look at your dad (such a dork)
↪︎ wanna go on an unexpected date with that dada? part 2 here
Includes: modern!Baelor x f!reader / modern!Maekar x f!reader
Warning(s): ModernAU, kind of a crack!fic really (i wish my dad kept bees)
GIF by @sakuraspoke
The thing about Valarr, sweet, naïve Valarr, was that he had absolutely no survival instincts.
"He's just reading," he said, from beside you on the kitchen counter, stealing grapes from the bowl between you with the casual ease of someone who had decided you were close enough friends that your food was his food. "It's not that interesting."
"He's got two pairs of glasses on," you said.
"He does that." Valarr ate another grape. "He loses one pair, so he puts on another and then he finds the first pair and instead of swapping them he just—" he gestured vaguely, "stacks them."
You looked back through the kitchen window into the living room where his father was arranged in the armchair by the lamp with the particular quality of a man who had achieved a level of comfort he intended to defend unto death. Dark hair, threads of white catching the warm lamplight. Two pairs of glasses. A book that appeared to be roughly the size of a brick, held with the careful reverence of someone deeply personally invested in its continued structural integrity.
He had a cup of tea on the side table that he had not touched in forty minutes because he kept forgetting it existed.
"What is he reading," you said.
"Something about Byzantine military strategy."
You stared.
"For fun," Valarr added. "He does it for fun."
Baelor turned a page. The lamplight shifted across the lines of his face — the strong bearded jaw, the particular set of his brow when he was concentrating, the slight movement of his lips because he occasionally read difficult passages quietly to himself without realising he was doing it, a habit Valarr had told you about once with the fond exasperation of someone who had grown up watching it and could no longer imagine its absence.
He reached for his tea without looking. Missed it by four inches. Patted the table twice, frowning faintly at his book, and then looked down with an expression of mild surprise at the existence of the cup, like he had genuinely forgotten he had made it.
"Oh no," you said quietly.
"Yeah," said Valarr.
Baelor took a sip of the tea, realised it was cold, made a face of profound personal betrayal directed at no one, set it back down, and returned to his book.
You were experiencing something you didn't have a clean word for. It sat somewhere in the vicinity of I would like to bring this man a fresh cup of tea every day for the rest of my natural life and considerably south of that as well, if you were being honest with yourself, which you were trying not to be.
He turned another page. Murmured something to himself. The lamplight caught the line of his jaw and the silver in his hair and the careful way his hands held the book, and you were, genuinely, a little embarrassed about yourself at realizing that you were, in fact, biting your lower lip.
"Valarr," you said.
"Mm."
"Your dad is—" You stopped. Tried to start again. Stopped again.
"Is…" Valarr prompted, with the patience of someone who had been watching this unfold for the better part of an hour and had popcorn, metaphorically speaking.
You watched Baelor reach for his tea again. Miss it again. The same four inches. The same faint frown. The same expression of mild existential surprise upon locating the cup.
Something in you gave way entirely.
"Valarr," you said. "I want to fuck your dad."
The grape Valarr had been eating went somewhere it was not supposed to go. He coughed. You waited. He held up a finger, collected himself, and turned to look at you with an expression that cycled through several distinct phases — shock, offence, processing, reluctant resignation — in the space of approximately four seconds.
"That's my father," he said.
"I know."
"You just said that about my father."
"I'm aware of what I said."
"He's reading about Byzantine military strategy."
"I know! But him being a nerd isn’t helping," you yelled-whispered to your friend.
You looked back through the window. Baelor had found his tea again, remembered it was cold, and was now looking at it with an expression of genuine philosophical sadness, as if looking at it would eventually warm its content again.
Valarr stared at you for a long moment. Then he looked at his father through the window. Then back at you. The reluctant resignation had settled into something that looked almost like the beginning of a plan.
"He needs a fresh cup of tea," he said slowly.
"He really does."
"Someone should bring it to him." A pause. "He likes it with a splash of milk. No sugar. He'll look up when you come in and forget what he was reading for a moment because he's polite like that, and when he takes his glasses off to look at you properly he'll probably—" Valarr stopped himself. Pinched the bridge of his nose. "I cannot believe I'm doing this."
"Valarr—"
"The kettle's right there," he said, getting off the counter and leaving the kitchen with the dignity of a man washing his hands of a situation while absolutely enabling it. "I'm going to be upstairs. Not hearing anything. For a very long time."
You were already filling the kettle.
GIF by @prettysharwood
You had come over to study.
That had been the plan. That was still, technically, the plan, in the same way that standing in Daeron's kitchen doorway staring into the back garden while your notes sat untouched on the kitchen table was still, technically, adjacent to studying.
"What are you looking at," said Daeron, from somewhere behind you, in the tone of someone who already knew and was choosing to witness it anyway.
"Nothing," you said.
"You've been looking at nothing for six minutes straight."
Through the kitchen window and the glass of the back door, Maekar was in the garden.
He was doing something to a raised bed that appeared to involve a great deal of focused activity — kneeling in the dirt in old jeans and a worn grey t-shirt that had not survived contact with the garden soil in any meaningful way, hands dark to the wrist, white hair shoved back from his face with what appeared to have been a forearm and was now sticking up at an angle that should have looked ridiculous and did not. He was frowning at the soil the way, Daeron had once told you, he frowned at everything that failed to immediately cooperate with his intentions.
He said what seemed like a profanity by the look on his face under his breath. Adjusted whatever he was doing. The frown deepened fractionally.
The t-shirt was doing a lot.
"He's been out there since eight," Daeron said, now beside you with a mug of coffee and the expression of a young man who had made his peace with his life. "Something about the drainage not being right."
"Does he garden a lot?"
"He acts like it's a tactical problem he's been assigned to solve." Daeron drank his coffee. "Last month he made an Excel spreadsheet."
"A spreadsheet."
"For the tomatoes." A pause. "It had conditional formatting."
Outside, Maekar sat back on his heels and looked at the raised bed with his arms resting on his knees and dirt on his beard and the particular expression of a man reassessing a situation and preparing a revised approach. The late afternoon light was doing something entirely unreasonable to the line of his shoulders. His forearms were right there. Existentially. Just present in the world, doing that to your composure.
You needed to get a grip.
"He looks like that when he's cooking too," Daeron said conversationally. You wondered if he wore an apron. "And when he's parallel parking. And when he's doing the crossword. Basically, whenever he's concentrating on anything he gets that—" a vague gesture toward the window— "face."
"The face," you repeated.
"You know the face."
You knew the face. The face was a problem. The face combined with the forearms combined with the dirt on his bearded jaw combined with the knowledge that he had made a colour-coded spreadsheet for his tomatoes was creating a situation inside your chest that you were not equipped to manage.
You did not get a grip.
"Daeron," you said.
"Mm."
The words were out before you made a decision about them. "I want to fuck your dad."
The silence that followed had genuine texture.
Daeron lowered his coffee mug with the slow care of a man buying himself time. He looked at you. You looked at the garden. Outside, Maekar was frowning at the soil again, entirely unaware that his drainage problem was the least of what was currently happening in his kitchen.
"That's—" Daeron started.
"I know."
"He's my dad."
"I know."
"You came over here to study."
"I am studying."
A long pause during which Daeron appeared to conduct an internal debate of some complexity. You watched Maekar stand, brush the dirt from his jeans, push his hair back from his face with one forearm, and survey his raised bed with his hands on his hips. The t-shirt. The forearms. The hair. The frown.
"He's going to be insufferable about the drainage for the rest of the evening," Daeron said finally. "He needs something to redirect his attention."
You said nothing. You let that sit.
"He doesn't know you're here," Daeron continued, in the tone of a man constructing a case for something he will deny constructing. "I could go tell him. He does this thing when he's surprised — not bad surprised, just caught off guard — where he kind of—" another vague gesture— "resets. Stops frowning. It's a good moment."
"Daeron."
"I'm just providing information."
"You're facilitating."
"I'm going to go tell my dad you're here," he said, setting his mug down and heading for the back door with the air of someone who has made peace with their choices. "And then I'm going to remember that I have somewhere else to be. Urgently." He paused with his hand on the door. "He likes it when people are direct, by the way. He has no patience for anything else."
"I know," you said.
Daeron looked at you with suspicious eyes, like how long has this woman been observing my father without me noticing kind of eyes. He preferred not to walk down that line of thought and went to open the back door instead.
"Dad," he called, "look who came to visit!"
Maekar looked up from his raised bed. Found you through the glass. The frown shifted into something else — not quite a smile, but the suggestion of one, that fractional movement at the corner of his mouth that you had learned was as much as you usually got and had discovered was entirely sufficient.
Daeron brushed past you back into the kitchen, collected his jacket from the chair, and pointed at you on his way to the hall.
"I want absolutely no details," he said. "Like ever. Under any circumstances."
"Obviously," you said.
"Not even a look. Not a grin. Nothing."
"Daeron."
"I mean it,” he directed one final look to you from the front door. He turned on his heels and, with that wicked smile he usually saved for when he wanted to get under your skin, said: "Go on, pup, go get your toy."
Your eyes widened at the audacity of the man. But, when the front door closed behind him and you looked back through the glass at Maekar, who was still watching you with that fractional almost-smile and the dirt on his jaw and the forearms, you smiled and decided, for maybe the first time in your friendship, to not argue with Daeron.
So, you opened the back door.
I am completely normal about these men. Yeah. Completely normal.
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