks up a piece of fruit as well. 

you are tired of them, though not because they are not enjoyable company. it is your own situation that feeds your sadness. 

aly tyrell is funny beyond all measure. lady bethany is sweet and gentle and always compliments your dresses. lord santagar’s sister, sarena, is young and excited and reminds you of the innocent hope all girls possess at that age. you feel towards her perhaps that which an elder sister might feel towards the younger.

though your frustrations are targeted to your husband and his lack of action, you do not wish to take it out on them.

“at least,” you begin after taking another bite and chewing your cherry until your lips and tongue are red, “the fruit is sweet and the sun is warm.”

“i wonder if we will have another long spring,” bethany comments, picking up another slice of apple. 

“perhaps,” you mull. “it would bode well for the small folk. i know they dread winter so.”

“bethy, i cannot imagine what winter must be like at seagard. how do you survive the cold?” sarena asks, selecting a slice of blood orange for herself. 

“the same way everyone else does,” aly answers for her, “by staying warm in their husband’s beds.”

you laugh first, though it stings. the others follow.

“you shall be safe then, princess,” sarena says with a wide-eyed smile. “the prince would never let you be cold.”

“right you are, my lady. he would never.” you bite on your cheek, listening as aly begins another tale.

she is interrupted by a pale hand reaching towards the fruit, picking up a cluster of grapes. 

“cousin,” you greet, faking a sweet smile the way you are used to in his company.

“princess. ladies,” aerion says, narrowing his violet eyes towards you. “do your prince a favor, my ladies, and take a turn about the garden. i require a word with my dear aunt.”

the girls look toward you for permission first and you nod your head, something you know aerion did not appreciate, and they each get up and leave. 

sarena turns to look back at him twice, until aly steps to intentionally block her view, making her focus in front of her.

aerion looks a sweaty mess, slumping into bethany’s seat, next to you.

“so,” he starts. “how fares your marriage?”

“perfectly well,” you reply quickly. “baelor is a most thoughtful husband.”

“baelor,” aerion mimics with a scoff. he pops a grape into his mouth, chewing obnoxiously. “four moons ago you called him uncle.”

“a lot can change in four months, aerion. now he is my husband.”

“and some husband he is, i am sure. tell me, has he gotten a child on you yet? given his age, you can never know…”

you head snaps towards him, your fingers twitching as you try your hardest to refrain from slapping him.

“i will not dignify you with an answer. mind your tongue or i will-”

“you will what?” he questions, eating another grape, looking at you with a feigned, innocent expression. 

you cannot think of anything to say.

“you seem to forget that i am no longer your cousin. i am the crown prince’s wife now,” you finally reply, hoping he cannot see through your angry words, the saddened, lonely girl that sits beneath your visage. 

“of course not. i am merely looking out for you. well, if you require me… you know where i shall be.” 

“i do not require-“

“good day, aunt.” he picks up your tightened fist and presses a kiss to the skin of your hand. you pull your hand back instantly.

+

aerion’s words do not leave you for the rest of the day.

your ladies continue to chatter and gossip, but your thoughts are far away. you pick only bits and pieces, speaking when there is a silence meant for your reply.

“prince aerion is so handsome, is he not?” sarena says breathlessly, and bethany looks towards you with a concerned expression. aly rolls her eyes.

“as pretty as he is violent. i beg you to find literally anyone else to fancy. his older brother’s just over there-”

sarena scrunches her freckled nose in disagreement. you’ll warn her about pursuing aerion before he leaves once again for summerhall, but your mind cannot think of anything but your own plight.

it’s not until the sun has almost set and the air is much cooler that you are finally granted the opportunity to be alone with your thoughts.

alone, that you might finally concoct your plan.

you work quickly, before your mind has time to stop and think too much of your actions. your maid is confused when dismiss her after your bath, but you do not need her noticing that you do not plan to spend the evening in your chambers.

you dress yourself in the smallest of the newly-made nightgowns, not tying and lacing it where it ought to be, leaving it hanging off your shoulder and exposing the skin of your neck and chest more than you should.

part of the plan from the other night had worked—baelor had been susceptible to the charm of your new gowns, which seemed now to be worth every penny. perhaps that one was not the true victor, however.

you were confident that the one you donned now would be.

you forgo the robe entirely this time, knowing that baelor is not in his study across the corridor. he’s only in his chambers, only a door away. you step out into the hall and put a finger to your lips when ser donnel of the kingsguard sees you, standing in between the two doors for his watch until morning. 

though his eyes are wide at your clothes—or rather mostly lack of—he does not say anything. 

“no interruptions, ser donnel, if you can manage it. the prince and i have a most urgent matter to discuss.” 

he nods, and you smile, knocking on the door.

baelor’s gentle, deep voice echoes as he tells whomever it is to enter. 

it’s not until you step inside, gently closing the door behind you and padding barefoot to the desk and armchair by the fireplace where he works when he is tired of his study, that he notices you.

he looks up quickly, his gaze returning to the assortment of papers before him, before suddenly returning his eyes towards you, his head almost spinning. you bite back a smile.

“niece. what are you-”

“husband,” you greet, ignoring his use of your former title. “i require a moment of your time.”

his mismatched eyes, deep in a distracted thought, travel from your face, slowly raking downwards. 

he stops to observe your bared shoulder and the sheer silk that reveals the curve of your breasts and hips before making his way to your legs, and then back up when you clear your throat.

“what?” he questions, meeting your eyes once again. “did you say something?”

“no,” you lie, shaking your head innocently, putting one step in front of the other until you are much closer to him and the fire. it provides warmth to your exposed skin but it is not nearly warm enough.

nothing but the heat of your husband on top of you will cure your coldness, you think, thinking back to what aly had said in the garden.

“you should return to bed. and wear something warmer. there is a chill in the air tonight.”

“i do not wish to sleep alone,” you reply, taking yet another step closer. he does not have anywhere to escape to, seated in his chair with the fireplace on one side and you on the other. 

“we have discussed this, princess-”

“not princess,” you say, feeling bolder than ever before. 

you perch yourself against his desk, the silk slipping aside and baring your thighs to him. his eyes are fixated on the skin until you speak again, when he moves to meet your eyes again. you hold back another laugh at his attempts to be stoic and polite, even when you are vexing him so deeply. 

“niece-”

“not niece, either. wife. it is the only name i shall respond to,” you say quietly, hoping he can also feel the sincerity of your words.

you watch as baelor swallows, tension thick in the air between the two of you. he runs a hand over his beard as he does when he is frustrated and trying not to show it.

from so close, you can see all the gray hairs that litter his face. they blend together with the dark hair seamlessly. that, along with the wrinkles by his eyes and the absolute temptation in his eyes, is enough to make butterflies erupt in your chest. 

“you do not know what you are asking for,” baelor says, and you smile. 

“i do know. i have had many moons to think about it.”

“you-” baelor stops himself, releasing a deep breath. “you do not want me. you simply desire company. that is why i arranged-”

“my ladies are lovely. kind and funny and good at conversing.” 

“i am pleased to hear it. perhaps they-”

you move slowly, shifting from your position near his desk until you are settling yourself in his lap, just as the other night. 

and just like then, baelor’s hands come to secure you. always worried about your safety, he holds on tightly, his fingers sinking into the flesh of your waist as yours wrap around his neck. 

“as lovely as they are, they cannot give me what i want.” 

you lean in to kiss the hollow of his cheek again, working your way down until you can nestle your face into his neck, littering a handful of kisses there too. baelor’s hands tighten on your body as you feel him suck in a deep breath. 

you breathe in the scent of his skin, calming and soothing as it is, leather and amber and something else that is uniquely your husband.

“what is it that you want?” he questions quietly, with a soft groan that is music to your ears. you stir against his lap and feel his hardness growing against your thighs, warm and firm.

you must be well and truly deprived, you think, since the thought of his manhood against you is enough to make your mouth water.

“i want you. i have wanted you for as long as i can remember. now i have you but in name only.”

“sweet girl, i am only-”

“tell me, husband, am i so awful that you will not spend time with me? am i not the same niece that you so doted on before our marriage?”

“that is precisely why i cannot-”

you lean in to silence him with a kiss, your lips hot and wet against each other. you moan into his open mouth, gripping onto his shoulder fiercely, not pulling away even as you feel baelor try and resist you. 

he too gives in—his hand weaving into your hair, his huge palm holding your head in place. the other hand stays by your waist, adamantly about not straying, though you can feel the heat of his skin through your silk. 

and beneath you is an entirely different story than whatever baelor claims to be the truth—he grows harder and hotter as you move ever so slightly against him, adjusting yourself until you sit atop his manhood. 

you rock gently, your eyes rolling back at the sensation between your legs, one you have not felt so intensely since the night of your wedding.

you believe you could even find your pleasure like this, drowning in his kisses and moving your hips faster until you both feel that shuddery release that you have so longed for—

and then baelor stops, pulling away. his hand stays on the back of your head, cupping and pulling you gently to look at him. 

breathless, flushed in every way possible, with a familiar yet distant ache growing hot and tight in your belly, your swollen lips turn into a pout as you bat your eyelashes at him.

“why do you deny me, husband? why do you deny yourself? you cannot hide the truth. i know you desire me,” you say, rocking yourself against him once more.

baelor’s lovely eyes are hidden from you as he shuts them tightly, holding back a moan. 

“i am trying to protect you,” he says quietly, his eyes opening again. they are filled with pain, something that you detest. it fills you with an immense sadness. 

you lean forwards, pressing your forehead against his.

“you cannot protect me from everything,” you whisper. “and if you must, let us start with the rumors of the court. it wounds me every time someone questions why i am not yet with child.”

“who has said it? i will-”

“it does not matter who. i know they all think it.”

“let them, sweet girl,” baelor says, bringing his hand to hold your cheek tenderly instead. tears—born mostly of sadness and frustration—begin to well up in your eyes. “i am trying to keep you safe and yet you are attempting to force my hand at every turn.”

all you have ever wanted is before you—baelor as your husband, talking of how he wishes to keep you safe, as you always knew he would. and yet, somehow, it is a terrifying thing altogether to imagine a life such as the one you have been living forever.

far away from him, detached and alone, sharing nothing but a meal on occasion instead of days filled with the love you know he harbors inside.

“keep me safe from what?”

“everything,” he replies, his hand tightening around your waist. a tear runs down your cheek and he wipes it away with his thumb. “the childbed, for one. you are too young to leave this world because of my own selfish desire-”

“baelor,” you whisper, your pout magnifying in intensity, if possible. “there is no telling what the gods have planned for us. i have learned that lesson with enough pain. should we not enjoy our marriage for as long as we are blessed enough to do so?”

you bite your lower lip, blinking slowly at him, wondering if this might be where the tide finally turns. you lean in for another kiss, only getting a soft, hesitant one before he pulls you away with his hand on your face.

baelor turns his head away from you. 

“go to bed, niece. it grows late.”

you feel a selfish sort of anger burning in your chest. you have tried to reason with him—and the gods know your husband a reasonable man, more than most. but you are not content with this life, and you never will be, not until you have your husband the way you want him.

the way you know he wants you.

you do not move. a rational side of you tries to argue that you’ve made more progress than before. perhaps one more plan needs to be made, and you will have convinced him of your own accord to heed you.

however, the irrational side wins, the words spilling out before you can think twice about it. 

“you know, aerion visited me today. he said that i only need find him if my uncle is having too much trouble getting me with child.”

baelor snaps his head towards you in an instant, his dark and light eyes blazing with a hidden fury. even so, he keeps his composure more than you wished he would.

“and what did you tell him, hm?”

“i told him to leave. i should have told him that i would have his tongue cut out if he spoke in that way again. because-” you breathe, your entire body trembling in his grip. “because i know my husband can please me. i know he can give me the child we both desire. please baelor… do not let them win.”

you fiddle with the tied ribbon by the collar of your neck, pulling it until it falls flatly around you. he can make out your heaving breasts under the sheer fabric.

you move your head slowly, just to meet his eyes again, blinking quickly. perhaps it is past your time to admit defeat, that you were simply not armored enough today.

baelor brings both his hands to either side of your face and crashes his mouth onto yours.

you release a squeal in surprise, returning the force of his kiss with an intensity you have never felt before. baelor’s hands hold you tightly in place, with no opportunity to move, his mouth hard against yours. 

and yet, his lips are soft. he kisses you as though he wishes to cherish the memory, trying to learn the curves and divots of your face with his fingers. you moan against him as his hands move down, dragging slowly past your past, tracing down your back until he finally lands at your hips. 

he squeezes, as though he is trying to make certain you are truly there before him. the position is not nearly as comfortable as before, but you have no complaints, allowing him to explore your mouth with his tongue, breathing him in through your every sense. 

baelor does not pull away, even as he reads your mind and hoists you up as he stands from the armchair. he sets you on the edge of his desk, using his other hand to brush papers and books out of the way so there is a clearing for you to lay on. 

you giggle against his mouth at the sound, only wondering what ser donnel may be thinking from his post outside the door.

but then baelor pulls away, and the thought is lost, replaced instead with regret. you let out a greedy whine, your fingers pulling at his doublet, wishing for his lips on yours again.

“patience, sweet girl,” he says, and you feel a shiver work its way through your entire body. 

you are many things. patient is not one of them.

your fingers work deftly at the buttons of his doublet, undoing most of them easily, but before you can get the bloody thing off of his shoulders, baelor brings his hand to your jaw, cupping it and squishing your cheeks together.

“i said to be patient,” he reminds you, and you comply instantly, an eagerness to please him rolling smoothly through your body. 

something aches between your legs at his tone, but you are not stupid enough to be defiant now, when you are finally getting what you want.

you remember the night of your wedding as though it was yesterday—how gentle he’d been and how much pleasure he gave you, as though your pleasure mattered more than his. it had been—

the thought is distracted as you hear the sound of silk being torn. you gasp, looking up at baelor instantly.

“baelor, my gown—!” you cry out, though it is hard to care that much. you are mostly being dramatic because you want to see his reaction. 

“it has served its purpose,” baelor says calmly. 

he does not meet your eyes, rather, he stays focused on your newly exposed skin. the silk falls on either side of your body, revealing your breasts and the skin of your belly and legs to him completely. the air hardens your nipples further, and he stares, stares until you begin to tremble and shake with anticipation.

“husband,” you plead, wondering why he is only looking when he has you like this—a slavish position, bared completely for him while he still has all of his clothes on. 

his eyes wander further down, until he stops to stare at your cunt. you feel yourself burn with hotness at his gaze, wondering why he will not just get on with it. he has you exactly how he might want you—splayed out on his desk, your legs wrapped around him loosely. he need only—

baelor kneels. you almost sit up, wanting to know what he is thinking, but one of his huge hands on your stomach tells you, silently, to stay as you are.

“oh,” you sigh, feeling baelor’s hot breath on the sensitive skin of your thighs. his beard is scratchy, deliciously so, as he lines your inner thighs with kisses. when he takes a piece of the delicate skin between his teeth, you yelp, your hand weaving into his hair.

he looks up at you from the position—your legs almost wrapped around his head, his beautiful eyes—one blue, one brown, both dark with lust—looking up at you.

and you do not need him to speak to understand what he is saying. you lay back, keeping your eyes on him.

he dives in between your legs as though he is a man starved. 

the first lick makes your entire body tremble, and the second makes you moan out as though there is no one else in the castle save for the two of you. you feel his hot tongue work up and down your leaking cunt, focused on that one part that makes you see stars as his tongue teases it over and over again. 

he trails down, prodding against your sensitive hole with his tongue, lapping up your wetness, as your fingers grow tighter in his hair, pulling as you try to move your hips, a silent signal that you need more. 

baelor holds your hips down and his tongue returns to your sensitive pearl, simultaneously thrusting in two fingers. your eyes roll all the way back. you moan wantonly—it is all you have wanted.

no amount of your own fingers or folded pillows or thoughts of your husband could ever replace this. his tongue moves against you, flicking and sucking, the noises obscene as they fill the chamber. you cannot hold yourself back, certain someone can hear you, though it is hard to care. 

your back arches, rising off of his uncomfortable desk, but you know the feeling that grows deep in your belly. it’s tight and hot and wound up, but it loosens and stretches with every lick of your husband’s tongue.

but it’s different than the night of your wedding. this is so much better, not as gentle and sweet as that night.. no, this is rougher and more deliberate and filled with a fervor that you have unknowingly been creating in your husband all these moons.

the thought is enough to make you reach your peak instantly, but you hold back, wanting to bask in the sheer pleasure for a moment longer. baelor wraps his mouth around your pearl and continues thrusting his fingers in and out, the squelch of your soaking cunt making your entire body feel as though a flame has consumed you whole.

how—how could you have ever been satisfied by yourself? nothing could ever replace this feeling, you think dreamily, drunk on your husband’s affection. he enjoys it, you can tell, being the reason for your complete undoing.

baelor’s other hand reaches towards you, groping your exposed breast from his position. his fingers tease your nipple and you cry out, the pleasure close to unbearable.

he says something, his lips vibrating around you, and it makes your mouth gape open. you cannot understand him, but you guess it all the same, crying out his name over and over again. 

“good, sweet girl. perfect girl. let me feel your release on my tongue,” he murmurs against your cunt, and with a final thrust of his fingers and pinch of your nipples, you give in to the pleasure, succumb to your husband. 

the sheer bliss that washes over you is unlike anything you have ever felt before. it scorches through your body, a feeling something like lightening striking you, as the heat deep inside of you unwinds, and then snaps altogether.

the shockwaves continue as you moan out baelor’s name, and he does not let up. your body continues to shake in his grip, his tongue rough and almost painful against you, your sensitive cunt pulsing around his fingers. 

it’s not until you are completely boneless, slack-jawed and exhausted, collapsing against his desk, that you feel him slide his fingers out of you. 

you cannot imagine what a mess he has made of your thighs, though when he stands, groaning, you smile before you can help it. 

your juices linger on his beard, and the very thought makes you feel as though you are on fire.

using your hands on his doublet, you push him closer to your for a kiss, feeling the taste of yourself on his tongue and mouth, not receding until he finally uses his hands on your face to guide you away gently.

“that was incredible,” you whisper, leaning your head against his chest. his broad hands on your back support you, otherwise you are certain you would collapse back down.

“i am glad to hear it,” baelor says, polite as ever. “i shall escort you back to your chambers. let me retrieve my-”

“my chambers?” you question, pulling away to look up at him in confusion. “but we have not-”

“you are tired, sweet girl. i will not-”

you make a low, frustrated sound.

“i am not tired. i do not want to go back to my chambers. i want you, all of you. i want you to claim me, as is your right as my husband.”

“claim you?” baelor repeats slowly, watching you with his intense, consuming gaze. 

“will you not give me your seed, husband? as your wife, am i not entitled to it?” you ask, armed with that alluring pout that he is so mad for. 

it is not even so much your words, but rather how you say them, and how you look at him. as though there is nothing you desire more than him. 

baelor leans in for another kiss, your sweet mouth eager for his. 

and then he picks you up by the waist, your sore legs wrapping around his easily. he carries you over to his bed, placing you down with a gentle thud.

his time, when your hands come to his doublet, he lets you take it off of him. you remove it and the cloth falls somewhere behind him, just as your scraps of silk now lie on the ground by his desk.

his shirt is next, even as you paw at his breeches and their laces. he pulls the cotton from the back and yanks it off over his head, while he stares down at you. you are biting your lip in anticipation to claim the spoils of your victory.

sweet, eager girl. you have no idea what you are truly asking for. but he will give it to you all the same.

as soon as your fingers successfully untie the laces, he pulls them off, taking his hardened, throbbing cock into his hands. he strokes it as you watch wide-eyed, your chest heaving and breasts bouncing as you wait patiently for him to give you what you so desire.

he hovers over you, pressing a quick kiss to your mouth before working across to your jaw and then down the column of your neck. he goes over your collarbone, over where your heart beats under your skin, and onto your breasts.

baelor feels your fingers tighten around his arm and watches as your eyes roll back in your head as he takes your nipple into his hot mouth. he flicks his tongue against the sensitive skin, still stroking himself, his cock pulsing with every sweet sound you make. 

he switches to the other breast, lavishing it with attention while he moves your legs as though you are but a gift for him, positioning you until his cock is lined up against your drenched cunt. 

“husband,” you whimper, and he lets go of your tender nipple with a soft noise. “please… please take me,” you say, hot tears of frustration and overwhelmed pleasure running down the side of your face. 

he abandons your breast and moves, nudging the thick head of his cock so it slowly slips inside of you. your tight cunt sucks him in instantly, pleading for more as your face twists into a gasp, mouth falling open, eyes shutting tightly.

baelor comes close to your face, kissing your tears softly, until those lovely eyes flutter open to meet his. he groans, burying his face into your neck as you smile, teasing and sweet and yet so hungry for him.

“please, husband,” you moan again, a soft question this time. he answers by thrusting his length into you, all in one swift motion.

the sound of the bedframe thudding against the wall fills the chambers, followed by the lewd, wet sound of baelor moving in and out of your cunt. then there is your cries and pleas, your sweet moans that he cannot believe he has denied himself for so long.

“there, sweet girl,” he says, as he moves your pliable legs easily. he feels that soft spot inside of you that makes you lose all train of thought, makes your eyes shut and squeal louder than he has ever heard before. “this is what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“yes, yes, baelor-” you continue, and brings himself all the way out, just to push back in. 

you take him as though you were made for him. and perhaps you were.

“i know, sweet girl. i will give you want you need. i will give you everything-”

but he lets go of the thought, focusing instead on the way your cunt pulses and tenses around him every time you hear his voice. and who is he to deny you, when he has already denied so much?

this overwhelming pleasure, this sensation that lights his very bones aflame. he could have had this every single night since the day he took as you as his wife in the sept, if only he had not been so—

“baelor!” you cry out, whining and panting as he pulls himself out of you, using every last bit of strength he possesses. 

your sweet cunt clenches around nothing, pulsating as he flips you over onto your belly, folding your legs until you’re exactly how he wants you. he keeps his hands on the soft flesh of your ass, digging in his fingers until he’s sure he’s marked you.

and then he slides back in, feeling the grip you have on his cock, his own eyes rolling back for a moment. 

his muscles tense and his bodies shudders, the new position allowing him to feel every last inch of himself buried deep inside of you.

it’s when you turn your head, attempting to look back at him, that he truly loses all sense of control.

this is all your fault—of course. 

how could any red-blooded man, even one as patient as he, resist your charms and temptation? resist your sweet smiles and your devious plans to make him lose his composure? 

it had worked, he thinks, worked too well. there’s only so much a man can take before he must give in, before he has to please his wife—a duty given to him by the gods.

yes, baelor thinks, watching your lovely features tighten up, as your body mimics the very same around his cock, you are a gift from the gods. 

gifts are not meant to be ignored. they are meant to be cherished. 

baelor leans forward, gripping the back of your neck, pushing his body weight on top of you, fucking you harder than before. 

all that he hears is your cries, all that he feels is the sweat and slick of flesh hitting flesh, and all he can focus is on how your cunt swallows him so perfectly. he knows he cannot last much longer, not when you flutter around him as if you are doing it on purpose.

he pulls out once again, flipping you back over easily. his arms come around either side of your head, boxing you in, as your legs end up spread atop his shoulders. baelor folds you in half, his nose brushing yours, leaning in for another hot kiss as he slides back inside. 

it is all he can do not to spill instantly at the very site of your hiccuped moans with each and every thrust. you are so perfect, your body tensing up again, ready for another release, he knows. 

i know because i am your husband. your body speaks only to me. 

his fingers do not tease this time—flicking over your pearl repeatedly as you weep, perhaps wanting more, perhaps wanting him to slow down. he does not listen.

your back attempts to rise off the bed again, arching as he does not give up his ministrations on your most sensitive part. 

baelor feels you begin to peak before your mind has even begun to process it. you clamp around him, the tension increasing and building until it snaps. he leans in for a kiss as he works you through it, not stopping any motion, swallowing your gasps and your damp tears. 

your entire body is limp by the time you have finished your pleasure. 

it feels as though that alone is more than enough for him, baelor thinks. he slows down his thrusts, coming to cup your face gently, pressing a light kiss to you.

“how do you feel, sweet girl? are you well?”

“no,” you say, to his immediate alarm. if he was not already completely pressed against you, he would adjust until he had you in his arms entirely. 

“no?” he repeats. “what can i-”

“you have not given me your seed yet,” you say, blinking those pretty, bleary eyes at him.

you look ruined in every sense of the word—your face sparkling with tears, lips bruised and swollen, your entire body marked by him in some way or another.  

“please,” you continue, and baelor begins thrusting back into you, almost without even thinking of it. it must feel incredibly sensitive for you, as you shiver and tremble under him, but you do not give up on your goal. “i want it, husband. i want your seed. please, will you not give it to me?”

it does not take much.

baelor moans loudly against the skin of your neck, the brunt of his release hitting him squarely in the chest. his hips begin to stutter, losing his control as he feels the hot spend fill your pulsating cunt. even that does not stop, not until you have milked his cock completely dry.

you are maddening. a creature sent to torment him in the world of the living and in the land of dreams. 

you giggle at the sensation, likely pleased with your victory. you pull on baelor’s neck until he gives you another kiss—this one long and lingering, your tongues playing together until finally baelor’s muscles give out from sheer exhaustion. 

he collapses next to you, an arm sprawled across your body.

you end up curled against his chest, mewling like a satisfied kitten might after receiving a fair serving of milk. he can feel the heat of your body radiating onto him, the sweat that coated both of your skin and your soft, tired breaths as your body melts into his. 

finally satisfied, he thinks, a smug feeling rolling over him lazily. 

this is what you needed, he knows, and now the sedition has slowly seeped out of you, as his seed is seeping out of your cunt. 

“now, wife,” he says, the words a steady whisper into your ear. “sleep. we shall talk in the morning.”

“mmh,” you make a sweet, pleasant noise and he feels your body still as you enter your slumber.

hopefully a peaceful one, such as that after a fiercely fought battle has been won he thinks, his own eyes beginning to shut. 

it could only be moments later—he has not even felt himself descend into sleep—that you stir in his grip. your soft lips begin littering kisses up the column of his neck, over the hair of his beard that grows there, all the way up until you find the lobe of his ear. 

you kiss there too, teasing the skin between your teeth until you finally release it, his eyes almost fluttering open again. 

“husband,” you whisper into his ear, “can we go again?”

“seven hells-”

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