[sickobuff]

sicko . adult . she/her

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[sickobuff]

genuinely was JUST looking for your punishment negan fic and i thought you deleted it and i was like 💔💔💔 BUT I FOUND IT YAY

pls write more negan in kinktober. WE need this

yayyy i'm glad you found it!! all my stuff should be linked in through my masterlist, but i know it glitches out from time to time

and YES i will be writing more negan for kinktober so keep an eye out for that in two-ish months

[sickobuff]

You write negan sooo well and I wanna ask what's your thought process when writing his dialogues and expressions? Cus I'm also writing a fic and he's just so freaking hard to write like I wanna get his demeanor right badly

first of all, thank you so much.

i'm gonna be honest, i don't know how well this will help you cus i get tripped up writing dialogue for him all the time lol, but i'll usually rewatch an episode or two of his to refresh myself on the sound of his voice, how he talks, the rhythm and pace of his words, etc. he's really flippant a lot of the time, very condescending, and when he's like that, i really try to make it clear that he's just amused by everything—cracking jokes, taunting, teasing, etc. when he gets strict, he gets mean and serious. idk tbh

bottom line, i just really try to hear his voice in what i write. if it sounds weird or doesn't sound like something he would say, i rework it, find some way to phrase it in a way that he would say. i look back at a lot of his lines from the show for this, so that's mostly it

[roxxmo]

custody of blood | part I

summary: sent to oldtown as a ward beneath your cousin lord ormund hightower's protection, you learn there are some vows that are easier to preach than to keep. pairing: ormund hightower x targtower!reader content/warnings: 18+ (mdni), icky guardian/ward relationship, canon-typical incest (cousins), age gap (~20 years), grooming, religious abuse and religious guilt, emotional manipulation, coercive control, possessiveness, severe power imbalance, forced declarations of affection, physical intimidation/rough handling, parental abandonment, references to childhood neglect, implied sexualized ritual, canon-typical misogyny, canon divergent, no use of y/n word count: 6.8k A/N: i need psychological help for how badly i need this man fr. originally had this planned as a oneshot, but i kept writing more...and more...and more...and felt like i was going to rush through the material if i tried to fit it all in one, so now we have a three-part series that i am very excited for you all to read :) hope you guys enjoy this freak of a man AND to see how freaked out i make these two hehehe! and excited for you all to see what ormund means when he reminds reader it is the seventh day...hmm...wonder what he has in store... also, fun drinking game: take a shot every time reader says "yes, my lord"

MASTERLIST next chapter →

The other side of the bed was empty when you awoke, though the sheets remained warm and rumpled. Eyes still heavy from the lingering seeds of sleep, your hand reached across the mattress, patting until it found the warm hollow of where his body had lain. Ormund was almost always up before dawn. 

“Idleness is as plain a sin as vanity or greed,” he liked to say. “It begets indulgence, indulgence begets excess, and excess begets unfaithfulness.”

Unfaithfulness, of course, was inexcusable.

The bedchamber was still dim, with only the first suggestion of morning creeping beneath the shutters. Beyond the walls of the Hightower, you could hear the bells of the Citadel begin their first tolls. 

Ormund, as expected, was already kneeling before the small altar in the corner of the room. He wore only his linen sleeping shirt and breeches, and though his back was turned to you, you could see one hand slowly turning the pages of his weathered copy of The Seven-Pointed Star and hear the low murmur of passages he had committed to memory. 

In all the years you had lived in Oldtown, never once had Ormund deviated from this morning ritual. You remember the first time you had seen it. You had been a small child then, prone to wandering from your own chambers in the middle of the night into this one, back when it had belonged to the late Lady Hightower as much as it did her husband. She had always been kind to you. Like a true mother, when your own was so far away. 

Whenever sleep would not come, or the young Hightower boys had filled your head with tales of monsters lurking beneath the floor, you would creep from your bed and patter barefoot down the stone passage. You would ease open the heavy, creaking door and stand silently at the foot of the canopied bed until Lady Hightower stirred. She would always lift the blankets for you. From his side of the bed, Ormund would grumble some half-hearted objection about indulgence and the necessity of teaching you independence, but Lady Hightower paid him little mind. She would draw you into the warmth between them and promise that no monster in Oldtown would dare pass through their chamber door.

Even after she died, you did not cease coming.

It hurt, at first. To lie in the bed where she had once held you, the space now empty without her. Ormund never objected to your staying. Though he remained stoic and stony throughout his own grief, perhaps there was comfort for him, too, in not being left to sleep alone. When you wept silently into her old pillow, he would smooth your hair back from your face and say nothing. 

The habit endured long after your tears had dried and the black mourning clothes had been packed away. Some nights, you would attempt an honest effort at remaining in your own chambers, only to find yourself once again padding down the candlelit passage towards his. 

Ormund never turned you away. Now it was his hand that lifted the blankets for you to crawl beneath. Now it was his arm that pulled you in, wrapped around your waist in the night, his face that pressed into your hair, his body whose warmth you sought beneath the covers. 

The servants of the Hightower knew that your own chambers were little more than a formality, so seldom occupied that dust gathered upon the bed. You slept in your cousin Ormund’s chambers, you bathed there, you dressed there. Nearly every trace of your daily life had migrated into his rooms, until there was little left in your own to suggest they had ever belonged to you. 

It was only natural. After Lady Hightower’s death, the keeping of the household had fallen into your hands. It was you who approved the servants’ schedules, arranged the seating at feasts, and received the wives and daughters of visiting noble houses. Some might have found it strange that Ormund’s ward should occupy so much of his late wife’s place while remaining neither wed nor formally mistress of his household. Stranger still, perhaps, that if anyone entered Lord Ormund’s chambers before the sunrise, they would find him curled around his ward– Queen Alicent’s youngest daughter– his body arranged in the shape a husband’s would make.

If they did find it strange, no one within Oldtown had the courage to remark upon it. 

“You’re awake.”

You propped yourself up on your elbows to watch as Ormund closed the prayer book and rose from the altar. 

“Yes,” you answered as he crossed the chamber to the washstand. He dipped his hands into the porcelain basin and brought the water to his face. “I heard you praying.”

Ormund hummed as he dried himself with the folded linen cloth laid fresh each morning beside the ewer. “It would serve you well to join me in morning prayer.”

You ducked your head. “Yes, my lord.”

“I think only of your soul. One burdened by the sins of your…Targaryen…forefathers should labor all the more harder to absolve herself of them.”

“Yes, my lord.”

You waited for him to chide you further, or launch into one of his soliloquies on how faithfulness did not sleep merely because the sun had yet to rise. Ormund did none of that. 

Instead, he made his way to the bed and lowered himself onto the edge beside you, his weight dipping the mattress. Ormund lifted one hand to cup your cheek and ran his thumb gently beneath your eye. You nuzzled into his touch without a thought. 

“We will have visitors from the Reach in the Hightower later today. In particular, Lord Godric Ashford will call upon me this morning in my solar,” he said, as casually as if he were discussing the day’s weather. 

Your brows rose. You knew that several noble houses from across the Reach were expected at the Hightower in the coming days for discussions of taxes, grain, and the season’s feasts. Hosting them was hardly unusual. Nor was it unusual for one of their unmarried sons to request a private audience with your guardian. “Lord Robert’s son?”

“Yes, unfortunately,” Ormund mused, seemingly more occupied with gently stroking his thumb back and forth over your cheekbone. “I assume he intends to ask for your hand in marriage.”

Your stomach twisted in a mixture of dread and excitement. Lowering your eyes, you worried at a stray thread in the coverlet. “Do you…do you think he might be suitable?”

The thumb on your cheek stopped. Ormund’s face tightened slightly, as though some rancid smell had entered the room. “That, my dear, remains to be seen.”

He stood from the bed, and you instantly missed the warmth of his touch. You watched him cross to the wardrobe and pull open the carved doors, retrieving his clothes for the day. 

“But you will still hear him, yes?” 

“That is what I have agreed to,” Ormund answered with obvious reluctance, stepping into his breeches. “And I suppose I must keep my word. I will hear his presentation, just as I have heard the others before him.”

He slipped his arms into the doublet, turning to you as he began buttoning it. “You will not concern yourself with the meeting. You were entrusted to me for good reason. Namely, my rectitude and discernment in such matters. You would not want to be betrothed to some ignorant oaf, would you?”

“No, my lord.”

“And you know that I have only your best interests at heart, including the question of what sort of man you should be given to. Correct?”

“Yes, my lord.”

Ormund smiled affectionately. “Good girl.”

Your heart squeezed at the praise. It had always been that way with Ormund, desperately seeking any type of reassurance that you were saved. That you were obedient. That you were wanted. That you were good. 

The sound of light footsteps and swishing skirts echoed under the chamber’s door. Your servants, no doubt, waiting to be beckoned in by the Lord Hightower to serve upon his ward. 

Ormund made his way back over to you, but this time stayed standing, looking down upon you. “You will attend the sept this morning. When Lord Ashford has finished his proposition, you will come to me in the solar. This evening, we will receive our guests for supper in the Great Hall.”

You bowed your head obediently, just as he taught you. “Yes, my lord.”

Ormund turned to the door as if he meant to call the servants in, and then paused. He slowly turned back to you, his blue eyes swimming with a feeling you had become quite familiar with. Determination, and something weightier under it. Something you had never been able to name, but knew intimately. 

“It is the seventh day,” he stated, his voice low. You knew that. You knew by now not to recognize the day by name, but by its count. “You will come straight to this chamber after supper. Bathe first.” 

Silently, you nodded. His face twisted in disapproval. “Your words, please.”

“Y-yes, my lord.”

He exhaled, a small measure of satisfaction returning to his face. “Good. Very good.” 

Ormund laid one hand over yours where it rested atop the coverlet, looking suddenly very serious. “And do tell your women never use to that horrid citrus oil on you again like they did last week. It taints you.”

“I will.” 

He squeezed your hand in appreciation, then straightened himself and turned towards the door. “You may enter.”

The door opened at once, like your women had been waiting. They filed into the chamber with lowered eyes, none appearing surprised to find you sitting in Lord Ormund’s bed. He did not bother to look at them, his gaze fixed on you as he spoke. 

“See that she is properly dressed to receive visitors.”

The girls spoke in unison, eyes still fixed on the ground. “Yes, Lord Hightower.”

Ormund nodded at you once. An unspoken acknowledgement passed between the two of you. The seventh day. What the night would hold. Then he departed, leaving the chamber door open behind him. 

Your women moved quickly and efficiently, drawing back the blankets and settling a robe over your shoulders as they began the familiar work of preparing you for the day. There was no time to dally. Before long, your hair had been pinned, your gown laced tightly in Hightower green, and your throat and wrists adorned with jewels Ormund had gifted you on namedays and holy days.

One of the girls uncorked the vial of citrus oil and reached for your neck. You grabbed her hand, stopping her. 

“Lord Ormund,” was all you had to say. 

She bowed her head in immediate understanding and exchanged it for another perfumed oil he had shipped from Lys for you. 

Soon, you looked as a proper Hightower woman ought to look. And by the next tolling of the bells, you had entered the sept of the Citadel.

The seven-walled chamber appeared much as it had when you first arrived in Oldtown– or, at least, as it had in your earliest memories once you had gone from a crawling babe to a waddling child. Damp clung to the stone floors. At the center stood an altar crowded with pools of hardened wax and burning candles, while bejeweled likenesses of the Seven watched from alcoves set into each wall. Your attendants lingered behind you like silent shadows as you moved through the sept, a veil drawn over your hair.

You walked as Ormund had always instructed you to walk: head bowed, hands clasped, each step quiet. The very picture of piety in a woman.

Stopping at the Maiden, you thought once more of the late Lady Hightower. You often served as her little companion to the sept on mornings like this, following closely behind as she knelt and prayed before each altar. You could feel the memory clearly: the whisper of her skirts against the stone, the warmth of her hand around your smaller one, the patient way she corrected your prayers when your childish tongue stumbled over the words. 

The truth was that you had no memories before ones such as these, ones of Oldtown. 

You were just a babe when your father, King Viserys, sent you south to be fostered among your Hightower kin. Ormund had always said that, for all the sins of your parents, they had at least possessed the wisdom to recognize Oldtown was where you belonged. 

The explanation for your immediate exile from King’s Landing had always been a convoluted one.

On some days, you had been sent away because court was dangerous. On others, because King’s Landing was steeped in pride and your father wished for you to be raised in the piety of your mother’s kin. Lady Hightower had longed for a daughter. Your health was fragile as a babe, Oldtown’s air was better for a delicate infant. Alicent had a difficult birth and needed time to rest. The reasons always shifted depending upon who offered them.

The clearest explanation, though it was the one that had always gone unspoken, was that you had simply not been wanted.

At first glance, there was nothing about you that suggested descent from Old Valyria. You possessed neither silver hair nor amethyst eyes. Beautiful, certainly, but not plainly Targaryen. You bore none of the unmistakable marks of your father’s house.

More importantly, you had no dragon.

Ormund refused to speak of that last matter. You did not know whether an egg had been placed in your cradle according to custom, whether it had failed to hatch, whether the hatchling had died, or whether no egg had ever been given to you at all. Whatever the circumstances, it seemed the Seven had determined that you were not to be a Targaryen, but a Hightower.

“A blessing,” Ormund often called it, standing behind you, watching intently as you brushed your hair in the evenings. “That your appearance was not marred by the stain of inbreeding. You should be grateful the gods favored you enough to preserve your beauty from such impurity.”

What he really meant was, “You should be grateful the gods gave you to me”. 

And you were. Your childhood in Oldtown had been a happy one. Ormund and Lady Hightower’s sons took to you as a true sister, including you in their games no matter how often you ran weeping to their mother after they shoved you into the mud. You received the finest education the Citadel’s maesters could provide and were thoroughly instructed in histories, languages, scripture, and the workings of court. Ormund instilled in you the virtues expected of a holy and pious woman. Lady Hightower taught you kindness. You wanted for nothing. You were cared for completely.

Being cared for, however, was not the same as being wanted.

One by one, the boys grew into men. They departed to serve in other courts, took wives, and established households of their own. You remained behind. After Lady Hightower’s death, the question of where you belonged began to trouble you even more. 

You searched everywhere for some reflection of yourself. In histories and poems. In portraits, tapestries, and family trees. You studied every face and name, hoping one might reveal why you had been born in the first place. 

Though Ormund preferred that you remain ignorant to the fact, you knew you were a Targaryen.

He contradicted himself often in that regard. He insisted that you were a Hightower whenever you longed for King’s Landing, yet invoked the sins of your Valyrian predecessors whenever you displeased him. As a child, the inconsistency had deeply confused you. Now, though, you knew better to question it. 

The histories did not speak of Targaryens as aliens deserving only shame. On the contrary, they praised them. Aegon the Conqueror had crossed the Narrow Sea and conquered Westeros, his lineage sitting upon the Iron Throne from then until the end of time. They had bound themselves to mighty beasts that would bow to no other riders. Why should you not wish to be one of them? Why should you be ashamed?

Perhaps that was why, during one of your rare visits to King’s Landing, you became determined to find some way of securing your place within your own bloodline. Ormund had permitted you, after much begging on your part and great reluctance on his, to attend the wedding of your brother Aegon to your sister Helaena. You had still been young enough to think yourself a girl, though womanhood waited only just around the corner, and through that haze of youth the wedding had seemed beautiful.

Now, of course, memory revealed what you had been too young to recognize then: the discomfort across Helaena’s face, the uninterested ambivalence with which Aegon accepted the ceremony, the celebration disguising a union neither seemed to really desire. But that morning, surrounded by jewels and music and flowers, by feasts and speeches proclaiming the strength of their union, you had understood only one thing.

If your appearance could not prove you a Targaryen, perhaps marriage could.

When you returned to Oldtown, full of courtly notions and girlish fancy, you announced to Ormund that you would marry your brother Aemond– who had scarcely looked your way throughout the entire visit. Ormund had been seated behind the desk in his solar, writing upon a sheet of parchment. At your declaration, the quill froze between his fingers.

With deliberate care, he set the quill aside and lifted his eyes to you with a dreadful stillness. “You will do no such thing.”

Your smile slowly faded. “But…Aegon married Helaena. That is what Targaryens do.”

Ormund rose suddenly from behind the desk, his chair scraping harshly across the stone floor. You remembered how the sound had frightened you.

“The Targaryens– your father’s family– are incestuous barbarians,” he had declared. “Their minds are so corrupted by generations of inbreeding that they no longer possess the sense to recognize depravity. Your mother whored herself to a Targaryen. I will not give you to your own brother. I will not allow you to repeat her sins and bring further shame upon the Hightower name.”

By then, he had crossed the solar and taken your chin firmly in his hand, his fingers dimpling the skin of your cheeks. You had begun to cry, though you could not tell whether it was from fear, shame, or the sudden loneliness of knowing you might never truly belong anywhere.

“But then I could live with Father and Mother,” you whispered, tears slipping down your cheeks. “I could go home.”

Ormund bent until his face was close to yours, his breath hot against your skin. His grip tightened beneath your chin. “This is your home.”

The memory faded as you reached for a candle from the basket beneath the Maiden’s altar. You held its wick to one of the burning flames and watched a bead of wax gather at the tip before slipping towards your fingers.

Aemond had been the first man Ormund refused you. He had not been the last.

Among Ormund’s duties as your guardian was the arrangement of your eventual betrothal. Ormund approached that responsibility as he approached all others: with severe discretion, particular judgment, and standards so high that no man alive seemed capable of meeting them.

There had never been a shortage of suitors. You were young, unmarried, and beautiful– and whatever Ormund might say of your father’s house, the hand of a Targaryen princess remained a prize few sensible men would dismiss. 

As you grew older, the procession became a lengthy one.

The first man to formally inquire after you had been Ser Joldwin Mormont. You remembered him quite clearly. He had been nearer Ormund’s age than your own, tall and broad as most Northmen seemed to be, with a rough face that was not altogether unpleasant. He was steady in temperament and remained remarkably calm beneath Ormund’s inquisitions. He had even brought you a gift: a beautiful velvet cloak trimmed in bear fur. You had thought he resembled the carved likenesses of the Warrior found in the sept. He would make a good husband, you had decided.

Ormund had not agreed.

He had no shortage of qualms. Men of the North were ignorant, uncivilized, and hardly better than an illiterate barbarian dragging around a club in Ormund’s opinion. Bear Island was remote, bitterly cold, and impoverished. Worst of all, the Mormonts possessed a peculiar habit of treating their women as though they were equals. 

It was not a place, he decided, where you belonged.

Ormund had declared Joldwin entirely unsuitable, and forced you to toss the beautiful cloak into the fireplace of the Great Hall. He said it smelt of bear shit.  

After that, the list of suitors started to blend together. 

There was a Martell, handsome enough to make you blush with warm brown eyes, who winked at you across the hall. Ormund reacted as though the man had attempted to bed you in the middle of the Hightower. The Dornish were lecherous and tried to “fuck anything that walked”, he told you. 

There was a young Rowan who stuttered frequently and spoke so softly that you had to lean closer to hear him. Ormund dismissed him as weak and unfit for a wife. 

A ruddy-cheeked and quite cheerful Redwyne heir sent you summerwine and a song composed in praise of your beauty. Ormund called him frivolous.

One man lived too far from Oldtown. Another lived so near that Ormund questioned whether he sought your hand only to gain influence within the city. One possessed too many ambitions. Another had none. One was too young to govern you properly, while another was so old that Ormund expressed outrage at the very notion of subjecting you to him.

There was always some defect. Too proud. Too timid. Too wealthy. Too poor. Too worldly. Too sheltered. Too handsome. Too plain. 

Ormund’s standards contradicted one another so thoroughly that, had all his preferences been gathered together, the perfect husband would have needed to be commanding without controlling you, gentle without indulging you, wealthy without greed, devout without presumption, and situated near enough that you might never truly leave the Hightower.

Such a man had yet to present himself.

Perhaps, you thought as you placed your candle down before the Maiden’s altar and bowed your head, Lord Godric Ashford would be different. Perhaps today would finally be the day Ormund found a suitable match for you. Perhaps today was the day you would understand what fate had intended for your life. Perhaps you would finally be chosen.

You set your candle upon the Maiden’s altar and prayed for love, for a fruitful marriage, and for a husband who chose you with a pure heart. You tried to imagine such a life with Godric, though you did not yet know his face. 

You hoped he was strong, like Ormund. Tall, like Ormund. Handsome, like Ormund. 

You hoped that he might be enough like Ormund to earn his approval. You hoped, without really understanding why, that he was like Ormund. 

By the time you returned to the Hightower, Lord Ashford had already been shown into Ormund’s solar and begun his proposition. 

Ormund had never permitted you to be present for such conversations, of course. Serious matters, he insisted, were to be muddled by girlish sentiment. Over the years, you had therefore found other ways to learn what decisions were being made about your future without you. Some time ago, you had discovered a narrow passage running behind the rear wall of Ormund’s solar– an old servants’ entrance, long forgotten, its doorway boarded over and concealed behind a heavy tapestry.

And so, upon returning to the Hightower, you dismissed your ladies with the excuse that you wished to pray alone in your chambers (surely the gods would forgive the lie, given the good reason for it). Once they had gone, you slipped behind the tapestry and crept down the cobwebbed corridor until you reached the boarded door. Pressing your ear to the weathered planks, you heard the low murmur of men’s voices.

“...and I would never seek to separate her from Oldtown, Lord Hightower,” an unfamiliar voice spoke. You leaned closer. It was firm but polite, young but not imprudent. Lord Godric Ashford. He sounded kind. “I understand the princess is quite close with you, and I would ensure she could visit the Hightower as often as she wished. Family is of the utmost importance to me.”

You heard Ormund’s chair squeak. You could imagine he had leaned back in it, hands clasped in front of him, assessing Lord Ashford as he did all things brought before his judgement. “That seems to me an indulgence. She would be your wife, would she not? You would not want her with you in Ashford?”

“Of course, my lord. But I would not be so cruel as to forbid her from visiting the man that raised her. My own mother was a Caswell, and she visited my grandsire at Bitterbridge at every turning of the season.”

“And if she wished to visit more often than you considered appropriate?”

There was a brief pause. “I would speak with her, as husband and wife should.”

“Hmm. And if speaking did not bring her around to your judgement?”

There was another lull, longer this time, before Lord Godric gave an uneasy chuckle. “Well, I would hope my wife did not need to be disciplined as a child would.”

“Hopes are not the same as reality,” Ormund replied easily. “Particularly where Targaryen blood is concerned. They are a willful and proud people. Very resistant to correction.” 

“I-I have heard no such things of the princess, my lord.”

“No? Then what have you heard of her?”

“Every account has described her as the very image of what a noblewoman ought to be: beautiful, gracious, and demure. I’ve been told she is quite pious, as well.”

A thoughtful silence settled over the solar. You wished desperately you could see Ormund’s face. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet. 

“She is.”

Your heart swelled and instinctively, you pressed yourself closer to the boards. You were a good girl. 

“But do not mistake her nurture for nature, Lord Godric. She did not arrive in Oldtown so.”

“My lord, I did not mean to suggest–”

“Every virtue you have heard praised in her was cultivated beneath my hand. Her modesty, her devotion. The weeds of Targaryen pride had to be pulled, one by one. A garden does not become handsome just because a flower has good intentions. It becomes handsome because a gardener has the discipline to attend to it every single day and cut away what ought not grow.”

Lord Godric hesitated in his answer. “And…you believe a husband must continue that work? Pull the weeds from her?”

“I believe,” Ormund answered slowly, “that any man who means to take her from me must be capable of preserving what I have made.”

What he had made. 

You drew a shaky breath, your fingernails pressing into the weathered boards.

Perhaps it was true. Ormund had spent years teaching you the faults of your father’s house. They were blasphemous, unnatural. Incestuous and violent. An abomination before the Seven. His lessons were so ingrained within you that even the faintest reminder of your Valyrian blood could fill you with shame.

You had not chosen that blood. You had not asked to be born into it. You had only ever wanted to be good. And if Targaryens were innately wicked, perhaps you truly did owe everything virtuous within you to Ormund.

As a child, you had often wondered what sort of creature you might have become without his guidance. If he were true, which he often was, you would be a terrible creature malformed by sin. The thought frightened you still. But another more terrible one followed suit: without his guidance, you would not have had him.

No arms around your waist in the night. No hand smoothing your hair. No voice telling you what was right, what was wrong, what was safe. A life without Ormund. You tried to imagine it and found only emptiness. Would such a life truly be worth living?

And yet…you wanted to be chosen.

Your own mother and father had decided they had no need of you in King’s Landing, though they kept their other children close. You had been sent to Oldtown, where you doubted Ormund and Lady Hightower had been given much choice in whether they would receive you. No one had ever truly chosen you.

That was what made the suitors difficult to dismiss. They came before Ormund willingly, they asked for your hand because they wanted you. You liked that more than you wished to admit. 

And though the thought of leaving Ormund filled your stomach with dread, it had become increasingly difficult not to resent him for refusing every man who tried to choose you.

“I believe I have heard all I need,” Ormund said suddenly, his voice decisive. Your heart faltered. You knew what that meant. 

“...My lord?” You could hear Godric shift closer to the desk. “I hope I have not caused offense of any sort. I only meant that, should the princess become my wife, I would do all within my power to–”

“I said I have heard enough.” Something heavy was placed on the desk with a thud. A wine cup, presumably.

You wanted desperately for Godric to protest. You wanted him to declare his love to you, though he had never once seen your face. You wanted him to insist that perhaps the choice of whom you married ought to belong, at least in part, to you. You wanted him to accuse Ormund of cruelty for denying you the right to a husband.

The last thought filled you with immediate shame. You whispered a hurried prayer under your breath to the Father, begging forgiveness for having judged the man who had only ever sought to protect you.

Godric did none of that. Instead, he simply uttered with cool restraint, “As you will, Lord Hightower.”

A chair scraped across the floor and heavy footsteps crossed the solar, followed by the opening and closing of its main door. You withdrew from the boarded door slowly, blinking as tears began to brim at your eyes.

Usually, disappointment was all you felt when another suitor was refused. A dull ache in your heart followed by the acceptance that Ormund must have seen some defect you had overlooked. He knew the nature of men and the dangers of the world in ways you did not.

This time felt…different.

Godric had spoken respectfully. He had promised not to sever you from Oldtown. He had regarded your devotion and gentleness, and when Ormund questioned whether he could govern you, Godric had not boasted of cruelty or correction. His only failure had been suggesting that you ought to be treated as a wife rather than a child.

By the time you emerged from behind the tapestry, Lord Ashford was gone. The corridor stood empty, save for the guard outside the solar, offering no glimpse of the man who had come to ask for your hand and been dismissed before you could even see his face.

Ormund had instructed you to come to him once the proposition concluded. Usually, you obeyed quickly. Now, though, you lingered outside the solar door with your hand raised to knock, struggling to understand the feelings swimming in your mind. Confusion, disappointment. And something dangerously close to anger.

You knocked anyways.

“You may enter,” Ormund called. 

You opened the door and stepped inside, carefully pulling it shut behind you. Ormund had moved from the desk to the window and stood peering down at the city below. The shutters had been opened. He turned at the sound of the door closing, looked you over once, and– apparently finding no objections with your appearance– gestured towards the carved chairs near his desk. 

“Sit.”

You did. 

Ormund remained beside the window and drew a long breath through his nose. His face tightened with mild disgust. “Lord Ashford seems, from his smell, to possess a great fondness for horses.”

You sniffed discreetly. There was nothing in the air besides parchment and the dried florals Ormund preferred to keep throughout his rooms. “Perhaps he rode in this morning.”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps the men of Ashford prefer to sleep in stables.” Ormund reached into the pocket of his breeches and withdrew the ornate pomander he carried. He held it beneath his nose and inhaled deeply. Only once he appeared satisfied that every trace of Lord Ashford had been driven from his nostrils did he return it to his pocket. Then he turned to you, settling against the window ledge with his hands clasped before him. “You attended the sept this morning?”

You stared down at your hands, folded in your lap. “Yes, my lord.”

“And for whom did you light a candle for today?”

You chewed on your lower lip. “The Maiden.”

Ormund nodded in consideration, crossing his arms over his chest. “And why did you choose the Maiden today?”

“I…I wanted to pray for your meeting with Lord Ashford to go well.”

“You prayed for Lord Ashford?”

Your palms had begun to feel sweaty. “Y-yes, my lord.”

“You prayed to marry him?"

“...yes, my lord.”

The muscle under Ormund’s eye twitched. He pushed himself away from the window and approached you slowly. Rounding the corner of the desk, he stopped beside your chair. Then, tugging at the fabric of his breeches over his thighs, he lowered himself until he was kneeling at eye level with you. You kept your gaze fixed on your lap. 

“You wish to leave Oldtown so badly,” he said softly, so quietly it was barely a whisper, “that you would pray to marry a man who you have never met?”

“M-my lord, I did not–”

“Look at me.”

Trembling, you raised your gaze to meet his. Ormund’s face had gone still, though the blue of his eyes had turned icy. Your stomach lurched. 

“I have risked much to raise you,” Ormund began, leaning in closer to you. “I have shielded you from those at court who question why King Viserys cast his youngest daughter out of King’s Landing. I have protected you from men who would use your blood and name for their own advancement. I have purged you of the evils of Valyria and shaped you into a proper woman. And now, now you hate me enough that would you leave my bed for a stranger?”

Heat burned at your cheeks, hearing Ormund speak like that. Like your shared bed was something…you could not finish the thought. “No, Ormund, please, I don’t–”

“You hate me enough that you would question my judgement?” he pressed, voice lowering to a gravelly hum. “You believe you know better than I? That I am ignorant?”

Hot tears had begun to spill over, wetting your lashes and blurring your vision. “I don’t, my lord, I don’t know b-better than you, I only wanted–”

“Tell me, then.” Ormund seized your face in one hand, his rings digging into your cheeks as he forced your chin upward. “Tell me that you do not wish to leave me.”

“I-I do not wish to leave you, my lord,” you choked, sobbing fully now. 

“Tell me that no man could care for you as I have.”

“No man could c-care for me as you have!”

His hand tightened enough around your chin that your cheeks squished together. His face, though, had shifted, a diseased softness bleeding into it. “Now, you must tell me what you have forgotten to say.”

Shame and something hotter burned low in your gut. He always made you say the words like this. When you had no option but to force the truth out of you. 

“I…” your breath shuddered. “I love you.”

Ormund’s grip refused to loosen. “Again, please.”

The words caught in your throat, scraping like sand. “I love you, Ormund.”

Finally, his face eased, and so did his hold. 

“There,” he murmured, sickeningly tender as he wiped his thumb across your cheek, catching one of your stray tears. “Was that so difficult to say?”

You shook your head quickly. You did not trust your voice. 

Seemingly satisfied, Ormund rose from where he was crouched, dusting off his breeches. The matter was finished. He returned to his desk, lowering himself in his chair, no trace of the man who had just seconds ago demanded the sick truth of your devotion. You remained frozen, unable to move, cheeks wet and burning. You suddenly were conscious of how horrible you must look, swollen eyes and shaking hands. 

Ormund glanced up from his papers. “You will go and ready yourself for the evening’s feast now.”

Numb, you stared at him. He raised one brow in question. Ormund did not like to repeat himself. 

“Y-yes, my lord,” you stuttered. 

“Wear the blue silk. The one with the square neckline,” he dipped his quill into the ink, already moved on from the excitement and back to his usual self. He glanced up once more, eyes moving across your face. “And…have the women repair your face. It would be quite unbecoming to our guests to see you have upset yourself.”

You were thoroughly humiliated. “Yes, my lord.”

Legs shaking slightly, you rose and smoothed your skirts. 

“And, one more thing,” Ormund spoke, though he continued reading the parchment he held. “You will not speak with Lord Ashford this evening.”

You paused. Was this a trap? “Would it…would it not appear discourteous if I refused to–”

“The matter has already been decided, my girl. You have no need to encourage him further.”

“I…I understand.” You bowed, trying not to trip over your still unsteady feet, and then turned towards the door. You had just put your hand on the latch when Ormund spoke again.

“Have you forgotten something?”

You paused, and then looked back in the solar. Ormund had finally lifted his eyes from the parchment and was leaning back in his seat. He tapped one finger against his cheek. 

Your cheeks grew hotter, though you had done this hundreds of times before. Thousands, perhaps. You crossed the solar to where Ormund sat, his expression completely neutral. Heart beating in your throat, you bent carefully and pressed your lips briefly to his cheek. He caught your wrist before you could retreat.

“Once more, properly this time,” he commanded.

You swallowed and kissed him again, lingering this time until you felt the faint scrape of where he had shaved that morning and breathed in the familiar fragrance of his pomander.

Ormund released his grip on you, mouth curled in a smile. “Good girl. You may go now.”

You bowed, lower this time, and left the solar with the warm and humiliating feeling you had become accustomed to now living in the very place Ormund had hollowed out inside you over years and years. 

As you walked down the halls of Hightower, face lowered so any passerbys would not catch a glimpse of your reddened cheeks and puffy eyes, you wondered why you felt the way you did. 

Lord Ashford would be at the feast that evening, and though Ormund had forbidden you from speaking to him, you knew that you would search for him among the gathered faces. For what, you could not say. To prove something, perhaps. But what, exactly?

That Ormund was right? Or that he was wrong? 

And afterward…no matter the excitement from the day, you had not forgotten Ormund’s reminder that morning. 

“It is the seventh day.”

You dreaded the fact, but not for the ritual that awaited you, but rather the shameful fact it made you excited. 

It seemed this was to be a day of contradictions.

You wanted Lord Ashford to see you, and you hoped he never appeared so that you might obey Ormund without temptation. You wanted Ormund to loosen his hold upon you, and you wanted him to swear that he would never allow you to belong to anyone else.

How could both desires live in the same body? The same heart? You did not know.

You knew only that, by the end of the night, Ormund would decide which desire you were permitted to keep.

taglist

🏷️: @bloodravens @exxotiic @arkadiaphilosopher @the-avengers-ate-my-tongue @syrligmarx @wife-of-gojo @h9704 @lauriejayy @hardkiddonut

[sickobuff]

this is so well written i'm losing my mind

[total-killer-brainrot]

thinking ab.... titus danforth covered in blood beating the shit out of me

[sickobuff]

we deserved more of sean bean as odysseus. hottest he's ever been.

[ohbo-ohno]

just watched 'send help' with rachel mcadams (didn't like it) but it's lowkey sooo ghost x reader sorry but like.

maybe you're a personal assistant for someone important, and the plane you're on for some work trip crashes. you and a personal guard who everyone called 'ghost' are the only one who wash up on the shore of an abandoned island. you wake up before him and do your best approximation of cpr, try to cover his body from the bugs and smack away the crabs because what the fuck else are you supposed to do. he wakes up eventually, thank god, and seems... far more comfortable than you

so you follow him around some. sue you, he knows how to make shelter, he collects rain water easily, and when you find a fruit tree, he lifts you up on his shoulders (without asking first, but still) to reach it. he's quiet, and big enough to be scary without even trying, but he's the only thing helping keep you alive.

a few days in he finds boar tracks. when he says he's going hunting you try to convince him otherwise - you don't have a weapon, how are you even going to kill that thing? it's not a prey animal, it's going to come after you! listen, not to sound selfish, but i'm kinda screwed if you go off and get yourself killed! but he doesn't listen, and you get so frustrated you storm off, stressed and overwhelmed and already convinced he's gone

you're relaxing at the fire later, arms wrapped around your knees while you watch the embers float up into the dark sky. and there's a sound behind you that nearly gives you a heart-attack, a sight that all but does the job. it's ghost, soaked in blood, dragging a corpse nearly his size by the leg behind him.

oh my god, you'd say, because he actually managed to do it. you fawn over him, making sure he's not hurt, then shift to cheering and celebrating. and he's hot, radiating with it, with the energy of a predator who completed a satisfying hunt. do you know how to cook this thing? you'd ask, and he does.

it's only when you reach for a piece of the cooked haunch that he stops you, holding you easily by the wrist. not yet, he says. haven't done much to deserve it, have you?

what? you say

had to work for it, didn't i? he says. had to earn my keep. don't see why you shouldn't have to do the same.

it's only when his hand drops to his belt that you fully realize what he's telling you. he tugs you easily to your knees, the fire at your back as he pulls your face close

[acecroft]

SHAWN HATOSY as Titus Danforth in Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (2026)

[sickobuff]

I'm always down for a long oc or reader fics. I love seeing people's ocs! also even better if maybe you could throw a little negan x oc moments in there too 🫣

who would i be if i didn't??

[sickobuff]

I'm down for a twd longfic with oc reader

that's all i need.

[sickobuff]

total shot in the dark but would anyone care for a canon-abiding twd longfic with an oc-ish reader insert x daryl dixon...

like episode by episode (mostly) with reader kinda just jammed right into the story with them

[sickobuff]

The punishment fic was so good. You write negan exactly the way he would've reacted, like I loved the dialogues it feels so him. He really was so damn mean but at the same time he likes to give an illusion that he's not as bad as others, like simon, so I fear his manipulative tactics would work on me. I would never leave his side lol

i can't tell you how much this ask means to me lol, thank you so so much. i absolutely love writing dialogue for him bc he's got such a particular way of talking, he's so much fun to play around with. and trust, he'd get into my head too lmao

[hammersanvil]

Baelor and Maekar Targaryen by CrazyTom

[bloodcloverthelast]

The last words of a true knight;

And a brother

(Also please ignore the spelling mistake thank you)

[ceilidho]

a beginner's guide to nesting

Lately, you’ve been thinking about having a baby. Or: the fertility clinic au Part 1 masterlist

It must be the mother of all quarter-life crises for you to be as torn up about this as you are. 

(‘Mother of all’—what an apt phrase for a time like this.)

Two of your friends have babies and suddenly it’s all you can think about. Chubby cheeks and wrinkly fingers; diaper bags stuffed to the brim and shrill baby screams piercing through the house.

You try to help them out as best you can in those first few months, coming over with dinner wrapped in foil and snacks in Tupperware for the exhausted parents, offering to help run errands or tidy up the place while they try to catch up on sleep. The picture perfect friend.

You never thought it’d hit you like this until it does. Baby fever à la max. Even the word ‘fever’ undersells it—the feeling that overtakes you is like a blazing inferno, burning away every other want or desire apart from the one currently tearing you asunder. 

It’s all you can think about from that point on. Babies, babies, babies. The milky smell of their heads, the flexible cartilage of their noses, their pudgy, wrinkly yawns and soft sighs. You make excuses to visit, offering to babysit whenever they look like they could use a night out, your agenda so transparent that anyone with eyes could see it. 

All you can think when you look at them is that your life has been looking a lot like a house of cards these days: all style and no substance. 

They get in your head, alright. That ominous they; not a specific person or group, just a nebulous, widespread opinion permeating far too many corners of your world. All that fearmongering about babymaking windows and that talk of rapidly vanishing fecundity—your eyes nearly bulge out of your head when you come across a TikTok of a thirty-six year old calling her eggs geriatric—and by the end of it, you swear you can hear your biological clock booming between your ears, one swinging gong after another. 

You’re able to keep the beast at bay for a bit by tricking yourself into thinking that it’s just in your head. Just one of those things. You’re getting older—of course at some point you’d start to worry about the things you never got a chance to do. FOMO. Regrets blooming into full-blown crises. It’s only natural that it would start to get to you eventually. 

Trying to convince yourself of that is not enough to shake the damn urgency from your blood though. You’re like a dog with a bone, too many late nights spent scrolling through parenting forums and conception tips, neither of which are of much use to you as a childless, partnerless person not currently trying for a baby. What does it matter to you if smoking reduces your chances of getting pregnant by forty percent? You don’t even smoke. 

You might actually want to have a baby though. Mindblowing after all this time, to think that maybe it wasn’t just a fleeting fancy. 

Mindblowing, then abruptly terrifying. 

Your present situation is a bit dire. It’s been several years since you last had a partner, none you ever would’ve ever considered having a baby with. Absurd—worse than absurd even. And despite everything, despite the self-imposed countdown ticking away in your head and the stress causing your spine to curl in a half-inch more every single day, you are, thankfully, not desperate enough to reach out to any of them. 

So you try. For a short period of time, you make a real, concerted effort to find a partner, going on three dates in a week, each more appalling than the last. It’s the last one that breaks you, your date not only unbearably dismissive to the waitstaff but also entirely uninterested in discussing anything about your life, completely preoccupied with recounting the minutiae of his own life story. 

A swing and a miss. You made an effort at least, put yourself out there. Tried to do things the old-fashioned way. 

It’s the twenty-first century though, for goodness’ sakes; there are more ways to start a family than just the tried-and-true method. 

And that’s how you wind up here, at a fertility clinic on a Tuesday afternoon, PTO plugged into your work calendar with a secretive little “Appointment” reason left for being out of office. It’s no office-busybody’s business though. They don’t need to know about the increasingly debilitating need to have a baby that’s been overtaking you these past few months. 

It would clear a lot of things up, but it still isn’t anyone’s business.

The waiting room is a simple, unadorned roost of a room, the walls lined with plastic eggshell-like chairs for all the eggs soon to be hatched. An oddly sterile space for the purpose it serves. It would be a little uncomfortable if it weren’t like every other waiting room in existence, minus any snivelling sick people.

There are other people besides you. Or rather, there were people. People that have already come and gone, not quite so anxious as to turn up an hour early for their two o’clock appointment, their stomachs grumbling from skipping lunch. 

And so after the third couple goes in for their appointment with the specialist, you’re left on your own for a bit until a new person walks in. 

A man this time, all by his lonesome. 

And boy is he a specimen so fine that you can’t help but hope that he’s come to make a deposit. If they let you pick your donor based on build and gait alone, you think you’d have your man right here. You can barely drag your eyes away from him, glued to the rounded muscle of his back, gliding over the curve of his shoulders and up the thick of his neck.

After a brief conversation with the receptionist to check in, he drums his fingers across the counter and takes a seat on one of the little egg chairs along the wall facing yours. 

Where he then proceeds to lift his head and lock eyes with you. 

In retrospect, you wish you could describe it as a magical moment, but in reality, you just freeze in place, embarrassed at being caught staring. He’s a decently handsome enough man to be good fodder for any later self-care. Square-jawed and bearded.

Good hairline for his age, which you don’t want to take a crack at guessing, but if you had to, it would have to be somewhere around his mid-forties. Maybe late. But it touches him in just the right way, evident in the lines on his forehead and the pull of the skin around his eyes, his beard just ever so slightly flecked with the barest hints of grey. 

The writing on the threadbare shirt he has on, almost hidden beneath the plaid shirt layered over it, is barely legible after countless washes. You can almost see straight through it. If you pinched the fabric between your fingers, you think your nails would poke right through. You could rip it right off him, get a better look at the dense pecs that you can just barely make out through his shirt.

You swallow, that thought catching you off guard. 

Despite your own embarrassment, his gaze holds steady. Some people aren’t born with shame as a built-in foghorn. Some people look out into the world and genuinely believe it is theirs to conquer, raised on a diet of self-confidence and boldness, free-range audacity. 

He’s bold enough, in fact, to rise to his feet and cross to the other side of the waiting room, taking a seat right beside you. He sits down beside you like you're old friends, like there's nothing strange about a man sitting beside a veritable stranger in a completely empty room.

It’s such a bold move that you don’t even know what to say at first, head turned towards him in the chair next to you now with some dumb expression on your face, gobsmacked.

“Can I help you?” you hear yourself ask, years of socialization coming to the rescue. Thank god the gears start turning in your head after that brief second of bewilderment. 

“Not at all.” And what a voice too, as if his looks weren’t enough. All unintentional deep-chested purr, leonine English rumbling out of the depths of him, Northern accent to top it off. “Just thought I might introduce myself. Be polite, seeing as how we’re both here for the same reason.”

Unless he ran ahead of a wife still on her way up the elevator, you don’t think that’s the case. You glance around him just to double check the door. “Are we?”

“Maybe a pick-up instead of a drop-off in your case,” he concedes, a droll little note curled up in his voice. “But that’s not so different when the end result’s the same.”

You swallow and force an awkward smile, ignoring the way your heart speeds up. “Yeah, I guess so. Anyway, nice to meet you, um, circumstances aside.” You hold out a hand, which he doesn’t hesitate to take.

“Nothing wrong with the circumstances, but pleasure to meet you too, love.”

His palm feels huge around yours, a warm, firm grip that only yields a few moments later when you have to make an effort to pull your hand away, holding on for the fleetingest of seconds, long enough for a spark of anxiety to shoot through your chest. 

You hope that’s the end of it when he finally lets go of your hand. Not because you don’t want to chat up an incredibly attractive stranger, but because you couldn’t imagine the timing being worse. 

He, however, seems to have no qualms with carrying on. “Has it taken yet or are you shopping for donors today?”

It’s a horribly invasive question, but you answer it anyway, all buttoned-up and ginger. “Um. No, I’m just here for a consultation. There’ll probably be a lot of paperwork before, um…before we get started.”

“A lot of nonsense for something I reckon we could get done a lot easier together.”

It doesn’t register until it does. Then you just have to look at him and blink, confused. 

“Excuse me?” you ask. 

He cocks an eyebrow. “I haven’t got this wrong, have I? You said you’re here for a baby?”

“Uh, yes, that’s—that’s what I just said.”

“And I’m here to help someone like you have a baby. Seems like we’d be making both of our lives easier if we just skipped all the red tape and saved you the expense.”

“‘Save me the expense’?” you repeat, stunned. 

“Won’t cost anything the natural way.”

You know what he’s insinuating, but you can’t believe it. You actually can’t believe that this man—a stranger, handsome as he might be, good-looking as he might be, husband-envy-inspiring as he might be—would openly proposition you in the waiting room of a fertility clinic. Offer to get you pregnant ‘the natural way’, as if it were a cold drink on a hot day. A side of fries with your order. 

“I—I’m sorry, but that’s incredibly inappropriate,” you eventually wheeze out. 

That gets a laugh out of him, one of those amused huffs that erupts out of him like a bear flicking a bee off its snout. “Can’t be cagey about this sort of thing, love. You have to be direct when you want to get things done.”

“You do know we’re in public, right?”

“I’d be happy to take this somewhere private.”

The heat under your cheeks might actually result in a physical burn. “I…think I’m going to find somewhere else to sit.”

“Ah, don’t worry about that, love, I’m gonna head out anyway.” A satisfied smile tugs at his mouth. “I think I got what I actually came for.”

Your frown deepens. “You haven’t even been called in yet.”

“Not what I meant.”

Before you can ask what he means, he shifts in his seat, leaning closer to you for just a second, but long enough for your heart to suddenly go wild and your pupils to go big as dinner plates. 

“Here,” he grunts, lifting a hip to pull his wallet out of his back pocket, flicking it open and plucking out a business card. He flips your hand over and puts it down on your palm. “That’s my number. When you’re done here, give me a call. I’m sure we can come up with something better than this.”

He taps the card in your hand with a finger. It ricochets through you, the tap rippling up your arm and chest, nearly rocking you back in your seat. Everything he does must be punctuated with the same echoing weight. 

He nods to you on his way out, a secretive smile on his lips, just the barest hint of a lift that you might’ve missed had you not been staring at his face. All you can do is stare though, still absolutely floored, practically speechless as you watch him leave. 

And then you’re alone again, in an entirely different headspace than when you first sat down. 

“John Price?” the receptionist calls out from behind the desk suddenly, but with the man gone, there’s no one else in the waiting room apart from you. “Mr. John Price?”

You blink, stun-locked. You can’t have been the reason he decided to back out of his appointment at the last minute. He must’ve decided to bail at the last minute before throwing a Hail Mary in an attempt to get laid. 

That has to be it. He wouldn’t leave because of a brief interaction with you. 

The waiting room feels a lot emptier without him now that he’s gone, as if by being made aware of his presence, everything has been indelibly altered. Changed. Slightly less interesting somehow.

You hover somewhere between bewilderment and affront until a flicker of giddiness steals in. Tamp that back down. He's gone, and with him the impossible audacity of what just came out of his mouth. You stare at the door that he just disappeared through, lips parting around a reply you'll never get to deliver, then let out a sharp, disbelieving scoff. The gall. 

And yet, despite yourself, you can't quite smother the giddiness bubbling low in the pit of your stomach. Your fingers curl around the business card in your hand. 

Eventually it’s your turn. You almost miss the sound of your own name until a lady in purple scrubs repeats it, sending you shooting to your feet. You follow her as she leads you down a hall and towards an open office just as clean and spartan as the waiting room. All there is in her office is a desk, a bookshelf, and a mobile ultrasound machine. Practically empty for all intents and purposes.

Ok lady, you think, sitting down across from her, what’s it gonna take to put a baby in me?

“Four thousand dollars,” she says matter-of-factly, the earlier part of your conversation long forgotten after hearing the price. 

That just about knocks all the wind out of you. “Oh,” you bleat, the prospect of ever getting pregnant suddenly a sad and distant dream.

“Per cycle,” she further clarifies, much to your dismay, sliding a couple pamphlets your way. “We’re always hopeful that it’ll take on the first cycle, but we typically see about three to four cycles of IUI before conception occurs.” 

IUI—intrauterine insemination. The sperm they have to shove up inside you to try and knock you up. At four thousand dollars a pop. 

“There’s no…first time discount?”

“Excuse me?”

“Like the, um…like the home buyer’s loan.”

She seems vaguely apologetic when she shakes her head at least, though that doesn’t really ease the sting. “No, unfortunately. Most of our customers are first time parents, so—”

It wouldn’t make much business sense. “Yeah, no, I get it.”

You do your best to pay attention to the rest of the conversation and ask the right questions, but the sticker shock makes it hard to focus. At some point, the consultation must end because she sends you off with a folder full of pamphlets and QR codes to scan, and a follow-up appointment booked two weeks out for a blood test and a pelvic ultrasound.

No music on the drive home, just silence to let the events of the day marinate. 

You know it’s likely just this clinic. It’s not like there aren’t other, probably cheaper clinics. But it’s the principle of the matter, the one factor that you hadn’t considered in this whole endeavour—you’d assumed, obviously, that raising a child in and of itself wouldn’t be cheap, but you hadn't even contemplated that the run-up to actually getting pregnant might be so cost prohibitive. 

If you even get pregnant. You exhale in a rush, the thought hitting you like a sledgehammer. God, you might not even get pregnant. You might go through the whole treatment, waste thousands of dollars, and go half-crazy begging the universe to let you get knocked up, and it might not even take. 

Dinner is a glass of white wine and burrito straight from the freezer, in no mood to cook or clean even a single dish. You should be cutting down on your alcohol consumption in anticipation of fertility treatments, but that’ll be a task for a later, less devastated you. You’ll rinse the hot sauce off your plate when you’re done eating and leave it in the sink for tomorrow morning. 

It’s not how you wanted the day to end. You were hoping to come home invigorated and inspired, already prepping for the next steps in the process. Instead it feels like you’ve taken a massive step back. 

Occasionally you like to look up flights to other countries just to imagine what it might be like to get away from your life for a bit, but the ticket price always brings you back down to reality. 

This isn’t like that though; this isn’t some temporary flight of fancy or some pie in the sky that you’ll spend decades chasing down in your dreams, hoping for just a single bite or even just a whiff. This is something you actually, genuinely want. A baby. Something you can take with you into the future, something you can build your life around.

There’s got to be another way. 

It’s a physical weight in your front pocket. You can feel it now, burning a hole in your hip. When you pull it out, the name John Price is printed on the card in a crisp, typewriter font, his phone number and occupation printed in the same sized font just beneath it. 

You stare at the card long enough for your eyes to go dry. Blink. Breathe out, reluctance giving way to acceptance, as tentative as it might be. It certainly wouldn’t be the strangest thing to ever happen. A fun night with a good-looking man, with the added benefit of getting a baby out of it, no strings attached. Not the most irresponsible decision anyone has ever made. Some people join the army, after all. 

A shiver runs up your spine when you remember the way he worded it though. Sweat on your upper lip that you have to lick off, the salt sinking into the ridges of your tongue. You don’t think he meant turkey basters and plastic cups by getting it done ‘the natural way’. You saw the way he looked at you.  

You could do it for a baby. Let him—and here, you have to squeeze your eyes shut and cover them with your fists—let him do what he has to do to get you pregnant. Cut out the middle man and just let him fit the heavy weight of his body over yours and pry your legs apart to let him sink between your—

You pull out your phone and send him a text.

[hollowhuntress]

daryl dixon would absolutely call his girl “bambi.”

not because it’s cute. because it makes sense.

he notices movement before faces, footsteps before voices. he’d clock immediately that she couldn’t make it twenty feet through the woods without catching a root, stumbling over a log, or snapping enough sticks underfoot to send every deer running.

the first time, “stumblin’ around with two left feet like bambi. gon’ get us killed.” brushing past her.

as time passes, i can just hear him shaking his head with that little half-smirk and going, “c’mere, bambi.”

it just sticks.

[silverlullabies]

Pornstar!Simon who’s been told he can’t fuck you anymore because the way you sound when he’s inside you makes every other costar you’ve had in the past look bad.

The Director pulling him aside with the footage still looping on the monitor, voice low, telling him it was obvious your moans dripping out wet and broken were real in a way you’ve never given the cameras before, obvious now that every gasp and whimper you’d faked with the others was thin and breathy and hollow compared to this and your former costars were bound to complain.

Said it made the lads before him look like they couldn’t even get you properly wet, let alone fuck the sense out of you. Said pairing you with Ghost again was asking for trouble. Too risky. Too fuckin’ real.

Swinging the monitor around to show Ghost the way he had angled his hips so the camera caught his cock stretching your silky cunt half an hour before, thick enough that your walls flutter around him without any acting, slick spilling out around the base every time he bottomed out.

Your fingers scrabbling along the bed every time he ground himself down, too fucked out to really run from the pleasure the way you wanted to, body shaking brain reduced to static goo.

You having a hard time remembering the scripted words you were given, eyes rolling in your sockets, little whimpers and moans punched out “hn-hn-hn-“ every time his hips met yours and the head of his cock kissed your cervix.

Ghost cooing down at you when you miss your cue for the third time, hand pinning your wrists above your head while the other kept your thigh shoved wide, voiced amused when he asks “wha’s amatter? Cat got your tongue, dove?”

Ruined any possibility of you answering when he fucked you deep, making your cunt visibly pulse around him on the monitor, arousal drooling down his balls.

You tried. You really did. You mouth opened, some broken attempt at the first word, but it dissolved into another punched out moan the second he angled just right, letting the camera see the way your eyes rolled in their sockets.

His thumb stroking once over your clit, almost gentle, almost fond. “Tha’s it,” he murmured, “take it. Fuckin’ take it.”

Another missed cue. Another low, rough chuckle. He didn’t really give you room to think. Just kept you pinned and full and dripping while the cameras roled and the script stayed forgotten on the floor somewhere behind the lights.

The director was still talking but Ghost wasn’t listening, instead, just reached over and rewound the tape instead. Watched the part where you tried to speak again. Watched the way your body gave out for him and only him. Watched his own hand on the screen, thumb stroking your clit.

He hit play once more. Let it loop. Thumb hovering over the button, already deciding he didn’t give a fuck what the director had to say about it, he was gonna fuck you again no matter what.