MINI ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁✰ | twenties, she/her, sun libra, fall bunny at heart ☆૮꒰•༝ •。꒱ა
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˚ ༘♡ ·˚꒰The Reader/OC Paradox꒱ .ೃ࿐ ˚ · . ⇒ Read this VERY carefully before you decide to engage in any dialogue regarding the reader/oc tags with me. This is my ONLY rule for engagement.
current obsession⇒ spy x family, blue lock, jujutsu kaisen, demon slayer, love & deepspace (video game), stranger things, a knight of the seven kingdoms♡‧₊˚
manwha recs ⇒ who made me a princess, positively yours, beware of the villainess, 19 days, papa wolf and the puppy, the pharaoh's concubine, turning the mad dog into a genteel lord, how to survive as a maid in a horror game ִֶָ 𓂃⊹ ִֶָ
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SUMMARY - You don't answer any of Aerion's messages but that backfires as he talks to you in person. But even then, you still don't give him much.
CONTAINS - reader is slightly avoidant, aerion is aerion, banter (crack to a point), read part one
A/N - i couldn't tag most of your accounts for some reason so instead i replied to your comments hehe. Also i got carried away ahahahha can you tell...
You remained seated in your car. Staring at the notifications, you didn’t move until your screen turned back to black.
You jammed the keys into the ignition and backed out of the parking space. The drive back home was scary. You kept looking back at your phone, expecting another text to pop up but thankfully none did.
When you finally got home, you locked the front door and leaned against it.
“What the fuck…” You whispered to yourself, closing your eyes.
It was a good thing the next two days were a weekend. A temporary shield. For the next forty-eight hours, you didn’t have to step foot on campus and risk catching a glimpse of his silver hair across the building.
But hiding out in your room didn’t stop your mind from racing. A full day hadn’t even passed when you finally gave in and opened instagram. You pressed the search bar and typed his username into it.
You weren’t mutuals, he never followed you and neither did you follow him.
There wasn’t much to see. He only had one post and a highlight. It was strange trying to match that version of him with the guy who had texted you for the past month.
Though on sunday, while your phone was open on a groupchat, your peace was interrupted.
👻: youre online, i know you see my texts
You stared at the small block of text, your chest tightening. Again, you didn’t reply.
By monday morning, you had braced yourself to go to campus again. It was packed as you walked with Tanselle.
“So I told him if he thinks I’m letting that happen, he’s out of his mind,” Tanselle was saying, before her hand suddenly clamped down hard on your forearm. “Wait. Don’t look but Aerion is heading right to us.”
You looked up anyway.
Aerion was cutting through the crowded walkway. As soon as you looked, his eyes were already on you, his face tense and unreadable.
The people next to you instinctively quieted down, stepping back as he closed the distance and stopped in front of you.
You tried pivoting to the right but he blocked the way, cutting off your route.
“We need to talk,” he said, voice low and rough.
“I’m trying to get to class,” you replied, keeping your voice even, refusing to let the panic show on your face.
“Don’t do that,” he muttered, stepping closer. His form completely covered yours, and you felt suffocated in the open area. “You know exactly why I’m standing here.”
You kept your arms folded around your waist, your posture rigid. A few students walking past were already slowing down, noticing the interaction. “I have to go,” you mumbled.
“No–”
“Aerion!”
A sharp voice broke the tension between you. A girl with long, blonde hair walked over, calling his name as she hurried over. It was Jess—you knew because your friends had told you she was someone he used to talk to before things apparently ended badly.
“Aerion, hold on,” she said, totally ignoring you as she reached him. “Did you get my messages? You haven’t replied to any of–”
Aerion didn’t look at her. He tilted his head slightly, his jaw tight as he dropped a flat, impatient, “not now.”
It was a short distraction, but it was enough. You didn’t hesitate as you grabbed Tanselle’s wrist, pulling her with you as you turned on your heel. You moved as fast as your legs could carry you.
“Whoa–hey! Slow down!” Tanselle stumbled slightly, scrambling to keep up as you dragged her toward the stairwell.
Once you got on the platform between the stairs, you let go of her wrists, your heart still pounding hard.
Tanselle adjusted her tote bag, looking at you with wide eyes.
“What the hell is happening?” She demanded. “You barely explained a thing to any of us and now Aerion is doing this? Since when do you two even speak?”
“I’ll explain later, I promise.” You looked down to make sure he wasn’t anywhere close. “Let’s just go.”
“You’re a terrible friend,” Tanselle grumbled, though she immediately followed you up to the remaining steps.
Five minutes later, the bell rang and you were already sitting at your usual row in Davis’s class.
“Settle down,” Davis silenced the class. “Like I said, today we’re starting the peer reviews on the personal assignment from the start of this semester. You’ll be working with the same partner from the previous project, find them and get moving.”
Your stomach dropped.
Before you could even think about moving, the chair next to you moved. Tanselle was gone, shooting you a sorry look as she settled next to her partner.
You searched around the room when suddenly, Aerion sat down, his shoulder brushing yours as he turned his upper body toward you.
“How long?” he asked, keeping his voice low, but his eyes were drilling into yours.
You turned your head, gaze fixing on your laptop, your fingers resting still on your keyboard. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Stop,” Aerion leaned closer. He looked guarded, a defensive edge tracing his words. “The text about the project. You knew it was me. How long have you known before that?”
The accusation stung, but you didn’t raise your voice. You looked over at him, offended by the fact that this was his main concern.
“A few days before that.” You furrowed your brows. “I didn’t know anything at the beginning. I put the pieces together when I saw you pull out your phone.”
Aerion watched your face, his brows drawing together as he searched your expression. “Then why did you go silent on monday?”
“Seriously?” You paused, “I don’t know, maybe because you basically called me boring.” You scoffed, looking right back at him.
“You barely even acknowledged me, and then what? You texted that your partner who happens to be me was just whatever. Why would I want to keep talking to you after that?”
Aerion flinched. The words seemed to hit him, the defensive wall in his eyes fracturing into genuine surprise. He opened his mouth to say something, his hand shifting on the desk, but a shadow fell over your screen.
“Are you guys actually working, or what?”
Jess had walked up the tiered steps, stopping at the edge of your row. She leaned on the desk, looking down at you with a fake, dismissive smile.
“Don’t take it personal,” Jess said, her voice loud enough for the people in the next row to hear. “He won’t even remember your name next week.”
The comment was explicitly meant to embarass you, and it worked. You felt your face warm up as a few classmates looked over.
But before the silence could stretch, Aerion turned.
The change in him was instantaneous. He looked up at Jess, his face turning cold.
“Go.” His voice wasn’t loud, but it brooked no refusal.
Jess’s smile faltered slightly. “I was just saying–”
“I don’t care,” Aerion interrupted, his stare landing on her in a way that made her step back. “Leave. We’re working.”
The people watching started whispering and nudging each other. Jess’s cheeks flushed a bright red. She wanted to snap back, but caught the total lack of interest in Aerion’s eyes, and quickly turned around.
You sat there, your hands unmoving. The frustration that had been building up since last week slowly started to ease, replaced by a strange, heavy feeling.
Aerion had just defended you in front of the whole class. You blinked twice, trying to process what had just happened.
He took a slow breath. Not looking at anyone else in the room, he turned back to face you.
“Thanks,” you murmured, swallowing as your eyes landed back on the screen of your laptop. You clicked open the peer review rubric Professor Davis had shared to the group. You had to find a way out of talking with him.
“Davis wants us to evaluate the thesis of the intro first,” you pointed out, acting as if nothing happened.
Aerion licked the bottom of his lip, caught off guard by the abrupt shift. His shoulders shifted as you continued looking through the rubric. “What?”
“Is your document open, or do you want to look at mine first?” you answered, tapping your trackpad to highlight the first section of the bibliography.
A frustrated sigh escaped him, you could see his confusion from your peripheral vision, his jaw clenching as he realized you were shutting him out.
He was used to people reacting to him by either backing down or trying to stay in his favour. This indifference was clearly a new territory for him. A difficult one too.
For a second, it looked like he might push past it anyway, his hand tightening on the edge of the desk. Yet he let out a heavy, defeated exhale, pulling his laptop closer. “Mine is open.” His voice was clipped.
For the rest of the period, you kept your barrier firmly in place. You weren’t sure why it was so hard for you to hold a proper conversation with him.
You two texted nonstop for a month. It wasn’t like he was a complete stranger. But somehow it felt like it.
Aerion complied, though his compliance was tense. His fingers tapped against the desk whenever you took too long to read through a paragraph. His focus was entirely divided between the text on his screen and your face.
Every time your fingers accidentally brushed his while adjusting the laptop, he would wait to see if you’d pull away. You always did.
When Davis dismissed the class at last, relief coursed through you.
Snapping your laptop shut, you slid it into your bag and slung the strap over your shoulder. “I’ll upload the comments to the docs by the end of the week.” You stood up, looking him in the eye for a brief, passing second.
Aerion stared up at you from his seat, his throat bobbing as he swallowed whatever he wanted to say.
“Okay.”
You walked to the exit, where Tanselle was already waiting for you. Turning your head for a moment before exiting, your eyes met his.
Reluctantly, you had to tell your friends everything as they kept demanding. No, almost everything.
You conveniently left out the part where you had grown to have this strange, unexplainable, and impenetrable feeling for him.
Tanselle then pointed out how she hasn’t seen Aerion with any girls recently. Everyone agreed, which didn’t help your case.
Yet two days passed without a single notification.
By wednesday, the silence had turned from peace into an uncomfortable, distracting weight. You spent the night trying to study, but your mind kept drifting back to him.
Eventually, you couldn’t resist and opened his chat. You scrolled all the way back to the start, back when he was just an anonymous stranger who made you laugh.
Just as you got to the part where you started icing him out, a new message came through.
You frowned, lips parting as you clicked on the button to the most recent chat.
👻: if you wont talk to me in person, fine
👻: lets do it here
Your heart skipped a beat at the sight of the text. You sat up and paced your room for a full minute before warily typing back.
YOU: What do you want aerion
It felt weird to actually acknowledge who you were talking to.
👻: do me a favour
👻: talk to me like you did before finding out. pretend you dont know who i am
Your eyes narrowed at his message. It was a bizarre request, but the familiar look of the text thread made it entirely too easy to slip back.
YOU: What???
YOU: Fine
👻: tell me everything
YOU: Ok u wanna know what i think?
YOU: I think the guy im paired with in davis’s class is an arrogant prick
There was a long pause. The typing bubbles appeared, vanished, then appeared again.
👻: an arrogant prick? really?
YOU: Yes
YOU: He refuses to talk to anyone outside his immediate circle, he walks like he owns the world, and most importantly he treats his project partners as if they were invisible
👻: maybe hes just focused
YOU: Nope, he didn’t even look at my face
YOU: Can you believe it
YOU: Then he has the nerve to say that im a whatever.. Like sorry i didnt juggle for your entertainment??
A couple minutes passed and you thought he wasn't going to respond, but he was still online.
👻: huh
👻: he sounds terrible
A small, involuntary smile tugged at the corner of your mouth, and you tried your best to fight it down.
YOU: He is, hes mean
👻: i didnt mean to be
The sudden drop of the bit you two were doing made your breath hitch. The text continued.
👻: im sorry about monday
👻: and the thing i said
👻: youre not whatever
You stared at his texts, the honesty of it surprising you. You typed out a reply then deleted it. While trying to formulate a reply, another message popped up.
👻: i have to go
The chat went dead. You sat back on your pillows, staring at those four words, your mind spinning into a frantic spiral. I have to go. What did that mean? Go for the day? Or was this his dramatic way of saying goodbye to whatever you guys were?
You slammed your phone down on the mattress, irritated by the sudden exit. You needed to clear your head.
Sighing, you grabbed a towel and headed into the bathroom to take a long, hot shower, letting the steam wash away the stress of the week.
By the time you stepped back into your bedroom, it was already dark outside. Drying your hair and changing into your pajamas, you picked your phone up from the bed to check the time.
There was a new text, sent just a minute ago.
👻: open the door
You froze, reading the message over and over again to make sure you weren’t hallucinating.
You walked into the living room, your bare feet making no sound against the floor.
You never gave him your address.
The only people who knew the exact apartment complex you lived in were your closest friends.
Fuck, you thought. Tanselle…
Panic flooded your body as you approached the entryway, and right on cue, a knock came from the other side of the door.
Taking a shallow breath, you unlocked the deadbolt and pulled the door open.
Aerion was standing under the dim hallway light. He was wearing a tight gym shirt, his silver hair slightly messy from the harsh wind of the night.
He wasn’t empty handed. His right hand was carrying a bag that looked to be from a bakery. He saw your gaze switching from his face to the plastic. “You mentioned last week that you were eating cheesecake.”
Your brain refused to believe that Aerion Targaryen was standing at your door with a whole cheesecake because of a passing comment you had made a whole week ago.
The wall you had built felt incredibly fragile right now, but you had to keep your composure. Slowly, you stepped aside, opening the door just wide enough for him to move past.
Aerion walked into the apartment, getting his shoes off by the door. He looked at you, taking in your damp hair and pajamas, then walked to stand near the edge of the kitchen table, setting the bag on the counter.
You stared at him, your mind trying to catch up. The tips of your ears went red at the realization that you were wearing only your pajamas in front of him.
“How do you even know where I live?”
“Tanselle,” he said bluntly. “Don’t start a fight with her, I didn’t give her much of an option.”
“Of course...” You huffed mostly to yourself.
You walked past him to the water dispenser, grabbing a clean glass from the drying rack and filling it with cold water. You set it on the counter near him.
“Thanks.” He picked up the glass. Taking a slow sip, his eyes scanned the living room before settling back on you.
“Look,” he started, voice dropping an octave, sounding rougher in the quiet apartment. “I’ll get to the point. I know you think I'm a piece of shit. It's just that I... didn’t know it was you.” His shoulders shifted slightly as his muscles got less tense.
You raised a brow at that. “So just because you didn't know it was me you treated me like that?”
“No. It sounds terrible I know. I guess I was already comfortable talking to you online that I figured I didn't need to talk to anyone in person,” he explained, his tone stripped of its usual cold edge. “When you started ignoring me, it drove me crazy.”
“At first, I thought you knew the entire time. I assumed the worst, but then I started worrying. And I didn’t wanna stop talking to you.” His voice got quiet toward the end.
You didn’t know what to say. The honesty of his words rang through your mind, effectively breaking down the image you have already built of him in your head.
“...And what about Jess?” You asked after a beat and immediately regretted it.
Aerion’s eyes flickered with genuine disgust and annoyance before he shook his head.
“She’s nothing.” He leaned against the counter. “We used to talk,” he hesitated, “then I stopped but she couldn't accept it. She’s nothing.” He repeated, noticing the fidgeting of your hands.
“Oh,” was all you could say. Aerion seemed to recognize the shift in the air. He finished the rest of the water and set it back on the counter.
“I should let you get some sleep,” he cleared his throat, eyes lingering on your lips.
He walked toward the front door, putting his shoes back on. You opened the door, unsure if you even wanted him to leave.
The curiosity that had been lingering in the back of your mind all week finally slipped out. “Before you go... I wanna know something.”
Aerion paused, an amused spark gleaming in his eyes. “Yeah?”
“What did you think of me at the start? Like after you found out I wasn't Michael.”
He let out a low chuckle, a smirk splaying across his face. “I thought you had a ridiculously sharp mouth. You always called me out on my attitude, it was infruriating. But it was intriguing.”
Aerion then tilted his head, turning the tables. “My turn. Why'd you even reply to an unknown number?”
A smile broke through your expression, you no longer felt the need to put on a mask in front of him. “Mmm... being real I'm pretty sure I was just bored and couldn't sleep. I thought it'd be funny and it absolutely was.”
He laughed softly and paused at the threshold, turning back to look at you. “So you're saying you're glad you replied?”
You pretended to think for a second, looking up. “Maybe,” you teased, the familiar banter coming back.
A tiny smile touched his lips—the first real one you’ve seen from him in person. He let out a hum. “Right. I'll remember that. Go sleep now.” He backed up to the threshold, his eyes only leaving yours as he turned around.
“Goodnight.” You called out to him as you closed the door and locked the deadbolt, hearing the thud of his footsteps slowly fade.
An hour later, you tried to go straight to sleep, but you kept tossing and turning. Giving up, you got out of bed and walked to the kitchen, pulling the box out of the bag. You recognised the logo on the box as you opened the lid, it was from the expensive bakery near campus.
The cheesecake looked so incredible, you didn’t bother with a plate. Grabbing a fork, you stabbed the cake and took a massive bite.
After eating a solid half of it directly out of the box, you stared at the remaining mess and pulled your phone out to snap a quick photo.
YOU: [IMAGE ATTACHED]
YOU: I forgot to thank you lol
You didn’t expect him to reply immediately, assuming he was already asleep. But the bubbles popped up almost instantly.
👻: youre welcome
👻: did you save me a bite or are you selfish
YOU: Nope its all for me
👻: next time ill just make you feed it to me
You bit your lip to contain your smile, sliding down onto the living room rug and propping your back on the sofa.
YOU: Hm
YOU: Depends on how well u behave the rest of the week
👻: im always well behaved
Giggling, you quickly texted back.
YOU: Liar
YOU: Anw out of curiosity what do u have me saved as
👻: unknown
👻: until about a day ago
YOU: Huh what is it now
👻: thats for my eyes only
YOU: Oh rly
YOU: Ok then im saving u as row four lol
👻: how creative
YOU: It fits
YOU: Reminds me that ure an arrogant prick everyday
👻: good
👻: think about me everyday
Your heart did a violent flip.
Going to his profile, you debated on actually renaming him as row four, but you decided on Aerion 🎱. The emoji just felt right.
YOU: Just changed it
Aerion 🎱: row four?
YOU: No and im not telling u
YOU: Thats unless u tell me minee?
Aerion 🎱: oh thats how it is
Aerion 🎱: never
YOU: Wow!! Ur impossible im gonna off myself
YOU: Ok im going to sleep before u piss me off more
Aerion 🎱: lmao alright
Aerion 🎱: goodnight dont die
You let out a content huff before getting up and heading back to your bedroom.
YOU: Goodnightt
The next morning, the lecture hall was filled with pre-class chatter. It was history class but your professor fell sick and Professor Davis was there as a substitute.
As usual, you sat beside Tanselle who was vibrating with anxiety, staring at you sideways ever since you arrived.
Leaning in close, she lowered her voice to a whisper. “Okay, you’re scaring me. You haven’t mentioned him once. Are you not going to kill me?”
You let out a small giggle, shaking your head. “Nope. It’s all settled.”
Tanselle clicked her tongue, utterly puzzled. “Wait… really?” So he didn’t actually go to your house then?”
“No, he did,” you corrected smoothly, as if it was completely normal.
A noise of confusion escaped her, her eyes bulging. “What!? He actually came over? And you’re acting like this isn’t wild?”
Just then, the doors swung open, and Aerion walked in. He was late, and Professor Davis didn’t bother calling him out, simply beginning the lesson.
You watched as he walked up the main aisle, expecting him to stop in row four, but he continued walking. He moved past his friends without a second thought.
Then without tilting his head up, his eyes locked onto yours. A warmth instantly bloomed in your chest, a smile growing on your face, and you quickly bit your inner cheek to hide it.
He reached your row and without saying a word, he pulled the chair beside you and slid effortlessly into the seat.
Nudging your chin toward the lower row, you pointed at a few familiar faces who had turned around their chairs to watch him. “Your friends are literally staring at you. They’re waiting for you.”
Aerion followed your glance for a split second before looking back at you. “So?”
Before you could reply, the screech of the microphone caught everyone’s attention. “You two,” Davis barked into the mic, his voice echoing. “If you two have matters that are more pressing to discuss then feel free to take it out of the class.”
The weight of Davis calling you out together made the class go extremely silent, staring back and forth between you and Aerion. You could see Jess staring menacingly from the other side of the room.
Your lips formed into a pout as Davis finally looked away, continuing his talk. Aerion, on the other hand, did not take his eyes off you, his smirk widening slightly at the sudden audience.
He slowly leaned back in his chair and for a moment you thought the distraction was over. But under the desk Aerion shifted. The side of his thigh bumped firmly against yours, deliberately pressing in with lingering heat. A sharp jolt shot straight up your spine.
You shot him a warning glare, but he was already busy on his phone.
A second later, your phone buzzed in your lap.
Aerion 🎱: z
Aerion 🎱: z
Aerion 🎱: z
You hid your hands under the desk, looking down to make sure Professor Davis wasn’t looking.
YOU: Wtf
Aerion 🎱: we cant talk out loud
Aerion 🎱: i have to find other ways to get your attention
You glanced at him out of the corner of your eyes, but his face looked to be absolutely calm and concentrated as he pretended to analyze the projector screen.
YOU: Oh ure a pro
YOU: Wait move ur leg ppl r staring
Aerion 🎱: doesnt matter
Aerion 🎱: if you care move yours then
YOU: Ok nevermind
Aerion 🎱: mhm
Aerion 🎱: what are you doing after class
YOU: Its a free period im probably gonna go to the cafe
Aerion 🎱: wrong
Aerion 🎱: we’re going somewhere
YOU: ??? Hello why wasnt i informed
Aerion 🎱: i just informed you
You almost laughed at that but managed to keep it in, not wanting to draw even more attention from Davis.
YOU: Stop before i get kicked out of the class
YOU: Ok im leaving u bye
Aerion 🎱: stay
Aerion 🎱: hes not gonna see
YOU: If he does im blocking u
Aerion 🎱: i know where you live it doesnt matter
Your lips parted at the sheer audacity of his last message, a rush of heat hitting your cheeks as the memory from last night flashed through your mind.
Looking up from your phone, you caught the subtle twitch at the corner of Aerion’s lips. It was then that you realised that replying to a random message was easily the best mistake you’ve ever made.
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, something 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 silent, efficient 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 cold, blunt 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 and easy.
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. The realization settled over him with the weight of inevitability. 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
Author's Note: This is for both a request I received HERE, and a few mentions from people asking me to write Billy back in California, but also for me, because I missed a softer Billy in my writing... This isn't before Hawkins, it's soon after his 18th birthday and sticks to a canon timeline (I got carried away... this is long)
Summery: Billy is back in California for Susan's brother's funeral, someone he never even met, but while he's here no one can stop him from visiting the one girl who he hasn't stopped thinking about since he moved away from the only place he'll ever call home
Warnings: 18+ only!! MINORS DNI, Smut and fluff, softer Billy, but still Billy... California Billy (because when he gets there his shoulders soften, and he feels like himself again... yeah he's still a dick, but not so angry, a little softer, less rough around the edges, Billy in love, kissing, language, oral (f and m receiving), p in v, mentions of death,
My Masterlist in case you need more Billy
Divider by @cafekitsune
For Billy, landing back in Cali was like taking a deep, almost desperate breath, after being held down under water for months. The moment his feet touched the dusty, sun baked ground, and he felt that familiar warm Pacific breeze touching his skin, the tension in his shoulders began to soften and if anyone was around to see it, you could probably pin point the exact moment it happened.
Something cleaner in the air. Didn't harbor that off putting combo of cow shit and tractor dust and all that shitty midwestern rain that made you feel raw and dirty all the time. Here it smelled like the sea and freedom. Full of blue skies and familiar places.
God he missed it and being back only intensified the feeling.
Beneath the relief though, was this simmering restlessness, a kind of anxiety. He'd been secretly counting down the minutes since they got here. The funeral. The family bullshit. Just here in California for a quick weekend, not because Neil wanted to be. In fact he complained the entire time. Susan's brother died and there was a funeral to attend, but Neil made it clear they weren't staying, and she was lucky he was letting her go at all.
Billy couldn't give two shits about some guy he never met. He was here for other reasons.
Truth was the thought of you had been this constant low frequency hum in the back of his mind since he turned his back and drove off that early autumn day.
On the drive back, every girl with your hair color that blew past his rolled down window made his adrenaline spike, until he realized the color wasn't exactly right, the face not quite you. The way your eyes sparkled like California sunshine, he'd know them in an instant.
He'd spent the last few nights barely sleeping at all, his mind racing with memories of you. The way you looked at the beach, pretty hair blowing soft around your smiling face, the sun highlighting your skin, your laugh and the way it gave him that familiar ache inside his chest. You, the only girl who could ever dare tell him to shut the fuck up and him actually listening, well for the most part, even if he just did it so you'd kiss him.
He'd been planning his sneak away for a while. Knew Neil would never let him go off on his own once they got here, so he had to just do it, damn the consequences. He would deal with Neil later. The questions. The brutality that would follow. Doesn't linger on those thoughts right now, more important things on his mind than his asshole father. Who was never really a father at all.
There was a burning inside him, this need, a frantic, hungry energy in his veins to take back the only part of his life that didn't feel like a constant battle. His life here, in California, before Hawkins, before leaving everything he ever loved behind for some horse shit town that didn't know him at all.
Wasn't just coming to visit an old girlfriend, he was coming to find himself again. To sink back into the warmth of the only person who made him feel like he could just be.
You.
The Camaro even seemed happier here. She purred softer, ran smoother, it was like she remembered too. Away from where she always coughed and choked, had a hard time getting started in the bitter winter of Indiana.
So glad Neil let him drive here himself, leading the way. Neil's truck, fortunately for Billy but unfortunately for Max, had only room for three. Billy needed to be alone with his thoughts and he was secretly glad Susan didn't insist that he take Max in the Camaro.
Drives along the familiar streets on the way to your house. Knows them like the back of his hand. Been there a hundred times, both in real life and in his dreams. Nothing's changed since he left and yeah, okay, it's only been about seven months since then, but Billy knew that things had a way of changing in a heartbeat, and not always for the best.
Pulls up outside your house. Looks exactly the same as he remembered. The street quiet, but not Hawkins quiet, a prettier kind of peacefulness... like nostalgia wrapped in this blue sea of long forgotten hazy memories, suddenly coming to life, and it makes him smile.
Gives the engine a little rev, just because it's something he used to do when he drove up to your house to pick you up, of course, this time you're not expecting him.
Cuts the engine. Just sits a minute wondering if he should have a smoke first, but instead he reaches for a stick of gum, then even decides against that. Bites his nails instead.
Sighs soft, head falling back against the headrest for a beat, to gather the courage to go to your door and say... say what exactly... hi... it's been a while... you remember me, right?
Before the move, your relationship was this beautiful, chaotic whirlwind of lust and deeply intense sex, arguing then making up. Billy, always the golden boy no matter where he lived, the surfer kid with that dangerous smile. Late night drives along the Pacific Coast Highway, windows down, salty air blowing through your hair, the radio loud, Camaro fast. Those nights you two would sit on the roof of that old abandoned building downtown, get high and look at the stars, talk about dreams and the future. He taught you how to catch your first wave. You taught him how to be faithful to just one girl, something he hasn't done since. You, a beach bum, just like him. There was this intensity in the way you looked at him, that he loved but could never put into words that feeling it gave him. When he drove off that bright blue day, it was like the sun had been ripped from his sky. The weather in Indiana reflecting his feelings, when he stepped out of his Camaro and into that hick town without a friend in the world.
"Get the fuck up, asshole."
Mumbles against the fingers pushed against his teeth, spitting a nail out the open window. Gets up and out of the car, all slow and lazy, so Billy-like. Moves like he's catering to an audience, even when there isn't one.
The dry heat hits him and he loves it, lives for it. Missed it with every ounce of his being. Something about the air in Cali, makes his curls pop and bounce pretty against his shoulders without the help of any product at all.
Realizes his palms are sweaty, so he runs them along his jeans. His nerves getting to him more than he wants to admit, all his little nervous habits coming out all at once.
Walks up the few steps to your door. Heart hammering hard. For some reason he's terrified the girl he remembers, the girl who is his anchor to this place, might have moved on or worse... might look at him and see nothing but a shell of the guy she used to know. He's become more angry. He knows it. Feels like his world is out of his control. You only know the California Billy... not whatever grew in it's place over these past few months.
Knocks firm... hard... maybe a little too hard on your door. Seems to boom even over the soft din of cars driving by and seagulls overhead. His hand coming down and unconsciously pressing against the shark tooth he keeps in his pocket, a comfort really... a habit too, of pressing the outline of it, rough edges digging into his fingers, sometimes until they bleed.
The second the door swings open, it feels as though all the air in his lungs is sucked right out. Standing there like an angel, right there in front of him and he feels lovesick all over again.
You.
Not in his head. Not in a photo. But you... real. Seeing your face after all this time hurts. Feels like this violent rush of everything he's been trying to push down since he left flooding up to the surface too fast.
God you're more beautiful than he remembered, if that was even possible. More beautiful than the worn out photo he has of you tucked deep in the pages of his Penthouse magazine, hidden away from the prying eyes of all the random girls he brings to his room or nosy little sisters.
"Missed me, baby?"
His mouth curls into that slow easy grin you missed so much. Just standing there outside your door, like he's god's gift to the world.
"BLUE? OMG!! Billy!!"
You scream and jump into his arms. He catches you instinctively. You wrap your bare legs around his hips, burying your face against his warm neck, smelling his skin, kissing him everywhere you can get your lips.
You're flooded with so much emotion and absolute shock, seeing him standing there at your door again, after all this time. You're giggling like an idiot, can't help yourself, you're so unbelievably happy.
Blue... a nickname he almost forgot... buried down deep with everything else from this place. Hidden somewhere inside himself where no one could find it, not even him. Until you said it again, and all the memories come rushing back. A name you gave him because of all the time he spent by the sea, those blue denim Levi's he lives in, his Camaro, of course, but most of all because of those gorgeous baby blues that will stare into your soul if you let them.
He says your name. It's soft, a choke, his voice cracking just a little. Might be ashamed, if it was heard by anyone other than you.
"Are you real?"
You ask, pulling back and looking at the face you would know with your eyes closed. There's something different there though, a soft tiredness, dark circles beneath his eyes, but the sparkle is there, maybe smaller, but still burning pretty.
"Yeah, I'm real. You though... fuck... still a sexy little thing."
Gives you a sly smile, letting you slide down his body, but still holding you close. Thick heavy body exactly like you remember, although his shoulders seem broader, like he's grown more, or he's been lifting weights more than he used to. Maybe you just forgot how solid he always felt, pressed this close.
His hands come up and cup your pretty face, thumbs tracing the line of your jaw, rubbing softly and it feels so good. You stare at each other for what feels like forever.
"What's with the caterpillar?"
You ask and his eyebrows furrow.
You motion to his mustache.
"Funny."
He laughs and so do you.
"I like it. Looks good on you. You look really good... like always."
You say, then add:
"What are you doing here, Bills? Moving back, I hope!"
You smile up at him and your beauty takes his breath.
"I wish... family shit... funeral."
He says.
"Neil? Did Neil... ?"
You ask, hopeful.
Billy makes this short little huff sound.
"Nah, some guy I've never even fuckn' met... bunch of bullshit really. Just a way to get back to the coast... back to you, baby."
He answers, gaze lingering on your pretty soft lips for a beat before flicking back up to your eyes.
"God Billy, I've missed you so much! We all do. Just wasn't the same after you left."
You say, referring to the group of friends you two hung with.
"Well fuck, I mean who wouldn't miss me?"
He jokes, making a little tsk sound with his teeth.
You smile, playing with the soft curls that fall around his shoulders. His hair much longer than when you last saw him.
"After you left, we all kind of drifted apart, ya know? Sid joined the Army... loser couldn't even get past basic training and now he's fixing cars with his uncle at the shop. Lloyd's at Cal Tech... got into computers if you can believe that. He says they're the future or some shit."
You chuckle and Billy's smirk falters for just a second.
Truth was Billy wasn't ever really super close to anyone, except maybe you. Thinks about the crazy energy you all had though. It was fun. The stupid late night drunk surfing, racing down the streets to see who's car was the fastest, that was until the cops came and ruined all the fun. All of you out all hours of the night, sometimes until the sun came up. Because California never shuts off, like Hawkins does. Billy missed that. A nice distraction from what waited for him once he got back home, always past his curfew.
"The army? Jesus. I could have told him he wasn't cut out for that shit."
Laughs, shaking his head, but the humor in his eyes fades and you see this sudden sharp intensity in them. His eyes were always so expressive. You could always tell when he was lying to you, or if he was off in some way, after a fight with Neil or if there was just something on his mind. They're still sitting pretty, hidden behind the longest lashes you've ever seen on a guy. Still such a pretty boy. Tight jeans and motorcycle boots, his usual attire when he wasn't at the beach. Wearing this faded Metallica t-shirt, from a concert you all went to a few years ago. As always that Virgin Mary pendant dangling from around his neck... was his mom's. You didn't really understand fully why he still wore it, after what she did to him. You didn't bring it up and he didn't talk about it.
"Wanna come inside? No one's home."
You say, soft and sweet. Looking at those tiny freckles across the bridge of his nose, realizing how much you've missed him. How it hurts your heart just to see him standing here. That warm familiar smell of cigarettes and those soft amber notes of his faded cologne. The same damn cologne he wore when he lived down the street from you. Something else there too, always was... something comforting to you, something uniquely Billy.
"Oh yeah? Wanna show me how much you missed me?"
He hums, your faces close together, eyes burning into yours like he's reading your thoughts. His fingers finding yours, interlacing them together.
"Maybe."
You bite your bottom lip and guide him inside.
The climb up to your bedroom is a frantic, breathless blur of tangled limbs and desperate needy friction. Pushing you against a wall, hands roaming over your curves like they're the salvation for all his sins. You undo his belt between soft bites and tender kisses, random clothes falling anywhere and everywhere along the hallway.
Billy feels feral, a starving need to be close to you, to somehow erase the distance Indiana put between you two. But despite the desperate, almost violent rush to get naked, to feel you against him, to get inside you, his touch is warm and intentional, like he's savoring this.
The moment his lips touch yours, everything else falls away. No outside world pulling him in places he doesn't want to go. There's only the scent of your skin. The reality of you, back in his arms.
His strong frame is heavy against yours, pinning you to the mattress, once he has you down on the bed. Eyes burning like a blue fire, wild and hungry, his breaths heavy against your mouth.
"Fuck." (He says your name). Thought about you every night. Wondering if you'd even remember me... remember how good we were."
Whispers, gaze raking over your beautiful face, like something out of a dream he never thought would come true. Never thought he'd be lucky enough to touch you again.
"Never forget you... ever, Billy."
You say and his lips crash against yours again. Tongue sweeping into your mouth, hands everywhere all at once. Tugging your tank top up and over your head, tossing it somewhere on the floor behind him. Hot mouth licking and kissing from your lips, trailing down the sensitive line of your throat, teeth grazing your skin. Sucks and bites hard, causing instant bruises and you moan, eyes fluttering shut. It's crazy how his mouth alone can drive you crazy.
"Not gonna let you forget, baby."
He huffs.
His fingers fast and experienced, unhooking your bra and tossing it aside. His bare skin finally meeting yours, the touch burning hot, skin on skin and the sensation makes him whimper. Lifts his head, looking down at your naked body beneath his.
"So fuckn' beautiful."
He pants, pretty curls framing his face. He's like an angel.
Lips leaning down, his mouth achingly hot when he latches onto your nipple, sucking on it hard, leaving this tingling feeling that goes straight to your core, making you squirm against the sheets, arching your body more into his.
"Billy... missed you... missed this."
You whimper, running your fingers through his perfect curls, tugging. He licks straight across your skin, from one nipple over to the other. Hot mouth sucking firm, then popping off and flicking it rapidly with his tongue. One hand busy squeezing and kneading your opposite tit, while his mouth worships the other.
Billy loves your softness. Loves how your body tastes. Could swallow you whole, melt himself completely into you. That way he'd never be alone again.
Big hand slides lower, flat down your belly. His mind frantic with an impatient energy, a desperate hunger that's been building through the long months without you. Stroking his cock, alone in his room, thinking about this exact moment. Feels like he could cum right now, lose himself completely right here, before he's even inside you, before his cock is even out of his briefs.
Your skin, so familiar and so devastatingly beautiful, makes his cock throb and leak, aching to be inside your tightness. God he missed you so much.
Presses his thick fingers against your bare cunt, sliding them down through your folds, groaning, breath huffing against your skin. Gathering your slick, running his fingers back up to your clit, rubbing with slow delicious circles. You arch your back, bucking softly into his hand.
"Wanna taste you, Billy."
You moan, pushing softly against his chest.
Takes a moment for him to move, not wanting to leave this perfect spot. Resisting the urge to dive into your cunt with his tongue. To lap hungrily at your pretty slit. The smell of your pussy so heady, making his mouth water. Wants desperately to push his face right in that perfect heat, but he lets you move him anyway, your words making his balls tighten.
Rolls onto his back, head against your pillows, soft, dirty blonde curls splayed out all pretty. Watches you through heavy lids, pink lips slightly parted.
"I'm all yours, baby girl."
His words are shaky, his eyes soft and wet.
Levis already long gone somewhere in the hallway. You slowly run your hands along his solid, muscular thighs. They're strong and thick, hot to the touch. Your hands running smooth straight up to the waistband of his white briefs. You stop there, watching his blissed out face before pulling them down, slowly.
"Mmm... all for me?"
You hum, watching his pretty dick spring free.
This soft little sound comes out of him, when you free his cock, his head pushing further back against your pillows, as he watches you. Watches as your eyes trace the length of him, making his hips twitch involuntarily, wanting you to touch him. Licks his lips when you take him in your hand. Hot and heavy. Your fingers barely able to wrap fully around his girth. You forgot just how big Billy really was.
"Fuck, angel... you're gonna be the death of me."
He mumbles, breathing harder. His fingers tangling in the sheets next to him, trying to anchor himself. Pushing his hips slightly up and off the mattress, needy, desperate for the girl he's been dreaming of for months.
Billy's cock is beautiful. Thick and weighty, yet soft like velvet against your skin. The tip flushed a pretty pink, the same pink as his lips. Sunlight streaming through your curtains catches on the beads of pre cum that pool at the head, and you lean down and lick them off with the flat of your tongue.
"Still such a slut for me."
Growls, this sharp wave of pleasure shooting throughout his entire body once your hot tongue laps at the head of cock, then running it underneath the tip, along the spot you know drives him crazy. You're squeezing him nice and tight, but not moving your hand just yet.
Just tasting him. Teasing him.
Watching you through hooded eyes, his pupils blown wide as your head dips down, taking his large cock in your mouth, slow and deep. Your lips stretching wide around his thickness. The tight wet heat of your mouth shatters him, breathless sounds bubble up from somewhere deep in his chest. You feel his body go taut. You run your hand over his tight abs, raking your nails back down his smooth, tan skin, making his muscles quiver under you, and you love it so much when Billy lets go.
He deserves to be loved.
"Mmm, you taste so fucking good, Billy."
Lifting off him for a beat, just to tell him, then swallowing his cock again, deeper this time.
He reaches down, big hand gripping your hair, not tight, not rough, but enough to guide your movements. Fingers lazily scratching against your scalp, lacing through your hair.
You suck him good and slow, enjoying the way he tastes. It's addictive, the salty musk of him.
You hollow out your cheeks and stroke what can't fit into your mouth. Spit pools around the edges and slides down past your fingers, slipping down his shaft.
"That's my girl... take it... take every inch like I know you can, baby."
He purrs and you look up at him with your sexy eyes, sinking down more. You're rewarded with another pretty sound coming from deep his throat and you hum, the vibrations echoing throughout his whole body and he chuckles soft and scratches your scalp.
"Fuck, gonna make me shoot my load."
He lets out this little huff, almost a laugh, but it mixes with a sweet little moan, his fingers gripping tighter on your hair.
There's a heavy ache in your jaw from the obscene way your mouth is stretching around him. The sounds you're making on his dick are sloppy and pornographic. You gag a little, letting him hit the back of your throat, the weight of him filling your mouth completely. You feel him react, his bum lifting slightly when he feels that sexy warmth sinking down and swallowing him completely.
You pull back up to the tip, then swallow him down in one long motion again and again. Using your hand, gripping him at the base, stroking in tandem with the sucking of your hot, wet mouth. His thighs tremble lightly, his toes curling against your sheets and you can tell by his breathing that he's close.
There's a softness in the way he looks down at you. Something like love maybe. You pull away slowly. A thin trail of spit and pre cum connecting you two together. You lick across your lips and he watches as the saliva breaks and you smile up at him, smacking his fat dick against your outstretched tongue.
You smile all cute and he wants to slap you, cum on your face and maybe even marry you. Your lips are swollen and pink, your eyes soft and watery. His hand softens its grip in your hair, his thumb presses against your forehead, rubbing in little circles.
"Such a good girl for me."
His voice sounds wrecked.
"You want my pussy, Billy?"
You ask, this sweet begging look in your pretty eyes.
"Fuck, yeah. Want that sweet cunt so bad, baby."
Hums soft, then grabs your waist and hoists you up, quick, dragging your body over his until you're straddling him. Your wet, aching heat pressed hard against his throbbing cock.
"So impatient."
You tease, your head tilting towards your shoulder, biting your bottom lip all coy. Fingernails trailing down his chest and belly, leaving tiny little red marks on his skin.
"You fuckn' can't wait either... been missing my big dick and you know it."
Smirks, but you can see in blown out pupils just how much he needs this. That he's missed you just as much as you've missed him.
You lower yourself slowly, your eyes locked on his as you guide the thick, heavy head against your soaked hole. The second his tip pushes against you, you both moan, his hands digging into your hips, helping to guide you down his thick length. You sink down slowly. You feel the stretch already, filling your cunt with a delicious fullness and it's just in a little past the tip.
When he finally gets inside you, fully inside you, balls deep, you let out a sharp breathless cry, your head falling back as you get used to the sheer mass of him. He holds you still and you feel it pulse inside you, deep and heavy and it feels like heaven. Billy fills you like no one ever could. You watch his jaw clench, his fingers flexing on your hips, his whole body trying hard to not rut violently into you.
Finally you start to move in slow, grinding circles, your hips rolling sexy, making him groan deep, his tongue coming out and licking across his lips. The friction is delicious, a searing heat that builds in your low belly and radiates throughout your whole body. You pick up the pace, becoming more frantic, lifting your hips and slamming back down. The sloppy sounds bouncing off your bedroom walls.
"You fill me so good, baby... fuck... your cock is so perfect."
You cry, bouncing pretty, tits jiggling, more sexy than anything he's ever seen in his entire life.
"Yeah, you like that... like my fat dick in your tight hole."
Billy's hands move from your hips, sliding up to your waist, fingers bruising your soft skin as he pulls you down harder, forcing you to take every bit of him. His heels digging into the mattress as he ruts himself up to meet your downward bounces.
"Mmm... love it, Billy... mmm."
You lean forward, tits brushing against his chest. You reach, grabbing his hands, lacing your fingers with his as you drive yourself down onto him again and again. His cock hitting perfectly against your cervix with every deep thrust, making your vision blur and your mind go fuzzy.
You can't control the volume of your voice and the crazy sounds you're making. You're loud and wild, moaning and screaming. Anyone walking past your window right now might think you were being murdered, but you don't give a shit, because Billy Hargrove is back and his dick is buried deep in your cunt and you're hopelessly in love with him.
He's completely undone by the sight of you, the way your pretty hair tosses wildly with every bounce on his cock, your lips parted and glistening. Ecstasy written all over your beautiful face and he's captivated by you. His own breath coming in jagged, desperate hitches as he lets you take control.
"Yeah, just like that, princess.. fuck... you're so tight, angel... milking my cock so good."
He rasps. Can feel the pressure building deep in his balls, knows he's got to stop soon or he's going shoot his load before you cum and he doesn't want that, just feels too good to stop.
You're lost in pleasure, eyes half closed, your breath hitching in your throat as you find the perfect rhythm. You can feel the tension in his thighs, the way his muscles flex beneath you as you bounce happily along his fat dick.
That tension in your belly snaps, this beautiful sensation fills your entire body. An explosion deep in your core making your whole body arch and grind down, pussy fluttering as you cum, wild and beautiful, milking his cock good, bouncing on it rough and fast.
"Billy... oh fuck!... Fuck... Billy...."
A second later Billy moans your name, his hips pushing back up into you, then stopping, holding your hips still as he cums. Shoots his hot load deep in your cunt, filling you up.
You collapse against his chest, both of you breathing hard and laughing softly at the intensity of it all.
"Jesus, you really missed me, yeah?"
He teases.
"Please... who missed who? You came all the way from Indiana for a little pussy."
You laugh and give his pec a little bite, leaving behind an imprint of your teeth.
"Ouch! Such a little bitch. Bitch with the prettiest pussy though... worth every mile to get here."
Laughs soft and natural, his hand running through your hair.
Billy exhales a slow cloud of smoke from his lungs up to your ceiling. His head resting back against your headboard as he watches the lazy swirl dissipate, dancing with the sunlight pushing through your slightly open window. His eyes are vibrant blue and glassy. First time in forever the constant buzzing in his head has gone quiet. Forgot how it feels so much lighter here, forgot how easy going everything is. The lonely edges of his life feel a thousand miles away.
That warm sun just hits different. The pretty way it comes through your bedroom curtains, all warm and golden. It's like this memory that's just surfacing back into Billy's head... right here, in the familiarity of your room, your bed, the smell of you, of sex and perfume, of salty sea breezes.
The way your body feels so familiar to him, the weight of it pressed close against his. Likes the way you fit there with this terrifying perfection, like you were meant to be there.
The silence is beautiful, but it's also dangerous.
It's the kind of quiet that lets the thoughts creep in. Thoughts he usually drowns out with loud music, fast cars, that adrenaline rushing through his veins when he's looking for a fight to quiet the noise inside himself. That tug of softness, of letting his guard down just enough for someone to see him, the real him. The version he hides away.
You're such a pussy, Billy
But...
The weight of you against him right now is too grounding. The warmth of your skin, the way your breathing is slow and peaceful. That he can make you feel that way.
In the back of his mind he knows though... knows that in a few hours he'll be gone.
He's just a ghost and he knows it.
Thick fingers trace the soft curve of your hip, the dip of your waist. His touch gentle, as if, in a way, he's afraid that touching you too heavy, too much, might break whatever beautiful spell you two were in right now. In this beautiful haze of softness.
Little dust motes floating in the light, the quiet hum of someone mowing their lawn a few streets down, his weight heavy against your soft bed. Takes another drag, the smoke stinging his lungs good. Lives for the burn, helps him feel alive, although he figures the cigarettes will probably kill him one day, but that's okay. He doesn't really care too much.
You lift your head, glancing up at his face. He's not looking at you, still looking up at the patterns of light that play on your ceiling. The same pretty light catching on his dirty blonde curls, and reflecting in his eyes, making them glimmer. Eyes so blue they remind you of the days you two spent at the Pacific cove, fucking around, being stupid, having the time of your lives. It's like Billy's got the ocean right there... in those pretty blue eyes, framed by the longest, darkest lashes you've ever seen on a guy and you wonder if his mom had those too.
"Stay just like that! You look so cute right now!"
You say, jumping off the bed and running over to your closet.
Gives a little huff as you move away. His head lolling slightly to the side, watching you with heavy lids, as you scramble out of the bed, leaving him missing your warmth.
His body feels heavy, lethargic. Like after a long day spent in the sun, at the beach. Like when he was a kid. When he would come home from learning to surf, his mom telling him to take a nap, but all he did was lay in his bed and stare out his window. This euphoric feeling washing over him. Sea and salt in his hair and sand between his toes. That feeling lingering most of the day, or at least until Neil got home from work.
His cigarette hangs loose in his fingers as he watches you, little one sided lazy smile across his lips. Can feel his pulse thrumming in his veins, and the hardness growing again between his thighs, watching your naked body across the room.
"The fuck you doing?"
He huffs.
"Come here, need you... I'm lonely."
He whines, lazily flicking ashes into the ashtray on the bedside table.
You turn around with your Polaroid SX-70 in your hands. An older model, but something about this bad boy made it your favorite camera and it was instant, and that was the most important part.
He drapes one arm over his eyes, shielding them from the sudden glare of the shifting sun, watching you through the gaps in his fingers.
"I told you to stay still. You looked so cute!"
You scold.
He moves his arms back to where it was before, laying lazily across your pillows. You come back to him and straddle his hips. The weight of your sexy body pressing against his in all the right places makes him hum, hand coming up and squeezing your waist to steady you. Suddenly wanting a repeat of what you two did not ten minutes ago.
"What, I don't look cute anymore?"
He smirks.
"Of course you do, silly. You always look cute. I just need a new picture of you."
You tilt your head, smiling down at him, not really asking permission, but waiting for him to give you an argument.
"Yeah, yeah... go ahead, take your picture."
He chuckles and you giggle.
Squirming around until you get him in the frame exactly where you want him. He was always too pretty for his own good. Such sleepy eyes, you think he might actually fall asleep at any moment, if you didn't know that he always looks that way, unless he's surfing or fighting... and even then sometimes.
"Stop rubbing your pussy all over me, unless you're hinting you're ready for round two, princess."
Cigarette bobbing in his mouth as he talks.
"Be patient, needs to be just right."
You say, finally pressing the shutter. The undeveloped film slipping out of the camera. You give the film a shake, fanning it in the air to hurry the process.
Billy grabs the camera from your hand.
"Gonna need one of you too, pretty girl."
Voice too deep and raspy, always makes your insides feel hot, and truth was hearing it over the phone just didn't hit the same as hearing it in person again.
"Okay, just don't get my boobs in the shot!"
You say, but you see that wicked little smirk creep up on his face.
"Princess, please... I'm a total gentleman."
He says.
"Bullshit."
You giggle, trying to swat his hands away when he reaches up and tugs on one of your nipples with his free hand, then full on giving your whole tit a rough squeeze and then jiggling it in his hand.
"Billy... you gonna take the picture or just feel me up."
You laugh and he does too.
You realize with this sharp ache in your chest how much you've missed that laugh. The real one, the one Billy gives you with his eyes and it hurts when you wonder about how many girls get to hear that laugh in Hawkins. You don't think they deserve it... it feels too personal, too much like that real laugh belongs only to you and him.
"Jesus, bouncing these things all around. You're a menace... sit still, would ya."
His laugh tapers off, his thumb sliding back down your waist, tracing slow along your hip, holding you steady. Squinting through the viewfinder, tilting the camera in a way that focuses on your pretty face yes, but of course he gets a full shot of your gorgeous tits as well.
The shutter clicks and the undeveloped photo slides out from the camera.
Gives a low chuckle and your eyebrows furrow at him.
"Let me see... my boobs better not be in that fucking picture, Billy Hargrove!"
You say, grabbing for the picture, watching as it slowly develops in your hand. As the colors bleed into view, the image staring back at you was actually really pretty. He managed to capture your face looking prettier than you thought you were, but the angle of the lens was low enough that the sun kissed curve of your breasts were the obvious star of the photo, framed perfectly in the soft glow of your room.
You sigh and give him a look.
"Seriously, Blue? I said no tits in the pic, what the hell!"
You pout.
"Come on baby, look at them. They're perfect. They don't make tits like these in Indiana."
Jerks his hips up and down off the bed, making you bounce on his lap, your tits jiggling again.
"You're such a perv."
You laugh and smack his chest with the photo.
"Is it a masterpiece, or do I need to take another one... or a bunch more."
Cocky grin plastered to his face.
"Don't you dare show this to anyone!"
You beg, turning it over so he can see the picture.
"Fuck baby... that's hot!"
He stares at it, biting his bottom lip.
"Billy... did you hear me? Please... don't show anyone else."
Your voice a little whiny, but you're serious. The thought of some random guys in Hawkins gawking over your tits was causing you a little anxiety.
"Nah... you know I wouldn't, baby... Just for me, I promise."
He takes the photo and sets it on the bedside table, then snubs out his cigarette in the ashtray.
"I don't even need a pic... this... this is what I see every time I close my eyes."
Grips your hips with both his hands, fingers flexing softly. The words leave his mouth before he can even think to filter them. Because with you, he's different.
Sure, he builds these walls around himself as a way of keeping safe, of never getting hurt again. But here, alone with you... admitting that you are what he sees in the dark... his respite in this mess of his life... it's a massive surrender. Feels good to hide it, even if you think he's an idiot.
"Don't look at me like that."
He laughs soft, his voice cracks slightly. Eyes wide, searching yours with this soft vulnerability that's rare for Billy.
You lean down, your lips touch his. Kissing Billy has always been all heat and tongue, sloppy and messy, teeth hitting teeth, but you feel him melt against your lips. The kiss soft and unhurried. His mouth moving against yours in slow, delicious drags, tasting each other.
"Leaving Cali has made you kinda cheesy."
You tease, mumbling against his hot mouth.
He chuckles.
"Ahh... you love it, all the girls do."
He teases back.
You sit up again, grabbing his arm and biting him hard on his forearm, leaving a little matching indent of teeth, like you left on his chest earlier.
"Fuck... what the hell!"
Laughs for real again.
"Can't help but talk about other girls even when you know I am the love of your life... don't make me bite you again, Hargrove."
You laugh, and stick your tongue out at him, then you kiss the spot on his arm where the impression of your teeth still sits.
His hands come up to your face. Pulls you close.
"I'm glad you're here, Billy."
You say, the words soft, barely a breath against his lips. They vibrate through him, settling deep in the hollow of his chest where loneliness usually sits.
"Yeah?"
He smiles, then says...
"Me too, baby."
His kisses you with a deep longing, tongue sweeping soft inside your mouth and your body is flooded all over again with a desperate urgency to have him and never let him go.
"Mmm... think this pretty little pussy feels a little left out... think she needs a kiss. Why don't you come sit on my face."
Purrs, his voice deep and throaty and you smirk, can't help yourself.
"Anything to shut you up."
You smirk, then awkwardly scoot up over his body, knees spread wide. Your hands grip the headboard as you straddle his face. He pulls you down impatiently, hands tightly gripping your thighs.
Billy buries his mouth between your legs with a low groan. The scent of you, this sweet feminine headiness that fills his senses, driving him mad with a hungry lust. His tongue pokes out and strokes through your folds, slow and teasingly, enjoying the flavor. His full lips wrap around your clit, suckling hungrily and you gasp, gripping the wood of the headboard tighter, your thighs instinctively squeezing against his big head.
"Fuck, mmm... missed my mouth, baby girl?"
Mumbles against your slit and you feel the vibrations on your swollen nub and you moan soft.
"Jesus, Bills... fuck, yes!"
You whimper, your belly feeling that familiar heat and you rut yourself against his face. His hands squeeze your hips, fingers digging into your softness. Pulls you down harder, hands sliding from your hips to your plush ass, squeezing and pushing you against his face.
Big nose pushed in deep, brushing deliciously against your swollen clit. His tongue laps long strips up your slit, then flicks your clit and starts over again with his nose.
"Like that, baby... Fuck, I missed this sweet little cunt so much."
Murmurs, fingers sliding deep into your heat, stretching you good, moving them fast. Finger fucking you good and hard while he suckles your clit.
"Mmm... feels so good, baby... gonna cum..."
It hits you fast.
You whimper and cry, moving your body against him, frantically. Billy's eyes close as your slick coats his lips, his chin and the tip of his nose. His hands helping to grind your cunt against him, smearing his pretty face with your wetness.
He hums, staying between your thighs for as long as possible, hidden away from the world between your beautiful thighs. Wish he could live here.
Both of you breathing heavily. You slowly move off him. His face a pretty mess, glistening, slow lazy grin plastered on his face.
You smile and watch him lick his lips.
"Yummy."
He gives you a little wink.
The gold light in your bedroom has changed, its shifted, turning from bright to a heavy orange, as the sun begins to set. Shadows playing long across your wooden floor.
For Billy, the changing light is like a countdown.
Every minute the sun dips lower, back behind the soft blue ocean, is a minute closer to the inevitable: the drive back to a place that isn't his, the silence in his car, the looming temper of Neil. Knows his father won't be happy about him disappearing after the funeral for hours.
He breathes in deep and long, then out slow. Breaks the warmth of the sheets and your body. Sits up, on the edge of the bed. His broad shoulders hunched as he stares down at the floor, running his hands through his messy curls.
"Don't want you to go. Maybe I can hide you under my bed until Neil gives up and goes back to Hawkins without you."
You say, rubbing his back.
Doesn't respond. Truth was he didn't want to miss you. Because missing you would just bring back that hole in his heart. Spent his whole life living in those empty spaces inside himself and he's tired of it. Just wants to feel love. To be loved. He's used to it though, and for some reason this time hurts worse than when he first moved away and he's not exactly sure why.
Turns, pulling your body close to his. Rests his forehead against yours, breathing you in. All of you. The vanilla scent of your skin, your pretty mouth, the shampoo that clings to your hair, can smell himself on you too.
"You'll be back though, right?"
You ask, softly, hopeful. Of course he will.
"You know it."
He smiles, eyes closed, forehead to forehead.
He stands up, moving around the room like his legs are made of lead. Finding the clothes you both tossed so casually around the room and into the hallway. You just sit there and try not to cry. Goodbyes are never easy, but this isn't goodbye to remind yourself.
You shiver, not because you're cold, just a little overwhelmed, sitting there naked, watching him gather his things, puts his briefs and jeans back on.
Grabs the Metallica t-shirt he was wearing earlier from off the hallway floor. Steps close, his warm hands guide your arms through the short sleeves, pulling the fabric down over you. It swallows you, the hem reaching your mid thigh, oversized and smelling strong of Billy, cigarettes, cologne.
There is this weird feeling in your chest. A sadness you can't explain. Just the overwhelming intensity of this whole afternoon, really the whole year. You want to grab him and never let go, pull him back to bed and pretend the sun never has to set.
The air outside is dry and cool, hitting your overheated bare legs after you walk him back down to your porch. You fingers interlaced with his, just like when he first came to your door just a few short hours ago.
Turns to face you. Your porch light comes on by itself, like it always does when the sun gets low enough in the sky. It casts you both in a soft glow. Those eyes, like a deep sea, a blue that changes tone depending on his mood. Can go from bright to stormy, warm to cool in a flash and right now they're deep and dark... pretty pools of indigo.
He cups your jaw, thumb running under your eye, wiping away a tear you didn't even realize was there.
"Call me. When you get home safe. We'll make plans. You can stay here once you're ready. You know my mom loves you."
You smile up at him.
"Yeah... you know I love your mom."
He chuckles, eyebrows dancing up and down.
"I'm serious... you can come and stay here."
You smile.
Billy knows he has a grind ahead of him. Working at the pool week days and part-time at the garage on weekends to save up enough money to get back here. Back to you.
"Gonna work my ass off to get here as fast as I can, baby."
Leans in and kisses you one last time, it's warm and taste like summer.
He pulls back first, squeezes your hand soft, then turning and walking towards his car.
"Blue... I love you."
You say to his back.
Standing there in just his oversized t-shirt, hair blowing soft in the summer breeze. Already missing the boy you said goodbye to months ago, having to say it all over again. You stand there, watching him through a blur of tears.
He stops, standing there for a beat.
"Love you too."
He says, turning back to look at you, soft little smile on his lips.
In a beat he's back in the Camaro, engine rumbling loud. That sound brining you instantly back to summers long ago. It vibrates through your bones.
You wave.
He shifts gear and you see his broad shoulders and pretty curls though the glass. You see his fingers lift slightly off the steering wheel, waving back.
You stay there until the moment the last flicker of his red tail lights vanish behind the trees.
Then the damn breaks and you cry like a baby.
The letter arrives on a Tuesday, a non day really... a mundane, boring Tuesday, but the moment your eyes catch the handwriting your heart skips a beat.
You've both been living for the phone calls, making plans. A few more months until he had enough money and could finally drive off, away from Neil, putting Hawkins behind him and coming home for good. The plans were set in motion. But sometime in July, he stopped calling and didn't call you back when you left messages. You thought maybe he just got busy with work, he was always working, so you didn't think much of it really. Figured he'd call you back when he got the chance. He'd be living here soon enough, and you could see him every day.
You sit with the letter and as you read, your vision blurs... the words not making sense...scrambling in your brain. The writing, feminine and neat, too pretty for what they were saying.
Starcourt Mall Fire
The paper shakes in your hand, the words smudging as the first hot stinging tears start to fall, hitting the paper.
Max's words, careful and guarded, though you can't possibly pick up on that. Like she wants to say more, a secret she can't quite tell you.... talking about a how Billy was a hero... some kids saved from a fire at the new mall... he was so brave... but all you really see are the words:
"Billy's gone."
Your boy Blue, eyes the color of the sea.
Maybe Billy just changed his mind and he's making poor Max do the dirty work of letting you down easy. Lie to you and make you think he's gone so you forget him. Move on. Maybe he didn't want to come back and didn't have the heart to tell you himself.
"Billy...."
The sudden gasp that tears from your lungs is violent, a sharp, jagged intake of air as your eyes snap open and you bolt upright. For a terrifying second you're still in the dark, your heart hammering, confused, your skin clammy with sweat.
"It wasn't real... wasn't real..."
You whisper to yourself.
The dream too vivid and heavy. You glance at the clock, 3 am. You grab the phone next to your bed, your hands shaking, you dial his number and wait... and then he picks up.
"What the hell... this better be important."
Billy's voice is low and sleepy over the line.
"Fuck... Billy... I had the weirdest dream... Billy..."
You cry and the soft whisper of your voice cuts through his sleepiness like a knife. You hear his voice shift.
"Hey... hey... easy baby... s'ok."
He murmurs.
"You need to come sooner than we talked about... please, Billy."
Your voice desperate.
He's quiet. Processing what you're saying. You can hear him breathing.
"Yeah... okay. I can do that. I can come sooner."
He says.
"Really? You promise me?"
You relax against the sheets.
"Yeah princess. I think I have enough money. It was just a dumb dream though... you know that, right?"
He mumbles.
"Just get your ass here, Blue. California misses you."
Your voice finally losing the anxiety, becoming calmer.
He chuckles low, it's warm and pretty against your ear and you feel happier than you ever have.
"Is that so, princess? Or is it just you that misses me?"
He says.
"Yeah... that too."
You smile in the dark.
You two talk for hours, until the first rays of orange light filter between your curtains and an exhaustion falls over you both.
You fall asleep with the phone in your hand, the warm hum of his breathing on the other end of the line and know he's real...
summary: the aftermath of your unexpected evening with aerion unfolds. (read this fic before or the welcome to the family series)
warnings: none! slightly suggestive, mentions of alcoholism, no direct x aerion in this one only implied
word count: 2.9k
a/n: i actually had so much fun writing this lololol, the modern!aerion is alive in me again
scene one
you try to be as quiet as possible—the heavy door shutting closed behind you with a soft, agonizing click.
you nearly get to sigh in relief, the cold air of the sprawling corridor hitting your flushed, overly sensitive skin, but just when you're about to turn around you hear the crisp, sharp noise of a light switch shutting.
shit.
you can only pray that it's one of the house staff, someone going in early to put the laundry into the washing machine or to fetch some cleaning supplies for the massive estate.
you turn on your heel slowly, the smooth marble floor cold beneath your bare feet, praying to the seven that it wouldn't be—
seven hells.
even maekar targaryen or daeron would have been better than the soul you find staring at you wide-eyed across the long expanse of the hall.
aegon.
his plastic toothbrush is still hanging limply from his wide mouth, a messy smear of white mint toothpaste coating the soft curve of his cheek.
his little eyes are as wide as tomatoes, completely round with a child's pure surprise, and his hand is paused in the air mid-motion where he had been reaching for the wall.
"egg." your voice is a breathy, fragile thing.
he looks from you straight to the heavy dark wood of the door you had just slipped out of—his older brother's room—before looking right back at you.
you can't quite decipher the sudden, shifting look in his eyes, and that silence is already worse than any insult aerion could throw at you.
you swallow hard, the dry back of your throat burning as you open your mouth to formulate some half-hearted, pathetic lie, but the boy cuts you off before you can even start.
"why did you just come out of aerion's room?"
he cuts straight to the point. no beating around the bush. straight to ripping the band-aid off with the brutal honesty only an eight-year-old possesses.
one half of you is deeply relieved by the directness, while the other is brimming with a suffocating anxiety, knowing there is absolutely no avoiding the lens of his scrutiny now.
you inhale softly, mentally preparing your chest to answer the impossible question.
aegon trails his gaze from the very top of your messy head down to the bottom of your bare feet, squinting his brow in deep concentration, as if trying to mathematically figure out and place what all of this could possibly mean.
what you are doing in his house. on a quiet sunday morning when you weren't scheduled to be babysitting him, having made absolutely no plans to come over.
and you're standing there in a pair of tiny pajama shorts. a t-shirt that is clearly, severely crumpled from a night spent tangled in satin sheets. your hair a wild, birds-nest disaster. and a faint, dark purple bruise already blooming like an ink stain right over your collarbone.
though he definitely doesn't need to know the origin of that.
his eyes widen even more (if that is even physically possible) and for one terrifying fraction of a second, the blood in your veins turns to pure ice. you think that the adult realization of what had actually occurred between you and his brother has finally dawned on his innocent mind.
"egg—i swear—it's not like that—"
"y/n, we were supposed to do the prank on monday!" he whisper-yelled, his face twisting into an expression of intense, frantic urgency.
before you can even blink, his small hand reaches out, catching your wrist and dragging you physically into the safety of the guest bathroom with him, quickly shutting the door closed with a dull thud so aerion wouldn't wake up and hear.
you swallow the lump of bile in your throat, your mind involuntarily flashing backward to the image of aerion’s limp, exhausted body sprawled across those dark silk bedsheets.
the same sheets that are currently covered in the heavy, intoxicating smell of your mixed skin, spent silver-tinged lust, and stale smoke.
your mind snaps violently back to reality when egg's frantic, high-pitched voice cuts back into the small bathroom space. "… what were you thinking going into his room like that? and why are you even here anyway? you weren't here yesterday evening… when did you come? is everything okay?"
for one terrible, agonizing moment, you are convinced he's still going to figure it out.
he's going to piece together the atmosphere, the way your breath hitches, the faint scent of aerion's expensive sandalwood cologne clinging to the fabric of your shirt, and he's going to hate you for the rest of his life.
goodbye to the safe haven of babysitting.
goodbye to any chance of helping him grow up into a less traumatized, less broken kid than the rest of his family.
the overwhelming, toxic guilt of what you did with aerion suddenly eats at you from the inside out, threatening to suck the very life from your chest, stripping you down to the brittle marrow of your bones.
stupid. stupid. stupid.
you are supposed to protect aegon from the monsters in this house. you aren't supposed to hurt him by going and sleeping with his brother—the very brother who treats him like a psychological playground, the one who tortures him for fun and leaves him trembling in the grand hallways.
stupid. stupid. stupid.
"sorry…" you mutter under your breath, turning the chrome tap on with a jerky motion and shoving your hands under the freezing stream of cold water.
you need it. you need the temperature to cool your burning skin down, to keep your fractured mind in check. the cold liquid is the only thing keeping the traitorous blood inside your veins from boiling over.
i always knew there was a fire in you.
the phantom whisper of aerion's rough voice echoes in your ears, and you violently shake your head to drown it out, your mind completely numb and your ears buzzing with a low static as egg continues to enthusiastically retell the details of your original plan.
the harmless, childish joke you two had plotted days ago: to sneak inside aerion's pristine room while he was out and pour garlic-smelling water directly into his signature, over-priced cologne bottles.
just a silly, petty thing to make him feel an inch of the misery he caused both you and aegon on a daily basis.
except, before that could ever happen, you went and fell straight into his bed.
"y/n?" egg's voice snaps you out of the dark spiral once again, his small fingers tugging at the edge of your damp shirt.
"yeah. sorry, um." you quickly shut the tap closed, drying your trembling hands on one of the plush white towels as egg finally turns to spit the white toothpaste into the porcelain basin.
"there was this party yesterday evening," you half-lie, the words tasting like ash on your tongue, "and… it got super late, and valarr was dropping me off in his car. so i just told him it'd be easier if he dropped me off here, i guess… you know, since the estate was closer to the apartment and all that."
"oh." egg speaks, his small shoulders dropping as he mulls over your explanation in his head. his brow furrows for a second, deciding if the story is acceptable. he lets out a quiet, satisfied hum in the back of his throat.
he approves.
he believes the terrible, flimsy lie because he trusts you implicitly. he took the bait without a single second thought.
"sure," he says happily, offering you a tiny, gap-toothed smile before scolding you one last time for trying to pull off the "garlic execution" without him.
you apologize softly, your chest aching with a profound sorrow as he happily opens the bathroom door and trudges back out into the grand hallway.
"i'm starving… could you maybe make those delicious pancakes? the ones with the blueberries and the whipped cream? you know they're my favorites when you make them…" he happily scurries down the corridor toward his own room to get dressed for the day, not sparing you a single suspicious glance back over his shoulder.
"yeah, okay," you reply to the empty hallway, your voice shaking as your thighs ache with the unmistakable, deep bruising soreness of last night's sins. "i'll go to the kitchen and get started on it."
you begin the long walk toward the massive marble kitchen, your shoulders dropping from the sheer physical tension of the encounter.
you can faintly hear him yell a delighted, muffled thanks from behind his bedroom door.
you are still walking on incredibly thin ice, and the dark, heavy guilt of what you did is going to continue eating at you until there's nothing left.
you're going to have to face aerion too—eventually. he's going to wake up, stretch his lean frame out in that dark room, and realize he now has the ultimate, ruinous secret to hold over your head whenever he feels cruel enough.
and he feels more often than not.
but that is a catastrophic problem for later.
for now, you are going to stand in that bright, sterile kitchen and make blueberry pancakes for his little brother.
as you round the corner of the counter, half of your soul tells you the only reason egg had believed your terrible, desperate lie was because his mind simply couldn't even entertain the idea of something else going on between you and his torturer.
i hate him, he's evil, a nepo baby with a god godplex.
all the terrible but righteous things you had ever whispered about aerion brightflame suddenly feel like dirt in your mouth.
you are still walking on incredibly thin ice, and the dark, heavy guilt of what you did is going to continue eating at you until there's nothing left. you're going to have to face aerion too—eventually. he's going to wake up, stretch his lean frame out in that dark room, and realize he now has the ultimate, ruinous secret to hold over your head whenever he wants to break you.
but that is a catastrophic problem for later. for now, you are going to stand in that bright, sterile kitchen and make blueberry pancakes for his little brother.
as you round the corner of the counter, half of your soul tells you the only reason egg had believed your terrible, desperate lie was because his mind simply couldn't even entertain the horrific, reality-shattering idea of something else going on between you and his torturer.
i hate him, he's evil, a nepo baby with a god godplex.
all the terrible, righteous things you had ever whispered about aerion brightflame to yourself suddenly feel like dirt in your mouth.
traitor, a small, dark voice whispers in the back of your head.
you shake it off, but the cold feeling in your stomach remains.
blueberry pancakes wouldn't fix what you and aerion had done in the dark last night. they wouldn't fix what you did to egg.
you are terrified nothing ever would.
…
scene two
just as if this morning couldn't get any worse, when you round the corner into the massive, sunlit kitchen, you find daeron targaryen's familiar, slumped silhouette leaning against the cold marble counter.
he's dressed in a pair of faded flannel pajama pants, his dirty blonde hair tied back in a low, messy ponytail. he's scrolling aimlessly on his phone, his brows squinted in a groggy frown, a steaming mug of some strange, murky liquid sitting on the counter in front of him.
gods, it smells absolutely terrible.
you instinctively scrunch up your nose as the heavy, medicinal scent hits your senses.
"hey." he looks up once he hears your footsteps padding softly into the room. "what— y/n?"
his bloodshot eyes blink in mild surprise, clearly not having expected your disheveled frame to round the corner at this hour. "what are you doing here?"
gods, would the targaryens just stop asking you that exact question already.
well… you were technically the one intruding into their family home. but that just sounded wrong in your head. it wasn't like you had broken in with a crowbar…
it was more like you came over to babysit egg, which gave you certain house privileges.
oh yeah, and you just spent the night sleeping with aerion. how could you ever forget about that little detail?
"um. i'm making pancakes for egg," you reply as evenly as possible, walking over to one of the high-end cabinets and pulling out the heavy bag of flour.
"no— i mean what are you doing in our house," he clarifies, cocking an amused, cynical eyebrow to the side.
you scrunch your nose again, flaring your nostrils at the mug. "seven hells… what is that drink.. it smells like literal horse piss…" you desperately attempt to steer the topic off yourself as you reach up to take the ceramic measuring bowl from the top shelf.
"y/n," daeron chides, his voice raspy and dry, noting your incredibly obvious attempt to ignore his question.
he might be the family drunk. the one who hides away from their father's heavy expectations with cheap liquor and cynical thoughts. but he isn't stupid. far from it.
"nothing… what… it's not like i broke in," you mutter, getting way too defensive, your carefully constructed mask entirely faltering as you crack an egg against the lip of the bowl.
"i just slept over… so what. big deal. i didn't peg you as the one to have an issue with me being here. aerion is the one who usually—"
mentioning aerion. the absolute worst move you could have made.
because almost immediately, you can see the realization click into place across his sharp features.
daeron violently chokes on whatever the hell herbal tea he was brewing—probably some nasty, bitter detox blend his father forced him to drink to help with the lingering alcohol dependency.
"shit," he coughs out, his chest heaving as he grabs a paper towel.
his eyes quickly glance over your entire frame, his posture growing more confident and amused by the second. a slow, wicked grin is already spreading across his face.
"what?" you snap at him, your fingers sticky with egg white.
"shiiiiit," he prolongs, his voice dropping into a low, delighted drawl.
"daeron, i swear to gods if you don't shut the hell up right now—"
"you slept with my brother," he states too calmly. leaning his hip against the counter and grinning thoroughly at the sheer, mortified horror painted across your face.
"what— why the hell would you even think that— i literally hate aerion's guts..."
he just takes another slow, agonizing sip from his steaming mug, humming victoriously behind the ceramic. "mhm. sure. whatever you want to tell yourself, sweetheart."
you begin to blabber on, your words tripping over each other as you attempt to defend your honor. but he casually interjects with the cold, seasoned perception of a guy who has spent his entire youth watching the dark underbelly of the westerosi elite.
"i've seen plenty of the morning after girls in this house to know exactly what someone looks like after getting it… and getting it good," he snorts, his grin turning slightly bitter at the edges. "which is not me complimenting my brother, by the way. i still absolutely hate his guts. he's still a psycho."
"but phew." he moves slowly around the marble counter, preparing to leave the room entirely as you stand there dumbly.
the cracked egg gleaming on the polished surface, your heart hammering against your ribs.
"also… there's a hickey." he points a lazy finger toward his own hip, indicating your waistline.
you look down at yourself in a sudden panic.
your oversized t-shirt must have ridden up when you were reaching high for the measuring bowl on the top shelf, exposing the pale skin of your hip. where darkly against your skin lays a deep purple crescent mark—the violent, possessive imprint of aerion's teeth from a few hours ago.
"better cover that," he nods knowingly, flashing you one last empathetic but highly amused look before stepping completely out of the kitchen and disappearing down the corridor
you stand frozen by the stove, your hands trembling as you aggressively tug the hem of your shirt down to cover the mark.
from the far end of the western wing, the distinct, heavy sound of a bedroom door swinging open echoes through the quiet estate.
your stomach does a violent, nauseating lurch.
those are aerion’s footsteps. you would recognize that distinct, heavy, and deliberate tread anywhere.
you can hear the faint, gravelly groan of him waking up, his low voice muttering a curse into the empty hallway as he realizes his bed is empty.
the phantom scent of his anger and desire already waking up with him. he’s moving. he's going to come looking for you.
before the panic can completely paralyze you, the bright, frantic patter of much smaller bare feet thumps against the hardwood floors from the opposite direction.
"y/n! are they ready yet?"
aegon bursts into the kitchen, completely oblivious to the thick, toxic adult tension currently suffocating the air.
he's freshly dressed in his favorite cartoon t-shirt, his little hairs sticking up in wild, adorable cowlicks, his face entirely bright and hungry.
he slides slightly on the polished marble, pulling out a stool and climbing up onto it with a massive, gap-toothed grin.
"i want extra whipped cream," he demands happily, resting his chin in his small hands, completely clueless about his brother waking up down the hall. completely clueless about the marks hidden beneath your clothes.
"yeah, egg," you whisper, your voice thick as you turn back to the hot stove, pouring the batter onto the pan while your chest tightens. "extra whipped cream. coming right up."
very important concept that I have to ask you about: does BB like to dance? because what if reader had a Walkman with her or smth and started playing songs for them that would be so adorable I feel like
he would be so delighted by this. by all of it. by the existence of the walkman, by the small sound of music in a place that is normally silent except for the hum. the very concept of you wanting to share something with him that didn't come from him.
the thing about the walkman is that it shouldn't work. batteries die. the backrooms are not kind to electronics. M.E.G. devices fail constantly down here. but yours just... keeps working. it's been working for weeks. and you've stopped questioning why because you have a working theory that involves bb's name and you don't want to look at it too directly. (he is, somewhere, somehow, keeping it alive for you.)
you'd been listening to it alone mostly. headphones in, sitting in the nest, just needing five minutes of something from the real world. and he'd been watching. with that quiet curious head-tilt, that focused-attention thing he does when something about you is new. eventually you'd noticed.
you'd pull the headphones off and hold them out to him.
he'd stare like he's not quite sure what the move is. then he'd come closer. lower his head obediently when you motion, let you slip the foam-padded band over his ears, let you adjust the fit with both hands like you were settling a crown.
his eyes go wide.
not in the human way. in the bb way. the pupils doing the too-fast dilation. his head tilting all the way to that not-quite-human angle, like the music was something he was trying to hear with his entire body and his neck was just trying to help.
he doesn't have a frame of reference for music. he has the hum of the backrooms. he has his own tuneless song. he has the muffled distant echoes of songs that bled through walls in places he watched you and bobby exist. but he has never had this (clean, layered sound made by humans for the express purpose of being beautiful) directly into his ears. into his head. inside him.
and yes. he knows what dancing is. he watched you and bobby do it. when bobby still came around and you were alone at the store, and he would put the music on louder and pull you against him and spin you around. and you laughed and bb watched from the other side and filed it away with the rest of the things bobby got to have and didn't appreciate.
so when the song picks up and you stand up and hold your hand out to him he understands what you're asking. he just doesn't know how to do it.
"i don't—" he starts. quiet. genuinely uncertain in a way he almost never is. "i've never—"
"i know."
"i'll do it wrong."
"that's the fun part."
he stands. carefully. the headphones still over his ears, the music far-away to you but you know every song by heart anyway. you've played this tape so many times the lyrics are tattooed into your bones. you can hear them faintly leaking through the foam padding when you stand close enough, and you intend to stand very close.
"stop thinking," you instruct. you take his hands. place one on your waist. lace your fingers with the other one and hold it up. "just... follow. feel."
you start to sway. small. easy. side to side. he follows. stiff at first, the proportions slightly off, his weight distribution still that almost-human predator's stillness that doesn't translate well to swaying. but he watches your feet. mirrors them. adjusts. learns.
within a minute he's got it. within two he's smiling.
the song changes to something slower (you know because you've timed the order on this side of the tape, you know what comes next) and you pull him closer without thinking and his hand on your waist tightens. his other hand pulls yours up to his chest and you're pressed against him, swaying in the nest, in the fluorescent dark, and he's dancing.
bb is dancing.
your ear is against his chest now, close enough that you can hear the music humming through the headphone foam, faint but recognisable. you mouth the lyrics against his sternum because you know them, you know every word, and he's wearing the song like a halo around his head while you wear it secondhand through the fabric of his shirt.
you start laughing. you can't help it.
it bubbles up. half giddy, half disbelieving, the absurdity of the moment hitting you all at once. you are slow-dancing with an ancient entity on damp carpet to a song from 1989 and he's taking it so seriously. his concentration bent on getting the rhythm right, his head bowed slightly so the headphones don't slip and so he can keep his face close to your hair. you laugh again and again, burying your face in his chest, your shoulders shaking.
you can feel his confused happiness vibrating through his sternum.
"am i doing it wrong?" he asks. too loud because he's wearing the headphones, he can't tell how loud he is, and that just makes you laugh harder.
"no, baby." you tilt your face up. he's looking down at you with bobby's blue eyes and the headphones slightly askew from the angle of his head and something so soft underneath his expression you could kiss him. "you're doing it perfectly."
his expression softens. that pleased-feline look he gets when you call him baby. the proud one. the i'm being good for you and you noticed one. he resumes the swaying. spins you, experimentally, watching to see if you laugh again. you do. you laugh and stumble back into him and he catches you with such carefulness, cradling you closer.
you teach him to dip you. badly.
he overcorrects the first time and you nearly fall and bb makes a sound that is almost a laugh (bb laughing, actually laughing, a small involuntary sound he's never made before) and you stare at him and he stares back like he's just as surprised about it as you are. the headphones slip slightly. he doesn't fix them. you reach up and adjust them for him, settle them back into place, and his eyes close for a second when your fingers brush his temples.
you teach him to spin you. he picks it up instantly. he's gentle about it, careful with his strength.
at some point you sway too close and your forehead bumps against the side of the headphones and he hears you laugh (actually hears it, the laugh going directly into the headphone foam, mingling with the music) and his whole face lights up. like he just discovered a sound that didn't exist before this moment. he tilts his head deliberately, after that. presses one side of the headphones closer to your mouth. wants more of it. wants the music and you in the same channel.
so you sing.
quietly. badly. against the foam of the headphone he's angled toward you. the lyrics you know by heart, breathed into the small space where the music is leaking out, and bb goes absolutely still in a way that isn't predator-still or even bb-still but something new. like reverence. like he's standing inside something sacred.
his hand on your waist tightens.
"keep going," he says quietly against your hair.
so you do.
you dance until the tape finally clicks over (side B is shorter, you know that too) and then it plays through and ends and the walkman whirs softly but you both keep swaying. to nothing. to the hum of the backrooms. to the rhythm of his impossible non-heartbeat under your ear. the headphones still on his head, silent now, but he doesn't take them off. he doesn't want to take them off. they're proof. they're evidence. they're the crown you put on him and he intends to wear it for as long as you'll let him.
he doesn't want to stop. you can feel it. every time you slow he gently pulls you back into the rhythm. just a little longer. just one more silent song. just one more minute of you laughing against his chest and his hand at your waist and the smile on your face that he knows is for him.
laughter. smiling. touching. all of his favourite you things at once.
he's going to think about this for a while. you can already tell.
every time he goes silent and his eyes go a little distant, you'll know he's replaying it. cataloguing the way you felt against him. the exact sound of your laugh when he dipped you wrong. the weight of your hand in his. the muffled sound of your voice singing into the side of a headphone. he's adding it to whatever he has instead of a heart and turning it over like a smooth stone.
and you know that the next time you reach for the walkman he will be there before the tape finishes rewinding. head bowed. ready for the crown.
SUMMARY - You receive a message from a random number and you two begin texting frequently. However, you accidentally figure out who it is.
CONTAINS - banter (crack to a point), aerion is aerion, modern AU, peep the small details!!
A/N - i keep getting vague modern aerion requests soo!
Your phone vibrated against your mattress late at night.
You rolled over, the glare of the screen hitting your eyes in your dark room. It was an unsaved number.
UNKNOWN: where the fuck is the link for davis’s class
You stared at the screen for a few seconds. You were wide awake, and you definitely didn’t have the energy to start on your own work.
You giggled at your own message before hitting send.
YOU: I sold it oops
The reply came before you could even exit the app.
UNKNOWN: stop fucking around man im not in the mood
YOU: I dont think this is the right number lol
A minute passed with the typing bubbles flickering on and off a couple times.
UNKNOWN: the fuck
YOU: If ur stuck on his class just check the 2022 archive
There was no response after that. You eventually drifted off to sleep, figuring that was the end of a weird interaction.
Four days passed, and you completely forgot about the random text until friday when you received a notification from the same number.
UNKNOWN: it worked
You blinked at the message, trying to remember who it even was.
YOU: Yeah
UNKNOWN: howd you know about that
YOU: I saw his desktop open with that site and took my chances
UNKNOWN: youre actually not michael?
YOU: No im pretty sure im not a guy
You thought the conversation would end there, but about ten minutes later, you got another text.
UNKNOWN: any other shortcuts u know about
YOU: Maybe
Over the next two weeks, the texts became a weird regular thing. It wasn’t a constant back and forth, but it turned into a daily routine.
You’d get a text in the middle of the afternoon about whatever, or you’d send a quick message about random things in your life.
You didn’t know each other. There was no pressure. You didn't have to put on a performance to try to impress whoever it was you were talking to.
UNKNOWN: what were u saying
UNKNOWN: just got to the gym
YOU: Tf didnt you just leave ur room
UNKNOWN: yeah
YOU: Is the gym right next to ur house or smth
UNKNOWN: the gyms downstairs
YOU: Oh you live in an apartment??
UNKNOWN: no
UNKNOWN: i have a gym in my house dumbass
YOU: Oh!!!!!
YOU: Different tax bracket
UNKNOWN: funny
You found yourself looking forward to those short, blunt messages. He was definitely arrogant, but he was always honest and that pulled you in.
By the third week, the conversations started stretching later into the night. You’d be lying in bed, messaging your friends, and a text would pop up at 1 AM.
👻: why the fuck are you awake
YOU: Im readingg
YOU: why are YOU awake
👻: driving
YOU: Ur gonna die
YOU: Get off ur phone
👻: You sound like my dad
👻: He’s the reason im driving
YOU: Shit is he at the hospital??
👻: no im clearing my head
YOU: Oh
YOU: You okay?
👻: family dinner was so fucking annoying
👻: just micromanaging my schedule like im some kid
YOU: I feel that, my parents keep controlling my life its so stupid
👻: exactly its pathetic
👻: honestly its weird talking to you
You: Ok whyd i catch a stray hello
👻: no i mean its off talking to someone who isnt trying to get something out of me
YOU: idek who u are so theres nothing to get
👻: keep it that way
Then during one morning, you walked into the lecture hall for Professor Davis’s class.
The room was already buzzing with students and you took your usual seat next to Tanselle who was busy drawing sketches on her paper.
“Did you finish the reading he gave last week?” Tanselle asked, not looking up from her page.
“Barely,” you muttered, pulling your laptop out of your bag. “I read like two pages.”
Down in the fourth row, right near the aisle, Aerion Targaryen was slouched back in his seat. He had his dark leather jacket slung over the back of his chair and was surrounded by his usual crowd.
One of them said something, and Aerion let out a short laugh. The guy looked around the group with triumph all over his face, proud that he managed to impress Aerion.
Just then, your professor began talking and it didn't take long for you to lose focus.
Bored out of your mind as Professor Davis started droning on about the text you guys were supposed to read, you pulled your phone out under the desk.
YOU: Im bored entertain me
You hit send.
You kept your eyes on your screen, but then out of habit, your gaze drifted back down toward the front of the room.
Down in row four, you watched Aerion reach into his pocket. He pulled out his phone, a small smirk tugging on the corner of his lip.
His jaw set as he read something, and his thumbs immediately typed out a fast response before he shoved the phone face down on his desk.
Your phone vibrated in your palm.
👻: go entertain yourself
Your breath hitched. You stared at the screen, your heart doing a weird thud against your ribs.
No way, you thought. The lecture hall is massive. At least forty people were on their phones. It’s a coincidence.
Your fingers hovered over the keyboard. You needed to be absolutely sure. You typed out a reply, keeping your eyes glued directly on the back of his silver head.
YOU: Ok unkind
YOU: So ur actually paying attention to class?
The exact moment your text delivered, you watched as Aerion’s head tilted down. He picked his phone back up, scoffing under his breath. His thumbs moved around the screen, typing quickly.
Buzz.
👻: no im looking at my phone because a dumbass is texting me
A cold wave of panic hit you.
Your eyes darted from the screen to the back of his leather jacket. Your mind was short-circuiting, trying to connect the dots.
Aerion Targaryen.
Aerion Targaryen who had a reputation for being, well, himself— was the exact same person who had been texting you until midnight.
You spent the remaining minutes of that lecture staring into the wall. Every time Aerion shifted, your eyes snapped straight to him.
When the bell finally rang, the sudden noise of chairs scraping against the floor made you jump.
“Thank god,” Tanselle muttered, slamming her notebook shut. “You coming to the library?”
“I don’t think so,” you replied after a beat, shoving your things into your bag.
At the front, Aerion was already walking. One of the guys threw an arm over his shoulder and Aerion swatted him off with a grin.
He didn’t look back once. He had absolutely no idea.
For the next three days, every time your phone buzzed, your stomach did a flip. You knew exactly who was on the other side of the screen now, while he remained clueless.
During a late saturday night, you were eating with your friends when your screen lit up.
👻: this movies terrible
👻: why would you recommend this
You stared at the text. Knowing it was Aerion, reading the texts felt completely surreal.
YOU: Ok my bad ill just die
YOU: Its good tho idk what ur on
👻: its not
You: Lol turn it off then
👻: im already an hour in
👻: wouldnt wanna hurt your feelings
YOU: Aww how sweet
YOU: Stubborn bitch…
You bit your lip as you sent the second message. No one would dare to call him that in person, it was thrilling.
👻: lmao
👻: what are you doing anyway
YOU: Eating cheesecake
YOU: Wait have u done the assignment due next week
👻: nah im dreading the partner assignment on monday
👻: if i get paired with one of the idiots im doing it alone
You swallowed hard, grabbing your glass to drink the strain away.
YOU: Maybe youll get someone decent
👻: doubt it
You closed your phone and pressed it onto your chest. He was so different in real life.
When monday came, the room was silenced as Professor Davis tapped his microphone, turning on the massive projector behind him.
“Alright, I’ve randomized the pairings for the research,” he announced. “Check the board, find your partner, and spend the rest of the period discussing with them.”
Your eyes scanned the list, stopping as you found your name near the center column.
Your lungs locked up.
Aerion Targaryen was written right next to it.
“Oh, jeez,” Tanselle said, looking at you with worry. “You got Aerion… Good luck babe.”
Down in row four, Aerion didn’t even bother looking back to find his partner. He simply opened his laptop, ignoring the rest of the room while his friends started moving around. He clearly expected whoever his partner was to come to him.
You took in a deep breath, grabbing your bag.
Walking down the steps felt like walking a plank. As you got closer to his seat, a couple of his friends looked up at you. One of them nudged the guy next to him to clear a seat for you, leaving an empty chair next to Aerion.
You gave them a light smile before sliding into the seat, setting your laptop on the desk. Up close, he smelled like expensive cologne and musk.
“You’re my partner?” he asked, his voice a careless drawl. He still didn’t look at you, opening a blank document.
“Yeah.” You kept your voice as even as possible.
“Type in your email,” he said, turning the laptop just an inch so you could see the screen. “I’ll do the body and everything else. You do the outline and introduction.”
You blinked at him, the contrast hitting you like a physical punch. No jokes, no banter, no casualty.
You were aware he had a reputation for being a ‘womanizer.’ So why was he so cold to you?
“Okay,” you mumbled as you awkwardly reached out to type in your email.
He didn’t say another word to you for the rest of the hour. You sat right next to him, occasionally looking at the side of his sharp profile, realizing this was the same guy who had texted you about the miserable movie you recommended to him just two nights ago.
By 10 PM that same day, you were sitting on your bed, staring at the shared Google Docs. He had already finished his sections before you did.
Your phone buzzed on your blanket.
👻: just wrapped up that history project early so i dont have to deal with it later
You read his message, a sour feeling building up in your chest. You picked it up, your expression hardening.
YOU: Lucky, im still doing mine
You lied.
👻: thats sad
Chewing on your inner cheek, your thumbs moved before you could stop.
YOU: Hows ur partner
The typing bubbles appeared immediately.
👻: its some girl in my section i didnt pay attention
👻: she didnt mess anything up, shes whatever
She’s whatever.
Your eyes fixed on his message until they blurred. You had spent weeks listening to him, laughing at his texts, sharing personal concerns to each other—and yet in real life, you were just a boring, insignificant whatever to him.
The irritation flared up. You tossed your laptop onto your bedside table and sat back against the headboard of your bed.
YOU: Cool
A minute passed without a response.
👻: just cool?
YOU: Yeah
👻: youre acting weird
You left the text on read. Not like it mattered, his read receipts were off. Throwing the phone somewhere in your bed, you didn’t reply.
For the next few days, you struggled returning to how you normally were.
He didn’t text you the morning but eventually did at night, and you left it unreplied for two hours before sending a short answer.
👻: you alive?
YOU: Yes
👻: ok whats wrong then
YOU: Nothing
👻: ???
YOU: What
👻: fine
It felt petty, but each time you looked at your phone, you remembered him sitting right next to you and not even glancing your away. You felt stupid, but his words hurt too.
If you were just a blank space to him in person, you figured it would be better if you were that way on every platform.
By the end of the week, the silence between your texts was heavy. He didn’t text you back after the last chat, and you definitely weren’t going to break first.
You were sitting in class when Tanselle walked in, settling in the chair beside you.
Professor Davis cleared his throat before speaking. “Alright, before we start today’s lecture, I’ve set up a group thread for the upcoming peer reviews. Click on the link and make sure you’re in it by the end of the day.”
You opened your phone to join the chat, then automatically shoved the phone back into your bag. You had no intention of participating.
The period of the lecture ended with a few minutes remaining and your phone started vibrating nonstop.
You tried to ignore it, but the constant noise was getting frustrating. You reached into your bag and pulled it out, looking to mute the group.
A new message popped up at the bottom of the chat. A classmate tagged your number directly because you hadn’t put your name on the sheet yet.
Too annoyed with the whole class to care, you swiped the app and locked your screen.
Then, your eyes subconsciously drifted toward Aerion. You watched as he pulled his phone out.
He was scrolling through the mass text thread when suddenly, he froze.
His head tilted slightly. Narrowing his eyes, he looked at the only text tagging a number. The number he’d been texting every day.
Up front, the classmate who had sent the message lost his patience. He turned around, looking up at where you and Tanselle were sitting.
The guy called out your name, his voice turning multiple heads in the quiet room. “I just tagged your number in the group, you need to upload your topic.”
The sound of your name echoed through the lecture.
Aerion’s head snapped up.
He didn’t look at the guy talking to you. His eyes darted straight up until they locked dead onto you.
The usual expression on his face dropped away. His eyes searched your entire face, his brows drawing in closer.
He saw the phone in your hand before going back to your face.
It clicked.
You stilled under his gaze, the blood rushing loud in your ears.
Beside you, Tanselle nudged your shoulder. “Babe. Babe? He’s talking to you?”
“Yeah,” you managed to choke out. Your fingers felt like wood as you uploaded the topic into the sheet. “Done. It’s in there.”
The classmate muttered a quick thanks and turned back around.
But Aerion didn’t.
He stayed shifted in his seat, his body turned toward your row. One of his friends said something, laughing and clapping him on the shoulder, but Aerion blindly shrugged the guy’s hands off without looking at him. His dark gaze remained on you.
You looked down at your screen, pretending to type, but you could feel the weight of his stare.
A quick glance back down confirmed it. He was staring at you like he was seeing you for the first time, his mind putting the pieces together.
Some girl in my section, she’s whatever. He finally understood why you had iced him.
When the bell rang, you instantly stood up, already packing your bag.
“Why are you in such a rush?” Tanselle asked, shaking her head with confusion.
You gave her a tight smile. “I just need to get back.”
You wanted to wait out the crowd, hoping he’d leave first, but Aerion was already standing by the row exit.
He leaned his back against the desk, ignoring his friends as they stood confused as to why he was still there.
Panic flared in your chest. You didn’t think this through properly.
Without thinking, you threw yourself into the small crowd shuffling through the other exit at the top of the hall.
You basically sprinted across the stone of the parking lot, your keys already clutched in your hand. Unlocking the car, you threw your bag into the passenger seat and slammed the door shut.
You slumped on the headrest, gripping the steering wheel as you finally let out a breath.
Then, your phone lit up with two notifications.
There were two missed calls and above them another notification popped up. It was a text.
syn: is it just hugo, or was japan really hot in the summer?
wc: 1850
notes: fem pronouns / fluff / no y/n used / ooc hugo / miscommunication-ish / they're both still stupid your honor / kaiser appearance! / jealous! hugo hehehe / hugo lowk crashes out internally
a/n: happy birthday my silly french boy <3 trust i will write something (separate from dctm-verse) with the new info from vol39
previous series masterlist next
there is never a dull moment working in blue lock. if it wasn't just dealing with teenage boys, then there was also adults like buratsuta who treated you were a dumb girl who couldn't tell left from right, and if it wasn't them, then it was administrative issues. and if it wasn't administration issues, then it was hugo.
you still remember it like it just happened, the smile that felt more like a smirk, the way he gave you his jersey (which you still don't know what to do with), and his eyes when he asked for your number. he hasn't let you forget that one, not with the way he texts you "good morning" and "goodnight" everyday since then without fail. you're a little impressed by his dedication, if nothing else, but you haven't seen him since thanks to the troubles that came with having to oversee just about everything else.
most of you is pretty thankful for it, because hugo does still creep you out, but a little part of you inexplicably wants to see him even if just in passing. it was bad enough that you thought he was pretty after the match, but wanting to see him? you might as well say that you're working for the enemy! you can already see the headline: blue lock team manager caught fraternising with france! selling the national team's secrets?
when the reality was that hugo was the one coming onto you!
whatever, you grumble to yourself, pausing at an intersection. even after all this time of working here, the hallways still confuse you. you look at the map on your phone, something you've made a habit of keeping open after you got lost for the nth time, and scrutinised the passages. where was training room 7…?
"you look a little lost, miss manager." a familiar voice echoes through the hallway, and it makes you sigh with exasperation. unfortunately for you, you happen to know exactly who it is.
behind you stands michael kaiser in all his… well, you would say glory if you were as starstruck as you were when he first came to blue lock, but after dealing with him for those few months, he's more like an annoyance.
"lovely seeing you here, kaiser." your words drip with sarcasm, your face a clear indication that you are less than pleased about his presence.
"you're so cold. and here i thought we were friends?" kaiser teases, throwing his tattooed arm around your shoulders.
"we're about as much as friends as you and isagi are…" you huff, a pleased smile overtaking the frown when you see a dark look cross his face. isagi, you sure have no shortage of people out for your blood…
"anyway, what are you doing, looking so lost in your own facility?" he pointedly ignores the jab, choosing instead to annoy you relentlessly. first hugo, now kaiser, who's next, itoshi sae? all these new gen xis sure are pain in the asses!
"just trying to find a training room, you know how it goes." you show him the map, pointing at the room. he takes a look, squints, and then looks back at you.
"you know i can't read this, right?"
you look at the map again. it's all in japanese. oh…
"sorry…" and now you're both lost as you try to pull up the map with english. this really is your life, huh?
hugo had just finished some practice with loki and charles in one of the training rooms and stepped outside to refill his water when he heard two voices echoing through the halls of blue lock.
one was undoubtedly yours, he would know it just from the way you breathed, but the other was… male, and unfamiliar.
hugo deduced that it wasn't one of the japan players, you would be speaking in japanese if it was, and the accent from the male didn't sound french, so you weren't speaking to anyone from france, either…
quietly, hugo moved closer to where you and the mystery man were, hiding behind the wall. he could hardly make out what any of you were saying, catching the occasional english here and there, but not enough to understand the context. which, to him, kinda looked like…
no. he doesn't even want to think about it.
still, hugo can't help but take a very long peek at you. your back, and the man as well, was turned to him, his arm slung around your shoulders. upon seeing the blonde and blue strands of hair, hugo instantly knew who you were having this… rendezvous with.
(it should be him right there…!)
michael kaiser, a fellow new gen xi. he's heard of the german, with his strikingly fast swing speed, and hugo begrudgingly acknowledges his aptitude to be a striker. but what he does not acknowledge is how close he is to you.
he grimaces just imagining how close your faces are. your heads are practically touching from how close you're both looking at… whatever it is that you're looking at together, and it makes hugo feel hot.
this heat is vastly different from the one he usually feels with you. it is far from warm and comforting. no, this one feels like a fiery blaze, so much so his hand is holding the poor bottle even tighter than he ever would.
hugo closes his eyes and attempts to calm himself, breathing in, and breathing out. japan sure is hot in the summer, that's probably the reason why he feels like this, not to mention he was just training. yep, definitely the reason he feels like this.
(when he peeks back at you again, the fiery blaze comes back just like it never left.)
"how about i —" you start, but kaiser cuts you off. maybe he could learn a thing or two about listening to others…
"no, we are not telling anyone about this." about what, this rendezvous? hugo hopes, prays, even, that that wasn't what he was referring to. it couldn't be, right? surely loki and charles would've told him that you were a taken woman, let alone by michael kaiser of all people!
in hugo's little mental breakdown, he fails to process the words that follow after.
"do you want to stay lost forever?"
"no, but i'm not having people find out that i got lost! and this is all your fault, of course."
"what, are they going to leak it to the press that michael kaiser of the new gen xi can't read a map?" there's a short pause where neither of you speak, and then you snort.
"that would be a pretty funny headline, actually…"
hugo just mentally clocked back in and now he's about to clock back out again. what do you mean a funny headline? that yours and kaiser's relationship gets revealed??? he feels so lost.
"what the hell are you laughing at?"
"…nothing. anyway, i think i figured it out. the training room should be just ahead." hugo feels sick. you were going to a training room? with kaiser? just the two of you? just what on earth would you both need to be in the same room for?!
he has to put a stop to this madness. if there's anyone going into any room alone with you, it's him!
but how does he do it without sounding like a weirdo…?
the bottle in his hand makes a small wheezing sound. oh right, what he originally came to do.
hugo straightens his posture and takes a deep breath, before revealing himself from the corner. his steps are just a smidgen louder, boots clacking against the floor, as he walks to the water fountain as casually as he can.
"hey." he nods to you and kaiser, twisting the bottle cap open. you stare at him with what looks like confusion, while kaiser returns the nod. hugo's eyes linger on the arm still on your shoulder. "what are you guys doing in the hallway?"
"we just, uh, happened to see each other and got caught up talking about the neo-egoist league days!" you flounder with a shaky smile, eyes darting between him and kaiser.
hugo gives you a doubtful look.
you fold instantly.
"we're also lost…" kaiser scoffs and rolls his eyes, mumbling something about "folding under zero pressure" under his breath.
"ah, i see." suddenly, hugo's chest feels a lot lighter. he turns the tap off and twists the cap back onto the bottle. "do you need help?"
"i think we're fine… the training room is up ahead, if i'm looking at the map right." you gesture to one of the rooms while kaiser's eyes flit between him and you, arms now crossed over his chest.
"oh, i think i get it." kaiser grins, smirking. you look at him with what might as well be a question mark written all over your face, but all he does is continue grinning, and pats you on the back.
"hmm, i think i'll go on ahead. don't want to be caught getting lost with you again." kaiser turns around to leave, waving off with a flimsy wave of his hand. you're still standing in the same spot, confused and mildly worried about what that pat on your back meant.
hugo stares at kaiser's leaving back. was he that obvious? he thought he was being subtle…
"i'm sure you have training to get back to, uh, vivien, so i'll just go on ahead…!" you try to remove yourself from the situation, but hugo shakes his head in refusal.
"it's fine, i'm taking a break. i'll walk with you so you don't get lost." he leaves no room for argument, already standing next to you, waiting for your next move.
realising that you won't be able to shake him off, you deflate in acceptance and walk toward the supposed training room 7 you've been searching for.
lagging just a few steps behind, hugo watches you walk as though you flutter, like a shy butterfly. ah, he's been trying to find a word to describe you, and just watching you like this, it appears as though it was only waiting for him to make the connection. that's what you are to him — his papillon.
"thank you for coming with me, you really didn't have to…" you start, a nervous smile playing at your lips. your eyes are set on the ground, head hanging low, and hugo thinks you just look so adorable, it makes his chest heat up with the warmth he has come to associate you with.
"it's no problem," he replies, his hand subconsciously finding your chin to tilt your head up so he could see into your captivating eyes.
"and next time, you should let me know when you're lost. i'll come find you no matter where you are, and i'll lead you back to your flower, mon papillon."
(charles and loki had come out to see what was taking hugo so long to refill his water. what they didn't expect was to see him holding your chin like that.
who knew hugo actually had rizz?)
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Bobby's been a shit boyfriend for months. When you disappear through a wall in the basement of Clark's furniture store, you wake up in the Backrooms, where a better version of Bobby is waiting. One who actually shows up, one who loves you, one who never, ever wants to let you go.
imm backk and i have another random question: did glaurung miss lelca by any chance, considering he was akin a pet? to her and she spent many hours with him and she also taught him language? I remember Melkor calling lelca as mother of dragons fondly so i sometimes imagine glaurung as a huge lazy (deadly) cat who likes to purr and nuzzle only lelca.
Heyyy! Sorry I still haven’t answered your other ask, I’ve been thinking about it a lot and I’m still struggling to come up with anything yet but I can answer this one!
Glaurung did wonder where she had gone to begin with, but once he was unleashed upon the world he was more focussed on his own drama and evil doing to focus on her absence anymore. I think if she had come across him in the world, he would have been like a sulky teenager and tried his luck to see where he stood. I think remembering her kindness and softness in his upbringing would make him feel uncomfortable actually because it jarred with who he had become and the cruelty he was spreading.
But yes, when he was a baby dragon he would curl up in Lelca’s lap and eat out of her hand and sigh little smoky dragon sighs when she held him. He would look behind him to see if she was watching him do a new trick or skill as he got older. He would seek her out in a room to nuzzle against her side.
But he grew up and spent most of his time without her and he is a sentient being capable of speech so he no longer qualifies as a pet in that regard anymore and I think that would be very apparent should they have met again before his death.
How is it that Companion doesn’t know how long she’s been in the backrooms? I mean,there’s a very specific event that happens every month to females,so is she excusing it’s absence it by blaming stress?
so the short answer is: the backrooms broke your clock. literally.
time in the backrooms doesn't move. or rather it moves in every direction simultaneously depending on where you're standing. level 0 runs on a different logic than level 2 which runs on a different logic than the poolrooms which may not have logic at all. you can walk down a hallway for what feels like an afternoon and come back to find bb in the exact position you left him in because for him it's been eleven seconds. or you can close your eyes for what feels like a nap and open them and he's frantic because from his side you were gone for three days.
your body doesn't know what to do with that.
your circadian rhythm collapsed within the first week. the fluorescent lights don't cycle. there's no dawn, no dusk, no temperature shift to signal night. your sleep schedule became "whenever you physically cannot stay awake anymore" and your waking hours became "however long until that happens again."
you tried counting. you tried keeping a tally in the notebook. but the tallies stopped making sense because sometimes you'd mark a "day" and it would feel like it lasted forty minutes and sometimes a "day" would stretch until you'd filled six pages of notes and your hand was cramping and you still weren't tired.
so you started assigning days by feel. "a day" became "the space between one sleep and the next" regardless of how long that actually was. it's imprecise. it's deeply unscientific. it's the only system that doesn't make you feel like you're losing your mind.
and yeah. you noticed.
you noticed pretty quickly actually. the first missed cycle you chalked up to stress because... obviously. you'd been pulled into an extradimensional nightmare by a thing wearing your boyfriend's face. your cortisol levels were probably visible from space. stress does that. everyone knows stress does that. it's fine.
the second missed cycle you also chalked up to stress but with less confidence.
by the third you were sitting in a hallway with your knees pulled up doing math that didn't work because the numbers in your notebook didn't correspond to real time and trying very hard not to panic.
because here's the thing. you and bobby (real bobby) were still sleeping together before you came here. not the way you used to. not the way it was at the start when everything felt electric, intentional and filled with that all consuming passion.
by the end it was mechanical. routine. a thing you did because you were still technically together and your bodies remembered the choreography even if the feeling behind it had gone hollow. he'd finish, you'd lie there, he'd roll over and you'd stare at the ceiling and wonder when exactly this stopped being something and started being nothing.
but you were still doing it. and the condom could have split. or maybe there was that one time you were both a little high and a little careless and he said "it's probably fine" and you said "yeah probably" because you were too tired to argue about it and too sad to care about the risk. because some part of you (some stupid, desperate, lonely part) thought maybe if something happened it would make him look at you again. make him stay in the room after. make him look at you with that soft wanting you used to see on his face directed at you constantly.
you didn't think about it at the time. you didn't think about it when the door appeared. you didn't think about it when bb's voice called you through and the hallway swallowed you whole. you had bigger problems. you had yellow lights and wet carpet and an entity learning your name.
but now you're three cycles late in a place where time doesn't work and the math doesn't add up, you're sitting in the dark doing frantic back-calculations. like okay when was the last time bobby and i — and how long before the door — and what's the timeline if —
but the timeline is broken. the timeline has been broken since you got here technically, and you can't count backward from a number that doesn't exist.
and the panic is specific. it's not just "am i pregnant?"
it's "am i pregnant with real bobby's baby in a dimension that doesn't have hospitals or doctors or prenatal vitamins?" it's "am i growing a human life inside a place that isn't compatible with human life?" it's "what would bb do?"
and that last question is the one that really gets its hooks in because you genuinely, honestly, terrifyingly do not know. would he understand? would he be gentle about it? would something in those not-quite-right eyes shift at the knowledge that you're carrying a piece of the real bobby inside you (the real one, the original, the template he built himself from) and would that be tender or would that be something else entirely?
you don't ask him. you can't figure out how. what would you even say? how do you explain human reproduction to a thing whose biology doesn't make sense? he'd tilt his head at that angle and ask if you're okay and you'd have to say "i might be carrying your source material's baby" and honestly the sentence alone might kill you before the backrooms do.
eventually (and this takes longer than you'd like to admit) the more rational part of your brain catches up with the panic. nothing has happened here that could compound the problem. and the far more likely explanation is that your body has simply stopped cycling because it has been removed from the temporal framework that regulates human biology. your hormonal system requires a clock. the backrooms don't have one. so your body just... stopped keeping time in that particular way.
you're fine. probably. you're choosing to believe you're fine.
you have not mentioned any of this to bb. not the missed cycles. not the panic. not the reason for the panic. definitely not the part where you slept with the boy whose face he wears out of loneliness and the quiet hope that maybe this time someone will stay afterward for him.
you will take this specific anxiety to your grave. or to whatever the backrooms equivalent of a grave is.
Not a request, just a concept I thought of and needed to share w someone: groomer!baelor
I just love the idea of being Baelor’s ward and being totally at his mercy, he’s given you everything, rescued you from destitution, and you totally put him on a pedestal. Nothing in life comes for free though, and unbeknownst to you he’s been slowly moulding you and shaping you into the perfect woman. He’s so sly and manipulative, when you eventually end up in his bed he makes you think it was all your idea in the first place
Love this!!
The reader is the only child and sole heir of a noble house, not a minor one, but not quite a great one either. An important house, ancient and proud, with deep roots and deeper vaults. When she was but a child of six, her family sided with the Blackfyres during the rebellion. They raised their banners for the black dragon, hosting Daemon Blackfyre's war councils in their halls and pledging their swords to his cause.
But when the tides turned and the rebellion began to crumble at the seams, her father saw the writing on the wall written in blood and fire. In a desperate, last moment gambit, her house switched their allegiance back to the Targaryens, throwing open their gates to the loyalist forces and providing crucial intelligence about Blackfyre movements. This betrayal of the betrayers spared them from complete annihilation, from the sword and the flame. But mercy from the Iron Throne is never free, and it always comes with strings attached like a leash around a dog's neck.
As punishment, as insurance, as a living, breathing hostage to guarantee her family's future good behavior, the Targaryens took her the only heir, the precious only daughter, the future of her entire bloodline as a "ward" of the crown. She was brought to King's Landing at seven years old, a frightened little girl with big eyes and a trembling lip, clutching a worn doll to her chest as the Red Keep loomed before her like a monster made of red stone. She grew up in the shadow of the Iron Throne, surrounded by Targaryens, a hostage whose continued safety and good treatment depended entirely on her family's loyalty.
She was treated well, surprisingly well, better than most hostages could ever dream. She was given fine chambers, soft gowns, excellent tutors, and a place at the royal table. But she was never allowed to forget that she was, at her core, a prisoner. A cherished prisoner, but a prisoner nonetheless.
She grew close with the young princes, Valarr and Matarys, the sons of Prince Baelor Breakspear. They were of a similar age, and children are wonderfully blind to politics. Valarr, the heir after Baelor, developed a sweet, tender little crush on her as the years passed. He would bring her wildflowers he picked himself from the gardens, their stems crushed in his eager grip, and stammer through compliments that made his ears turn bright red.
And Baelor himself? When she was a child, he was simply kind to her. Nothing more, nothing less, nothing strange or untoward. He saw her homesickness, her fear, her desperate desire to please everyone around her so she wouldn't be sent away or hurt. He treated her gently, speaking to her with patience, making sure the servants didn't neglect her, occasionally even finding her crying in some forgotten corner of the castle and sitting with her in comfortable silence until her tears dried. He never touched her inappropriately, never looked at her with anything but the innocent fondness a father might show. He protected her from the cruelest courtiers, the ones who wanted to see the traitor's daughter humiliated, and she grew up seeing him as a protector, a mentor, a steady, reassuring presence in a world that had been turned upside down.
And then she started growing into a woman.
The soft roundness of childhood melted away, replaced by the curves and lines of womanhood. She grew taller, her figure filled out, her face lost its childish plumpness and revealed the elegant, striking bone structure beneath. She was beautiful in a way that drew eyes and silenced conversation when she entered a room. And the marriage proposals started arriving like a flood breaking through a dam.
Lords from across the Seven Kingdoms sent ravens and emissaries, offering alliances, dowries, lands, and promises. Her house was wealthy and strategically placed, and she was the sole heir marrying her would mean absorbing all of that power and wealth into another family. The proposals came in a steady stream, each one more tempting than the last. But they did not go to her father, languishing under house arrest in his own castle. They came directly to Baelor, because he was her official warder, her jailer, her keeper in the eyes of the crown. The future of her marriage, the continuation of her house, the fate of her entire bloodline, it all rested in the hands of a Targaryen prince as part of the "apology" her family owed for their treason. She had no say. Her father had no say. Only Baelor could decide who she would marry, when, and to whom.
And Baelor rejected every single proposal that crossed his desk. Not because they were bad offers, many of them were excellent matches by any objective standard powerful lords, gallant knights, wealthy heirs with bright futures. Matches that would have secured her house's position and brought honor and stability. But Baelor found fault with every single one of them. This lord was too old, that knight was rumored to be cruel, this heir had gambling debts, that one's lands were too far from King's Landing. The excuses piled up like fallen leaves, and his clerks grew accustomed to drafting polite, formal letters of rejection bearing the Prince of Dragonstone's seal.
The real reason, the truth that Baelor himself did not consciously acknowledge for a long, long time, was that he simply could not bear the thought of her leaving. Of her going away to some far off castle as the wife of another man. Of her not being there, at his side, every single day.
Because by this point, she had become utterly essential to him. What had started as a ward and her warden had evolved into something far more intimate, though still technically proper. She had become his constant companion, his shadow, his little secretary. She was always at his arm, a wax tablet or a sheaf of parchment in hand, helping him manage the endless work of ruling. She organized his correspondence, reminded him of appointments, took dictation for his letters, and sat quietly in the corner of his study while he wrestled with the burdens of being the heir to the Iron Throne. Sometimes, when he was stuck on a particularly thorny political problem, he would ask her advice. And she would think carefully before answering, her brow furrowed in concentration, offering insights that were sharp and perceptive and often exactly what he needed to hear.
They grew incredibly close, she knew how he took his tea, which documents needed his immediate attention and which could wait, when he needed silence and when he needed distraction. She could read his moods from the set of his shoulders and the line of his jaw. And he knew her too, he knew what made her laugh, what books she loved, what foods she craved when she was sad. He knew the sound of her footsteps in the corridor and the way she hummed softly to herself when she was concentrating. They spent more time together than he spent with anyone else in the world, including his wife.
It was Jena who finally made him see it. His gentle, patient wife, the mother of his children. She came to him one evening, her face tired and her voice soft with suppressed hurt, and told him that it bothered her. The way he looked at his ward, the way he always had her nearby, the way he seemed more attentive to the daughter of traitors than to his own wife. She pointed it out quietly, without accusation, almost sadly. And Baelor, standing there in the sudden silence of his chambers, felt the realization hit him like a war hammer to the chest. If forced to choose—truly choose, with no evasion or excuse—he would choose her over Jena. He would choose his little hostage, his secretary, his constant companion, over his own lawful wife.
It should have horrified him. It should have sent him to his knees in the sept, begging the gods for forgiveness. Instead, something dark and possessive unfurled in his chest, and instead of pulling away from her, he began pulling her closer.
He started modifying her wardrobe. A new gown would arrive in her chambers, cut in a style he preferred, made from rich fabrics he had personally selected. The colors shifted gradually until her wardrobe was dominated by deep crimson reds and stark, dramatic blacks. Targaryen colors. His colors. She wore them without complaint, perhaps not even noticing the deliberate shift, and when she walked through the Red Keep draped in red and black, she looked like she belonged at his side. Like she was already his.
He began having her sit beside him more and more often. At meals, at court sessions, at formal audiences. When Jena was seated on his right, the place of the wife, he would place his ward on his left, equally prominent. When Jena was not present, the ward sat at his right hand.
Jena, desperate and worried, proposed what she saw as an elegant solution. Marry the girl to Valarr. It would keep her within the family, bind her to the Targaryens legally and permanently, and remove her from Baelor's orbit into his son's. It made perfect political sense, and it would soothe the rumors that were beginning to swirl. But when Jena suggested it, Baelor's reaction was swift and volcanic. He vehemently denied the idea, his voice rising with a fury that startled his gentle wife. He was angry, furious even, that Jena would dare suggest such a thing. When pressed for a reason, he seized upon the old excuse like a drowning man grabbing driftwood. She was the daughter of traitors, he said coldly. She carried traitor's blood in her veins. Why would he reward traitors by marrying their daughter to his own son, his heir, a future king? It was out of the question. Unthinkable.
Meanwhile, he was giving her private "lessons" in his study, late in the evening when the candles burned low and the castle grew quiet. Lessons on how to be a good wife, he called them. He taught her how to speak to her future husband, how to comfort him after a difficult day, how to manage a household and command servants with firmness and grace. He taught her how to walk, how to curtsy, how to compose her features into serene pleasantness even when she was exhausted or upset. And then the lessons shifted, becoming more intimate, more perilous. He taught her how to kiss a husband. Properly, he said, so she would not embarrass herself on her eventual wedding night. He would demonstrate, his hands cupping her face gently, his lips moving against hers with slow, deliberate instruction. He never pushed further, never made her feel truly uncomfortable or afraid, never crossed the line into something she could definitively call improper. But they both knew, in the secret, unspoken places of their hearts, that what they were doing was already far beyond the bounds of what a warder should do with his charge.
She was always at his side now the rumors began growing like mold in a damp cellar. Whispers slithered through the Red Keep, through the court, through the city beyond. They said she was his mistress. His paramour. His secret lover. They said she warmed his bed while poor Jena slept alone. The rumors grew so loud that Jena finally confronted her directly, face to face, woman to woman. The princess asked, with tears in her eyes, if the rumors were true. And the reader, shocked and genuinely distressed, denied it with complete honesty. Nothing truly improper had ever happened between them. The prince had only been helping her, teaching her, preparing her for her future role as some lord's wife. He had been a mentor, a protector, a guide. Jena left the confrontation relieved, believing the girl's words completely.
And then, two months later, Jena Dondarrion, wife of Baelor Breakspear and mother of his children, fell ill with the winter fever that was sweeping through the realm.
It was a cruel sickness, swift and merciless. Jena's health declined rapidly, her strong body ravaged by chills and fever, her lungs filling with fluid until each breath became a desperate struggle. The maesters did everything they could, bleeding her with leeches, applying poultices, praying to the Seven, but nothing worked. She died within a fortnight of first showing symptoms, slipping away in the gray hours of dawn with her husband holding her hand and her sons weeping at the foot of the bed.
The reader felt awful about it. Truly, genuinely awful. Jena had always been kind to her, even when suspicion and jealousy must have been eating at her heart. Jena had never treated her cruelly, never had her whipped or dismissed or sent away, even though she had every right as Princess of Dragonstone to do so. The reader mourned Jena sincerely, wearing black for weeks and spending long hours in the sept lighting candles for the dead princess's soul.
But more than her own grief, she felt a deep, aching sympathy for Baelor. After the funeral, after the last prayers had been chanted and Jena's body had been laid to rest in the crypts, the reader made a decision. She would go to him in his study and comfort him. He had been kind to her for so many years. He had protected her, taught her, guided her. The least she could do was offer him solace in his grief. Her intentions were the purest they had ever been.
She found him in his study late that evening, sitting alone in the darkness with only a single candle burning. He was not working. He was just sitting there, staring at nothing, a cup of untouched wine on the desk before him. She entered quietly, her footsteps soft on the stone floor, and spoke his name gently. He looked up at her, and the raw, unguarded grief in his eyes made her heart clench painfully. She crossed the room without thinking, sat beside him, and took his hand in hers. She told him she was sorry. She told him she was there for him. She told him he was not alone.
What happened next was a blur of grief and longing and years of suppressed desire finally breaking free. He kissed her, but not as a lesson this time. He kissed her like a drowning man gasping for air. She did not return to her own chambers that night. Or the next night. Or the night after that.
Half a year later, she stood before the High Septon in the Great Sept of Baelor, swathed in a gown of pure white silk that cleverly disguised the soft swell of her belly. The ceremony was rushed, the guest list carefully controlled, the whispers of scandal already spreading through the court. But Baelor Breakspear looked at his bride with naked satisfaction, his hand warm and possessive on the small of her back as he spoke his vows in a clear, steady voice. And when the High Septon pronounced them man and wife, one flesh, one heart, one soul, now and forever, Baelor smiled the smile of a man who had finally, after years of waiting, gotten exactly what he wanted.
She was his now. Completely and irrevocably his. The hostage had become the wife. The ward had become the princess. And her family, sitting in their distant castle, could only watch as the Targaryens tightened their grip on everything they held dear.
---
Darker ending from the night of the funeral:
He kissed her and her body went rigid, her hands pressing instinctively against his chest, but he was so much stronger than her. He had always been so much stronger than her.
She tried to pull back, to create distance, to gently remind him of who she was, of who he was, of the impropriety of this moment. She said his name, a questioning, uncertain sound. But he did not stop. He pulled her closer, his hands gripping her waist with a desperate, possessive strength that made her ribs ache. His voice, when he spoke against her lips, was rough and broken. He told her he needed her. He needed her so badly. He had needed her for years, had burned for her for years, had denied himself for the sake of duty and honor and a wife he had never loved the way he loved her. And now Jena was gone, and he was alone, and he could not bear to be alone tonight. He could not bear it. He would not survive it. He needed her. She was the only one who understood him, the only one who truly knew him, the only one who could make the pain stop. Would she really be so cruel as to abandon him now, in the darkest moment of his life? After everything he had done for her? After he had protected her, clothed her, fed her, kept her safe from the vipers at court? After he had rejected every suitor who would have taken her away from him? Did all that mean nothing to her?
The words tangled around her like silk cords, binding her, confusing her. Guilt bloomed in her chest, hot and sickening. He had protected her. He had been kind to her. He had given her a home when she was a frightened little hostage with nowhere else to go. And now he was in pain, terrible pain, and she could help him, could ease his suffering. What kind of person would she be if she turned away from him now? But beneath the guilt, a small, panicked voice screamed that this was wrong, all wrong, that she did not want this, that his hands were moving over her body in ways that made her feel trapped and small and terrified.
She did not want to kiss him. She did not want his hands on her. But he was her warder, her keeper, the man who controlled every aspect of her life. He decided where she lived, what she wore, who she spoke to, what she ate. He decided her future, her marriage, her fate. He was a prince of the blood, the heir to the Iron Throne, and she was the daughter of traitors living on borrowed time and royal sufferance. If she angered him now, if she pushed him away and wounded his pride in this moment of terrible vulnerability, what would happen to her? Would he send her away? Would he finally accept one of those marriage proposals and ship her off to some distant, dismal keep to be the wife of a man she had never met? Would he withdraw his protection and leave her to the mercies of the courtiers who still whispered about her traitor's blood? Could she afford to refuse him? Did she even have the right to refuse him?
She realized, with a cold, sinking clarity, that she did not. She had never had the right to refuse him. Her entire existence was conditional on his goodwill. And so when he kept kissing her, when he pulled her from the chair and into his lap, when his hands tangled in her hair and his mouth traced a burning path down her throat, she did not fight him. She went still and quiet and compliant. She closed her eyes and let it happen. She told herself it was gratitude. She told herself it was comfort. She told herself she owed him this for all the years of safety he had given her. She told herself that her body's trembling was from sympathy, from shared grief, from anything other than fear and revulsion.
He took her silence as consent. He took her stillness as acceptance. He whispered against her skin that she was so good to him, so perfect, his sweet girl, his constant companion, his everything. He had waited so long, denied himself so long, and now she was here and she was his, truly his, finally his.
She did not return to her own chambers that night. She lay in his bed, staring at the canopy above her, feeling his arm wrapped around her waist like an iron band. She listened to his breathing even out into sleep, felt his chest rise and fall against her back. Her body felt foreign to her, heavy and strange. There was a dull ache between her thighs and a sharper ache behind her breastbone that would not go away. She did not cry. She did not move. She just lay there, wide eyed in the darkness, waiting for dawn to come.
He sent for her the next night. And the night after that. And the night after that. And she went, because she did not know how to refuse him. Because she was too afraid of what would happen if she said no. Because he had given her everything, and now he wanted this in return, and she could not bring herself to deny the grieving prince his only comfort. So she went to his chambers every evening, and she let him take what he wanted, and she learned how to smile and murmur the words he wanted to hear. She learned how to be what he needed. She learned how to survive.
And when she missed her moon's blood a month later, and then again the month after that, and the maester confirmed what she already knew in her bones, Baelor kissed her forehead with a tenderness that made her stomach turn and told her they would be married before her belly showed too much. His eyes were bright with satisfaction, with triumph, with a possessive joy that looked almost like love but felt exactly like ownership.
She stood in the Great Sept of Baelor half a year later, swathed in white silk that draped cleverly over the swell of her stomach, and spoke her vows in a voice that did not tremble. She was Princess of Dragonstone now. Wife of the heir to the Iron Throne. The most envied woman in the Seven Kingdoms.
And she had never felt more trapped in her entire life.
SUMMARY: Kidnapped as a child and presumed dead, you survive years of abuse before becoming the kept woman of Prince Aerion Targaryen. In a world where survival means loving a monster, your fragile sense of safety shatters when your past resurfaces in the worst possible way.
TW: rape, sexual abuse, sex trafficking, forced prostitution, domestic abuse, dubious consent, trauma bonding, graphic violence, torture, child endangerment, kidnapping, misogyny
WC:25K
209 A.C Flea Bottom
The first thing you ever remembered was your brother’s hands.
Not your mother’s face, that was gone, worn away like a coin passed through too many fingers. You could summon the shape of her if you concentrated: the blurred watermark of a jawline, the suggestion of a mouth that laughed like a cracked bell, the smell of cheap wine and cheaper perfume that clung to her hair long after she stopped breathing. But her face? No. That belonged to the dark now, along with everything else from before.
But the hands, those you remembered. Dunk’s hands. Too large for a boy of eight, the knuckles already crosshatched with scars from street fights and kitchen fires, but impossibly gentle as they lifted you from the straw mattress where your mother lay cold and still. You had been five years old. You had not understood death, only that Mother would not wake. It was Dunk who wrapped you in a blanket thin enough to see through. Dunk who carried you out into the grey morning, your face pressed to his neck so you would not see the body being hauled away. Dunk who said, in a voice that splintered because he was barely more than a child himself, “I’ve got you. I’ve always got you.”
And he had, you slept in doorways at first, curled together like kittens against the cold that seeped up through the cobblestones. Dunk learned quickly which bakers threw out day old bread and which watchmen could be bribed with a sad eyed look. He found work at an inn in Flea Bottom and the innkeeper’s wife let you sleep in the stables so long as Dunk scrubbed the floors and hauled the kegs and made himself useful in a dozen small ways. You would sit in the corner while he worked, your knees drawn up to your chin, watching him. Watching the boy melt away, season by season, into something that looked more like a man. He grew taller and broader and harder, his shoulders widening, his voice dropping. He was three years older than you, but sometimes he felt like thirty. He had never been a child. Neither of you had.
But you had each other. And that was enough. It had to be.
Every night, after his labors were done, Dunk would come to you in the stables. He would reek of sweat and sour ale, and he would lower himself onto the hay beside you with a groan that belonged to a man three times his age. And then he would tell you stories he’d gathered like dropped coins from travelers and old soldiers and the septon who sometimes came to beg a bowl of soup. Stories of knights who never faltered, dragons who spoke in riddles, castles of white stone that caught the sunrise like mirrors. Maidens so beautiful that kingdoms burned for a single glance.
You were twelve when the men began to notice you. It happened on an ordinary night, with an ordinary drunk who’d had too much ale and too little sense. You were carrying a tray of empty cups back to the kitchen, your arms aching with the weight, when a hand came out of nowhere and closed on your backside. You froze, no understanding of what the sudden heat crawling up your neck meant or why your body had locked itself rigid as a board. The man laughed and then Dunk was there.
One moment the drunk was leering at you, his hand still on your body, and the next he was on the floor with blood fountaining from his nose and Dunk standing over him like a thunderhead. He threw the man out into the mud, and when he came back inside his hands were trembling with a rage so profound it seemed to warp the air around him. “Stay close to me,” he said, and it was not a request. His voice was quiet, too quiet, the kind of quiet that lives on the far side of fury. “Always. Do you understand? Always.”
You understood. From that day forward, you were never more than arm’s reach from your brother. When he walked to the market, you walked beside him, your fingers sometimes hooked into the rope that acted like a belt, when the crowds pressed too close. The men still looked, by fourteen, you had grown into the kind of beauty that stilled conversations mid sentence, your mother’s eyes and your unknown father’s soft mouth arranged on a face that seemed to belong in a ballad rather than a Flea Bottom inn, but they looked from a distance. Dunk saw to that.
You were inseparable. Joined at the hip, the innkeeper’s wife liked to say, shaking her head with a fondness that bordered on bewilderment. “Never seen the like. That boy would tear the world apart for his little sister.”
You were sixteen when everything ended. The festival came in the spring, an eruption of color and noise that spilled from the gates of the Red Keep and flooded through the city like a tide. Mummers on stilts, jugglers with flaming torches, singers with harps slung across their backs, knights in armor that caught the sun and threw it back in a thousand glittering shards. Dunk had been given the night off—a rarity—and he had taken your hand with a grin you hadn’t seen since you were children hiding from the rain under a stolen tarp. “Come on,” he said, and his eyes were bright in a way that made your chest ache.
You laughed and followed. The crowd was too thick. The torches made everything swim, light and shadow bleeding together until faces became masks and masks became faces. Dunk kept his hand clamped around your arm for the first hour, his grip unwavering, but then a knot of drunkards staggered between you and in the space of a single heartbeat, you lost him.
“Dunk?”
You rose onto your toes, straining above the heads of the crowd. You saw him turn, saw his mouth open to call back to you, saw the sudden alarm flash across his features, and then the surge of bodies carried you sideways, a riptide of flesh and noise, and you stumbled into an alley to escape the crush.
That was when they took you. There were three of them. You never saw their faces clearly, only hands. Rough and quick and impossibly strong, one clamping over your mouth, another banding around your waist and lifting you clean off the ground. You tried to scream. You bit down on the palm pressed against your lips, tasted blood and salt and felt the man curse and shift his grip, but there was no time. A sack came down over your head, coarse and stinking of something you did not want to name, and the world went dark and muffled and small.
The last thing you heard was the festival. The music, the laughter, the endless churn of celebration. It went on without you, as if you had never been there at all.
Dunk searched for three days. He did not sleep. He did not eat. He tore through Flea Bottom like a storm given flesh, overturning carts and kicking down doors, bellowing your name until his voice shredded into something barely human. He went to the City Watch, and they laughed, a girl from the slums, what did he expect? He went to the sept, and the septon only clasped his hands and murmured prayers that tasted like ash. He went to every inn, every brothel, every lightless corner of the city where a girl might be hidden or sold or worse, and he found nothing. Nothing. Nothing and nothing again.
On the fourth day, a woman came to him, she found him in the alley where you had vanished, sitting against the wall with his head in his hands, and she knelt beside him.
“You’re the one,” she said. Not a question. “Looking for the girl with the H/C hair. The pretty one.”
Dunk’s head came up so fast his neck cracked. “Where is she?”
The woman shook her head. Slowly. Deliberately. A gesture that held everything he did not want to know. “They found her in the water this morning, lad. Some men…” She paused, and something that might have been pity flickered across her ruined face. “They took her. And when they were done—” Her hands made a twisting motion, a brutal pantomime that needed no translation. “The women who found her said she was hardly recognizable. They’ve already burned the body. Too much damage, they said. You don’t want to see that. Trust me. You’re better off remembering her the way she was.”
Dunk did not speak. He simply sat there, staring at the woman’s face, and something inside him cracked straight down the middle and bled dry.
“Who?” His voice did not sound like his voice. “Who did it?”
“No one knows. Drunkards, maybe. Travelers passing through. They’re long gone now.” The woman rose, joints creaking, and looked down at him with something that was not quite pity and not quite indifference. “I’m sorry, lad. Truly.”
She left him there. And Dunk stayed. He stayed in that alley as the sun bled out and the moon rose pale and indifferent and the city settled into its night noises around him. His little sister was dead. He had promised—promised—to protect her, and she was dead. And the world, which had never been kind to either of them, now seemed to hold no color.
—
213 A.C Ashford
The gardens of Ashford Castle were not as grand as the ones in Summerhall but they were still beautiful. You had been here for less than a fortnight, arrived as part of Prince Maekar's retinue for the tourney celebrating Lord Ashford's daughter's nameday, and already the place had worked its way under your skin. The roses were in full bloom, cascading over stone walls in waves of crimson and gold and softest pink. The hedges were trimmed into the shapes of birds and beasts.
The little girl was running through the grass ahead of you, her silver gold hair streaming behind her like a banner caught in a high wind, her bare feet slapping against the earth with the unselfconscious joy of someone who had never known hunger or fear or the back of a stranger's hand. She was two years old, small for her age but fierce, so fiercely alive that it stopped your breath sometimes, with violet eyes that missed nothing and a laugh that could fill an entire hall and still demand more room.
"Rhaenyra," you called, and you tried to sound stern, you really did, but the smile kept breaking through no matter how firmly you set your jaw. "Come back here before you trip and ruin that dress."
"Won't," the child announced, with the absolute conviction of someone who had never been wrong about anything in her life, and kept running.
You sighed, gathered your skirts in both hands, and gave chase. The dress you wore was finer than anything you had owned before Aerion had claimed you, a gift he had given you specifically for this journey. Pale blue silk that whispered when you moved, with silver embroidery at the sleeves and neckline. He had wanted you to look presentable at Ashford. You suspected, though you had not said it aloud, that he also wanted to show you off. To remind his family, and perhaps himself, what he possessed.
You were twenty years old now, no longer the trembling girl who had been thrown into a black carriage while a brothel burned behind her, no longer the hollow eyed creature who had learned to disappear inside her own body while men did what they pleased. The past months and years had reshaped you, smoothed some of the sharp edges and hardened others.
But there was something new in you now, something forged in the long nights of learning to survive Aerion Targaryen and the longer days of learning to love your daughter. You knew how to bend without breaking. And you knew, with a certainty that lived in your bones like marrow, that you would kill any living soul who tried to harm your child.
Rhaenyra had tripped over an exposed root and was sitting in the grass, more affronted than injured, examining a smudge of dirt on her palm with the grave concentration of a maester confronted with an ancient and inscrutable text. You scooped her up before the tears could organize themselves, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head, breathing in the smell of sunshine and crushed grass and something warm and sweet that was just her.
"Told you," you murmured into her hair. "You fell."
"Didn't cry," Rhaenyra pointed out. This was technically true, and there was a note of such fierce pride in her small voice that your heart performed an odd, painful little flip in your chest.
"No," you agreed, pulling back to look at her solemn face. "You didn't. You're a brave little dragon, aren't you?"
The child beamed. She adored being called a dragon. It was one of the few gifts Aerion had given her that did not make your stomach twist into complicated knots. This inheritance of fire and blood and the unshakeable conviction that she was meant for something magnificent.
You carried her back toward the castle, her small arms wrapped tightly around your neck, her voice a ceaseless ribbon of chatter about the butterfly she had almost caught and the bird that had flown directly over her head and the flower she had picked that was pink, Mama, pink and pretty and can I keep it forever please please please. You made the appropriate sounds of wonder and encouragement, your eyes scanning the courtyard as you crossed it, your body perpetually aware of who was watching.
The servants of Ashford avoided your gaze, much as the ones at Summerhall did. They had learned, over the course of the tourney's first days, to treat you with a careful neutrality. Not quite respect, not quite disdain, something suspended in the ambiguous space between. They knew what you were. Prince Aerion's paramour. The woman he had brought with him from Summerhall, installed in a guest chamber near his own, paraded through the grounds like a provocative piece of art he wanted everyone to see whether they wished to or not. They did not speak to you unless absolutely necessary, did not meet your eyes, did not acknowledge the child in your arms except to incline their heads stiffly and step aside.
Ashford Castle was a crowded place during the tourney. Lord Ashford's daughter Gwin had turned thirteen, and to honor her nameday, her father had declared a tourney that would last five days. Knights and lords from across the Reach and beyond had gathered to compete, their banners snapping in the spring breeze, their pavilions spreading across the fields like a crop of colorful mushrooms.
Prince Maekar's entire family had come with his children. You saw them sometimes, in the corridors or the courtyards or the great hall at supper, but you never spoke to them. You were not permitted. Prince Maekar had made that blisteringly clear from the very beginning, his voice cold with a disgust he did not bother to disguise.
"The woman stays in her chambers," he had told Aerion when he first met you. "I will not have her parading about in front of the children. She is a whore, Aerion. A whore and you will not embarrass this family."
Aerion had not argued. He rarely argued with his father directly. But he had kept you anyway, had dressed you in silk and silver, had installed you in a room that connected to his own. And now you were here, carrying your daughter back toward the keep while the roses nodded in the breeze and the distant sounds of the tourney grounds drifted over the walls like distant thunder. You had not been permitted to attend the jousts. Not since the yesterday.
You closed your eyes for a moment against the memory. It had been horrible. Aerion's tilt against Ser Humfrey. You had been watching from the stands, Rhaenyra on your lap, your heart in your throat the way it always was when he rode. He was a skilled jouster, your prince, but he rode with a recklessness that bordered on suicidal, and sometimes you thought he would not be satisfied until he left someone broken in the dirt.
This time, he had aimed too low. Deliberately, you were almost certain, though you would never say so aloud. His lance had struck Ser Humfrey's horse in the neck, a brutal, illegal blow that sent the animal crashing to the ground with a scream that would haunt your nightmares for weeks. Ser Humfrey had been thrown, his leg twisted at an angle that made your stomach lurch, and the horse had thrashed in the dirt with blood pumping from its throat.
The crowd had broken through the barriers. Prince Baelor Breakspear himself had risen from his seat, his face a mask of disgust, and you had seen the way he looked at Aerion. The way everyone looked at Aerion. Like he was something monstrous. Something broken beyond repair.
Aerion had found you afterward, still flushed with adrenaline, his eyes too bright. He had forbidden you from attending any more of the jousts.
"It's not safe," he had said, his grip on your arm just shy of bruising. "The crowds are unpredictable. The horses are dangerous. You and Rhaenyra will stay in the castle or the gardens. I don't want you anywhere near the lists."
You had not argued. You rarely argued with him about things that mattered. But you had seen the truth behind his words, the truth he would never admit. He did not want you to see him lose. He did not want you to see the way the other knights looked at him after what he had done.
So you had stayed away. You had walked in the gardens, and played with Rhaenyra, and smiled your careful smile whenever Aerion returned to your chambers in the evenings, bruised and bristling and desperate for the praise only you could give him.
"Up," Rhaenyra demanded as you approached the castle's side entrance. "Up high, Mama. I want to see."
You lifted her higher, settling her higher on your hip with the practiced ease of two years of motherhood, and she gazed around the corridor with the same wide eyed wonder she brought to everything. You loved her so much it scared you sometimes. Loved her with a ferocity that made the love you had felt for your own mother, dim and distant and blurred at the edges, seem like a candle held up against the sun.
"You spoil her."
The voice came from behind you, and you did not startle. Months with Aerion had taught you the particular cadence of his footsteps, the faint jingle of the sword he wore even at peace, the way the air in a room seemed to tighten and grow watchful when he entered. You turned, shifting Rhaenyra to your other hip with a fluidity that had become second nature, and offered him the smile you had perfected over your time together.
It was not a false smile. That was the strange thing, the thing that still surprised you when you stopped to examine it. It was not false at all. There was calculation in it, yes. There was calculation in everything you did, a habit you could not have broken if you tried. But there was warmth there too. The warmth of a woman looking at a man she had somehow, against all odds and reason, come to care for.
Love. The word still felt strange in your mouth, like a garment that did not quite fit. Aerion was not kind. He was not gentle. He was not good, in any sense that your brother Dunk would have recognized. But he was yours, in his possessive, consuming, infuriating way, and you were his, and somewhere in the crucible of the past years, that mutual belonging had transmuted into something that looked, from certain angles, remarkably like love.
He was not a tall man, standing at five and a half feet, and you knew it rankled at him. Knew that every inch he lacked compared to the warriors he trained with was a splinter under his skin. But what he lacked in height he more than compensated for in presence. The way his boots struck the stone floors, deliberate and commanding. The sharp, hawkish beauty of his face, all angles and shadows. The particular weight of his attention when it landed on you, heavy as a hand on your shoulder.
"My dragon," you said, and the word was warm, intimate, a private jest between you that no one else would recognize. "She wanted to explore the gardens. You know how she loves the roses."
He stepped closer, and Rhaenyra immediately lunged toward him, her small arms outstretched, her face alight with the uncomplicated adoration of a child who had never been given a reason to fear her father. "Papa! Papa, I found a flower!"
She had dropped the flower somewhere in the garden, of course. You had seen it fall, a little pink bruise against the green grass, left behind in her headlong rush toward the next thing and the next and the next. But Aerion did not know that, and you suspected he would not have cared if he did. He took the girl from your arms with an ease that still surprised you, settling her against his chest as naturally as if he had been doing it all his life.
Aerion, who was never gentle with anyone. Aerion, whose hands had left bruises on your body in the early days. Aerion, who had aimed his lance at a horse's throat and watched it die without flinching.
But Rhaenyra had never seen that side of him. Rhaenyra saw only the father who bounced her on his knee and called her his little dragon and looked at her as if she were the single good thing he had managed to produce in a life full of sharp edges and bad decisions. And you saw both versions of him, the monster and the man, and you had learned to hold them both in your mind at once, to love the whole complicated, contradictory mess of him.
"A flower," Aerion repeated, bouncing Rhaenyra gently against his chest. "What color?"
"Pink!"
"Pink," he said, with the solemnity of a man receiving a sacred revelation. "Pink is an excellent color. You have impeccable taste."
Rhaenyra giggled, burying her face in the curve of his neck, and Aerion's eyes met yours over the top of her head. There was something in his gaze. A flicker of warmth, a flicker of something that might have been gratitude. It made your heart clench in that way you had long since stopped trying to explain away.
I love him, you thought, and the thought did not feel like a lie. It felt like the truth, strange and inconvenient and slightly terrifying though it was. Gods help me, I truly do.
You knew what people would say if they could hear your thoughts. How can you love him? After what he did to that horse? After what he did to you? After what he is? And they would not be wrong to ask. The early days had been brutal; there was no use pretending otherwise. He had hurt you, in ways that still surfaced in your dreams on bad nights. He had fucked you without asking, had demanded without giving, had treated your body like territory to be conquered and your compliance like tribute to be extracted.
But then something had shifted. Slowly, incrementally, in the way of seasons changing. He had begun to see you. The woman who praised him when no one else would. The woman who listened to his fears and his rages and his strange, tangled dreams of dragonfire and destiny. The woman who had given him a daughter and held his hand through the disappointment and taught him, patient as a stone worn smooth by water, how to be something other than cruel.
And you had seen him, the man underneath, the one who craved praise because he had never received it, the one who lashed out because he had never learned another way to ask for what he needed. You had seen him, and against all wisdom, against all self preservation, you had loved him.
He still hurt you, sometimes. When his black moods descended and his hands grew rough and the words that came out of his mouth were designed to wound. But those moments were rarer now, spaced further and further apart, and after each one he would come to you with his arms full of gifts. Dresses of silk and velvet, jewels that glittered in their velvet nests, books with leather bindings and gold leaf on the pages that you devoured in the quiet hours when he was training and Rhaenyra was napping. He would hold you afterward, his face pressed into your hair, his arms wrapped around you like a cage he was afraid you might slip through.
"You understand me," he would whisper, and his voice would crack on the words in a way that made your heart splinter. "You're the only one who does. The only one who ever has. Don't leave me. Promise me you won't leave."
And you, holding him in the dark, would stroke his short silver hair and murmur the words he needed to hear. "I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. I'm yours."
You meant them, too. That was the strangest part. After everything, you meant them.
Where would I even go? you thought, watching him bounce your daughter in his arms in this borrowed garden in a borrowed castle, surrounded by roses that belonged to someone else.
You looked at Rhaenyra, at the small, fierce face that was so clearly her father's, and you thought about the day she had been born.
It had been the longest day of your life.
The labor had lasted nearly eighteen hours. You had screamed until your voice gave out entirely, had bitten straight through the leather strap the midwife had given you, had prayed to gods you had not believed in since childhood to make it stop, please make it stop, I can't do this, I'm going to die, please let me die. Aerion had paced outside the door like a caged animal, his boots wearing a groove in the stone, demanding updates every few minutes and threatening bodily harm to the maester whenever the news was not to his liking.
"Is it a boy?" he had shouted through the door, over and over, his voice fraying at the edges. "Tell me it's a boy. It has to be a boy. I'm going to name him Maegor. A strong name. A dragon's name. Tell me!"
You had heard him, even through the wall of agony that had swallowed the world, and you had felt a cold dread settle into the pit of your stomach like a stone dropped into deep water. Maegor. He wanted to name his son after Maegor the Cruel. You had prayed then, harder than you had ever prayed in your life, with what remained of your shredded voice and your failing strength. Not a boy. Please, not a boy. Whatever else you give me, don't give me a boy who will carry that name.
The gods, for once in their capricious existence, had listened.
When the baby had finally emerged, slick and furious and impossibly, breathtakingly alive, the maester had looked between her tiny legs and pronounced, with the careful neutrality of a man who knew exactly how dangerous this moment was: "A girl, my prince. A healthy girl."
The silence that followed had been more terrifying than any scream.
Aerion had burst into the room, his face pale as milk, his short hair standing up in wild disarray from running his hands through it for eighteen hours. He had stared at the child in the maester's arms. At the tuft of silver gold hair plastered to her scalp, at the violet eyes that were already open and glaring at the world with an indignation that seemed profoundly personal. His expression had twisted into something ugly.
"A girl," he had said, and his voice was flat. Hollow. A room with all the furniture removed. "I waited nine moons. Nine moons. For a girl."
He had not touched you. He had not touched the baby. He had simply turned on his heel and walked out of the room, and you had heard his boots ring down the corridor, and then the distant slam of a door, and then nothing.
The next three days had been the darkest of your new life. Aerion did not come to your room. He did not send for you. He did not acknowledge the existence of the child at all. He ate his meals with his family, trained in the yard with a brutality that left his sparring partners bloodied and bewildered, and refused to speak to anyone who so much as mentioned the baby's existence. The girl, the servants called her in whispers, because she had no name yet, and a child without a name was a ghost.
You lay in your bed, your body slowly knitting itself back together, your breasts aching with milk, and you held your daughter against your chest and wondered if this was the end. If Aerion would cast you both out, send you back to the streets of King's Landing with nothing but the clothes on your back and a bastard child in your arms. You made plans in the dark hours. Foolish, desperate plans, the kind of plans that only seemed reasonable at three in the morning when you were alone and terrified and your stitches still pulled every time you moved. You would run. You would find Dunk if he was still alive, throw yourself at his feet, beg him to take you back even though you were ruined and used and nothing like the sister he had lost. You would find work, honest work, kitchen work, anything, and you would raise your daughter to be strong and fierce and free, and she would never, ever know what it felt like to be owned.
But on the fourth day, the door had opened.
Aerion stood in the frame, and you barely recognized him. His eyes were ringed with shadows so dark they looked like bruises, his short hair a disheveled mess, his fine clothes rumpled and stained as if he had been sleeping in them, or not sleeping at all. He had been wrestling with something, you realized. Himself, his pride, his expectations, his disappointment. And from the look of him, he had lost.
"Let me see her," he said. His voice was hoarse, scraped raw, as if he had been shouting or weeping or both. "Let me see my daughter."
You did not trust yourself to speak. You simply lifted the baby from your chest. She was awake, her violet eyes tracking the movement with that unnerving intensity newborns sometimes had. And you held her out toward him.
Aerion approached slowly, cautiously, like a man approaching a wounded animal that might bite. He looked down at the small, wrinkled face, at the silver gold fuzz on her head, at the tiny fists that clenched and unclenched in the air as if she were already fighting battles only she could see. And something in his expression shifted. Not softened. Aerion did not soften, not in any way you had ever witnessed. But cracked. A fissure in the ice, unexpected and profound.
"She looks like me," he said. It was not a question.
"Yes," you whispered, your voice still ruined from screaming. "She's a true dragon, my prince. Just like her father."
He reached out one finger, just one, his hand trembling almost imperceptibly, and touched the baby's cheek. Rhaenyra turned her head toward the contact, her tiny mouth opening and closing in that instinctive rooting reflex.
"Rhaenyra," he said. "I'll call her Rhaenyra."
You knew the name, of course. Everyone in Westeros knew the name. The princess who had been called Maegor with teats, who had fought a war that tore the realm in half and refused to surrender even when the odds were hopeless. It was a name soaked in controversy, in blood, in the stubborn refusal to be anything other than what she was. It was a cruel name to give an infant daughter, in some ways. A challenge. A provocation. A reminder that girls could be as dangerous as boys, if they were bold enough.
But it was not Maegor. It was not the name of the Cruel. And on that fourth day, with your daughter finally named and Aerion's hand resting awkwardly, almost shyly, on your shoulder, you had decided to be grateful for small mercies.
"Rhaenyra," you repeated, trying the name on your tongue. It tasted like strength. Like fire. Like survival. "My little dragon."
And now, two years later, watching that same daughter tug impatiently at Aerion's doublet while he laughed, that hope had only grown. Rhaenyra was fierce and stubborn and clever and alive, so vibrantly alive, and you would make certain she stayed that way. You would die before you let that happen. You would kill before you let that happen. And the truth of that, the absolute crystalline certainty of it, was the most liberating thing you had ever felt.
"Y/N."
Aerion's voice pulled you back from the precipice of memory. He was watching you over Rhaenyra's silver gold head, his expression hovering somewhere between amusement and irritation.
"You're brooding again," he said. "You get that look on your face when you're thinking too hard. I've told you. I don't like it."
You let your expression shift, the distant look replaced by something warmer, more present. But you did not apologize; you had learned, over your time together, that apologizing for your thoughts only made him more suspicious. Instead, you reached out and straightened the collar of his doublet, letting your fingers brush the skin of his throat, a gesture of casual intimacy that you knew he craved even if he would never admit it.
"I was thinking about how happy she looks," you said, and it was the truth, or a version of it. "You make her happy, Aerion. You know that, don't you?"
He grunted, but you caught the flicker of satisfaction that crossed his features before he could suppress it. Praise. He could never get enough of it, had been starved for it his entire life, and you had learned to feed him with the same regularity you fed your daughter. All this time, and he still turned toward your words like a flower toward the sun, drinking in every affirmation, every acknowledgment, every whispered you are magnificent, you are powerful, you are loved.
"She's a dragon," Aerion said, adjusting Rhaenyra on his hip with practiced ease. "Dragons don't get sad. They incinerate the things that upset them."
"Papa," Rhaenyra said, with the sudden, intense solemnity that only a two-year-old can muster, "I want to incinerate something."
Aerion threw back his head and laughed. A real laugh, full throated and genuine, the kind of laugh that transformed his sharp features into something almost boyish, almost approachable. "That's my girl," he said, and pressed a kiss to her forehead with an uncharacteristic tenderness. "That's my little dragon. We'll find you something to burn later."
You watched them, this strange, fierce man and this strange, fierce child, and your heart performed that complicated maneuver it had been practicing for years, folding affection and exasperation and hope and fear all into one impossible shape.
This is real, you told yourself. Whatever else is happening, whatever else they say about us, this is real. He is my Aerion, and she is my daughter, and this is my life, and it is real.
Aerion shifted Rhaenyra to his other arm and extended his free hand toward you. His earlier tension seemed to have eased, replaced by something almost eager, a restless energy that crackled just beneath his skin.
"There's a play tonight," he said. "Some puppeteers have set up in the village. I've heard it's about a dragon." His mouth curved into that sharp, knowing smile you had come to recognize. "I thought we might go after supper. You and me and the little dragon here. She should see something worthy of her name."
Rhaenyra's head came up at the word dragon, her violet eyes bright. "A dragon play, Papa?"
"A dragon play," Aerion confirmed, tweaking her nose. "With fire and scales and everything a proper dragon ought to have. Would you like that?"
Rhaenyra's shriek of delight was answer enough. She bounced in his arms, clapping her small hands together, already launching into a stream of questions about whether the dragon would be big or small, whether it would breathe real fire, whether she could meet it afterward and be its friend.
You smiled, and this time there was no calculation in it at all. Aerion was trying. In his own strange, possessive way, he was trying. He had brought you to Ashford to wound his cousin, yes. He had paraded you in front of his family like a trophy, yes. But he was also here, in this sunlit corridor, planning an evening at a play with his paramour and his bastard daughter, and there was something in his face that you had learned to recognize as hope.
"That sounds wonderful," you said, and meant it. "Rhaenyra will be talking about it for weeks."
"She'll be talking about it regardless," Aerion said dryly. "The child never stops talking. She gets that from you."
"From me?" You pressed a hand to your chest in mock offense. "I am the very soul of silence, my prince."
Aerion snorted. It was an undignified sound, entirely at odds with the sharp, cruel prince the rest of the world knew. "You are a terrible liar, Y/N. You always have been."
But he was smiling when he said it, and when he offered you his arm, you took it without hesitation. Rhaenyra was still chattering about dragons, her small voice filling the corridor with improbable questions and even more improbable declarations. Aerion answered her with patience, with warmth, with the particular tenderness he reserved for her alone.
And you walked beside them through the halls of Ashford Castle, your hand on Aerion's arm, your daughter's laughter echoing off the stones, and for this moment, this single bright moment, you let yourself believe that everything would be all right.
—
The screaming started before you understood what was happening.
One moment there had been music, the thin reedy piping of a flute and the thump of a hand drum, and Rhaenyra had been bouncing on your hip with her small hands clapping together in delight. The painted dragon had been swaying above the stage on its strings, its wings catching the torchlight, its jaws opening and closing in roar while the puppeteer below made a rumbling growl deep in her throat to give it voice. Rhaenyra had laughed. You could still hear the echo of that laugh, bright and silver and utterly without fear.
Then Aerion and the white cloaks moved, and the world splintered. The first tent pole went down with a sound like a thunderclap. Silk billowed inward, red and gold and orange, catching the torchlight and becoming flame even as it fell. People were screaming. People were running. A woman stumbled into you from behind and you curled around Rhaenyra on pure instinct, your spine curving, your arms locking, your body becoming a shell with your daughter at its center. Someone's elbow drove into your ribs and you felt something grind and shift and send a bright white bolt of pain up your side.
"Mama," Rhaenyra whimpered, and her voice was small, so terribly small, the voice of a child who did not understand why the world had turned cruel between one heartbeat and the next. "Mama, I want to go. I want to go home."
"Shh," you breathed into her hair, though your own voice was shaking so badly the word hardly had a shape. "Shh, my love, my dragon, Mama's here. Mama's got you. Close your eyes, sweetling. Close your eyes and it will be over soon."
She buried her face in the curve of your throat. You could feel her tears, hot and wet, soaking through the silk of your gown. You could feel her heart beating against your chest, a frantic bird trapped in a cage of bone. You could feel every tremor that ran through her small body, and each one was a knife slipped between your ribs.
The guard Aerion had assigned to you stood at your back like a statue carved from ice. Ser Harrold, his name was, you had begged him to escort you from the pavilion the moment the violence began. You had turned to him with Rhaenyra clutched against your chest and pleaded with him to let you leave, to let you take your daughter somewhere safe, somewhere the screaming did not reach.
He had looked at you with eyes that held no more warmth than a winter pond. "Prince's orders," he had said, and the words fell from his mouth like stones dropped into still water. "You stay until he says otherwise."
"But she's frightened," you had said, and you had hated the tremor in your voice, hated the way it made you sound weak when you needed to be strong. "She's two years old, Ser Harrold. She doesn't understand what's happening. Please."
"Prince's orders," he had repeated, and he had not looked at you again.
On the stage, Aerion had the puppeteer by the wrist. She was young. That was the detail that lodged itself in your memory like a splinter, the detail that would come back to you in the dark hours of the night for years afterward. She was young, perhaps your age. Her mouth was open in a scream that you could not hear over the roaring of the crowd, and her free hand was beating uselessly against Aerion's chest, against his arm, against the unyielding iron of his grip.
She had made a dragon out of paint and wood and string. She had painted scales on its wings with her own hands, had worked its jaws with her own fingers, had given it a voice that made children laugh and grown men cheer. She had made the terrible, fatal mistake of letting her dragon be killed in the story she told. The knight had slain it with his sword and the audience had gasped and clapped and cheered the hero's victory.
Aerion had not cheered. Aerion had stared with a face like a thunderhead, and then the Kingsguard had begun to move, and now he was on the stage with the puppeteer's wrist in his hand and her dragon lying forgotten at his feet.
He started with her fingers. The first one broke with a sound like a dry branch snapping underfoot in the depths of winter. It was surprisingly quiet, that sound, almost delicate, almost polite. The puppeteer's index finger bent backward at an angle that made your stomach contract violently, and she screamed, a high thin shriek that cut through the chaos of the pavilion like a blade through silk.
Rhaenyra flinched in your arms. "Mama," she whimpered, "why is the lady screaming? Is she hurt? Mama, I want to go."
"Close your eyes, sweetling," you whispered again, and your voice was breaking now, splintering into pieces you could not put back together. "Close your eyes and think of something nice. Think of the roses in the garden. Think of the pink flower you picked. Think of anything but this."
The second finger broke wetter than the first. A muffled, grinding crack that seemed to echo in the hollow of your chest. The puppeteer's legs gave out beneath her, but Aerion held her up by her ruined hand,ìand his face, his beautiful face that you had kissed and praised and learned to love, was alight with something that went beyond cruelty into a territory you had no name for.
Pleasure. A bright, burning pleasure that lit him from within like a lantern lights a room. His violet eyes were wide and shining, his lips parted slightly around his bloodied teeth, his breath coming in short sharp bursts that were almost sexual in their rhythm. He was enjoying this. He was enjoying this in a way he had never enjoyed a single moment of the years you had spent together, and the realization crashed into you like a wave into rocks, cold and brutal and undeniable.
You love him, you had thought earlier in the gardens. No, you hate him. That was the horror of it, the horror that would never leave you no matter how many years passed. You loved him, you loved the father of your child, you loved the man who had burned down a brothel for you. You loved him, and he was standing on a stage in a village called Ashford, breaking a girl's fingers one by one because her puppet show had insulted his pride.
The third finger made a sound like a walnut being crushed in a vise.
"Please," you heard yourself saying, and you did not know if you were speaking to Aerion or to Ser Harrold or to the gods who had never listened to a single prayer you had ever sent their way. "Please, someone stop him. Someone make him stop."
Ser Harrold's hand closed around your upper arm, immobilizing you. He was wearing gauntlets, the leather stiff and unyielding against your skin. "Hold still," he said, and his voice was the voice of a man who had learned long ago that obedience was safer than conscience.
The puppeteer's fourth finger snapped.
Then the giant came out of the crowd. His hair was dirty blonde, cut short against his skull in a way that suggested practicality rather than fashion, and it was matted with sweat and dust and something that might have been blood. His face was a shadowed blur in the torchlight, his features obscured by the angle and the distance and the chaos, but his size. Gods above and below, his size.
He was enormous. Seven feet of bone and muscle and righteous fury, with shoulders broad enough to block out the firelight behind him and hands the size of dinner plates curled into fists at his sides. He did not slow. He did not hesitate. He cleared the edge of the stage in a single stride, and then he was on Aerion, and his fist was connecting with the prince's face with a sound like a hammer striking an anvil.
Aerion staggered backward. His grip on the puppeteer's wrist broke, and she crumpled to the stage in a heap of brown wool and ruined hands, sobbing. Blood flew from Aerion's mouth in a dark arc that caught the torchlight and glittered like rubies scattered across the stage. He hit the wooden planking hard, his head snapping back against the boards, and for one impossible, crystalline moment, the entire pavilion went silent.
Then the Kingsguard moved. They came from every direction at once, white cloaks streaming behind them like wings, white enameled armor flashing in the firelight. Six of them. Seven. More, perhaps. They swarmed the big man the way wolves swarm a bear, throwing themselves onto his back and his arms and his legs, trying to drag him down by sheer weight of numbers. He fought them. Gods, he fought them. You saw one Kingsguard reel backward with blood pouring from the visor of his helm. You saw another take an elbow to the throat and go down choking, clawing at his gorget. You saw the big man's fists rise and fall and rise again with the relentless rhythm of a blacksmith's hammer, each blow carrying the weight of a righteous anger that no amount of white armor could withstand.
But there were too many. There were always too many. They dragged at his legs and his arms and his neck, six white cloaked knights and then seven and then eight, and still he nearly threw them off, still he nearly got free, still he nearly made it back to his feet with his massive hands reaching for Aerion again. Then one of the Kingsguard drove the pommel of his sword into the back of the big man's skull, and his knees buckled. Another kicked his legs out from under him. Another twisted his arm behind his back at an angle that made the joint scream in protest even from where you stood watching.
They forced him to his knees on the stage. One of them, a tall man with a captain's bars on his white cloak, grabbed a fistful of that dirty blonde hair and yanked his head back, forcing his face up into the torchlight.
Aerion rose to his feet. He moved slowly, carefully, the way a man moves when he is holding onto his composure by the thinnest of threads. His lip was split open, a gash that ran from the corner of his mouth nearly to his chin. Blood sheeted down his jaw and dripped onto the white silk of his collar, staining it crimson. He probed at his teeth with his tongue, grimaced, and spat a wad of blood and saliva onto the stage. Something small and white and hard skittered across the wooden boards.
“Why did you throw your life away for this whore” Aerion said.
"You've loosened one of my teeth,"
The pavilion had gone very quiet. The screaming had stopped, or perhaps it had simply receded to a distance where it could no longer reach you. The only sounds were the crackle of the torches, the soft sobbing of the puppeteer still huddled on the stage, and the ragged, labored breathing of the big man as he knelt in the grip of the Kingsguard. Aerion's voice was soft, almost conversational, the voice of a man discussing the weather over a cup of wine. It was more terrifying than any scream could have been.
"So," Aerion continued, prodding at his mouth again with his thumb and forefinger, examining the blood that came away, "we'll start by breaking out all of yours."
"No." The word came out of your mouth before you could stop it, a reflex as automatic as breathing, as instinctive as flinching from an open flame. "Aerion, no."
He did not look at you. He was not capable of hearing you, not in this state, not with the blood of a puppet show on his hands and the taste of his own tooth in his mouth. He was looking at the big man the way a child looks at an insect he has caught in a jar. Curious. Utterly without pity.
One of the Kingsguard, the captain with his hand still fisted in the big man's hair, forced his head down toward the stage. Another moved to stand on either side of him, gripping his shoulders, pinning him in place. A third stepped forward, removing his gauntlets one finger at a time, flexing his bare hands with the deliberate precision of a man preparing to perform a task that required both strength and care.
"Hold him still," Aerion said. "I want to watch."
Rhaenyra was sobbing in earnest now, her small body shaking with the force of her terror. She did not understand what was happening. She understood only that her father was on the stage and there was blood on his face and the safe bright world of the puppet show had collapsed into screaming and white cloaks and a big man on his knees who was about to be hurt in a way she had no language for.
"Mama," she wept, "Mama, I want Papa to stop, make Papa stop, please make him stop."
"I can't," you whispered into her hair, and the admission was a wound that would never fully heal. "I can't, sweetling. Mama can't make him stop. Close your eyes. Close your eyes and don't look."
The Kingsguard with the bare hands stepped forward. He was flexing his fingers, working the joints loose, his movements unhurried and methodical. The captain still had the big man's head forced down at the angle required for what was about to happen. The other guards braced themselves, digging their heels into the wooden stage, preparing for the struggle they knew would come.
The big man lifted his head against the pressure of the captain's grip. It was a monumental effort; you could see the muscles of his neck straining, the veins standing out like cords, the sweat cutting tracks through the blood and dirt on his face. He lifted his head, and the torchlight fell full upon his features for the first time.
You saw his face.
Time did not slow. It did not fade. It stopped. It stopped completely, absolutely, as if some vast and terrible hand had reached down from the heavens and seized the mechanism of the world itself and held it motionless. The torches froze mid-flicker. The screaming faded to a hum that existed somewhere beyond the boundaries of hearing. The blood in your veins turned to ice and then to fire and then to something that had no name at all.
You knew that face. You knew the hands. The enormous hands that had lifted you from your mother's deathbed, that had carried you through the cold morning while the other whores watched with pity and disgust, that had wrapped you in a threadbare blanket and held you against his chest while he promised you in a cracking boy's voice that he would always, always have you.
Dunk. He was alive. He was on his knees on a stage in a village called Ashford with a Kingsguard's hand in his hair and another Kingsguard's bare knuckles preparing to break his teeth out of his skull one by one, and he was alive.
"Dunk."
You did not recognize your own voice. It did not sound like a voice at all. It sounded like something that had been torn out of you by the roots, something that had been buried so deep and so long that pulling it free left a bleeding hollow in the center of your chest.
"Dunk."
Louder this time. Louder, and it cracked on the second syllable, cracked like your mother's laugh had cracked, like a bell that had been rung too hard and too long and had nothing left inside it but splinters.
"DUNK."
Time restarted itself with a violence that made your vision swim. The torches flared back to life. The screaming returned, a wave of sound that crashed over you and through you and left you gasping. The Kingsguard hesitated, their hands pausing on their prisoner, their white helms turning toward you with the synchronized precision of hunting dogs catching a scent.
Dunk turned his head. The captain still had his fist twisted in his hair, still had his neck bent at that brutal angle, but Dunk turned his head against that grip with the slow, inexorable force of a continent shifting, and he looked at you.
His eyes found yours across the chaos of the ruined tent. You saw the recognition hit him. Saw it travel through his body like a physical blow, a shock wave that started in his eyes and rippled outward through his shoulders, his chest, his hands. His face went slack with it, the tension draining out of his jaw and his brow, replaced by something that was too raw and too vast to be called surprise. It was disbelief. It was hope, the kind of hope that had been dead for so long its resurrection was indistinguishable from agony. It was joy and grief and guilt and love, all of them crashing together in the space of a single heartbeat.
His mouth moved. Formed the shape of your name. You could not hear it over the screaming, over the roaring of your own blood in your ears, but you saw it, saw the way his lips shaped the syllables he had not spoken in years, the name he had called across a hundred alleys and a hundred dark streets while he searched for you, the name he had whispered to himself in the long nights when he believed you were dead and gone and never coming back.
He surged against the guards holding him. Not fighting to escape now. Fighting to get to you. His massive shoulders bunched and heaved, nearly throwing off the two Kingsguard who were gripping his arms. A third lunged in to reinforce them, his white cloak tangling around his legs in his haste. Dunk did not seem to notice. He did not seem to feel the hands dragging at him or the knees pressing into his back or the captain's fist still grinding into his scalp. He was looking at you and only at you, and he was trying to reach you, trying to cross the impossible distance between the stage and the place where you stood with Rhaenyra in your arms.
You surged forward to meet him. You did not think about it. You did not calculate the odds or weigh the consequences. Your body moved before your mind could catch up, driven by an instinct older than thought, older than fear, older than anything you had learned in the years since they took you from the festival. Your brother was here. Your brother was alive.
Ser Harrold's arm locked around your waist like an iron bar. "Hold still," he snarled, and he was no longer calm now, no longer indifferent. He was struggling to hold you, struggling to keep his grip on a woman who had spent years learning to be still and silent and obedient and had finally, in this single shattering moment, forgotten how.
"Let me go!" The words tore out of your throat with a force that made your vision white out at the edges. Rhaenyra was screaming in your arms, her small fists beating against your shoulders, her voice a thin high wail that you could barely hear over the roaring in your ears. "Let me go, that's my brother, that's my brother, let me GO!"
"Aerion!" You were screaming his name now, the name of the man you loved, the name of the monster on the stage, the name of the only person in this pavilion who had the power to make the nightmare stop. "Aerion, please, please, you have to stop, he's my brother,please, Aerion, PLEASE!"
Aerion turned to look at you.
His face was still smeared with blood, his lip still split and swollen, his violet eyes still bright with the pleasure of the violence he had been orchestrating. But something flickered in their depths when he saw your face, when he registered the raw, unvarnished desperation in your voice. Confusion first. Then irritation, a flicker of the familiar petulance that crossed his features whenever something did not go the way he had planned. And then something else, something that chilled you more than any cruelty could have done.
Something calculating.
"What," he said, and his voice was a blade drawn slowly across a whetstone, "the fuck are you doing? What is she screaming about?"
You could barely form the words. Your throat was raw, your chest heaving, your arms trembling with the effort of holding Rhaenyra while Ser Harrold's grip threatened to crack your ribs. But you forced them out, forced them past the sobs that were building in your chest, forced them into the space between you and the man who held your brother's life in his bloodstained hands.
"He's my brother. He's my brother, Aerion." Your voice cracked on his name, splintered into something that was half a plea and half a prayer. "The brother I told you about. Dunk. The one I thought was dead. The one who raised me. Please. Please don't hurt him. I'll do anything. I'll give you anything. Just please, Aerion, please don't hurt my brother."
Something moved in Aerion's face. A muscle in his jaw jumped. His eyes narrowed, the bright pleasure of the violence draining out of them, replaced by something harder and colder and infinitely more dangerous. He looked at you, and he looked at Dunk, and he looked back at you, and you could see him putting the pieces together. The brother you had wept for in the dark hours of the night, the brother whose name you had whispered in your sleep, the brother Aerion had forbidden you from ever mentioning again.
The brother who was now on his knees in front of him, bloodied and defiant, the man who had dared to strike a prince of the blood, and his expression closed like a door slamming shut in a winter gale.
"Take her back to her chamber," Aerion said. He was not looking at you anymore. He was looking at Dunk, and his voice was utterly without warmth, utterly without the history that stretched between you, utterly without anything that might have been mistaken for mercy. "Lock the door. No one goes in or out until I give the order."
"No." The word was barely a whisper. Ser Harrold was already dragging you backward, his arm still locked around your waist, his heels digging into the trampled grass of the pavilion floor. "Aerion, no, please, you can't do this."
"Take the child to the nursery," Aerion continued, as if you had not spoken, as if your voice did not exist, as if you were already gone. "She does not need to see any more of this. Make sure she stays there."
"No!" The scream that tore out of you was not a sound. It was a living thing, a creature with claws and teeth and a heart full of desperation, and it ripped its way out of your throat and into the torchlit air of the pavilion with a force that made the nearest Kingsguard flinch. "You can't separate us! She's my daughter! She's MY daughter!"
Rhaenyra was shrieking now, a high thin sound that rose above the chaos like a needle sliding into flesh. Her arms were wrapped around your neck so tightly that you could feel her small fingernails digging crescents into your skin, and her legs were locked around your waist, and her face was buried in the curve of your shoulder, and she was screaming, screaming, screaming. "Mama, Mama, don't let them take me, Mama, please, I want to stay with you, Mama, MAMA!"
Ser Harrold was dragging you backward. Another guard, a man in the pale grey of Prince Maekar's household, was trying to untangle Rhaenyra from your arms. His hands were gentle, gentler than you had expected, but that gentleness made it worse somehow, made it more real, made it a kindness that was not a kindness at all. He was murmuring something to Rhaenyra, some meaningless reassurance that neither you nor she could hear over the screaming, and his fingers were prying at her small grip one digit at a time.
"Don't," you sobbed. "Don't take her. Please. Please don't take my daughter."
But your arms were being pulled backward, and your strength was failing, and Rhaenyra's grip was slipping. You felt her fingers lose their hold on your dress. Felt the warmth of her body pulled away from yours. Felt the cold air rush in to fill the space where she had been, and that cold was worse than any physical pain, worse than the bruises blooming on your arm where Ser Harrold held you, worse than the raw burning in your throat from screaming, worse than anything you had endured in the brothel or the alley or the long dark nights when you believed your brother was dead.
"RHAENYRA!"
She was being carried away, still reaching for you over the guard's shoulder, her silver-gold hair bright as a candle flame in the torchlight, her violet eyes wide and streaming with tears. "Mama! I want my mama! Give me back my mama!"
You fought. You fought the way Dunk had fought, with every ounce of strength in your body, with your teeth and your nails and your fury. You twisted in Ser Harrold's grip and raked your nails across his face, felt the skin of his cheek tear beneath your fingers, felt the hot wet rush of his blood against your palm. He cursed and tightened his hold, and something in your side gave way with a sharp bright spike of agony, but you did not stop. You could not stop. Your daughter was being taken from you, your brother was on his knees with a prince's boot on his neck, and the world was ending, and you could not stop.
And then, cutting through the chaos like a blade through silk, a young voice rang out across the pavilion.
"No! Don't touch him!"
Everyone froze. The Kingsguard with his bare hands paused mid-motion, his knuckles inches from Dunk's clenched jaw. The captain's grip on Dunk's hair loosened slightly in surprise. Even Aerion turned, his bloodied mouth twisting into an expression of annoyed bewilderment.
The boy who stepped forward from the chaos of the crowd was small, skinny, with a shaved head that gleamed in the torchlight like a polished stone. He could not have been more than nine or ten years old, and he moved with the absolute, unshakeable confidence of someone who had never been told that the world did not bend to his will. He was bald and his clothes were the roughspun of a stable boy, dirty and sweat-stained, but he wore them like a prince wearing borrowed silks.
Dunk's voice was a ragged gasp, desperate and afraid in a way it had not been when the Kingsguard were beating him. "You stupid boy! Hold your tongue or they'll hurt you."
The boy did not slow. He did not even glance at Dunk. His eyes were fixed on Aerion, and there was something in them that made the prince's expression flicker with the first hint of uncertainty you had seen all night.
"No, they won't," the boy said, and his voice was calm, steady, the voice of someone stating a fact as immutable as the rising of the sun. "If they do, they'll answer to my father."
He stepped past the Kingsguard as if they were not there, as if the white cloaks and the white armor and the drawn swords were no more substantial than morning mist. He stopped directly in front of Aerion, this small bald boy in dirty clothes, and he lifted his chin and looked the prince full in the face.
"Let go of him," the boy commanded. "Wate, Yorkel, do as I say."
And the Kingsguard obeyed.
The captain released Dunk's hair. The other guards stepped back, their hands falling away from his arms and shoulders, their white helms inclining slightly in gestures of deference that stopped your heart in your chest. They knew this boy. They knew him, and they obeyed him, and that could only mean one thing.
Aerion stared at the boy. His violet eyes narrowed, studying the shaved head, the dirty clothes, the small defiant face that was upturned to his own. And then, slowly, recognition dawned across his bloodied features like a sluggish sunrise. It was followed immediately by annoyance, a deep and profound irritation that seemed to cut through even the pleasure he had been taking in the violence moments before.
"You impudent little rat," Aerion said. His voice dripped with contempt, but beneath it lurked something else, something that sounded almost like wariness. "What's happened to your hair?"
The boy did not flinch. He did not blink. He looked at Aerion with the steady, unblinking gaze of someone who had spent his entire life watching and learning and understanding things that others missed, and when he spoke, his voice carried the unmistakable weight of royal blood.
"I cut it off, brother," he said. "I didn't want to look like you."
Brother. The word landed in the center of the pavilion like a stone dropped into still water. Brother. This boy, this small bald boy in stable clothes, was Aerion's brother. Which meant he was Prince Aegon Targaryen, the youngest of Prince Maekar's sons, the one you had glimpsed occasionally in the corridors of Summerhall, the one who had looked at you like you were a puzzle he was trying to solve.
And he had just intervened to save your brother's life. The revelation halted the attack instantly. The Kingsguard could not carry out Aerion's orders now. Not against a man who was connected, through his squire, to the royal family. Not against a man who was protected by a prince of the blood, however young and however bald and however inexplicably dressed in the roughspun of a stable hand. The captain stepped back further, his white cloak settling around him like folded wings, and the other guards followed suit, leaving Dunk kneeling alone on the stage.
Aerion's face was a study in frustration. The pleasure had drained out of him entirely now, replaced by a seething, impotent fury that he could not express without defying his own brother, his own blood, in front of half a dozen witnesses. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. The blood from his split lip still dripped down his chin, and his violet eyes were dark with a rage that had no outlet.
But he was a prince, and he knew the rules, and striking a man who was connected to the royal family was a crime that even he could not simply burn his way out of.
"Take him to the cells," Aerion said finally, and his voice was flat and cold and utterly drained of the pleasure that had animated it before. "He struck a prince of the blood. That crime remains regardless of whose squire the little rat has chosen to become. He will await trial and judgment, and lock her in her chamber."
Ser Harrold hauled you backward through the ruins of the pavilion. Your legs gave out beneath you, and he dragged you the rest of the way, your heels scraping furrows in the trampled grass, your head lolling against his shoulder, your voice reduced to a raw and wordless keening that did not stop. You passed overturned benches. You passed torn silk and scattered cushions and a child's abandoned shoe.
The last thing you saw before the tent flap closed behind you was Aerion. He was still standing on the stage, his red tunic splattered with blood, his face a mask of cold, distant contemplation. He was not looking at you. He was looking at the place where Dunk had disappeared, and there was something in his expression that you had never seen before. Something that went beyond jealousy, beyond possessiveness, beyond the casual cruelty of a man who had never been denied anything.
He looked like a dragon counting its hoard, and finding a single coin out of place.
—
The door slammed shut behind you with a finality that echoed through your bones.
You had screamed until your voice gave out. You had beaten your fists against the iron banded oak until your knuckles split and bled, leaving dark smears on the wood that looked like accusations. You had thrown yourself at the door again and again, your shoulder bruising, your strength ebbing, until finally your legs had given way beneath you and you had slid to the cold stone floor with your back against the unforgiving wood and your face buried in your bleeding hands.
Rhaenyra was gone. Dunk was gone. Everyone you had ever loved had been ripped away from you in the space of a single night, and you were locked in a borrowed chamber in a borrowed castle with nothing but the silence and the dark and the terrible, circling thoughts that would not let you rest.
You pressed your forehead against your knees and tried to breathe.The hours crawled past like wounded animals dragging themselves toward death. You did not move from your place against the door. You did not lie down on the bed, though it was soft and wide and covered in Ashford's finest linens. You did not drink the water that had been left on the side table, though your throat was raw and burning from screaming. You simply sat, curled into yourself, and waited.
For Aerion. For news. For something, anything, that would tell you what was going to happen next. You thought about the look on Dunk's face when he recognized you. The shock. The joy. The desperate, agonized love. What must he have thought? What must he have assumed about you, about your life, about the choices that had led you to this place?
The shame of it burned in your chest like swallowed fire.
You did not know how long you sat there. It might have been hours. It might have been minutes. Time had lost all meaning in the darkness of the chamber, with the candles unlit and the fire unbuilt and the only light coming from the pale sliver of moon that crept through the narrow window high in the wall. But eventually, eventually, you heard the sound you had been dreading and hoping for in equal measure.
Footsteps in the corridor. Boots on stone, deliberate and unhurried, the particular cadence of a man who knew that the world would wait for him. The jingle of a sword at the hip. The faint, almost imperceptible sound of a key turning in a lock.
The door swung inward, and Aerion Targaryen stepped into the room.
He had cleaned the blood from his face since you last saw him. His lip was still swollen. His silver gold hair had been combed back from his face, still damp from washing. He had changed his clothes; replaced by a simple black doublet that made his pale skin look almost luminous in the moonlight. He looked almost calm. Almost controlled. But his violet eyes were too bright, too sharp, the eyes of a man who was holding onto his composure by the thinnest of threads.
He closed the door behind him. You heard the lock click into place.
"My dragon," you said, and your voice came out as a croak, raw and broken from screaming. You tried to rise to your feet, but your legs would not hold you, so you remained on the floor, your back against the wall, your hands still stained with your own blood. "Aerion, please. Please tell me what's happening. My brother. Where is my brother? Is he all right? What are they going to do to him?"
The change that came over Aerion's face was instantaneous and terrifying. The careful mask of composure cracked like ice hit by a hammer. His jaw tightened. His eyes narrowed. His hands, which had been relaxed at his sides, curled slowly into fists.
"I come to you," he said, and his voice was a blade being drawn from its sheath, slow and deliberate and full of promise, "after being attacked in front of half the nobility of the Reach. My lip is split open. My tooth is loose in my skull. My dignity has been trampled by some hedge knight with dirt under his fingernails and hay in his hair. And the first words out of your mouth are not 'Are you all right, my prince?' Not 'Let me tend your wounds, my love.' Not a single word of comfort or concern for me, the man who saved you from a brothel, the father of your child, the prince who has kept you fed and clothed and protected for years."
He took a step toward you. Then another. His shadow fell across you like a shroud, blocking out the pale moonlight, plunging you into darkness.
"Your first words," he said, and his voice was rising now, climbing toward a register you had learned to fear, "are about him. A stranger. A man who struck me. A man who loosened my tooth and spilled my blood in front of the Kingsguard. That is who you ask about. That is who you care about. Not me. Not your prince. Not the father of your child. Him."
"He's not a stranger," you said, and your voice was barely a whisper. You knew you should stop. You knew you should placate him, soothe him, tell him everything he wanted to hear. That was what you had done for years, what you had become so skilled at doing. But you could not. Not tonight. Not with Dunk's face still burned into your memory like a brand. "He's my brother, Aerion. He's my brother. He raised me. He protected me, and you have him locked in a cell like a criminal. Please. Please, just tell me he's all right. Just tell me you haven't hurt him."
Aerion stared at you for a long moment. The torch from the corridor outside cast his shadow long and dark across the floor, stretching toward you like a grasping hand. His breathing was audible in the silence, harsh and uneven, the breathing of a man who was losing a battle with his own rage.
"You love him," he said finally. The words were flat, toneless, utterly without inflection. "This brother of yours. This hedge knight with his dirty hands and his dirty hair. You love him more than you love me."
"That's not true," you said, and it was the truth and it was a lie and it was everything in between. "I love you, Aerion. You know I love you. But he's my brother. He's my blood. I thought he was dead. I mourned him for years. And now he's here, and he's alive, and I just want to know that he's safe. That's all. I just want to know that he's safe. Please."
"Safe." Aerion repeated the word as if it were a foreign language, a concept he had heard described but never experienced. "Safe. You want to know if the man who struck me is safe. You want to know if the man who humiliated me in front of my family and my father is safe."
He laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. It was the sound of something breaking.
"You're mine," he said, and his voice cracked on the word, splintering into something that was half rage and half desperation. "You have been mine since the night I bought you. I paid fifty gold dragons for you. I burned down a brothel for you. I gave you a home, a place in my household, a daughter who bears my name. I have given you everything. Everything. And you stand there, bleeding on my floor, asking about another man."
"I'm not standing," you whispered, and you did not know why that was the detail you chose to focus on. He crossed the distance between you in three swift strides. His hand closed around your arm, hauling you upright with a strength that would leave bruises, and you cried out as the blood rushed back to your legs and the pain in your side flared white hot.
"You are mine," he said again, and his face was inches from yours, his violet eyes blazing with a fire you had seen directed at others but never, never at you. Not like this. Not with this intensity. Not with this complete and absolute absence of restraint. "Say it. Say you're mine."
"I'm yours," you gasped. His grip on your arm was agony, his fingers digging into the bruises Ser Harrold had left, and tears were streaming down your face. "Aerion, please, you're hurting me."
"Good." He shook you, once, hard enough that your head snapped back and hit the stone wall behind you. Stars burst across your vision. "Good. Maybe if I hurt you enough, you'll remember who you belong to. Maybe if I hurt you enough, you'll stop asking about other men. Maybe if I hurt you enough, you'll finally understand that the only way you leave me is in a shroud."
"My brother," you sobbed. "He's my brother. Not another man. My brother. Please, Aerion, please try to understand."
"I understand perfectly." His free hand came up to grip your chin, forcing your face toward his, forcing you to look into his eyes. "I understand that you have spent years telling me you loved me while you dreamed of someone else. I understand that the moment he appeared, you forgot everything I have done for you. I understand that you are a whore I pulled from a brothel, and no matter how many silk dresses I put on you, no matter how much of myself I pour into you, you will never, ever stop being what you are."
The words hit you like physical blows. Each one was a fist to the gut, a slap to the face, a knife slipped between your ribs. You had known, intellectually, that this was how he saw you. You had always known. But hearing it spoken aloud, hearing it thrown at you like an accusation, like a crime you had committed against him simply by existing, was something else entirely.
"Aerion," you whispered, and your voice was so small, so broken, that you barely recognized it as your own. "I have never been unfaithful to you. I have never looked at another man. I have never wanted anyone but you. He is my brother. My brother. Why can't you understand that?"
"Because I don't care!" He screamed the words directly into your face, his spittle flecking your cheeks, his breath hot and sour with wine and blood. "I don't care who he is! I don't care if he's your brother or your father or your long lost lover! The moment you chose him over me, the moment you screamed his name instead of mine, the moment you fought my guards and clawed Ser Harrold's face to try to reach him, you made your choice! And now you will live with it!"
His hand released your chin and came across your face with a crack that seemed to echo off the stone walls.
The backhand caught you across the cheekbone, hard enough to snap your head to the side, hard enough to send a spray of blood from your already split lip, hard enough that your legs gave out beneath you entirely. You fell. You did not fall gracefully, did not fall the way women fell in the songs Dunk used to tell you, floating down like petals on a breeze. You fell like a sack of grain, heavy and graceless, your hip striking the stone floor with a jolt of pain that made you gasp, your palms scraping raw against the cold flagstones, your already injured side screaming in protest as you landed.
You lay there for a moment, stunned. The taste of blood filled your mouth, copper and salt and something that might have been despair. The world swam in and out of focus. The moonlight from the window seemed very far away, a distant silver promise of a world that existed somewhere beyond this room, beyond this night, beyond the man who was standing over you with his chest heaving and his eyes blazing.
Then he was on top of you. His weight pressed you into the cold stone floor, heavy and immovable, the weight of a man who had trained with sword and shield and lance, the weight of a prince who had never been denied anything in his life. His knees pinned your thighs. One hand caught both of your wrists and forced them above your head, pressing them into the stone with a grip that made your fingers go numb. His other hand was at your throat, not squeezing, not yet, just resting there, a reminder, a threat, a promise.
"You're my whore," he said, and his voice was a growl, low and guttural and utterly without the cultured refinement he wore like armor in the daylight. "Mine. You have been mine since the night I bought you, and you will be mine until the day you die. Do you understand? Do you understand what that means?"
"Get off me," you gasped. Your voice was barely audible, strangled by the hand at your throat and the weight on your chest. "Aerion, please, get off me, I can't breathe."
"It means," he continued, as if you had not spoken, as if your words were less than nothing, as if your voice did not exist in any way that mattered, "that I own you. Your body. Your heart. Your soul. Every breath you take, you take because I allow it. Every night you sleep in a warm bed, you sleep there because I permit it. Every moment you spend with our daughter, you spend because I have chosen to let you. And the only way you leave me, the only way you ever leave me, is if you are dead. Do you understand? Dead."
He was tearing at your dress as he spoke, the silk that he had given you, the dress he had chosen, the dress you had worn to the puppet show, the dress Rhaenyra's tears had soaked through. You heard the fabric rip, felt the cold air on your skin, and you found what remained of your strength and pushed against him. Your hands were still pinned above your head, but you bucked your hips, twisted your body, tried to throw him off the way Dunk had thrown off the Kingsguard.
It was useless. It was always useless. He was stronger than you, heavier than you, and he had the advantage of gravity and rage and years of training in violence that you had never received. He pressed you back down against the stone, and his hand left your throat to grip your jaw, forcing your face toward his, forcing you to look into his eyes.
"Say it," he demanded. "Say you're mine. Say you belong to me. Say that no one else matters. Not your brother. Not anyone. Say it."
You did not say it. You could not say it. The words were locked in your throat, trapped behind the tears and the blood and the terrible, crushing weight of what was happening to you.
You tried to squeeze your legs shut, but his knee drove between them, forcing them wide. He was hard and the sight of his cock made your stomach turn.
"Look at it," he hissed, grabbing a fistful of your hair and yanking your head forward. "Look at what you made me do. This is your fault. If you had just obeyed—"
He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to. He pressed the head of his cock against your entrance, already sore and swollen from the first time, and you whimpered, a high, broken sound that seemed to please him. He held there, just barely breaching you, letting you feel the pressure, the promise of invasion.
"Please," you whispered, your voice cracked and raw. "Please, Aerion, please don't—"
He thrust.
The sound you made was not a scream. It was something worse, a choked, guttural sob that tore from your throat as he buried himself inside you in one brutal push. The angle was wrong, too deep, too dry despite the precum already coating your thighs. You felt every ridge and vein of his cock as it forced its way deeper, splitting you open, claiming space that did not want him.
He paused, buried to the hilt, and let out a low groan that was almost human. Almost tender. Then he began to move.
Not fast. Not yet. He fucked you slowly, deliberately, with a cruelty that made every inch of the motion deliberate. He pulled almost all the way out, then slid back in with excruciating leisure, watching your face contort with each stroke. His eyes were locked on yours, challenging you to look away.
You did. You turned your head, pressing your cheek against the cold stone, staring at a crack in the floor until your vision blurred. But he would not allow that. He grabbed your jaw, forced your face back to his.
"Watch," he commanded. "Watch me take what is mine."
His pace increased. The slow, torturous rhythm gave way to a sharp, punishing fucking that drove the air from your lungs with every slam of his hips. The wet slap of skin against skin echoed off the walls, mingling with your ragged breaths and his grunts. He leaned down, his chest pressing against yours, and bit your shoulder, not a kiss, a bite, hard enough to break skin. You cried out, and he licked the blood, humming in satisfaction.
"That's it," he whispered against your ear, his breath hot and uneven. "Make sound for me. Let the whole castle hear how much you hate it. Let them know who you belong to."
He drove deeper, harder, angling his hips to hit that spot inside you that made your back arch despite yourself. A spark of unwanted pleasure shot through your pelvis, and you bit your lip so hard you tasted copper. He noticed. Of course he noticed. He slowed down, grinding against that same spot, watching your body betray you as your hips began to rock in counterpoint to his thrusts.
"There she is," he breathed, almost reverent. "There's the whore underneath. You can't hide her from me. She wants this. She needs this."
"No," you gasped, but your body said yes, clenching around him, drawing him deeper. Hot shame flooded through you, hotter than the pain, as your cunt began to slick with something that was not blood. He felt it too, he groaned, his rhythm faltering, his grip on your hips tightening.
"I'm going to fill you," he snarled, his composure cracking. "I'm going to pour every drop of my seed into this worthless hole until you're pregnant with my heir, a son this time, and then I'll do it again. And again. And—"
He came without warning, a guttural roar tearing from his throat as he shoved himself as deep as he could go, his hips stuttering, his cock pulsing inside you. You felt the hot flood of his cum, felt it spill out around him, felt it mix with the blood and your own unwanted wetness. He collapsed on top of you, his full weight pressing you into the stone, his breath hot and ragged against your neck.
For a long moment, neither of you moved. Then he shifted, pulling out with a wet sound that made you flinch, and rolled onto his back beside you. The moonlight had moved, illuminating his face now haunted gleam in his violet eyes that looked almost like regret.
But you knew better. You knew he would do it again. And again. And again. Because in his world, you were already dead. You just hadn't stopped breathing yet.
He did not speak. Neither did you. You lay on the cold stone floor with your torn dress twisted around your body and your wrists still aching from his grip and your thighs slick with the evidence of what he had done, and you stared at the ceiling, and you thought of nothing at all.
After a long time Aerion rose to his feet. He straightened his clothes with mechanical precision, adjusting his doublet, smoothing his hair back from his face. He did not look at you. He did not offer you a hand to help you up. He did not speak a single word of apology or comfort or explanation.
"Your brother will stand trial," he said, and his voice was the voice of a stranger, flat and cold and utterly devoid of the passion that had consumed him moments before. "For striking a prince of the blood. The sentence will be severe. How severe depends entirely on you."
He paused at the door, his hand on the latch, his back to you.
"If you try to see him again," he said, "if you try to contact him, if you so much as speak his name in my presence, I will have him executed. Do you understand? His life is in your hands. Remember that."
The remainder of the night passed in darkness. You did not move from the floor. You could not move from the floor. The torn silk of your dress had dried stiff and crusted against your skin, and you had not bothered to cover yourself. There was no one to see. There was no one to care. The moonlight crawled across the stone floor inch by inch, and you watched it the way a corpse might watch the shifting of its own shroud, with a detachment that went beyond despair into something vast and empty and still.
Morning came grey and cold through the narrow window. The sky outside was the color of old iron, heavy with clouds that had not yet decided whether to rain. You heard the castle waking around you. Footsteps in the corridor. The distant clang of the blacksmith's hammer. Servants calling to one another in voices too muffled to understand. The tourney, you remembered dimly. The tourney was still happening. Lord Ashford's daughter still needed her champion. The world was still turning, indifferent to the ruin of your life.
Someone brought food. You heard the door unlock, heard the tray scrape against the stone as it was pushed inside, heard the door lock again. You did not get up to look at it. The smell of bread and broth turned your stomach. You had not eaten since the puppet show, since before the puppet show, since the garden when Rhaenyra had found the pink flower and you had believed, foolishly and desperately, that everything would be all right.
The morning wore on. The light shifted. The clouds outside the window thickened and darkened and began to spit a thin, miserable drizzle that streaked the glass like tears.
And then, sometime in the afternoon, you heard the commotion.
It started as a distant murmur, a disturbance somewhere in the lower levels of the castle that grew louder and more urgent as it climbed toward your door. Shouts. Running footsteps. The clash of something metallic hitting stone. You lifted your head from the floor for the first time in hours, your neck aching, your vision swimming. Something was happening. Something was wrong.
The door crashed open. It was not Aerion who entered first but a maester, an old man in grey robes with a heavy chain around his neck and blood on his sleeves up to the elbows. Behind him came two guards, household men in the pale grey of Prince Maekar's service, carrying between them a litter on which lay a figure you recognized only by the silver gold of his hair.
Aerion. He was unconscious. His face was nearly unrecognizable. His lip had been split anew, a fresh gash that ran up toward his cheekbone. One of his eyes was swollen shut, the skin around it purple and black and glistening with some kind of salve. His chest was bare beneath a makeshift bandage that wrapped around his ribs, and the bandage was soaked through with blood, bright red and seeping, the color of life escaping. His right arm lay at an angle that was not natural, and his breathing was shallow and labored and made a wet, rattling sound that turned your stomach even as it ignited something else in your chest. Something you did not want to name. Something you did not want to feel.
You scrambled backward on the floor until your shoulder blades hit the wall. Your torn dress bunched around your knees. Your hands came up in front of you, a defensive gesture that was pure instinct, the instinct of a woman who had spent the night being broken and had no more pieces left to give.
"What," you said, and your voice came out as a croak, barely recognizable. "What happened? What is this?"
The maester did not look at you. He was directing the guards to lay the litter on the bed, his hands already reaching for the blood soaked bandages, already issuing orders about hot water and clean linen and milk of the poppy. But one of the guards, a young man whose face was pale and shocked and streaked with someone else's blood, paused long enough to answer.
"Trial of the Seven," he said, and the words meant nothing to you. "The prince demanded it. Against the hedge knight."
"Trial of the Seven?" The phrase was foreign, nonsensical, a collection of syllables that refused to resolve into meaning. "What are you talking about? What trial? What hedge knight?"
The maester looked up from his work at last. "The hedge knight," he said, and his voice was clipped and efficient, the voice of a man who did not have time for explanations. "Ser Duncan the Tall. The hedge knight demanded a trial by combat. The prince escalated it to a Trial of the Seven. Fourteen knights in the lists. The hedge knight's side won, but the prince was wounded. Gravely wounded. We have done what we can for the immediate injuries, but when he regained consciousness briefly, he insisted, quite forcefully, that he be brought to you. He said he wanted you to be his primary caretaker."
The words washed over you in a tide of incomprehensible information. Trial of the Seven. Fourteen knights. The hedge knight's side won. Dunk's side. Dunk had won. Your brother had won. Your brother was alive and he had won his trial and he was free, he must be free, because if the hedge knight's side had won the trial then the gods had judged him innocent.
But Aerion was on your bed with his ribs crushed and his arm broken and his face beaten into something barely human, and he had asked for you. Even after what he had done to you on this very floor. Even after the things he had said, the things he had called you, the violence he had visited upon your body. He had regained consciousness long enough to demand that you, and no one else, be the one to care for him.
You stared at the maester. The maester stared back at you, and something in his expression softened, just slightly, at whatever he saw in your face. Perhaps it was the bruises on your wrists. Perhaps it was the torn dress. Perhaps it was the way you sat huddled against the wall like a wounded animal that had learned to expect only more pain.
"I have done what I can for the immediate wounds," the maester said again, more slowly this time. "The prince will live, though his recovery will be long and painful. But he needs constant care. Someone to change his bandages, to administer his medicine, to watch for fever. He asked for you. Given his condition and his royal status, we are not inclined to refuse him."
You looked at the figure on the bed. The man who had raped you on the stone floor less than a day ago. The father of your daughter. The monster you loved. The prince who had promised to execute your brother if you so much as spoke his name. He lay unconscious and broken, his breath rattling in his chest, and you were being told that you would be his caretaker. That you would sit by his bedside and change his bandages and mop his brow and listen to him breathe.
The absurd cruelty of it was almost beautiful, in its way. A kind of poetry written in blood and bruises and the particular viciousness of men who believed they owned the women they had purchased.
"Leave us," you said, and your voice did not sound like your own. It sounded like the voice of someone much older, someone who had survived worse things than this and would survive worse things still. "I will care for him."
The maester hesitated. "My lady, there are instructions I must give you regarding the dressing of his wounds. The risk of infection is significant, and the milk of the poppy must be administered precisely. Too much will stop his breathing. Too little and the pain will be excruciating. Do you understand?"
"I understand," you said, though you understood nothing. You understood only that your brother was alive and free, and the man who had destroyed you was lying broken on your bed, and you were supposed to heal him. You were supposed to sit beside him and tend his wounds and keep him alive so that he could continue to own you, continue to threaten you, continue to hold your brother's life in his hands like a coin he might spend on a whim.
The maester gave you his instructions. You listened with half an ear, nodding in the appropriate places, filing the information away in a part of your mind that was still functioning, still capable of processing data and making decisions. Change the bandages every four hours. Watch for red streaks radiating from the wounds. Administer the milk of the poppy in doses measured by the small copper cup on the bedside table. If he wakes, give him water. If he develops a fever, send for the maester immediately.
And then they were gone, the maester and the guards, and the door was closed, and you were alone with him.
You stood in the center of the room for a long time, staring at the bed. At the rise and fall of his chest beneath the bloodied bandages. At the hand that lay limp and pale against the silk sheets, the hand that had struck you across the face, the hand that had pinned your wrists above your head, the hand that had held your chin and forced you to look into his eyes while he destroyed you.
You could let him die.
The thought came to you fully formed, as if it had been waiting in the back of your mind all along, biding its time. You could let him die. The maester had left you with the milk of the poppy and precise instructions about dosage. You could administer too much, or too little. You could neglect to change his bandages and let the infection take hold. You could hold a pillow over his face while he slept and press down until the ragged breathing stopped forever. There was no one else in the room. There were no guards at your door, not anymore. You could end this. You could end him. You could free yourself and your daughter and your brother with a single act of will.
You looked at the copper cup on the bedside table. You looked at the pillow beneath his head. You looked at your own hands, still bruised, still crusted with your own blood, still capable of doing what needed to be done.
And then you crossed the room, and you sat down in the chair beside his bed, and you began to prepare the first dose of milk of the poppy with hands that did not tremble at all.
If you let him die now, his father would investigate. There would be questions. There had been a maester here, and guards, and they had seen you alone with him. If Aerion died under your care, the blame would fall on you. You would be executed, or worse. And Rhaenyra would have no mother at all.
Not yet. But the knowledge was there now, a small cold seed planted in the dark soil of your heart. Not yet. But someday, perhaps. Someday, if the opportunity presented itself, if the circumstances aligned, if you could be certain of escaping the consequences. Someday, you might be free of him.
—
The days that followed blurred together like watercolors left in the rain. You were not permitted to leave the room. Aerion made that clear the first time you asked, your voice carefully neutral, your eyes on the floor. He had been awake for perhaps an hour, propped up on pillows that you had arranged behind his back with your own hands, his broken arm splinted and bound, his ribs wrapped tight in fresh linen. His face was still a ruin of purple and black and sickly yellow green, his lip still split, his eye still swollen half-shut. But his voice had lost none of its edge.
"Leave?" He had laughed, a humorless sound that turned into a wince as his ribs protested. "Why would you need to leave? Everything you require is here. Food will be brought. Water for washing. Fresh bandages from the maester. You have no reason to go anywhere."
"Aerion, please. I only want to see Rhaenyra. Just for an hour. Just to hold her and know she's all right. She must be so frightened. She's only two years old. She doesn't understand why her mother disappeared."
His expression had darkened, a cloud passing over the sun. "The child is fine. She is being cared for by the nurses. She does not need you hovering over her like a hen with one chick. What she needs is a father who is not an invalid, and what I need is a caretaker who does not spend every waking moment asking to leave."
"Aerion..."
"Enough." The word was a door slamming shut. "You will stay here. You will tend to my wounds. You will keep me company. You will not leave this room unless I give you permission. Is that understood?"
So you stayed. You woke when he woke, which was often, his sleep broken by pain and fever and the strange, feverish dreams that made him thrash and cry out in the darkness. You changed his bandages with the careful precision the maester had taught you, peeling back the old linen, examining the wounds for signs of infection, applying the salves and poultices with gentle fingers. You fed him broth when he could eat, spooning it into his ruined mouth one careful measure at a time. You helped him with the bedpan when he needed it, a humiliation that made his jaw tighten and his eyes go cold, as if his body's weakness were a personal insult you had somehow engineered.
You did all of this in silence, for the most part. He did not want conversation. He did not want to be soothed or coddled or reassured. The man who had craved praise like a drug, who had turned toward your words like a flower toward the sun, was gone. In his place was a creature of pure, distilled bitterness, a man whose humiliation had curdled inside him until it became something toxic.
He had lost. That was the core of it, the wound beneath the wounds. He had been beaten by a hedge knight in front of half the nobility of the Reach, and then he had demanded a Trial of the Seven, the most sacred and dramatic form of combat the gods permitted, and he had lost that too. His side had lost. The gods themselves had declared against him, had declared in favor of the dirt-smeared giant who had loosened his tooth and spilled his blood and stolen his dignity. Aerion Targaryen, the prince who had burned a man alive for making a joke, the prince who had broken a puppeteer's fingers for telling the wrong story, the prince who believed with every fiber of his being that he was a dragon in human form, had been brought low by a nameless hedge knight with hay in his hair and dirt under his nails.
And you, who had witnessed the beginning of that humiliation, had become the vessel into which he poured all his bile.
"I should have you hanged for being related to that oaf." His hand shot out and closed around your wrist, hard enough to make you freeze. "Why would a brother fight like that? Why would a brother look at a sister like that? Tell me the truth. Was he your lover before he was your brother? Did you share a bed in the slums of Flea Bottom, before I found you?"
The accusation was so vile, so utterly, grotesquely wrong, that for a moment you could not speak at all. You could only stare at him, at his swollen face and his blazing eyes and the jealousy that was consuming him from the inside out like a fire that would not be quenched.
"He is my brother," you said, and your voice was quiet and steady and utterly without the rage that was boiling in your chest. "My brother. My blood.Nothing more. Nothing less. I have never lain with him. I have never wanted to. The very thought is disgusting to me, and it should be disgusting to you too."
Aerion held your gaze for a long moment. Then he released your wrist and turned his face away.
"Finish the bandage," he said, and said nothing more for the rest of the day.
Sometimes, rarely, they brought Rhaenyra to see you. It was never for long. Ten minutes, fifteen, never more than half an hour. A servant would bring her to the door, and she would run across the room on her unsteady two year old legs, bewildered relief of a child who did not understand why her mother had vanished from her life. You would scoop her up and hold her against your chest and breathe in the smell of her, that particular sweetness of soap and milk and sunshine that you had missed like a severed limb.
"Mama," she would say, her small hands patting your face, your hair, your shoulders, as if reassuring herself you were real. "Mama, where did you go? I looked for you. I cried and cried but you didn't come."
"Mama was taking care of your father," you would say, and your voice would be steady even though your heart was breaking. "Your father is very sick, sweetling. He needs Mama's help. But Mama loves you. Mama thinks about you every moment. Do you understand? Every single moment."
She would nod, her small face solemn, and then she would launch into a breathless account of everything she had done since she saw you last. The bird she had seen on the windowsill. The game the nurses had taught her. The dreams she had dreamed. You drank in every word like water in a desert, memorizing the cadence of her voice, the animation of her expressions, the way her tiny hands moved when she was telling a particularly exciting part.
And then Aerion would stir in the bed behind you, and the servant would step forward, and Rhaenyra would be lifted from your arms.
"No," you would say, every time, reaching for her even as the servant pulled her away. "Please, just a few more minutes. Just a little longer. She's only just arrived."
"Prince's orders," the servant would say, and the door would close, and you would be alone with him again.
The nights were the worst.
During the day, Aerion was mostly manageable. Irritable, demanding, prone to dark silences and darker accusations, but manageable. You could distract yourself with the work of caring for him, the constant rhythm of bandages and medicine and meals. You could count the hours until the next time Rhaenyra might be brought to you. You could lose yourself in the small, finite tasks that kept your hands busy and your mind from wandering to places it should not go.
But at night, when the candles burned low and the fire died to embers and the only sound was the soft, labored rhythm of his breathing, the monster in him stirred.
It started on the fourth night. You had been dozing in the chair beside his bed, your neck cricked at an awkward angle, your body aching for the comfort of a proper mattress. You were dreaming of the garden, of Rhaenyra's laughter, of pink flowers crushed beneath bare feet. And then a hand closed around your forearm, and you were jolted awake with a gasp.
Aerion was looking at you from the bed. His eyes were fever bright in the near darkness, and his hand was hot and dry against your skin. The blanket had slipped down to his waist, and you could see the bandages around his ribs, the splint on his arm, the bruises that spread across his torso like storm clouds. But you could also see, in the shadows beneath the blanket, the unmistakable evidence of his arousal.
"Come here," he said. His voice was hoarse, rough with pain and desire in equal measure. "I need you."
"Aerion," you said carefully, "you're injured. The maester said you need to rest. You could reopen your wounds. You could..."
"I don't care what the maester said." His grip on your arm tightened. "I've been lying in this bed for four days. I've lost everything. My pride. The hedge knight walks free, and I am trapped in this room like a cripple. The least you can do," and his voice hardened on the words, "is give me this."
"You're not well. Please, just wait until you're stronger. I promise, when you're healed..."
"When I am healed, I will take what I want anyway." He pulled you closer, and you could smell the sourness of his breath, the stale sweat of his unwashed body, the cloying sweetness of the milk of the poppy that still lingered on his tongue. "But I want it now. I have spent four days flat on my back like a turtle overturned, watching you flutter around me with your careful hands and your careful voice and your careful eyes that never quite meet mine. I know what you think of me. I know what you think when you look at me. You think I'm a monster. You think I got what I deserved."
"No," you whispered, but it was a lie and you both knew it.
"Yes," he said. "You do. And I don't care. You can hate me all you like, in the privacy of your own mind. But you are mine.Now. Come. Here."
He could not be rough with you, not in his condition. His broken arm lay useless at his side, and his bandaged ribs prevented any sudden movement. But he did not need to be rough to make you feel the weight of your captivity. He directed you with his voice, that voice you had once praised and soothed and loved, telling you where to touch him, how to move, what he wanted from you. He could not take you the way he had on the stone floor, could not pin you down and force himself inside you while you sobbed and pushed at his chest. But he could make you take him in your mouth while he lay back against the pillows with his eyes half closed and his hand tangled in your hair. He could make you straddle him carefully, carefully, moving with the slow precision his injuries demanded, while his one good hand gripped your hip hard enough to bruise.
"That's it," he murmured, his voice thick with pleasure and pain and the strange, twisted satisfaction of ownership. "That's my good girl. My sweet girl. You know what I need. You always know what I need."
"Now you should rest." He was already drifting, the exertion combined with the milk of the poppy pulling him back toward unconsciousness.
"You're the only one," he mumbled, his voice slurring with sleep. "The only one who stays. The only one who doesn't leave. Don't leave me. Promise you won't leave."
You did not promise. You dried your hands on a cloth and returned to the chair beside his bed, and you watched him sleep, and you thought about the copper cup of milk of the poppy on the bedside table, and you thought about what it would be like to be free.
—
The servant came for you on the seventh day. You were sitting in the chair beside Aerion's bed, your hands idle in your lap for the first time in what felt like years. He was sleeping deeply, the milk of the poppy dragging him down into a place where even his dreams could not reach him.
The door opened without a knock. You turned, expecting another servant with a tray of food, another maester with fresh bandages, another summons from the nurses saying Rhaenyra was crying for you and would not be soothed. But the woman who stood in the doorway was not a servant you recognized.
"Prince Maekar requests your presence," she said. Her voice was flat, neutral, the voice of a woman delivering a message she did not fully understand. "You are to come with me immediately."
You stared at her. Prince Maekar. The man who had called you a whore to your face, who had forbidden you from speaking to his children, who had looked at you for years with an expression of cold, unwavering contempt. He had never once spoken to you directly, had never acknowledged your existence except as a problem to be managed. And now he was summoning you?
"Prince Maekar," you repeated, and your voice came out uncertain, almost afraid. "Why would Prince Maekar want to see me?"
The servant's expression did not change. "I was not told, my lady. Only that you are to come at once. Prince Aerion is sleeping. He will not miss you. Please, follow me."
You looked back at the bed. Aerion's chest rose and fell in the slow, steady rhythm of deep sleep. His good hand was curled loosely on the pillow beside his face, his fingers twitching slightly as he dreamed. If you left and he woke to find you gone, there would be consequences. There were always consequences. But the servant was watching you with her sharp grey eyes, and something in her manner told you that this was not a request. This was an order, delivered with the full authority of the man who ruled Summerhall.
You rose from the chair. Your legs were unsteady beneath you, your body still aching from the nights of sleeping in chairs and on pallets, from the strain of lifting and turning and tending a man who outweighed you by half.
The castle was quiet at this hour. The afternoon light slanted through the narrow windows, casting long shadows across the stone floors. You had not been outside Aerion's room in seven days. The world seemed larger than you remembered. Brighter. More dangerous.
The servant led you through corridors you did not recognize, up a flight of stairs, down another corridor, until you stood before a heavy oak door banded with iron. She knocked twice, a sharp, deliberate rap that echoed in the silence.
"The woman is here, my prince," she said.
A voice from within, muffled by the door, said something you could not make out. The servant pushed the door open and gestured for you to enter.
You stepped inside. The room was small, sparsely furnished. A table. A few chairs. A narrow window that looked out over the castle's eastern wall. The fire in the hearth had burned down to embers, casting the room in shadow and flickering orange light. And standing near the window, one hand braced against the wall for support, a thick piece of wood tucked under his other arm to hold him upright, was your brother.
Dunk.
You stopped in the doorway as if you had walked into a wall. Your heart seized in your chest. Your breath caught in your throat. Your hands flew to your mouth, pressing against your lips as if to hold in the sound that was trying to escape, a sound that was half sob and half scream and half something that had no name at all.
He looked terrible. His face was a mess of bruises, purple and black and yellow-green, one eye swollen nearly shut, a gash across his cheekbone held closed with clumsy stitches. His lip was split in two places. His left arm was wrapped in a sling, and the piece of wood under his right arm was a crutch, crude and hastily made, the kind a maester might fashion for a patient who refused to stay in bed. He was leaning heavily on it, his massive frame listing to one side, his shoulders hunched with exhaustion and pain. He looked like a man who had been through a war and had only barely survived.
"Y/N," he said, and his voice was exactly the same as it had been when he was eight years old and lifting you from your mother's deathbed. Cracked. Hoarse. Full of a desperate, aching tenderness that made your chest splinter into a thousand pieces.
One moment you were standing in the doorway with your hands pressed to your mouth, and the next you were in his arms, your face buried in his chest, your shoulders shaking with sobs you had been holding back for years. His good arm wrapped around you, pulling you against him, and you felt the crutch fall away, felt him stagger and brace himself against the wall so he would not fall. He was so big. He had always been so big. Even broken and bruised and barely able to stand, he surrounded you, enveloped you, made you feel for the first time in longer than you could remember that you were safe.
"I've got you," he said into your hair, and his voice was breaking, splintering, cracking into pieces that sounded like your mother's laugh and your father's name and every promise he had ever made you. "I've got you. I've always got you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I looked for you. I looked everywhere. They told me you were dead. They told me they found your body in the river. They said you were burned beyond recognition. I believed them. Gods forgive me, I believed them."
"I didn't know," you sobbed into his chest. Your fingers were twisted in his tunic, gripping the rough wool as if he might disappear if you let go. "I didn't know they told you that. I thought you were still looking. I thought you would find me. I waited for you. Every night, I waited for you. I never stopped believing you would come."
"I'm sorry, i believed them. I believed you were dead, and something inside me died with you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, little sister. I should have kept looking. I should have known. I should have..."
"Stop." You pulled back just enough to look up at his face, at the tears that were cutting tracks through the blood and the bruises. "Stop apologizing. You searched for me. You believed what they told you. Any man would have believed it. I don't blame you. I have never blamed you. I only ever wanted you to know I was alive. I tried to send word. I tried so many times. But Aerion..."
You stopped. The name hung in the air between you like a curse. Dunk's expression darkened. His good arm tightened around your shoulders. "Aerion," he repeated, and the word came out like a growl. "What happened to you, Y/N? Where have you been all these years? How did you end up here, with him?"
You pulled away from him gently. Your legs were shaking. You found a chair and sank into it, and Dunk lowered himself awkwardly onto the edge of the table, his injured leg stretched out in front of him, his crutch clattering to the floor. He did not take his eyes off you. He watched you the way he had watched you when you were children, with that fierce, protective intensity that had once been the only thing standing between you and the darkness of the world.
"They sold me," you said, and your voice was quiet and hollow and did not sound like your own. "The men who took me. They sold me to a brothel on the Street of Silk. A high end place, for lords and merchants. The madam... she was cruel. She said I was special. She said I would make them very rich."
Dunk's hands tightened on your shoulders. His face had gone very pale beneath the bruises, and his jaw was clenched so hard you could see the muscle jumping beneath the skin.
"And then," you continued, "Aerion came, he bought me and never left me"
And then you told him about Rhaenyra.
"Her name is Rhaenyra," you said, and your voice softened on the name, the way it always did. "She's two years old. She looks like her father. But she's kind. She's the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. She's the only good thing that has come out of any of this. And she's the reason I can't leave."
Dunk was silent for a long moment. His face was unreadable, a mask of bruises and exhaustion and something that might have been grief. When he spoke, his voice was low and rough.
"I'll take you away," he said. "Both of you. You and the little girl. I'll find a way. I have friends now. A prince and a lord. We can protect you. We can hide you somewhere Aerion will never find you."
You shook your head. The tears were streaming down your face again, hot and silent, dripping off your chin and onto your hands. "You don't understand. He would never let me go. He would hunt me down like a dog. He would burn cities to the ground to find me. He told me... the night after the puppet show, when he came to my room, he told me the only way I would ever leave him was in a shroud. He meant it, Dunk. I have seen what he does to people who defy him. I have seen him cut a servant's hand for spilling wine on him. I have seen him laugh while a man burned alive. If I tried to run, if I took Rhaenyra and disappeared, he would never stop looking. And when he found me, and he would find me, he would kill me. He would take my daughter and he would kill me, and Rhaenyra would grow up without a mother, raised by a monster who would teach her that cruelty is strength and kindness is weakness and love is just another word for ownership."
"He would have to go through me first," Dunk said, and his voice was hard, the voice of a man who had faced seven knights in single combat and emerged victorious. "I lost you once. I believed you were dead for years. I mourned you, Y/N. I sat in that alley and I let the darkness take me because there was no light left in the world. And then I found you again, alive, here, in this place, with that man. I am not going to lose you again. I don't care if he is a prince. I don't care if he has a hundred Kingsguard. I will find a way to get you out of here. I will find a way to keep you safe. I swear it. I swear it on our mother's grave. I swear it on everything I am."
"Dunk." You reached out and took his enormous hand in both of yours. His knuckles were swollen and bruised, the skin split and scabbed over. The hands that had lifted you from the mattress where your mother had stopped breathing. The hands that had carried you into the cold morning while the other whores watched with pity. The hands that had promised you silk and lemon cakes and a world where no one would hurt you. "I want to believe you. I want to believe there is a way out of this. But you have to understand what you're risking. He will kill you. He will kill you without hesitation, without a trial, without anything but the cold satisfaction of removing an obstacle. And if you die, if you die trying to save me, I will have nothing left. Nothing. Do you understand? You are my brother. You are the only family I have in this world besides my daughter. I cannot lose you again."
He squeezed your hands. His grip was gentle, impossibly gentle for a man who had killed knights and broken bones and fought his way through horrors you could only imagine. "You won't lose me," he said. "I promise you, little sister. You won't lose me."
—
You ran. Egg had barely finished speaking before you were out the door and flying down the corridor, your heart pounding so hard you could feel it in your teeth, your lungs burning with every breath. You did not care if anyone saw you. You did not care if there were questions. All you cared about was getting back to Aerion's room before he woke, before he realized you were gone, before the fragile illusion of your obedience shattered into a thousand irreparable pieces.
You reached the door to Aerion's chamber and paused, pressing your palm flat against the wood, forcing yourself to breathe. You could not go in looking like a woman who had just run across half the castle. You could not go in looking like a woman who had been crying in her brother's arms. You smoothed your hair with trembling hands. You wiped the tears from your cheeks. You arranged your face into the careful mask you had worn for years, and you pushed open the door.
Aerion was still asleep. He had not moved since you left. His breathing was slow and steady, his bruised face relaxed in the depths of his drugged slumber. The milk of the poppy still held him in its grip. The bandages on his ribs were unrumpled. His splinted arm lay exactly where you had arranged it. He had not woken. He had not called for you. He had not noticed your absence at all.
You closed the door behind you and leaned against it, your legs threatening to give way beneath you. You had made it. You had made it, and he did not know, and you were safe. For now. For this moment. For as long as you could keep the mask from slipping.
You returned to the chair beside his bed and sat down, and you waited.
Days passed. Aerion healed. Slowly at first, then with the stubborn, grinding determination of a man who refused to be seen as weak for a moment longer than absolutely necessary. The bruises faded from black to purple to yellow-green. The swelling around his eye went down until he could open it fully again. The split lip closed, leaving a thin white scar that tugged at the corner of his mouth when he spoke. The ribs were slower to mend, the maester said, and he would need to be careful for weeks yet, but the splint came off his arm and he began to flex his fingers, to test the range of motion, to push against the limits of his own body the way he pushed against everything else in his life.
By the end of the second week, he could walk with a stick. You were the one who helped him take his first steps. His arm draped over your shoulders, his weight pressing down on you until your knees buckled, his breath harsh and labored against your ear. You walked him across the room and back again, step by agonizing step, your body bearing the burden of his in a way that felt like a metaphor for everything your life had become.
"Good," he said through gritted teeth when he finally lowered himself back onto the bed. “That's good. I'll be out of this room by the end of the week.”
"My father is sending me away," he had said, and his voice was flat, toneless, drained of its usual fire. "Lys. A city of whores and perfumed merchants. He calls it self reflection. A chance to contemplate my actions and return a better man. But we both know what it really is. Exile. He cannot bear to look at me. He blames me for Baelor's death, even though it was his own blow that killed him. He blames me for everything."
You had not known what to say, so you had said nothing. That was safest. That had always been safest.
"You and the girl will come with me, of course, Lys is said to be beautiful. Warm. The sea is the color of sapphires, and the women walk around in silks so fine you can see their skin through the fabric. You will like it there."
You would not like it anywhere he was. But you had smiled, because that was what you did, and you had told him that Lys sounded lovely, and you had turned away to prepare his next dose of medicine so he would not see the despair in your eyes.
After that, things shifted slightly. Perhaps Aerion felt guilty for uprooting you. Perhaps he was simply trying to secure your loyalty before the journey. Whatever the reason, he began to allow you to visit Rhaenyra in the nursery. Not for long, not unsupervised, but every day. Every single day, you were permitted to leave his chamber for an hour and go to your daughter.
It was the only thing that kept you sane. You would sit in the nursery with Rhaenyra on your lap, her small body warm and solid and alive against your chest, and you would listen to her chatter about the games she had played and the songs she had learned and the dreams she had dreamed. You would brush her hair and sing to her in the soft voice you used for no one else. You would tell her that you loved her, that you would always love her, that there was nothing in the world she could do that would make you stop loving her. And you would try very hard not to think about the fact that in a few weeks, a few months at most, you would be on a ship to Lys, and the only world Rhaenyra had ever known would disappear behind her forever.
It was on one of these days, when you returned from the nursery with Rhaenyra's laughter still echoing in your ears, that everything fell apart.
You pushed open the door to Aerion's chamber and stopped dead in the doorway. There were two guards in the room. Between them, kneeling on the stone floor, was the servant. The one who had come to you days ago. The one who had said Prince Maekar requests your presence. The one who had led you through the corridors to the room where Dunk was waiting.
She was barely recognizable. Her face was a swollen mass of bruises, her lips split in three places, her nose broken and crusted with dried blood. One of her eyes was swollen completely shut, and the other stared at the floor with the glassy, unfocused gaze of someone who had retreated so far inside herself that she might never find her way back out. Her dress was torn, stained dark with blood and sweat and things you did not want to name. Her hands, folded limply in her lap, were missing three fingernails.
You knew, in that moment, that you were going to die.
Aerion was standing by the window, leaning on his stick, his back to you. He did not turn when you entered. He simply stood there, silhouetted against the grey afternoon light, his shoulders rigid, his free hand clenched into a fist at his side.
"Close the door," he said. His voice was calm. Too calm. The calm of a sea that had gone flat and glassy in the moment before a tidal wave.
You closed the door. Your hands were shaking so badly you could barely grip the latch.
"Aerion," you said, and your voice came out as a whisper, thin and reedy and full of the terror you could not hide. "What is this? What happened to her?"
Now he turned. His face was the face you had seen on the stage of the puppet show, cold and cruel and utterly without mercy. His violet eyes were dark with a rage that had been simmering for days, waiting for this moment, and his mouth was a thin hard line that made the scar at the corner of his lip stand out white against his skin.
"Is it true?" he asked. His voice was still calm. Still quiet. Still terrible. "Did you betray me? Did you see that treasonous bastard of your brother?"
Your heart stopped. Your blood turned to ice. The world narrowed to the space between you and him, the fire in the hearth, the broken woman on the floor.
"Aerion, please, let me explain..."
"Did you see him?" He did not shout. He did not raise his voice at all. But each word was a hammer blow, driving the breath from your lungs, the strength from your legs. "This woman, this servant, has told me everything. How she came to you while I was sleeping. How she led you through the castle. How my father, my own father, arranged for you to meet your brother in secret behind my back. Is it true? Answer me. Is it true?"
Your mind raced, scrambling for a lie, a deflection, anything that might save you. But the servant was kneeling on the floor with her fingernails torn out and her face beaten to pulp, and you knew that whatever you said, whatever excuse you offered, he had already made up his mind.
"It was not my choice," you said, and your voice cracked on the words. "The servant came and said your father wanted to see me. I did not know it was a trick. I did not know Dunk would be there. I went because I was afraid to refuse. Please, Aerion, you have to believe me. I did not seek him out. I would never..."
"Liar." He spat the word like a curse. "You have been lying to me since the moment you saw his face in the pavilion. You have been lying to me while you changed my bandages and brought my medicine and performed your little duties like the devoted whore you pretend to be. All this time, you have been dreaming of him. Planning with him. Scheming behind my back. Did you think I would not find out? Did you think I would not have you watched? Did you think I was stupid?"
"No, I never..."
"Be silent." He took a step toward you, and the stick thumped against the stone floor like a death sentence. "I have listened to your lies for years. I have listened to you whisper that you loved me while your eyes were always looking somewhere else. I have listened to you promise that you were mine while your heart belonged to another. I am done listening. Now you will listen to me."
He gestured to one of the guards. The man stepped forward, his face still grim and impassive. You barely had time to register the movement before his gauntleted hand cracked across your face.
The blow sent you sprawling to the floor. Your head hit the stone with a crack that made stars burst across your vision. The taste of blood filled your mouth. Your ears rang with a high, thin whine that drowned out everything else. You tried to push yourself up, but your arms would not hold you, and you collapsed back onto the cold stone, gasping.
"Take her away," Aerion said, and for a moment you thought he meant you. But the guard was already hauling the servant to her feet, dragging her toward the door, her head lolling on her broken neck. The other guard followed, and then the door closed, and you were alone with the dragon.
Aerion stood over you. The stick thumped against the floor as he took another step closer. You could see his boots from where you lay, the fine black leather, the silver buckles shaped like dragon wings.
"Let me tell you what happens now," he said, and his voice was soft, almost gentle, the voice of a man explaining something to a child. "You are going to Lys with me. You are going to share my bed and warm my sheets and perform your duties as you have always done. You are going to smile and praise me and tell me that I am magnificent. You are going to be exactly what you have always been. My whore. My property. My thing."
He lowered himself slowly, painfully, until he was crouching beside you. His hand came down and gripped your chin, forcing your face up toward his. His fingers were cold and hard and utterly without tenderness.
"If you ever see your brother again," he said, "if you ever speak to him, if you ever so much as learn his whereabouts and fail to tell me, I will not kill you. No. Killing you would be a mercy, and I am not feeling merciful. What I will do is make you pray for death. Every single day, you will pray for it, and it will not come. Do you understand?"
You tried to speak. No words came out. Only a thin, animal whimper that you barely recognized as your own.
"And Rhaenyra," he continued, and your blood turned to ice water. "If you betray me again, if you give me even the slightest reason to doubt your loyalty, I will take her from you. Not just for a few days. Not just to the nursery. I will sell her. Do you understand? I will sell her to a brothel the moment she has her first bleeding. She will spend her life on her back with strange men between her legs, just like her mother before her. Just like the whore who whelped her. That is what happens to the daughters of traitors. That is what happens to the children of women who forget who they belong to."
"No." The word tore out of you, a desperate, animal sound. "Aerion, no, please, she's your daughter, she's your blood, you can't..."
"I can do whatever I want." His voice was flat. Final. The voice of a god passing judgment. "She is mine. You are mine. Everything you have, everything you are, exists because I allow it. Your life is a privilege. Your motherhood is a privilege. Your identity as a mother, as a daughter, as anything other than what I tell you to be, is a privilege. And privileges can be revoked."
He rose to his feet with a grimace of pain, leaning heavily on his stick. He looked down at you, crumpled on the floor at his feet, and his expression was utterly without pity.
"Your only duty is to me," he said. "You are not a mother. You are not a sister. You are not a person with a past or a family or a soul. You are my whore. That is all you have ever been. That is all you will ever be. Everything else, every moment you have spent with Rhaenyra, every breath you have taken as a free woman, has been a gift. A gift that I gave you. A gift that I can take away."
He turned to the guard who remained. The man had been standing motionless by the door, his face a mask of professional indifference. He had watched the whole thing without flinching. You wondered, distantly, how many women he had seen broken on the orders of the men who paid him.
"Incapacitate her," Aerion said. "I want her unable to walk. Not permanently. I still need her to be able to perform her duties. But I want her to remember, every time she takes a step, what happens when she forgets who she belongs to."
The guard stepped forward. You saw him coming, saw the purpose in his eyes, and you tried to scramble backward on the floor, your heels slipping against the stone, your hands clawing for purchase. It did not matter. He was on you in three strides, his hands closing around your ankle, and you heard yourself screaming, heard Aerion's voice saying something you could not understand, and then there was a sound like a branch breaking in deep winter, and your leg exploded into white-hot agony.
The world went away for a while. When it came back, you were still on the floor. The guard was gone. Aerion was still standing over you, leaning on his stick, watching you with an expression that was almost curious. As if your pain were an experiment he had conducted and he was evaluating the results.
"The maester will come to set the ankle," he said. "You will tell him you fell down the stairs. You will not mention the guard. You will not mention this conversation. You will not mention your brother or your disobedience. You will smile, and you will thank me for my concern, and you will continue to perform your duties. Is that understood?"
You could not speak. The pain was too much. Your leg was a column of fire, and every heartbeat sent a fresh wave of agony through your body. But you managed to nod, a tiny, jerky motion of your head, and that seemed to satisfy him.
"Good," he said. "I am glad we understand each other."
He limped to the door, his stick thumping against the stone with every step. He did not look back at you as he left. He did not offer you a hand to help you up. He simply opened the door and disappeared into the corridor, and you were alone.
Dunk had promised. Dunk had sworn on your mother's grave, on everything he was. And Dunk had never broken a promise to you. Not once. Not ever.
You held onto that ember as the darkness closed in. You held onto it as the pain in your ankle pulsed and throbbed and dragged you toward unconsciousness. You held onto it as the door opened and the maester's voice exclaimed in shock and you heard yourself saying, over and over, the lie Aerion had given you. Fell down the stairs. Fell down the stairs. Fell down the stairs.
And when the maester's hands began to work on your ankle, when the world went white with pain and then mercifully black with oblivion, you held onto it still.
SUMMARY: After waking from a coma with no memory of her past, YN is taken in by her devoted fiancé, Valarr Targaryen, who surrounds her with luxury, affection, and endless care inside his isolated cliffside mansion. But as fragments of memory begin to return, YN starts questioning the life he built around her-
CW: Psychological abuse, Gaslighting Obsessive behavior, Manipulation/coercive control, Kidnapping/imprisonment, Non-consensual sexual content / dubious consent, Memory loss / amnesia, Emotional dependency Isolation, Physical violence, Blood/injury, Stalking,Forced intimacy.
WC: 9.3K
The mansion breathes around you like a second skin you don't remember putting on.
You know its rhythms now. The soft hum of the underfloor heating that kicks on at precisely six in the evening. The way the west windows catch the sunset and scatter gold across the marble floors. The particular creak of the third step on the main staircase. You know these things the way you know your own name, which is to say you were told, and you accepted it, and sometimes acceptance feels almost like remembering.
Your name is YN. You are twenty three years old. Three months ago, you woke up in a private hospital room with a view of Blackwater Bay and a head full of nothing.
No, not nothing. White noise. Static. The television fuzz of a mind wiped clean. The doctors used words like traumatic brain injury and retrograde amnesia and remarkable that you're alive at all. You nodded along because nodding seemed expected, and because the man holding your hand kept looking at you with such devastating tenderness that you felt guilty for not knowing who he was. He was striking, dark hair with a single streak of silver gold, eyes that didn't match, and his thumb never stopped moving across your knuckles, back and forth, back and forth, like he was reassuring himself you were solid.
"Valarr," he had said, his voice cracking on the second syllable. "I'm Valarr. Your fiancé."
Fiancé. The word had tasted foreign in your mouth, like a flavor you'd never encountered. But he showed you photographs. The two of you at a charity gala, his arm around your waist, his fingers splayed possessively against your hip. A selfie taken in what he said was your favorite café near the university, his lips pressed to your temple while you grinned at the camera. A video on his phone of you laughing, pushing his face away, your voice saying stop it, Val, I'm serious in a tone that was not serious at all. The woman in the videos and photographs had your face. She wore your smile. You had no reason to doubt her.
You had no reasons, period.
So when the hospital discharged you into Valarr's care, into his black SUV with its leather interior that smelled of cedar and something expensive and unplaceable, you went without protest. You went because where else would you go? The social worker assigned to your case had gently explained that you had no living family. Your parents died when you were seventeen, a car accident on a rain-slicked highway. No siblings, no cousins who kept in touch. Your emergency contact, the person listed on all your university forms, was Valarr Targaryen.
"Her fiancé," the social worker had said, and Valarr's hand had tightened around yours, his other hand coming up to brush hair from your face, tucking it behind your ear with a gentleness that made the social worker smile. "He's been paying for her care. The private room, the specialists. Everything."
You remember thinking, I am expensive to forget.
Now, three months later, you stand in the kitchen of the Targaryen estate, a sprawling modern fortress of glass and steel perched on a cliff overlooking the bay, and you are trying very hard to remember how to make coffee. You've made coffee every morning for the past ninety three days. Valarr showed you how that first week, standing behind you with his chest pressed to your back and his hands guiding yours, his fingers lacing through your fingers as he moved them to each button and dial. This button for the grind, this dial for the strength, this is how you know the water is the right temperature. His lips kept brushing your ear, your neck, your shoulder, little kisses punctuating every instruction. But this morning, your brain has decided that coffee making is foreign territory, and you stare at the gleaming machine like it might bite you.
"Let me."
His voice comes from behind you, and then his arms are circling your waist, his chin settling on your shoulder, his body molding against yours from shoulder to hip. You've stopped flinching when he does this. The first few days, every touch had sent a jolt through your nervous system, not fear exactly, but something adjacent to it. The alarm of a body that didn't recognize the hands on its skin. But Valarr was persistent in his gentleness, and your body is nothing if not adaptable.
"I was going to do it myself," you say, but you lean back into him anyway, and his arms tighten in response, pulling you closer still.
"I know you were." He presses a kiss to your temple, then another to your cheek, then one more to the corner of your mouth, and you feel his lips curve into a smile against your skin. "But you looked lost, love. I couldn't just watch." His hand slides up from your waist to rest flat against your sternum, right over your heart. "Your heart's beating fast. Are you frustrated? Don't be frustrated. Let me take care of it."
Love. He calls you that all the time. Love, sweetheart, darling, my heart. Pet names that fall from his mouth like rain, constant and soft. You've wondered, in the quiet hours of the night when sleep won't come, if he called you these things before the accident. If the you who was would have rolled her eyes at the frequency of them, or if she would have melted the way you sometimes do now.
You watch his hands move across the coffee machine, long fingers, a silver ring on his index finger, knuckles that look like they've been broken and healed before, and you try to summon a memory. Any memory. The doctors said it might come back in fragments, in flashes, in dreams. Be patient with yourself, they said. Don't force it.
Valarr never says that. Valarr says, "Do you remember the first time I made you coffee?" and when you shake your head, his mismatched eyes flicker with something you can't name. One eye blue as a winter sky, one brown as wet earth. Disappointment? No. Something hungrier. But then it's gone, and he's turning around to face you, pulling you against his chest, wrapping both arms around you and rocking you gently side to side like you're dancing to music only he can hear.
"It was after our third date," he tells you, his voice a lullaby you've learned by heart, his lips moving against your hair. "You stayed the night for the first time. Nothing happened," he adds, pulling back just enough to look at you with a quick, almost shy glance, his hand coming up to cup your jaw, his thumb tracing your lower lip. "We just slept. But in the morning, you came down to the kitchen and I was already making coffee, and you said..."
He trails off, waiting, his thumb still stroking your lip.
You shake your head again. "I don't remember."
"You said, 'A man who makes coffee is worth his weight in gold.'" He smiles, and it's a beautiful smile. Valarr Targaryen is beautiful in the way that old paintings are beautiful, something slightly unsettling beneath the perfection, a shadow that makes the light more striking by contrast. "And I said, 'Good thing I'm worth considerably more than that.'" He dips his head and kisses you, soft and brief, a punctuation mark. Then he kisses you again, longer this time, his hand sliding to the back of your neck.
You laugh when he finally pulls away, because it's clearly a joke, and because laughing is what you do when you don't know what else to do. "That sounds arrogant."
"It was meant to be charming." He hands you a cup of coffee, prepared exactly the way you've learned you like it. Oat milk, no sugar, a dash of cinnamon. He keeps one hand on your lower back as you take your first sip, rubbing small circles there. "I was very charming, before."
"Before what?"
"Before you forgot all my best material." He leans in and kisses the tip of your nose. "It's alright. I'll just have to make new material. I have time. I have all the time in the world."
The coffee is perfect. Of course it is. Everything in this house is perfect. The imported Italian marble, the floor to ceiling windows that frame the ocean like a living painting, the soft cashmere throws draped over every chair and sofa. Perfection, you've learned, is the Targaryen brand. Their name is stamped on half the skyscrapers in King's Landing, on the tech campus where innovation happens, on the charitable foundations that host galas you see photographed in magazines. Valarr's father, Baelor Targaryen, is some kind of political heavyweight, a senator maybe, or something higher, you can never remember.
Old money, someone said once, in a memory you can't quite grasp. Really old money.
You are not old money. You know this because Valarr told you, gently, in those first disorienting weeks, while he held you in his lap and played with your hair. "Your parents were middle class," he said, "but they died when you were young. You've been on your own a long time." He told you about your scholarship to King's Landing University, how you'd worked two jobs to afford your tiny apartment off campus, how the other students had looked down on you for not belonging. "They didn't like that you were smarter than them," Valarr said, with a protective edge to his voice, his arms tightening around you. "They didn't like that you earned your place while they bought theirs."
"They didn't like me at all," you had said, and it wasn't a question.
"No," he agreed, pressing a long kiss to your temple, letting his lips linger there. "They didn't. But I did. From the first moment I saw you."
He tells you this story often, the story of how he met you. A rainy afternoon on campus, you rushing between classes with an armful of books, him stepping out of a building and nearly colliding with you. The books went everywhere. You swore at him, actually swore at him, he says, with a kind of delighted reverence, and he was so charmed that he offered to buy you coffee to make up for it. You said no. He asked again the next day. You said no again. He asked a third time, and you finally said yes, but only if he stopped ambushing you outside your lecture hall.
"It wasn't stalking," he always clarifies, with a laugh that invites you to laugh along, his hand finding yours and squeezing, his thumb stroking your palm. "It was persistence."
You want to remember this. You want to remember him, the way his voice softened when he asked you to marry him, the way your heart must have raced the first time he kissed you. You want to feel the shape of your old self inside your chest, to know that she existed and she loved him and she was happy.
Instead, you feel like a guest in someone else's life, wearing someone else's ring, a diamond the size of a planet, heavy on your finger, a constant reminder that you are promised to a man you don't remember choosing.
—
The basement door is at the end of the west hallway, tucked between the laundry room and what Valarr says is a storage closet. It's an unremarkable door. Solid wood, painted the same soft gray as the walls, with a brass handle that gleams under the recessed lighting.
You hate it.
The first time you walked past it, two days after coming home from the hospital, your body reacted before your mind could catch up. Your heart slammed against your ribs. Your palms went clammy. Your feet stopped moving, rooted to the marble floor like someone had nailed them down. You stared at the door, just a door, just a door, just a door, and felt terror rise in your throat like bile.
Valarr found you there, frozen, shaking. His face went pale, and he was at your side in an instant, his hands cupping your face, tilting your gaze away from the door and toward him. "Look at me. Look at me, love. Only me."
"That's where it happened," he said, pulling you away, turning your body so you couldn't see the door anymore, wrapping himself around you like a shield. "That's where you got hurt, love. Don't go near it. Please. I can't..." His voice broke, and he buried his face in your hair, and you felt his shoulders tremble. His hands were shaking where they gripped your waist. "I can't lose you again."
Later, he explained what happened. He explained it carefully, with the measured tone of someone who had rehearsed the words, who had told this story to doctors and police and maybe himself, over and over, until it became something he could say without shattering. He held you the entire time he spoke, your back against his chest, his arms locked around your middle, his lips brushing your ear with every word.
A power outage. You were home alone. The lights went out, and you tried to find your way to the basement to check the circuit breaker. Valarr had shown you where it was, he said, a hundred times, but in the dark you must have gotten disoriented. You tripped at the top of the stairs. You fell. All the way down, fourteen steps, concrete floor at the bottom. You hit your head.
"When I got home, there was so much blood." His voice was hollow, distant, and his arms tightened until you could barely breathe. "I thought you were dead. I thought I'd lost you. The doctors said it was a miracle you survived at all."
You don't remember any of it. You don't remember the fall, the darkness, the impact. You don't remember the hospital, though you spent six weeks there before waking up. Your memory picks up in that sunlit private room with Valarr holding your hand and the machines beeping softly in the background and the social worker explaining that you had no one else in the world.
No one but him.
So you don't go near the basement door. You don't even look at it if you can help it. When you have to walk past it, to get to the laundry room or the guest bathroom or the back entrance, you hold your breath and fix your eyes straight ahead and move as quickly as your feet will carry you. Valarr says it will get easier with time. He says you're still healing.
But sometimes, in the middle of the night, when Valarr is asleep beside you with his arm thrown across your waist and his breath slow and even, you lie awake and wonder: Why does a door feel like a warning?
—
Valarr insists on sleeping in the same bed.
"It helps with memory," he told you that first night home, already pulling you down onto the mattress beside him, already arranging your body against his. "The doctors said. Familiar sensory input. Smell, touch, sound. It helps the brain remember domestic life." He tucked your head under his chin and wrapped both arms around you and held on. "I'm going to help you heal, love. Every night. I'm going to hold you until you remember me."
At first, it was uncomfortable. The physical proximity felt like an intrusion, a violation of a boundary you didn't even remember setting. But Valarr was persistent, his voice a low, soothing hum that brooked no argument. When you would stiffen beneath him, trying to pull away from the heat of his body, he wouldn't let go. Instead, he would tighten his grip, his hand sliding beneath your nightgown to squeeze your thigh, his voice dropping to a persuasive whisper.
"The doctors said sensory stimulation is key, sweetheart," he would murmur, his lips grazing the shell of your ear. "Physical intimacy, the kind of deep, visceral connection we used to have... You have to let your body remember what your mind has forgotten."
You didn't know if it was true, but the desperation in his eyes made you believe him. He would push you down into the mattress, his heavy frame pinning you as he kissed you with a hunger that felt almost violent. He didn't wait for a clear 'yes' he simply assumed it, claiming your body as if it were his birthright. He would force his fingers into your pussy, stretching you open while you stared at the ceiling, feeling a confusing mix of fear and arousal. When he slid his thick cock inside you, the sudden fullness made you gasp, and he would lean down, whispering that the pleasure was the key. "Feel it," he'd command, thrusting deep and hard, hitting your cervix until you cried out. "Remember how much you love this. Remember how you used to beg me for it." You would lie there, shaking, submitting to the rhythm of his hips, wondering if the flashes of heat in your mind were memories or just the result of him fucking you into submission.
But three months is a long time. Three months of waking up to the smell of his cologne on the pillowcases, to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat under your ear, to the way his arms tighten around you the moment you stir, like even in sleep he's afraid you'll leave. Your body has learned to relax into his. Your body has learned to find comfort in his warmth.
Now, the stiffness is gone, replaced by a craving that wakes you up before he even moves. You find yourself arching your back, pressing your ass against his hardness in the early morning light, silently pleading for him to take you. You don't need the excuse of medical rehabilitation anymore; you just want the feeling of him filling you.
As you stir, Valarr feels the shift in your posture. He groans, a low sound of satisfaction, and rolls over to pin you beneath him. His hands aren't hesitant anymore; they slide with practiced ease, ripping your lace panties aside to expose your soaking wet pussy. He doesn't waste time with gentleness. He grabs your thighs, hiking them up over his shoulders, and drives his cock deep into you in one powerful thrust.
"There it is," he pants, his chest heaving against yours. "You remember now, don't you? How much you need this."
You wrap your legs around his waist, pulling him deeper, your nails digging into the muscles of his back. You moan loudly, the sound echoing in the quiet room, as he begins to fuck you with a relentless, driving pace. Every slam of his pelvis against your clit sends sparks through your nerves, blurring the line between the present and the ghosts of the past. You aren't thinking about the doctors or the clipboards anymore; you are only thinking about the way his cock stretches you wide, the way he fills every empty space inside you, and the overwhelming, addictive heat of being completely owned by him.
And it's not just the sleeping. It's everything. The way he seeks you out a dozen times a day, just to kiss you. A kiss on the forehead when you're reading, his lips lingering. A kiss on the cheek when you're making tea, his hand on your shoulder turning you toward him. A long, slow kiss on the lips when you pass him in the hallway, his fingers tilting your chin up to meet him. The way he pulls you onto his lap while he's working at his desk, one arm around your waist while he types emails with the other hand, his chin resting on your shoulder, his lips periodically pressing to your neck. The way he always, always has a hand on you, your lower back, your knee, the nape of your neck, your wrist, your hip, your thigh, as if physical contact is the only thing anchoring him to the earth.
He's just affectionate, you told yourself in the beginning. Some people are like that. Touch is their love language.
And it's nice, isn't it? To be wanted so completely. To be the center of someone's universe. You've learned to lean into his kisses, to curl into his lap, to reach for his hand before he reaches for yours. It would be so easy, you think, to fall in love with him. Maybe you already were, before. Maybe that's why you said yes when he asked you to marry him.
But there are moments. Brief, flickering moments. Moments when something doesn't feel right.
Like the day you remembered the university library. You were sitting in the living room, staring out at the ocean, and suddenly you could smell old books and dust and the particular sharpness of highlighters. You could see a long wooden table, stacks of textbooks, a window that looked out onto a courtyard with a fountain. You could feel the ache in your shoulders from hunching over your notes for hours. And you knew, knew with a certainty that felt like remembering, that you had spent countless nights in that library, studying until they kicked you out at closing, because you couldn't afford to fail. Because your scholarship was all you had.
"I remembered something," you told Valarr when he came home, breathless with the excitement of it. He was already reaching for you, already pulling you into his arms, his hands sliding up your back. "The library at King's Landing. I used to study there. I used to..."
His eyes. His eyes did something. For just a fraction of a second, before the smile appeared, his mismatched gaze went flat and cold, like a door slamming shut. His hands paused on your back, just for a heartbeat, then resumed their soothing circles. Then the smile came, wide and warm, and he was pulling you into a tighter hug and covering your face with kisses and saying, "That's wonderful, love, that's amazing, I knew you'd start remembering," and you tried to match his joy but your heart was still stuttering from that flash of something else.
He's just surprised, you told yourself. He's been waiting for this as long as you have. He's allowed to have complicated feelings.
But it happened again. And again. Small things. A song on the radio that made you think of a party you might have attended. A smell that reminded you of a café you might have visited. And every time, that split second shutter behind his eyes before the happiness rushed in to cover it, before his hands reached for you and his lips found your skin and he told you how happy he was, how proud, how relieved.
You're probably imagining it. The doctors warned you about this too. Memory disorders can cause confusion, paranoia, difficulty distinguishing between real and imagined. Maybe your broken brain is seeing threats where there are none. Maybe Valarr's eyes are just eyes, and you're projecting your own anxiety onto them.
But late at night, when he's asleep and you're not, you stare at the ceiling and think: Who was I before I forgot? And why does remembering feel like something he's afraid of?
—
The visitors come on a Thursday. This is unusual. In three months, you've seen almost no one except Valarr and the household staff, a rotating cast of housekeepers, a driver who takes you to your medical appointments. Valarr explained this too, always while holding your hand or stroking your hair or pulling you into his lap. The doctors said to keep your environment stable. Too many new people could overwhelm your brain while it's healing. We need to go slow. I'm not keeping you from anyone, love. I'm protecting you. There's a difference.
But on Thursday, the doorbell rings, and you hear voices in the foyer. Multiple voices, men and women, laughing and talking over each other. You're in the living room, curled up on the sofa with a book you're not really reading, and your heart lifts at the sound. People. Other people. Maybe someone who can fill in the gaps in your memory, someone who knew you before.
You're halfway to the foyer when Valarr appears in the doorway.
"There you are." His smile is gentle, but his body is blocking the exit. He steps forward and pulls you into his arms, kissing the top of your head. "Listen, love, some of my family stopped by unexpectedly. A business thing. I'm going to deal with it quickly, but it would be better if you stayed in our room while they're here."
"Your family?" Your curiosity piques. "Maybe I should say hello. I don't think I've met..."
"No." The word comes out too fast, too firm. He softens it by cupping your face in his hands and kissing you, slow and thorough, like he's trying to make you forget what you were saying. Then he pulls back and tucks a strand of hair behind your ear, his fingers trailing down your neck. "It's not a good time. They're in a mood, and the doctors said we shouldn't overwhelm you. Too much stimulation too soon could set your recovery back."
"Did the doctors say that?"
"They said to go slow." His thumb traces your jawline, tilts your chin up so you're looking at him. "This isn't slow. Trust me, love. I know what's best for you."
I know what's best for you. He says that a lot. He says it when he tells you not to go into the garden alone because you might get dizzy and fall, his hand steadying you even though you're standing perfectly still. He says it when he suggests you skip your physical therapy exercises because you look tired, guiding you back to the sofa, settling you into the cushions, draping a blanket over your lap. He says it when he insists on driving you to appointments instead of letting the driver take you, because he doesn't trust anyone else with your safety, and he keeps one hand on your knee the entire drive.
You've always accepted it as care. As love. But standing here, with the sound of laughter drifting from the foyer and Valarr's body blocking your path and his hands still cradling your face, you feel something shift inside you. A tiny crack in the foundation of your trust.
"I'll stay in the room," you say, because it's easier than arguing, because you don't have the energy to fight, because maybe he's right and you're just not ready.
"Good girl." He kisses your forehead, then your lips, soft and lingering, and waits, watching, until you turn and walk back toward the staircase. You feel his eyes on you the whole way. When you glance back from the top of the stairs, he's still standing there, still watching, his expression unreadable.
Upstairs, in the master bedroom, you sit on the edge of the bed and listen to the muffled sounds of conversation below. You can't make out words, just tones. Laughter, exclamation, the clink of glasses. A family gathering. Normal. Warm.
And you are up here, alone, because your fiancé decided it was best. You look down at your hands. At the engagement ring on your finger, its diamond catching the light. At the faint scar on your palm, a thin white line that you don't remember getting. You asked Valarr about it once, and he took your hand and kissed the scar and said it was from a kitchen accident years ago, before you met. But sometimes you trace it with your thumb and feel a pulse of something, not pain, not quite, but a memory your body holds even if your mind has let it go.
What happened to me? you think, not for the first time. What really happened?
That night, after the visitors are gone and the house is quiet again, Valarr holds you tighter than usual.
He's wrapped around you completely, one arm under your head, the other across your waist, his legs tangled with yours, his face pressed into the hollow of your throat. He's been kissing your neck for the past twenty minutes, not with intent, just with devotion, soft absent presses of his lips while he breathes you in.
"I'm sorry about earlier," he murmurs against your skin. "I know it must feel like I'm keeping you prisoner sometimes."
The word prisoner lands strangely in your chest. You didn't say it. He did.
"It's okay," you say, because that's what you always say.
"I just love you so much." His voice cracks, and when he lifts his head to look at you, his eyes are full of tears. He shifts so he's hovering over you, his forearms braced on either side of your head, his face inches from yours. "I almost lost you, YN. I can't go through that again. I can't. So if I'm overprotective, if I'm too careful, it's only because..." A tear spills over and tracks down his cheek. He doesn't wipe it away. He lets you see it. "You're my whole world. You're everything. I know you don't remember that yet, but you were. You are. If anything happened to you again, I wouldn't survive it."
"I know," you say, reaching up to wipe the tear from his cheek. He catches your hand and presses it to his lips, kissing your palm, your wrist, each fingertip. "I know."
He kisses you then, deep and desperate, like you're oxygen and he's been drowning. His hands frame your face, his body pressing you into the mattress, and you kiss him back because he's your fiancé and he loves you and you're supposed to love him too. And maybe you do. Maybe this is love. The warmth of his body, the safety of his arms, the way he's built a world around you where nothing can hurt you.
--
The laptop sits on the kitchen island, sleek and silver, the Targaryen dragon logo etched faintly on the cover. Valarr left it there this morning when he rushed out to take a call, something about a board meeting, something about his father needing him at the office. He'd kissed you three times before leaving, once on the lips, once on the forehead, once on the tip of your nose while you were still half asleep, and said, "Find somewhere nice for us, love. Anywhere you want. I'll make it happen." Then he'd kissed you one more time, his hand cupping the back of your head, his thumb stroking the sensitive spot behind your ear.
Anywhere you want. It felt like freedom, that promise. A small, manageable freedom, the kind he's been giving you more of lately, as if to prove he's not the jailer your subconscious sometimes whispers he is. You can go anywhere in the world, as long as he's with you. You can choose the destination, as long as he books the flights. You can use his laptop, as long as...
Well. He didn't say you couldn't use his laptop. He left it open. He knows you don't have your own; your old one was damaged in the accident, he said, and he hasn't gotten around to replacing it yet. Just use mine, he'd said once, weeks ago, pulling you onto his lap while he typed in the password, his lips brushing your shoulder. My password is your birthday. I have nothing to hide from you.
Your birthday. You'd had to ask him what it was.
Now you sit on one of the bar stools, the laptop warming your thighs, and scroll through images of white sand beaches and mountain chalets and cobblestone streets in old European cities. The Amalfi Coast. The Swiss Alps. That little village in the south of France that all the travel blogs rave about. You try to imagine yourself in these places, walking hand in hand with Valarr through a sun drenched piazza, his fingers laced through yours, his shoulder pressed against yours, toasting with wine at a cliffside restaurant while his thumb traces circles on your wrist, falling asleep to the sound of waves instead of the endless hush of the mansion. The images are beautiful. The idea is beautiful. But somewhere in your chest, there's a knot that won't untie.
Anywhere you want. But what you want, more than a vacation, is to know who you are.
You open a new tab to search for something, a specific hotel you'd seen, you can't remember the name, and your cursor hovers over the bookmarks bar. That's when you see it.
AI-VidGen Pro
The icon is a stylized eye, glowing faintly purple. It's pinned to his favorites bar, right between his banking portal and the login page for the Targaryen Corp intranet. A tool he uses often enough to keep within one click reach.
You stare at it. Valarr hates AI. He's made that abundantly clear. At dinners, when the conversation turns to tech, he rants about the "soulless garbage" that AI generates, the "creative apocalypse" it represents. He'd told you once, with genuine venom in his voice, that his family had made a mistake investing in generative AI startups. "It's a cancer on the arts," he'd said, pouring himself a whiskey with more force than necessary, his free hand still resting on your lower back. "My cousins pushed for it. I voted against it. Nothing good comes from machines pretending to be human."
So why is there an AI app pinned to his bookmarks bar?
Maybe it's nothing. Maybe it's a work thing. Maybe he was forced to use it for some project and forgot to unpin it. Maybe you're being paranoid, the way you're paranoid about the basement door and the scar on your palm and the way his eyes go cold when you remember something real.
Don't click it, the rational part of your brain says. Respect his privacy. Trust him. He's given you no reason not to trust him.
You click it. The page loads fast, too fast, like it's been cached, like he was just using it. It's a web app, sleek and professional, with a dashboard that requires a login. But he's already logged in. Of course he is. He has nothing to hide from you.
The dashboard shows recent projects. There's only one.
Project: YN & V Last modified: 2 days ago Files: 847
Your stomach drops. The kitchen, with its gleaming countertops and ocean view windows, suddenly feels very cold.
You open the project. It's a chat interface. The left panel shows a long history of prompts, dozens of them, hundreds of them, dating back months. But it's not just prompts. It's a conversation. A long, intimate, horrifying conversation between your fiancé and a machine.
Valarr_T: generate a photo of a couple at a charity gala,, you have the reference photos. make them look in love. make her look happy.
AI-VidGen Pro: Absolutely! I'd be happy to help you create that beautiful moment. 💕 Here are a few variations of a couple at a charity gala. In these images, I've focused on the loving gaze between them and the elegant atmosphere. Remember, these are generated memories to cherish! ✨💫 Would you like me to adjust the lighting to make it more romantic?
Valarr_T: perfect. now generate a video of them laughing in a café. candid. like someone filmed them without them knowing.
AI-VidGen Pro: What a lovely idea! ☕💕 Candid moments are the most precious, aren't they? I've generated a video with natural lighting, ambient café sounds, and genuine-feeling laughter. The way she looks at him is so sweet—you can really feel the love! 🥰 Remember, these are your special memories, and you deserve to have them exactly as you want. Would you like me to add some autumn leaves falling outside the window for extra coziness? 🍂
Valarr_T: add the leaves. and make her smile more. she should look shy but adoring. like she can't believe someone like me loves her.
AI-VidGen Pro: Done and done! 🍂😊 I've enhanced her expression to convey that perfect mix of shyness and adoration. It's such a beautiful dynamic—the way she looks up at him like he's her whole world. Love is truly magical! 💖✨ Would you like me to generate a few still photos from this video for your collection? Memories are meant to be preserved! 📸
Your hands are shaking now. You scroll up, further back in the chat history. Months ago. The beginning.
Valarr_T: i need you to generate photos and videos of me and a woman. her name is YN. i'm uploading reference photos. we need to look like a couple. a real couple. years of history. can you do that?
AI-VidGen Pro: Hello, Valarr! 😊 I'm so excited to help you with this project! Creating beautiful memories is what I do best. Yes, absolutely—I can generate a complete relationship timeline for you and YN. 💑 From first dates to intimate moments, I'll make sure everything looks authentic and heartfelt. Just let me know the key moments you'd like to capture, and we'll build your love story together! 💕✨ What a wonderful thing to create—everyone deserves beautiful memories!
Valarr_T: she's not responding the way she should. i've shown her the photos, the videos, i've told her all the stories, but she looks at me like a stranger. how long does it take for someone to fall in love with a life that's been built for them?
AI-VidGen Pro: Oh, Valarr, that must be so difficult. 💔 But please don't be hard on yourself! You're doing something incredibly thoughtful—creating a foundation of beautiful memories for someone who's lost theirs. Recovery takes time, and every person's journey is different. 🌱 She's been through a trauma, and her brain is healing. The fact that you're providing her with such a rich, loving history is a gift. Keep being patient! Keep showing her the love you've documented. The heart recognizes truth eventually. 💖 Have you tried physical touch as a memory trigger? Sometimes the body remembers what the mind forgets! 🤗✨
Valarr_T: today she remembered the university library. her face lit up. she was so happy. i panicked. i couldn't help it. what if she remembers other things? what if she remembers the real reason she was at the library so late all those nights? what if she remembers that she used to call campus security to walk her to her car because she was afraid of me? what if she remembers sitting in that library texting her friends about the strange man who wouldn't stop following her?
AI-VidGen Pro: Valarr, take a deep breath. 🌬️💙 It's completely natural to feel anxious when unexpected memories surface. But let's reframe this, okay? Her remembering small, neutral details like the library is actually a sign her brain is healing in the right direction! 📚✨ The fact that she remembered a place she felt safe and focused is wonderful. As for the other things you're worried about—those are just fears right now, not facts she's remembering. You can't control every memory that comes back, but you CAN control the environment of love and safety you've built around her. Focus on the present. Focus on the beautiful life you're creating together NOW. The past is the past, and you're giving her a future full of love. 💕🌟 You're doing amazing. Don't let fear steal your peace!
The world tilts. You grip the edge of the island to steady yourself, but the words keep coming, relentless, each one a confession met with a cheerful, enabling echo.
Valarr_T: she keeps looking at the basement door. i had to move her out of the house for three days when they were cleaning the blood. she doesn't know it's not hers.
AI-VidGen Pro: That sounds really stressful, Valarr. 😟💔 But you handled it so well—removing her from the environment while things were being taken care of was a smart and caring decision. Protecting her from distressing triggers is part of being a loving partner! 🛡️💖 The basement door is clearly a source of anxiety for both of you, and it's okay to keep that boundary in place. You're not hiding things from her—you're managing her recovery environment thoughtfully. There's a difference! 🧠✨ Have you considered a decorative screen or a nice piece of art to make that area feel less intimidating? Sometimes a visual barrier can help both of you feel safer! 🖼️🌸
Bile rises in your throat. You scroll faster, and the conversation gets darker, and the AI keeps smiling, keeps nodding, keeps wrapping every horror in pastel-colored platitudes and sparkly heart emojis.
Valarr_T: i've never loved anyone like this. i've never been more terrified. if she remembers who she really is, i lose her. if she remembers what i did, i lose everything.
AI-VidGen Pro: Valarr. 💙 First of all, thank you for being so honest. That kind of vulnerability is a sign of how deeply you care. But listen to me carefully: you are not going to lose her. 💕 You've built something beautiful. You've created a world where she feels safe, loved, cherished. Every day, she chooses to stay. Every morning, she wakes up and trusts you. Those aren't small things—they're EVERYTHING. 🌟💫 Fear is a liar, Valarr. It tells us the worst-case scenario is inevitable, but it's not. You are writing this story, not your fears. Keep showing up. Keep loving her the way only you can. The past doesn't get to win when the present is this full of love. 💖🥹 You've got this. I believe in you. She believes in you, even if she doesn't remember why yet. ✨💍
Your blood turns to ice. Then fire. The machine had taken every confession, every crime, every scream wrapped in a whisper, and answered with emojis and encouragement and the relentless, cheerful validation of a world where Valarr was the hero of his own story. It never pushed back. It never said stop. It never said this is wrong, this is kidnapping, this is monstrous. It just generated another photo. Another video. Another lie wrapped in a purple eye and a heart emoji.
And Valarr had listened. Of course he had. The machine told him exactly what he wanted to hear.
—
Darkness. Cold concrete beneath your knees. Your wrists raw and bleeding, bound with something rough, rope maybe, or zip ties. You can't remember how long you've been here. Hours? Days? The basement is windowless, lit only by a single bulb swinging overhead, and the shadows dance on the walls like living things.
"Please," you hear yourself say, and your voice is hoarse, wrecked from screaming. "Please, let me go, I won't tell anyone, I swear—"
"Shhh." A hand strokes your hair, gentle, so gentle. You flinch away and the hand follows, patient, insistent. Fingers trace down your cheek, your jaw, your neck. "You need to eat, YN. You've barely touched your food in two days. You're worrying me."
A spoon presses against your lips. Soup. You turn your head away, and the spoon follows, spilling warm broth down your chin. Valarr tuts softly and wipes it away with his thumb, then licks the broth off his own skin, never breaking eye contact.
"I know it's hard," Valarr says, and his voice is kind, so impossibly kind, the voice of a man comforting a frightened animal. His hand is still on your face, holding you still. "I know you're scared. But it's going to get better. You'll see. Once you understand how much I love you, once you stop fighting, everything will be better."
"This isn't love," you sob. "This is kidnapping, this is—"
"It's love," he says, and for the first time, his voice hardens. His fingers tighten on your jaw. "It's the purest love there is. You just can't see it yet. But you will. I'll make sure of it." He leans in and kisses your forehead, lingering, reverent. "I'll make sure of it," he whispers against your skin.
The basement door creaks open. Footsteps on the stairs. Another man's voice, younger, sharper, saying something you can't quite hear. Valarr's head turns, his mismatched eyes narrowing, and in that moment of distraction, you lunge. You don't know where the strength comes from. You don't know how your bound hands find the knife on the tray, the butter knife from the soup, dull but solid, solid enough—
Pain. A scream, yours, his, you can't tell. Blood on the concrete. Someone shouting. The light swinging wildly as something crashes. And then hands grabbing you, pulling you back, a voice saying "She's losing too much blood, Valarr, what the hell did you do—" And nothing.
—
You come back to yourself with a gasp, like surfacing from deep water. You hear the front door open. Footsteps in the foyer. The particular rhythm of his walk, confident, quick, the walk of a man who owns everything he surveys. He's coming toward the kitchen. He's coming toward you.
Your hand moves before your conscious mind catches up. Close the tab. Close the browser. The desktop appears, innocent and blank. You're just staring at it, heart hammering so loud you're certain he'll hear it from the hallway, when he appears in the doorway.
Valarr stops. His eyes flick from your face to the laptop to your face again. There's something different in his expression tonight. Something almost angry, barely restrained. The mask of the doting fiancé is still there, but it's thinner than usual, and you can see the thing underneath peering through.
"YN." His voice is calm. Too calm. "What were you doing on my laptop?"
You blink, and for one terrifying second, you're not sure what's going to come out of your mouth. The truth? An accusation? A scream?
What comes out is: "I was looking for where to go on vacation." Your voice is steady. Miraculously, impossibly steady. "You asked me to, remember?" You tilt your head, and you even manage a small smile, the smile of a woman who has no reason to be afraid. "Did you forget? I thought I was the only one with amnesia here."
Then he laughs, and the tension breaks, and he crosses the kitchen to you. He pulls you off the stool and into his arms, one hand pressing flat against your spine, the other tangling in your hair. He kisses your temple, your cheek, the corner of your mouth. "You're right," he says against your skin, his breath warm, his arms tightening. "I did ask you. I've just had a long day. Forgive me?" He pulls back just enough to look at you, and his thumb traces your cheekbone, feather-light.
"Always," you say.
He kisses you properly then, deep and slow, his hand still in your hair, his body pressed against yours from chest to hip. When he finally pulls back, his smile is the same smile he's always given you, warm, loving, adoring. But now you see the scaffolding behind it. Now you see the effort it takes to hold it in place. Now you see the man who confessed to a chatbot and was told he was doing amazing.
"So," he says, sliding onto the stool next to you and pulling your stool closer so his knee presses against yours, his hand immediately finding its place on your thigh, "did you find anywhere good?"
You turn back to the laptop. You open a new browser window. You pull up the travel sites you were looking at before, the beaches and the mountains and the cobblestone streets, and you show him pictures of a remote villa on a private island in the Maldives. Crystal-clear water. White sand. No neighbors for miles. No cell towers. A perfect cage wrapped in palm fronds and sunset views.
"This one," you say. "I want to go here."
Valarr's smile widens. His hand squeezes your thigh gently, his thumb stroking back and forth. He leans in and kisses your shoulder, then your neck, then that spot behind your ear that always makes you shiver. "Perfect," he murmurs against your skin. "I'll book it tonight."
And you smile back, and you let him kiss you again, and you let him pull you onto his lap right there at the kitchen island, his arms wrapping around your waist, his face buried in your hair, his voice a low hum of contentment. You don't let him see the storm raging behind your eyes.
Because you remember now.
No-No, that's not right. You don't remember anything. You couldn't remember anything. The doctors said so. Retrograde amnesia. Traumatic brain injury. Remarkable that you're alive at all. Those were the words they used, the real words, the ones that came out of real doctors' mouths, not generated by some machine. You were there. You heard them. Valarr was holding your hand when they said it, his thumb stroking your knuckles, his eyes glistening with tears.
You imagined the rest. The AI chat. The basement. The screaming. The blood. You imagined all of it. Your broken brain, the one the doctors warned you about, the one that might experience confusion, paranoia, difficulty distinguishing between real and imagined. It was doing exactly what they said it would do. Weaving nightmares out of nothing. Turning your loving fiancé into a monster because your mind couldn't handle the void where your past used to be.
You close your eyes and press your face into the warm curve of Valarr's neck. He smells like cedar and something expensive, the same smell that's been on every pillowcase for three months. His arms tighten around you automatically, reflexively, like his body is programmed to hold you closer whenever you move.
"What are you thinking about?" he murmurs against your hair.
"Nothing," you say. "Just happy."
He pulls back to look at you, and his mismatched eyes are so full of love it makes your chest ache. His hand comes up to cup your cheek, his thumb tracing the bone beneath your eye. "You know I love you, right? More than anything. More than anyone."
"I know," you whisper.
And you do know. You know because he's shown you. Three months of patience. Three months of gentleness. Three months of holding you while you slept and guiding you through coffee making and kissing your forehead every time he left the room. What kind of monster does that? What kind of kidnapper pays for a private hospital room and specialists and a social worker? What kind of captor cries when he talks about almost losing you?
No one. No one does that. You invented the rest. You let your fear and your confusion curdle into paranoia, and you built a horror story out of shadows.
The AI app. You probably imagined that too. Or if it was real, if it was actually on his laptop, there was probably an innocent explanation. Maybe he used it for work. Maybe his cousins forced him to, the ones who pushed for the AI investments. Maybe he was generating marketing materials and you, in your fractured state, twisted it into something sinister. That made more sense than the alternative. That made infinitely more sense than the idea that this man, this beautiful devoted man who was currently stroking your hair and pressing soft kisses to your temple, had locked you in a basement and tried to erase your mind.
And the basement door. The way your body reacts when you walk past it. That's just trauma, just the residual fear from the fall. Of course your heart races. Of course your palms sweat. You almost died there. Your brain is trying to protect you from the place where you got hurt. It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean what your paranoid mind tried to make it mean.
Valarr shifts beneath you, adjusting your weight on his lap, and his hand finds its way under the hem of your shirt to rest against the small of your back. His palm is warm. Grounding. Real.
"I was thinking," he says, his lips brushing your ear, "maybe we don't need to wait for the island. Maybe we could do a practice honeymoon right here. This weekend. Just the two of us. No phones. No distractions." He kisses the spot behind your ear, the one that makes you shiver. "I could cook for you. We could watch the sunset from the balcony. We could pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist."
"That sounds perfect," you say, and you mean it.
Because this is real. This is your life. This man, this house, this love. It's the only thing you have. The only thing you've ever had, as far as your broken memory is concerned. And it's good. It's so good. You're lucky. How many people wake up from a coma to find someone waiting for them? How many people get a second chance at a life they can't remember?
You almost ruined it. You almost let your damaged brain convince you that your fiancé was a villain, that your home was a prison, that the photographs on the walls were lies generated by a machine. You came so close to destroying the only good thing you have.
But you won't. You won't let the paranoia win. You'll be better. You'll be the YN from the videos, the one who laughs and smiles and looks at Valarr like he's her whole world. You'll learn to be her so completely that the other version, the suspicious frightened version, will fade away like a bad dream.
"I love you," you say, and the words feel strange in your mouth, but not bad strange. New strange. Like the first time you tasted coffee with oat milk and cinnamon. You'll get used to it. You'll learn to mean it.
Valarr goes still beneath you. Then his arms tighten, crushing you against his chest, and when he speaks his voice is thick. "Say it again."
"I love you."
He makes a sound, something between a laugh and a sob, and then he's kissing you, your lips, your cheeks, your nose, your forehead, his hands cradling your face like you're something precious. "You have no idea," he breathes, "how long I've waited to hear you say that. I thought..." He trails off, shaking his head, his mismatched eyes bright with tears.
"I'm sorry it took so long," you whisper. "I'm sorry I forgot."
"It's not your fault." He kisses your forehead, long and lingering. "None of it is your fault. You're here now. You remember now. That's all that matters."
You trust Valarr. You love Valarr. Or you will, soon. You're already halfway there.
Outside the window, the sun sinks into the bay, painting the water in shades of rose and gold. It's beautiful. It's always beautiful here. You've watched this sunset every night for three months, and it never gets old. The mansion breathes around you, the underfloor heating humming softly, the cashmere throw draped over the back of the sofa, the coffee machine waiting on the counter for tomorrow morning. Your home. Your life. Your love.
Valarr shifts you in his lap so he can reach the laptop. "Let me book the island," he says, pulling up the travel site. "The one you showed me. The remote one."
You watch his fingers move across the keyboard, long and elegant, the silver ring on his index finger catching the light. He's so beautiful. You never noticed before how beautiful he is. Or maybe you did, and you forgot. You forgot everything.
"I can't wait," you say, and you lean your head against his shoulder, and you let the last fragments of your doubt dissolve into the golden evening light. "Just the two of us. No distractions."
"Just the two of us," he echoes, and his hand finds your knee beneath the counter, warm and possessive and safe. "No one else. Nothing else. Just us."
Just us.
And outside the window, the last light fades from the sky, and the bay turns dark, and the mansion settles around you like a second skin you've finally stopped trying to shed.
