I have been thinking about exile!reader & aerion w/kids a lot recently ……. I think they would both struggle ofc, but I honestly think reader would struggle more with parenthood than aerion because aerion at least had decent examples in Dyanna and maekar even if he turned out to be a whacko himself. Reader on the other hand was neglected by her mother and her father was 💀 a terrible father who cared more about making sure she was the perfect heir than anything else.
I also think her and Aerion would have crazy arguments when they have their first kid because reader wants the kid fostered in Volantis by her father/brother for a few years for him to “learn his roots” even if she’s not allowed back herself, and Aerion is like ?????? No ???????? I want our son near us ?????????
Hi! I hope you don’t mind me asking a couple of things I just want to make sure I understood everything correctly First, did I get it right that she is in exile, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be Lys? Like, she could be in another Free City or even somewhere in Westeros she just can’t return home? And second, after being exiled, did she kind of stop expecting things like marriage or children, because she felt that no one of high status would want her anymore after such a “fall” from being a future triarch of Volantis to an exile?
I DONT MIND AT ALL!!!! I love talking about her
YES. She's in exile, but it doesn't necessarily have to be Lys. She just settled down in Lys in the exile au because it was easiest for her. In a different AU that I imagine for her, instead of settling in Lys, she wandered Essos with various sellsword companies and eventually made her way to Westeros, which would be the AU where she meets Aerion during the Ashford Tourney.
Kind of. Her exile is a bit like .... complicated because the only condition of her exile is that she's not allowed to step foot back in Volantis & she's not allowed direct communication with her brother or father. But she still has her father's support, the power of her family name, access to their gold, etc. Additionally, any of the other Tiger families would also give her aid if she requested. Her exile is also not widely known—that's mentioned in one of the previous parts—no one knows the full details, only that one day, she arrived in Lys and never left, people made assumptions from there. They also know that the Tigers still claim her as their own even if she's not in the Black Walls, so she's treated very well (ie. her being with the First Magister and able to get away with so much bullshit in Lys). So, she still has influence & power, and her fall isn't as awful as it could be (entirely disinherited). That being said, what's preventing her from accepting a life with Aerion w/marriage&kids is going to be addressed in the part I'm releasing tonight, but in short, she knows that the Elephant families will take poorly to Westeros openly aligning themselves with her/the Tigers after what she did, and will retaliate through trade wars or by backing the Golden Company/the Blackfyres, and the only way for Westeros to avoid that if Aerion does marry her, would be to exile him the way she's been & cut him off so they can say he did this on his own and Westeros has no affiliation with her & has not chosen a stance in old blood politics, and she doesn't want that to happen to him cuz she loves him obviously. TLDR, if Aerion wasn't a Targaryen prince, she'd be fine marrying him because it wouldn't be an issue of her status; it's an issue of the Elephants taking this marriage as a stance of Westerosi support of the Tigers. IDK IF THIS MAKES SENSE IM TRYING TO ARTICULATE IT BUT MY BRAIN IS DEAD RN
Here to beg for all the juicy little details on exile!reader’s friends from Volantis and their group dynamics!!! Ik she ran that friend group like the Navy 😭
BUT ALSO who would Aerion hate the most??? Who would he hate the least??? (Can’t say who would he like cause that man likes no one) WHO WOULD MAKE HIM THE MOST JEALOUS????? Like not even sexually necessarily just who would make him most jealous bc they knew her longest/best/were closest with her bc jealous unhinged Aerion is my favorite along with soft(ish) Aerion pleaseeeeeee 🙏🙏🙏
Let me preface by saying that they are cunts LOL, so that’s your TW for that. They’re a bunch of assholes, but I’m sure you all expect that seeing how our girl is KIDFHAIUHDFS.
BUT SHE INDEED RAN THAT GROUP LIKE THE NAVY LOLLLLL ….. I already mentioned in that one ask, but they’re definitely that one friend group in HS that all “dated” each other at one point, except instead of dating they were just all fucking LDIOFJAISDHFASU. I suppose before we get into the dynamics themselves (and Aerion’s would-be opinions on each of them), there should be some context:
[The old blood weigh their children in potential] …. [They were able to determine which of us were worth investing time in, and which should only be used as broodmares and trophies for the ones who were.] -> taken from the last part of exile!au
^^^ The five of them are the ones of their generation with the most potential and were considered the most worth investing time into, and they were treated accordingly. We already know some of the more negative parts of their childhood, what with the intensive training/abuse, but once they got older, to their teens-ish, they stopped being so tightly controlled because the hard part (grooming them into being the perfect heirs) was finished.
So, they were given more freedom, and they became totally unbearable LOL. Like they really sucked lowkey. They were entitled assholes and arrogant as all hell; they were reckless & considered rules/law suggestions at best and treated them as such. They threw grossly indulgent revels/parties, and made a sport out of trying to bleed their families’ fortunes dry on excess just because they could. They laughed about things other ppl would ruin their lives over, dragged each other into ridiculous situations just to stave off boredom, and picked fights they knew they’d win just to entertain themselves; and if something ever went wrong, they would call for Volantis’s version of trial by combat, put a blade in Reader or Aenar’s hands, and make the problem disappear that way. They also have no real sense of boundaries with each other—literally shared everything from clothes to whores to each other. They were essentially like Asoiaf’s version of the Gossip Girl big four, except to a much worse extreme LOL.
And our girl naturally was at the center of it all for all of the reasons in the fic. She was considered to have the most potential in their generation, and was expected to be running for Triarch by her early twenties, and that’s just how hierarchy worked in the Tiger party—those with the most potential and meet that potential are top of the ladder. But her being at the center of the group wasn’t anything overtly obvious, like ordering them around or anything; they just gravitate toward her. When they sit somewhere, they’ll instinctively center around her, or when something happens, they glance at her first. They defer to her when necessary (this is usually in regard to court/politics), and she keeps them in line when they push things too far.
CONTEXT OUT OF THE WAY, HERE ARE OUR FOUR SHINING STARS (in order of who Aerion hates the least to who Aerion hates the most):
Aenar Berralis — Aenar is our girl’s closest friend (besides her brother, obviously), and he was the one who she was going to have run alongside her for Triarch when she eventually ran in her early twenties. I know it’s SO crazy that Aenar is the one Aerion hates the least since he and reader are so close, but I promise, he has reasons to hate the others much more LOLLLL. Aenar is so chill compared to all of the rest of them. His only problem is that he has a bit of a temper that reader often needs to run interference with when one of the elephant heirs purposely try to set him off. When our girl ran her campaign through the Sorrows and Slaver’s Bay, Aenar went with her even though she told him not to, and he was willing to accept the consequences of treason alongside her, and was planning to, but before he could, reader stepped in and said it was her plan alone, and she lied to Aenar saying that she got approval. He was #nothappy. But they rlly are plantonic soulmates TO ME, and the reason that Aerion isn’t quite as jealous of him is that there were never any romantic feelings between the two of them. They honestly don’t even really fuck all too often unless Naera is being greedy and wants them both IKDAHFAIUSDFH.
Naera Valtigar — The only other girl in their friend group, prodigious with a battle axe and a glutton for anything that glitters blue. Naera is rlly the one that reader goes to when she just wants to enjoy herself LOLLLLL. Besides Viserys (reader’s twin), Naera is reader’s only other #safespace, where she can be a miserable cunt and gossip and indulge in excessive spending and cruelty without judgment or having to worry about things being taken too far. With the others, there’s always a level of push and pull, but with Naera everything is just seamless. They understand each other in a way that never needs to be spoken, and Naera never rlly needs to be reined in the way some of the others would (ahem looking at you Visedor and Jaenys). That being said, she’s a bit of a judgmental bitch, more than the rest of them, and Aerion hates her because Naera hates him UDFHASDFSADF. When Naera meets Aerion she’s pretty open about the fact that she thinks poorly of him/his family, and she says in front of him multiple times that she thinks reader could do better (and has done better), and Aerion takes that quite personally, rightfully so. Naera also thinks Aerion is selfish for not sharing, and is vocal about it but not quite as nasty about it as Visedor gets.
Visedor Caltalor — The youngest in the friend group and somehow the most irritating for it. He grew up chasing them since they were a year older and technically part of a different “cohort”—so he was always trying to keep up & prove he belonged once he made a name for himself in his own year’s cohort. By the time they let him in fully, he’d already learned all their worst habits without any restraint. He’s reckless in a way that borders on stupid sometimes, eager to impress, eager to push things just a little too far just to get a reaction, and the others indulge it more often than they should because it’s entertaining. Of the four of them, he’s the one reader actually has to keep on a leash LOL, because his humor is just a bit too casually cruel, and he’s always too eager to have it land somewhere it will hurt just to see ppl’s reaction, and he rarely thinks twice about it unless reader makes him. He’ll run his mouth and escalate things, take a joke too far, and then push it further just to make whoever he’s talking to crack, and it always works because no one expects him to be as vicious as he is about it. That said, he listens to her immediately the second she gives him The Look. Yk, he’s always wanted to be part of their world, the top of the hierarchy of the Tiger families, and she has always been the image of that to their generation, so it reflects in the fact that he’s hopelessly adoring of her in a way that is highkey obsessive. He’s very clingy and always seeking approval from her, always lingering too close, always finding some excuse to be at her side, and has a habit of inserting himself wherever she is, including worming his way into bed with her and Jaenys LOL. Visedor does not mind sharing as long as he gets to have some piece of her, and he does not understand why Aerion is so “selfish” as to want her all to himself, so they really cannot stand each other at all & Visedor is sooo nasty to Aerion about it LOL.
Jaenys Saenor — Aerion hates him the most and it’s with good reason LOL, Jaenys is the one our girl fucked the most. Like, they all fucked each other at some point, but these two always circled back to one another, and spent most nights in each other’s beds LOL. He isn’t as much of a soldier as Aenar and Reader are, but he is VICIOUS with strategy. He has one of the sharpest minds amongst their generation of Tiger heirs, and he uses it ruthlessly. He and reader understand each other in ways that are almost uncomfortable to witness LOL (Aerion does not like seeing the two of them near each other, hates the way they have conversations with just a shared glance). He challenges her more than anyone else did—not really by outright defying her, but by questioning her & forcing her to justify herself so that she never gets complacent & never settles into the comfort of being the smartest person in the room without having to prove it, and she lets him, because he’s one of the only people whose mind she actually respects enough to sharpen her own against. He’s also mean as hell LOL. Like he just has a really bitchy personality and like Visedor, he wil frequently push things so far that reader has to step in and tell him to chill. All four of them took reader’s exile really fucking hard, but Jaenys took it the hardest LOL. When he realized that she and Aenar went instead of Viserys, Jaenys literally planned a full-blown coup/civil war in case the Elephants insisted on having her executed, because he was not about to sit back and let that happen.
Fun fact: Jaenys will be showing up in part 8 of exile au
Honorable Mention—Viserys Maegyr, our girl’s twin brother: Aerion is most jealous of Viserys LMAOOOOO and I mean, I can’t really blame him 💀 she so openly adores her brother, he is her sun & moon & stars and if she hadn’t been exiled, they would’ve been married per tradition and Aerion just always finds himself comparing himself to Viserys because he’s like wth does she even see in me when this boy she describes as gentle and sweet is her whole world. 💀 little does he know Viserys is also a spoiled cunt with a bitchy personality that reader just overlooks because he is her #sunmoonandstars. On the topic of her brother, he actually does not like her friends, mostly out of petty jealousy, but also because of less petty jealousy, in that he wishes he could be more like them and not the family disappointment. But when she became close to them, he genuinely would melt down about it because he was like wth im not enough for you anymore ?????? That being said 💀 her friends adore him LOLLLL, like they absolutely look out for him once she’s exiled, Aenar has beat many elephant heirs who thought they could get away with mocking Viserys after reader was gone. Viserys is literally the only one spared from Visedor & Jaenys’s casual cruelty. And Naera even promised reader that she would marry Viserys so that she could look out for him.
Honorable mention 2–Aenys Vyninar, the Elephant Heir: I will be keeping him a bit of a mystery for a while longer, but just know, Aerion will hate him as much as he hates Jaenys. Which I find funny because I purposely made their names Aenys & Jaenys cuz they’re only different by one letter JDJJSJJDJDJDJ
SUMMARY: an excerpt of letters exchanged between you and aerion during his time with the second sons. or, a collection of aerion being the fakest idgafer of all time.
WARNINGS: fem!reader. reader comes from Valyrian lineage but no physical traits are mentioned/described. Aerion typical threats of violence and possessive behavior.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: A shorter part today! The next part is likely going to be quite long & rather intense, so it will take a while, please be patient with me!!! I'm considering putting a taglist together for the next part just because I anticipate it will be a handful of weeks before I post it, so if you'd like to be included on that taglist, please comment below! I had a lot of fun with this part because it was different from what I usually write, so it was fun trying to convey both of their deteriorating mental states without any internal narration. BUT WE'RE ALMOST BACK TO WESTEROS!!! I have two more parts planned set in Lys, and then we are heading across the Narrow Sea, and things are going to get #complicated for our favorite toxic couple. Comments and reblogs always appreciated! I hope you guys enjoy!
READ: IKSAN AŌHON, IKSĀ ÑUHON
Wench,
I find myself despising you more and more each passing day.
I have spent the better part of four moons surrounded by filthy mercenaries who smell of sweat and blood, and somehow you remain the most aggravating creature I have encountered in all of that time. I blame you entirely for the state of my mind. The men here seem convinced I am moments from slitting someone’s throat over a misplaced goblet, and perhaps I am. If you had not made me so accustomed to your company, I would not find everyone else so intolerable by comparison.
The fighting is dull now. It was enjoyable at first—I am sure you would understand. There is a clarity in battle that Lysene politics lacks. But the novelty has worn thin. We spend more time waiting than fighting, and idle men are irritating company.
The captains insist that this contract is a worthwhile endeavor, but I fail to see how squabbling over half-starved bandits is meant to impress anyone. The men here fight well enough, I suppose, but they lack refinement. Most of them are brutes with more scars than sense. They stare at me after battle as though they have never seen a man fight with real skill before, which, considering the company they keep, may very well be true, but it is at least preferable to the simpering cowardice of Lyseni nobles. I have carved through enough men these past weeks to satisfy lesser appetites, yet I remain in poor temper regardless. Curious, that.
You, meanwhile, have written almost nothing of substance. Three lines in your last raven, and one of them was mocking me. You do not even bother to properly address or sign your letters. If you insist on corresponding so infrequently, you might at least have the decency to be detailed when you do so. It is nearly time for the midsummer festival, is it not? I wish that I were there. I am tired of this.
You’d best not entertain that pretender too heavily during the festivities either. You may think yourself clever for provoking this sort of reaction from me when I am too far to do anything about it, but I warn you now that my patience is not infinite and I do not forget insults easily. In fact, I forget very little where you are concerned, which is precisely why one particular detail in your letter has… stuck with me. You wrote that you returned to your chambers “late.” A curious choice of wording. Late with whom? Late doing what? You see how readily such vagueness invites suspicion. If you wish to avoid interrogation, you should be more precise.
Regardless, I suppose if you insist on tormenting me from afar, I deserve some form of repayment. Tell me exactly what you plan to wear for the festival this year. In detail.
Do not take too long responding this time. If your next raven contains another useless two sentences, I will see to it that the next time we meet, you will not have hands to waste with your mediocre writing skills anymore.
Yours,
A.T.
————————
My most illustrious and brilliant dragon prince,
You are becoming terribly dramatic in your exile from exile. I returned to my chambers late because the festivities lasted late, as festivities tend to do. There’s naught to do here but drink and fuck. Am I not allowed to entertain myself anymore? Haegon remains alive and moderately entertaining—he is enthralled by the tales of my campaigns in the east. Though I must say, your fixation with him is becoming somewhat concerning.
I plan to wear the black silks I wore to Magister Lorento’s revel—I am sure you recall the ones. You were quite fond of them.
Your most beloved wench
(I do hope this address and signature suffice.)
————————
Wretched woman,
I send you half a dozen paragraphs detailing my days, and you only respond with barely two, and that loathsome address and signature? I would almost prefer the letters without them.
You are fortunate that this raven reached me after battle rather than before it, otherwise I might have gutted the first man who spoke to me out of sheer irritation. “Moderately entertaining,” you say, as though that is meant to reassure me. I know precisely the sort of man Haegon Blackfyre is—vain enough to mistake your attention for affection and stupid enough to think himself special because you allow him near you. I dislike him more every time you mention his name. In fact, I am beginning to suspect that you only bring him up because you enjoy imagining how foul my temper becomes while reading your letters.
And yes, it does concern me. I am stranded on the mainland while you lounge about Lys in black silk beside a Blackfyre pretender who is apparently “moderately entertaining.” I think my fixation is entirely justified under the circumstances. Frankly, I find your lack of concern for my deteriorating state somewhat offensive. Another man is hearing stories that ought to be told to me and receiving smiles that ought to be directed elsewhere. Meanwhile, I am left in the company of mercenaries and whores. I find myself missing your incessant insults and aggravation—that alone should convey the severity of the situation.
As for the black silks, you should not wear them while I am away. I am entirely serious. The thought of you walking through the festival dressed in them while that Blackfyre whore trails after you has already ruined my evening. I hope this pleases you.
I miss you,
A.T.
————————
It pleases me immensely. You should not be so needy, prince—it makes you ugly.
Though if it soothes your deteriorating state at all, you need not concern yourself with the black silks anymore. The First Magister’s guards caught a thief in my chambers several nights ago. A thief who curiously did not take any of my jewels, but instead tossed my favorite silks into the hearth. I assume this was your doing. Frankly, I find it difficult to believe anyone else would be deranged enough to send someone sneaking into my chambers over a dress.
Anyway, the festival was boring. Too much incense, too many musicians, too many people trying far too hard to impress one another. Haegon spent the better part of the evening attempting to convince me to accompany him back to Tyrosh after all of this is over—I’m sure you will enjoy imagining that. I drank enough cherry wine to tolerate the conversation and watched the First Magister interrogate half his household over my poor, murdered silks.
You would have hated it. I almost missed you enough to become sentimental about it.
————————
Wench,
I did warn you that the Brightflame’s reach is endless, once, did I not? You only have yourself to blame, and you ought to consider yourself fortunate that I had them destroyed when you weren’t wearing them. Honestly, I thought the restraint displayed was admirable.
In fact, I resent that you sound so amused by the entire affair. You accuse me of derangement while describing the incident with enough fondness that I suspect you enjoyed knowing someone was possessive enough to burn the damned thing in the first place.
As for Haegon Blackfyre, I am beginning to suspect he suffers from some lingering injury to the head if he truly believes you would willingly follow him anywhere. The fact that he asked at all offends me on your behalf. Even tolerating the offer was idiotic of you.
The company has become insufferably dull these past few weeks. The men drink, gamble, whore, boast about battles I could have won half-asleep, and then expect me to sit amongst them as though I find any of it remotely engaging. I have taken to sleeping later simply to avoid them.
One of the captains attempted to drag me into some tavern two nights ago because he claimed I looked “morose.” I nearly split his skull for the observation alone. I am not morose. I am simply tired of sleeping in hot tents and waking to men shouting before sunrise. There is no conversation worth having here, no one capable of holding my attention for longer than a few minutes, and the whores have become intolerable now that I know what it is like to share a bed with someone who actually bites back.
Do not let this inflate your ego too terribly. I am merely observing that exile is considerably less entertaining without someone nearby to aggravate me properly.
A.T.
————————
Dragon prince,
You have become alarmingly soft, haven’t you? Complaining about lonely tents and disappointing whores in writing now? I’ll keep the proof of this tucked away safely, don’t you fret. What would your captains say if they knew the terrible Bright Prince spends his evenings sulking because no one nearby can keep up with him properly?
Still, I understand the feeling.
I miss you. Try not to die of boredom before you return to me.
————————
Wench,
I have reread your pathetically short letter so many times over the past three days that one of the men finally asked whether the raven had delivered battle plans or a love confession. I nearly fed him his own teeth for the question. You should feel honored. Very few people survive long after becoming irritating in my presence lately.
Your timing, as usual, was atrocious. The raven arrived shortly before dawn, just as I was preparing to ride out with the others, and I made the mistake of reading your letter immediately.
Do you have any idea what it does to a man to march into battle after reading the words “I miss you” in your hand?
Things here have worsened. The waiting is the worst part of it. Battle at least occupies the mind for a few glorious moments, but the hours before and after drag endlessly. The men drink and shout and boast while I sit there wondering what you might be doing in Lys. I find myself imagining your chambers with alarming frequency—whether you have filled them with half the city, or whether you are draped across that ridiculous nest of cushions on your balcony, a cup of wine in hand. Most days, I suspect you have found some unfortunate magister to torment for your own amusement.
It has become a genuine problem. I wake in foul moods now for reasons that have nothing to do with the campaign. Every morning, there is a brief moment where I expect to hear your endless complaints, only to remember that you are several hundred leagues away, making yourself everyone else's problem.
I dislike it immensely.
Before you, solitude was uncomplicated. I was perfectly content with my own company. Most people were tolerable only in small doses and became tiresome shortly thereafter. Then you appeared and ruined the arrangement entirely by insisting on inserting yourself into my life.
Now I know things I never wished to know. I know the sound of your footsteps in a crowded hall. I know when you are drunk before you have spoken a word. I know the look you get when you are about to say something outrageous simply because you know it will irritate me. I can tell the difference between when you are genuinely angry and when you are merely seeking attention. Do you understand how disastrous this is for me?
And despite all of that, I think the truly humiliating part is that I would endure every miserable mile of this exile twice over if it meant returning to find you still waiting for me at the end of it. You see what you have reduced me to? It is revolting, and you will pay for it.
Do not take too long writing again. I find myself growing restless whenever the ravens are delayed now, and I dislike the sort of thoughts that begin occupying my mind in the silence between your letters.
Lamentably yours,
A.T.
————————
Aerion,
I received a raven from my brother this morning. The first in six years.
Lys suddenly feels very small. Everyone keeps speaking to me, and I can scarcely hear them properly. Even Haegon has noticed something is wrong, which is irritating in its own right.
I do not know what to do anymore. I think things are changing. I am so tired.
————————
You are being terribly vague again, and ordinarily I would accuse you of doing it intentionally just to worsen my temper, but I suspect this time you scarcely realize you are doing it at all.
What did your brother say? More importantly, what do you intend to do now?
You write as though the ground beneath your feet has suddenly shifted. I do not like it. I like it even less because I am not there to see your face while you write these things.
The men here have begun speaking of movements within the Golden Company at last. I would ask directly whether you intend to leave Lys with them, but I suspect you would only become evasive out of spite if I did. So instead, I will simply remind you that disappearing without warning would be a very poor decision where I am concerned.
Write again soon.
A.T.
————————
Your silence is beginning to aggravate me beyond reason.
At first, I assumed you were merely being cruel again. After several days, I concluded you had most likely become distracted by some revel or you were ignoring my ravens for your own amusement. It has now been twelve days, and I am running out of explanations that do not involve either catastrophe or deliberate malice on your part. I find both possibilities equally offensive.
I warned you before that I dislike silence where you are concerned.
Answer me immediately, even if it is only to insult me properly.
A.T.
————————
You are testing my patience now.
Four ravens unanswered ceased being amusing weeks ago. If this silence is meant to provoke me, then congratulations—you have succeeded. Now answer me.
If your brother has filled your head with dreams of home and you intend to leave Lys with the Golden Company, then say it plainly instead of vanishing like a coward. I expect you to tell me yourself before I hear it from anyone else. Gods know you have never lacked for cruelty before, so why begin sparing me now? Do not make a fool of me.
And if you have truly decided to disappear from my life after spending months convincing me that I mattered to you, then I swear to every god still listening that I will never forgive you for it.
A.T.
————————
Wench,
It has been two moons. I have sent over half a dozen ravens.
If you are alive, write back.
If you are angry, write back.
If you have decided to abandon Lys and chase whatever ghost your brother’s letter awakened in you, then write back and tell me that, too.
Just do not leave me waiting in this silence any longer.
A.T.
————————
“Oi, Brightflame,” a familiar voice drawls from his left as Aerion finishes cleaning his blade—your blade. The one you pressed into his hand before he left Lys a full year ago. His gaze flicks up, already incensed by the thought of you crossing his mind, and he raises his eyebrows questioningly. “We received word from Lys.”
Aerion’s heart skips a beat, grip tightening on the hilt of the sword. He rises to his feet, casting a questioning look over to the sellsword. A letter from you, maybe? You stopped sending them three moons ago, but what else could—
“The Golden Company raised their sails at dawn. Every ship in the harbor has sailed east.”
East?!
————————
The only free city east of Lys is Volantis ………. JK our girl will be there when he returns, but fun fact: this is where I headcanon that the timelines split, so to speak. There is a universe where our girl is not there waiting for him when he returns to Lys, and war breaks out between Volantis/the Blackfyres and Westeros
SUMMARY: Aerion has the opportunity to return to Lys briefly for a supply run. He has missed you desperately—have you missed him the same? Or are you already halfway gone?
WARNINGS: fem!reader. reader comes from Valyrian lineage but no physical traits are mentioned/described. Dubcon (reader was drinking, but they’ve fucked drunk before). Brief somno. Blood play. Knife play. Aerion POV — probably the most unhinged we've had so far LOL. switch!reader, switch!aerion (as always). Mentions of underage sex. Mentions/implications of child abuse (reader's childhood). Mentions/implications of grooming (reader's childhood). A bit more of reader’s past is divulged and she is meant to be struggling mentally (especially when she was younger) but was constantly forced into high-functioning behavior and had insane expectations/responsibility so it was never really addressed and she kind of just dismisses it as normal (it is not normal).
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Omg I'm sorry this part took me so long </3 This was supposed to be a brief interlude for before he returns to Lys and it is not brief at all LOLLLLL I really enjoyed writing this part because 1) we get a POV of a new character and get to see more of our girl's past, and 2) Aerion is just so fun for me to write IKHDFAHSUFAUH he is so unhinged and the more he accepts that he loves her, the worse it gets. HAHAHAH Anyway, comments and reblogs always appreciated! I hope you guys enjoy!
READ: STARFALL | LAMENTABLY YOURS
Aerion is going fucking insane.
It has been two months since he left Lys with the Second Sons—two months since he left you—and there is no end in sight. From the little news that he is able to gather from his fellow sellswords, who become increasingly incensed with Aerion’s badgering, the Golden Company has brokered a contract with the magisters until a pirates’ den in the Stepstones is duly dealt with. Thus, they have settled in the city for the time being.
Aeiron thinks that it is fucking ridiculous, and if there is a pirates' den to be dealt with, then the magisters should have just contracted the Second Sons to do so. They have a long-standing relationship with the other mercenary company anyway, and in Aerion’s opinion, it is wildly disrespectful for them to turn so quickly to a rival company, but none of the captains seem to share his sentiment, because he is only met with a dismissive shrug when he raises his complaints.
He is sick of it.
It was entertaining enough at first. The first few weeks, he could almost pretend that he hadn’t fled Lys with his tail between his legs because of the Golden Company. It was familiar, something closer to what he had been raised for—steel in hand, blood slicking his face and soaking the ground beneath him, men screaming and dying around him. There was something intoxicating about the way the company veterans looked at him after, eyes wide and a little afraid.
A dragon among mutts. It should have satisfied him—it almost did, for a time. He loves the violence, loves the reputation he has built, and the whispers that follow him through camp. He fights harder than he needs to, stays longer in the thick of it than is wise, and takes risks that make even the captains side-eye him when they think he isn’t looking. He likes the way it felt—how it drowned everything else out.
There was a clarity in it that he had not felt in a long time. No politics or having to watch his tongue, no pretending to be less than what he is. Just violence, clean and honest, and the undeniable truth that no one could stand before the dragon and live to tell the tale. He carved through men twice his size without a second thought and laughed when anyone had the nerve to ask for mercy.
But the unfortunate thing about battle is that it ends, and when it ends, there is nothing left but the quiet, and the quiet is unbearable, because then all he has are his thoughts, and his thoughts are plagued of you. He lies awake more often than not, staring up at the top of his pavilion—he tries to find whores to occupy his time, but even with someone to warm his bed, it is your name he breathes, your face he sees when his eyes slide shut.
He hates it.
What are you doing? What are you thinking? Are you alone? Are you thinking of him? Do you miss him? Do you remember him? Are you with the Blackfyres? Have you grown fond of them the same way you did him? Are you going to accept their deal? Do you think of him? Do you still love him? Do you—
He rolls onto his side with a sharp exhale, dragging a hand down his face, fingers catching in his hair as though he might tear it out just to feel something other than this awful ache in his chest.
He hates it. Hates that there are things happening to you and around you, and he is not there to see, to remind you that he exists. He feels sick every time he remembers the way people spoke about you and him, as though he were just a fleeting distraction that would soon be spent. There is a real chance that you moved on the moment he was out of sight and reach, and Aerion just does not know. Will not know until he returns to Lys and either finds you there waiting for him or long gone.
The whore beside him—he doesn’t know her name because he didn’t bother to ask, and isn’t sure why she had the nerve to stay the night instead of fleeing the moment he was done with her—shifts slightly when he moves, murmuring something soft and drowsy as she presses closer to him.
Aerion goes still. For a fleeting moment, in the dim flicker of lamplight, he almost lets himself pretend. The curve of her shoulder beneath his hand, the warmth of her breath against his chest—he could close his eyes again and pretend that it is you. Pretend that when he turns his head, he will find your gaze waiting for him, glittering and knowing and far too amused for his liking.
He almost does. His eyes slide shut, and then—
Return to me, dragon prince. That is an order.
Aerion lets out a vicious hiss, the illusion shattering so violently that it almost makes him dizzy. He cannot be free of you—he will never be free of you.
What are you doing? Who are you with? Are you thinking of him? Does he haunt you the same way you haunt him?
He shoves himself upright, and the woman beside him jolts at the sudden movement. She reaches for him, confused, but Aerion is already on his feet, pacing the length of the pavilion like a caged animal.
“Get out,” he says coldly, hardly sparing her a second look as his temper wanes.
He tugs at his hair as he shakes his head, barely noticing as the woman scrambles to grab her clothes, fleeing his pavilion before she’s fully dressed. His name on your lips, your breath on his skin, the way your fingers feel tangled in his hair, and the warmth of your body sliding against his. Aerion misses you desperately. He feels fucking insane. What is he supposed to do if you are not there when he returns? What is he supposed to do?
He knows what he is supposed to do. He will hunt you down. He will fucking hunt you down until the end of the world, if he has to, because you have no right to leave when you told him to return to you. If you make him out to be the fool, he will hunt you down, and he will kill you, because he would rather you dead than with anyone else.
Furious with himself, he shoves aside the flap of his pavilion and steps out into the night air, chest heaving. The camp is quieter at this hour, though not silent—there’s always someone awake, always the low murmur of voices, the crackle of fire, the distant clatter of steel being cleaned or sharpened. The smell of sweat and blood and smoke hangs heavy in the air. He used to enjoy it, he thinks bitterly, now he finds himself longing for that sickeningly sweet perfume and thick incense, because he knows it’s where he will find you.
“Couldn’t sleep, prince?”
Aerion’s head snaps toward the voice, irritation already spiking before he even registers who it is. One of the captains—lean, dark-haired, perpetually unimpressed—leans back against a post, arms crossed as he watches him.
Navario, Aerion recalls—a Braavosi who has been with the Second Sons for almost a decade now. He’s never crossed paths with him directly until now.
Aerion’s lip curls up in disgust. “If I wanted commentary, I would have asked for it.”
The man huffs a quiet laugh, unbothered. “You’ve been like this for weeks. Thought maybe you’d finally burned yourself out.”
“I am a dragon. I do not burn out,” Aerion says coolly, the words immediate and instinctive. “I am not one of your half-trained mongrels who needs to be dragged off the field before he keels over.”
“Naturally,” Navario drawls. “You know, I hear our lovely lady exile took a liking to you before we departed Lys. Is it true?”
Aerion physically falters, gaze cutting to the side to focus on him, but before he can respond, he notices movement further down the line of tents. Lanterns bob in the dark, a cluster of men moving with purpose rather than the idle drift of camp settling for the night. Steel glints at their sides and packs are slung over their shoulders—a departure?
“What is that?” he asks, already moving before the man answers. “Where are they going? I was not told there would be any departures tonight.”
“Why exactly would you have been made aware?” Navario drawls, and when Aerion shoots him a vicious look, he shrugs carelessly. “If you’re curious, go ask.”
Aerion shoots him a cold look over his shoulder, half-tempted to remain behind and demand to know who exactly he is and why he refers to you so casually—if he’s familiar with you, if he’s heard from you, because you have not sent him a single raven in the two moons he’s been gone. He tries to tell himself it’s because you cannot be caught in communications with him if someone manages to intercept your raven, but he will be seriously incensed if you’ve been in contact with anyone else.
Curiosity gets the best of him, though, so he doesn’t waste another breath on a retort, boots crushing the packed earth as he cuts through the camp to figure out what’s happening.
There’s a ship moored just beyond the shallows, its dark shape rocking gently against the tide, lanternlight catching along the edges of its hull. A smaller boat sits closer in, men already wading through the surf to load it with supplies.
“You,” he snaps, grabbing the nearest man by the arm before he can step into the water. “Where are you going?”
The sellsword startles, twisting to look at him, clearly not expecting to be manhandled. “The fuck—get off—”
“Answer me,” Aerion cuts in, grip tightening just enough to make the point.
The man scowls, but there’s a flicker of recognition when he takes in Aerion’s face—the reputation that’s followed him these past weeks does half the work for him.
“Supply run,” he mutters. “Couple of us are heading back toward Lys, pick up contracts, see what’s shifted. Now let go.”
Lys. The word hits Aerion like a gut punch. He goes very still, throat bobbing as he realizes what this means. If they’re going back to Lys, then—
“Back to Lys,” he echoes.
“Aye,” the man says, jerking his arm free with a sharp tug. “Won’t be long. Just a day trip there, then back here. Why?”
Aerion smiles thinly. “I will be coming with.”
—then he will get to see you again.
—————————
Jaenys Saenor has been called many things: cruel and whorish, vicious and violent, a pretty little knife with too sharp of an edge for someone to hold without bleeding (he took this last one as a compliment, even though Laena certainly didn’t mean it as one; he likes being called pretty, and anyone who complains about sharp edges is too boring to have a place in his life anyway). Men curse his name in one breath and beg for his attention in the next, because he has always known exactly where to press to make it hurt—and how to make them come back for more anyway.
He has never been called helpless, and he has not felt helpless in almost two decades.
Until now, at least.
It is an unwelcome thing. He leans back against the carved stone of the balcony next to your favorite courtesan, wine in hand, gaze fixed not on the city below, but on you, lounging on red velvet cushions, entertaining whores and Blackfyres with empty eyes and careless laughter that rings hollow compared to the laugh he knows so intimately.
“You are staring,” Caelyx murmurs beside him, amused.
Jaenys takes a sip of his wine, but it is not enough to wash away the bitterness in the back of his throat. He asks dryly, “Am I?”
He is. He knows he is.
You are surrounded, as always. Silk and incense and gold, bodies draped across cushions, voices low and indulgent, wine spilling freely and lips brushing bare skin. One boy is at your feet, half-draped across your lap, and there is a girl at your side, fingers tangled lazily in your hair. Haegon Blackfyre, who took a quick liking to you and you have indulged more than the rest, sits on your left, arm draped along the back of the cushions behind you, mouths meeting in slow, lazy kisses.
Jaenys’s lips curl down before he can stop himself, brows furrowing.
“Indeed. Like you want to kill someone,” Caelyx drawls.
“I do enjoy bloodshed,” Jaenys muses absently, trying to figure out what about this situation bothers him so much. He tosses a wink at Caelyx, but a distracted one, and then he returns to studying you. “And I am quite skilled at causing it.”
It is a familiar sight—you have always surrounded yourself with people, even back in Volantis, so he should not be bothered. If you were not with Viserys, then you were with Jaenys and the others, and if not them, then Aenys (though you liked to pretend your affair with the snake-eyed Elephant cunt was a secret), and if not Aenys, then whores. You were always the center of something—Volantis’s own personal sun, Visedor liked to joke—so he is not bothered because of that.
He is bothered because it is different.
The decadence and excess, that has always been you, but the absence beneath it that leaves a poor taste in his mouth. You have never been so—so dull. Like a shell. You have always been loud and bright, so full of life that people naturally gravitated toward you. You never did anything halfway. When you wanted something, you took it whole, burning through it until there was nothing left to take, and you cast it aside without a second thought.
That’s not to say you were never bored; you were frequently bored, but only because you exhausted things too quickly. This is—it’s different. Because however bored you were back home—however frequent and however terrible—you were always hungry for something new to capture your attention.
Now, you do not seem to hunger for anything at all.
There is an absence of fire in the way you move that unsettles him. You let people touch you, let them kiss you, let them press close like it means something, and you give them just enough to keep them there, but there is no bite to it, no indication that you’re enjoying anything happening around you.
It is wrong. It is so terribly wrong that it makes Jaenys’s stomach twist. You have always wanted. Even your boredom had teeth, restless and searching, always reaching for the next thing to sink into and tear apart. You were never empty like this.
Is this how your exile has been? Is this what those Elephant cunts did to you when they cast you out? Stripped you of the fire and brilliance that made you who you are?
“Is this what she’s been like?” Jaenys forces himself to ask, voice quiet. He’s almost afraid to know the answer, gut twisted, chest aching, because this is not you. Not the you he knows, not the you he loves. Caelyx doesn’t immediately answer him, so Jaenys shoots the boy a cutting look, stomach flipping when he sees the soft frown on his face. “Answer me.”
Caelyx’s gaze flits over to him briefly. “For a while,” he finally says simply. “Until the dragon prince showed up, at least.”
That’s even worse, Jaenys thinks miserably, because that means he cannot blame this on the Elephants for casting you out. That means this is his fault—that you were happy, that you had found something to hold on to in spite of the circumstances, and Jaenys had been the one to rip it away. Jaenys is the reason that you are miserable and drifting, hollow in your laughter and quick to find the bottom of a bottle.
It infuriates him to know he has played such a large role in this, but how the hell was he supposed to know you’d gone and acquired a Targaryen prince for yourself? You’d always mocked the dragons back home—their inheritance disputes, their dead dragons, all of it. You were the last person Jaenys ever expected to fall in love with one of the Andal cunts, so he thought this would be an easy way to bring you home.
And it is love, Jaenys knows that. You have only ever drawn your blade on him for Viserys before, and you did it so unhesitatingly for this western prince that, for a brief second, Jaenys wondered if you would actually kill him. Not only that, you gave the cunt your Valyrian steel, not knowing if you’ll ever see him again—Jaenys begged you to let him borrow it for a few hours for the Syranaelia six years ago, and you threatened to throw him from the top of the Black Walls if he ever asked you such a stupid question again.
It is love, and Jaenys might have destroyed it.
A few years ago, before you were exiled, he would have been smug. He loved watching you spurn people in favor of him, loved it even amongst friends. The others were always fine with sharing each other, and he was too, to an extent, but he could never rid himself of that vicious glee he felt whenever he was the one chosen—that’s why he could understand the Targaryen’s apparent disdain for both Jaenys and your favored courtesan that night before he left Lys.
Now, the thought sits heavy and sour in his stomach, because you are his friend, and you lost everything once already, and now you finally found something to hold onto again, and he took that from you too.
Across the room, you tilt your head back, laughing at something Haegon says. Your gaze flicks in Jaenys’s direction, as though you can sense that he’s talking about you, thinking about you, but it is like watching someone else wear your face, because there is nothing behind your eyes or the faint curve of your lips.
Haegon leans in to brush his lips against yours again, and you hold Jaenys’s gaze for a moment longer before redirecting that vacant attention onto the boy next to you.
His teeth grind together.
Jaenys has known you for a very, very long time. He has known you since you were thrown into the 209th Cohort together at the age of four, and he has loved you just as long, and he has never seen you like this before. Not in all the years he has known you—not in your worst moods, when you were all teeth and temper and violence, spilling blood before asking questions; not even in your worst boredom, when you would float about in the public baths for hours, drunk and fully clothed, wasting away until you could think of something to do.
You have always wanted, he thinks again. You have always burned too brightly for the rest of the world to keep up, and it sickens Jaenys to think that you have finally burned out.
That he is the reason you have finally burned out.
When you were all children, he remembers thinking you were the cruelest creature he had ever met. Cruel and radiant; even when you were young, the adults talked about you like you had been born for greatness, and everyone was waiting for you to grow into yourself. He had thought himself unlucky at the time, being thrown into a cohort with you, Aenar, and Naera—the three of you were everything he was not. Brilliant, brutal, and untouchable in ways that made the rest of the cohort orbit around you like lesser stars. Aenar with his strength, Naera with her skill, and you with your sharp mind and that relentless will that made even the elders hesitate when you set your sights on something.
Jaenys had been smaller then, quiet and easy to overlook when placed beside the three of you. He had almost accepted it—a life at the edges, pretty and pleasant and forgettable. He wasn’t meant for the blood and glory the other Tiger heirs were bound for, as much as he longed for it.
Then you set his world on fire. Literally.
Jaenys’s lips twitch faintly at the memory—the 4th moon’s war game in 193. The stables had gone up in flames before he had even realized what you’d done, the scent of burning hay thick in the air, smoke clogging his lungs and stinging eyes as he stumbled out of the building. You stood outside on the garden wall, arms crossed over your chest, eyes meeting his, and you told him to conquer Aenar’s territory for you or die trying, because he and Naera had teamed together to bring an end to your unending win streak, and you refused to accept defeat.
For one long moment, he was trapped in the blaze of you—it was the first time he ever was, and he knew he never wanted to be anywhere else.
All this to say, Jaenys loves you—he has loved you since the moment you set his territory on fire, maybe even before that, too, like many other hapless fools who fell in love with you from afar. You may have laughed in his face when he told you this, but he still means it all the same, and because he loves you and because he knows you, because he has stood in the blaze of you and felt what it was like when you burn, he knows that this is not right. That there is something seriously, seriously wrong, and he needs to figure out how to fix it. He has seen you furious and bored, bloodied and laughing, ruthless and brilliant and cruel in ways that made men fear you and love you all at once, but never empty. Your fire has never burned out, even when it’s been dampened.
Expect now.
He downs another glass just to rid himself of the bitter taste, tongue darting out to lap at the beads of the sweet cherry wine on his lips as he tries to figure out what the hell he should do.
Naera and Aenar would know, Jaenys thinks pitifully—Aenar is always good at knowing how to fix things, and Naera is always good at getting things done. Jaenys has never pretended to be anything but what he is—cunning where others are strong, ruthless where others hesitate. He is good at strategy and tricks and schemes, and he has a taste for violence and cruelty—he is not a fixer.
But there is no clever angle here, no hidden weakness to exploit, no knife he can slip between the ribs of the problem and twist until it resolves itself. There is no war he can plot that will give you back what he has unwittingly taken from you. This is not a game he can outmaneuver.
His shoulders slump as he sighs, unsure what to do.
“Fuck me,” he sighs, putting his goblet of wine down on a nearby table a tad too harshly. Next to him, Caelyx raises his eyebrows, but Jaenys waves him off and makes his way over to you and Haegon Blackfyre.
He flops down on the cushions on your opposite side, slinking an arm around your shoulder to tug you away from Haegon. You let him move you without resistance, and it makes his stomach flip uncomfortably. Jaenys receives a dirty look from the Blackfyre in response, and he tosses him a wink and a smug smile before leaning in to ghost his lips against yours, waving the boy off with his free hand to silently tell him to leave the two of you be.
You hardly kiss him back—it would fool anyone else, the way you move your lips just enough to feign interest, but not him.
He pulls back to look at you, gaze searching yours, and finds nothing waiting for him—not the sharp amusement he’s used to, not the lazy indulgence he typically finds, not even irritation at being interrupted. Just that same distant stare that has been haunting him for two moons.
Jaenys’s smile falters. “Gods,” he murmurs under his breath, thumb brushing along your arm as though he might coax something out of you by touch alone. “You look positively dreadful.”
You blink at him, slow and unfocused, like it takes a moment for you to place who he is at all, and something ugly twists in his chest at that. Then your lips curl up into a sharp smile, but it still doesn’t reach your eyes.
“Do not be cruel because you’re jealous I’m giving Haegon attention,” you say, head tilting to the side, familiar and playful, but off. Enough to fool anyone else, but not him. You lean in to whisper, “You know you’re my favorite.”
Jaenys lets out a soft huff of laughter at that. “Jealous,” he echoes, voice a low drawl, brows lifting as his thumb presses more firmly beneath your jaw, forcing your gaze to stay on him when it starts to drift. “You wound me. We both know that if I were really jealous, he’d already be bleeding on the carpets. I’m good at sharing—when I need to be, that is.”
Something flickers in your eyes at that—disappointment, maybe? And he understands why instantly, because only ten minutes with that volatile little dragon told Jaenys that the boy would quickly and gladly spill blood if someone so much as looked at you the wrong way in his presence.
Ugh, Jaenys thinks, withering a bit.
The dragon boy is troublesome; Jaenys does not like feeling guilty. It is a foreign feeling—he does not know if he’s ever felt guilty before these last two moons, and he resents it. Jaenys has never been the sort to dwell on the consequences of his actions, not when he’s always been so good at staying one step ahead of them by using his sharp tongue and quick mind to free himself of them, but this lingers in a way that’s impossible to ignore.
He rests his thumb over your bottom lip, pressing down enough to get you to part them slightly for him. You raise your eyebrows at him, and he leans in. He continues quietly, thumb dragging idly along your jaw again, “Is that what you want? Someone to snarl and bare their teeth every time another man breathes too close to you.”
Your gaze is flinty now, jaw tightening beneath his fingers as you try to figure out if he is mocking you. For a second, your fire returns, and Jaenys is almost able to bask in the heat of it again. He exhales through his nose, eyes sliding shut briefly before he leans in close enough to press his lips against your ear, his forehead to your temple, speaking low enough so that Haegon cannot overhear what he’s about to say.
“I will fix this,” he says softly.
When he hears you let out a confused huff, he presses his lips to your temple, because Jaenys has known you since the two of you were children, and he has loved you just as long, but as much as he wants you to come home, he is terrified to bring this version of you home. He left Volantis to fix things—to bring you back where you belong, back to something that looks like before everything went wrong—but not like this.
Jaenys has never been afraid of a problem before—not a person or a war, not even when faced with insurmountable odds and an expectation of failure.
But this—this scares him.
This is something that has already sunk its teeth into you, and he does not know if he, or Aenar, or Naera, or Visedor, or even your brother, will ever be enough to pry it out completely. If he brings you home like this, whatever part of you that is lost and drifting now after losing the dragon boy might be killed off entirely, and he cannot bear a world where you are forever longing for something you can never have. He cannot bear a world where you are not—where you are not you. Where you are not radiant and brilliant, and all teeth and knives and cruelty, a sun that burns too hot and drags everyone in too close, but no one ever cared what it cost them if it meant standing close enough to feel your heat.
Jaenys will fix this, even if it means waiting a little longer to get you home. He might be more prone to violence and cruelty than anything beneficent, but he has always been lucky—he was lucky that it was him you turned to during that war game when you were all children, luckier still when everything just fell into his lap after that. He might not know how to fix it right now, but Jaenys is the smartest person he knows, so he will figure it out when Lady Luck inevitably smiles in his direction again, even if it goes against his very nature.
“Avy jorrāelan,” he murmurs against your temple, just for you to hear. “Iksan vaoreznuni. Īlen mērī sylugon naejot mazverdagon ra paktot, se eman mērī vēttan mirre qubykta. Shijetra nyke.”
I love you. I am sorry. I was only trying to make things right, and I’ve only made everything worse. Forgive me.
When you pull back to look at him, Jaenys’s throat bobs when he sees the warmth in your eyes as your lips curl up into a small smile. You say quietly, “Gaomagon daor sagon iā mittys. Konīr iksis daorun naejot shijetra.”
Do not be a fool. There is nothing to forgive.
Jaenys exhales and replies, “Sesīr sīr.”
Even so.
A huff of laughter slips from your lips, this one sounding more real than any of the louder ones he’s heard you let out over the last two moons. “Pār nyke shijetra ao. Māzigon, ivestragī īlva jikagon vīlībagon isse se tistālion se orgoz hen se dārōñe vali arlī.”
Then I forgive you. Come, let us go spar in the market and piss off the magisters again.
Jaenys laughs, rising to his feet and holding his hand out to you.
You take it.
“Mērī lo mazemā se qilōnarion bisa jēda,” he tells you with a sharp smile.
Only if you take the blame this time.
“Deal.”
—————————
Jaenys is a pain in your ass, and five years apart made you forget just how much of one he was.
Luckily for you, he was very quick to remind you the moment the two of you were reunited.
You roll your eyes as he laughs wildly, dodging a strike that nearly takes his ear off; you circle one another in the market, ignoring merchants who are all tossing gold at one another, bets flying for first blood, first to the ground, and first to yield, voices rising in a chaotic chorus around you as steel strikes steel.
“You have gotten slower,” Jaenys mocks, and your eye twitches, irritation swallowing the void that has been steadily consuming you these past two moons. “I noticed it the first time we sparred, but—”
He yelps when you drive your foot hard into his abdomen, sending him stumbling back; a chorus of boos rises from the crowd when he regains his footing before hitting the ground. You give him a taunting raise of your brows, and he lets out a huff of laughter, the tension bleeding from his shoulders as the two of you settle into a familiar routine.
You do not know if it’s a blessing or a curse that Jaenys was the one to slip away from Volantis to come find you. He is somehow both the best and worst person who could’ve found you like this. These… moods didn’t happen often back home because there was no reason for you to really lose yourself in the way you’ve lost yourself without Aerion, but some days you just—you were just tired. Inexplicably so. You were tired and angry and bored, and you would get so wound up about it that you thought it was the end of the world and couldn’t stand anyone near you, so you would find the public baths and float for hours until it passed.
Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn’t.
Aenar and Naera never pushed, even if they were concerned, if only because they knew better when you were five seconds from self-destruction. They would linger on the edges of the water, not coming in, because you would bristle when anyone came too close to something you considered your territory, but they would wait. They would wait and watch and circle until you came back on your own terms. And you did come back on your own terms—usually, at least. That or Viserys interfered.
Visedor—he only really stepped in when it didn’t pass that first day, when these stretches of boredom and anger and helplessness would last for days at a time, so he would distract you by fucking or fighting or causing trouble and forcing you out for your head long enough to deal with it.
Jaenys is different.
He is not like your brother, because Viserys would pull you out by force, because he could. He was the only one who could. He would find whatever bathhouse you usurped for yourself, glide into the water, and drag you out kicking and screaming if he had to. It was never often that he was the one who had to step in for you, but he always did when necessary—covering for you with your father when you didn’t show up to meetings or training because you were too busy floating in a bath, causing a scene to pull the attention from you when your father started to realize something was wrong, because failure was expected for Viserys, but it was entirely unacceptable for you. If your father ever got wind that something was wrong with you, he would have had you beaten until you learned not to be wrong at all.
But Jaenys—
Jaenys schemes. He schemes, and he pushes, and he calculates, and he always gets what he wants in the long run, and it makes you suspicious.
He is the worst one to be here with you, because he will never let this rest until he figures out how to fix it, and you hate that he sees through all of the facades, and that when all you want is to pretend that everything is okay, he never lets you.
He is the best one to be here with you, because you do not know if you’ll be able to pull yourself out of this on your own this time, and he might be able to put together a scheme to return to you the only person other than your brother who might be able to.
“You’re a cunt,” you tell him, and you mean it. He knows you do, because his smile widens, a laugh bubbling from his lips as your steel clashes again. “I’m gonna bloody up that pretty face of yours, Jae.”
Jaenys winks at you. “Will you kiss me better after?”
“If you actually manage to land a blow, I’ll do a lot more than kiss you,” you purr, leaning back to avoid an arc toward your neck, “but we both know that’s not going to happen.”
Jaenys laughs, smile sharpening. “Careful, I plan to hold you to it.”
You snort, twisting away from the next strike, but the easy rhythm you almost allowed yourself to fall into falters anyway, because for a brief, stupid moment, you can almost pretend that nothing has changed. That you are back in Volantis with your friends, trading blades in the forum until someone runs to your parents to complain about the noise and steel. That there is no exile hanging over your head, no impossible choice waiting for you at the end of this. That Aerion is not somewhere far away and unreachable, on the opposite side of the scale from your brother, your friends, your father, and your promised future.
The thought drains you so quickly that it almost makes you feel dizzy. Your blade catches Jaenys’s with a sharp clang, but the force behind it is gone now, attention drifting eastward for the hundredth time that day.
Jaenys’s smile falters, a heavy expression on his face.
“I want to go home,” you tell him quietly, lashes fluttering as you let out a breath. No one can hear what the two of you are saying over the crowd and steel, and everyone is far too caught up in their own excitement to notice the serious expressions suddenly on your faces. “I really want to go home, Jae.”
“I know,” he says simply, because he does. Because Jaenys has always known you best of your group of friends, because you have always relied on it and dreaded it in equal measure. “But not at this cost.”
Your jaw tightens as he speaks the words you’ve been refusing to say out loud for two moons now. You do not have to agree for him to know your answer—he already knows it well enough, sees it in you every time he looks at you with those irritating, knowing eyes. You miss Aerion so terribly that some mornings it feels difficult for you to breathe without him hogging all of your air. You miss the weight of him beside you at night, miss his voice and terrible temper and the way he looked at you like you were something worth giving up everything for. Some selfish, aching part of you looks at him the same, wants to throw all of this away, potentially your only chance of going home, just so you can have him again.
But how are you supposed to justify that? All of this, for a boy you have not even known for a year, who might already hate you for sending him away. How are you supposed to justify choosing him over your home and family, over the future you have spent your life bleeding for?
Still, you find yourself agreeing, voice mortifyingly weak even to your own ears, “Not at this cost.”
As soon as you speak the words, you feel as though you’ve swallowed poison.
It feels like a betrayal.
A betrayal to Jaenys, who has come all this way with all of these plans for you to finally come home.
A betrayal to your father, who expects you home on the next ship with Jaenys, so you can finally pick up the mantle as the future of the Tiger party, the way you were meant to from the very beginning.
A betrayal to yourself, because you do not even know who you are anymore, because there’s nothing you want more than to go home and reclaim your promised future—except Aerion, and that terrifies you.
A betrayal to Viserys. A betrayal to your brother—your twin brother—who is waiting for you back home, aching for you the same way you do for him. Two halves of the same whole; a single soul cleaved into two at birth, always yearning to return to one another.
There are eight hundred miles between you and him, and you can feel every inch of it. Every time you look east, you try to imagine what he’s doing—playing the harp, drinking wine, lounging in the gardens. Sometimes, you pretend to be there with him, eyes sliding shut as you lie on a marble bench of some magister’s manse, pretending you can hear his music and laugh.
When you were young, you sometimes woke in the middle of the night with the same pull you feel incessantly now. You felt the moment he slipped away from your side, and you would find yourself wandering the halls, confused and half-asleep, only aware that something was wrong and needed to be fixed. Your feet would bring you to Viserys, who was curled in the corner of some hall or tucked away under an orange tree in the gardens, because sleep only brought him nightmares.
You had learned then to always follow it—that pull—to find him, to go to him no matter the cost.
When had you unlearned it?
How had you unlearned it?
It is a betrayal—to you, to him, to everything you have ever known as truth. How are you ever supposed to look your brother in the eye again? Would you ever have the chance to do so, if you give this opportunity up? How can you possibly make this decision if it means you might never see him again?
You barely dodge the jab to your side, lost in thought. Jaenys raises his eyebrows at you, taunting, but you are retreating again already, back into that cold, empty void you were in this morning, where you have been for the last two moons, trying to balance this impossible, impossible decision.
“You really love that dragon boy, don’t you?” Jaenys asks you softly, an unreadable expression on his face as his gaze slips over you.
“What does it matter now?” you ask bitterly, becoming fed up with everything about this. “I will likely never see him again.”
You don’t want to talk about this anymore. You don’t want to think about it. You side-step the next swing of Jaenys’s blade, and you drive your foot hard enough into his side to send him sprawling onto the ground. You lift your blade to point it at his neck. The crowd erupts around the two of you, Lysene coins exchanged en masse as the gambling comes to an end.
“I yield,” Jaenys sighs, head rolling back, silver hair brushing the ground before he holds his hand up, beckoning for you to help him to his feet. You roll your eyes—what a princess, you think, grabbing his forearm to pull him upright. He stands in front of you, so close that your chest brushes his. You tilt your head up slightly to look at him, waiting for him to back up, but he doesn’t. He tells you quietly, “I told you I would fix it, didn’t I?”
“But at what cost, Jae?” You hate that your voice wobbles. You hate feeling weak. “The only opportunity I have to go home? To see all of the others again? Viserys? I lose no matter what happens. I—”
“This won’t be your only opportunity,” Jaenys says so firmly that you falter. He lifts his hand to brush his fingers against your cheek, tilting your face to force you to keep your eyes on him. Before you can spit out a ‘you do not know that,’ Jaenys continues, “Aenys—he has been… talking to your father.”
For a second, you don’t think you heard him correctly.
“What?” you ask, voice riddled with disbelief. “Aenys Vyninar? Aenys as in Triarch Vyninar’s son? Aenys as in bane of my existence and—”
“—and the boy you used to sneak out to fuck when you thought no one was paying attention,” Jaenys finishes lightly, one brow lifting when you scowl and look away. “He’s not happy about your exile either. From what I hear, he’s planning to run for Triarch in the next few years, whether his father approves or not. He will side with your father’s petition to revoke your exile, and you know what that means.”
If two of the three Triarchs approve the petition, then you can come home.
You blink, and a lump suddenly forms in your throat. “He would have to break away from the Elephant party to run against his own father. He would never have the support as an independent—you cannot expect me to believe he would risk his own political future for—”
“Except, he is,” Jaenys interrupts. You let out a shaky breath to steady yourself. “He’s already working at siphoning off votes from the Elephants, framing recent behavior as self-serving and vindictive rather than for the good of Volantis as a whole—”
“He’s trying to pull off a coup, then? He’s going to tear apart the whole Elephant party doing that,” you demand, voice pitching in disbelief. “I don’t—but why?”
Jaenys gives you a half-smile, head tilted slightly to the side. “You know why.”
Your eyes burn.
Idiot boy, you think, remembering all of the days you spent lounging in his bed, trading insults and kisses, all of the twisted games where you would try to get information from each other while the other’s guard was down. Aenys was—you do not know what he was to you. He was not a friend, barely a lover, but he was important to you in a way you loathe to admit.
Clearly, you were the same to him.
You suddenly feel far too close to crying for comfort, considering you’re still in public. Jaenys snakes an arm around your shoulders, pulling you into him casually under the guise of celebration rather than comfort.
“This was never the only way,” he tells you quietly. “I was just—impatient. I did not want to wait or rely on that Elephant cunt, and I did not realize—” He cuts himself off, looking away. “Let me fix this. I can make this right without you having to give anything up.”
You remember the days when Aerion came down with fever, suddenly. You remember sitting at his bedside and telling him about Volantis in his rare lucid moments. You remember telling him about gardens and fountains, festivals and the azantys shows; you remember telling him that one day, you would like to bring him there to show him your home, and you remember the ache in your chest, the mourning you felt, when you realized you would likely never be able to.
Jaenys ghosts his lips against your forehead, and for the first time in two moons—longer than that, much longer than that—you feel something close to hope.
—————————
Aerion does not know what he expected.
He watches blankly from one of the rooftops over the market as you trade blades with your friend. The two of you dance around one another, laughing, talking, like nothing’s changed, like you do not even care that Aerion is gone, like his absence means nothing to you.
And Aerion is—he is furious. He is furious and embarrassed; he is upset that he has come all this way for someone who does not care, that he had hope, that he has spent two moons haunted by you, that he cannot even escape you in his sleep, and you have probably not even thought of him once since he left.
Aerion dreams of you almost every night. He is loath to admit it, but it is true.
He dreams of the Blackfyres finding out you lied about him, and he dreams of returning to Lys to find your corpse waiting for him, because that is the only fate that awaits you if they learn the truth. He wakes up gasping those nights, fingers clawing at the shitty roll he sleeps on, sick and heaving and pushing himself out of bed to make his way to the officers of the Second Sons to find out if there has been any news from Lys.
Sometimes, he dreams that there has been word from Lys. He dreams that Volantis is going to war. He dreams of returning to Lys to find you gone, of going back to Westeros, where his family is preparing to defend against you and yours. He dreams that the next time he sees you, it’s on the opposite side of the battlefield.
Some of those nights, he dreams of killing you. He dreams of staring down at you, of you on your knees in front of him, his blade pierced through your abdomen. He dreams of blood spilling from your mouth, and he can tell you’re trying to say something to him, but you cannot hold on long enough to finish whatever it is, and he tries to put pressure on the wound he caused, tries to save you, but he cannot, and he feels helpless—so fucking helpless.
And some of them, he dreams of you killing him, and it sickens him that he prefers those. He dreams of your sword cutting through his chest, your hand fisted in his hair as you force him to the ground; he dreams of the long, terrible moment where you almost look triumphant—until you realize what you’ve done, and your expression breaks, eyes widening, lips parting as you fall to your knees at his side.
He wakes up with phantom pain lancing through him, heart hammering in his ribs, choking over his own breath, fingers still twitching in your direction, even if you are no longer there.
His heart hammers now, too—loud and painful, thudding in his ears like a war drum as he stares down at you from the place he first tracked you down during the days you used to make him hunt you. He realizes, dully, that of the realities he dreams of, one has become far more likely than the other, and the only question left is whether it will be you or him to fall at the other’s hand.
Fuck.
He feels like a fucking fool. His nails draw blood from his palms, the gift he brought you weighs heavily in his pocket, and his jaw is so tight that it is painful. He risked capture just to get a chance to see you again, just so he could know that you ache for him as much as he aches for you, only to find—to find you what? Playing around with your friend, laughing, smiling, teasing.
You do not care. You never cared. It was just as he feared—the moment he was out of sight, you forget he exists, while he is tormented by the mere idea of you.
It is sickening and infuriating, and he cannot seem to pull his gaze away. The fight comes to an end with your friend sprawled on the ground and your blade pointed at his neck, and Aerion stays in place on the roof, blood dripping between his fingers onto the tiles, breath ragged.
He should go back to the ship, wait out the rest of the supply run in the cabin he stole from the other sellsword meant to join the trip. He should forget about you. He should, because you forgot about him, and Aerion is not—Aerion is a prince, a dragon. He does not pine, especially not for someone—
Someone he loves.
Someone he loves enough to make him feel uncomfortable in his own skin. It is a foul, humiliating thing. Aerion is a dragon, not some soft-hearted fool sighing after a lost lover like the singers in the songs Daella is fond of, yet the thought of you with another man, the thought of you leaving him, leaves him sick with the urge to tear the world apart with his bare hands.
Only his mother had ever known how to quiet that ugliness in him before it swallowed him whole, and he lost her.
Only you after her—has he lost you, too?
That is why he cannot drag his gaze from where you are standing close enough to your friend that you might be kissing him, though Aerion cannot tell from this distance and angle, and the thought makes something savage twist violently in his chest. That is why his heart feels lodged somewhere in his throat. That is why he cannot move from the rooftop where everything changed—when he had finally found you after days of those wretched hunts of yours, back at the very beginning of this, and you were always just out of reach, until you weren’t, and his gaze met yours from the square where you’re standing now, victorious.
He had seen you, really seen you, and you had seen him.
Look at me, he thinks furiously. Look at me and see me, the same way I saw you.
But you do not.
Your friend steps away from you, and you stand there for a long moment, back to Aerion, staring at gods know what, before you start making your way over to where one of those silver-haired pretenders is standing. His teeth grind.
Look, look, look! Look at me, you wretched woman, I am right here, he almost shouts—enraged and desperate, because all he wants is you. He wants to scream at you for betraying him, wrap his hands around your throat and squeeze until you finally understand what you have done to him; he wants to tell you how badly he’s missed you, and he wants to ask if you’ve missed him the same, but he’s terrified your answer will not be what he wants to hear.
You do not look.
But your friend does.
—————————
Aerion wakes up on the floor.
He blinks once, twice, trying to remember what happened, where he is. Panic thrums through his chest briefly—was he caught? Did the Blackfyres realize he was here? Did one of the Second Sons give him up? Will his father care? Will you care? Will you care?
His fingers press down on the cool marble beneath him, and he winces as he pushes himself into a sitting position, head aching terribly.
He does not seem to be in a cell, he realizes, head still fuzzy, half out of it. He seems to be—
He’s in your chambers.
Aerion blinks again as clarity washes over him. Your ceiling, your bed, your sheets, your sleepwear discarded haphazardly on the floor—he recognizes it all like the back of his own hand. He spent more nights in your room than his own, your warmth curled at his side. He finds himself crawling toward the silk, fisting the soft fabric in confusion, trying to figure out what’s going on.
How did he get here?
Another shooting pain spreads from his temple as he tries to remember, and he hisses through his teeth, half doubling over, tears blurring his eyes. Before he even realizes what he’s doing, he’s lifting your sleepwear to his face, eyes sliding shut as he buries his nose into the soft silk and inhales deeply.
Instantly, the pain is replaced by a mortifyingly intense wave of relief, strong enough to make his shoulders shake as he greedily sinks into the familiar scent of you. Cherry wine and spice; that lavender oil you bought at the market with him the week before you left. It smells so much like you that it runs Aerion ragged, a noise building in the back of his throat that he desperately tries to swallow away.
He’s missed you. He’s missed you. He’s missed you so much, and you just—
“Ah, so we meet again, little prince! Do forgive me for this, but our mutual lover has missed you quite badly these past two moons.”
Aerion blinks once, head aching as an aggravating voice rings through his ears—whose? He recognizes it from somewhere, but he cannot place it.
Mutual lover, he thinks irritably, trying to sort through what they said to figure out who it might be—he would’ve recognized your whore’s voice, and the Blackfyres never would have left him in your room for you to find, he would be strung up and half-dead right now if they had found him, so then who—
Your friend, Aerion realizes instantly, blinking once as he remembers what he had been watching before he had decided to go back to the ship. You had been sparring with him—Jaenys—in the central market, and Aerion had been sitting on the same rooftop you would lounge on, waiting for him to find you in the early days of his exile. He had been waiting for you the same, but—but you hadn’t looked.
Jaenys had looked. Aerion had slid off the back of the rooftop, the way he had come from, to get back to the ship before Jaenys could catch up to him, but he’d hardly made it to the docks when he was thrown hard against the side of a building in a narrow alley. Aerion had drawn his blade, but—
But what?
He can’t remember what happened after. He lets out a frustrated breath, fingers tightening around your sleep clothes before he forces himself to his feet, trying to ignore the shooting pain that spreads from his right temple.
He needs to get out of here before you come back, because he does not want to talk to you. He does not want to talk to you, he does not want to see you, he does not want anything to do with you. You have made your choice, clearly, and he needs to—
He fists the silk tighter, pressing his face back into it, breathing in deep one last time before he looks up to the ceiling.
He counts to three in his head, desperately trying to pull himself back together.
His gaze cuts over to the door, and he squeezes his eyes shut as he reluctantly lets go of your clothes to force himself to move. One foot, then the next—the room sways unpleasantly around him. He has to brace a hand against the wall, hard enough that his nails scrape against the marble.
And then, he pauses.
There, by the fireplace, the black chest he asked you to look after for him, so he wouldn’t return to that poacher Vyrano having stolen and sold it. His throat bobs, breath shaky now as he takes half a step in its direction. He isn’t sure why he suddenly feels so thrown off.
Because you had actually gone for it as you promised?
Because he has never gone so long apart from it?
Because it means you might actually be waiting for him?
Why else would you go after it when he asked? Why else would you keep it safe in your chambers? Why else, why else, why else?
He hates the hope that blooms in his chest. It grows and spreads like a fucking weed that he cannot contain; it festers and pollutes, depriving him of all common sense. It doesn’t make sense, he tells himself logically. Aerion knows what he saw—he knows it. You didn’t care. You were smiling—you must have been, because he heard your laugh, even if it did sound a bit off compared to the one he had grown used to. You were sparring with your friend the way you used to with him. You did not look. He was waiting for you to look, and you did not look. You cannot be waiting for him, because—
Aerion’s gaze cuts to the side when he hears footsteps coming in the direction of your chambers. He barely bites back a curse, gaze flying around the room to find somewhere to hide, eventually deciding to slide behind the folding screen in the corner of the room. He leans back against the wall, watching through the sliver of the screens as you stumble in.
“Fuck off, Jae,” you snap, glaring back at the door as you catch your balance on the pole of your bed. “Close my door and get the hell out.”
Aerion’s breath catches.
You are—
You are right there.
You are right there, less than ten feet away. If he steps out from behind this folding screen and takes three long steps, he would be able to grab your wrist and pull you into his arms—hold you or fuck you or kill you, or all three if he so pleased. There is a lump suddenly in his throat, fingers fisting at his sides, nails digging into his palm deep enough to draw blood.
“Ah, but you promised you would do more than just kiss me if—” Aerion hears your friend pout from the doorframe.
“Why must you test my patience?” you cut him off before he can finish, giving him a sharp but sweet smile. “Get out. You pissed me off, and you didn’t land a blow—as usual.”
Jaenys sighs dramatically. “You never used to condition our love like this, ñuha prūmia. It makes me sad. I miss your bed.”
My heart.
“You were in it last night,” you reply, and Aerion’s teeth grind together. He squeezes his eyes shut, hand darting down to the dagger at his waist, knuckles white around its hilt. It takes all of his self-control to keep in place. “Don’t get greedy, Jae.”
“I’m always greedy when it comes to you,” Jaenys purrs. “C’mon. I was good today, wasn’t I? Let me come in.”
Is this why your friend found him and left him here? To force him to watch while you and he—
Aerion feels apocalyptic. He will not suffer the insult. He will not. He will kill you both if that cunt comes within five feet of you.
His eyes snap back open, focusing on you, and—
—and all of the will to fight leaves him immediately, shoulders slumping, instinctively taking half a step forward, until his chest is almost against the folding screen. He hates the way he longs for you; hates that he cannot even muster the will to remain angry. You’re leaning against your bed, dressed in the same black leathers you were wearing in the market square, but your hair is loose now, and you’re visibly drunk, unsteady on your feet, holding onto the pole for leverage.
You look beautiful, Aerion thinks, furious and yearning and all things in between, because he is sick of how badly he wants to be with you, and he is sick of being apart from you at all. All of the tumultuous emotions that have been tearing him apart the past few days, weeks, months, come back with a roaring vengeance.
Aerion misses you. It is impossible to deny. All he wants is to go back to the days he spent hunting you through Lys, lounging on cushions, and watching magister’s sons and merchant princes make fools of themselves, tangled in your sheets, bodies entwined. It is infuriating, because he has known all along that there would be no going back to a life without you—he has known it since the day he first won one of your wretched games, when you had him laid back on your bed, unraveling beneath your touch. He has known it before that, even, since the first time you made him say it in the cove—iksan aōhon, iksā ñuhon.
But it is incontrovertible now—he has had two moons of hard-packed earth and steel, bloodshed and violence and everything he has longed for that he could not have while trapped on this pillowed island. And in those two months, he has ached and raged and longed, forever unsatisfied because hard-packed earth and steel are not enough now that he has had a taste of a life with you.
Nothing is enough if he does not include you.
Wretched woman, he thinks furiously, eyes tracing the length of your neck as you sigh and tip your head back. You have ruined him. You have ruined him in full, and Aerion does not even have the will to hate you properly for it.
“Jae, if you do not get out of my sight in the next five seconds, I’m going to throw you off my balcony,” you say, head tilted to the side as you pull a dagger from your waist to point it lazily at him. “The fuck happened to your face anyway?”
Your lips curl up into a half-smile, and Aerion detests you—he detests watching you smile at someone else, and he detests that there are things happening around you that he does not know, and he detests that he cannot have you as completely as you have him. He never wants you to leave his side; he wants to possess you so fully that all you can think of is him. As long as Aerion lives, you would be his—and he would be yours.
“Don’t worry about it,” your friend drawls, and Aerion’s jaw tightens when he sees him peek into the room, eyes furrowed, and lips curled down in a slight frown as he looks around. He must be looking for Aerion, he realizes, seething. He is purposely trying to antagonize him. A vicious thrill runs through him when he sees that Jaenys’s eye is swollen and his lip is split, a slash deep across his cheekbone. “Whatever, get some sleep. Maybe tomorrow you won’t be such a raging cunt.”
You throw the dagger at him hard, but Jaenys only laughs wildly as he shuts the door, the blade burying in the wood instead.
For a long moment, you only stand there, shoulders hunched inward, frowning slightly. You look so sad, so suddenly that Aerion falters, brows furrowed as you hang your head forward and let out a heavy sigh. He itches to make his way over you; to tell you that he’s here, just to see how you react. Will you be relieved? Will you look at him the same way you did when he left? Or will your eyes slip over him like he’s not even there?
Does Aerion really want to know?
No, he doesn’t.
He takes a step back, away from the folding screen, until his back is against the wall. His eyes slide shut again as he tilts his head back against the marble, fighting the heaviness that weighs on him. You fall asleep quickly when you go back to your chambers after drinking, so he’ll just wait for you to lay down and slip out from the balcony. You’ll wake if he tries to open the door, and—
His attention cuts back to you when he hears you push yourself away from the bed. He tilts his head slightly to the side, peering through the crack to figure out what you’re doing, and he pauses when he sees you making your way over to his chest. His brows furrow suspiciously as he leans forward again; you’re kneeling in front of the fireplace, back to him, and he cannot tell what you’re doing until he sees the glow of the fireplace emanating around you.
What?
Aerion blinks—it’s hot as hell. Aerion’s silks are clinging to him, even with the cool marble behind him. He can feel the sweat beading at his forehead and dripping down his sides. Why are you lighting a fire?
He watches, bewildered, as you prod at the embers with the poker. Firelight spills gold across your skin, and you sit there silently for a long while, staring into the flames before you finally sigh and open up his chest. Aerion blinks again, a second and third time, shaking his head slightly as he tries to figure out what the hell is happening, but he freezes when he sees you lift his dragon egg from the cushions.
The egg gleams in your hands, scales of deep crimson and black, beautiful and lifeless and so familiar that it makes the breath leave his lungs.
Aerion has had it for as long as he can remember—some of his earliest memories are of clutching it clumsily in both arms while his mother laughed softly and told him not to drop it. He remembers dragging blankets beside the great hearths in his chambers at King’s Landing, placing his egg into it, and lying in front of it, watching the flames lick at the scales, begging the fire to breathe life into it. He remembers pressing his ear to it at night, convinced that he could feel warmth instead of the cool stone.
Everyone eventually stopped humoring him—they had all given up. The eggs were decorative stones to the rest of them, but he had never accepted it. He could never bear being parted from it for long. Not when they left King’s Landing for Summerhall, not when he was exiled to Lys. Even when everything else was stripped from him, the egg stayed. He carried it with him from city to city despite the weight of it; still woke up some nights, certain he felt warmth beneath the shell or heard movement from within.
Ridiculous and childish, maybe, but he does not care. It is his dragon. It will hatch for him someday—it has to, he’s seen it, he knows it. And you—
—and you lift it like you know it too, which is ridiculous, because he remembers how you reacted during that argument the two of you had moons ago, remembers the way you looked at him when he implied maybe the right blood wasn’t being spilled to bring life to the stone eggs. When he was too close to admitting out loud that sometimes, in his dreams, he sees himself stepping into the flames with the egg cradled to his chest, that he does not die when he does, but transforms—into what he was always meant to be.
He had caught himself before he did, because the way you looked at him—Aerion is used to people staring at him like he’s half-mad, but he cannot handle it from you. The point is, you do not believe the egg will hatch, and you do not believe that dragons will return.
He supposes he cannot blame you—the Volantene bloodmagickers have been trying for centuries, and they have made no progress, but the Volantene bloodmagickers are not him. They are not Targaryens. It is his family who retained their dragons when all of the other Valyrian dragonlords were lost to the Doom, and thus, it is they who are the true blood of the dragon, much as the Volantene old blood—you and your friends—like to claim otherwise. Only the true blood of the dragon can bring life to what was lost, he knows it, and you do not believe it, but… but you act as if you do. Right now.
Aerion is hardly breathing as he watches you settle the egg on top of the hearth, head tilted to the side as you watch the fire lick the scales, the same way he would back home.
He almost calls out for you—his chest is all tangled, and he feels so uncertain that it almost makes him sick to his stomach. His first instinct is to convince himself that it’s not what he thinks. You’re not doing this for him; you’re doing this for yourself. You’re trying to steal his egg. It was never that you didn’t believe him—it was that you were trying to discourage him, it was that you knew the dragons would come back, but you wanted his dragon for yourself.
It would make more sense, he rationalizes, hand dropping back down to his dagger. It would make more sense than you—than you, what? You doing this for him? You keeping the egg warm and taking care of it the way you think he would, because he’s not here to do it? How does it make sense? You don’t even believe it—he knows you don’t—so then, why?
You reach for the dagger you must have pulled out of the wall when Aerion was trying to calm himself down, and Aerion leans forward even more, until his face is almost pressed up against the crack, trying to figure out—again—what you are doing. His lips part when you press the blade hard against your palm, cutting through the skin there, and Aerion’s body locks up.
He shakes his head again, blinking to clear his vision, trying to make sure he’s actually seeing what he thinks he’s seeing, but—but he is. You let the dagger clatter to the ground as you hold your hand over the egg, and he hears you murmuring something under your breath, “… ānogar… ābrar… dōron…” He cannot make out all of the words, but he understands enough to know what you’re doing.
Blood… life… stone…
Aerion suddenly feels feverish, weak in the knees, sick to his stomach, so confused, so uncertain. He steps back once, twice, three times, until his back hits the wall and he slides down to the floor, pressing his face into his hands.
He does not understand.
Aerion has spent his entire life chasing this—dreaming of dragons, reading old scrolls until his eyes burned, desperately searching for scraps of forgotten knowledge from the Freehold, trying to figure out how he could possibly bring life to stone. He has bled for this obsession before, fought for it, and no one ever took him seriously, not really. At best, they indulged him, but you—
You are sitting on the floor of your chambers with blood dripping down your wrist, murmuring old Valyrian rites over his cradle egg for—for him. Not because you believe that dragons are destined to return to the world, not even because you believe in him when he tells you he has dreamt of it, but because somewhere along the way, you started loving him enough that the distinction no longer mattered to you.
Aerion presses his face harder into his hands. His thoughts feel disjointed, half-feral with confusion and refusal to believe what is right in front of his eyes. He tries to make sense of it, and he cannot, because you should not love him like this. It makes more sense if there’s some underlying self-serving reason. You know too much about him to love him sensibly—you have seen the ugly parts, the obsession and arrogance and cruelty. He has pushed you away and threatened to kill you if you didn’t leave him be, and in the same breath, he promised to hunt you down if you ever left him, because he does not know how to deal with how strongly he feels for you, and it always manifests in the worst ways.
He feels overwhelmed. Aerion always feels overwhelmed, but never like this.
This is not—he does not know what this is. It does not feel like possession, or obsession, or the frantic, poisonous thing he has come to learn is love. It feels—
He squeezes his eyes shut harder, teeth grinding together.
—safe.
The realization is horrifying.
He has spent so long bracing himself for abandonment that he no longer knows what to do with devotion freely given. Every relationship in his life always felt conditional somehow, balanced on the edge of a blade. Useful, until he became too difficult. Wanted, until he became too much—and Aerion has always been too much. Too volatile, too intense, too quick to cruelty. He has been preparing himself for you to leave him since the moment he realized he loved you. Maybe even before that.
He thought that this would finally be it. You would look at the opportunity laid before you—the Blackfyres, your friend, your home suddenly within reach again—and you would decide that he was never worth enough to outweigh it.
And logically, why would he be?
He is a prince without a kingdom, exiled across the Narrow Sea with more scandal than allies to his name. His own father does not want him around; his brother will not even write him. You have known your people your entire life—your brother waits for you back within the Black Walls, your father wants you home, and your friend crossed half the world and planned a war just to bring you back where you belong.
Aerion is just—
Aerion.
A mistake made in exile in comparison; a temporary madness born from loneliness and proximity and all of the ugly things the two of you recognized in one another. He would become nothing more than a strange chapter in your life. A lover from your years of forced humiliation. A dragon prince you once entertained in Lys before returning to your real life across the sea.
He thought that once the choice was finally in front of you, you would take one look at him and realize how absurd this all was. He spent two moons trying to harden himself against the inevitable moment you would decide your home mattered more than he did. He convinced himself of it when he was watching you with your friend from the rooftop, and it felt as though his ribs had been split open.
You would survive it, and Aerion would not. You would grieve him, maybe. Miss him, hopefully, for a while, at least. But you would go back to your brother and your friends and your city, and life would continue on around you until the wound scarred over. Aerion thinks losing you would leave him maimed permanently—he knows it. The past two moons have proved it.
But—you are here. You are waiting for him. You are bleeding over his dragon egg in the middle of the night because he once looked at you with desperate certainty in his eyes and said someday it would hatch. You would not do that if you had already discarded him, if you did not plan to choose him, and Aerion does not know how to cope with it.
You do not even know he is here. That is what ruins him most.
It would be different if you knew he was watching. Aerion could dismiss all of this then. He could tell himself it was another game, another calculated attempt to keep him bound to you until you no longer had use for him. He could be angry then. Anger is easy. Suspicion is easier. Cruelty, easiest of all.
But you think you are alone. You think there is no one here to see the way your shoulders curl inward, the way your lips move around words you do not believe, the way you offer up your blood to the egg in hopes of bringing life to it, not because you believe it will, but because he does.
Something hot stings behind Aerion’s eyes before he realizes, with vague horror, that he is crying.
He wipes viciously at his face immediately, furious at himself, but it does not stop the next tear from slipping free. Or the next.
He presses his hand over his mouth to stifle the noise that builds in his throat, desperately trying to force himself to calm down.
You are wretched. You are a wretched woman. Aerion regrets ever approaching you that day on the rock. He regrets ever indulging your games. He regrets it all, and most of all, he regrets that he cannot truly bring himself to regret anything at all. You have ruined him in full—you really, truly have—and Aerion cannot even bring himself to regret any of it.
He inhales deeply through his nose, tilting his head back against the marble again. He counts—one, two, three—and then pushes himself back to his feet. He forces his eyes dry and his breath steady, and then peeks back through the folding screen to see if you’ve moved over to the bed yet.
You have. Aerion grinds his teeth together as another wave of longing washes over him. You are sprawled haphazardly over the covers—didn’t even bother to change out of your leathers, you rarely do whenever you’ve been drinking.
He should be there with you, he thinks bitterly. At your side, you should be curled into his chest, and he should be toying with your hair, because you are a miserable, wretched wench, but you are beautiful, and the only time he can truly enjoy that is when your mouth is shut with sleep or busied with his cock.
He finds himself moving in your direction before he can stop himself; his feet drag lightly against the marble floors, body drawn to yours, like some pathetic, starved thing, finally catching the scent of food again after two moons of hunger.
Gods—he hates how weak you make him.
Aerion stops at the side of your bed and stares down at you in silence. The firelight and setting sun spill soft gold across your skin; one arm hangs off the mattress, fingers brushing the floor, blood still dripping from where you’d cut your palm open for him. Your breath is slow and heavy with exhaustion and wine, and now that he is closer, he can see the faint circles beneath your eyes.
You look worn thin, now that he sees you up close, and it unsettles him more than anything else today has. He finds himself reaching out before he can stop himself, fingers tracing beneath your eye.
“—our mutual lover has missed you quite badly these past two moons.”
Is it true? He exhales lightly through his nose, gnawing at the inside of his cheek as you instinctively turn your face into his hand. Could it be? You had been laughing in the market square, sparring with your friend like nothing was wrong, but—but the laughter had sounded wrong, hadn’t it? It wasn’t the way you would laugh with him, bright and brilliant, all sharp edges and fire that Aerion wanted to bask in for the rest of his life.
His fingers slip down your face—tracing the slope of your nose to the outline of your lips. His heart jumps when your lips part beneath his touch, breath warm and steady against his skin. He finds himself leaning his head down, lashes fluttering as he ghosts his lips against your cheekbone, lower still, until his mouth hovers just above yours.
He can feel your breath against his lips, can almost taste the cherry wine you’d been drinking, and then he closes the sliver of distance. The contact is brief at first, hesitant in a way that would mortify if anyone else were there to witness it. Aerion is not hesitant. He takes and burns and devours; he does not hesitate, not like this, but—but he cannot help himself. Because he has missed you desperately—have you missed him the same?
His lips brush yours, and you taste the same you did two moons ago—cherry wine and spice, and for the first time in two moons, the unending ache within him is finally put to rest. Everything crashes through his chest so violently that it almost hurts.
His hands slip down to your leathers, fisting the fabric hard as he makes a quiet, broken sound against your mouth before he can stop it. He kisses you again, deeper this time, tongue easing open your lips so that he can lick the inside of your mouth, no longer hesitant, because he cannot be hesitant now that he’s had a taste of you again. The restraint snaps apart all at once, replaced by two months of hunger and fury and yearning condensed into something mortifyingly desperate and needy.
He has missed you. Have you missed him?
You stir beneath him, but Aerion is undeterred, bowing his head with a shaky exhale, pressing another kiss to the corner of your mouth, then your cheek, your jaw, dragging his tongue up the length of your neck. He has spent two moons trying to survive without this—with hard-packed earth beneath him instead of silk sheets, with blood and steel instead of your hands in his hair—and he does not know how he survived it, how he could ever survive a life without you. It is impossible.
Wretched, wretched, wretched woman.
He is ruined. He is ruined.
His fingers work at the strings of your leathers, fumbling as he tries to loosen them—you are stirring now, he can feel it in the way you shift beneath him, and the soft gasps starting to spill from your lips as his teeth graze your clavicle, before he licks up to the hollow of your throat, breath ragged and lashes fluttering as heat clouds all common sense.
He shifts onto the bed, the mattress dipping beneath his weight as he moves to straddle your hips, sliding the fabric down your shoulders so that he can kiss down your chest, between your breasts, mouthing bruises into your skin.
“Wake up, wench,” he murmurs into your skin. He already feels too hot—the fire, the summer night, the feeling of your skin for the first time in two moons. He’s half out of it already, hips jerking, grinding into your thigh, because his cock is straining against his pants, and his abdomen is so tense that he almost feels like he’s in pain. “Wake up!”
“Aerion?” you murmur drowsily, not even awake yet, body twitching beneath his.
His name on your lips chokes the air right out of his lungs. Aerion, Aerion, Aerion—he wants to hear you say it over and over again, wants to hear you cry it, scream it, wants the whole island to know that you are his. You are his, and he is yours—iksā ñuhon, iksan aōhon. None of the bastard pretenders, not even your friend—they cannot make you feel the way he does. Not in a million years. Not until the sun rises in the west and sets in the east; not until the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. It is only you, and only him. That is how it will be for as long as he draws breath.
Your hand lifts from where it’s brushing the ground to slide against his face, and Aerion lets out a low moan, turning his face into your bloody palm, kissing the wound briefly once, before he drags his tongue across the cut. The taste of your blood floods warm and metallic in his mouth, and Aerion groans deep in his throat at the sensation, eyes sliding shut as he laps at the wound, hips still rutting against your thigh.
You bled for him, he thinks, panting into your skin. You bled for him. You bled for him. You bled for him.
The thought is dizzying, all-consuming; for a moment, he chokes because he almost finds himself finishing in his pants just from it. You bled for him. You cut yourself open and spilled your blood for the egg, just because he had looked at you with certainty one night and confessed something no one else has ever taken seriously. You bled for him. You did it for him—you bled for him, for him—what else would you do for him? Would you choose him if he asked? Would you return to Westeros with him? Would you turn your back on your family? How far would you go? What could he ask of you that would make you deny him? Is there anything? You bled for him.
He’s drunk off the thought—off the cherry wine and spice he licked from your lips and the warmth of your body sliding against his for the first time in two moons. No one—nothing—can compare to this. He thinks it might kill him. You might kill him. How dare you? How dare you do this to him? How dare you make him feel this way? How dare—
“Aerion?” you breathe again, more awake this time, and Aerion’s eyes slide open, amethyst slivers landing on your face with his mouth still pressed to your open wound.
You blink once, still sleep-heavy and unfocused, trying to make sense of what you’re seeing. Your fingers curl into his cheek, nails digging lightly into the skin there. There is a hint of confusion in your eyes, and Aerion is sure he must look mad with your blood smeared across his face, dripping from his lips, but he—he does not care.
He does not care at all—he wants you, all of you, he wants you completely. Wants to possess you, consume you, have you, hold you, fuck you, kill you even, one day, because he loathes to allow anyone to experience something with you, take something from you, that he cannot.
It is unreasonable—he knows it, logically, but he wants it all the same. Aerion wants to crack you open and crawl inside your ribs until there is nowhere you end and he begins. He wants to consume every thought you have ever had, every memory, every ugly and beautiful thing alike, until there is nothing left in the world that belongs solely to you anymore.
He hates that things happen around you that he cannot be around for. Hates that there are parts of you he cannot touch—that he cannot know every thought running through your head at any given moment, that there are twenty-three years of your life that belong to other people and places that he cannot reach. Your brother knows you in ways Aerion never will. Your friends know versions of you that he has never seen. There are pieces of you scattered across Volantis that Aerion will never be able to claw into his own hands, and he hates it so violently that it leaves him full of rage and helplessness all at once.
His thumb drags against your lower lip as he stares down at you, breathing unevenly. Your eyes are clearer now, more awake, and he hates that too, because he can see the moment your thoughts begin moving behind them again—quick and sharp and impossible for him to follow.
What are you thinking?
What did you think while he was gone?
Did you lie awake wanting him the way he wanted you? Did you think of leaving him? Did you stand on your balcony at night and picture Volantis waiting for you across the sea, or did you picture him? Did you think of your brother more than him?
The jealousy that cuts through him is vicious and ugly. His hand drops down to your throat, pressing down lightly on either side of it.
“Are you—” you start to ask, blinking once, twice. Your hand slides against his cheek, against your blood still slick on his skin, thumb running over his lip once.
You do not finish the question. You surge upward, hand sliding behind his head to drag him down, surely staining the silver red, but Aerion does not care, because the moment your lips are on his, all coherent thought slips from his mind.
His breath hitches, and he lets out a moan into your mouth, pressing his body into yours as close as he can. Your thighs part so that his hips can slide between them, and he bites down hard on your lower lip, just so he can feel how you gasp against his lips.
“How—how are you here?” you ask, fully awake now, disbelief lacing the words as his lips slide messily from yours down your jaw again. “Aerion—”
His grip tightens in your hair, cutting you off, and your eyes flash in response, taking it as a challenge. He has missed this—he has missed you. You are the only one who meets him where he needs to be, the only one who understands him, the steel to his fire, the only person in the world who does not bend away from the worst parts of him. Everyone else recoils eventually, but you bite back.
He asks, “How many people did you let touch you while I was gone?”
Your eyes flicker with amusement, and Aerion’s fingers tighten unconsciously in your hair before he forces them to loosen. His mouth drags slowly along your throat again, teeth scraping your skin, relishing in the way you shudder against him, still hazy with sleep, back arching into him until your breasts are flush to his chest.
“Hm?” he presses when you do not immediately respond. The images fester in his mind—Jaenys’s hands on your body, the Blackfyre pretenders draped on the cushions at your side, while he rots in the Disputed Lands, thinking of you every waking second. “How many? Answer me, wench. Did you miss me, or did you just find someone else to fill the space?”
His lips brush your jaw against, softer this time; he feels almost feverish. He licks the line of your jaw, lashes fluttering as you roll your head backward to give him better access to your neck.
“You should not ask questions you do not want the answer to, prince,” you rasp, voice rough with sleep, and Aerion bites down on your neck hard enough to draw blood. You let out a bark of laughter instead of a yelp of pain—he loves it, loves you. “You first. You had whores in your camps. Did they help? Did they make you miss me less?”
You are mocking him, he realizes furiously. Not even a question of if he missed you, because you know he has. Aerion hisses against your skin, baring his teeth even though he knows you cannot see it. He drops his forehead to your shoulder, shivering when he feels your hands slip beneath his tunic and smooth against the warm skin of his back. A pitched noise builds in the back of his throat as he presses his face into your chest, and one of your hands leaves his back to hold the back of his head.
“You are a plague,” he tells you, not for the first time, and certainly not the last. His voice is rough, cracking over the words. “I hated them. Every single one. I kept thinking of you—I would close my eyes, and it was your face. Your voice. Your hands. It was intolerable. You are intolerable.”
He grunts low in his throat, biting down again, this time on the plush skin of your breasts—you pull his hair hard at that, hard enough that his breath hitches and he cannot smother the whine that spills from his lips. He kisses messily back up your neck until his lips hover above yours, and his hand returns to your neck, not squeezing, not yet.
“Tell me,” he says, voice low. “I know you let your friend into your bed. Did you let that Blackfyre cunt too?”
“Are you mad about Jaenys, dragon prince?” you drawl, looking too amused as you roll your head back to look at him. How could he not be? It is not fair. You already live inside him like a sickness. A religion. A second heartbeat. He hates the idea of someone else getting to be with you. “He has been in my bed since we were barely fifteen. You are almost a decade too late to become jealous over it.”
Aerion hisses, volcanic rage flooding him instantly, grip tightening on your throat enough to cut off the air flow. You smile anyway, teeth sharp, delighted, and the jealousy twists into a vicious thrill, pulse pounding. The violence in him, the possessiveness, the cruelty that he spends so much time trying to disguise from everyone else—you look at it and smile, and Aerion feels something in him go warm and molten, the fight draining from him before it can even really take hold. He sinks into you, gaze loosening on your throat so that he can lean in and nose your cheek, letting out a ragged breath.
You like him like this, as he is—not the polished prince he learned to be at court, not even the sharp-tongued exile lounging through Lys pretending indifference to everything around him. This. The ugly thing beneath it all. Blood smeared on his face, violence in his eyes, his hand on your throat. Even two moons apart, and you still want him for what he is.
You are insane, he thinks wildly, panting as he tries to distract himself by dragging open-mouth kisses along your jaw.
More than he is, maybe.
“And the Blackfyre?” he asks again, voice lower this time. “Did you let him touch you, too?”
You tilt your head to the side, eyes glittering in a way that puts him on edge. You ask sweetly, “Which one?”
Aerion stares at you in disbelief, and then you laugh—it is bright and pretty as a bell, not like the hollow one he heard while you were sparring with Jaenys in the market square. You slide your hands up his body to cradle his cheeks, pulling his face from your shoulder to press your lips to his.
He feels your leg circle his waist, and he knows what you’re doing, but he’s too consumed by the way your tongue dances along his to stop it—his back hits the mattress hard, air whooshing from his lungs, and you hover above him, straddling him, rolling your hips against his so slowly that he cannot stop the low moan that spills from his lips.
“You have no right to be mad, prince,” you tease, forearms coming to rest on either side of his head as you hover over him. “You spread your legs in my absence, did you not?”
“I did not spread my legs,” he hisses furiously, face flushing, disliking the way you phrase it. “And it is different. They were whores.”
You hum, rocking your hips again just to see how his breath catches. He glares up at you, silver-gold hair spread messily across your pillows, your blood still streaked across his mouth.
“Jaenys is whorish,” you offer, as though that is supposed to make him feel any better. “I’m sure it counts for something.” You pause, and then add with a sharp smile, “And Haegon Blackfyre certainly fucks like one.”
Aerion stills beneath you, staring up at you in sheer disbelief, and you have the nerve to look inordinately pleased with yourself, eyes bright and smile even wider when you see the way he looks at you.
He hates that he pictures it immediately. Your hands tangled in that pretender’s hair, your mouth smiling against his throat, you tumbling backward into his arms while Aerion sleeps in dirt in the Disputed Lands, dreaming of you every night like a man cursed.
“You vicious fucking creature,” he says softly, the words coming out almost reverent despite the rage wreaking havoc on him internally.
He grabs your hips hard enough to bruise and flips you onto your back in one swift movement. You let out a startled laugh, goading him as he pins your wrists above your head with one hand and snatches the dagger from where it’s sheathed at its side with the other.
He presses the tip beneath your chin, staring down at you, hostility and desire so tangled together that they are nearly indistinguishable. And you—you are undeterred. Your head tilts to the side, gaze lidded as you stare up at him, unbothered by the blood dribbling at the underside of your chin.
He’s missed you, he thinks again desperately. He’s missed this.
No one else speaks to him like this, treats him like this. No one else grabs hold of the ugliest parts of him and drags them into the light without fear. Most people spend their lives trying to soothe him—soothe him, placate him, praise him, survive him. But you—you antagonize him. You provoke him. You want him. You want all of him.
“How did he touch you?” The words scrape out of him harshly because he can not help himself. “Did he kiss you like this?” He drags his mouth hard across your jaw. “Did he hold you down?” The dagger shifts just enough to emphasize the point. “Did he make you feel like I do?”
Aerion can hear his heart thudding in his ears, pulse roaring, knuckles white around the hilt of his dagger. He drags it lazily down the length of your throat, watching the red line beading in its wake as his lips brush your jaw. He lifts his head so that it’s hovering over yours.
“Did you think about me while he touched you?” he presses, voice lower now—crueler and needier, desperate to know the truth of it.
You tilt your head up, neck pressing deep enough into his dagger that it draws blood. Your lips ghost his as you whisper, “The entire time.”
Aerion kisses you again—harder this time. Something savage and triumphant tears through him so suddenly that it nearly hurts. His breath catches hard in his chest, fingers tightening instinctively around your wrists as he presses the blade in deeper with his other hand before he tosses it to the side haphazardly.
You kiss him back just as hard, yanking your wrists out of his grip so that you can hold his face between your hands. Your nails dig crescents into his cheeks, and your legs wind around his waist, and Aerion is—he is not close enough, not nearly, he needs to be closer, inside you, on top of you, beneath you, skin-to-skin, mouth-to-mouth, until there is not even a breath of space between the two of you.
His hands fly down to work at the laces of his pants, and he does not pause when he feels you break your lips from his, not when you tilt his face up to get his attention either.
“How long are you here until?” you murmur, fingers running absently through his hair. Aerion’s lashes flutter at the feeling, and he has to force himself to pay attention. “Hm?”
His gaze flicks over to the balcony, toward the setting sun, lips curling into a frown. “Not long,” he admits. “It is only a day trip for supplies. I need to be back at the dock before the moon rises.”
You look disappointed, and Aerion gives you a questioning look, barely able to bite back a groan of relief when he finally frees his cock. You do not acknowledge the silent request; instead, Aerion finds himself on his back again, with you straddling his hips.
He blinks up at you, flushed and breathless, cock aching as you absently stroke it. His abdomen tenses and spasms as you push his tunic up so you can kiss up from his hip to his sternum. Even as you work him so easily that he fears he might come apart before you’ve even undressed, he can see your mind sharp and calculating, thoughts racing faster than he can follow.
He hates that he cannot hear them.
Finally, you sigh and say more to yourself than to him, “There is not enough time, then.”
He bites back a moan when you squeeze the base of his cock, eyes half-rolling back. “Time for what?” he forces out.
“I had plans for you, dragon prince,” you murmur, almost sounding sulky about it as you shimmy out of your own pants.
His lips part when he sees the wetness smeared against your inner thighs, chokes over air when he watches how you slide your fingers between your folds, gathering the slick on two fingers.
He raises his eyebrows, trying to pretend he’s half as affected as he really is. “Oh?” he drawls, a bit breathless. “And what exactly were your plans, wench?”
You tilt your head to the side and give him a lazy half smile. “You know.”
Aerion inhales so sharply, face flaming as he remembers exactly what you said the last time he was here. Beneath you, held down, stretched open, back arched, inch by inch—his pupils are blown wide as he stares up at you, chest heaving, and when you finally sink down on his cock, warm and wet and tight and so fucking familiar, Aerion’s whole body spasms in an attempt to stop himself from cumming immediately.
You grab his face when he curls inward, choking on air, eyes squeezed shut, and you tilt it up so that he’s looking at you.
“My poor dragon prince,” you mock—his cock twitches hard inside of you at the my, and he at least is able to relish in the way it makes your breath catch briefly. “Were you really going to come untouched from two moons apart?”
Aerion will kill you.
He bares his teeth, but as soon as he does, you roll your hips, and the only thing that spills from his mouth is a noise that’s so pitched that he flushes from his face to his chest.
You look delighted.
“You are wretched,” he gasps as your cunt squeezes his cock. His breath hitches into a whine when you finally start to fuck him in earnest, a slow, steady roll of your hips, taking him in full with each bounce. “Hah—fuck—”
“It’s all I’ve been able to think about,” you tell him, kissing up his throat, bruising and biting so he has something to take with him back to the Disputed Lands. He wishes your teeth would dig deeper, that your lips would press darker bruises—he does not want them to fade, wants the proof of your touch branded on him, and the proof of his on you the same. “I loathe to wait longer, but I want to take you apart properly.”
A vicious thought hits him at once, fingers digging so deeply into your hips that it makes you falter. He asks you, “Have you taken any of them like that since I have been gone? Your friend? Your whore? The Blackfyre?”
You tilt your head to the side, calculating as you slow the roll of your hips to a still, and Aerion’s cock aches, and his abdomen is on fire, thighs so tense that he feels as though they might be sore tomorrow, but he needs to know. The thought of you taking any of them the way you’ve promised to him, the thought of them—the Blackfyre—being able to have you this way when he has not been able to, it enrages him. Any jealousy he felt earlier is dwarfed compared to what he feels now: it is violent and furious and so all-consuming that he cannot breathe. His nails draw blood from your hips, and he cannot stand that look in your eyes as you stare down at him—sharp and curious, too quick for him to follow. He hates it, he hates it—he wants to know every thought in your head. He wants everything that has to do with you—every thought, every feeling, every experience, everything.
“Does the idea of that upset you, prince?” you ask, as though you do not already know the answer.
His hand flies from your hip to your throat, squeezing just hard enough to threaten. “The idea of that makes me want to—”
He cannot even articulate it—the lust for blood, for death, for you. Luckily, he does not need to, because you know. You always know. And you look terribly satisfied as you sit back on his thighs, his cock still buried deep inside of you.
“I have not,” you tell him at last, and the relief hits him so hard that it almost feels like another form of anger. Your arms curl around him—one hand pressing between his shoulder blades to pull him into your chest, and the other slides to the back of his head, fingers tangling in his hair as you hold him. His arms wind around you, too, biceps flexing, holding you so tight that it must border on painful. “I have been waiting for you.”
Your voice is small at that last part, quiet in a way you rarely are. He does not think you are just talking about fucking anymore, and he feels wrecked, breath ragged as he presses his face into the crook of your neck.
“You have?” he questions, voice equally small, just for a second.
He feels you nod. “Kessa,” you say softly, pressing your lips to his temple. “Tolvie tubis, tolvie jēda, tolvie tȳne.”
Yes. Every day, every hour, every minute.
He squeezes his eyes shut to fight the heat suddenly pressing behind them, letting out a shuddered breath into your skin. His arms tighten around you.
“Avy jorrāelan,” he tells you, hand sliding down the length of your spine, trying to pull you impossibly closer. “Nyke vēdros issare qrīdrughagon hen ao.”
I love you. I hate being apart from you.
You guide his face gently from the crook of your neck. Aerion’s breath hitches when you press your lips back against his, kissing him slow and deep, rolling your hips as you ease his lips open so that you can map the inside of his mouth.
Aerion melts into it instantly. The way you cradle his face as though he’s something precious, the way you kiss him slow and easy as though you have all the time in the world, and the sun is not steadily setting just beyond the balcony. Your fingers comb through his hair as your mouth moves against his, and Aerion lets out a soft moan, lashes fluttering.
The heat in his stomach builds rapidly, despite the slow rolls of your hips, and Aerion cannot even bring himself to feel embarrassed when he realizes how close he already is to finishing. His hands flex helplessly against your back, but his body is too hot, and his eyes are half-knocked back, and his thighs and abdomen are so tense that they ache.
“I—” he starts to say, breath hot against your lips. He pulls back just enough to look at you, and you are—you are beautiful. Lips swollen and parted, sweat beading at your forehead, lashes fluttering with each roll of your hips. You are beautiful, and you are his, and he is yours. “I’m close, I—”
“Me too,” you breathe, and then you kiss him again, like you cannot get enough of him, the same way he cannot get enough of you.
He holds your waist tight, guiding you down, rocking his hips up into you, faster now, a bit rougher as the two of you chase release—it is filthy, the sound of his cock fucking deep into your cunt. He can feel the wetness splattering against his thighs and pelvis with each thrust, the lewdness of your cunt sucking him in deep. It is in such contrast to the chaste kisses the two of you are sharing that it drives him crazy.
Your breath hitches on something that sounds like his name, and Aerion presses his forehead to yours, sharing the same sliver of air as he lets out a low moan. His hips stutter against yours, grip tightening on your waist as he holds you down and cums deep inside of you, spots dotting his vision and body spasming as he grinds his cock up into you, dizzy over the feeling of your walls tightening around him, cum gushing down his length.
You settle against him, panting, not even bothering to pull yourself off his cock as you wind yourself back around him—arms around his shoulders, legs his waist. You bury your face into the crook of his neck, and he buries his into your hair, holding you just as tight.
“They do not plan to leave any time soon,” you say after a moment, voice quiet and subdued, breath fanning hot against his neck as you nose into it. “They keep picking up more contracts.”
Aerion exhales, eyes sliding shut. Of course they are. Bitterness swells thick in his chest; he hates the images that immediately form in his head. Jaenys sprawled carelessly in your bed for another few months, laughing and sparring with you in markets, touching you without hesitation because he has known you your entire life, and Aerion has not. Haegon Blackfyre lounging on cushions with you, silver-haired and smug and more familiar with the shape of your smile than he should ever be.
“Henujagon lēda nyke,” he murmurs, pressing his lips to your temple, and then pressing his nose into the side of your head. He repeats, “Nyke vēdros issare qrīdrughagon hen ao.”
Leave with me. I hate being apart from you.
You let out a heavy sigh. “Ao gīmigon nyke daor,” you say quietly, pulling back slightly so that you can brush your lips against his. Aerion’s eyes flutter shut, lips pressing chastely against yours once, twice, three times. “Jaelan ao naejot gūrogon mirros arlī lēda ao.”
You know that I cannot. I want you to take something back with you.
Aerion makes a questioning noise in the back of his throat, tilting his head to the side. He frowns when you shift enough to reach over to the table near your bed. He lets out a low grunt when you inadvertently grind down on his sensitive cock, fingers flexing at your hips, but you settle back down on his lap before he can hiss at you to quit it.
You’re holding something long and thin in your hand, fine mahogany—it takes Aerion a moment before he recognizes it as a wax seal stamp. His brows furrow as you grab one of his hands and place it in it, forcing him to curl his fingers around it.
“I could not write you without drawing suspicion. If anyone had seen a seal bearing the three-headed dragon… Well, you know what would have happened,” you tell him. The last bits of tension ease from Aerion’s shoulders as you answer the question that’s been haunting him for two moons. “Take my family’s seal. I have a spare. No one will question me receiving a raven that bears it.”
Aerion’s stomach flips violently. For a second, all he can do is stare down at the seal resting in his palm, his thumb tracing the sigil engraved in the stamp, circling the snake that devours its own tail and the skull within it. This is—this is not done. Noble families do not give away family seals to people. Anyone bearing this could write in your name—could command in it, could implicate your household in treason if it fell into the wrong hands. Even carrying it is dangerous—the kind of dangerous that only exists between people who trust one another implicitly.
And you are pressing it into his hand.
You hold his gaze steadily despite the vulnerability creeping around the edges of your expression now. You are trying to pretend this is practical, merely a solution to the problem of ravens and suspicion, but he can see the truth beneath it. You are handing him something precious—something that belongs to your bloodline, and could destroy you and your family if he decided to misuse it.
His fingers curl tighter around the mahogany handle instinctively, and when he lifts his eyes back to yours, he can’t hide the way his throat bobs, how he can hardly hold your gaze.
“You trust me with this?” he asks quietly.
He wants to withdraw. Wants to pull away from you and turn cruel because he does not like how vulnerable he feels. You drugged me, he wants to accuse viciously. You drugged him because you did not trust him to control himself, but you—you trust him with this? Trust him to guard it so it does not fall into the wrong hands? Trust him not to misuse it? How does that make sense at all?
You do not hesitate in your response. “Of course.”
Aerion’s teeth grind, gaze lowering, head falling forward slightly. He catches sight of the fire from the corner of his eye, and he sees the familiar scales of his dragon egg, and Aerion can feel it. He can feel the way his skin starts to crawl, stomach twisting, chest tightening—too much, all at once. It builds, and builds, and builds, and he can feel it on the brink of exploding violently.
“Why?” he asks through his teeth.
Why what? Why do you trust him? Why do you love him? Why are you waiting for him? Why are you actually considering choosing him over your home? Your friends? Your brother?
“Why do I trust you?” you ask dryly, almost sounding amused. “Should I not?”
His hand snatches out to wrap around your hand, and he pointedly presses hard down on the wound there. You do not even flinch, squinting at him slightly, assessing.
“Why?” he asks again pointedly.
Your gaze flicks over his shoulder to where you placed the egg in the hearth, brows furrowing slightly. For a second, you almost look embarrassed, and Aerion almost relishes it because he’s never seen you embarrassed before, but he’s so wound up that he cannot bring himself to fully appreciate it.
“Well, I wasn’t sure how you took care of it,” you start to say, voice clipped. “I—”
“But why?” he hisses. “You do not believe it will hatch, so why would you—”
He does not know how to finish the question, and he feels helpless as his gaze flicks back up toward you, but understanding crosses your face immediately.
“Because you do,” you say so simply the words he has been dreading and yearning for in equal measures.
Because you do, as though it is that simple, as though that alone is enough reason to bleed for his dreams, as impossible as you think they are. Enough reason to justify kneeling before a fire in the middle of the night with his dragon egg cradled in your hands and Valyrian rites on your tongue; enough reason to spill your blood and call upon old magic.
Just because he believes.
Aerion feels something inside him split wide open, and when you curl your arms around his shoulders to tug him close again, he follows without protest, sinking into you, face pressed to your neck, arms wound tight around your waist. Your fingers slide into his hair, nails scratching lightly against his scalp in that way that always seems to make the tension in him ease.
He presses closer anyway, breathing you in desperately—wine and lavender and spice and the faint metallic scent of blood still lingering on your skin. The fire crackles softly beside the bed, warming the room until the summer heat feels almost suffocating, but Aerion cannot bring himself to care. He would let himself burn alive if it meant staying here in your arms a little longer.
“You cannot say things like that to me,” he murmurs into your skin.
“But it is true,” you say easily, which ruins him even more, a ragged breath stolen from his lungs as he presses his forehead harder into your skin.
“You make me feel mad,” he admits, voice small. “I do not—I do not understand you. Or this. Or—”
—me.
“You were already mad. You did not need my help with that.”
“I am trying to be serious, you miserable wench,” he hisses, but you laugh—bright and pretty, full of fire and life. “You are wretched. I should have your tongue.”
“Your threats do not frighten me anymore, dragon prince,” you say, fondness lacing the words, and Aerion scowls into your neck as he feels you press your lips to the side of his, and then tug at his earlobe with your teeth. “We both know you are too fond of my tongue to rid me of it.”
“Do not be so vulgar,” he scoffs, but he is smiling, and he knows you feel it, because he feels you laugh.
He feels warm all over—not just from the fire and the summer heat and your body wrapped around his, but from something infinitely worse.
In his pocket, the gift he brought for you weighs heavily.
He feels it every time you shift against him—the ring he bought in Myr when the Second Sons passed through for supplies a few weeks ago, obsidian, ruby-embedded. He had seen it in the market and immediately thought of you, of your sharp smiles and warm skin and the way red jewels look so pretty against your skin. He nearly gutted the merchant for suggesting emerald instead. He imagined slipping it onto your finger himself, pictured it on your hand; he wanted to leave something of his behind with you when he returned to the Disputed Lands.
But now, it feels woefully insufficient. A ring is nothing close to the value of the Valyrian steel you put on his throat, nothing compared to the seal you pressed into his hand, nothing beside the blood drying on your palm from where you cut yourself open for his dream.
Fuck.
“Aerion?” you ask quietly, pulling back slightly to look at him. “What is it?”
Are you still taking requests? If you’d like, can you do akotsk men flirting style? (ignore this if requests are closed 🥺🙏🏼)
i want to apologize very, very deeply, my sweet anon ♡⸝⸝ i wrote these headcanons too late, but i held your request in my head this entire time. i carefully nurtured the idea and eagerly waited for the moment i could calmly bring it to life. i couldn't pass it up, because it's a wonderful idea .ᐟ thank you for sending it in. and once again, i am a thousand times sorry. i really hope you like it. mwah mwah ₍ᐢ‥ᐢ₎ ₊˚ෆ
𝘃𝗮𝗹𝗮𝗿𝗿 𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗿𝘆𝗲𝗻
in short: discreetly yet masterfully. sometimes a single glance is enough, sometimes something more is needed
Valarr is masterfully skilled in the art of flirting. He never acts directly. Open flirting is something unrefined, unworthy of his sophisticated princely nature. Valarr can devour you with his eyes. He looks at you for a long time, with a sultry gaze, so confident and hot that everything around you starts to melt. You feel his eyes on your back as you walk away. His eyes speak much louder than any words. "I want you to be mine." It is a silent plea, made of longing and stubborn confidence that he gets what he wants. Always. He is not pushy, yet somehow you keep running into each other in the same places, by the will of the gods. Or not by the will of the gods at all.
Walking through the gardens, maintaining the proper distance that society's morals prescribe, he keeps glancing your way. His hand hovers casually in the air near the green foliage. Valarr smiles with just one corner of his lips, and it is the most devilish thing you have ever seen in all of Westeros! He maintains the dignity of a prince. He is a gentleman. But in his eyes, a fire dances.
His neat, delicate fingers pluck a flower with effortless ease. Something inside you turns over at the sound, the way the stem breaks and bends, just like your knees. Valarr does not hand you the flower. Brazenly, he tucks it into your hair. Then, almost immediately, he says that the delicate petals feel like your skin. He apologizes for his foolishness almost at once, but it is not hard to guess that he did it on purpose.
𝗱𝗮𝗲𝗿𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗿𝘆𝗲𝗻
in short: he's not that bad at flirting, but when he really likes someone, he can get a little awkward
Daeron is a real tease when it comes to flirting, because he uses his hands. Sometimes it comes out very awkwardly, the way he tries to touch your wrist with his fingertips. He shyly looks away, just like a boy, when he notices you trying to stop his flirting, or when he thinks you're about to. His palms become silly, slightly clammy from nervousness, because he spent all his effort on simply keeping a straight face, and his hands were no longer his responsibility. He is sensitive to rejection, so it's much easier for him to say that you simply misunderstood him.
"You're beautiful." slips from his tongue like a treacherous prayer, and his eyes, the color of the evening sky with gold, trace your face. Daeron has forgotten how to read your emotions from the mere flutter of your lashes. He is not particularly religious, but he couldn't help but pray to the gods for help. When shyness took hold of you, he could barely contain his smug pride, because it truly felt like a victory.
"I just meant it in a friendly way... I just noticed." the prince excuses himself hastily, even though his warm hand has already reached for yours. But Daeron grabbed at thin air, clenching it like an elusive dream, feeling like the greatest fool of all. He turns away sharply, as if a cat had sunk its claws into his leg. He clears his throat, grabbing a plump, spice-scented cookie from a tray. He shoves it into his mouth without any grace, as if it could help him forget his recent shame.
"It's tasty." Daeron declares a minute later, with the look of a martyr begging for oblivion.
𝗮𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗿𝘆𝗲𝗻
in short: flirting or a declaration of ownership. he doesn't really distinguish between the two
It's unclear who is flirting with you Aerion or his smugness. He speaks without any concealment about his interest in you. He throws generous, seductive phrases your way, about you, about how handsome you'll look together as a couple. Aerion approaches you from behind, like a predator, but he doesn't sneak up on you. You notice his silhouette immediately. He smiles at you in the mirror's reflection. His whole irritatingly pleased face says, "You've been waiting for me, haven't you?"
His hands, which he has imperiously placed on your shoulders, feel like something heavy. Not like shackles, but something like metric chains that you could easily slip out of if you really wanted to. He tilts his head, and your insides twist into a knot.
He is a dragon, after all. He might bite. But Aerion simply bathes your neck in his hot breath. He blows a few stray hairs from the back of your neck, finding them rather bothersome.
His fingers catch on the thin chain of your pendant. The prince twirls it, amusing himself, nothing more. Your body looks wooden, because you dare not even move.
"Red would suit you." An insolent statement, not requiring a response. Even if you had intended to make one, Aerion has already stifled that urge. The way the tip of his nose tickles your cheek is something painfully menacing and wrongly stirring.
"And this pendant looks disgusting," he says, pulling away. "I will give you another."
Oh, this is not a gesture of a generous soul. It is an order. Every encounter like this leaves a strange aftertaste. Is this his damn idea of flirting?
𝗯𝗮𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗿𝘆𝗲𝗻
in short: not insolent, but not timid either. everything exists on the edge
Baelor's flirtation is wrapped in elegant ribbons. No insolence, even though who could be more confident than the future king? He wouldn't commit any thoughtless, boyish actions. He is a pillar of calm. It seems like he could catch lightning with his bare hands and not get burned. This man is not cautious at all. He doesn't hesitate, blushing like a fool, when trying to compliment your attire today. Baelor would rather give an approving nod when he sees you. Triumph flickers in his gaze. As if he could ever doubt his own taste for even a second. And you are certainly part of his excellent taste!
Baelor sits closer to you, so that the skirt of your dress brushes against his knee. No one else would notice. Or so it might seem to everyone around. The prince smiles as he raises his golden cup to his lips, but this small gesture cannot escape your notice. He did it on purpose. Baelor has made the first move and now waits for you to do the same. Even if you don't dare, seeing how suspiciously and jealously a servant is looking, this man will not keep you waiting. His fingers pinch a piece of the fabric, as if plucking it.
"Hmm, is this silk? It shimmers so wonderfully in the sun." His hand freezes dangerously close to your thigh, but he would never commit any unforgivable vulgarity. This is what excites you all the more: feeling the warmth of his hands and wondering what it would be like to be gripped by those fingers. Not this silk, which had the honor of being caressed by the future king.
"I don't want to seem picky, but the tea seems to have gone cold." He says it with no hint of reproach. A lazy, knowing smile appears on his face.
𝗹𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗹 𝗯𝗮𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗼𝗻
in short: open, honest, and loud. almost like a performance
Lyonel is the type to tell you he likes you without any unnecessary shyness, and it's not because he's drunk. Alcohol doesn't loosen his tongue at all. It's useless. This loud man's tongue is always as sharp as a dagger. He says what he thinks and never regrets it. No delicacy, and he certainly doesn't care about anyone around him. Let them stare and enjoy the show.
If you're in his line of sight, he will chase after you like a promised doe on a hunt. He is literally ready to jump up from his seat and interrupt a conversation to give his attention to his love interest.
"God, shut up, you're ruining my view of the most beautiful woman in the room. My woman." Lyonel will wave off his conversation partner, even if a second ago it was a heated argument he swore he would win.
He will glide over to you looking like a victor. He already looks smug and overconfident. His hands are already reaching for you. He needs to touch you. His chances of survival depend on it. Lyonel will kiss your fingers, not because he's a gentleman (let's be honest), but because he can. He doesn't care what people think (again). He already considers you almost his wife, and this is just a temporary obstacle.
If he wants something, he will never back down, and stubbornness will be the main reason. Lyonel doesn't know how to deny himself pleasure. And seeing how you amusingly and ever so slightly narrow your eyes when his beard pricks your skin is quite a pleasure. He'll do it again, knowing that you are true to your habits, just as he is to his.
𝗱𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗹
in short: prefers something a little more genuine than mere flirtation
Duncan and flirting? That already sounds like something impossible, doesn't it? This large, awkward man takes some things too literally. So, for the sake of all Seven, please do not try to flirt with him in any complicated way. He may be a simple guy in some ways, but you will never find such sincerity in anyone else. He has an enormous heart, and there is room in it not only for the horses he treats as true conversational partners, not only for the boy who cannot sit still and spins like a top, but also for so much else. But you are not so much else. You are his whole world. He would not dare to say this out loud for too long. It is too shameful and too… simply too much?
Still, Duncan is used to proving everything through actions. He is a knight in every sense. Honor guides him with far more success than he can guide little Egg. Duncan is one of the few men who is ready to love from afar. It will be torture for him, but there are things he believes he must accept.
Once, a girl made an inappropriate joke about how, if he's so tall and his foot is so big, is he that big everywhere? The knight lowered his gaze, feeling oddly ashamed. It took some courage for him to pull you to his side, wrapping an arm around your waist. "My lady would be the better judge of that from her perspective."
But as soon as he looked at you and saw how happily you smiled, Duncan lost his fire. "Let's not discuss this, alright? It's too… obvious of a joke…"
𝗺𝗮𝗲𝗸𝗮𝗿 𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗿𝘆𝗲𝗻
in short: when boundaries are blurred, he won't display anything openly, but he won't exactly hide either
First, let's just look at Maekar. So. In my opinion, he doesn't look like a person who flirts at all. Does he even smile to begin with? But anything can happen. Snow can fall in summer. He would definitely take his time weighing the decision. It takes him far too long just to come to the conclusion that you attract him. Though even after that, he will spend quite a while looking for something annoying in you, in your manners, your gait, even your smile. He deceives himself the most, replaying your image in his head over and over again. Let him be angry at himself rather than at you, you who is completely unaware of how sinisterly you have captured his poor thoughts.
Maekar doesn't like the fact that he seems to be the only one suffering from this. And again, he will try to forget everything, considering your presence near him a huge mistake. The more he denies it, the more obvious it becomes. The castle corridors aren't narrow at all, so why do your bodies pass so close to each other? Or why is he kinder than everyone else in helping you mount your horse, when just a few days ago you were climbing on without any difficulty?
"Clumsy." he will say, adjusting your leg, placing it firmly into the stirrup. "Clingy." he will add, trying to appear displeased with your antics.
At any meal, even if the tables are as long as a snake, the two of you still find each other's eyes. No one would think that you have crossed the bounds of propriety, almost undressing each other across that table with a respectable distance between you. The two of you have a different kind of feast.
Reading Supergirl: Being Super, which is only my second ever Kara book, but it is making wonder about how her parents explained her sudden presence. Cause with Clark, Ma Kent could feasibly pull the "I didn't know I was pregnant" thing. It would be a weird story, but one that you could maybe get away with. You can't do that when it's not an infant that landed in your cornfield though
Warnings: Enemies to Reluctant Lovers; Targcest; Pregnancy; Mentions of Parental Neglect; Arranged Marriage; Arguing; Use of “You” but No “Y/N”; No Physical Description of Reader
Word Count: ~3900 words
Plot: Valarr is set to marry you, Aerys’s estranged daughter. Neither of you are thrilled with the arrangement.
Part 1 Part 2
Master List
"How could this have happened?"
"You are certain that you do not remember anything?"
"Someone must have seen her."
"There is no way you could have walked all the way there."
"We should double the guards. Triple, perhaps."
"There must be some explanation."
Questions and statements just continued to be flung at you and about the room as the maesters looked over you. Your bedroom had become crowded with concerned family members, lead among them your mother. Your head was pounding and the continued questions and voices were simply overstimulating your senses, leaving you simply staring into space with lips occasionally wobbling as you grew even more overwhelmed.
You did not remember anything, which you had already told them. You did not know how you got there, which you had already told them. You were fine, which you had already told them.
There was only so much that you could tell them, at yet, it was not enough.
"I believe!" Valarr's voice cut through the haze, silencing those in the room with you. Your eyes trailed over to him at his position by your bedside. In a more relaxed tone, he concluded, "she requires rest."
"A sensible thought, Valarr," Baelor agreed before anyone else could speak up. "We should leave her to rest."
You nodded in thanks and accepted concerned kisses to the head and cheek. Your family members shuffled out of the room, still discussing the incident among themselves. Baelor was the last in the room, save for you, Valarr, and the maester. He sent Valarr a nod and a look that indicated they would be speaking later, before slipping from the room as well.
A few beats of silence passed before you turned to Valarr. "Thank you."
"It was enough for me to endure, let alone you."
You nodded before your attention returned to the maester. After he completed his assessment of you, and found that both you and your babe appeared in good health, the maester left you and Valarr alone to your own company.
A beat of silence passed after the door shut before Valarr turned back to you. "Do you wish to be alone?"
"I do not need to be." You blinked and stared at your hands. "In truth, the only thing I require is a bath."
"Of course."
Valarr called a maid and a short time later, you were able to finally relax in the hot water. You washed yourself, though your maid helped clean the sand from your hair. Valarr remained in the room, but kept his eyes averted from your figure. You believed he was pretending to read. But he had not flipped a page in five minutes.
When your hair was properly washed, you dismissed your maid so that you and Valarr could speak in private. You drummed your fingers on the edge of the tube and stared at the fireplace.
"So . . . what happens now?"
Valarr looked up from the book that he was not reading and stared at you. Your head turned and you met his gaze as he set aside the book that, again, he was not reading. Valarr folded his hands in front of himself and began to fiddle with a ring he wore.
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean. You and I both know that whatever happened is not going to simply be forgotten."
"No, you're right about that assumption." Valarr stood up from his seat and took a few steps forward, though he remained a respectful distance away from you. You would have rolled your eyes at him if you had the energy. "I assume that there will be more guards around our chambers. And at least one to follow you throughout the castle."
You nodded, turning to stare at your toes. "So, I will be a prisoner."
"You will be treated like the princess that is carrying a future heir to the throne," Valarr corrected, causing you to roll your eyes. It appeared that you did have the energy to do that. "You would have had a sworn sword regardless once I became the heir to the throne."
"Lucky me."
Valarr felt a vein rise on his neck and let out a breath. "You are tired. I will leave you to rest."
"Do not do that," you snapped at him, causing Valarr to pause in his walk towards the door.
"Do not do what?"
"Do not treat me like some petulant child."
Valarr felt the vein rise further and he moved to kneel beside your bathtub so that the two of you could argue face to face. "What do you want me to do? I cannot read your mind, so you must tell me."
"Alright," you agreed, shifting to face your husband, "if you intend to treat me like the rest of them treat me, I prefer that you do not speak to me at all."
Valarr frowned, confused. "How do the rest of them treat you?"
"Like I am a burden. An embarrassment to the House. Someone that needs to be coddled to survive."
"That is not—"
"—Is it not?" you interjected, cutting him off. "I was born an embarrassment to this House and until I give you a son and an heir, I am destined to die an embarrassment to this House."
"You are not an embarrassment! You are just difficult!"
"Well, I'm sorry I could not be born the perfect child, like you!"
"I am not—"
Valarr cut his sentence off when you stood up from the tub on your own. HIs cheeks grew red and he averted his gaze as you stepped out of the tub and pulled your robe on. Tying the knot over your bump, you stared down. You rested a hand over the curve of your bump, thinking about your child for a moment, before turning back to face Valarr.
"Do let me know if the Council decides I should be locked away in my tower until your child is born."
Walking past Valarr, you moved to sit at your vanity and begin to dry your hair. Valarr stared at you for a moment before he took his leave. When he was gone, your maid returned and helped you prepare for bed. it was only midday, but there was nothing else that you wanted to do other than lay in bed.
Your maid drew the curtains and then you were finally left alone with your thoughts. Tears filled your eyes as you nuzzled into the pillow, hoping that sleep would take you quickly.
*~*~*
Valarr moved to join the Small Council meeting that was already in progress. If he was left alone with his thoughts, he would only grow angry and frustrated and probably think about doing something stupid. So, boring council meeting it was.
The kingsguard opened the door for him and everyone quickly rose out of deference for him, save for his father and grandsire. He took his seat without comment and tried to look engaged.
"How is she?" King Daeron asked kindly, causing Valarr to look up.
"Tired," he decided on, folding his hands in front of him. He took a breath, straightening his spine. "But she is resting now."
"Good."
"Actually, while the Young Prince is with us, perhaps we should discuss the events of the morning?" the Grand Maester suggested, causing Valarr to silently curse under his breath.
"Did the Princess elaborate on how she came to be in the Dragonpit?"
"No, she did not," Valarr replied calmly, leaning back in his chair. "She does not recall anything besides falling asleep in her room last night."
"Strange, is it not?"
"There must be some kind of explanation."
"Have the searches of the corridors been completed? The guards on duty at night questioned?" Baelor spoke up, causing everyone in the room to turn to him.
"The search yielded nothing, my prince. And the guards on duty did not report seeing the Princess. They maintained their posts all night, as ordered. And I trust their word," the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard reported, causing Baelor to nod. "It is also unlikely that anyone would be able to scale the walls to enter the Princess's chambers from the windows."
"Unlikely, but not impossible," another lord stated, causing Valarr to begin to fiddle with his ring again.
"Why would someone kidnap the Princess, leave her and the unborn child unharmed, and dump her in the Dragonpit unharmed?"
"Did the Princess show any signs of distress before the incident this morning, my prince?" the Grand Maester asked Valarr, causing him to look up once more.
"No."
"Nothing to make it seem as if she wished to run away, perhaps?"
Valarr felt his annoyance stab at him at straightened up. "She would never do anything to put the babe she carries in danger. And running off in the middle of the night and crossing alone to the Dragonpit would surely put her and our child at risk."
"Of course not, my prince."
"Well, perhaps the only person who knows what happened is the Princess."
"It is best not to upset her at this stage of her pregnancy. She could be prone to hysterics," the Grand Maester warned, causing Valarr's teeth to grit together.
"I am certain that if the Princess knows or learns of any explanation to what occurred, she would share it immediately," Baelor stated wisely and calmly, causing Valarr's jaw to relax. "In the meantime, we should not disturb her. She has but a few moons left in her pregnancy."
"Perhaps," King Daeron spoke up, causing the entire room to grow silent and turn to him, "it would be best for the Young Prince and Princess to spend some time away from King's Landing. Dragonstone is quite enjoyable this time of year, is it not, Baelor?"
"It is indeed." Baelor turned to Valarr, who stopped fiddling with his fingers. "What do think is the right choice, Valarr?"
Valarr thought it over with a moment and glanced at the other lords before he returned his gaze to his father. “I believe I should speak with my wife first before agreeing to anything.”
A few chuckles passed around the room. “I see you are quickly learning the rules of combat,” King Daeron mused, folding his hands in front of him. “Marriage, that is.”
Valarr nodded in return before the topic shifted to the rise in pirating through the Narrow Sea.
*~*~*
It had taken one rather tense conversation to convince you that spending some time away from the court at Dragonstone would be beneficial. You would get away from the prying eyes and whispers. And perhaps the removal of such stressors would allow your relationship to repair from the recent setback.
Valarr finished looking over the papers his father had sent him and left the study in search of you. You were not in the solar or your bedroom or the library. He managed to find your maid, who indicated that you went for a walk on the beach. To Valarr’s relief, you had taken a guard with you.
You were not far from the steps when Valarr found you. Your hands held your skirts as you allowed the waves to tickle your toes. Your hair gently blew behind you from the breeze off the water, giving you an ethereal appearance.
He moved to stand behind him and was about to greet you when you blurted out, “I don’t remember what happened.”
“What?” Valarr asked, confused.
“I don’t remember how I got to the Dragonpit.” You looked over your shoulder at your husband. “You said you were working on papers. I assumed that at least one of them asked about it.”
“No, just trade figures.”
“Riveting.”
“Quite.” You turned back to the water as Valarr allowed his eyes to trail along the expanse of your bare shoulders. “Do you come out here often?” You paused and turned to him as if he had grown a second head. “I meant the beach.”
“When I want a distraction, yes,” you replied quietly, adjusting your dress over your bump.
“How is the babe?” Valarr asked softly, causing your hand to rest against the curve of your bump.
“More active now.”
His eyes widened in surprise. “You can feel them?”
“Yes, sometimes.” You held Valarr’s gaze as you rubbed your bump absentmindedly. “The midwives say that in a moon or two, you should be able to feel them yourself.”
Valarr nodded and folded his arms behind his back. A moment or two passed before he asked quietly, “Would you allow me?”
You paused, glancing at your toes for a moment. “Yes, so long as I am not cross with you.”
Valarr managed a smile. “That appears fair.” He glanced out at the sea before turning back to you. “Did you wish to be left alone?”
“I do not need to be.”
“Would you like for me to join you?”
“You may do as you please,” you replied, stepping out of the water and dropping your skirts on the sand.
“A walk?”
You looked up and down the shores before turning back to Valarr. “Fine. I suppose that the exercise would be useful.”
You took the lead, missing the small smile that graced Valarr’s lips before he joined you. The two of you walked down the sandy path as a kingsguard trailed behind the two of you.
“Do you like Dragonstone?” Valarr asked softly, glancing at you out of the corner of his eye.
“I like the quiet. And the fact that I do not feel like everyone is staring at me here.” You folded your hands in front of you, letting out a breath. “Do you? I recall you spent much time here when we were children.”
“It certainly has its benefits.” Valarr glanced up at the fortress before turning back to you. “But I think it was rather overwhelming as a child. Matarys got lost in the old caves once. I believe my mother was prepared to melt into the ground from stress.”
“He did always appear more rebellious than you.”
“The Second Son Syndrome, as Uncle Maekar would call it,” Valarr replied with a shrug. “I was born with expectations already piled onto me. And my mother was certainly stricter with me than Matarys.”
“Because you were the heir?”
“I assume so.”
You looked out at the crashing waves as your fingers gently curled around your bump. “Would you be the same with our firstborn son?”
Valarr turned towards you and stopped walking, which caused you to stop as well. The two of you stared at each other until Valarr took a step forward and lowered his voice.
“I do not intend to, no. I do love my parents, but I do not want to copy everything that they did.” He tilted his chin up slightly, letting a breath out through his nose. “I do not want the weight on their shoulders for each step they take. At least, as a child.” He paused again. “And I assume you will be quick to let me know when I fail to achieve that.”
“Most likely,” you agreed, nodding along.
“And,” Valarr began carefully, “do you wish to raise our child as you were raised?”
The soft smile on your lips disappeared almost instantly and before Valarr could ask what was wrong, you took a few steps back. “I believe that I should rest and not exert myself too much.”
“Of course.”
The walk back to the fortress was quiet and awkward and Valarr struggled to understand what was out of line about his question. But he knew that pushing you further now would only make it worse.
And so, the two of you walked in silence, fates tied together but oceans apart.
*~*~*
Valarr did not usually stay up late. Early to bed, early to rise. That was the discipline his father had instilled in him. But it was driving him crazy. Any implication of your childhood and you shut down. And Valarr could not spend the rest of his life guessing about how to get you to open up.
He had begun drafting a letter to your mother before he decided to scrap it. Tossing it into the fire, Valarr sat down at his desk once more and began drafting a letter to your grandsire, Lord Penrose. He did not want to be prying, but he had no other way of getting to the bottom of it. You were certainly not going to help him along.
Sealing the letter, Valarr set it aside and finally prepared for bed. Just as he was about to slip into bed, Valarr swore that he heard a door close. It would not have been odd ordinarily, but no one else, save for the few guards on duty, should have been awake.
He walked over to the door and opened it, studying the halls. There was no sign of anyone else, as the guards remained further down for privacy. He should have simply returned to bed, but something in his gut caused him to investigate further.
Valarr headed down the hall and arrived at the door to your quarters. He pressed his ear against the door and lightly knocked. But the door opened a fraction on its own at the force. Valarr frowned and pushed the door open to step into your quarters.
He arrived at your bed to find you missing from bed. Not unlike the other day back in King’s Landing.
Valarr called your name and searched your quarters for any sign of you. His heart started to beat out of his chest as he hurried out of the room. Rushing down the stairs, he turned the corner to see the guard on duty drawing his sword at the commotion.
“My prince? What is the matter?”
“Have you seen my wife?” Valarr asked, reaching the bottom of the stairs.
“No, my prince. Not since she turned in for the night.”
“She is not in her bed. We need to find her. Now!”
Valarr did not wait to hear the response, too busy trying to hold it together and find you. He rushed down the hall, throwing doors to rooms open and not stopping to take a breath before hurrying onto the next one. He ran out onto the balcony overlooking the old dragon pits as his heartbeat drowned out every other sound. But when he spotted you, his heart leapt into his throat.
He yelled your name at the top of his lungs, but it did not seem to slow your measured steps towards the edge.
Cursing, he turned and sprinted down another level. You continued to walk slowly, each step carrying you closer to the edge. The great dragons of generations past would greet their riders here. But there was no dragon there to catch you if you fell.
Valarr shouted your name again as he caught up with you. Grabbing your arm, he fell back, pulling you away from the edge. You had only been two steps or so from falling. Wrapping his arms around you, he expected you to thrash or fight or do something other than lay limp against his chest.
He called your name again, softer this time, as the kingsguard hurried over. You looked like you were sleeping, but after a moment, the serene expression slipped and you winced, as if you were nursing a horrendous migraine. Your eyes slowly opened and you blinked slowly, trying to orient yourself, before your eyes locked with Valarr’s concerned stare.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” he repeated incredulously.
The pain in your knee from how Valarr pulled you back slowly registered. You lowered your hand and felt the worn stone beneath your fingers. Picking your head up from Valarr’s chest, your eyes widened in shock when you realized where you were. Your grip on him tightened and his arm latched onto your hips in response. You turned to look at him once more.
“What’s happening to me?” you whispered out nervously, causing Valarr to pause.
He didn’t know. His father didn’t know. The King didn’t know. The Grand Maester didn’t know. No one seemed to have any idea what happened. And apparently was continuing to happen.
So, he simply pulled you back to his chest, resting his hand on the back of your head as he stared out at the dark abyss below.
*~*~*
You moved into Valarr’s room after the second incident.
A guard was to always be stationed outside overnight. The doors were locked through rope tied through the handles at night. You slept on the side of the bed further from the door, which would hopefully either force you to climb over him or give him more time to wake up to stop you.
But all of these were temporary fixes. And you did not want to spend the rest of your life like a prisoner in your own home.
So, you wrote a letter to the one person who might be able to help. You didn’t tell Valarr because you were convinced he would be against it since he took the advice of his father and the Grand Maester to heart.
You were eating dinner with Valarr when a guard walked into the room. “Prince Daeron has arrived. He stated that you were expecting him, my princess?”
“Yes, I was. If he is not exhausted, please bring him him here and request another plate from the chef. I’m sure he hasn’t eaten yet.”
“Yes, of course.”
The guard left with his orders and you turned to the questioning stare of your husband. His utensils were set down and there was an annoyance to his stare that was not there before.
“Daeron? You called for Daeron?”
“He is the most adept at understanding odd circumstances,” you stated calmly, folding your hands over your bump.
“You think he’s the solution to this problem?”
“I think we’ve exhausted all other options.”
“And you didn’t think I needed to know you were expecting him?”
“No, because I knew you would act exactly like this.”
Valarr was about to retort something else when the door opened once more. Daeron entered and you stood up to greet him. You offered him a hug that made Valarr’s stomach twist uncomfortably before he rose from his own seat.
“Thank you for coming,” you stated, giving Daeron’s hands a squeeze.
“I did not mind the excuse to get away from Summerhall.” Daeron turned and offered Valarr a nod in greeting. “Cousin.”
“Cousin,” Valarr returned politely.
Valarr did not despise Daeron. Not in the slightest. They had a quiet bond as eldest sons. But there was always a different kind of bond that you had with Daeron. You were the first to comfort him when his father showed he was disappointed in Daeron. And Valarr was not sure if you kept writing to Daeron while you lived with your mother’s family.
But he presumed you did based on the closeness that you showed him.
“I am not sure what help I can offer, but I am happy to offer what I can.”
“And drink our wine,” you replied with a knowing look as you moved to take a seat again. “Come and sit. I had them make you a plate.”
Daeron sat beside you as Valarr took his place across the table once more. And tried to not break the plate by angrily slicing the meat in front of him.
Characters: Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, Jason Todd, Damian Wayne, Bruce Wayne.
Synopsis: They are having a heated argument.
DICK GRAYSON
When his parents died, he grieved for a while, but eventually, he just... kept going. No regrets, no looking back.
He always managed to move on from bad things.
Or at least, that’s what he told himself while stuffing the candy you’d bought together onto the highest shelves — shoved all the way to the back where you wouldn’t notice them, even if you tried to reach.
That way, you’d have no choice but to talk to him.
He’d already lost count of how long you’d been ignoring him. The only thing he knew for sure was that he couldn’t stand sleeping alone.
Not again.
After the fight, he’d said maybe the two of you should take a breather. Cool off before things got worse.
So when he came back later, apology already rehearsed in his head, breakfast tray balanced carefully in his hands, he walked into the bedroom almost excited.
What Dick hadn’t expected was for you to take his words that seriously.
When he said take a breather, he meant maybe thirty minutes. An hour, tops. Just enough time to calm down before saying something unforgivable.
Not... whatever this was.
Not you refusing to talk to him altogether. Not sleeping on opposite sides of the bed. Not acting like the two of you were suddenly strangers trying to rethink your entire relationship.
The breakfast went untouched.
So did the small pout on his face.
You didn’t even let him sit beside you when he tried to talk.
He ended up sleeping on the couch.
The next day was fucking miserable. His mood was awful, and everyone in the manor could feel it hanging in the air.
Grayson didn’t act like this. Even with his half-assed “I’m fine,” it was obvious he was anything but.
And when he finally got back to the apartment that night, exhausted and emotionally wrung out, he went straight for the bed, practically collapsing on top of you like he needed the contact to survive.
You pushed at him weakly, nowhere near as firmly as you had the past few days.
He let out this quiet, bitter little laugh but still refused to let go.
“Baby, stop,” he mumbled softly.
Even when you tried to shove him off again, he just held you tighter, burying his face against your neck like he was starving for you.
“Please,” he whispered, completely drained.
JASON TODD
Jason could be such a fucking asshole sometimes — selfish, cold, always running his mouth before thinking twice. It was easier for him to let people hate him than let them get close enough to actually understand him.
Not that he acted that way around kids or women. Around them, he kept himself restrained. Distant. But the second he felt cornered — exposed in any way — those sharp looks and cruel words came out like second nature.
A defense mechanism. The only one he’d ever really had.
You knew that.
You knew about his mother leaving him behind like he was nothing. Knew how, for one brief moment, Bruce Wayne had made him feel wanted — safe — only for Jason to end up feeling abandoned all over again.
Trust didn’t come easy to him. Neither did vulnerability. Loving you probably scared the hell out of him.
So instead of fighting back, you swallowed the hurt along with your pride. You waved your hand dismissively, avoiding his eyes as you muttered a quiet, “Forget it,” before turning around and walking away.
And somehow, that felt worse.
Jason swallowed thickly as he watched you leave.
You didn’t yell at him.
Didn’t demand an apology.
Didn’t ask him to take back a single thing he’d said.
You just… left.
Like you were tired.
After everything he’d thrown at you, all you wanted was for him to forget it.
But he couldn’t.
Because after that, something changed.
You still talked to him. Still answered when he spoke. But there was distance in you now — something careful, almost detached — and Jason noticed every second of it.
It made his chest ache.
And, if he was being honest, it scared him enough to make him paranoid.
TIM DRAKE
This time, the fight started over something stupid.
You’d turned off Tim’s alarm so he could finally rest on his day off. In your head, it was a small act of care — something gentle.
Tim didn’t see it that way.
He had deadlines, reports, a million things waiting for him, and when he woke up hours later, disoriented and exhausted, the soft good morning kisses you pressed against his face quickly turned into frustration.
“No, because this isn’t about whether I should rest or not,” he snapped, shoving himself out of bed. “It’s about the fact that you don’t get to interfere with my work. You don’t get to decide when I stop.”
You frowned, trying not to react to the sharpness in his voice. “Tim, you hadn’t slept in two days.”
“Yeah? And just because you don’t have the same responsibilities I do doesn’t mean you get to make choices for me.”
The words hit harder than he intended.
Your expression changed immediately. Hurt. Shocked.
“Tim.”
But he was already too angry, too exhausted, too worked up to stop himself.
“Mind your own business, and I’ll mind mine.”
And after that, neither of you were exactly kind to each other.
The argument ended with Tim slamming the front door hard enough to shake the walls.
The second he got into the car, regret settled heavy in his chest.
Because Tim overthought everything.
Every failed relationship. Every mistake. Every moment where he’d been too distant, too busy, too emotionally unavailable. The thought looped endlessly in his head until he felt sick with it.
You’re ruining this too.
You’re going to lose them too.
By the time he sat down in front of his computer, he couldn’t focus on a single thing. His leg bounced anxiously under the desk while his mind tortured him with scenario after scenario of you getting tired of him. Leaving him. Finding someone softer. Easier to love.
Someone better.
The anger faded quickly, leaving behind only exhaustion and this horrible, crushing sadness.
So when he finally came home hours later, all that was left of his pride was exhaustion.
Quietly, almost nervously, Tim slipped into bed beside you.
He turned toward you carefully, watching your face in the dim light for a second with this small, hopeful look in his eyes. Like maybe if he stayed close enough, you’d roll over and pull him into your arms. Maybe you could both pretend the fight never happened until morning.
But you didn’t move.
You just turned your back to him.
And suddenly the room felt unbearably cold.
Tim bit down hard on his lip the second he felt tears gathering in his eyes, embarrassed by how fast they came. Still, he couldn’t stop them. They slid silently down his cheeks while he stared at your back, trying not to make a sound.
When you still didn’t turn around, the quiet sniffles eventually broke into shaky, uneven crying.
Because that was the moment it really hit him.
You weren’t going to comfort him this time.
Please.
Please kiss his swollen eyes and tell him you’re still here.
DAMIAN WAYNE
To everyone’s surprise, Damian Wayne was actually a good boyfriend.
It sounded absurd to anyone who only knew him from a distance. With the way he carried himself — sharp tongue, permanent scowl, an attitude that pushed people away before they could even try getting close — nobody expected him to be soft with someone he loved.
But he was.
Painfully so.
Damian was romantic in a way that caught you off guard. Quietly sentimental. The kind who noticed insignificant details you'd mentioned months before.
There was something unbearably delicate hidden beneath all that hostility.
And little by little, you had managed to reach it.
You peeled back every layer he tried so desperately to hide behind until you finally touched the vulnerable parts of him nobody else got to see.
At first, it felt like a victory.
Like warmth blooming inside your chest.
Being trusted by Damian Wayne felt sacred. Intimate. You thought you understood him now — the things he feared, the things he buried, the things he struggled to say out loud.
You were wrong.
Because somehow, Damian always found a way to shut you back out again.
One wrong moment, one careless outburst, and suddenly every wall you thought you’d broken down was standing taller than before.
You pressed your lips together tightly, forcing yourself not to say something impulsive.
The silence in his bedroom felt horrible.
Cold.
Suffocating.
“What’s wrong, Damian?”
He didn’t answer.
“Damian,” you tried again, irritation slipping into your voice this time.
The entire day had been fine. More than fine, actually. He’d left his classes early just to spend time with you. You’d gone out to eat together, watched a movie back at the manor, stayed curled up against each other for hours.
And then suddenly he changed.
Short answers.
Dismissive looks.
Ignoring you whenever you spoke.
The worst part was that he’d done it in front of your friends.
Having your boyfriend act cold and irritated toward you in front of your classmates was humiliating.
“I already told you. Nothing.”
“Then why are you talking to me like this?” you asked, frustration finally bubbling over. “If something upset you, how am I supposed to fix it if you won’t talk to me? We’re together, Damian. We’re supposed to work things out.”
He laughed quietly under his breath, but there was nothing amused about it.
“God, you’re irritating.”
You stared at him silently.
And there it was again.
That look.
Distant. Closed off. Like he’d shoved you outside the walls all over again.
“Do you genuinely believe something is wrong with me?” he asked mockingly. “I have far more important matters to deal with.”
Your chest tightened painfully.
“Fine.”
The second the word left your mouth, Damian hesitated.
Barely.
But you noticed it.
“What?” you asked flatly.
You grabbed your backpack from the floor and walked toward the door of his room.
Damian watched you the entire time without speaking.
Because what was he supposed to say?
That he hated how your friends interrupted the date the second things started feeling intimate? That it bothered him watching you laugh with them while he sat there feeling invisible? That he’d wanted your attention to himself for once?
It was supposed to be his time with you.
His moment.
The bedroom door shut softly behind you.
And suddenly the room felt unbearably empty.
Damian sat down at the edge of the bed slowly, his chest tightening with every passing second until it became difficult to breathe. His eyes burned.
You hadn’t even tried to stop him from pushing you away this time.
You just left.
Eventually, he collapsed face-first onto the mattress, burying himself beneath the blankets like hiding would somehow make the ache in his chest disappear.
He didn’t know how long he stayed there.
Minutes.
Maybe hours.
At some point, he grabbed his phone.
Your chat was still open.
Damian stared at your contact silently while his thumb hovered over the call button. His stomach twisted painfully with nerves.
Call them.
Don’t call them.
Call them.
Before he could think too hard about it, he pressed the button.
The ringing nearly made him sick.
Once.
Twice.
By the third ring, you answered.
“Hello?”
Damian froze.
Your voice was soft. Careful.
And suddenly, all at once, the anger drained out of him, leaving behind nothing but this awful ache in his chest.
He opened his mouth, but no words came out.
Because right then, curled up alone in his bed with tears stinging his eyes, Damian could only think one thing:
Who was he without you?
BRUCE WAYNE
Why are you arguing with this man? Leave the old man alone; he has enough problems already.
• I admit it, I just wanted to write about Tim being a whiny crybaby. oc tim (?
Also, as you know, I don't speak English and it's translated thanks to technology :) I've had this in drafts for months ()
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