hello!! i saw u were taking requests for beau and thought of this :)
could you do a beau maxwell x reader where reader is friends with allie and hannah. she’s a bit more shy than both of them and doesn’t like to drink a whole lot or really go to parties so she kinda just chills at home most of the time. allie finally convinces her to go out with them and her and beau gut it off but reader thinks he just likes her as a friend but he’s actually so down bad and it lowkey turns into pining/yearning from beau. (reader likes him just assumed he didn’t like her like that)
thanks <3
Beau Maxwell x Fem!Reader
❗️: No warnings besides kissing..
🖌️: hope you guys like this.
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You stood in front of the mirror in Allie’s dorm room, tugging at the hem of the simple black dress she’d convinced you to wear. Your usual weekend uniform was sweatpants and a hoodie in the safety of your own room, curled up with a book or watching something low-key with Hannah.
“I don’t know about this,” you said, voice soft as you adjusted the neckline again. “Parties aren’t really my thing. Too loud. Too many people. I’ll just stand in the corner and feel awkward the whole time.”
Allie, already in a cute red top and jeans, spun around from her vanity with a bright smile. “Come on, YN! You’ve been cooped up in your room studying for weeks. One night out won’t kill you. Hannah’s coming too it’ll be fun. We’ll stick together.”
Hannah, sitting on the bed in a soft blue sweater and skirt, gave you an encouraging nod. “She’s right. We won’t let you get lost in the crowd. And if it sucks, we can leave early. Promise.”
You sighed, fiddling with the strap of your small bag. The three of you had become close friends quickly Allie the bubbly, outgoing one who dragged everyone into adventures, Hannah the sweet and grounded middle ground, and you the quieter, more reserved one who preferred staying in. Parties made your stomach twist with anxiety, but Allie had been begging for weeks.
“Fine,” you relented, smoothing your hands down the dress one last time. “But if I hate it, we’re out after an hour.”
Allie squealed and pulled you into a quick hug. “That’s my girl! You look hot, by the way. Someone’s definitely going to notice.”
You rolled your eyes, cheeks warming. “I’m not there to get noticed. I’m there to survive.”
Hannah smiled softly as she stood up. “You’ll do great. And if anyone’s too much, we’ve got your back.”
The three of you headed out, Allie chattering excitedly the whole walk to the football house party. The music was already thumping when you arrived, the front yard littered with people laughing and drinking. Your nerves spiked immediately the noise, the crowd, the unfamiliar energy. You stuck close to Allie and Hannah as they led you inside.
The living room was packed, bodies moving to the beat, red cups everywhere. You found a relatively quiet spot near the edge of the room, nursing a water (you’d politely declined the stronger stuff) while Allie and Hannah chatted with a few people they knew.
That’s when he spotted you.
Beau Maxwell the charming, golden-boy quarterback everyone on campus seemed to know was standing with Dean and a couple of his teammates across the room. His eyes landed on you and stayed there, something shifting in his expression. He’d seen you around campus before, always with Allie or Hannah, always looking like you’d rather be anywhere else. Something about your quiet presence had stuck with him.
He excused himself from the group and made his way over, that easy, warm smile on his face.
“Hey,” he said, stopping a respectful distance away. “You’re Allie and Hannah’s friend, right? I’m Beau.”
You looked up at him, surprised he’d approached. Most people didn’t bother with the quiet girl in the corner. “Yeah. I’m YN.”
“Nice to meet you, YN.” His smile widened, genuine and bright. “First time at one of these?”
You nodded, fiddling with your cup. “Allie dragged me. I don’t usually do parties.”
“Smart choice,” he said, leaning against the wall beside you. “They can get pretty wild. But you look like you’re handling it better than most first-timers.”
You gave a small, shy smile. “Barely. I’m mostly people-watching and hoping no one spills a drink on me.”
Beau chuckled, the sound warm and easy. “I can help with that. I’ll be your personal bodyguard tonight. No spills on my watch.”
The conversation flowed surprisingly easily after that. Beau was charming without being overwhelming asking about your classes, what you liked to do when you weren’t being dragged to parties, sharing funny stories about his teammates that made you laugh softly. He stayed right there with you, never pushing, never leaving your side even when his friends waved him over.
From across the room, Dean nudged Allie. “Look at that. Beau’s down bad already. He’s been staring at her like she hung the moon since he walked over.”
Allie grinned. “She thinks he’s just being friendly. She has no idea how gone he is.”
Beau was, in fact, completely gone. Every quiet laugh you gave, every shy glance you sent his way, every time you tucked a strand of hair behind your ear it all hit him harder than any tackle on the field. He wanted to know everything about you. Wanted to be the reason you smiled more. Wanted to pull you closer and keep you there.
But he played it cool, keeping the conversation light, even as his heart raced every time you looked at him.
The night stretched on, the party swirling around you, but Beau stayed right there pining quietly, yearning in every glance, already completely hooked on the shy girl who didn’t realize she had his full attention.
The party noise swirled around you, but Beau’s attention stayed fixed on you like you were the only calm point in the chaos. He leaned a little closer to be heard over the music, his shoulder brushing yours in a way that felt intentional but not overwhelming.
“So, what do you do when you’re not being dragged to parties by Allie?” he asked, voice warm and genuinely curious. “You seem like the type who has a favorite quiet spot on campus.”
You glanced up at him, surprised by how easy the conversation felt. Most guys at parties tried too hard loud jokes, over-the-top compliments. Beau was just… steady. Listening.
“I like the library’s top floor,” you admitted softly. “Or the bench by the old oak tree when it’s not too crowded. Reading. Sketching sometimes. Nothing exciting.”
Beau’s smile softened, eyes crinkling at the corners. “That sounds perfect. I’m usually stuck on the field or in the weight room, but I get it. Sometimes the quiet is the best part of the day.”
From the corner of your eye, you saw Allie and Hannah watching with matching grins. Allie gave you a not-so-subtle thumbs up. You felt your cheeks warm and looked back at Beau, assuming he was just being nice the friendly, popular guy chatting with the shy friend of his friend’s girlfriend.
He wasn’t. Inside, Beau’s chest felt tight in the best way. The way you spoke quietly, the small smile that tugged at your lips when you mentioned your favorite spots, the way you didn’t try to impress him it all hit him harder than he expected. He wanted to know more. Wanted to be the one who got to sit on that bench with you, sharing the quiet. He was already down bad, pining in a way that surprised even him.
“You should show me that bench sometime,” he said, voice light but sincere. “If you want. No pressure. I promise I won’t talk too much.”
You gave a small, shy laugh. “You seem like the type who talks a lot.”
Beau grinned, rubbing the back of his neck. “Guilty. But I can be quiet when it counts. Especially if it means spending time with someone interesting.”
The compliment made your stomach flutter, but you pushed the feeling down. He’s just being friendly, you told yourself. Popular guys like him don’t go for the quiet girl who prefers staying in.
Allie appeared then, looping her arm through yours. “There you are! Dean’s looking for you, Beau. Something about a bet with the guys.”
Beau glanced at Dean across the room, then back at you, reluctance clear in his eyes. “Duty calls. But I’ll find you later? If that’s okay.”
You nodded, a small smile breaking through. “Yeah. Okay.”
He gave you one last warm look before heading off, heart racing as he walked away. She smiled at me, he thought, already replaying the conversation in his head. God, I’m in trouble.
Allie squeezed your arm as soon as he was gone. “He’s so into you. Did you see the way he looked at you?”
You shook your head, cheeks warm. “He’s just being nice. We were just talking.”
Hannah, who had joined you, smiled softly. “He doesn’t look at just anyone like that. Trust me.”
You brushed it off, the shy part of you convinced it was nothing more than friendly conversation. But across the room, Beau kept stealing glances your way, pining quietly, already counting down the minutes until he could talk to you again.
The night continued, the party loud around you, but every time your eyes met Beau’s across the crowd, something warm and unspoken passed between you even if you didn’t quite believe it yet.
The campus quad was quiet in the late afternoon, sunlight filtering through the leaves of the old oak tree. You sat on your favorite bench with a book open in your lap, legs tucked beneath you, completely absorbed in the story. The world around you felt distant the occasional student walking by, the soft rustle of leaves overhead. This was your place. Peaceful. Safe.
Beau spotted you from across the quad and felt that familiar pull in his chest. He’d been thinking about you nonstop since the party the way you’d smiled shyly when he approached, the quiet way you listened when he talked, the way you seemed to prefer the edges of the crowd rather than the center. He crossed the grass toward you, heart beating a little faster with every step.
He stopped a respectful distance away, not wanting to startle you. “Mind if I join you?”
You looked up, surprised but not displeased. “Sure.”
Beau sat on the other end of the bench, giving you space, but his eyes stayed on you. God, he was down bad. The way the sunlight caught in your hair, the focused expression on your face as you read it all made something warm and aching settle in his chest. He wanted to know what you were reading. Wanted to know what made you smile like that. Wanted to be the reason for more of those small, private smiles.
“What are you reading?” he asked softly, not wanting to break the peaceful moment too much.
You glanced at him, then back at the page. “An old favorite. Fantasy. Escapist stuff.”
Beau nodded, leaning back against the bench. “Sounds perfect. I could use some escape after practice today. Coach ran us hard.”
You gave a small nod, turning a page. The silence between you wasn’t uncomfortable. Beau was content to just sit there, stealing glances at you when he thought you weren’t looking. Every little detail the way you tucked a strand of hair behind your ear, the slight furrow in your brow when something in the book surprised you made his yearning deeper. He wanted to pull you closer. Wanted to know everything about you. Wanted to be the person you felt comfortable enough to share those quiet moments with.
After a while, you closed the book and looked at him. “You don’t have to sit here in silence if you don’t want to.”
“I like the silence,” he said honestly, voice warm. “Especially with you. Most people fill it up. You don’t. It’s nice.”
You gave a small, shy smile, looking down at the book in your lap. Beau’s heart did that stupid flip again. He was completely gone for you the shy girl who preferred books to parties, who listened more than she spoke, who made him feel like he could just be without performing.
The afternoon stretched on like that quiet conversation mixed with comfortable silences. Beau asked about your classes, about what you liked to read, about anything you were willing to share. He hung on every word, storing it away like treasure. Every time you smiled, even a little, he felt it in his chest.
When the sun started to dip lower, he stood reluctantly. “I should let you get back to your book. But… can I walk you to your next class sometime? Or sit with you here again?”
You looked up at him, the shyness still there but something warmer underneath. “Yeah. I’d like that.”
Beau’s smile was bright and genuine as he walked away, heart full and yearning stronger than ever. He was already counting down the minutes until he could see you again.
The lecture hall was emptying out after the guest speaker on modern literature, students filing out in a steady stream. You lingered near the back row, gathering your notes with careful precision, the shy habit of double-checking everything before leaving. The talk had been interesting insightful enough to keep your full attention and you were still mentally replaying a few key points as you slipped your bag over your shoulder.
Beau had been sitting three rows behind you the entire time. He’d chosen the seat deliberately, telling himself it was just because the view was good, but the truth was simpler: he couldn’t stop watching you. The way you leaned forward slightly when something caught your interest, the small nod you gave when a point resonated, the quiet focus that made you seem like you were in your own world. He was starstruck in the most ordinary way completely captivated by how present you were in moments like this, how you absorbed everything without needing to be the center of attention.
He waited until most of the crowd had left before approaching, heart beating a little faster than usual. “Hey. That was a good talk, right? The part about unreliable narrators really stuck with me.”
You looked up, surprised but offering a small, genuine smile. “Yeah, it was. I liked how she connected it to everyday storytelling. Made me think about my own writing.”
Beau’s chest tightened at the way you shared that small piece of yourself so naturally. God, she’s so effortlessly interesting, he thought, fighting the urge to step closer. He wanted to know everything about your writing, about the stories you kept in your head, about the way your mind worked when no one was watching. Instead, he kept his tone light, friendly on the surface while his feelings ran much deeper.
“I’d love to read something of yours sometime,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “If you ever feel like sharing. No pressure.”
You gave a shy laugh, looking down at your notes for a second. “It’s nothing special. Just personal stuff. But… maybe. Thanks for asking.”
Beau felt that familiar pull again the starstruck kind of awe that hit him every time you let him see even a small part of your world. You thought he was just being friendly, the nice guy who chatted with his friends’ friend. He was anything but. He was completely gone, replaying every small smile, every quiet laugh, every time you looked at him like he was just another person in the room while he felt like the luckiest guy alive just to be near you.
They walked out of the lecture hall together, the afternoon sun warm on the quad. Beau matched your pace, stealing glances when he thought you weren’t looking. She has no idea, he thought, heart aching in the best way. How much I think about her. How I replay every conversation. How I want to be the person she feels safe sharing those personal stories with.
You chatted lightly about the lecture as you walked, your voice soft and thoughtful. Beau hung on every word, nodding, asking questions that showed he was truly listening. Inside, he was a mess of yearning wanting to reach for your hand, wanting to tell you how much he looked forward to these moments, wanting to be more than just the friendly guy who happened to be in the same class.
When you reached the path that split toward your next destination, you gave him that small, shy smile again. “Thanks for walking with me. See you around?”
“Definitely,” Beau said, smiling back even as his chest felt tight with everything he wasn’t saying yet. “Looking forward to it.”
He watched you walk away, hands in his pockets, heart full and aching with how much he wanted this wanted you to be more than friendly conversations and shared lectures. He was starstruck, completely and quietly, by the girl who had no idea she’d already taken up so much space in his thoughts.
The bell above the door jingled as you stepped into Della’s, the familiar scent of coffee and fried food wrapping around you like a warm hug. It was a quiet afternoon, the lunch rush long gone, leaving the diner peaceful with only a few scattered customers. You slid into a booth near the window, pulling out your notebook to review notes for your next paper. The soft hum of the jukebox in the corner and the clink of dishes from the kitchen made the perfect background noise for focusing.
Beau spotted you the moment he walked in with Dean. His heart did that familiar flip the one that had become routine whenever he saw you on campus. He’d been thinking about you constantly since that afternoon in the lecture hall: the way you’d smiled shyly when he asked about your writing, the quiet way you listened, the small details that made you so uniquely you. He was completely gone for you, starstruck in the quietest way possible. Every time he saw you, he wanted to know more. Wanted to be the person you felt comfortable sharing those small pieces of yourself with.
Dean noticed immediately. “There she is. Go say hi, lover boy.”
Beau shot him a look but didn’t deny it. He crossed the diner and stopped by your booth, hands in his pockets to keep from fidgeting. “Hey. Mind if I join you? Dean’s meeting someone, so I’m on my own for a bit.”
You looked up, surprised but offering a small, genuine smile. “Sure. Have a seat.”
Beau slid into the booth across from you, his eyes soft as he took you in the way you tucked a strand of hair behind your ear, the focused expression that made his chest ache with how much he wanted this to be more than friendly. “What are you working on?”
“Just notes for a paper,” you said softly, closing the notebook slightly. “Nothing exciting.”
“Everything you do seems exciting to me,” Beau replied, the words slipping out before he could stop them. He rubbed the back of his neck, a little embarrassed but honest. “I mean… you always look so focused. Like you’re really in it. I admire that.”
You gave a shy laugh, looking down at the table. “It’s just school stuff. You’re the one out there winning games. That seems a lot more exciting.”
Beau shook his head, leaning forward a little. “Nah. I see the same guys every day. You… you’re different. In a good way. I like hearing about what you’re working on. Makes me feel like I’m getting to know the real you.”
The waitress came by then, and Beau ordered for both of you your usual black coffee and a muffin, remembering from the times he’d seen you at the library. You smiled softly when he did, the shyness making your cheeks warm.
As you talked, Beau felt that familiar yearning settle deeper in his chest. Every small detail the way you played with the edge of your notebook when you got thoughtful, the quiet laugh you gave when he made a dumb joke, the way you listened like his words actually mattered made him want more. He wanted to be the person you called when you needed someone. Wanted to be the reason you smiled more. Wanted to pull you closer and tell you how much he thought about you when he was on the field, in class, lying awake at night.
“You know,” he said after a while, voice softer, “I keep thinking about that lecture. The way you talked about unreliable narrators. Made me want to read more. Made me want to know what else you think about.”
You looked at him, the shyness still there but something warmer underneath. “I like talking about books with you. You actually listen.”
“I always will,” Beau said, the words carrying more weight than he let on. Inside, his heart was racing. She has no idea how much I want this. How much I want her.
The conversation flowed easily after that books, classes, small stories from your lives. Beau hung on every word, starstruck and yearning, while you felt that quiet pull toward him growing stronger, even if you still thought he was just being friendly.
The afternoon stretched on like that, the diner quiet around you, the connection between you deepening one small, careful moment at a time.
One Thursday evening, Allie and Hannah convinced you to join them for a low-key movie night in their dorm instead of anything loud or crowded. You arrived feeling comfortable and relaxed, ready for the cozy familiarity of just the three of you unwinding.
You had barely settled onto the floor with blankets and pillows when a knock sounded at the door.
Allie bounced up to answer it. “Perfect timing!”
Beau stepped in behind Dean, holding a couple of takeout bags from the pizza place everyone liked. His eyes found you immediately, softening in that warm way that always made your pulse quicken just a little.
“Hey,” he said, voice low and easy as he set the bags down. “Hope we’re not crashing. Dean mentioned you guys were doing movies, and I figured extra pizza never hurts.”
Hannah smiled and scooted over to make room. “You’re always welcome. Especially with food.”
Garrett followed a moment later, dropping down beside Hannah and pulling her close with that effortless affection the two of them shared. “Couldn’t let Logan and the guys drag me into some loud hangout when this was an option,” he said, grinning as Hannah leaned into him.
You shifted comfortably on the blanket, a small smile tugging at your lips. Beau dropped down right beside you, close enough that his presence felt steady and reassuring without overwhelming the space.
The movie starteda laid-back mystery everyone had pickedand the room filled with soft commentary, laughter, and the rustle of pizza boxes. Beau stayed right there with you the whole time. When the lights were low, you noticed him glancing your way more than at the screen, his expression warm and focused. Every quiet laugh you let out drew a matching smile from him, like he was collecting those moments.
Inside, Beau was a mess of yearning. The way you relaxed into the evening, the soft focus in your eyes during the tense scenes, the easy way you existed in the middle of the groupit all hit him deeply. He wanted to pull you closer, to wrap an arm around you the way Garrett did with Hannah, to make sure you felt as safe and wanted as you made him feel just by being near. But he kept it light on the surface, content for now to share the same blanket and the same quiet space with you.
Halfway through, Allie paused the movie for snacks. Hannah and Garrett slipped into the little kitchen area together, leaving you and Beau in a gentle pocket of quiet on the floor.
“You okay?” he asked softly. “Not too much noise or anything?”
You shook your head, meeting his eyes. “It’s nice. Really nice, actually.”
Beau’s chest tightened with hope. “Yeah? Good. I like this too. Being here with you.”
The words carried more weight than either of you said out loud. You looked down for a second, still convinced he was just being his usual kind, friendly self. Beau, meanwhile, fought the urge to say everything he was feelingthat these quiet nights with you had become his favorite part of the week, that he thought about you constantly, that he was already completely gone for the girl who preferred calm evenings and still saw him as just a good friend.
When the others returned, the movie resumed, but the air between you and Beau felt warmer, a little more charged. He stayed until the credits rolled, helping clean up even when you told him it was fine. At the door later, he lingered while the others headed out first.
“Walk you back?” he offered, hands in his pockets.
You nodded, and the short walk across campus was peaceful under the evening lights. Beau matched your pace, his shoulder brushing yours now and then in a way that felt natural. At your door, you turned to him.
“Thanks for tonight. It was really good.”
Beau smiled, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Anytime. Text me if you want to hit the bench or the library tomorrow… or just hang out. Whatever works for you.”
“I will,” you said softly, that small genuine smile appearing again.
He waited until you were inside before walking away, heart full and aching with how much he wanted more. The pining had only grown stronger, quiet and steady, as he replayed every moment from the night and counted down the hours until he could see you again.
Beau couldn’t stop thinking about the movie night. Days later, the memory still lingeredthe way you had relaxed beside him on the blanket, the soft sound of your laugh during a quiet moment in the film, how perfectly you fit into the group without ever trying to take up space. It left him restless in the best and worst ways. Practice felt longer than usual, every drill interrupted by thoughts of you. He wanted more of those evenings. He wanted to be the person you looked forward to seeing, the one you turned to when the world felt a little too loud.
That afternoon, after a tough session on the field, Beau found himself back at the off-campus house Dean shared with Garrett, Logan, and Tucker. The place was familiar, filled with the usual chaos of hockey gear, half-eaten snacks, and loud banter. Dean was sprawled on the couch, flipping through channels, when Beau dropped into the armchair across from him with a long sigh.
Dean raised an eyebrow, smirking. “Alright, spill. You’ve been walking around like you got sacked in practice but there’s no bruise. What’s going on in that quarterback head of yours?”
Beau rubbed the back of his neck, staring at the floor for a second before meeting Dean’s knowing look. “It’s… her. Y/N. I can’t stop thinking about her, man. The movie night the other night? I sat there the whole time trying to play it cool, but every time she laughed or leaned in a little closer to hear something, it felt like I got hit harder than any tackle. She’s just so… real. Quiet in this way that makes everything else fade. I keep replaying how she smiled when I offered to walk her back. Small, shy, but genuine. God, I’m down bad.”
Dean let out a low whistle, sitting up straighter with a grin. “Finally admitting it out loud, huh? I’ve seen the way you look at her. You’ve been gone since that first party Allie dragged her to. The way you parked yourself next to her the whole night, ignoring everyone else? Classic. And don’t think I missed how you brought her favorite coffee to the library last week without her even asking.”
Beau groaned, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “She has no idea. She thinks I’m just being friendly because of you guys and Allie and Hannah. I sit there on that bench with her under the oak tree, listening to her talk about her books or whatever paper she’s working on, and all I can think about is how much I want to reach over and tuck that strand of hair behind her ear. How I want to be the reason she feels comfortable enough to stay out longer instead of heading straight home. I replay every conversation. The way her voice gets softer when she’s sharing something personal… it kills me. I’m out here counting down the minutes until I can see her again, and she probably just sees me as the nice guy who hangs around the group.”
Dean chuckled, but there was real understanding in his eyes. He’d been there himself with Alliechasing, wanting, figuring it all out. “Look, Maxwell, you’re doing it right. She’s shy. She doesn’t do the big parties or the loud scenes. You’re giving her space, showing up in the quiet moments. That’s not nothing. Hannah’s the same way in a lot of respectsGarrett had to learn to slow down and meet her where she was. You keep showing up like that and she’ll start to see it. The way you remember the little things? The coffee, the bench, asking about her writing? That stuff sticks. She might not realize it yet, but you’re already different from the rest of these idiots on campus.”
Beau nodded slowly, the yearning tightening in his chest like a familiar ache. “I just… I want to do this right. I don’t want to push. Last night after the movie, when I walked her back, it took everything not to tell her how much I look forward to every single time we run into each other. How the field feels easier knowing I might see her after. How I turned down a team thing the other night just because there was a chance she’d be at that low-key hangout. I’m starstruck, Dean. Like, actually starstruck by how steady and thoughtful she is. Most people fill the silence. She doesn’t. And I could sit in it with her forever.”
Dean clapped him on the shoulder, expression turning more serious. “Then keep doing exactly what you’re doing. Be there. The rest will come. And heyif you need backup, Allie and Hannah have been rooting for this since day one. Garrett too, probably. He gets the whole ‘quiet girl who changes everything’ thing.”
Beau managed a laugh, some of the tension easing. Talking it out helped, even if the feelings only burned brighter afterward. He spent the rest of the afternoon hanging around the house, but his mind kept drifting back to youwondering what you were doing, if you were reading on that bench, if you’d text him about meeting up again.
Later that week, the group gathered again at Della’s Diner for a casual lunch. Garrett and Hannah sat close on one side of the booth, his arm draped casually behind her. Allie and Dean were across from them, trading playful jabs. You slid into the booth comfortably, and Beau took the spot right beside you without hesitation.
Conversation flowed easilystories from recent classes, Garrett recounting a funny practice moment, Hannah sharing a song she was working on. Beau hung on every word you said, asking gentle follow-up questions about your notes or the book you’d mentioned last time. Under the table, his knee brushed yours once and stayed there, a small point of contact that sent warmth through him.
Inside, the yearning surged stronger than ever. She’s right here, he thought, stealing another glance while you laughed softly at something Allie said. And I want this every day. The easy talks, the shared spaces, the way she makes everything feel calmer. He was completely hooked, pining in every quiet moment, already imagining walking you back after this, hoping for just a few more minutes alone with you.
The afternoon stretched on, filled with good food and better company, but for Beau it all circled back to youthe shy girl who had no idea she’d already taken up every spare corner of his heart. He was patient, steady on the outside, but inside he was falling deeper with every passing day, waiting for the moment you might finally see it too.
The group lunch at Della’s stretched pleasantly into the afternoon. Garrett and Hannah eventually had to head out for one of her music rehearsals, while Allie and Dean lingered a little longer before Dean dragged Allie off with a wink about “studying.” That left just you and Beau in the booth, the diner quiet around you now that the lunch rush had passed.
Beau’s heart hammered against his ribs as the comfortable silence settled. He had been thinking about this for daysrehearsing it in his head during practice, on the walk back from Dean’s the other night, even while sitting on the bench with you. Every moment with you made the yearning sharper: the way you listened so attentively, the small smiles that felt like rewards, the steady calm you brought to his chaotic world. He wanted more than friendly hangouts. He wanted dates. Real ones. But the thought of messing it up, of making you uncomfortable, had kept the words stuck in his throat until now.
He fiddled with the edge of a napkin, clearing his throat awkwardly. “So… um. This was nice. Like, really nice. I always like when it’s just… us. Talking. Or even not talking.” He rubbed the back of his neck, cheeks warming as he realized how clumsy that sounded. “What I mean is… I was wondering if maybe… you’d want to do something? Just us? Like… not with the whole group this time.”
You looked up at him, surprised, a flicker of warmth in your expression that only made his nerves worse.
Beau pushed on, the words tumbling out in a rush that was far from the smooth delivery he’d imagined. “There’s this little bookstore-café thing a couple blocks off campus. They have good coffee and it’s quiet, and they do this thing on weekends where people can just sit and read or whatever. No pressure or anything loud. Or if that sounds terrible, we could… I don’t know, walk around the quad or get food somewhere else. Or not. You don’t have to. I just… I really like spending time with you. A lot. More than just the group stuff. So… yeah. Would you want to? Go out? With me?”
He winced internally at how awkward it came outstilted, rambling, nothing like the confident quarterback everyone else saw on the field. His hands had gone clammy, and he forced them still under the table. Smooth, Maxwell. Real smooth. But he couldn’t take it back now. The yearning had built up too much; he needed you to know, even if it was messy.
You blinked at him, processing, a shy smile slowly forming. The surprise was clear, but there was something softer underneath it toolike the idea wasn’t entirely unwelcome.
Beau’s chest tightened with hope even as embarrassment lingered. “You don’t have to answer right now,” he added quickly, voice gentler. “I know you like things low-key, and I don’t want to make it weird or anything. I just… keep thinking about how much better everything is when you’re around. The bench, the library, movie nights… all of it. So if you’re free this weekend, or whenever, I’d really like to take you out. Properly.”
He met your eyes, the earnestness winning out over the awkwardness. Inside, the pining roared louder than ever. He wanted this so badlythe chance to show you how much he meant it, to be the person who made your quiet world feel even better. Every second waiting for your answer felt endless, his heart laid out more openly than he’d planned, but he didn’t regret it. Not when it was for you.
The diner hummed softly around you both as Beau waited, hopeful and vulnerable, the golden-boy quarterback reduced to an awkwardly smitten guy who was completely, undeniably down bad for the shy girl across from him.
Beau shifted in the booth, his fingers crumpling the edge of the napkin a little more as the words hung between you. The silence stretched for what felt like forever to him, though it was only a few seconds. His pulse thrummed in his ears, the yearning that had been building for weeks pressing hard against his chest. He wanted thiswanted you so much it made his usual confidence waver.
“I mean… on a date,” he clarified, voice dropping lower and a little rough around the edges from nerves. “I’d really like to take you on a date. Just us. The bookstore-café sounds good because it’s quiet and you can pick whatever you want to read or drink, and I promise I won’t talk the whole time if you don’t want me to. Or we can do something else. Anything you’d like. I just… I like you, Y/N. Like, like you. Not just as friends. So yeah… would you go on a date with me?”
He looked at you then, eyes warm and hopeful despite the awkward stumble of his delivery. His cheeks were flushed, and he rubbed the back of his neck again, clearly out of his element but too sincere to hide it.
You felt a flutter in your stomach, the surprise giving way to a genuine, shy smile. The way he had been showing up for you all the quiet conversations, the way he listened, the steady presence that never pushed had slowly chipped away at your assumption that it was purely friendly. “Yes,” you said softly, warmth coloring your voice. “I’d like that. A date sounds nice.”
Beau’s face lit up, relief and joy breaking across his expression so openly it made your own smile widen. “Really?” he breathed, like he couldn’t quite believe it. “Okay. Great. Awesome. This weekend? Saturday afternoon? I can pick you up, or meet you there, whatever works best for you.”
“Saturday sounds perfect,” you replied, the shyness still there but mixed with a quiet excitement you hadn’t expected.
The rest of the time in the diner passed in a softer haze. Beau couldn’t stop smiling, even as he tried to play it cool. Inside, the yearning had transformed into something brighter, more hopeful, but no less intense. She said yes. The thought looped in his head as he walked you back toward your dorm afterward, stealing glances at you the whole way. He wanted to reach for your hand but held back, not wanting to rush. Instead, he kept the conversation light asking what kind of books you might want to browse, promising not to embarrass himself by trying to impress you with football stories.
When you reached your door, he lingered, hands in his pockets. “I’m really glad you said yes. I’ve been wanting to ask for a while. You make everything better, you know that?”
You gave him that small smile again, the one that always hit him right in the chest. “I’m looking forward to it too, Beau.”
He waited until you were safely inside before walking away, heart racing with a mix of triumph and deeper longing. The pining hadn’t disappeared it had only grown warmer, more focused. He already couldn’t wait for Saturday, imagining the quiet moments ahead, the chance to show you how much he truly saw you.
Word spread quickly through the group. Allie squealed when you told her and Hannah the next day, pulling you into a hug. “I knew it! He’s been so obvious.”
Hannah smiled softly, Garrett’s arm around her as they all hung out later that evening. “He’s a good one,” she said. “Garrett says he’s been talking about you nonstop.”
Garrett chuckled. “Understatement. The guy’s whipped.”
Beau, sitting across the room, caught your eye and offered a sheepish but happy grin. The awkwardness of the ask was already fading into anticipation. He was still quietly starstruck, still yearning for every future moment, but now there was the sweet knowledge that you had said yes. Saturday couldn’t come soon enough.
The Saturday afternoon sun was warm as Beau pulled up outside your dorm to pick you up for the date. He looked a little nervous but genuinely happy when you climbed in, offering you that warm, crinkly-eyed smile that always made your stomach flutter.
“Ready?” he asked, gripping the wheel a bit tighter than usual.
You nodded, smiling shyly. “Ready.”
The plan had been the quiet little bookstore-café just off campus, but when you arrived, it was unexpectedly packedstudents spilling out the doors, loud chatter filling the space that was supposed to be peaceful. Beau’s face fell for a second before he recovered with an apologetic laugh.
“Wow, okay… not as low-key as I thought. We can find somewhere else, or”
“It’s fine,” you said quickly, not wanting him to feel bad. “We can adapt.”
Beau brightened at that. He drove to a nearby coffee spot instead, where you both grabbed drinks yours exactly how you liked it. Once back in the car, the ride felt surprisingly comfortable. Soft music played from the speakers as he navigated away from campus, one hand on the wheel, the other occasionally gesturing as he talked.
“I’m sorry about the café,” he said after a few minutes, glancing over at you. “I wanted it to be perfect. Quiet. Your kind of place.”
You took a sip of your coffee, feeling more at ease. “This is already nice. I don’t mind the change.”
Beau’s heart did that familiar flip. God, she’s so understanding. Every small reassurance from you only deepened the yearning that had taken root weeks ago. He wanted to pull over and tell you how much this meant to him, how he’d been thinking about this date nonstop, but he kept it light for now.
While you were looking out the window at the passing scenery, Beau quickly pulled out his phone at a stoplight and typed a fast message to the group chat with Dean, Garrett, Logan, and Tucker.
Beau: Café was packed. Heading to the spot now. Everything set up?
Dean: All good, lover boy. Picnic blanket down, food arranged, fairy lights ready if it gets dark. You owe us.
Garrett: Don’t screw this up, Maxwell.
Logan: Tucker picked the flowers. Don’t say we never did anything for you.
Beau slipped the phone away before you noticed, a grateful smile tugging at his lips. His teammates had come throughsetting up a quiet spot at a secluded clearing by the lake just outside town. No girls involved; he wanted this to feel like it was just from him, even if he’d needed a little backup to make it special on short notice.
After about twenty minutes of easy driving and conversation, Beau turned onto a quieter road and parked. “Come on. I’ve got a backup plan.”
He led you down a short, grassy path with the coffee cups still in hand. When the trees opened up to the clearing, your eyes widened. A large blanket was spread out under the shade of a big oak tree overlooking the calm lake. There were fresh sandwiches, fruit, snacks, even a small bouquet of wildflowers in the center. Soft pillows were arranged for sitting comfortably, and a couple of lanterns waited in case the sun went down.
“Beau…” you breathed, genuinely touched. “Did you do all this?”
He rubbed the back of his neck, cheeks flushed with a mix of pride and lingering awkwardness. “I wanted it to be nice for you. The guys helped set it up while we were getting coffeeDean mostly coordinated. I just… I really wanted it to be just us. No crowds. No noise. Just this.”
The two of you settled onto the blanket. Beau sat close but respectful, the yearning evident in every glance he stole when you weren’t looking. Watching you relax into the peaceful setting, the way the breeze moved through your hair, the soft smile on your face as you took in the lake view it all hit him hard. This is what I want. Her, comfortable and happy, with me. He was completely starstruck, heart full and aching with how much he already cared.
Conversation flowed naturally as you ate. He asked about your favorite quiet spots, listened intently when you shared more about your writing, and opened up about the pressure of the football season in a way he rarely did with anyone else. Every laugh you gave, every time you met his eyes a little longer, made the pining sweeter and deeper.
As the sun began to dip lower, painting the lake in golden hues, Beau leaned back on his hands, content in the comfortable silence that fell between you.
“I meant what I said the other day,” he said quietly after a while. “I like you a lot, Y/N. This… being here with you… it’s better than any win on the field. I’ve been wanting this for weeks.”
He didn’t push for more, happy to let the moment sit. The date had turned out even better than he’d hoped, and as he looked at you across the picnic blanket, the yearning settled into something warm and certain. He was falling hard, and he couldn’t wait to see where this whatever it was becoming would go next. Just the two of you, in the beautiful quiet he knew you loved.
The picnic by the lake turned out even better than either of you expected. You spent a comfortable couple of hours talking, sharing food, and watching the sunlight dance across the water. Beau kept the conversation balanced never letting it drag, always checking in with gentle questions about your classes or the stories you liked to write. When the sun dipped lower, he packed everything up with care, refusing to let you help carry the heavier basket back to the car.
The drive back to campus was peaceful, windows down, the warm evening air flowing through. Beau kept stealing glances at you, his chest tight with that familiar deep yearning. She said yes. She’s here with me. Every quiet smile you gave him on the way home made him want a thousand more afternoons just like this.
He walked you all the way to your door, lingering for a moment under the soft glow of the porch light. “Thank you for today,” he said, voice warm and sincere. “I had a really good time. Best date I’ve ever been on.”
“Me too,” you admitted softly, cheeks warm. “The picnic was perfect, Beau.”
He smiled, bright and a little shy himself. “Good. I’d love to do it again. Soon. Whenever you want.”
You nodded, and with one last lingering look, he headed off, heart racing the entire walk back.
The next couple of weeks passed in a sweet blur of new moments. Beau didn’t overwhelm you he kept things at your pace. A quiet study session in the library where he brought snacks and sat across from you, stealing glances while pretending to focus on his playbook. Another evening walk around campus after his practice, ending with ice cream from a small stand near the quad. Each time, his pining only grew. He found himself thinking about you during team meetings, replaying the way your hand had brushed his when you reached for the same book, or how peacefully you looked sitting beside him by the lake.
One evening, the whole group gathered at Garrett and Hannah’s place for a casual dinner. Dean immediately clapped Beau on the back the second he walked in. “How’s it going, Casanova? Heard the picnic was a hit.”
Beau shot him a look but couldn’t hide his grin. “It was perfect. Thanks again for the setup, man.”
Garrett chuckled from the kitchen where he was helping Hannah. “Tucker picked some solid flowers. Logan almost knocked over the lanterns twice.”
You sat comfortably beside Beau on the couch, listening to the easy banter. The group’s teasing was light and supportive, making everything feel natural. Beau’s knee rested gently against yours the whole night, a small point of contact that sent warmth through him every time.
As the weeks went on, the two of you grew closer in small, meaningful ways. Beau’s yearning never faded it simply evolved. He wanted to hold your hand on walks. He wanted to pull you close during quiet movie nights with the group. He wanted to be the person you called first when you needed someone steady.
One Friday night after another successful low-key date this time a sunset walk followed by takeout in his car he finally worked up the courage again as he parked outside your dorm.
“Hey,” he said softly, turning toward you. “I know we’ve been taking things slow, and I love that. But… I really like where this is going. A lot. Would you want to make this official? Be my girlfriend?”
The question came out a touch awkward, just like the first ask, but filled with honest hope. His eyes stayed on yours, heart laid bare once more.
You smiled, warm and genuine, the shyness mixing with clear affection. “Yes, Beau. I’d like that.”
His face lit up with pure joy. He let out a relieved laugh and, after a moment of hesitation, reached over to gently squeeze your hand. The contact felt right warm, steady, and full of promise.
The next few days after making things official felt like a gentle step forward. Beau still kept things at a comfortable pace, but his affection showed in the little ways walking you to classes when their schedules overlapped, sending good-morning texts that made you smile, and always making sure you had a quiet escape plan whenever the group got too rowdy.
One warm evening, after a relaxed dinner with Garrett, Hannah, Dean, and Allie, Beau offered to walk you back alone. The campus paths were quiet under the soft glow of the streetlights, the air carrying the faint scent of blooming flowers. Conversation came easily as always, but there was a new, charged undercurrent between you now.
When you reached your dorm building, neither of you moved to go inside right away. Beau turned to face you fully, his usual easy confidence softened by nerves and something deeper. He stepped a little closer, eyes searching yours with that warm, steady gaze that always made your heart skip.
“I’ve been wanting to do this for a while,” he murmured, voice low. One hand lifted slowly, giving you plenty of time to pull away, and gently cupped the side of your face. His thumb brushed lightly over your cheek, tender and careful.
He leaned in, hesitating for just a heartbeat, before his lips met yours in a soft, sweet first kiss. It was gentle at first almost tentative, like he was savoring the moment he’d imagined so many times. When you kissed him back, the touch deepened slightly, warm and full of quiet emotion. Beau’s free hand found yours, fingers intertwining as the world narrowed to just the two of you under the lamplight.
When he finally pulled back, his forehead rested against yours for a moment, a soft smile playing on his lips. His heart was racing, every part of him completely wrapped up in you the way you tasted, the shy way you looked at him now, the perfect fit of your hand in his. He was utterly captivated, already craving the next kiss, the next touch, the next quiet moment that was just yours.
“That was… wow,” he whispered, a little breathless and grinning. “I’ve wanted to kiss you since that first party. Probably shouldn’t admit that, but it’s true.”
You laughed softly, cheeks warm, and he kissed you once more quicker this time, but no less heartfelt before stepping back with clear reluctance.
“Night, beautiful,” he said, waiting until you were safely inside before heading off, already replaying the kiss in his mind with a smile he couldn’t wipe away.
The relationship had grown beautifully over the following weeks. You and Beau were solidly together now comfortable, affectionate, and deeply happy in that quiet way that suited you both perfectly. He still stole your breath with how attentive he was, always balancing his busy football schedule with time for you. The group loved seeing it; Dean and Garrett gave him constant playful grief, while Hannah and Allie beamed with approval.
One rainy Thursday evening, Beau came over to your dorm room for the first time. You’d mentioned it casually before, but things had finally aligned for a cozy night in. He knocked softly, and when you opened the door, his face lit up at the sight of you in your comfortable clothes, hair a little messy from the day.
“Hey,” he said, stepping inside with a warm smile and a bag of takeout in one hand. His eyes scanned the small space curiously your neatly organized desk stacked with books and notes, string lights casting a soft glow, and the little window overlooking the quad now streaked with rain. “This is nice. Feels very you.”
Before he could say more, a small meow came from the bed. Your cat, a fluffy gray tabby named Whiskers, lifted his head from the pillow and blinked sleepily at the newcomer.
Beau’s expression softened instantly. “You have a cat? You never told me that.” He set the food down and crouched slowly, holding out his hand for Whiskers to inspect. “Hey, buddy. Nice to meet you.”
Whiskers sniffed his fingers, then bumped his head against Beau’s hand with a contented purr. Beau laughed quietly, the sound warm and delighted, as he gently scratched behind the cat’s ears. Watching him be so gentle and immediately charmed by your pet made something warm bloom in your chest.
“He likes you,” you said, smiling as you sat on the edge of the bed.
Beau looked up at you, eyes full of open affection. “Good. Because I’m planning on being around a lot.” He stood, pulled you into a soft kiss, then settled beside you on the bed with the takeout. Whiskers curled up between you two like he belonged there, purring steadily.
The evening unfolded lazily. You ate straight from the containers while a low-volume movie played on your laptop. Beau kept one arm around you, fingers tracing lazy patterns on your shoulder as you leaned into him. Every so often he’d press a kiss to the top of your head or your temple, completely content in the quiet intimacy of your space.
“I love this,” he murmured during a lull in the movie, voice sincere and low. “Just us. Your room feels like a little safe bubble. The rain outside, your cat purring, you right here… I could do this every night.”
He was so in love it showed in everything the way his gaze lingered on you when you talked about your day, the gentle way he played with Whiskers to make you smile, the soft kisses he stole between bites of food. Being in your personal space for the first time made him feel even closer to you, like he was being let into the heart of your world.
Later, as the rain tapped steadily against the window and Whiskers dozed on the pillow, Beau pulled you closer, wrapping both arms around you in a warm embrace. “Thank you for letting me come over,” he whispered against your hair. “I’m really happy, you know that?”
You nodded, cuddling into him, and he kissed you again slow and sweet, full of all the love he felt. The night stretched on like that, cozy and perfect, just the two of you (and Whiskers) in the quiet glow of your dorm room. Beau couldn’t imagine a better way to spend an evening. He was utterly, completely in love, and every moment like this only made him fall harder.
The weeks after that first evening in your dorm blurred into a comfortable rhythm. Beau started spending more and more time at your place. What began as occasional study sessions or movie nights quickly turned into him showing up with dinner or coffee multiple times a week, lingering longer each visit until it felt natural for him to stay over.
One particular Friday night, after a long week for both of you, he ended up spending the night for the first time. The rain was falling steadily outside again, making the cozy dorm room feel even warmer. Whiskers had claimed his usual spot on the pillow, purring loudly as Beau stretched out on your bed beside you, one arm wrapped securely around your waist.
“This is becoming my favorite place,” Beau murmured, pressing a soft kiss to your shoulder. He had borrowed a pair of your oversized sweatpants (which were a little short on him) and looked ridiculously content lying there with you. “I love my house with the guys, but here… it’s quieter. Just you, me, and this little guy.” He reached over to scratch Whiskers under the chin, earning a happy trill from the cat.
You smiled, curling closer into his chest. Beau’s hand rubbed slow circles on your back, his touch warm and soothing. He was so in love it showed in every small action how he remembered exactly how you liked your tea when he made you a cup earlier, how he’d dimmed the string lights just right, how he held you like he never wanted to let go.
“I’m really glad you’re here,” you whispered.
“Me too,” he replied softly, tilting your chin up for a gentle kiss. It started sweet and slow, the kind of kiss that had become familiar between you, but lingered with quiet depth. When he pulled back, his forehead rested against yours. “I could get used to falling asleep with you like this every night.”
He spent the night wrapped around you, one leg tangled with yours, Whiskers curled at your feet. Beau slept better than he had in weeks, waking up to the soft sound of rain and the sight of you still nestled against him. Mornings like that quickly became routine.
From then on, Beau was at your dorm almost as much as his own place. He’d come over after practice, still a little sweaty and tired, collapsing onto your bed with a dramatic groan before pulling you down with him for cuddles. Some nights you studied together he’d quiz you on your notes while Whiskers tried to sit on his lap. Other nights you’d order food and watch shows, his head in your lap as you played with his hair
Whiskers had fully adopted him too, often demanding attention the moment Beau walked through the door. Beau never minded. He’d talk to the cat seriously while you laughed, scratching his ears and letting him knead on his chest during evening cuddles.
One lazy Sunday afternoon, as golden light filtered through the window and Whiskers dozed between you, Beau rolled onto his side to face you. “I know I say it a lot, but I’m really happy with you,” he said, voice full of warmth. He leaned in, kissing you softly at first, then deeper, pouring all the love he felt into it. His hand rested on your waist, holding you close as the kiss lingered.
These moments in your dorm tangled up together, cat purring nearby, world shut out by the rain or sunshine outside had become his safe haven. Beau was head over heels, completely content to spend as many nights as you’d let him right there with you, building something real and beautiful in the quiet space you called home.
Beau pulled you closer on the bed that lazy Sunday, his brown eyes soft as golden light filtered across the room. Whiskers dozed between you, but Beau barely noticed, too focused on tracing slow kisses along your jaw and down to your neck. “Love these quiet days with you,” he murmured against your skin, voice warm and low. His hand rested on your waist, thumb brushing gentle circles as he captured your lips in a deep, unhurried kiss. You melted into it, fingers threading through his dark hair, and he sighed contentedly when you kissed him back with the same easy affection.
The weeks that followed felt like a natural extension of what you two had built. After tough practices, Beau would show up at your door with takeout, kicking off his shoes and immediately drawing you into his arms for a lingering hug that turned into soft kisses. “You’re my reset button,” he’d say between pecks, brown eyes crinkling as he smiled. One evening, after a big win, he surprised you with a blanket fort in your dorm using extra sheets and string lights. You laughed as he tugged you inside, pulling you onto his lap for slower kisses that built warmth between you. His hands stayed respectful but intimate, holding your face as he whispered how you made every victory sweeter.
Comfort wrapped around you both like a favorite hoodie. During late-night study sessions, Beau would quiz you from across the bed, then reward right answers with quick kisses that grew longer when focus slipped. “Best study partner ever,” he teased, nuzzling your temple. On a crisp fall afternoon, he took you for a drive outside campus to a quiet overlook, parking so you could watch the leaves change. He kept one hand on your thigh, stealing glances and soft kisses at stoplights, talking about future plans like post-grad life and how he saw you in all of them.
Even group hangouts felt more connected now. At a casual bonfire with Dean, Allie, Garrett, and Hannah, Beau sat with you tucked against his side, pressing occasional kisses to your hair or shoulder while chatting with the guys. Back in your room afterward, he was all tenderness helping you unwind with shoulder rubs that led to lazy makeout sessions under the covers, Whiskers ignoring you both from the pillow.
“You’re everything I need,” Beau said one night, forehead against yours after a particularly sweet kiss, his arms secure around you. The relationship had settled into that perfect balance of playful charm and deep steadiness, with him showing through every touch and word just how completely you were his person.
Summary: Ormund was not always the man he is. He was once a gentle boy, one who fell in love with you, the second Targaryen daughter, the one rumoured to be only half-Targaryen. You fell in love with him too. What follows is a story of love, betrayal and deceit where the ties which bind you are tested by war, by loyalty and heart. By Black and Green. Only in the place between death and dying may the bonds be restored. (13k)
Pairing: Ormund Hightower x Targ!wife!reader
TW: 18+ MDNI, NSFW due to extreme graphic violence and sexual content. Sex scene includes:. fingering, oral f receiving, p-in-v and possible scent kink; I love giving origin stories to crazy guys and this is it; Rhaenrya ends up Queen as she always should have; Reader matches Ormund; No physical description of reader except that she doesn't have Targaryen features; Reader has magic (foresight surrounding battles); Faith of the Seven wedding; Cannibal is the reader's dragon; reader has kids; Jace lives (Reader takes the arrows for him); Ormund's like SERIOUSLY in love; mentions of Ormund being abused by his father (religious abuse).
Credit & A/N: GIF by @ladythedrunken, sword divider by @diviniyae; ran out divider space. I hope you guys like the story, it's my first HotD fic.
The Meeting:
The halls of the Keep were dark and cold and angry, if such a thing can truly be attributed to walls; the stench of blood and dragons and rot clinging to the stonework. Ormund didn’t like it, his father having instructed him long ago in the fact that the Targaryens are sinful, that they are rot and ruin and destruction, driving the land to chaos.
“Disgusting dragon riders,” he whispers, scuffing one booted foot along the carved stone floor.
“That’s not very nice, now is it?” a voice calls out from the shadows, one light and young and pretty, lilting through the air, echoing off the coldness like fire, wrapping him in warmth. He looks around, craning his head to catch a glimpse of the speaker, but he sees nothing. Nothing but stone and torches and tapestries and shadow.
“Who is there?” he calls out, his voice still young, still that of a child, the boy of seven which he is, the one tryingso hard to be a man for his father. To show his father that he’s worthy of the Hightower name, the seat, the power.
“It is I, the ghost that haunts these hallowed halls,” the voice continues, a bit of laughter contained in the wavering soprano sound.
“The ghost of what?” he asks, turning fully now in circle after circle looking, looking, looking and seeing nothing. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“You don’t believe ghosts?” the voice says, the words lilting up in a question yet tinged with a darker edge, a blade over his neck threatening to fall. “You, who live in the time of dragons and dragon riders. You, who live in the time of witches and magic and power, don’t believe in ghosts?” The voice seems to come from everywhere all at once, surrounding him with the darkening, deepening edge.
“N-no,” he stutters, straightening his shoulders, attempting to regain his composure, his power. The strength of the Hightower blood, the one not tainted by sin as his father says.
“You are a fool,” the voice says, blunt and cruel and tinged with hatred, anger. Disdain. Disdain for him? The Hightower heir? “And I am the ghost of the Dragon Queen.”
“There is no such Dragon Queen in our history,” he says, now fully believing that it is simply a figure he cannot see, crossing his arms with the arrogance that only a seven year old lord can have.
“History is told by the victors, young Hightower,” the voice says. “Not the losers. Not the women who serve only as tools in the narrative you men create.”
“You speak in blasphemy,” he says and above him he hears rustling. He looks up just as you drop down, dressed in riding clothes, landing on the stone floor in a crouch, eyes narrowed on him, cold and cruel and assessing despite the youth in your cheeks, the innocence that seems to radiate from you. “You are no ghost.”
“You’re quite the genius, aren’t you?” you counter, crossing your small child arms over your chest, big eyes rolling at him in annoyance. “I am the Princess Targaryen at your service.”
“You are not Princess Rhaenyra,” he says, having already met the silver-haired, tainted blood offspring of a poisoned, corrupted king.
“There are two princesses, you idiot,” you reply, eyes rolling once again and he struggles to see you as a child of five, a shadow haunting your eyes that makes you seem infinitely older.
“You are the half-borne,” he says, no malice in his tone yet your face twists, pinches, curls inwards, rage shimmering in your non-Targaryen eyes.
“Rhaenyra is my twin,” you hiss, stepping closer to him, your small chubby finger jabbing into his chest with more force than he expected. “Borne seven minutes before me. It does not matter if the rumours are true and we came from the same womb or not. I am her twin and she is mine. I am her other half, her opposite.”
“If you are her twin,” he says, reaching forwards to touch your hair, feel it in his fingers, but you slap it away with your other hand, such force for a girl of five. “Then why are you not…” he trails off, unsure of how to word what he wants to say, unable to play the diplomatic game like his father.
“Not Targaryen?” you finish and he nods, your eyes rolling again and he wants to say that it is insolence to your better, but technically your station is higher than his and even though tainted blood runs through your veins, Ormund feels a strange sort of power. The kind that one would bend the knee for, serve for when there is no one else like it. “I am the darkness and she is the light.”
“What do you mean dark? Light? There are no such denominations in the Seven,” he says, already knowing his scripture more than his history, Oldtown for piety and true faith. Not like King’s Landing, like the Keep. Like the Targaryens.
“You cannot find everything in your gods, young Hightower,” you whisper, stepping back from him. “I am the dark because I will do whatever she will not. I will cross any line.” With that, you smile once, a smile that makes you look like the five year old you are before melting backwards into the shadows.
In the space of one breath and the next, Ormund finds that you are gone. Completely. Faded away like you were never there at all.
And yet…Ormund is left the idea that perhaps tainted blood does not mean tainted people.
Perhaps…perhaps his father is wrong.
The General:
Ormund is back in King’s Landing, sent by his father to see his uncle, his cousins. A diplomatic exercise, one where one must learn to see their enemies’ weaknesses in order to exploit them later on the battle, but he wishes that were still home. Still in Oldtown, waking in his bed, the familiar scent of prayer rather than the lingering stench of human refuse and dragon.
“Come on! Is that the best you can do?!” a voice, familiar and pretty, yet edged like a sharp drawn sword echoes along the stone walls and he steps forwards, away from the carriage which brought him back to the Keep, away from his family, towards the sound. The one he’s held onto since he was seven.
The one of power unmatched despite the tainted blood.
The one that made him question—makes him question—his father’s rulings. Beliefs. Makes him want to know himself and what he thinks rather than what he was told to believe.
“Princess,” replies an aggrieved, tired voice, accompanied by the clang of metal on metal, a sword blade hitting a sword blade. “I will hurt you if I give you all I have.”
“Ser Rickon,” your voice replies, cocky and light and soothing to the now fourteen year old Ormund. Soothing in ways he doesn’t entirely understand. “I’ve been holding back too.” Ormund steps around the bend of the Keep, taking in the sight of the training yard, of you the Targaryen-not-Targaryen bedecked in fitted armour, holding a sword and clashing, pushing back against the fully grown, aged Kingsguard with a fury in your movements that he could never track. Not completely.
He knows, without a doubt, that anyone set against your blade would lose. It seems like you hold the ability toknow your opponent’s next move before they do. Anticipate and change your strike for soon the Kingsguard is on the ground, his sword kicked aside and your blade pressing against the hollow of his throat.
“I shall speak to my father,” he hears you say, stepping back and offering one hand to the man, which he takes, letting you haul him to his feet with more strength than one would expect from a girl of twelve. A princess no less. “Training must be improved. If this is what protects our lives…pity.” You turn, eyes scanning the yard, settling upon him, lips curling back in a smile that is strange and delightful as you lift a singular gloved hand up to wave at the same the guard comes up behind you for a stealth attack, one you’ve already anticipated, stepping to the side, his body collapsing on the ground. “Honestly, Ser Rickon! You do not fight in the yard when a lady’s back is turned! Manners, Ser. Manners.”
“You’re quite good, Princess,” Ormund calls out, aware of the way your gaze has never left him even as you kick the guard in the side lightly as he lets out a broken chuckle, your steps moving up the hill towards him, his family behind him. He can practically hear the gears turning in his uncle’s head, Otto forever trying to figure out ways to make the throne a Hightower affair, his in truth.
But all Ormund cares about is you—the ghost of the mythical Dragon Queen, the darkness to Princess Rhaenyra’s light.
“I’m not bad,” you reply, now stopping before him, digging the point of your elaborate sword into the ground, stepping towards him, offering him your metal gloved hand for a shake. One he takes, a strange urge inside of him to feel your skin against his. To feel what you would feel like, if your hand would fit to his as if by the Seven’s creation. “But I have a long time to improve.”
“Why do you practice?” Ormund asks, his uncle’s scoff audible behind him, his cousin Alicent’s small laugh, your eyes narrowing past him at them, lip curling and jaw setting before you turn back to him.
“Because one day,” you whisper, stepping closer, your hand still in his as you pull him to you, your bodies close yet not touching, “I will be a general. I will fight for my honor, my sister’s and the throne. Your family does not believe a woman can do so…I say,” you pull back, letting go of his hand, lips curved in a smirk as your eyes turn behind him, no doubt focused on his uncle, “all the more reason to prove the fuckers wrong.”
You spin, turning away, the back of your armour, emblemed with a singular dragon appearing to claw up and off your back, hand reaching forwards, grabbing the sword from the dirt, sheathing it on the strange contraption on your back and walking away as his uncle sputters about manners, propriety.
Everything that being a princess is—but being a general is not.
“The General Targaryen,” Ormund muses beneath his breath, watching as you walk away, the only Targaryen seemingly free of the curse of taint and sin and disgust. The only one who seems proper even if you break all the rules. “The General Hightower.”
He likes the sound of that title better. But not for him.
He likes it for you.
He just doesn’t yet understand why.
The Betrothal:
“Sister!” Rhaenyra calls out, her voice arching through the room, bouncing off the stone walls, surrounding you with the lightness. The lightness that has been darkening as all has come to pass. All that you have foreseen, all that you have known. All that you have plotted for and against.
“You are betrothed, I presume,” you call out as she steps into the room, her crown upon her head, the Princess of Dragonstone in entirety.
“I don’t like it when you do that,” she says and you twist on the stool before your dressing table, taking note of the way her face is drawn tight, the expression only slightly more open than before. You remember when she yelled at you, screamed and cursed the fact that you let the marriage between Alicent and your shared father commence.
It did not matter if you have seen there was no way to circumvent the union, only options before you to ensure your sister’s throne. She was angry and hurt that she did not know. She took it out on you, only now doling out bits of her love and attention, warming back up to you just in time for you to lose her again.
“I can’t help it,” you reply, folding your hands over your knee, fingers interlaced, her hands twined in the dark red skirts of her gown. “It is my gift.”
“You don’t mean that,” she says, her voice soft in a way it hasn’t been in so long, her face crumpling in on itself as she steps in, collapsing upon your bed, her body seeming to fold in on itself. “You think it’s a curse, don’t you?”
“No,” you tell her, the words thoughtful in only the way that true honesty can ever be. “I view it as useful neither gift nor curse, but a tool. If I didn’t…” you pause, tears stinging at your eyes, tears that you refuse to let fall because it is not strong, it is not what a future general does. Not what the Hand of the Queen does.
“If you didn’t what?” she asks and you look at her, your perfect, precious sister, still yet untainted by the blood of war, of the scent of death, things you have lived a thousand times every night, death after death after death as you struggle to find that way to victory. The way to win. You’ve died a thousand times every night, working towards that gleaming thread of victory, of your sister on the Iron Throne.
“I didn’t, I would break under the weight of what I see,” you whisper, looking down at your hands, the ones interlaced over your knee, together. Everything is stronger when there are more.
“Father always said we dream in cryptic ways,” she says, rising from the bed, her movements graceful and princess-like. Everything you are not from the silver hair to the violet eyes and the courtier way that she moves. “Yet nothing you dream is cryptic. Is it?”
“No,” you answer, looking up with haunted eyes, only half here and half in those tangling threads, things to unravel, to solve. To solve before the dragons dance and blood runs through the streets, painting cities red. “It’s just not quite clear.”
“I see the future Lord Hightower has been writing,” she says, her gaze snagging on a letter, one scrawled in Ormund’s careful, pious hand. “And here I thought the Lord Hightowers hated us.”
“Otto, Alicent and Gwayne do not,” you counter. “They are friendly.”
“They are not the shepherds of Oldtown,” Rhae counters, lifting the letter, her eyes scanning what’s been written in his hand, the pledges of friendship, of faith. Of belief. “He believes in you. In the Hand of the Queen.”
“Shut up, Rhae,” you hiss, reaching and pulling the letter from her hand, the paper crinkling in your touch as you lay it aside, the scent of sandalwood still clinging to the paper. He douses his papers with it, said in the first one that he wanted it to be as if he were there, as if he were speaking to you.
“You have a plan,” she says and you look at her, lips pursing, one eyebrow arched.
“I always have a plan. You just don’t always know what it is—nor do I.” Your serious expression lasts for only a moment before the two of you are laughing, the sound like the times of girlhood, of innocence.
Before the real world reared its ugly head and prophecy overcame reality.
Before your sister was set to marry a Velaryon.
Before you had to sacrifice the freedom you’d been promised long ago.
All for the Queen on the Iron Throne.
“Father?” you call out, stepping into his solar, boots scuffing along the seam between rug and stone. “Father, I need to speak with you.”
“Come in, my darling,” he calls out and you follow the sound of his voice, crossing through the darkened rooms to where his desk rests, his body folded into the chair behind it. “What’s wrong? What have you foreseen?”
“Many things. Wars and blood and Iron Thrones,” you reply, crossing the room to collapse into the second seat before his desk, leather clad legs tossed over one of the armrests, back against the other. “I have seen ways to ensure that Rhae is queen for a long, long time.”
“Is that why you are here? To ensure it?” he asks and you look at him, your hand pulling the Valyrian steel blade from its sheath, the one Daemon gave you while Rhae got the pretty useless necklace.
“Yes,” you tell him, pressing the tip of the blade against the soft pad of your index finger, twirling and finding the lack of pain startling and yet so useful. “I need you to marry me off.”
“You wanted freedom. I promised you that.”
“I need that promise broken,” you tell him and his lips purse, his expression darkening but he nods, consenting, assenting, relenting.
“Daemon has been looking for a new bride—”
“No,” you cut your father off, shaking your head and tipping your head back to look at the stone ceiling, the one carved by hands over centuries for the people with the blood of dragons in their veins. The conquerors who never understood the power of the individual. “The Hightower boy.”
“Gwayne? Very well,” your father says and your lip curls as you look back to him, teeth grinding against one another, a squeaking sound in your ears. Loud and abrasive.
“No, the one to be the lord,” you tell him and he cocks his head at you, the look he has when assessing you and you do not know what he sees, but you can see something in his eyes.
“They don’t like us,” he says and you shrug, kicking your legs up and over, sitting up straight in the chair, ignoring the twinge of pain in your lower back from the press of the armrest.
“It doesn’t matter. Power is a potent aphrodisiac, Father. You should know better than anyone.”
“I shall send a message,” he says. “We shall go from there.” You rise from the seat, nodding once at him, turning to go, to leave, but he stops you with his next words. “I am sorry, you know.”
“For what?” you ask, the words scraping against the sides of your throat, rough and painful in a way that you rarely let anything be.
“For marrying her. I know what it’s done to Rhaenyra, to you. And I am sorry, but it was necessary.” It is no secret that publicly Rhae has always had your father’s favour, but you are the son he never had. You are the soldier, the knight, the general. The one with magic, with skill. The one who sees no lines, only what must be done.
“They will not say no,” you tell him and with that you leave, gritting your teeth, setting your jaw as a single lone tear slips down your cheek, trailing over your skin with a searing, burning feeling that feels far more painful than any fire from any dragon.
Even if your own dragon, Cannibal, burned you.
“The Targaryens want you to marry the that second borne daughter,” Ormund’s father says, tossing the official parchment onto the table in disgust, his lip curling as he tosses his letter opener aside, the metal clanging against the wood of the table. “What a disgrace.”
“Father,” Ormund whispers, swallowing hard, the memory of your last letter, the sight of the places where you had pressed your quill deeper, the scent of your skin lingering on the paper burning deeper inside of him because why would he settle for letters when you could be his. When he could be yours.
He understands now that he loves you. That he has since he was seven and you, the impossible five year old dropped from the sky. That he has since he saw you defeat the Kingsguard, since he wanted you to be General Hightower, not Targaryen.
That he has even long before he learned that you were the one chosen by the fiercest and largest dragon of them all. An abominable creature of course but…was it really so bad? So sinful?
Ormund doesn’t know. Only that he wants to be yours.
“What is it, boy?” his father says, looking at him, Hightower green eyes narrowed, nostrils flared.
“Power is important. It would put us closer to saving the realm…a proper ruler, one day,” he says, swallowing hard again, but not from want this time, but rather fear. Fear that his father will hear the love he has for you, will try to beat it out him, reinforce the idea that you are sinful. A disgrace. A rot to be carved away.
“You want to marry her?” he asks, tone already deepening, darkening but Ormund holds true, nodding, setting his jaw to appear strong, fierce and not scared.
“Purify the line,” he says and he holds his breath as his father looks away, eyes narrowing before finally nodding, assenting.
“Very well, my boy. You shall have her.”
The Courtship:
The only thing that makes King’s Landing tolerable is knowing that you are here, that soon instead of the stench that clings to everything here, he will smell you, that strange perfume of your skin that is at once both sweet and strong. The strange perfume that he wants to have surrounding him at all times, you with him in truth.
But he would settle for your scent if you had to be away.
“The princesses are out riding, my lord,” one of the servants says, bowing low, eyes not meeting his, rather focused on his boots. Ones that shone in Oldtown, but here in the Keep have already picked up a fine layer of dust. Disregard as the rest of this place. He will be glad to have you out of it.
“Riding what?” he asks, but he needn’t have for he can hear the loud, overloud, sound of wings beating air, fast and furious and all too large. He turns, glancing out at the training yard, noticing Cannibal and Syrax both, growing larger as they near.
Cannibal had never been seen before he bonded you when you were four, saved you from danger and no one had any idea why he did so, only that he refused to let anyone near you and stayed under your window for the entire time you were a child.
You spoke to him before any courtier, it is said.
But Vhaegor was believed to be the largest of the dragons, until Cannibal. He can see how huge he is now as he dips to the side, his body canting and you leap from him, your figure small and dark as you land on the ground, your body rolling into a ball, rolling before you land on your feet, Cannibal already turned around, flying away.
Meanwhile, Syrax lands, dipping a wing and letting Princess Rhaenyra off gently, ensuring she is safe before departing after yours.
“You must have a death wish, dear sister,” he hears Rhaenyra exclaim, your laughter sounding in the yard as you loop your arm around her neck, pulling her in close before marching onwards, closer to him.
“I only do what you will not,” you reply, your voice light, still ringing with your laughter and he finds himself suddenly nervous, hands shifting to adjust his doublet, ensuring that it’s straight and he puffs out his chest, his heart speeding up when you look at him, your eyes narrowing, lips pursing before you break away from your sister, walking towards him. “Hello.”
“H-hello,” he stutters, swallowing hard at the end of his words, your scent overwhelming, intoxicating. He feels slightly ashamed of his reaction to you, the way you change him from the strong heir to Oldtown to a stuttering young boy crushing for the first time, but when you smile at him, he finds he does not care.
“I have to change,” you tell him, reaching forwards, your hand finding his, fingers interlacing with his and all the blood seems to leave his body, rushing to all different places in his body at the feeling of your bare skin against his.
He wondered what it feel like, if it would mold to his and you do. It’s like you were made for him, like the Seven had intended this to be. Like the two of you were forged for one another. He follows after you, blood pulsing in his head as you drag him through hallway after hallway, up stairway after stairway before stopping outside an ornate door.
“Wait here,” you tell him, disappearing inside the room, the door closing behind you and he does, waiting patiently, leaning against the wall, interlacing his hands together in front of him, pretending that his hand is yours. That you are still touching him as casually as you did.
Touching him like you loved him as he loves you.
It’s no time at all before the door is pushed open and you step out, in a deep black gown, interspersed with bits of red. He swallows hard, his mouth feeling dry, like the wetness typical of a mouth has fled all of a sudden to his palms. He wipes them on his breeches as discreetly as he can but by the way your eyes track the movement, he knows you noticed.
“You look…” he trails off, his eyes tracing every line of your figure, caught up in your beauty, unsure of quite how to express the fact that he thinks you are a goddess. The most beautiful woman to ever live.
“Like a princess?” you ask and he startles, looking back up and meeting your eyes, nodding once, the movement jagged.
“Yes.”
“You and I should probably become used to it,” you remark, stepping forwards and taking his hand again, looping it around your arm, “as this is how I must dress to be your Lady Hightower.”
Your voice is resigned and he wants to tell you that he would never cage you as his lady, that he wants you, the General, but he cannot find the words for it.
So, he says nothing at all.
The gardens are well-tended, perfectly maintained, but even the scents of the prettiest flowers cannot cover up the permeating scent of rot that lingers in the courtyard, in the Keep. In all of King’s Landing.
But your scent, your touch is enough. It’s intoxicating to him, truly, the way your hand fits into and against his, the way your fingers fit the grooves between his as if you were always meant to hold his hand, as if this was fated, created. Deemed truthful by the Seven.
“How d—” he breaks off, pausing, bending his bend before the statue of the Mother, her effigy in the grounds. He feels you still, imagines you bent like him, paying respect to the idol of the god, one the many seven faces.
“You truly believe?” you ask and he jerks his head, a twinge of pain in the far back, like something snapping, his eyes wide with the surprise and shock coursing through his veins.
“You do not?” he asks and you shake your head, eyebrows arching as your free hand strays to your hip, stance asymmetrical as you look at him.
“I do not believe in your gods, no,” you tell him, your eyes flitting up and away towards the sky, eyes shuttering for just a moment, a thousand reflections of emotions glimmering in those perfect, precious eyes of bravery and truthfulness.
“Why not?” he asks and you look back at him, lips curving with a smile as if you cannot look at him without feeling joy.
“Because I do not believe in gods that do not exist. I believe in the gods in the world I can see. The Old Gods, the gods of nature. The ones who listen when you must pray. The ones who created us, but gave us the freedom to live. I believe that everything that happens is because of what we do. Not some mythical seven faced thing,” you tell him, your voice lilting and rising, shifting through the air like he always imagined a goddess would sound.
“But your father—”
“My father does not know what he believes,” you counter, gesturing at the effigy of the Mother which stands before the two of you, the one gleaming in the sun, heat broiling off of the marble in strange visual waves. “He acts like a follower of the Seven, but it is not true. He does not go to sept or prayer. He rules and plays the sides that he must play.”
“But the Seven are the only gods that truly matter,” Ormund counters, the lifetime of learning and prayer rearing within him. Lessons beat into him by his father’s hand, his belt, his knife, the fireplace pokers with red-hot ends.
“No,” you whisper, your expression softening on the edges, gaze going dreamy as if you remember something. “I do not believe in gods that cannot hear the prayers of the believers. No god can hear you through a sept, through a prayer mandated by man. No god can see through the candle smoke. You do not humble yourselves before them, you do not make an offering. You do nothing, but listen to some so-called holy man tell you what you must do. I do not subscribe to lies. I believe in the truth. In the gods in the wind and the sky and the ground and the water. That’s what I believe. I believe in that which I can see and hear and feel.”
“Well,” he pauses, swallowing hard, fighting back against his father’s teachings that threaten to rear their head, have him lecturing you, making you believe. “I shall have enough faith for both of us in the Seven and you…can have enough for the two of us in your old gods.” And the toll that sentence, concession, takes on him is worth it to the smile on your face, to feel your arms as they wrap around him in a hug, his face pressed against your neck, your scent the only thing he can smell.
All he ever wants to smell.
Propriety be damned.
The Wedding:
The hall is full, you don’t even have to be inside it to know, you can hear the rustling of people inside of it, the sounds of whispers and murmurs and prayers as you stand, the gown on your frame heavy, far too heavy. This was what you never wanted. You wanted freedom and armour and swords and war. You wanted to fly on Cannibal’s back over the world, serving your sister, the Queen.
Instead, to ensure her throne, you must be wed. Become the Lady Hightower, rather than the Princess Targaryen you have been your entire life.
“My child,” your father calls out and you turn to him, your eyes heavy-lidded and tired, lined with tears, tears you will never let fall for it’s not strength to cry where people can witness weakness. “It is time.”
“Of course,” you whisper, your hands twining in the layers of your white and silver skirt, the one that matches the one your sister’s, save for the gold that was on hers. The General has the silver; the Queen has the gold. You lift the heavy folds into your hands, stepping towards him, unsure of how to step and move in a gown like this when most of your life has been comprised of armor.
You know that gowns are a different sort of armour, ones made for ladies, ones made to present them as proper while hiding a multitude of secrets, but they have never been your favoured kind. Nonetheless, you cross the room, taking your father’s arm, the black and red cloak around your shoulders, soon to be replaced with ones of green and gold—Hightower colours.
The doors to the hall open, revealing the crowd of people curious and watching, whispering about your legitimacy, whether you are Targaryen at all, but it is nothing new. What is new, is the boy of no more than twenty who stands at the top of the stairs, looking at you with awe in green eyes, a nervous hand running through dark brown curls that are overlong and falling into his eyes.
A sight that makes you smile.
In truth, you love Ormund and it is no burden to marry him. You could have married Gwayne or the Tyrel lad or the Martel prince. There were other options, other ways to ensure that your sister would be the first woman on the Iron Throne, one who would not bleed, but you grew fond of the boy who wrote you letters.
The boy who said he believed in you. Something no one else had ever said.
“You will be fine, my dear,” your father whispers as the two of you begin the walk along the red roll of carpet, the one with golden tasselled edges, opulence and Targaryen power in a simple display.
“I know, Father,” you reply, your attention focused on the boy ahead, the one who’s Adam’s apple bobs hard, his chest rising and falling in erratic ways. “I have seen the outcomes. I will be wonderful.” The feeling is strange when Viserys pulls the cloak from your shoulders, your arms bare for a moment, skin prickling with goosebumps, coldness seeping in through the loss of the house which has been yours since before you were born.
But the coldness recedes when Ormund steps forwards with the green and gold cloak of the Hightowers, placing it over your shoulders, his palms pressing down against them for a moment, his touch grounding and precious and everything you need to survive through the rite of the Faith that you do not believe in. You would rather kneel before a Weirwood tree, the skirt of your gown digging into the damp, cold earth, the white stained black with soil.
But you find that this is okay too, your hands finding Ormund’s as the Septon speaks, his voice arching loud and clear through the hall, Ormund’s green eyes locked upon you the entire time.
And when you are pronounced of one flesh, you find that the kiss he gives you is sweet and grounding and promising. As if the press of his lips against yours is a promise like his Faith says: a promise to love you forever.
To believe in you.
Ormund cannot take his eyes from you, his wife, clothed in white and silver wearing the cloak of green and gold, a Targaryen no longer. No, you are his wife. He wants to shout it from the rooftops, declare it to the entire world, but he refrains, contenting himself with dancing with you, his hand never leaving yours.
It is now, watching you spin in a swirl of skirts and cloaks that he remembers from that first day in the courtship, the walk around the gardens when you said that you believed in what you could see. In gods that could hear you.
“My love?” he says as he pulls you back in, his hand finding your waist, fitting to the curve as if it was always supposed to. “Is this marriage…real for you?”
“It is before the Seven,” you whisper, eyes looking just past him, at someone over his shoulder, as if you cannot lie to him if you look at him.
“How can I make it true to you?” Your eyes find his again, shocked and surprised, wide open, pupils flaring and contracting and flaring again as they trace every line of his face, his skin flushing beneath your gaze.
“Take me to a Weirwood tree,” you whisper, your cheek pressing against his, lips at his ear, breath coursing over the shell of it, causing goosebumps to pebble along his skin, blood to rush to places it really shouldn’t in a public place. “On our trip, take me to Weirwood tree and there we shall make it real.”
“So it is said,” he replies, his voice equally low and quiet at your ear, “so mote it be.” And he knows that he does not imagine, the tremor in your body, the shiver of your skin in his hands. You desire him as he desires you.
“You waved the bedding ceremony,” you remark, your hands coming to the clasp of the cloak, the golden leaf hooking around gold twines. “How will they know it’s true?”
“Blood,” Ormund says, his back to you, muscles stiffening, rippling beneath the fabric of his doublet, his breath hitching as his arms move, the overlayer of the doublet shrugged off and onto the floor.
“Ah, I see,” you whisper, crossing the room, your cloak left behind in a pool on the stone floor. You cross to him, your hand resting in the place between his shoulder blades, rubbing a small circle as you step around to look at him, at the vein pulsing in his jaw, the way the line is sharp, taut, his neck tight and rigid. “Do you not want to consummate? Are you not ready? For if you’re not, I shall cut my hand and it will be done.”
“NO!” he blurts out, the word too fast and too loud for the stillness of the chambers, his cheeks reddening as he looks down, down at his boot covered feet. “I just want it to be proper and I…” He swallows hard and you understand.
“You don’t know what to do,” you conclude and he nods, cheeks still red, ruddy as he looks at you, green eyes apologetic. Fearful. “Well luckily,” you whisper, stepping closer, watching as his Adam’s apple bobs with another hard, fearful, nervous swallow, “I do.”
“How?” he asks, the blush fading, his brows drawing together and eyes flaring with anger, with jealousy and possessiveness. Perhaps the most potent aphrodisiac. More potent than power for here is power in love, a man who truly wants you as his.
“My uncle is a…an interesting man,” you whisper, lips curving in a sardonic kind of smile, your free hand, the one not resting between his shoulder blades, finds his, interlacing your fingers with his. “And he…he took my sister to a brothel one night and I followed. Not to see or know, but rather…because my blades are quite sharp.”
“And?” Ormund whispers, his body pressing against yours, his body moving steps to you, to feel you against him even through the layers of fabric.
“And I saw what the act is,” you whisper, your gaze dropping from his eyes to his lips, his soft lips, the ones that you have felt against yours merely hours ago. The ones that made you feel what you supposed those people at the brothels did, except yours was made of love. “I know what to do.”
“Teach me,” he whispers, his forehead dipping, pressing against yours, his eyes closing as he breathes in your scent, the one he says is everything he’s dreamed about. “Teach me so that I may know—for you.”
“Very well,” you whisper, surging up, pressing your lips against his in a kiss that is hungry, that is full of love and desire. He gasps, eyes flying open, surprise glimmering in them before he melts against you, his hands finding your waist, your shifting to twine around his neck, lacing through the curly strands of his hair, his body pressing you back, back, back against the wall.
His mouth has opened, slanting, his tongue sliding into your mouth, sliding along yours in a way that leaves you breathless, his hands sliding from your waist, to your back up to the ties of your gown, the laces of the bodice. Your skin is fevered, flushing with want, a coil in your stomach from the press of his body against yours, the feeling of his lips and tongue and the way in desperation your teeth have clashed.
“Is this right?” he whispers, pulling back, pulling away as his fingers work the bodice ties loose, a line of saliva stretching between you and him. “Am I doing this right?”
“I mean,” you pause, swallowing hard yourself, skin flushing anew, burning, burning, burning at the way his eyes track the movement of your swallow, green eyes black with desire. “I feel something so I assume so.” The scent of his skin like that of sandalwood and papyrus is all you can smell and it is intoxicating, but not so intoxicating as the way his eyes widen when your dress loosens, when you shrug out of it, the gown pooling underneath you on the floor, a halo around your feet.
“My god,” he rasps and then he’s kissing you again, his hand fisting in your hair as he pulls you against him, enough that you can feel his bulge, the one not growing so much as already grown. It’s hard and stiff and his hips move against you of their own accord and you wonder how he knows to do this when he has never done so before.
“I thought,” you gasp out as he finds a spot underneath your ear, his teeth working at the skin, tongue soothing the bite, “you’d never done this before.”
“I haven’t,” he murmurs against your neck, “but with you, it seems I know.” He breathes in the crook of your neck, breathing in your scent, his nose pressing against your skin before he lifts his head, the bed now behind you, your knees pressing into it, threatening to buckle as he pushes against you. “What is next?”
“They, um, they,” you pause, breaking off, images flashing before your eyes, things that at the time you wished you hadn’t seen, but are useful now. Fingers at the place you never thought of as anything, hands and lips over chests, hips slamming against hips. “The men prepare the woman.”
“How?” he asks, pulling back, pulling away from you, mouth pinching as though even this small bit of separation pains him.
“Their fingers,” you whisper, sighing when he looks confused, brows knitting in a way that is adorable, yet far too clueless. You remove your smallclothes, letting them fall to the floor, a heady rush of lust and love in your veins when you see the way he’s looking at you, when you hear the deep sound that escapes him.
You fall back onto the bed, shifting, spreading your legs, your hand going to your cunt, finding your clit, placing pressure against it, a bolt of something running through you, a small sound escaping your lips involuntarily.
“Let me,” Ormund whispers, his clothes now shed, his cock erect, hard, a clear bead resting on the tip as he climbs over your body, replacing your hand with his, his thumb pressing down on your clit, a curious finger dipping between your folds, pressing inside of you, the stretch burning and strange but at the same time, perfection and you let out a small sound, one that has Ormund looking at you with absolute lust. “You like this?” he asks, clarifying as he moves his finger in and out, tracking every reaction you have, every twist of your face, the way you move against him.
“Yes,” you breathe out and his lips curve in a cocky kind of smile, another finger sliding inside of you, knuckles dragging along your walls, his thumb never ceasing.
“Not enough,” he whispers and before you can ask him what he means, he’s shifting, lifting your hips, his tongue pressing against you. He’s tasting you and his fingers are moving, his tongue building a rhythm with them around your clit, his chest moving, rising and falling as if he’s breathing in the way you smell. Delighting in it.
It’s not long before the coil in your stomach is snapping, that feeling of heat and pleasure surging through your veins as he rises, his body over yours, his chin and lips still glistening with your release.
“Divine,” he whispers, his eyes hungry in a way you’ve never really seen before. “What’s next?” You can’t help but laugh a little, kind of laugh made of surprise, his lips curving up at the sound, his lips peppering kisses all over your skin, making you laugh all the more.
“You know what’s next,” you say and he pulls back, a solemn look in his eyes as he nods.
“Yes,” he says, “and you must know before I do that I love you. I feel you should know it before we do something that can never be taken back. I know…” he pauses, even as his cock presses against you, kissing your entrance. “I know that I may not have been your choice.”
“You were my choice,” you tell him and he blinks, the look in his eyes like he is rewriting every thought he’s ever had. “I saw many options and my father did not suggest you. I did. I wanted you and I have you. I love you.” He presses his lips against yours, pressing inside of you, inching in and your gasp of pain is swallowed by his lips, a single tear sliding down his cheek as he pushes in, the burn echoing throughout your body.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers and you lift one hand from his back, wiping away the tear with the side of your finger, drawing him back to you in a kiss as he begins to move inside of you, building a rhythm, one punctuated by murmurs of love you. Love you. Love you.
And when his thrusts grow sloppy, you can feel his release nearing, yours drawing close again from the way he kisses you, his hands trailing over every inch of your body and the way his cock drags along your walls.
“Love—you,” he cries, just as your release comes through, that same feeling of pleasure, of heaviness in your limbs as he spills inside of you in thick hot ropes, his body collapsing beside yours, drawing you close to him, his eyes closing as he breathes you in. “I love you.”
“And I you,” you whisper, your hand tracing the side of his face as his eyes open, lips pulling back in a smirk as he looks at you.
“I shall never tire of hearing you say that,” he whispers. “Can you say it again?”
“I love you, I love you, I love you,” you whisper and he sighs in contentment, pulling you down beside him, your gaze snagging on a bruise on his shoulder, one dark and deep and in the shape of a belt. “What is that? Who hurt you?”
“It’s nothing,” he whispers, a shadow falling over his face. “Just a reminder of the weight of blood. Something that…” he pauses, pulling the covers up and over the two of you, the ones which had been folded at the end of the bed, “I forget when I’m with you.”
And you say nothing more, simply pressing a kiss against the purpling bruise and holding him while sleep claims you both.
The Weirwood tree is tall and large and strong, wizened in a way that Ormund has never seen another tree be. It is a marker of the Old Gods, the Old Faith, something his father hates, something he should hate, his father’s message having been beaten into him a thousand times before, but standing here, his hand in yours, he finds he disagrees.
As he always does with you.
“What do we do, my love?” he asks you and you turn to him, a smile alight on your face as you pull him towards it, a small giggle escaping your lips, body clothed in a green and gold gown, beautiful and perfect and yet a part of him wishes you were wearing armour, clothes you loved above all else.
“We speak the truth,” you reply, kneeling down in the damp earth, not only the hem of your dress gathering dirt, but rather all of it. “We tell the tree how we love each other and then we say we take the other as our partner. It is that simple.” He kneels down with you, the scent of you and damp earth overwhelming him and he knows that for the rest of his life, when he thinks of his wedding it will be this: you in a dirt-stained gown and loose hair and the scent of dirt, your warm hands in his.
“Well then, I love you. I have since you dropped from the ceiling when you were five and I was seven and I will continue to do so forever.”
“I love you as well,” you tell him, your smile softening, becoming loving in a way it’s never been before. “I have loved you since you sent your first letter and said that you believed in me and addressed me as General Targaryen because no one had ever believed in me before. And I could not imagine losing you, my letter boy, to anyone.”
“What now?” he whispers, his heart seeming too large for his chest and he wants nothing more than to take you here and now—now that he understands everything to do.
“Now you say you take me for your wife,” you tell him and he squeezes your hand.
“I take you, Y/n Targaryen, as my wife.”
“And I take you, Ormund Hightower, as my husband,” you whisper and then he’s letting go of your hands, his fingers framing your face as he cups you, pulling you to him and pressing a searing kiss to your lips. One that leaves you both breathless because you know.
This is the moment that you became real.
The First Child:
Ormund waits, his hands twining together as Cannibal comes into view, his true name something only you know, a secret that you keep and that he does care that you do. He can practically hear his father’s mutterings, curses about you and your polluted blood and sinful nature, but he does care because he loves you.
He loves the things you’ve told him of your line, of your sister, of your mother. He has grown to love the things you love, his father’s messages be damned.
He watches as you leap from Cannibal’s back, landing in a roll, springing to your feet as Cannibal takes off for some distance place, someplace you can call him back from in some way that he does ask about. Your dragon is the only secret you keep and he does not care.
What he cares about is the wide smile on your face, the way your skin is glowing as you run to him, the scent of fire and ash clinging to your dark leather riding gear. He opens his arms and you run straight into them, your week away with your sister having taken a toll on him.
He spent the entire time pouring your oils on your pillow and holding it to him, wishing that it was you, even though he knew it wasn’t, the smell being off. Wrong.
“My love!” he cries as he picks you up, spinning around the courtyard of Oldtown. “How are you?”
“I’m pregnant,” you blurt out as he sets you down, everything inside of him freezing in place.
“You’re what?” he breathes and watches as your smile widens, deepens, tears lining your perfect eyes. Eyes that are glimmering with a strange sort of happiness.
“I’m pregnant,” you whisper and he’s dropping to his knees before you, the dirt of the courtyard digging into his clothed knees, one hand on your hip, the other on your stomach as he looks at it. He expects to see the child moving inside of you already but it’s early, he knows. He just can’t believe it.
An heir, already.
“My miracle,” he whispers, looking up at you, tears gathering in his green eyes. “My forever miracle.” And he rises, pressing a deep kiss against your lips as he pulls you against him, every line of your body against every line of his and there is the thing he missed, the things your oils lack. The mystery ingredient: you. Just you.
You and another.
“What do you think of the name Aemon?” Ormund says, stepping into the room, his attention on you, but his eyes still scanning the book of names he found in the library.
“No,” you whisper and he looks up at you, you who stands tall, belly round and protruding, five moons in now, the child kicking hard against you, wanting out, wanting to breathe air. “I want to name him Baelon—or, if it’s a girl, Baela.”
“Why?” he whispers, taking note of the tears that line your eyes, tears that fall more easily now since the baby.
“My brother,” you whisper, voice thick as a single, glittering tear rolls down your cheek. “My brother was named Baelon.”
“Very well,” Ormund says, dropping the book onto the bed, crossing to you, stepping behind you, interlacing his fingers beneath your bump and lifting, reliving you of the pressure for a moment. “Baelon it is.”
Ormund hears your scream echoing off the stone walls of Oldtown, ricochetting to him in his solar, the new solar for the new Lord of Oldtown, his father now nothing but ash. It is a deep scream, a primal scream and he runs, leaving everything behind, every instinct in his body simply to get to you, pushing past servants and guards and anyone who gets in his way, bursting into the room just as you scream again, your hand on your stomach and a pool underneath you on the stone.
“MIDWIFE!” Ormund roars, his voice a matching primal sound for yours. “NOW!” The midwife runs in, followed by the Maester and they try to remove Ormund from the room, but he fights against them, fighting to stay with you, your hand reaching for him and his reaching for you and they soon give up on trying to separate you.
For there is something no one knows, save you and he: you are of one heart, one body, one mind.
By whatever God’s decree.
Twenty hours of labour, of your screams and cries, of your hand squeezing his and cursing him in the same breath that you confess how much you love him. Twenty hours for a silent child.
“My lord,” the midwife says, the child in her arms silent and still. “He is not breathing.”
“GIVE HIM TO ME!” you cry and she startles, body seizing for a moment but Ormund nods and she hands the green and gold bundle to you, one which you push back from the stillborn face. “Listen to me Baelon,” you whisper, “you will live. Even if I have to fight every god in the world, you will live. You will breathe and cry and scream because I am your mother and I am telling you to live.”
He reaches for you, wanting to look you in the eyes and tell you that the child is gone, but it’s that moment that a sharp and keening cry breaks through the air, the baby screaming in your arms, face ruddy in only the way that a baby can be. And it opens its eyes to show startling green.
“Welcome Baelon,” he whispers. “You are a miracle, just like your mother.”
It was after the labour, as you were penning your letter to your sister that a raven landed on the sill with a message. One that you opened, passing yours onto the bird, instructing it to take the message to Princess Rhaenyra. The message was written in your sister’s scrawling hand, a mere few words. Just: Jacerys Velaryon and his date of birth.
Exactly two days before Baelon.
It must be a twin thing.
The Children:
Five children, a miracle for the Hightower line, every single one carrying some piece of Valyria and Oldtown. Five children, four sons and one daughter. Baelon as the oldest, the heir to the Oldtown legacy, Aerys, the youngest, the most reckless. Rhaegar, the third born and the most studious, fascinated by the Andal faith. Matarys, the fourth born, the warrior. The most like you.
And Daenerys, the youngest, the only daughter. The one with red hair and green eyes, every inch the Hightower girl, but a mind of a Targaryen, steel and fire and swords. Spoiled beyond belief, but tough beyond all measure.
And now, a ward, a son of Alicent, your brother. Little more than a babe, one that you will raise. Young Daeron.
It seemed that your life was full, yet a dreamer always knows that the worst battle is around the corner and you knew that nothing would be solved before the green banners flew black.
The Dance of the Dragons:
“What?” you whisper, your throat thickening at the words still ringing through the hall, your father is dead, Aegon is king. “That is not his right!”
“Rhaenyra is not fit,” Ormund says, the letter sealed with the Red Keep seal in his hand, the folded parchment flapping in the movements of his hand. “Daemon is a threat.”
“Daemon is an idiot in love! And it is not his right! You cannot support this!” you cry, but Ormund’s face draws closed, shuttering as he sets his jaw.
“I am a Hightower and I support Aegon as king. His bloodline is partly pure. And you are a Hightower by marriage. You follow what I say.”
“Don’t forget yourself, Ormund,” you hiss, stepping closer to him, your finger jabbing into his chest. “I am not a simple-minded fool and if this comes to war as I know it will, you do not want to be on my bad side.”
“We have been married for seventeen years and yet you doubt me?” he whispers, his voice low, the door of his solar creaking open, a presence behind the two of you and you can feel your heartbeat in your throat, can hear your blood pulsing in your head.
“If you are not with me,” you hiss, “you are against me.” You turn and walk away, your chest feeling like it’s caving in, the warning from your father all those years ago ringing through you, the fact that Hightowers hate Targaryens.
You wonder, if perhaps, your love for the letter boy clouded the truth of the war you saw. If you made a wrong choice that will cost your sister her throne.
“Mother,” Baelon hisses from the shadows of the halls, stepping out, Aerys not far behind him. “We must leave. Our loyalty is to Aunt Rhae, not Alicent. Not Aegon. We cannot stay. We have to leave. Fight.”
“I can’t,” you whisper and the tears that you have been feeling since your father died, since you heard the throne was stolen, boil over, spilling down your cheeks as your body shakes, your eldest son, a man grown, enfolding you in his arms. The arms which did not move until you ordered them too. Your miracle child.
“Why not?” he whispers and you cry harder, the sobs wracking your body.
“Because I love him.”
“We fly the banner of Aegon,” you hear Ormund say, his voice loud and dominating in the small space. “We support a righteous king.” You gasp, your chest aching, your hand pressing against your sternum, green gown never heavier than now.
“Mother,” Matarys whispers behind you and you turn, seeing your youngest son, his violet eyes gleaming with their own tears, his mind haunted by dreams. A dragon dreamer or possibly a battle seer, you are not yet sure. But his mind is haunted with fire and smoke and a shadow with jaws of steel.
“Yes, my darling?” you say, your voice cracking with the weight of tears.
“We need to leave,” he says and the pain rams through you again with all the force of a battering ram and you shake your head, pressing your lips together as you hold your arms out for your small son to run to.
“Not yet,” you whisper.
“Why not?”
“Because I love him.”
“The dragons are ready whenever you are, Mother,” Rhaegar says, his body leaning against the stone wall of your solar, your sons all gathered before you. You’re sharpening your sword, the one given to you by Daemon when you took Baelon to retrieve his egg as a child.
“I cannot leave,” you tell them. “I love him too much and when you all fall in love, you will understand.”
“But you swore to Aunt Rhae,” Baelon cries and you shrug, tears slipping down your cheeks, an admission of weakness because Ormund has always, will always, be yours.
“What will it take for you to leave, Mother?” Rhaegar asks, logical to a fault, scholarly like Ormund.
“If he threatens us, you and me. Then I will leave. If I do not kill him first.”
You can hear murmurs behind the closed doors of Ormund’s solar and you push the doors open, to see Ormund seated beside Daeron, whispering about power and righteousness and the taint of Targaryen blood. Of their sin.
“Sins?” you call out and he looks up, startled, shame flooding his green eyes. Eyes that used to look at you with love, but have since become as dark and convoluted as his father’s. “You are despicable, Ormund!”
“Why? Because I speak the truth?!”
“BECAUSE YOU ARE BECOMING YOUR FATHER!” you scream, the sound bouncing off the stone walls, Daeron’s face drawing tight, fear and curiosity warring in them. “Daeron,” you say, tone softer, his face relaxing when he looks at you, the only mother he has ever known, “go.”
He does, running from the room and closing the doors behind him with a echoing bang.
“I am not my father,” Ormund says, stepping around the table, towards you but you shake your head, lip curling as you step away from his touch.
“You are crazed, half-mad. Claiming my blood, the blood in your children is sinful. You are becoming exactly as he taught you to be and I swear if you lift a hand to my children, I will make you regret it. Do not do it.” And then you sweep from the room, the tears burned away now by anger and rage and an understanding that soon you will leave.
That soon he’ll finally do something that means you must flee.
It comes at dinner that night.
“All Targaryens,” Ormund mutters, his knife stabbing against his plate with particular force, “ save for young Daeron, should burn by their own dragon fire.” It’s like someone has stabbed you, pain spreading from your chest through your body and you can feel your lips open, a horrid sound echoing through the room as you push your chair back from the table, limbs weak and heavy, Ormund’s head lifting with urgency, gaze clearing as he looks at you, body already moving towards you.
And that’s what’s cruel, because for a second it looked like he was your Ormund. The boy you fell in love with and the man who set you free.
But soon the shutter falls and the monster is in its place.
“Mother, are you alright?” Baelon calls out and you close your eyes for a moment, drawing strength from the blackness of your closed eyes, the darkness, nodding once, teeth grinding against themselves.
“I will be,” you whisper, “later, most likely by tonight.” You don’t even need to see your children to know that they understand.
Tonight is the night that you’ve finally snapped.
Tonight is the night you leave.
“You know,” Ormund says, his hands undoing the laces of your gown, a ritual of undressing one another that you began in the early days of marriage, “this war will have costs.”
“And let me guess,” you reply, tone arch and blood boiling at his touch, at his proximity, the kind of hate and anger that can only be borne of love, “you will pay them all.”
“No,” he says, his answer surprising you, your breath hitching. “I will not pay the price if it is you. You are the only thing I cannot lose. You keep me sane for only am I complete with you. You are the price I will not pay.”
Your chest feels hollow, scraped clean, his words running through you as you turn, your gown falling from your body as you pull him to you, pressing a kiss against him, one deep and searing, the two of you merely a tangle of tongues and teeth and limbs as you stumble to the bed. As you say goodbye even if he doesn’t know it yet.
And when he’s asleep, you rise from the bed, grabbing your sword, dressing in riding clothes as quietly as possible before slipping from the room, running to your children, banging on their doors, their bodies emerging, ready as you are.
“Mother,” Daenarys says when she emerges, “should we leave a note?”
“No,” you tell her. “Your father lost that courtesy when he said we should all burn. Now, let’s go.” And the six of you slip from the castle soundlessly, crossing the courtyard to the edge where you call out into the night, in a language that is not human, that merely sounds like chuffs and chirps.
The language of the dragons, the language Leviathan (Cannibal’s real name) taught you when you were a child.
The language he promised you that he would hear no matter how far away he was. And he does not let you down, his large form rising above the five other creatures behind him.
The language that is the reason you are able to flee with your children, flying to Dragonstone, to battle, to Iron Thrones and Iron Crowns and your sister.
To the battle you saw all those years ago.
—
Ormund wakes to an empty bed, your side cold as if it was never slept in at all, only the faintest edge of your scent clinging to the cloth. He rises, dressing, calling for you, yelling your name through the halls, running to every place you go, the hill, the yard, the library, armoury. Everywhere.
And you are nowhere.
“WHERE IS SHE?! WHERE IS MY WIFE?!” he cries once he’s gathered all the servants in the grand hall, a single soldier stepping forwards, eyes cast to the floor.
“She and your children were reported to have left last night,” he says. “On dragonback. Cannibal led the charge with her on him.”
Ormund can feel the last bit of his sanity disappear, everything shuddering into place as his father’s son.
“She is a traitor then,” he says but it is not him, not really, for the real Ormund is locked away, war making monsters out of men.
But the real Ormund whispers that he will get you back, no matter the cost because you were the only thing he never wanted to pay.
“If you see her,” he says, “kill her.”
—
“You did not leave quickly,” Rhaenyra says, your hand twined with hers as the two of you stand on the balcony of her rooms in Dragonstone, her crown heavy on her brow and your new title as her Hand and General of the armies, Protector of the Land, heavy on yours.
“No,” you whisper, looking out at the dusky, smoke-filled sky.
“I had rather hoped you’d never leave at all,” she says and you turn to her, taking in the aged look on her face, the face that you know so well, have known and will always know better than anyone else in all the Seven Kingdoms.
“That hurts,” you say, your tone teasing and she laughs, just a bit, a small laugh, short and sharp and nostalgic all the same.
“I had hoped that love would be too strong,” she says, her lips pressing into a saddened, heavy smile. “I had hoped Ormund would be different.”
“You are not the only one.”
—
“Lucerys should not go,” you whisper. “I see a shadow that takes him. It’s too dangerous.”
“We need this diplomatic mission,” Rhae says and you reach for her hand, lifting it and pressing it against your heart, your head shaking.
“We might lose him.”
“So, send me,” Matarys calls and you startle, looking back at him, your brows knitting and breaths changing, deeper and yet shorter, fear choking you.
“What? You said you see a shadow before you die,” you say and he stands, rising from his seat at the Black Council table, his body spindly and thin like a strong wind would blow him over.
“Let us change fate.” Rhae looks at you for a moment before shaking her head and nodding, assenting to the mission.
“Very well.”
—
You should never have let the mission go on. You should have gone with them, instead here you stand, looking at the two boys dead.
“The boys who clung to us, who hid their faces in our skirts,” Rhae whispers, her body pressing against you, hip to your hip, arm around you, the two of you holding each other up, “dead, all so I may sit upon a throne of swords?”
“War has costs,” you whisper, your tears having long since dried away, evaporated by rage. “And I shall pay them just to have Aemond’s head on my wall. Oh my boy!”
—
“Sir,” the messenger cries, stepping into the room. “News of the Targaryens.”
“Say it and then leave,” he orders, jaw already gritting, a pit of fear that he refuses to acknowledge growing as he fears that he will hear that you are dead. That you are gone.
“Matarys and Lucerys have been killed by Aemond on a mission.” Ormund can feel that chokehold of anger, that familiar pain as he lifts his glass of spirits and hurls it at the wall, the glass shattering in a million shards.
“Get out.” And when he is alone, Ormund lets the tears of sanity slip down his cheeks as he thinks of the small boy who used to swing from his arms lying dead on a funeral pyre, set alight by dragon fire.
He cannot bear it.
He would rather death claim him now.
—
“Before the battle, before I leave,” you hiss to Rhaenyra, drawing her aside, “I need you to listen in case when you take the throne, I am not there. Alright?”
“Alright,” she says, her tone cautious, hesitant.
“Wear full body armour before you sit upon the throne and put cloth in case the moon curse comes. Make sure no blood will be seen upon your body. Promise me or else all will have been in vain and our sons will have died for nothing.”
“I promise,” she vows and you nod, turning from her and leaving the hall, closing your eyes for a moment as the wind whips into your face, cold and cruel and cutting.
You will not come back from this battle.
Of that you are sure.
The Battle of the Gullet:
“Foolish girl,” you hiss at the sight of Rhaena atop Sheepstealer, the dragon out of control, not bonded in a true way to her. “To Jace,” you chuff at Leviathan and he huffs, the sound not a word, but a snort of indignation as he roars, the sound splitting the sky, Sheepstealer turning, veering, leaving Vermax in its path.
But then Sheepstealer’s tail swings, hitting Vermax and it’s the sight you saw in your dreams, the arrow soon to come. You squeeze your legs around the seat of Leviathan’s body and he dives, flying forwards, enough that as you hear the arrow launch, you are able to jump, leaping from Leviathan’s body, the arrow cutting through your armour, three others following in quick succession, ripping through your body.
“Y/N! NO!” Jace cries as your body falls, plummets, blood trailing from the wounds, your body landing atop the seat of Leviathan, but you cannot feel it. You cannot even feel what once was searing pain from the arrows cut.
Rather you feel nothing.
You feel empty, your blood trickling from you, falling onto Leviathan’s body, his words angry and worried and harsh.
“You want to talk about foolish girl, little human? That’s you! You are my human and you are not allowed to die!” His roar is the last thing you hear before everything goes black, an image of green eyes surging up to meet you as you feel the gods reach down for you.
You fought off death all those years ago for Baelon and now it has come to collect.
You knew you would not come back.
Daenarys’s letter:
Dear Father,
I know you may not even read this, may see my name and think betrayer but you should know that it is you who betrayed us long before we left.
You betrayed us every time you spoke against Targaryens for that is what we are. Hightower blood may run through my veins, through my brothers’ veins, but not our mother’s. Not your wife’s. You said all should burn and you forgot that that was her.
You said that your own wife should burn.
And you should know that we had pressured her to leave from the moment the war broke, but her response was always “I cannot because I love him.” Her limit was you threatening her and us. And you hit it. So, we left.
But do not let your hurt let her die without you saying goodbye. She took four arrows for Jace at the Battle of the Gullet. She’s dying, Father. They do not think she’ll make it. Please come.
Please say goodbye because I know you love her as she loves you. It is the only thing I’m sure of, Father.
Please.
Your loving daughter,
Daenarys Hightower
—
“My army,” Ormund calls, his heartbeat frantic, mind erratic. He wishes he had a dragon so that he could fly to you in no time at all and never have to worry about being too late, “we are to march to King’s Landing.”
“To kill the Queen?” one asks and he shakes his head.
“No,” he answers. “To serve her. Fly our banners black. Now let us go.”
The Reunion:
“Let me up!” you cry, the bandages tight around your body as you shift from side-to-side, trying to rise but finding that it hurts, giant ripping pain. “Come on, Daemon. Help me up.”
“And let you die?” he asks, violet eyes narrowed on you, lips curved up in a soft smirk. “I think not, young General.” His arm is around Rhaenyra’s fingers and you lift your arms into a prayer clasp, shaking them at her.
“Please, sweet sister,” you cry and she laughs, a choked kind of laugh, tears falling from her eyes as she shakes her head.
“I cannot lose you. The Maesters are hopeful your bleeding is done, but they’re not confident.” You sigh and let your hands flop back to the bed, the motion jarring and you grunt, teeth gritting, eyes falling on Jace and Baelon, standing side-by-side, future King and Hand together.
“Jace, you owe me your life,” you sing-song, but he shakes his head.
“No can do,” he says, and Baelon glares at you, green eyes lined with tears, anger in those eyes that are a mimic of Ormund’s.
“I wish Matarys were here,” calls a soft voice, that of Rhaegar, but the mention of your youngest son, the one with violet eyes and dark curls causing a pain to rip through you, choked sobs leaving your lips, the kind that have your body heaving, aching, tearing.
Rhae crosses the floor, sinking down upon the bed beside you and drawing you to her as you did when you were little, your tears falling fast as you mourn the child that you had. That Aemond killed. For no reason but a throne.
One your sister sat on without bleeding, despite the period blood she found after. She listened and now she shall be Queen for years.
“I want my son,” you cry and Rhae’s arms tighten around you.
“I miss him too,” calls a voice that has your heart racing, your head turning, tears falling faster, sobs racking your body. Ormund.
“Here to kill us all?” Daemon sneers, drawing forth his sword, placing the blade against the hollow of Ormund’s throat, a bead of blood on the edge of the sword.
“No,” he answers, his hand waving at his simple, black garb, not a single weapon in sight. “I am here for my love.” He looks at you with green eyes clear, sane, not a hint of the broken man forged by his father’s hand.
“You’re here, truly,” you whisper and he nods, stepping around Daemon’s blade to go to you, falling onto his knees before the bed in a repentant pose, taking your hand and pressing it against his lips.
“I told you before,” he whispers, “that war may have many costs, but you are the only cost I would not pay.”
“Where are your men?” Rhae asks and he lifts his head from the bed, from your hand, his green eyes meeting her violet ones.
“Here, flying the black banner,” he says. “My armies are hers. I am whatever side she claims in war. Because I will not pay the price of losing her.”
“You mean it?” you ask and he looks at you, reaching his hand forwards to cup your cheek as he nods.
“You are and have always been, their general.”
The End:
The war concluded with Queen Rhaenyra succeeding, her brother Aemond killed by her sister, Y/N. Aegon, Alicent and Helena also perished, war having shown that Side Black was the winner.
Vhaegor, the unbonded dragon, made a new choice—Ormund Hightower, the husband who rode with his wife when she went to slay her brother on the back of Leviathan, the mythical Cannibal.
Ormund gave up his seat at Oldtown to his second son Aerys and had two more children by his wife Y/N: Lucerys, the son and Matarya, the daughter.
Rhaenyra was succeeded by her son, Jacerys whose Hand was his cousin Baelon. And history has learned.
And history continues.
The Dance concluded as Y/N foresaw when the banners flew black.
“Oh my poor little boy.” You coo picking up the wailing babe. Your young brother and ward only calming in your or Gwayne’s arms, not even nursemaids can soothe the boy for long. “There’s no need for all this noise.”
“Is he alright?” Gwayne asks sleepily, rubbing his eyes while walking over to you both. Daeron having been put in the nursery once more to try and get him to sleep alone. That clearly having failed. As he doesn’t cry for attention, he wails like he’s been abandoned, desperate for a modicum of love.
“Just a little bit lonely.” You say, swayed him. The boy immediately settling now he’s in your arms. “Aren’t you my little dragon?”
“I can hold him.” Gwayne offers before just taking the sleeping babe from your arms. Giving the boy a soft smile when he briefly stirs. “You need sleep my love.”
“I’m fine.” You say knowing Gwayne just wants a chance to have baby cuddles, him having been busy most of the day.
“Why do you think he cry’s every time he’s apart from us?” Your husband asks sitting down on the large snuggle chair in Daerons room. Looking down at the boy with complete love and care in his eyes.
“He’s scared of being abandoned again.” You say sitting next to him, knowing he’s giving you a look while you look at the babe. “Don’t look at me like that. No matter how you try and spin it he was abandoned by his parents.”
“He wasn’t.”
“Gwayne-.” You try before getting interrupted.
“We’re his parents.” Gwayne says firmly, not willing to hear any different. “And he need to learn that we’re not going anywhere.”
“Then we need to show him.” You say resting your head on your husband shoulder.
-
“Rawww.” Gwayne exclaims picking Daeron up and spinning the boy around. Making the young boy laugh, loving playing with his kepa. “I’ve got you! Good luck rescuing the princess now!”
“My prince, be careful!” You fake shout, stood on the sofa pretending to be a princess locked away in a tower. “The only way to defeat the terrible monster is with cuddles!”
“Ahhh.” Gwayne fake screams when Daeron wraps his arms around him, cuddling the man tightly. “Oh no.” He says dramatically moving to the floor faking death but making sure Daeron doesn’t get hurt. “How did you find my one weakness.”
“Kepa!” He giggles as Gwayne fakes his death before running over to you and tacking you in a hug. “Muña!”
“My prince, you saved me!” You declare dramatically picking the boy up and kissing his cheek. “Thank you.”
-
“Who’s there?” Gwayne croaks out, still half asleep when he hears the chamber doors get slowly pushed open.
“Me.” Daeron says in a small voice tears streaming down his face while he cuddles his toy dragon close to his chest. “I had nightmare.”
“Come here.” Gwayne says holding his arms out to the boy who runs over and clambers into bed. Snuggling in between you both, waking you in the process. “What was it about?”
“You and muña didn’t want me anymore.” He cry’s terrified you would leave him and not want to be his parents anymore.
“That’s not possible.” You reassure him sleepily, brushing some of his hair out of his face. “You my darling boy are the best thing that’s ever happened to us.”
“Promise?” He asks in a small voice.
“We promise.” You and Gwayne respond in unison making a pinky promise with the boy.
“Now come on, it’s sleepy time.” Gwayne say, laying back down, needing sleep before he has to get up at dawn for drill training.
“Can we have dragon story first?”
-
“What are you doing?” You ask Daeron, finding your son with a bucket and sponge sat next to his dragon. Tessarion. The girl just laying beside him letting him clean her. Your dragon sliverwing just laying in the corner keeping an eye on her hatchings, the older girl being very protective of the young boy and his dragon.
“Giving Tessie a bath.” Daeron explains sweetly washing the dragons head.
“Why?” You ask trying not to laugh, Tessarion weirdly enjoying the bath.
“I heard uncle Ormund complaining about her smell when he came to visit so I thought I’d give her a bath.” He says innocently, an adorable look on his face while he washes the blue girl.
“Oh my sweet boy.”
-
“Do you have to?” Gwayne asks anxiously, looking between you and the dragon. Him loving the girl but worrying given you are a few moon along. Since finding out you were with child your husband has not liked leaving your side, Daeron doing the same.
“Gwayne, he wishes to fly and I do to.” You say, understanding where your husband is coming from but also knowing everything will be fine. You having promised to take Daeron flying, Tessarion being you young to have a rider.
“I know I just worry.” He admits, self aware, hating he has to spent the day with his insufferable cousin instead of you and your son.
“Silverwing would never hurt us.” You tell him softly, cupping his cheek in your hand.
“I know she wouldn’t but I still worry, what if the babe-.”
“The babe will be fine, many dragons riders have flown when with child.” You reassure knowing Gwayne just loves you so much that the thought of anything happening and him not being there is terrifying. “She knows that if anything at all happens to take me home to you.”
-
“Muña!” Daeron whisper shouts excitedly running over to you, having been scared after hearing the screams. Not even Gwayne’s words of reassurance could calm the boy.
“Hello baby boy, I’ve missed you.” You say taping next to you so you can cuddle him.
“Missed you to muña.” He says snuggling into your side. “Can I see the baby?”
“Daeron, meet your little sister.” Gwayne Says softly having been waiting in the corner holding the girl, wanting to give you and Daeron a moment together.“Her names Aemma.”
“Hello Aemma.” Daeron whispers to the baby girl sleeping in her father’s arms. “I’m your big brother.”
Could you write about Gwayne x reader where she is Rhaenyra’s sister, is his wife. She is pregnant around the same time that Joffrey is born. They are visiting King's Landing with Daeron who calls her mom since she has raised him, so Alicent hates her, when she gives birth Alicent calls to see the baby as she did with Rhaenyra thinking that Gwayne wasn’t with her, so he and Daeron go all protective and stand up to Alicent.
My wife
Gwayne being the man you and your sister need. Sorry this has taken longer than I planned I’ve been busy but I hope you enjoy xx
Content: labor, cute children and a dream husband
“You’re doing so well my love.” Gwayne says brushing your sweaty hair out of your face. Him refusing to leave your side while you give birth, you and Rhaenyra’s labors starting at the same time. “You to Rhaenyra.” He says to your sister, her wanting to be by your side given this is your first labor. Her own not stopping her. “You’re both doing so well.”
“Get this baby out of me!” You cry just wanting the pain to stop and to be able to hold your baby in your arms. “You are never touching me again!”
“Fuck!” Rhaenyra interjects shouting at the midwives. “You’re such a cunt!”
“As you wish my love.” Gwayne says knowing you’ll change your mind but willing to do anything you ask.
“One more push princess.” Both you and Rhaenyra’s midwives say in unison. Both you and your sister screaming while you push Gwayne between you both. Both of his hands being squeezed beyond belief.
“It’s a boy.” Rhaenyra’s midwife says wrapping the crying babe in a blanket before passing him to his mother.
“It’s a girl.” Your midwife says not even a moment after, doing the same with your babe. Gwayne being given both baby’s while you and Rhaenyra deliver the afterbirth.
-
“Princess’? The queen wishes to see the babes.” An apocalyptic servant says from the doorway, feeling guilty for just following orders. Her having waited a few more minutes after the screams stoped before entering. “I can take them.”
“No I’m taking my son myself.” Rhaenyra responds stubbornly, sharing a look with the midwives at the queens audacity. Just about to attempt getting up when Gwayne stops her.
“Rhaenyra don’t you dare get up.” Your husband commands, not willing to let any of this slide. Consequences be damed. “Tell my sister that if she’s so desperate to see them she can use her legs and walk to us.”
“Ser-.” The maid attempts to interject before getting interrupted by Gwayne. Him giving the girl a look, almost as if daring her to test him.
“Go.” He demands not giving her an opinion to argue back. “And send Daeron in while you’re at it I know he’s hiding behind the door.”
“Muña! Nyra!” Daeron whisper shouts having been told multiple times that when he sees you after the birth he has to be quiet. Him claiming up into bed with you and your sister. The sheets having been changed and most remnants of labor cleaned up.
“Hello darling.” You say softly to your eldest, he may be your brother by blood but he’s your son by love. “Do you want to see your sister?”
“You know the queen won’t be happy?” Rhaenyra says to her brother by law, noticing him poke his head out the door and send a servant away. Before he makes his way back to her side, leaving Daeron to talk with you while he checks on your sister.
“My sister should know better than to make a woman who’s just giving birth walk that far or at all.” He says back, disappointed in his sister. She used to be kind, but that’s what living with Otto will get you he thinks. Knowing if not for his father his sister would be much better off.
“She’ll say she gave the option of a servant taking the babe.” Rhaenyra counters worried about the fall out.
“And I will say just because she’s fine not caring for her child doesn’t mean we are.” He whispers into Rhaenyra’s ear, not wanting Daeron to overhear. “He’s adorable, boy number three.” He says more loudly, making your son think he was just talking about the new babes. “He’ll make a remarkable knight one day.”
“Thank you.” Rhaenyra smiles happy her sister has such a kind and loving husband.
“Are you ready to move to your apartments?” The midwife asks you and Rhaenyra, thinking you’d both be more comfortable there than the birthing chamber.
“I’ll help muña.” Daeron offers wanting to help in anyway he can.
“Thank you darling.” You say softly knowing there’s nothing your son can really do apart from just be with you but that’s more than enough.
-
“Laenor is helping Rhaenyra back to their apartments.” Gwayne tells you as soon as he enters yours. Him knowing that’s the first thing you’ll ask, you loving your sister. “I’ve also made it clear I’m the one who denied Alicent her ‘request’ so Rhaenyra shouldn’t get in too much trouble.”
“Thank you my love.” You say giving him a quick kiss when he bends down to look at the babe in your arms. Daeron having been telling you some of the things he did with his cousins, him being a similar age to Luke.
“Have you thought of a name yet?” Gwayne asks the boy, you having agreed he can help name your newborn. Wanting Daeron to be reassured that he’s still important to you.
“Aemma.” Daeron says having been speaking with Jace and Luke about ideas. All three boys thinking their mothers would like that and Rhaenyra confirming that would be a good choice.
“I love it.” You say, looking down at the little girl in your arms, her having little tufts of sliver and copper hair already on her head. “Princess Aemma Hightower.”
You’re intrupted from continuing your conversation when the guard opens the door and announces your father and his wife. “The king and queen.”
“Father.” You greet offerings him a weak smile, still unsure how to act around him all these years later after he caused you mother and brother’s death.
“A girl I hear!” He says excitedly, having just come from meeting baby Joffrey. “Marvellous news, have you picked a name?”
“Aemma, after mother.” You explain letting him look at the girl.
“She’d like that.” He says softly, looking at the girl who’s already the perfect mix of you and Gwayne.“Alicent what do you think?”
“Lovely.” She says tightly, silently seething after what you, Rhaenyra and Gwayne did. It ruining her plans of humiliating you both. “Gwayne may I speak with you?”
“Now isn’t a good time, my wife having just given birth and all.” Gwayne says passive aggressively, not having looked at his sister since she entered.
“Muña do you want a cupcake?” Daeron asks innocently, him thinking you might be hungry. Completely forgetting he’s in the presence of his birth parents. “I did them with Luke and Jace after getting the egg!”
“Ohh cake can I have one?” Your father asks the boy, only thinking of cake.
“Yes grandsire.” Daeron says sweetly taking two cakes from the table and giving you the best looking one.
“He’s your father remember darling? Like Alicent is your mother.” You correct, not wanting anymore issues today. Taking the cake of the boy and offering him a thank you.
“No, you and Kepa are my mother and father.” He responds, tilting his head to the side. Knowing it’s true but viewing you and Gwayne as his real parents.
“Daeron-.”
“I’m fine being the boys Grandsire, you two have raised him.” Visarys says interrupting his wife without realising or caring. “Now about this cake.”
-
“How dare you.” Alicent shouts at her brother, him having been ignoring her for the past few days. Him refusing to leave your side. “I’m your queen!”
“Yes, but before that you will always be my little sister who’s treating my wife and her sister horribly!” He shouts back, not caring that Cristian Cole is in the corner glaring at him.
“You don’t get to speak to me that way!”
“I apologise for speaking facts your grace, however I do not apologise for protecting women as that’s part of my vow as a knight and husband.” He snaps, fed up with the whole thing. Looking forward to when you’re healed and you can go back home to oldtown.
“Leave, you’ve turned my son against me!” Alicent screams, hating that her son loves you so much. Not thinking about the fact you’re the one who’s raised him while she was busy plotting with her father.
“No, you turned him against you by sending him away in the first place! And even then you could have written or tried to visit! We’re only here because Rhaenyra asked us to! You haven’t written since his 2nd name day!”
“You can’t speak to the queen like that.” Cristian Cole says in an attempt of a threatening tone, instead Gwayne just finds him pathetic.
“Oh fuck off Cole.” Gwayne snaps rolling his eyes while he leaves not bothering to ask his sister’s permission.
-
“We’re going back to oldtown tomorrow.” You say to Rhaenyra while you sit together having tea, watching the boys play outside. Joffrey and Aemma both sleeping in their mother’s arms. “He loves being with you and the children but, Alicent and her sons just upset him.”
“I understand that.” She says a selfish part of her wanting you to stay but knowing it for the best. You deserving to be happy. “I’m thinking of moving to dragonstone but I don’t wish to leave father and laenor wants to stay.”
“That’s understandable, I hope you two can come to an agreement.”
“Me too, we’ll come and visit you soon though.” She says changing the subject, not wanting to dwell. “The boys adore Daeron and Gwayne.”
“Me to.” You say cheekily, smile one your face as you watch the young boys play in the gardens. “My boys love yours as well.”
𓏲⋆ HELPING BEAU WASH HIS NEW PUPPY TURNS INTO SOGGY CLOTHES AND NEEDING A SHOWER ⋮
“Hold her! Oh my god.” you squealed when the baby golden retriever tried to jump out of the tub full of water. The movement causing a splash that soaked your tank top.
Beau barely caught her in time to keep her in the bathtub, his hearty laugh ringing through the bathroom.
He didn’t seem to be one bit bothered by the fact that he was covered in soapy, dirty water.
“Sorry, sorry!” he chuckled, but his attention was barely on you. His baby voice was quickly back as he muttered, “Y’gotta stay in the tub, girl. You’re still all dirty.”
It was both annoying and adorable.
Since Beau got the dog, his attention was split even more. You, her, school, and football.
While you were still at the top of his priorities (according to him), he was extra busy with taking care of her, training her, bathing her, exercising her, etc. You didn’t mind, but you missed the calm moments you could no longer get with her being around.
It was like you had a child already and you weren’t even out of college.
The dirt was starting to come off as Beau scrubbed her with dog shampoo, turning the water into an even darker muddy color. “Ew. She’s so gross,” you whined, rinsing her with water.
Beau just laughed and replied, “Be nice, she’s still just a baby.”
“Whatever. She’s lucky she’s cute,” you grumbled.
He turned off the water, holding her still in the tub while he asked, “Can you grab the towel? I left it on the counter.”
When your eyes followed his gaze to the counter, you found a very familiar pink towel. “She’s stealing my towel too?”
Your boyfriend just laughed and waited, his eyes falling over your body as you grabbed the towel with attitude. “First my boyfriend, then my towel. What’s next? My job?”
“Baby.” Beau’s voice was warm and trying to be serious and gentle, but you could see through it. “It’s your old towel, you don’t use it anymore. Can she have it?”
You rolled your eyes, fighting the smile on your face. “Fine. But I want my boyfriend back for a little bit tonight.”
Before Beau could even process what you meant, the dog jumped out of the tub and ran straight for you. Quickly, you wrapped the towel around her and tried to dry her off before she could shake the water everywhere.
“God, you’re so full of energy. Stop moving,” you talked to the dog, petting her and forgetting Beau was even in the room.
The hot water running down your back was a great feeling after being stuck in damp clothing for half an hour. Beau was behind you, rubbing your body with body wash and humming along to the song blasting from his speaker.
You let the sweet scented soap wash off your body as you lathered shampoo in his hair.
“Did you use your shampoo?” he asked as he turned to face you, a cheeky smile on his face. “It smells like you.”
You leaned up and pressed a quick kiss to his lips, mumbling against them, “Don’t act like you don’t use it every time anyway. You always smell like it after you shower.”
He let out a fake scoff, muttering, “I don’t know what you’re talking about...”
“Yeah, yeah. Just let me wash your hair.”
“Whatever,” he mumbled, his hand coming up to tilt your chin up. He pressed a slow kiss to your lips, deeper than last time. Pressing you against the tile, his hands slid down your body and gripped at your hips.
You pulled away just enough to say, “We’re not having sex in the shower right now.”
Beau nodded but moved his kisses to your neck, your fingers in his soapy hair. He groaned against your skin dramatically when you moved the shower head to rinse out his hair, forcing him to pull away to not get soapy water in his eyes and mouth.
“You hate me,” he pouted, his eyes relaxing closed at the feeling of you gently scratching his scalp.
“Would I be doing this if I hated you?”
“Maybe.” The warm water ran down your back as you swapped places under the stream. “You’re softening me up.”
You grinned, giving him another quick kiss. “Or I just love you.”
“See? Distracting me with your love,” he paused when you gave him a look. “I love you too, baby.”
“Good. Now let’s finish up so we can go watch our show and cuddle with the dog.” You turned the water off, adding, “Oh, and you’re doing the laundry. Your baby got our clothes wet.”
masterlist
note ᥫ᭡.ִֶָ𓂃 short one but i saw the dog picture on pinterest and thought it would be a cute idea 🥹
Pairing: Jacaerys Velaryon x female Targaryen!reader
Requested: yes, its also a combo of three requests
Warnings: incest obvi, mention of hair but its just during a cute part, allusions to do doing the deed before marriage, wrap it up folks cause we dont have the plan b tea, angst, parental abuse, viserys is fine in this, aemond being like his mother and minding everything but his business, ✨pregnancy and teen marriage✨, spoilers for the show
-
“We have to be quiet,” Jace whispered, holding Y/N’s hand as they walked by the gates. He had been carrying a bag with him as well.
They had to sneak around to be together. They always had. As far as the family knows, Jace and Y/N had not seen each other in six years, since the incident at Lady Laena’s funeral, but that is far from the truth. They would meet at Duskendale, often flying there with their dragons when they were old enough to do so. Before that, they would exchange many letters by raven.
Since they were young, they gravitated toward each other. Rhaenyra never minded this, she was quite fond of Y/N and knew she was not like the rest of her family. However, Alicent did mind. She hated how her daughter would associate with them, often making snide comments about it. Aegon did not even care and Helaena thought their friendship was sweet but Aemond despised the idea of it.
He was a possessive man when it came to his sisters. Deep down, he knew his behavior was not the best yet it did not make him stop. Y/N did not like having her brother make decisions for her or treat her as if she was fragile. For this, they both decided that they had to sneak around to avoid him altogether.
Aemond would monitor everything his sister did when they were children. It did not matter if she was with the Septa, or in the dragonpit, or even eating, he wanted to know. The first time he saw her playing in the gardens with Jace and Luke, he thought nothing of it. His feelings on the matter changed when he saw that she started spending more time with them every day.
The night he lost his eye, Aemond was comforted by Y/N. She was even willing to learn what the maester did to help him. He was grateful, because she was calm and sweet to him, unlike his mother, who was hysterical at the fact that he was maimed. They grew even closer in the following years. Aemond vowed to become a warrior, so he could protect his family, especially Y/N, as a repayment for all the times she helped him when he was in need.
“Where are we going?” She asked through quiet giggles. Jace smirked.
“Out.” Y/N gave him a confused look. It was late, where could they possibly go at this hour?
By this moment, they were almost at the dragonpit, the rush of excitement running through their veins. Vermax was outside, waiting for them. The dragonkeeper, Endric, was leaning against the wall smiling at them. Y/N had wondered what Jace had said to him to even make him agree to do this.
“Jace?” Y/N whispered as he began climbing on Vermax.
“Come on, Y/N,” he called for her, extending his hand so she would follow him. She was unsure, they had never done this before, especially at night. It took her a few seconds to decide she wanted to take the risk.
-
They arrived at a small but beautiful meadow far from the castle. Jace helped her climb off Vermax, who went to hide behind the treeline to rest. Y/N was delighted at the sight. The soft glow of the moon gave it a nice feel.
She was so entranced that she did not notice Jace had set up a blanket for them. “Come on, Y/N,” he playfully called for her as he sat down.
“Is there a special occasion I do not know about?” She wondered, sitting next to him. He chuckled, shaking his head.
“Do I need a special occasion to take you somewhere nice?” Jace said, grabbing her hand and kissing it.
“No,” Y/N said, “you can take me somewhere nice whenever you want.” Jace hummed, too lost in his thoughts as he stared at her.
Jace always had a crush on Y/N. She was sweet and fun to be around. Rhaenyra encouraged him to seek a friendship with her, knowing they got along well. At one point, they did everything together and knew everything about each other. The king was delighted. He loved that they got along.
Y/N rested her head on his shoulder. “Mother found me a suitor.”
“What?” Jace asked, with a clear surprise on his face. “I thought she said you could choose.”
“She lied,” Y/N noted. “She said I would bring shame to her if I picked the wrong suitor.”
Jace rolled his eyes. “It does not make any sense to me.”
They sat there in silence, not wanting to talk about it anymore. Jace was mindlessly playing with her hand and the rings she wore while Y/N rested. It felt peaceful, being alone in the meadow.
“You are so beautiful,” he whispered, carefully brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. Y/N’s face flushed.
“Jace,” Y/N breathed.
She cupped his cheek and then she pressed her lips against his as Jace felt his breath hitch. He grabbed her lower back, quickly getting her under him, and then he kissed her harder. She ran her fingers through his dark hair as the kiss deepened. She pulled back momentarily just to catch her breath. Jace’s gaze intensified as Y/N bit her bottom lip, softly caressing his cheek.
"Make love to me, Jacaerys.”
Jace growled in his throat as he crashed her lips onto hers, working to remove the dress she was wearing. There was no turning back this time.
-
They arrived back in the Red Keep right before dawn, sharing a quick kiss as a goodbye before parting to go to their respective apartments. Nobody seemed to notice they were gone, and if someone did notice, they had not said anything.
It was an eventful day in the castle, Jace and Y/N could not sneak off at all. Vaemond Velaryon wanted the Driftmark throne but King Viserys reaffirmed it was Lucerys’ birthright. Vaemond also committed treason by insulting Rhaenyra and her children, causing Daemon to slice his head off in front of everyone.
During the feast, Aemond had Y/N sitting next to him. He had a weird feeling about her, eyeing her the entire night. The suspicions he did not know he had were confirmed when Jace asked Y/N to dance. Aemond was clenching his jaw as he saw his sister dance with him. Y/N was having fun with Jace, everybody could see that. Aegon sent him a look, subtly shaking his head.
Aemond stood up after hitting the table. Jace stood in front of Y/N, just in case. “Final tribute. To the health of my nephews: Jace... Luke... and Joffrey. Each of them handsome, wise... hm... strong. Come... let us drain our cups to these three... Strong boys.”
“I dare you to say that again,” Jace threatened him. Y/N’s eyes widened as she grabbed his forearm, only to be shaken off.
“Why? 'Twas only a compliment. Do you not think yourself Strong?” Jace punched him, causing Aemond to push him back onto the ground. Y/N was staring at her brother in disbelief as the knights held Jace, Luke, and Baela back.
When Rhaenyra told her children to go to their quarters, Y/N left as well, but not before giving her brother a disapproving look. Aemond followed her and held the door of her chambers before she could slam it shut. “Y/N,” he warned.
“Go away, Aemond,” Y/N rolled her eyes.
“I only complimented them. It is not my fault they felt offended,” he pointed out. His sister stared at him with annoyance.
“Get out, Aemond, now. I will not ask you again,” Y/N threatened him. He scoffed, leaving.
Y/N sat on her bed, thinking about Jace. She wanted to defend him during the dinner, to stand up to her brother but she knew that would cause more problems, not stop them. After debating on what to do, she sneaked out of her chambers and ran to Jace’s apartments on the other side of the Red Keep.
Y/N softly knocked on the door, looking at both sides to make sure nobody was following her. Jace opened the door seconds later, both relieved and shocked that it was her. He pulled her inside, closing the door behind her. “What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see you,” Y/N confessed, wrapping her arms around his neck in a hug. “I am so sorry about everything, I wanted to help you but I didn't know how.”
Jace immediately wrapped his arms around her waist. “I know, don’t worry about it,” he assured her.
They stood there, holding each other, not wanting to let go. “I love you, Jace,” Y/N told him.
Jace smiled against her neck, “I love you, too.”
They slept together that night, knowing that it will probably be the last time they would share a bed for a long time.
-
Three months later
Rhaenyra and her family departed King’s Landing the day after the fight. Y/N and Jace were still meeting in the meadow. The intimacy between them reached new limits as they discovered more about each other’s bodies.
Y/N was just about to fall asleep when she felt something heavy landing on her. She opened her eyes to find her mother standing there, with a look of disappointment and disgust. It was her sheets. “You have not bled.”
That was enough to pull Y/N away from the sleepy feeling. Her blood ran cold as she sat up, the realization of her actions finally dawning on her. “I… I had not noticed,” Y/N admitted shamefully.
Alicent stalked towards her, roughly grabbing her chin. “Who did you fuck?”
“Mother, I-” Y/N whined when she felt the grip getting tighter. “I will not tell you.”
Her mother’s eyes widened as she did not hesitate to hit her daughter multiple times. Y/N started yelling at her, trying to push her away to no avail. Ser Criston and Ser Erryk ran into the quarters, pulling the queen away from the princess.
Criston took her away as she kept yelling obscenities at Y/N, while Erryk looked over at the injuries. It was not too bad, she would have some bruises but the bloody nose and split lip made it look worse than it was. “I will get the maester, princess.”
He quickly walked out just as Aemond entered. The expression of confusion he had turned into anger as he saw his sister. “Y/N! What happened? Who did this?”
“It was mother,” Y/N told him. She stood up from her bed, marching to her dresser to see her reflection in the looking glass.
“Why?” Aemond demanded to know. “Why would she hit you this way?”
Y/N fidgeted, turning around to face him. “She has insinuated that I am with child.”
Aemond stood there, trying to find a hint that she was joking yet he found none. Y/N stared at him defiantly, as if she was waiting for him to raise his hand as well. “Who-”
“I will not tell you. It is my business to deal with.” He was about to argue when Maester Gerardys walked in, quickly rushing over to tend to her. Y/N pointed at the door, silently telling Aemond to leave.
-
“Your Grace, Princess Y/N would like to speak with you,” Ser Harrold said, opening the door to Viserys’ chambers.
“Yes, let her in,” he replied with a smile, which disappeared when he saw the state his daughter was in. Y/N had a bruise on her cheek, along with some scratches. “My love, who did this to you? I will have their head.”
Y/N sat down on the chair, looking up at her father. “It was mother… she discovered something I did.”
Viserys was confused as he grabbed his daughter’s hand. “What did you do? Surely it did not warrant such reaction from her.”
“Father, I- Y/N cleared her throat. “I have sinned.”
He stared at her with evident confusion. Slowly, as he gave it more thought, he realized what she had done. “Y/N,” he sighed.
“I know, father. I have brought shame to mother, you, and our house.”
“Who was it?” Viserys questioned.
“Jace,” Y/N whispered.
Viserys sat down next to her, the shock dawning on him. “I will write to Rhaenyra about this. You will marry Jacaerys and live with him in Dragonstone.”
“What?” Y/N had thought she would be married off to another lord or locked in a tower forever. “You are not angry?”
Her father sighed again, “no, sweet girl. I am not as mad as I should be. I am glad you trusted me enough to come tell me.”
-
Rhaenyra and Daemon sat in the great hall, reading the letter they received from the king again and again.
Dear Rhaenyra,
I must confess I never thought I would send this type of letter to you. Something has happened between Jacaerys and Y/N, which has resulted in a child. For this reason, I have decided they will wed before the next full moon.
We will sail to Dragonstone immediately to discuss this with you and Daemon.
Viserys
Daemon could not help but chuckle. Rhaenyra gave him an amused look. “Care to share what is so funny?”
“It seems Jace and Y/N had been following in our footsteps without us realizing it.”
Rhaenyra chuckled as well, he was right. “I will go speak to him.”
She kissed him and walked to the training yard, where Jace and Luke were training, or messing around.
“Can you come here, Jace?” Rhaenyra called out. Jace excused himself and went up to her. She grabbed his hand, moving him to a more private area.
“What is it?” Jace questioned, worried.
Rhaenyra handed him the note. Jace read it, the color draining from his skin as he stared at her in shock. A child. Marriage. “How long have you two been together?”
“Since I was old enough to go riding on Vermax,” Jace confessed. Rhaenyra gave him an amused look.
“That's why you have been sneaking out so much,” she noted.
Jace’s eyes widened. “You knew?”
“Vermax is not the quietest dragon,” Rhaenyra reminded him. “And you disappeared for hours.”
“Are you angry with me?” He asked.
“No,” Rhaenyra admitted. “I did contemplate marrying you to her when I noticed how much you cared for each other but I knew Alicent was not going to agree.” Jace nodded in understanding. “Go tell your siblings, I am sure Luke is about to run here and ask what is going on.”
Rhaenyra caressed his cheek softly before leaving. Jace was feeling many emotions at once. He could only hope Y/N was doing well with the news. Despite how nervous he was, Jace was beaming. He was going to be a father.
-
By the following week, the Targaryens made their way to Dragonstone. Y/N was beaming with happiness, she was finally going to be with the man she truly loved. On the other side of the ship, Aemond was fuming. He hated it, the fact that Y/N had compromised herself in such a way by a bastard.
Once they were on dry land, Y/N walked ahead of them, getting more excited as she reached the top. The rest of her family walked at a normal pace, Viserys and Helaena being the happiest of them. Alicent and Aemond were drowning in their misery.
“Y/N!” Jace called out for her as they reached the main doors. She embraced him tightly, missing the warm feeling of being in his arms.
Rhaenyra and Daemon were happily watching the couple in front of them. They could not help but laugh at how history was repeating itself. Rhaenyra thought her son would be more traditional in the matter but she supported him.
-
While Viserys and Rhaenyra discussed wedding plans, Jace and Y/N sat together in the gardens. He had his back resting against a tree while Y/N sat between his legs, resting her back against his chest. Jace’s hands softly caressed her small bump.
“How have you been feeling?” He asked her.
“The sickness in the morning has been terrible,” Y/N confessed, “but the maester has been helping me with tea.”
Jace hummed. “Have you been in any pain?”
“No, fortunately not.” Y/N moved her head a little to look up at him.
He smiled at her, “I am glad you are here with me. When I read that note, all I wanted was to go find you.”
Aemond stared from a distance as the happy couple spoke and cuddled each other. He was feeling angrier than before, seeing his sister with him. He knew there was something between them, he always got the feeling but no matter how hard he tried, he never caught them together. All Aemond wanted was to eliminate Jace, however, he knew he would not leave Dragonstone alive if he killed him.
-
Months later
Jace cuddled his newborn son, Aelor, while Y/N rested. Her pregnancy was not the easiest, the Maester had ordered bedrest until the babe was born. She protested it, stating that spending months confined to a bed would drive her insane but Jace had convinced her to do as he said. The labors started in the afternoon. Jace ran frantically through the castle when he found out.
Their wedding was beautiful. It was hosted in the great hall of the Red Keep. The celebrations lasted for an entire week, filled with feasts and tourneys. Jace and Y/N were happy, they could not have asked for more. Alicent and Aemond were forced to join the festivities as they were still against their marriage. All the queen wanted to do was send Y/N to Oldtown but Viserys denied her request multiple times.
-
Years later, the family departed Dragonstone to go visit the king once again. Viserys always asked them to go see him, claiming he missed his daughter and his grandson. Although, the reality was that he missed them all.
Aelor was now four years young and he was a very energetic child. Jace did the best he could to keep up with him, yet it was too much to handle sometimes. The boy had sneaked out multiple times, even managing to get close to the dragons. Of course, Jace was on the verge of collapsing each time he did.
The entire family had gathered in the main hall to talk. The pitter-patter and the loud, child giggles echoed through. Aelor was glad to be there. He was a very curious boy, often stopping to stare at the decor around him.
Jace was speaking to Viserys when he felt a tug on his pants. Without hesitation, he lifted Aelor, placing him on his hip. The boy cuddled up to his father, tiredly rubbing his eyes. Y/N stood next to Jace to join the conversation.
“I do hope this future king has been behaving properly,” Viserys teased, smiling at his grandson.
Jace scoffed playfully, shaking his head. “I am slowly going insane.”
As they gushed about the boy, Aemond stared at them from afar. Despite all the years that have passed, he still despised the idea of his sister marrying that bastard. He plotted many plans for years, searching for the best way to get her back to King’s Landing, without him. But there was one thing he could not deny, Y/N was happy.
Synopsis: In the end, sea and the sky meet, and you get to keep both.
↳ Part One: Pretty Things
Pairing: Prince!Jacaerys Velaryon x Mermaid!Reader
Word Count: 10.6k
Warnings: fluff, sprinkle of angst, helicopter parent??, canon divergence, I gave Jace a new dragon, mermaid grief 🥹
A/N: I feel like this isn’t coherent enough but your girl tried 😭 perhaps I’ll make future drabbles or imagines about them lol
Dividers Credits: @uzmacchiato
The boots fascinated you before anything else did.
You sat at the edge of the bed while the maids laced them, watching the leather bend at your ankle. You had spent your whole life with a tail that moved without instruction, and now you had two limbs that apparently needed buckling into place like cargo.
"They've swallowed my feet," you said.
The younger maid, flour still on her sleeve from some earlier errand, pressed her hand over her mouth.
"They're only boots, my lady."
"Only? They wear little houses. For feet."
That broke her. Her laugh came out in a short burst and caught on the others until three women were smiling at you the way people smile at a child insisting something obvious is a revelation. You didn't mind. You tapped your heels together.
Clack.
You did it again.
Clack.
You were still laughing at yourself when the door opened and every other thought in your head simply stopped.
"Jace!"
You forgot that walking was an unproven skill. Your whole body forgot with you. You slid off the bed, took one confident step, and discovered on the second that your knees had not been told what their job was.
The floor tilted but you grabbed the bedpost with both arms and your heart was still climbing your throat when warm hands closed over your shoulders.
"You have to stop greeting me like you're diving through the sea," Jace said, laughing, though there was real relief under it. "One day I truly won't reach you in time."
"I almost had it."
"You did not."
"I almost-“
"You managed one step."
You looked down at your feet, betrayed. "...I suppose it was."
A cough came from the doorway, deliberate and unhurried, and Jace's ears went red. He stepped back at once.
"Apologies, Mother."
Rhaenyra crossed the room and sat beside you rather than across from you, close enough that you could count the silver threading through her hair. She had very beautiful hair, you concluded in your mind.
"So," she said. "I have heard an extraordinary amount about you."
"Mostly from my son."
Jace groaned from the chair he'd retreated to.
"I should like to hear the rest from you."
You told her your home was wet, which made Jace laugh into his hand. You told her it was bigger than Dragonstone, palaces of coral catching light the way the boots did, only better. Your father was a king. Your mother a queen. Yes, you were truly a princess, and no, Jace had not believed you at first, which had been rude of him.
When she asked about whales your whole face changed. You stretched your arms as wide as they would go, then wider, because no gesture held how big they actually were, how their songs carried for miles the way nothing on land seemed to carry.
"They choose whether to let you ride them."
"And if they don't?"
"They swim away."
"More polite than dragons," Rhaenyra said with a fond smile on her face.
Then Rhaenyra was quiet a moment, watching you.
"And who inherits your father's throne? When the time comes?" She asked out of curiosity.
"My eldest sister. Thallia is Crown Princess."
"Your eldest sister."
"Yes."
"Not your eldest brother or the eldest son?"
You didn't understand the question. "Why would that matter?"
The room went quiet. Jace shifted in his chair. Something moved across Rhaenyra's face, surprise first, then something sadder underneath it, before she smoothed it away.
"It does not matter there," you said, still trying to follow her confusion, "if they are sons or daughters. Whichever child is eldest succeeds. My grandmother ruled, before my father. She still speaks at court more than anyone."
"Your grandmother ruled," Rhaenyra repeated, quiet, like she was hearing an old argument finally settled somewhere she hadn't expected to hear it settled.
"Is it different here?"
Jace went still. Neither of them answered right away.
"Your people," Rhaenyra finally said, with a small sad smile that was entirely genuine, "sound wiser than a great many people on land."
She didn't explain, and you didn't push, though you thought of that silence again much later, once you understood what it had cost her to sit that throne at all.
┈┈・୨ ✦ ୧・┈┈
It took three days before you could cross a room without Jace's hands hovering at your elbows.
"You expect me to balance," you said on the second morning, glaring at your feet, "on these?"
"They're your legs."
"They are deeply unreliable."
"You've had them two days."
"My tail never behaved this badly."
"Your tail had more practice."
You frowned, unable to argue with that. "...That is fair."
He held both hands out. You took them at once like you always did whenever he offered you something. His hands were warm. Yours stayed cool no matter how long he held them, and he'd mentioned it more than once, like some part of the sea had simply never left you.
"Now. One foot."
"Which one?"
"Either."
"They look the same."
"The left."
"...Which is left?"
Jace closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them there was something helpless and fond in his face.
"We're going to be here a while."
They were. But you learned each other in that time, small pieces at a time. That he bit the inside of his cheek when he was trying not to laugh at you. That he let you win small arguments you were plainly wrong about, because watching you defend a bad answer with total conviction entertained him more than being right did. He learned that you counted under your breath before anything difficult, a leftover habit from timing your breath against tide, and that you flinched at loud sudden noise, a wariness bred into you by years of avoiding surface storms.
By the third evening you managed the length of the corridor under your own power, swaying only slightly, and Jace applauded so hard two passing servants stopped in confusion.
"I did it."
"You did."
"I am a human."
"You are something close."
"I walked."
"You certainly did."
You considered the scale of your achievement. "I think I deserve something."
"And what would that be?"
"I wish to lie down."
He laughed. "You've walked ten minutes."
"It has been exhausting."
That night, once you'd thrown yourself across the bed and declared it the greatest invention humans had produced, once you'd rolled onto your stomach and back again simply because you could, he pulled the blankets over you with a care that sat strange and warm in your chest.
"You tuck people in?"
"So they stay warm."
"Humans think of everything," you murmured, already half asleep.
He smiled and brushed the hair from your face and didn't leave until your breathing had gone slow and even.
┈┈・୨ ✦ ୧・┈┈
By the fourth day you could walk well enough that Jace decided you should see something of the castle besides your own chambers.
He started small. A spoon was the first wonder, examined with total seriousness while he explained its purpose, and you declared it clever despite his insistence that it was just a spoon. Bread came next, and you fell in love with it instantly, closing your eyes at the first bite. He told you about flour and yeast and the long wait for it to rise, and you listened like he was describing some old and careful magic, which you supposed, in its way, he was.
By the third day of walking around Dragonstone with him he'd stopped correcting you when you called something a wonder, and started waiting for the question before you'd even asked it.
"Jace?"
"Yes?"
"Show me another wonder."
It was on one of these walks that the windows undid you.
You'd spent ten minutes with your palms flat against the glass overlooking Blackwater Bay, watching the water stretch toward a horizon you missed with an ache you hadn't expected.
"The sea," you said. "I can see all of it."
"It is a good view."
"It is outside."
"...Yes."
"And we are inside."
"Also yes."
You leaned closer, breath fogging the glass. "But I can still see it."
"That is rather the purpose of a window."
"A window." You turned the word over. He explained it let the light in. You hummed, thinking, and then your face lit with the particular certainty of someone who has just solved something.
"Oh!"
Before he could ask, you took two determined steps forward.
"You can simply swim through-"
THUNK!
You bounced back with a gasp, both hands to your forehead.
"The sea attacked me!"
For one long moment Jace tried not to laugh. He truly tried.
"I may have assumed you understood how windows worked."
"How was I to understand? In the sea, if I can see somewhere, I can go there!"
"Don't."
"I am trying very hard."
"You are laughing."
"I am absolutely not-"
He broke, doubling over, hand braced on the wall. You folded your arms with what dignity remained to a woman who had just walked into glass.
"I have been grievously injured."
"I'm sorry."
"You are not."
"No."
"You think this is funny."
"I think it may be the funniest thing I have ever seen."
You poked the glass, cautious.
"...It is rather clever."
"It is."
"It still hit me."
"It did."
"I dislike windows."
"I give it until tomorrow."
"...Perhaps."
He was right. By the next afternoon you were pressing your whole hand against every window in the eastern wing, delighted each time, as though the glass might have changed overnight.
┈┈・୨ ✦ ୧・┈┈
Baela offered to take you to the dragons on the fifth morning, catching you in the courtyard where you'd been practicing your walk along the garden wall.
"I could take you to meet her, if you'd like."
You considered this seriously. You'd only seen dragons from a distance so far, huge shapes cutting the sky, and something about the size of them had unsettled you. But Baela's dragon was different, she said. Calmer, less prone to the temperament that ran through the rest of the family's mounts.
"Is she fierce?"
"Moondancer? No. Watchful. Careful. She doesn't like sudden things, but she isn't cruel about it. I think you two might understand each other."
"Not Vermax's kind of dragon, then. Jace said he was fierce." you said, remembering how Jace's voice always changed at that name, careful, like something held rather than spoken.
"No," Baela said gently. "Not like him."
Jace had duties that morning, some matter his mother needed him for, and though he lingered near the door too long, he trusted Baela enough to let you go without him.
Moondancer was resting in the lower yard, pale-scaled, wings folded loose. The moment your footsteps changed rhythm on the stone, her head came up and turned toward you, sharp and immediate.
You stopped walking.
She didn't blink. A low sound rose out of her chest, not quite a growl, and you took a step back on instinct.
"She doesn't know your scent," Baela said quietly, not moving closer herself. "You don't smell like anything she recognizes. Not Targaryen blood, not sea folk she's seen from the air. To her you're unexplained, and dragons are suspicious of what they can't place."
"She thinks I'm dangerous."
"She thinks you're unexplained. There's a difference, though I grant you it doesn't feel that way when she's looking at you like that."
Moondancer's head lowered, still fixed on you, and huffed through her nostrils hard enough to stir dust at your feet. You held still, unsure whether stillness was the right instinct.
Baela laid a hand against the dragon's jaw and murmured something too low to catch. Slowly the tension went out of the huge shoulders. The growl faded into something more like consideration, though her eyes never left you.
"It's alright," Baela said, to the dragon and to you both. "She isn't going to hurt you. She's deciding about you. Dragons take their time deciding. Come closer. Slowly."
You made yourself move, one step at a time, the way you'd learned to walk in the first place. Moondancer tracked you, and when you were close enough to feel the heat off her scales, she huffed again, softer, and lowered her head the rest of the way.
"Hold your hand out. Palm flat. Let her close the distance."
You did, arm unsteady. Nothing happened for a long moment. Then, slow, almost generous, she pressed her nose against your palm.
You laughed, giddy, and pressed your palm flatter against warm black scale.
"Hard."
"What did you expect?"
"Harder than whales."
"Probably." Baela was watching you with something soft in her face. "She was uncertain of you. I wanted you to see that, actually, rather than have her simply accept you the way she does family. Trust isn't automatic here. Not even from a dragon. Maybe especially not from a dragon."
You kept stroking slow lines along the scales while she went on.
"I think she likes me."
"I think she does too. That matters more than you know. She's careful who she warms to." She paused. "Moondancer is like that. If she's decided about you, she actually decided."
That evening you found Jace on the cliffside, watching the water the way he did when his thoughts got too heavy to carry indoors.
"I met Baela’s dragon today."
"So Baela took you."
You sat beside him. "Moondancer is very beautiful."
"She is."
"But." You chose your words carefully. "She is lonely."
His smile faded.
"The whales become lonely too. When they lose someone."
He said nothing for a long moment.
"Where I come from, nothing truly bonded is ever lost." You took his hand in both of yours. "Vermax is not lonely anymore. He waits."
"...Waits?"
"For you."
His breath caught. Neither of you spoke, the wind moving between you, the sea whispering against the rocks below. When he finally looked at you, something in his face had come loose.
He kissed you. Not because you were pretty, though you were. Because you'd given him something he hadn't known he was still looking for. Peace.
┈┈・୨ ✦ ୧・┈┈
The dancing was Jace's idea, and he seemed almost embarrassed to suggest it, which surprised you, given how easily he suggested most things.
"There's a dance," he said, over supper that same evening. "For an upcoming feast. Mother will expect everyone to know the steps. I thought, since you’re here for at least some of it, I should teach you."
"I know how to move," you said, faintly offended on behalf of every hour spent learning to walk.
"This is a different kind of moving."
He was right almost immediately.
He cleared a space in one of the smaller receiving rooms, empty but for a few chairs pushed to the wall, evening light slanting through the windows. There was no musician available, so he hummed the melody himself, which you found more charming than you let on.
"Your hand here." He guided your right hand to his shoulder and took your other hand, settling his palm at your waist with a care that made your breath catch slightly. "We move like this. Step, step, together. Simple."
It was not simple.
Your feet, still suspicious of every request, tangled within four steps. You stumbled into his chest and looked up at him with an exasperation reserved for your own body's many failures.
"This is worse than walking."
"It's the same as walking. With rhythm."
"I do not have rhythm. I have tide. They are not the same thing."
He laughed, tried again, counting softly under his breath. You managed six steps before your ankle rolled and you pitched sideways, and he caught you the way he always seemed braced to.
"Perhaps dancing simply isn't among my gifts."
"Or perhaps you're overthinking your feet." He studied you a moment. "Try this. Stand on my feet."
You stared at him. "That will hurt you."
"It won't."
"You are wearing boots. I am wearing boots. That is considerable weight for your feet."
"Y/N." He said your name the way he did when he wanted you to actually listen. "It won't hurt. I promise. Trust me."
You searched his face for any sign he was being polite about pain and found none.
"...If you yelp, I will feel terribly guilty."
"I won't yelp."
One hand braced hard against his shoulder, you stepped up onto the tops of his boots. He closed his arms around you at once, drawing you in until there was barely any distance left, your face suddenly much closer to his than it had been a moment before.
"There," he said quietly. "Now you don't have to worry about your feet. I'll do the moving. You just hold on."
"This feels like cheating."
"It is entirely cheating. I'd like to see you complain, though."
You didn't. You had nothing to say for a moment, caught between the closeness of him and the low light and the way his hand had settled at the small of your back.
He began to move, slow steps that carried both your weight easily. No stumbling, no tangled feet, just the rhythm of it, his voice counting soft against your hair.
"Step. Step. Together."
You lifted your face and found him already looking down at you rather than at his own feet.
"You're not counting anymore," you said.
"No," he admitted. "I suppose I'm not."
The light slid lower, turning the room the color of honey, and neither of you moved to light a lamp. When the tune he'd been humming trailed off, he kept moving, and so did you, until the only sound was the scuff of his boots against stone and the sea somewhere beyond the windows.
"I think," you said, cheek against his shoulder, "that I may enjoy dancing after all."
"High praise, from a woman who called it worse than walking ten minutes ago."
"I am allowed to change my mind."
"You are." His arms tightened. "I hope you do it often. Where I'm concerned."
You didn't answer that directly. You only pressed closer and let him carry you both through a few more slow turns before the light gave out.
It happened on the sixth evening, halfway through supper.
Your hand froze mid-motion. The goblet slipped and shattered somewhere distant, though you barely heard it over the violet light spreading beneath your skin, down your arms like ink through water.
"No." The word came out barely a whisper.
Jace was on his feet before anyone else drew breath. "No. Not yet. Please, not yet."
The hall went silent. Your legs vanished beneath scale as your tail struck the floor. You tried to speak, to tell him you were frightened too, that six days had never been enough, but your voice was simply gone.
He carried you to the beach himself. At the water's edge, still holding you, he asked the only question that mattered.
"Will I see you again?"
You shook your head. Small. Not no. Only, I don't know.
You kissed him, and he nodded when you pulled back.
"I'll wait."
He lowered you into the water. You swam out and turned back to see him still standing there, soaked to the knee, making no move to leave it.
┈┈・୨ ✦ ୧・┈┈
Chaos met you long before the palace did.
Your eldest sister found you first, cutting through the current so fast she nearly knocked you sideways in his rush to reach you.
"She's alive! She's alive, she's home!"
Her shout carried through the water in the way sound traveled beneath the waves, and within moments the whole Coral Court seemed to be converging on you at once. Sisters. Servants. A pair of guards who abandoned their posts entirely. Someone had already raced ahead to announce your return before you'd even passed through the outer gates, so that by the time you reached the palace proper, half the kingdom had turned out to see you.
Your mother reached you first, pulling you into an embrace so fierce your ribs protested, her hands leaving your shoulders only to frame your face, searching frantically for wounds that weren't there.
"My little pearl. Are you hurt? Tell me you're not hurt."
"I'm not hurt, Mother. I promise."
"Where have you been? One whole weeks with no word, no message, nothing-"
"I know. I'm sorry. I'll explain everything, I promise, just-"
Then your father's voice cut through the crowd, and the whole hall went still.
"Enough."
He sat upon the throne of whalebone and pale coral, and though you'd braced yourself the whole swim home for his anger, the sight of his face still made something in your chest go cold. He did not look relieved. He looked like a man holding something very carefully in place.
"Approach."
You swam forward, chin lifted despite the tremor building low in your stomach.
"Where were you?"
"On land." You confessed.
The word landed like a stone dropped into still water, and you watched it ripple outward through the gathered court, whispers breaking out on every side.
"With a human prince."
The hall erupted. Your father's hand came down hard against the arm of his throne, and the noise died as quickly as it had risen.
"I forbade the surface."
"I know."
"I forbade contact with humans."
"I know, Father, but-"
"And yet you defied both."
"He would have drowned!" Your voice rose to match his now, frustration breaking through the fear. "I found him tangled in his dragon saddle, half unconscious, sinking. I couldn't just leave him there."
"You could have summoned aid. You could have brought him to shore and left him for his own people to find!"
"There was no time!"
“You could have not returned to him!”
“Father-“
"You could have been killed!" His voice cracked on the last word, splintering in a way you'd never once heard from him, and for the briefest moment you saw past the fury to something rawer underneath it. "Do you understand what it is to wait, not knowing whether your child is alive or dead? Do you have any idea-"
He stopped himself. Composed himself, visibly, the way you'd watched him do a hundred times before in court, folding whatever he was feeling back down into something more presentable.
"I forbid you from leaving the palace," he said, quieter now, final. "You will remain here until I say otherwise."
"Father- please-"
"That is my judgment. It is final."
You looked to your mother, hoping for some intervention, but she only shook her head slightly, a warning, not now, and let your siblings draw you gently away from the throne room before you could say anything further to make it worse.
┈┈・୨ ✦ ୧・┈┈
That night, once the excitement had settled and the palace had quieted, your sisters gathered in your chambers the way they used to when you were small, piled together on cushions of woven kelp and soft anemone fronds, and you finally let yourself talk.
"Tell us everything," Nerissa said, tucking her tail beneath her, eyes bright. "All of it. Don't leave anything out."
"Father will be furious if he hears you encouraging this," you warned.
"Father isn't here." Vaelira grinned. "Talk."
So you did.
You told them about the boots first, because it still made you laugh to think of it, how you'd sat there turning your foot in the lamplight like it belonged to someone else, convinced the leather had swallowed your feet whole. Lysene laughed so hard she had to cover her mouth. You told them about the windows, and Maerys shrieked with delight at the part where you walked directly into the glass, certain you could simply swim through it.
"You didn't."
"I absolutely did. It hurt a great deal. The sea does not warn you, on land, that it has learned to become invisible and solid at the same time."
"That is the single most embarrassing thing I have ever heard," Ceryna said, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes.
"It gets worse. He laughed at me. For a full minute."
"As he should have."
"You are all supposed to be on my side."
"We are on the side of a good story," Nerissa said, unrepentant, "and that is a very good story."
You told them about bread, too, the way flour and yeast and patient waiting turned into something so warm and soft it seemed like a kind of magic in itself. You told them the names of things you'd learned, spoon and doorway and staircase, savoring each word on your tongue like it still belonged to you a little.
"And the prince?" Lysene asked, quieter now, leaning forward. "Tell us about him."
You felt your face warm despite the cool water around you.
"His name is Jacaerys. Jace. He has dark hair and darker eyes, and he is patient in a way I did not expect a prince to be. He taught me to walk. He held my hands for hours while I fell, over and over, and he never once grew impatient with me, not truly, even when I fell for the tenth time in an afternoon."
"Is he handsome?"
"Lysene."
"It's a fair question."
"...Yes," you admitted, and your sisters dissolved into delighted laughter at the way you'd hesitated before saying it, as though the admission had cost you something. "He is handsome. And kind. He held onto me the very first night I nearly fell trying to greet him, and he has been catching me, in one way or another, ever since."
"You love him," Ceryna said. It wasn't a question either.
You were quiet a moment, turning the thought over the way you'd turned the boots over that first night, careful, curious, a little disbelieving of your own certainty.
"I do. I know it sounds impossible. I knew him such a short time."
"It doesn't sound impossible," Nerissa said gently. "It sounds like you."
"He danced with me," you added, softer now, remembering the low gold light of that room, his hand steady at your waist. "Even though I was terrible at it. He let me stand on his own feet so I wouldn't fall, and told me it wouldn't hurt him, and it didn't, and we just moved like that for the longest time, not really dancing at all really, just turning slowly together while the sun went down."
Your sisters had gone quiet, watching you with something soft in their faces, and Maerys reached out to squeeze your hand.
"Father won't understand any of that," she said. "Not yet. But I think it's beautiful."
"I think so too," you admitted. "I just don't know how to make him see it that way."
None of you had an answer for that, not that night, and so you let the conversation drift instead toward smaller things, the shape of human buildings, the strange taste of bread, the way land smelled entirely different from the sea, sharper somehow, full of things that weren't salt and current. Your sisters listened to every word like it was the most fascinating tale they'd ever been told, and for one evening, at least, the trouble waiting for you outside your chambers felt very far away.
It would not stay that way for long.
The pleading started perhaps two weeks later, once the first sting of the confinement had worn thin enough for you to believe, foolishly, that reasoning with your father might work where defiance hadn't.
You found him alone in his private study, a small chamber carved into coral shelving lined with old scrolls and treasures collected over decades of rule, and you gathered your courage before speaking.
"Father."
He looked up, surprised, though he schooled his expression quickly. "Y/N."
"I want to go back."
"No."
"You haven't even heard what I-"
"I know what you're going to ask, and the answer is no." He set down the scroll he'd been reading, giving you his full attention now, which felt somehow worse than being ignored. "You are not returning to the surface."
"I only want to see him. Once. To explain, to say goodbye properly if that's what it must be, but I can't simply vanish on him the way I-"
"He is a human prince, Y/N. His life is measured in decades. Yours is measured in centuries. Whatever this is, it can only ever end one way, and I would rather it end now, cleanly, than after you've given him more of yourself to lose."
"You don't know that."
"I know a great deal more of the world than you do, child, and I am telling you, as your father and as your king, that this ends here."
"That isn't fair."
"Fair has very little to do with keeping you alive."
You left the study with tears burning behind your eyes and did not try again for several days, though the wanting never once quieted, no matter how hard you tried to drown it in distraction.
It happened again nearly two months after you'd returned, this time in front of the whole family at supper, when you could no longer hold the question back.
"Please," you said, setting down your utensils, addressing your father directly across the long coral table. "It has been two months. He doesn't even know if I'm alive. Please, just let me send word, just one message, so he knows-"
"No."
"Father-"
"I said no." His tone had gone hard, final, and around the table your siblings had gone quiet, watching the exchange with the particular stillness of people who know a storm is building. "I will not hear this again."
"You can't just lock me away and pretend the outside world doesn't exist!"
"I can, and I will, if it keeps you safe."
"This isn't safety, this is a cage!"
The word landed harder than you'd meant it to. Your father's expression shuttered completely, and he rose from his seat without another word, leaving the table in a silence so complete you could hear the distant current moving through the coral outside.
Your mother reached for your hand under the table, and though she said nothing, you saw something shift behind her eyes, some old argument with herself finally beginning to tip.
That night your father had you moved to a smaller chamber, deeper within the palace, further from the outer currents that led toward open water, and though no one called it what it was, you understood well enough. It was no longer merely confinement.
It was a cage, exactly as you'd said, and you would spend the following months slowly, quietly, coming undone inside it.
┈┈・୨ ✦ ୧・┈┈
The weeks that followed blurred into something you would later struggle to remember clearly, the way a fever blurs the days around it.
At first it was only restlessness. You paced the smaller chamber they'd moved you to, drifted through what garden space remained accessible to you, tried to lose yourself in old routines that no longer felt like yours. Your sisters kept visiting, though less often now, their attempts at cheer growing thinner each time.
"Come with us," Lysene said one morning, tugging gently at your hand. "There's a festival in the eastern reef. Lanternfish, dancing, the whole court will be there."
"I don't feel like it."
"You never feel like it anymore."
"Lysene."
"I'm sorry. I only meant-" She stopped herself, studying your face with a worry she didn't quite know how to voice yet. "You used to love festivals."
"I still do," you said, though even you weren't sure it was true.
You went, in the end, because she asked twice more and because refusing felt like more effort than agreeing. You smiled when the lanternfish spiraled gold and slow overhead, laughed when your youngest brother challenged you to a race through the coral, even let him win, the way you always had, just to watch him grin.
But none of it reached anywhere past the surface of you. You could feel the difference yourself, distantly, like watching someone else wear your face.
It was your grandmother who said it aloud first, nearly six weeks in, catching your chin gently in one weathered hand and turning your face toward the light.
"Your scales have gone dull, child."
"They're fine, Grandmother."
"They are not fine. Look." She guided you toward the polished shell mirror in her chambers, and you made yourself look, really look, for the first time in longer than you cared to admit. The dawn pink you'd worn your whole life, vivid enough once that strangers had complimented your mother on it, had faded into something pale and grey, tired in a way scales weren't supposed to be able to look.
"Oh," you said, quietly.
"How long has it been like this?"
"I don't know. I hadn't noticed."
"That," your grandmother said, "is precisely the trouble."
You stopped visiting the sunken ship after that, the one you'd claimed as a child, still half full of bells and pearls and smooth glass stones gathered over years of careful searching. You simply couldn't summon the will to swim there anymore, and when your youngest brother asked why, you told him you were tired, which was true, though not in any way rest could fix.
Then, one grey morning in the communal gardens, surrounded by your family the way you always were when the reef gathered to sing at dawn, your voice caught.
It happened without warning. You opened your mouth for the second verse, the one you'd known since before you could properly speak, and the sound simply wasn't there. A dry, broken rasp came out instead, and then nothing at all.
The silence that followed felt enormous.
"Y/N?" Your mother's hand found your shoulder. "Sweetheart, are you alright?"
You tried again. Nothing came.
Panic rose fast and sharp in your chest, and you fled the gardens before anyone could stop you, swimming hard until your arms ached, until the pressure in your chest matched something closer to how you actually felt.
Your father began trying things after that, in the clumsy, well-meaning way of a man used to solving problems with resources rather than understanding.
"Look," he said one evening, entering your chambers with something cradled carefully in both hands. "The largest pearl ever recovered from the deep trenches. Divers spent three days retrieving it."
You turned it over once in your palm. It was, unmistakably, beautiful.
"It is beautiful," you said, and meant it, though the words came out flat.
He waited, watching your face for the old delight, the rush to add it immediately to your collection the way you always had as a child.
You held it back out to him instead. "I think Mother would like it."
Something shifted behind his eyes, though he said nothing, only took the pearl back and left quietly, and you didn't see the way he stood outside your door afterward for a long moment before finally swimming away.
He assigned you a guard next, a cheerful young merman named Cato who trailed you through the palace with determined good humor, filling silences with jokes and stories and an endless patience you almost resented him for. He meant well. You could see that clearly, even through the fog that had settled over everything. But no amount of company filled the specific shape of what was missing.
"You don't have to entertain me," you told him once, gently, when his stories had trailed off into concerned silence. "I know my father sent you."
"He's worried about you.”
"I know."
"So am I, honestly. You used to laugh at my jokes."
"They still are funny," you managed, and offered him something close to a real smile, though it cost you more than it should have.
By the second month, even that effort had become difficult to sustain, and your father's anger, which had burned hot and certain in the weeks after your return, began, slowly, to curdle into something else entirely. You caught him watching you sometimes from across a room, the particular way you watch something fragile you've already dropped once and are terrified of dropping again.
It was your grandmother who finally forced the reckoning, nearly ten weeks in, when she found your father alone in the throne room long after the rest of the court had dispersed.
"You've imprisoned her," she said, without preamble, settling into the water beside him with the unhurried authority of a woman who had ruled these waters for a hundred years and had long since stopped needing anyone's permission to speak plainly.
"I protected her."
"You protected your fear."
"Mother-"
"You forgot," she said, cutting through whatever defense he'd been building, "that she is not yours to keep. She was never yours to keep. Children are lent to us, not given, and we are meant to raise them strong enough to leave when the time comes, not build the walls higher every time they try."
"She could have died out there. She very nearly died in here instead, and I don't understand how, I did everything a father is supposed to do-"
"You did everything a king is supposed to do," she corrected, gently but without softening it. "Kings protect their kingdoms with walls and rules and punishments. Fathers protect their children by trusting them enough to let go." She reached for his hand, old and steady over his own. "I raised you better than this, my son. I know I did."
He was quiet a long moment, staring at nothing.
"I don't know how to fix it."
"You already do." Her grip tightened. "You simply do not wish to hear the answer, because you're afraid of what it will cost you."
"And if it costs me her, one day, to some human prince and a life I'll never see the shape of?"
"Then it costs you that," she said simply. "Better that, than losing her slowly, right here, while you watch and call it keeping her safe."
He said nothing else that night, but the following evening, restless and unable to settle, he went to check on you himself, something he'd avoided doing directly for weeks, unable to face what he might find.
He found you asleep, curled tightly on your side, both hands drawn up close to your chest around something small. Carefully, gently, he pried your fingers open.
A little bronze dragon pin sat in your palm. Unremarkable by any measure that mattered to a king's treasury. Worn nearly smooth along one edge from the endless small motion of your thumb tracing over it, night after night, for months.
He sat very still for a long time, looking at it, and understood, finally and completely, exactly what he had been doing to you.
He went to his mother again that same night, and together, in the deep archive chambers sunk beneath the palace where the oldest records of your people were kept, they searched for hours through scrolls layered thick with silt and age, looking for anything that might undo the damage he'd caused.
They found it near dawn. A spell older than either of them, older than the current reign, describing a bridge once common between land and sea, back when the two worlds had mingled more freely than either now remembered.
He came to you the following evening, alone. No guards. No crown, which you noticed immediately, because you had never once in your life seen your father without it.
"My little pearl."
You looked up at him from where you'd been sitting, too tired to summon much surprise at the visit.
He knelt. Actually knelt, lowering himself to meet your eyes, and you realized with a small shock that you had genuinely never seen him do this before, not once, not even when you were small enough that it would have made sense.
"I was wrong," he said. "About all of it."
"Father…"
"Let me finish. Please." His voice wavered slightly, and you fell quiet, watching him gather himself. "I thought if I kept you here, beneath the sea, close enough to watch over always, nothing could ever hurt you again. I told myself that was love. I have told myself that was love for two months, while I watched you disappear right in front of me, and I did not let myself understand what I was actually doing until I found this."
He held out his palm. The little bronze pin sat there, dull and worn.
You made a small broken sound and reached for it, closing your fingers around it the way you had every night since you'd smuggled it home.
"I did not realize," your father said quietly, "that I had become the very thing hurting you."
Tears slipped free before you could stop them.
"I should like to meet this prince," he continued, and something almost like humor moved beneath the exhaustion in his voice, fragile but real. "If a human boy has managed to steal the heart of my impossible daughter so thoroughly that she would rather waste away than live without the hope of him, then I suppose I owe it to both of you to at least know the man."
"You mean it?"
"I mean it." He reached out and brushed a strand of hair back from your face, the way he used to when you were small and frightened of nothing more serious than a passing shark. "Perhaps it is time the sea stopped hiding from the land. We have kept ourselves apart long enough, out of fear more than wisdom, and look what it has nearly cost us."
You threw your arms around his neck, sobbing now in earnest, and he held you the way he had when you were small enough to fit entirely against his chest, murmuring something soft against your hair that wasn't quite words at all, just comfort, just relief.
"You will always have the sea," he said eventually, pulling back enough to look at you properly. "Whatever happens with this prince of yours. That will never change."
"It is still my home," you managed, voice raw but steadier than it had been in weeks. "It will always be my home."
"I know." He smiled, sad and warm at once. "But home is not only a place, little pearl. Sometimes it is a person waiting for you. I think it is past time I let you go and find out for certain."
┈┈・୨ ✦ ୧・┈┈
Two months had passed since Jace last watched you disappear beneath the waves, and the world above the water had reshaped itself entirely in that time.
Rhaenyra sat the Iron Throne now, the war ended not in the bloodletting everyone feared but in an uneasy peace bought at real cost. Otto Hightower and Aemond had paid for their treasons, along with Hugh Hammer, who'd gambled everything on a stolen dragon and lost it. Aegon lived, stripped of title, his family spared, a mercy that had cost Rhaenyra more than most people would ever know.
Vermithor, sensing something worthy in the grieving prince who'd lost his own dragon, had let Jace claim him.
Jace still mourned Vermax daily, in the quiet hours no one else saw. But he'd learned grief and moving forward weren't opposites, only companions that had to learn to walk the same road. Most evenings, once his duties to the crown were done, he flew out over the darkening water to the beaches of Dragonstone and waited, patient as tide, for some sign you'd return.
His patience was rewarded on an evening like any other, the sky gone violet and gold, when a head broke the surface past the rocks.
He lost his breath entirely.
He'd imagined this so many times over two months that he half suspected his own mind of conjuring it again. But you swam closer, smiling, unmistakably real, and he found himself running into the water without any memory of deciding to move, soaked to the waist by the time he reached you, and you threw your arms around his neck and kissed him before either of you managed a word.
Not that you could have managed one. Your voice had not come back to you, not fully, not since the night grief had stolen it, and even now, mermaid again and streaming water, you had nothing to offer him but the press of your forehead to his and the tears sliding down to mix with the salt already there.
He laughed anyway, disbelieving, hands framing your face like he needed to confirm with touch what his eyes were already telling him.
"You came back."
You nodded, fierce, and pressed another kiss to the corner of his mouth, and then turned slightly, one hand still fisted in his shirt, gesturing back toward open water.
Jace looked past your shoulder as several more heads broke the surface. Your father emerged first, followed by your eldest sister and two others, water streaming from pale hair as they waded toward the shallows.
Jace's arms tightened around you, some old instinct rising in him before he could think better of it. You felt it and pressed a hand flat against his chest, shaking your head, trying to tell him without words that it was alright, that this was meant to happen, that you had begged your father for this yourself.
Your father stopped a few feet away, close enough now that you could see the water still running off his shoulders, the trident held loose in one hand, its head catching the last of the light. He looked at Jace for a long moment without speaking, the kind of look that took its time, that missed nothing. Jace, to his credit, did not look away, though his hand found yours and held it.
"So," your father said at last. "This is the prince." Your father communicated through telepathy, an ability granted to him through the trident he possessed.
You wanted badly to say something, to introduce them properly the way you'd imagined doing a hundred times, and the wanting with no way to answer it sat sharp in your throat. You settled for looking between them, hand tight in Jace's, willing your face to say what your voice couldn't.
Jace understood well enough. "Prince Jacaerys Velaryon, Your Grace." He inclined his head, water still dripping from his sleeves.
Your father's eyes moved over him slowly, taking in the soaked clothes, the salt drying pale at his collar, the way he'd run into the sea without a moment's hesitation the instant you surfaced.
"You went into the water for her."
"I would have gone further, if she'd needed me to."
"Would you." It wasn't quite a question. Your father stepped closer, and you felt Jace's hand tighten slightly around yours, though he held his ground. "My mother tells me you searched for a way to hear her voice, once. That you spent your own coin, your own time, chasing old magic on the strength of nothing but a girl who couldn't promise you anything."
Jace glanced at you, surprised you'd told anyone that story at all, and something in his face softened before he answered.
"She saved my life and asked for no reward like most people would have. She told me she didn't know if she'd ever come back. I decided that was enough to wait for anyway."
"Two months." Said your father.
"Two months." Jace agreed.
Your father studied him a moment longer, and something in his expression eased, though not entirely. His gaze moved to you, and gentled further.
"She stopped singing, while she was away from you. Did you know that?"
Jace's gaze cut to you, alarmed. You looked down, unable to answer, unable even to explain, and his hand found yours again, gripping tighter.
"No," Jace said quietly. "I didn't."
"Her voice simply left her. Grief does that, to our kind, when it goes on too long unanswered." Your father's jaw tightened. "I nearly lost her to it. I want you to understand that plainly, before anything else is said here. Whatever this is between you, it very nearly cost me my daughter's life."
You tugged at Jace's sleeve, shaking your head, trying to soften it, but your father held up a hand, gentle, silencing the protest you couldn't voice anyway.
"I am not saying this to frighten you, or to shame her." His eyes stayed on Jace. "I am saying it because I need to know you understand the weight of what you're asking to hold. She is not a small thing to love carelessly. None of my daughters are. But she especially. She has never once in her life done anything by half measures, and I do not expect that to change simply because the person she's chosen happens to breathe air instead of water."
Jace was quiet a moment, and when he spoke his voice had steadied into something quite serious. "I don't intend to love her carelessly, Your Grace. I flew to that beach every evening for two months not knowing if it would ever mean anything. I'd have kept coming if it took two years."
"Fine words."
"They're not just words."
Something almost like the beginning of a smile moved at the corner of your father's mouth, though he suppressed it. He turned the trident slightly in his grip, and you recognized the old restless habit, the way he turned it when he was deciding something.
“This trident is older than the Fourteen Flames,” he said, changing course, though you suspected he’d already decided what he meant to say next long before he’d surfaced. “It has been carried by every ruler of the Coral Court since before Valyria first learned to bind dragons to its will. It holds old magic. Older than most remember exists at all. It is also, prince, the only reason I can stand here at all and speak words you can understand. My daughter cannot. Not above the water. Not since the grief took her voice.”
You nodded, small, and managed something that might have been the beginning of a rueful smile.
“You have it. Whatever you ask.”
“Swear that her happiness comes before your throne, before your dragons, before your own pride. Swear that if the day comes when she needs the sea and you keep her from it, I will have cause to come for you myself.”
“I swear it.”
“Swear that you will let her go, freely, whenever she wishes to return to us. That you will never make her choose between her family and yours.”
“I swear that too.” Jace’s voice didn’t waver. “She belongs to both worlds now. I have no interest in asking her to pick one.”
Your father held his gaze a moment longer, searching, the way he’d searched your face the night you returned home half drowned in grief. Whatever he was looking for, he seemed, finally, to find it.
“Good,” he said simply. “Then we understand each other.”
He turned to you, and the sternness went out of him all at once, replaced by something much softer.
“Are you certain, little pearl?”
You nodded, hard, both hands closing around his free one.
“Then step back from the water.”
You hesitated a moment, glancing at Jace, and he squeezed your hand once, a small silent reassurance, and you stepped out of the shallows onto dry sand.
Your father raised the trident, its head catching the dying light, and spoke words that belonged to no language you recognized, old and layered, syllables that seemed to hang in the air a moment longer than they should have. For a breath, nothing happened at all, and your heart climbed into your throat.
“Take another step,” your father said, watching you with quiet certainty. “It doesn’t finish until you’ve left the water fully.”
You did.
The change came like a held breath finally released, warmth spreading from your hips downward, and you looked down to see your tail unraveling into legs, solid and entirely your own. Your knees, still faintly unfamiliar even after everything, threatened to buckle, and Jace caught you at once, steadying you exactly the way he had that very first night.
You opened your mouth, and this time, for the first time in two months, sound actually came.
“Jace.”
Just his name. Small, rough, cracked at the edges from disuse. But it was your voice, entirely your own, and the sound of it seemed to undo him completely. He made a small broken noise against your hair, and held you tighter.
“Say it again.”
“Jace.” You laughed, half a sob, pressing your face into his shoulder. “Jace, Jace, Jace.”
“I could listen to that for the rest of my life.”
Your father watched the two of you with an expression that had gone entirely unguarded, pride and grief and relief tangled together, and when you finally lifted your head to look at him, eyes wet, he simply smiled.
“There she is,” he said quietly. “I’d nearly forgotten what your voice sounded like.” He sat on the land now.
“Father.” Just his title, and then you were crossing to him, arms around his neck, and he held you the way he had the night you’d come home, except this time there was no fear in it at all.
“Take care of her,” he said, over your shoulder, to Jace, though his eyes had gone soft. “She is the best of us, whether she believes it or not.”
“I know it,” Jace said. “I’ve known it since the first night she risked her life to save mine.”
Your father huffed something that was almost a laugh, and pulled back to look at you one last time.
“Come home when you wish it. The sea will always know how to find you.”
“I know, Father.” Your voice still rasped faintly, but it was steadying with every word, growing surer. “Thank you. For finding this. For coming.”
“And bring him with you, someday. I find I’d like to know him better. Perhaps I can find something that would help him breathe underwater.”
He stepped back into the shallows, your sister already turning to follow, waving you goodbye, the water closing gently around them as they slipped beneath the surface and were gone, leaving only the widening ripples where they’d been, and the sound of the tide, and Jace’s arms still steady around you on the sand, and your own voice, finally, fully your own again, murmuring his name once more just to hear it answer back.
┈┈・୨ ✦ ୧・┈┈
He'd come prepared this time. A simple dress, folded and waiting on the sand where he'd left it hours earlier in stubborn hope, and he helped you into it with carefully averted eyes while you filled the silence with questions about everything that had happened while you were gone.
"There's more," he said, once you were dressed, once your family had said their farewells and slipped back beneath the waves. "Something I want to show you."
He called for Vermithor, and even after everything you'd already seen on land, nothing prepared you for the sight of the old bronze dragon descending in a slow spiral and landing with a weight you felt travel up through your own new legs before he'd even fully settled.
You went very still, and without thinking, took a step toward him the way you had with Moondancer.
Jace's hand caught your arm.
"Wait."
You stopped. Vermithor's head turned toward you both, and unlike Moondancer's careful wariness, there was something sharper in his attention, a low warning already building in his chest. He'd bonded to Jace only weeks ago, in the middle of a war, out of grief and necessity rather than years of earned trust. He did not know you.
"He's still learning me," Jace said quietly, not taking his eyes off the dragon. "He isn't like Vermax was. Vermithor decides slowly, and he decides once."
"Then perhaps I shouldn't-"
"You should. Just let me go first."
He stepped forward alone, one hand raised, and said a single low word. "Lykiri."
Vermithor's rumble softened, though his eyes stayed on you over Jace's shoulder, unconvinced.
"Come here," Jace said, holding his other hand back without turning. "Slowly. Give me your hand."
You laced your fingers through his and let him draw you forward one step at a time, until you stood close enough to feel the heat off bronze scale even through the cooling air. Vermithor's head lowered, close enough now that your own reflection sat small in each huge eye, the growl in his chest settled into something watchful rather than open threat.
"Easy," Jace murmured, to the dragon and to you both. He guided your hand slowly, his fingers around yours the whole way, until your palm hovered just above scale. "He won't hurt you. I wouldn't let him near you if I thought otherwise. But let him do this on his terms."
Your hand touched down.
Vermithor let out a short rough grunt, his flank shifting under your palm, and for one held breath you were certain he'd pull away or worse. He didn't. He simply stayed, tolerating you, wary but not growling, the way an old careful animal accepts something it hasn't decided to like but has decided, for now, not to fear.
"There," Jace said, relief plain in his voice. "That's more than I expected. He didn't do that for my mother the first time."
"I don't think he's decided about me yet."
"No. But he didn't decide against you either. With him these days, that's worth quite a lot."
He helped you climb up first, settling you in front, then swung up behind you, his arms coming around you on both sides to reach the reins, so you sat with the whole open sky ahead and his chest solid at your back.
"Hold the strap there," he said, close to your ear. "And me, if you'd rather. I'm not going anywhere."
You gripped the leather with one hand and reached back to hold his arm with the other, and Vermithor's wings unfurled with a dry rushing sound, still grumbling faintly at the whole arrangement, but rising all the same.
The first beat of those wings sent a lurch through your stomach unlike anything the sea had ever given you, not even your fastest dives chasing whales through open water. The sand fell away fast. You gasped, fingers tightening on his arm, and he reached back to rest his hand briefly over yours.
"I have you. You won't fall."
You believed him completely.
Dragonstone spread out beneath you, towers and walls rendered small and careful, like something carved rather than built. You had walked those halls. You had fallen against those windows. You had learned to stand upright in those corridors, and now you were looking down at all of it from a height that made your chest ache with something too big for one word.
But it was the sea that undid you.
You had known the ocean your whole life from inside it, surrounded by it in every direction. You had never once seen its shape. From above, in the fading light, it stretched out silver and endless, catching the last of the sunset in broken streaks of gold, the swells rolling in patterns you'd never been able to see from beneath the surface. You could see all of it at once, the way it curved toward the horizon, the way moonlight was already gathering thin along its edges.
"It's so big," you said, voice cracking slightly, not from fear this time. "I lived inside it my whole life and I never knew it looked like this from above!"
Jace turned his head just enough to catch your face. Whatever he saw there softened something in his own.
"Is it what you imagined?"
"I never imagined it at all. I didn't know there was a shape to imagine."
Vermithor banked in a long unhurried turn, and you laughed, a bright startled sound half torn away by the wind, gripping tighter out of instinct rather than fear. Below, the water rippled where his shadow passed, as if the sea recognized something familiar overhead.
"There," Jace said, pointing down and to the left. "That's where you pulled me out from deaths door. The gullet."
"I am glad I did! The pretty prince! "
You swatted his arm, laughing, and he laughed with you, the sound scattered by the wind before it could land anywhere.
You flew a long while after that, following the coastline as the last color drained from the sky and stars came up one by one. You watched fishing boats far below, small lanterns swaying at their bows. You watched a pod of dolphins break the surface in a slow arc, and felt an old instinct pull at you even from this height, before it passed and left only wonder behind it.
"I used to watch birds," you said, cheek against his shoulder. "From below. I always wondered what the sea looked like to them."
"And now you know."
"Now I know." You tightened your arms around him, feeling his breathing steady beneath your hands, his warmth a fixed point against the huge cold openness of the sky. "I think I understand something now."
"What's that?"
"Why you waited on that beach every evening. Even when I couldn't tell you if I'd come back." You turned your face into the wind. "It's a little like flying, isn't it. Loving someone. You have to trust there's something holding you up even when you can't see it."
Jace was quiet a moment.
"I always saw you," he said. "Even when I didn't know if you'd come back. That was enough to keep watching the water for."
You pressed a kiss to his shoulder through the fabric of his coat, and he reached back once more to rest his hand over both of yours at the strap.
Vermithor began to drop lower, the lights of the Red Keep growing warmer ahead, torches lining the walls. The wind gentled as the open sky narrowed back down toward something more solid, more like a world you now, somehow, belonged to as much as the sea.
"Are you ready?" Jace asked, as the courtyard rose to meet you.
You thought of everything the sea had given you. Your family. The whales. The long patient songs that had shaped your whole life before this one. And you thought of boots, and windows, and bread, and a bronze pin worn smooth by your own thumb, and a boy who had waited on a beach for two months without once doubting you'd return.
"Yes," you said, and meant it entirely.
Vermithor's feet hit stone with a shudder that traveled up through your whole body, and Jace helped you down, hands steady at your waist, and for a moment you simply stood there together, catching your breath.
Above you, the last color faded from the horizon, and the sea, distant now but never out of reach, went on turning beneath the stars, patient and waiting, the way it always would.
Synopsis: He fell from the sky. She rose from the deep. When an unlikely savior pulls a prince back from death’s door, neither of them can quite stay away from the shore that brought them together.
↳ Part Two
Word Count: 6.0K
Pairing: Prince!Jacaerys Velaryon x Mermaid!Reader
Genre: Little mermaid au, Jace lives!, fluff
Warnings: Mermaid descriptions of reader but nothing too specific about looks, Jace and Baela aren’t betrothed, vermax :(, brief mentions of nudity.
A/N: Based off THIS REQUEST, I hope this doesn’t seem rushed :) lowkey used my physics knowledge to make bs up 🥴
Divider credits to: @uzmacchiato <3
In a world where dragons roamed the sky and stranger things still lurked in the far reaches of Sothoryos, the existence of merfolk was hardly a thing beyond belief.
Yet for centuries the merfolk had kept to themselves, hidden from human eyes by choice rather than necessity, for the sea was their domain, vast and forgiving, older than any castle built of stone, and they had little wish to share it with a race that seemed forever at war with itself and everything around it.
In time, that same secrecy had turned them into little more than legend, tales spun by sailors over cups of watered wine on nights when the wind howled and the deck rolled beneath them. Sirens were known to lure ships onto rocks with voices sweet enough to make a man forget his own name, and feast on whatever remained once the rocks had finished their work.
Mermaids were a gentler breed by comparison, prone to guiding lost sailors safely home as often as they were blamed for storms and ill weather they had no hand in at all. Two natures entirely, wearing similar faces, and precious few humans who lived long enough to learn the difference between them.
They were beautiful creatures beneath the waves, long tails the colour of pearl and coral fading seamlessly into human torsos, faces too fine and too still to belong to any mortal woman, gill feathers tracing delicate lines along their throats that fluttered faintly with every breath of water drawn through them. Webbing caught the light between their fingers and along the curves of their ears, and their eyes, when a sailor was unlucky or lucky enough to catch one open beneath the surface, ethereal was the word men reached for, when they had any words left at all.
It had been pure chance that placed you so close to the Gullet on the day the battle came, chance and your own incurable curiosity, which your sisters had scolded you for since you were small enough to hide behind their tails.
You had always had a weakness for collecting things. Rings slipped from dead men's fingers, buckles and buttons and the little bronze bells that sailors sometimes wore for luck that had done them no good at all in the end, coins gone green and soft with centuries beneath the salt.
You kept them in the hollow belly of an old sunken hull you had claimed as your own years ago, arranging and rearranging them the way a child arranges shells on a beach, and you were forbidden, absolutely forbidden, from ever breaking the surface to retrieve anything that had not already sunk deep enough to be safely yours. The deep waters near the wreck sites were permitted. The world above the waterline was not.
You had seen fleets pass overhead before, dark hulls cutting shadows across the sunlit shallows, and it had never troubled you much. Ships came and went. Men fought their wars on the surface and left their dead to sink down to you eventually, and you had learned not to think too hard about where the trinkets came from.
What startled you that day, what sent ice through your veins even in water still warm from the summer sun, was the sound. A battle breaking out with no warning at all, not the slow grinding approach you were used to but something sudden and enormous, the water shaking with it as though the sea itself had been struck. Fire that should not have been able to burn beneath the waves somehow did, hissing and spitting where it touched the surface, and ash sifted down through the water like grey snow, and wood came apart in great splintering chunks, and bodies. So many bodies, falling and falling, sinking past you like stones dropped from a terrible height, men who had been laughing and cursing and praying only moments before.
You very nearly got swept into the worst of it yourself. Your pale pink tail caught for one heart-stopping instant on a length of trailing rigging, and you fought and thrashed to free yourself, kicking hard for clearer, deeper water, away from the chaos above. It was then that something struck the surface with such force that the shockwave of it rolled straight through your chest, and you turned back despite every instinct screaming at you to keep swimming, and saw a dragon.
Only the one. You did not know his name yet, though you would come to learn it soon enough. Vermax, green as new leaves, thrashing against water he had never been built to fight, wings beating in great useless sweeps, trying and failing again and again to claw his way back up into a sky that no longer wanted him.
And strapped to his back, tangled in leather that should have kept him safe and now threatened only to drown him with the beast, was a boy.
A very pretty boy, you thought, even through the horror of it, because you had always had a weakness for pretty things as well as shiny ones, and some habits did not care what was happening around them.
He fought his harness with a growing, panicked desperation, one leg caught fast beneath a buckle that would not give no matter how he wrenched at it, and you watched the fight slowly bleed out of him as the water rose past his chin and then his mouth. You watched him press his palm flat against his dragon’s scaled hide, whether in farewell or in simple desperate comfort you could not say, and something inside your chest twisted so hard and so suddenly that it hurt, a feeling you had no name for and no time to think about, and you were moving before your brain had caught up to it.
The buckles gave easily enough beneath your fingers, quick clever things built for human hands rather than merfolk ones but simple enough once you understood the shape of them, all but the one pinning his leg fast, which would not release no matter how you pulled. It was your sister's whalebone dagger, tucked always at your hip, that finally cut him free, the leather parting in one long stroke. By then the boy had gone entirely still, his eyes half open and unseeing.
You spared one moment, only one, though it cost you dearly to spare it, to press your palm flat against Vermax’s scales in something like an apology, for jot being able to save him. The great beast simply closed his eyes, as if content that his rider had found safer hands than his own to carry him the rest of the way, and sank without a struggle into the dark below, leaving no trace but a slow drift of green scales catching what little light remained.
Surfacing was a huge mistake. You broke into open air in the very heart of the wreckage, ships burning on every side, smoke thick enough to sting your eyes, and had barely a breath to get your bearings before an arrow split the water beside you, close enough that you felt the wind of its passing against your cheek and almost hitting the boy in the neck.
You looked up into a row of crossbows all trained your way, men shouting words you did not understand but whose meaning was plain enough in the set of their shoulders, and understood with sudden, terrible clarity exactly how little difference they would see between a dragon’s rider and whatever monster had come to finish the work the sea had started.
You went back under. Humans could not breathe water, but neither, you thought grimly, dragging the boy's dead weight down with you, could you survive a volley of bolts meant to end lives.
You swam hard and fast and low, keeping to what cover the drifting wreckage offered, dragging him through water gone thick and stinging with smoke and ash, until the sounds of battle fell away behind you into a dull, distant roar and the nearest shore rose dark and welcoming against the horizon. You hauled him up onto the sand with strength you did not know you possessed, adrenaline lending you what your body alone could not, and only then let yourself look at him properly.
Your stomach dropped. His lips had gone the deep, bruised blue of a man already claimed by the sea, his skin pale as the underbelly of a fish, and his chest did not move at all.
The old stories. Your grandmother had told them half as warning and half as wonder, back when you were young enough to still believe every tale she spun, of how a drowned man's lungs might yet be coaxed back to life if the sea inside them was driven out in time, before the body forgot how to want air at all. You laid both palms flat over the centre of his chest, unsure of your own strength, and pressed down hard.
Once. Nothing happened. Panic clawed up your throat.
Twice. Your own breath caught, tight and painful.
Thrice, and you pressed with everything you had left in you, uncaring now whether you cracked something beneath your palms, because a bruise, even a broken rib, was nothing at all set against death.
On the fourth press he convulsed beneath your hands and turned sharply to one side, retching a lungful of seawater onto the sand, coughing so violently his whole body shook with the force of it. You sat back, tail curling instinctively beneath you, heart hammering, and watched the grey slowly bleed out of his face as air, found its way back into him at last.
He did not understand, in that first hazy moment, anything beyond the fact that he was somehow, impossibly, still alive. The world swam in and out of focus around him, blurred and ringing. The last clear memory he had was of Vermax beneath him and the water closing over them both in a great green rush, of struggling against a harness that would not give no matter how he fought it, and then a blurred pale shape cutting toward him through the murk like something out of a half remembered dream, and then nothing at all.
He sat up too quickly. Pain lanced through his skull bright enough to make him gasp, and he only dimly registered that he had knocked someone backward in the process, hearing a small startled sound beside him.
"I am sorry- I did not mean to- are you..." The words died somewhere in his throat.
A hand still rested lightly against his shoulder, small and cool and strange. He gaze followed it down past a bare collarbone, down a torso, and then no legs at all, only a long tail the colour of pale coral, still trembling faintly where it lay half in the surf, catching what little light the dying sun still offered.
His eyes came back up to meet yours. Yours were already wide with fright, caught somewhere between diving straight back into the water and staying just long enough to see what he would do with the knowledge now sitting plainly on his face.
"You," he breathed, and could not seem to manage a single word more than that.
You did not wait to find out what he would say next. You began dragging yourself backward toward the water on your palms, tail scraping over wet sand, and that seemed to break whatever had held him frozen in place, because he scrambled after you across the shore despite the state of his own battered, aching body.
"Wait, please, don't go, who are you? What is your name? Why did you save me? Why?" The questions tumbled out of him faster than you could possibly have answered even if your voice had worked properly, one tripping over the next, desperation making him clumsy with his words. When you opened your mouth to try anyway, nothing came at all, no sound, not even a whisper. You touched two fingers to your throat and shook your head slowly.
"You cannot speak?"
You nodded, something apologetic in the tilt of your head.
There was no simple way to explain it to him, not with gestures alone, that merfolk voices were shaped and tuned for the weight and pressure of deep water and simply could not survive in air thin and empty as this, so you only looked at him, sorry, and slid a little further back toward the tideline, the cool water lapping welcome against your tail.
"Wait!" He was on his feet now, unsteady, swaying slightly as he turned to take in the shore around him properly for the first time. "This is Driftmark- I think- and that," he pointed to a dark shape rising jagged from the water in the distance, smoke still curling faintly from somewhere within the battle behind them, "that's Dragonstone. That is where I live. I must find some way to thank you properly, I do not even know how yet, but I will. I swear it."
You gave him one last long look, drinking in the sight of him properly now that the worst of the danger had passed, pale and shaking and utterly unlike anyone you had ever pulled from the wreckage before, and nodded once before the water closed silently over your head.
What he did not know, could not have known, was that you had not truly gone. You lingered just beneath the surface, hidden in the shallows where the light still reached, watching as the full weight of what he had lost caught up to him at last.
You watched his shoulders begin to shake, watched him sink slowly to his knees on the wet sand as the grief he had been too shocked to feel finally broke over him, grieving the bond severed so suddenly with his dragon, a bond you understood was not so different from the ones your own kind shared with the great whales that sometimes let mermaids ride upon their backs through the deep currents. You felt sad and helpless and entirely too far away to do anything about either, your own chest aching in sympathy for a boy you did not even know the name of yet.
Trinkets, you thought at last, retreating slowly deeper into the water where the cold and the dark could swallow the strange, unfamiliar feeling sitting heavy in your chest. I will bring him pretty things. Pretty things always help. Everyone knows that.
By the time Jace made it back to Dragonstone, disguised as best his battered state allowed, the sun had long since set and the castle had already begun to mourn a prince presumed lost at sea.
Rhaenyra, who had spent the whole of that day and the one before convincing herself, against every hope, that he was truly gone, very nearly lost her composure entirely at the sight of him standing whole in the doorway of her solar, swaying but breathing, and threatened violence on anyone who dared suggest it a cruel trick before she was even certain of it herself.
Then he was close enough to touch, close enough that she could feel the warmth still clinging to him despite the cold seawater soaked through every layer of his clothes, and she crossed the room in three swift strides and pulled him into an embrace so fierce it near cracked his ribs, one hand cradling the back of his neck the way she had when he was small enough to carry on her hip.
She pulled back only far enough to strike him hard across the face, the sound of it sharp in the quiet room, then dragged him straight back into her arms before he had time to recover from either the blow or the embrace that followed it.
"Never," she whispered fiercely against his hair, "never again. Do you understand me?"
Jace made no complaint about any of it. He only held on, breathing in the familiar smell of her, flowery and something that had always simply meant home no matter where in the world he found himself, and let himself be scolded and forgiven in the very same breath, over and over, until the shaking in his hands finally began to still.
There would be time to explain everything later, the mermaid and the potion he did not yet know he would go looking for and the strange ache already settling in his chest at the thought of never seeing her again. Tonight he only wanted this, his mother’s arms and the solid stone floor beneath his feet and the simple, overwhelming relief of being alive.
It was two full days before he saw you again, two days that felt considerably longer to both of you than their number suggested.
He had taken to walking the shore each evening as the sun went down, though he offered no one an explanation for it beyond a vague murmur about wanting air, and Rhaenyra, watching her son closely for any sign of the grief she knew still sat unresolved in him, chose not to press the matter, not yet.
On the second such evening, with the light turning gold and heavy across the water at the very edge of dusk, a small shape broke the surface some distance out from where he stood. Only your eyes showed at first, wary, scanning the beach with the caution of a creature that had learned, however briefly, exactly what danger humans could pose. Once you were certain he was truly alone, no soldiers, no crossbows waiting in the shadows, you swam closer, arms full of things gathered carefully from the seafloor over the two long days you had spent working up the courage to return.
He laughed before he could help himself, disbelieving, because you had brought him what looked like a small fortune of drowned treasure: coins gone green with centuries of salt, sea glass worn to the smoothness of river stones in every colour from deep emerald to pale, milky blue, pearls still crusted faintly with the ghosts of the shells that had once held them, all of it cradled carefully against your chest as though it were the finest gift any king had ever received.
"For me?" He pressed a hand to his own chest, incredulous, and you beamed and nodded so hard your whole body shook with the force of it, tail flicking once against the shallows in what he would later come to recognise as excitement.
"I have nothing half so precious to give you in return," he said, quieter now, kneeling properly in the wet sand so that he was closer to your level, and you shook your head firmly, as if to tell him that was hardly the point of any of it, that gifts given freely required nothing given back.
He knelt at the waterline for a long while that evening and talked, filling the silence you could not, telling you his name, his House, that he was a prince of Dragonstone and heir to something called an Iron Throne that sounded, from the little he explained, far heavier a burden than any crown ought to be. Your eyes lit at the word prince, delighted, and you pointed to your own chest in turn, tapping it twice for emphasis.
"A princess, then?" he guessed, and you nodded, pleased as anything with yourself, and something in his chest that had been wound painfully tight since the moment the water closed over his head two days before finally began, slowly, to loosen.
You tried, that first proper evening, to tell him other things too, though the telling was slow and clumsy without words. You drew shapes in the wet sand with one finger, a rough sketch of a tail, of waves, of something that might have been a whale or might simply have been a very poor circle, and Jace watched with a fascination that made you strangely warm beneath your scales, guessing at your meaning and laughing softly whenever he guessed wrong, which was often.
When the moon rose high enough that you knew you had to leave, you leaned in and pressed a quick, shy kiss to his cheek, as if to tell him not to be sad any longer, that you would return, that whatever grief still lived behind his eyes need not be carried entirely alone. That Vermax lay peacefully beneath the sea. And if he had been pretty enough to catch a second glance from you even amid the chaos of a burning battlefield, well.
You had always liked pretty things, and you saw no shame in admitting it, even silently, even only to yourself.
In the days that followed, Jace found himself buried in the library far more often than seated at council, a fact that did not escape his mother's notice for long. The war, if it could even still be properly called that, had cooled in the aftermath of the battle into something closer to a wary, watchful peace, both sides circling cautiously around the idea of parley rather than open slaughter, and so Rhaenyra could afford, for the first time in longer than she cared to admit, to spend her worry on her son rather than entirely on her crown.
It was on the seventh day since his return that she finally cornered him about it, finding him hunched over a table stacked high with scrolls he had clearly been picking through for hours, Daemon lounging nearby against a bookshelf with a look of a man who had already scented an amusing story and had no intention whatsoever of leaving before he heard the whole of it.
"The one who saved me from the water," Jace admitted at last, ears burning red under his mother's steady gaze, "was a mermaid. I have been meeting her at dusk every evening since. She brings me gifts."
Silence, and then Daemon's low, delighted laugh rang out across the quiet library. "A fish," he said, "has stolen my son’s heart. Rhaenyra, did you hear that? A fish."
"She is not a fish," Jace snapped, mortified, colour flooding all the way up to the tips of his ears, and would say nothing further no matter how Daemon pressed him for details, though his ears stayed scarlet the rest of the evening and he refused, quite pointedly, to look either of them in the eye.
It was only once they were alone, Daemon finally chased off by some matter of ships needing his attention, that Rhaenyra asked, more gently now, what exactly he hoped to find buried in all those old scrolls.
He confessed it slowly, haltingly, that he was searching for some means of letting you speak properly above the water, because you listened to him so patiently each evening, tilting your head at his every word as though nothing he said could ever bore you, and he found, to his own quiet surprise, that he wanted very badly to hear your voice in return, to know what you sounded like when you laughed instead of simply seeing it in the curve of your mouth.
Something in her face softened at that, the last of the earlier sternness melting away entirely. She crossed the room and pressed a kiss to the crown of his head, something she would often do when he was but a babe and even now.
"I nearly lost you once already," she said quietly. "I do not think I would survive losing you a second time, not truly. If this girl from the sea brings you peace after everything, then that peace is worth more to me than I can properly measure. I will help you find your answer, if I am able. You have only to ask."
He thanked her, throat tight, and went to bed that night lighter than he had felt in a very long time.
By the tenth day, though, his search had turned up nothing but dust and disappointment, page after page of tidal charts and shipping records that told him everything about the sea and nothing at all about the creatures who lived beneath it, and he was scowling so fiercely at a particularly useless scroll that he did not hear Baela approach until she dropped a stack of books onto the table hard enough to make him jump nearly out of his seat.
"What have I told you about pouting, cousin? It hardly befits a prince, especially not one so recently returned from the dead."
"I am not pouting," he said, pouting.
She laughed, unbothered, and pushed the books toward him anyway, settling into the chair across from him with the satisfied air of someone bearing very good news. "Found these buried in the old archive, behind a shelf half the household seems to have forgotten existed. Scrolls on sea creatures, potions, that sort of thing, all written in the old tongue. Some of it looks to go back to Old Valyria itself, if the binding is anything to judge by. Thought they might serve you better than moping about the library like a wet cat."
His whole face changed, disappointment giving way so suddenly to hope that Baela laughed again just watching it happen. He thanked her so earnestly, gripping her hands in both of his, that she looked half embarrassed by the whole display and waved him off with a mock scowl of her own, and then he buried himself in the texts for the rest of the day and well into the night, barely stopping to eat, ink staining his fingers as he copied out passage after passage by candlelight.
The gods, it seemed, had finally decided to smile down upon him after everything, because tucked among the brittle, crumbling pages he found precisely what he had been searching for all along: an old Valyrian draught, described in cramped, faded script, said to grant a creature of the sea, mermaid or siren alike, a brief and temporary span of human legs, the magic bound to fade again once enough days had passed.
Gathering the ingredients took the better part of two more days, some of them common enough to find in any well stocked kitchen and others requiring correspondence sent quietly to a maester on the mainland who asked no questions he clearly did not wish answered, and finding an alchemist both skilled and discreet enough to brew the whole of it properly took longer still. But by the fourteenth day since the battle, Jace stood at the shoreline at dusk with a small vial clutched tight in one hand, its contents glowing faintly violet in the fading light, and his heart hammering somewhere up near his throat.
You surfaced as you always did by then, cautious first, scanning the shore out of old habit, then delighted once you saw him standing alone, swimming in swiftly with your usual haul of shells and drowned bottles clutched against your chest. He knelt at the waterline and, for once, did not simply talk about his day or ask after yours in the halting, gestured way you had both grown so used to.
He explained the potion instead, slowly, carefully, holding the vial up so you could see the strange violet light swirling within it, watching your face closely all the while for any sign that this was too much, too strange, too great a thing to ask of you.
You went very quiet. Your brow furrowed the way it always did when you turned something over carefully in your mind, weighing it from every side, and Jace, who had come to know that expression well over a fortnight of evenings spent together, made himself sit still and wait, though every part of him wanted to fill the silence with reassurance.
"It is only if you wish it," he said softly, when the silence had stretched long enough that he could not help himself any longer. "I would never have you feel forced into anything on my account, not after everything you have already given me. If you would rather not, I will understand completely, and I will still come to see you each evening, just as I have."
You studied the vial a long moment more, turning the choice over one final time, thinking of your sisters and the warnings you had grown up hearing about the dangers of the world above, of legs that were not truly yours and a voice that might vanish again the moment the magic faded.
Then you looked at him, at the earnest hope he could not quite hide no matter how he tried, and something in your face settled at last, resolve chasing out the last of the hesitation, and you nodded.
He could have wept from the sheer relief of it. He handed you the vial with hands that were not entirely steady, and you drank it down in a single determined swallow, immediately screwing your face up at the taste, which was somehow both bitter and sickly sweet beneath it, like rot dressed up in honey, and Jace laughed at the disgusted noise you made.
The change came almost at once, faster than either of you had quite expected. Your tail began to glow faintly from within, the violet light spreading through the coral pink scales, and then, slowly, the scales themselves began to dissolve and reshape, splitting and lengthening before your very eyes.
You watched it happen to your own body with something closer to wonder than fear, propping yourself up on your elbows in the shallow water to see it better. It did not hurt, not truly, only felt strange, an unfamiliar pulling and settling sensation that ran the length of what had been your tail only moments before, and then, quite suddenly, you had legs. Two of them, unfamiliar and entirely new to you, kicking weakly in the shallows as you tried, with no success at all, to make them do anything useful.
It was Jace who first remembered, with a start that nearly gave him whiplash, that you now had absolutely nothing on at all beneath the water. He spun to face the other direction so fast he nearly lost his footing on the wet sand, hurriedly unclasping his own travelling cloak and passing it back over his shoulder to you without turning around, ears burning scarlet all over again.
"Here, please, wrap this around yourself, I am so sorry, I did not think- I should have thought of it before you drank the wretched thing."
You took the cloak, bewildered by the whole strange business of clothing, and wrapped it clumsily about yourself as best you could manage with limbs that still refused to cooperate properly.
"Why," you whispered, voice thin and strange and entirely your own, and both of you went utterly, completely still.
"You spoke," Jace said, turning back around despite himself, eyes wide with wonder, all thought of modesty forgotten entirely.
"I did," you said, marvelling at the strange, thin sound of your own voice carrying through open air, so unlike the way words moved and pressed through water, lighter somehow, and stranger, but yours all the same.
He knelt properly before you then in the wet sand, something almost formal in the gesture despite how thoroughly absurd the whole moment truly was, both of them soaked and shivering and grinning like fools, and asked if he might finally know the proper name of the maiden who had pulled him back so stubbornly from death's door.
You told him. Your name, spoken aloud for the first time in your life, and that you were the seventh daughter of a house that ruled beneath the narrow sea, a true princess in every sense, just as you had claimed all along through nothing but gestures and a proud tilt of your chin.
"I know this may only last a short while," Jace said, still kneeling, still holding your hands as though he feared letting go might undo the magic.
"And I mean to keep searching, if that is what you wish, for some way to make it last longer, or even permanent. But for now, will you come and meet my family properly? They ought to see, with their own eyes, the girl who saved their prince from the bottom of the Gullet."
You tried to stand at that, eager and entirely too confident in limbs you had possessed for all of ten minutes, and discovered immediately that legs demanded a coordination and strength the sea had never once asked of you. You stumbled, pitched forward, and landed hard on your knees in the wet sand with a startled, frustrated huff.
You tried again, gripping his shoulder for balance this time, and managed perhaps three wobbling steps before your legs betrayed you a second time, sending you tumbling sideways with a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a groan of pure exasperation.
Jace, biting back a laugh of his own though it clearly threatened to escape, knelt beside you and tightened the cloak properly around your shoulders, then slid one arm behind your back and the other beneath the crook of your knees, lifting you up into his arms with far more ease than his still-recovering body should reasonably have allowed.
"I will teach you to walk properly," he promised, adjusting his grip as you settled, somewhat stiffly, against his chest, your new legs kicking experimentally against nothing at all. "Though I think that particular lesson is better suited to daylight and a rather softer patch of ground than this. Just now I have limited time before the magic fades, and I intend to make the very most of it while I can."
The jaws that dropped when Jacaerys Velaryon strode into Dragonstone’s great hall carrying a girl in his arms, salt still drying in tangled waves through her hair, wrapped in nothing but his own travelling cloak and kicking her bare feet with open, delighted fascination at the strange new sensation of having feet at all, were a sight none of the household would soon forget, and several among the kitchen staff would still be whispering about weeks later.
Baela nearly dropped the tray she was carrying. Rhaena’s mouth fell open mid sentence and simply stayed that way. You met Rhaenyra and Daemon’s twin looks of open astonishment with wide, curious eyes of your own, entirely unbothered by the attention, as though growing an entirely new pair of legs within the hour were the most ordinary thing in all the world, and gave the queen a doe eyed stare that made it very difficult indeed for anyone in that hall to remain suspicious for long.
Daemon was the first to find his voice, low and disbelieving, a slow grin spreading across his face. “Well- damn. He wasn’t kidding about the fish.”
Rhaenyra’s palm found the back of his head before he had even finished speaking, a sharp, swift smack that made him yelp and rub at the spot, wounded.
“Mind your tongue,” she warned, though there was little real heat in it, her gaze already softening as it moved from Daemon back to her son and the girl held so carefully in his arms.
In the end, there was little else for anyone present to do but believe it, however improbable the tale sounded when spoken aloud: that the lost prince of Dragonstone had indeed been pulled from the bottom of the sea by a little mermaid, and that she, in turn, without quite meaning for it to happen at all, had followed him all the way home.
Summary: Jude is obsessed with you in every way. He especially loves the fact you’re so American and will never stop teasing you about it.
Warnings/Notes: Fluff, silly American stereotypes, could be read as a sequel to Notice Me
A/N: Something fun and lighthearted! Also VERY indulgent once again sorry if you hate Americans... Two fics in one day. I'm on a roll.
Main Masterlist
In the months after the World Cup frenzy and the spontaneous date you had gone with arguably the world’s best football player, things only got crazier. Said footballer was now your very handsome, very thoughtful, very famous boyfriend. And you were being thrown into a new type of spotlight as not only a WAG but also a model turned movie star with you appearing in the latest Bond film.
So it had been a crazy year of press conferences, football matches, interviews, escaping the paparazzi. You were ready to rest. Because you and Jude had such insane schedules and constantly traveling around it was harder to see each other like a proper couple. Luckily you both found a couple weeks of overlap and Jude practically begged to have the two of you spend in Los Angeles. He had been upset he couldn’t go with you to the Los Angeles James Bond premiere months earlier so Jude insisted the only way you could make up for it was by letting him move in into your LA home for the next few weeks.
“I don’t really understand your obsession with this place,” you said, unlocking your home and showing it to him.
“It’s Hollywood babe,” he grinned.
It was weird having a man here. Let alone a man that was your boyfriend. Jude had visited your place in New York and Milan but never Los Angeles. The place you had grown up. It seemed to feel like another step in the relationship to something more permanent.
You tried not to think about it and led him into the living room where he flopped on the couch, kicking his long legs up on the coffee table. You sat on the cushion next to him but he was quick to wrap his arms around your middle to pull you flush against his side.
“Missed you,” he mumbled into your neck.
“Miss you too,” you sighed, squeezing his hand.
You two enjoyed each other's warmth for a moment, basking in the still silence and soft embrace. It had been weeks since you last saw each other, him being busy with football and you killing the runways in London and Milan.
“So what do you wanna do tomorrow?” you asked, turning slightly to face him.
“Whatever you want,” he shrugged, “Don’t care as long as I’m with you.”
You smiled at his words thinking about possible plans.
“Beach?” you suggested, that was never a bad shout.
“Of course you’d say that,” Jude teased, “Shall we go to Erewhon after and then shop on Rodeo Drive?”
His accent made the joke slightly funnier but now you were a bit peeved at his teasing. When you first got together, Jude seemed to be obsessed with your Americanism in ways you did not understand. Oftentimes he’d mimic your accent and you tried to do it back but failed. Now his latest joke was so unapologetically LA you were after he’d been watching all the old post-modern Hollywood movies.
“Jeez forgive me and my suggestions,” you grumbled.
“Nah you know you’re my favorite California girl,” he said, tickling your sides.
You squirmed in his hold trying not to give him the satisfaction of laughing. That was one of the things about your relationship that worried you at first. He was England’s golden boy while you were just a regular American. An American who was still a top model but your fame was really only known in the states and some parts of Europe like Milan and Paris.
You saw how people got when the internet’s heartthrob got off the market. You avoided Instagram for nearly a month after paparazzi pictures of you and Jude got leaked at a Louis Vuitton after party. The world could be cruel but Jude made it clear you weren’t alone. He had been through his fair share of media scrutiny and always made sure that even if the world had something to say you were still the one he wanted.
A soft growl interrupted your thoughts when you turned to Jude seeing his cheeks grow a bit pink.
“Hungry?”
“A bit,” he said, “Haven’t eaten since the airport.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” you scolded, getting up from the couch.
“Because there were only salad places from the airport to here.”
Well he wasn’t wrong about that.
“You have a palette of a child Jude.”
“I’m an athlete who is craving In and Out.”
“What a tourist,” you teased, “Let me put on some pants if we’re going out.”
You were wearing some disgusting sweats but you figured you two could walk around the shops after a quick bite. Jude gave you an odd look before another grin formed on his lips.
“Pants? Babe, I don't think that’s very appropriate for a night out.”
You rolled his eyes at his teasing as there were some slight language changes to you and Jude’s dialectics.
“I’m not calling them trousers. They are pants.”
Jude only laughed harder at your annoyance, “You know I wouldn’t mind you flocking around in just pants.”
He wiggled his brows flirtatiously at you, making you roll out of his arms and smack him with the closest throw pillow. He let out a yelp as you scrambled away before he could you again. You were giggling at his perplexed state before he also rose from the couch.
“You’re going to pay for that!” Jude said, trying to chase you.
You let out a laugh as you ran down the halls towards your bedroom. The joke was on him though since he had no idea how to navigate your house.
You thought you escaped him, diving into your closet to change but a pair of arms grabbed you by the waist as you turned the corner.
“Ah!” you screamed, twisting to see Jude grinning down at you with his arms firmly wrapped around you.
“Gotcha,” he hummed, turning you around to face him, “Time for your punishment for threatening me with an injury.”
“What a baby,” you sighed but you gave in to what he wanted most.
You angled your head up to press a soft kiss to his lips, cradling his jaw while he pulled you flushed against him. The two of you made out for a few minutes in your closet, your hands running along his jaw and chest while his hands tangled in your hair and pawed at your body. It was only until the sound of stomach rumbling that forced you guys to pull apart, although Jude’s lips still chased yours.
“Let’s eat some real food,” you hummed, wiping off the lipstick stains on Jude’s own lips with your thumb.
Jude playfully tried to bite your thumb but allowed you to change so the two of you could go eat.
–
It was a well known fact that Jude could not drive. You on the other hand had been navigating the Los Angeles highways since you took the driver’s test the day right after your 16th birthday. You unlocked your convertible which you admit was a pretty LA of you.
“Aren’t I a lucky lad?” he grinned, hoping in the passenger seat, “Got the prettiest girl driving me around.”
“I hope you know that I still find it extremely icky that you still don’t have a license,” you said, rolling your eyes while pulling out of the driveway.
It was pretty nice out so you opened up the car so the light ocean breeze could pass through.
“I’ve spent more time on planes and travel buses than actually cars babe.”
“As much as I hate the paparazzi, I really hope they get an image of this passenger prince over here,” you sighed.
“Then the world would know I’m seeing the most beautiful girl in the world,” he said, always trying to butter you up.
Before you could retaliate your eyes finally registered the traffic ahead of you.
“Ugh the 405 is backed up,” you sighed, “Maybe I can re-route to Venice.”
“I love when you talk about LA navigation babe. So sexy.”
“Jude I swear to god!” you huffed, trying to merge into the congested lane.
“You’re so easy to annoy,” Jude laughed, reaching over the console to take your hand.
You playfully tried to pull away but Jude was stronger and pressed a kiss to your palm. You shot him a glare and he gave you a wink back. Cheeky bastard.
The rest of the car ride went without much teasing. Jude was taking photos of you in the driver’s seat with the coast in the background. You found it a bit adorable him being in awe of the scenery.
You pulled into the parking lot, knowing that neither of you had the patience to wait in the drive thru line. Although Jude said before he left he wanted to experience the drive thru which had you rolling your eyes but promising him that. You were going to take him to Chick-fil-a or something. Thankfully the spot you chose was not that crowded as you were already in front in a couple minutes.
“What can I get you?” the cashier asked.
“I’ll do a regular cheeseburger with grilled onions and fries,” you said, “What do you want Jude?”
Jude had an amused glint in his eyes as he began his own order.
“I’ll do a double-double with grilled onions and animal style fries. Oh and I’ll also do a chocolate milkshake.”
The cashier typed in your order and Jude graciously paid for your meals. However as you walked over to an open booth he still had that teasing spark in his eyes.
“What?” you pressed, narrowing your eyes, “What did I do?”
“Apparently you’re going to do a cheeseburger? That’s really interesting babe.”
You blinked at him not even processing how odd that phrasing may seem to a non-American.
“I feel like it’s wrong to make fun of my Americanism when we’re in America,” you sighed, “I’ll allow it when we’re in Europe but we’re on my home turf.”
“Fair enough,” Jude said, holding up his hands in defense, “Just know it's all teasing. I do love your valley girl accent babe.”
“I do not have a valley girl accent!” you exclaimed, although there was some vocal fry in that statement.
Your number was called out as Jude quickly got up to retrieve your order. Before he immediately dug in he made sure to get one last comment in.
“I don’t have an accent,” he mimicked in an awful impression, “Hate to break it to you but you sound like Elle Woods from that one American college movie. It’s still very cute though.”
He took a bite of his burger, nearly moaning at how good it was.
“Well you sound like a Peaky Blinder,” you retorted pointing your finger accusingly which made Jude naturally grab your hand and press a kiss to your palm. You pulled away only cause he had sauce on his lips which made him chuckle.
“I clearly remember you telling me how charming my accent was when we first met.”
“Never happened,” you shook your head even though it was totally true.
Before the two of you could get into another argument a voice called out,
“Umm could I get a photo with you?”
It was a young girl who looked a bit shy gripping her phone.
“Oh yeah sure,” Jude grinned, “You a Madrid fan?”
“Oh not you,” the girl quickly said, “Her. I love your runways.”
You shot Jude a teasing look before telling the girl yes. You made a point to hand the phone to Jude to take the photo which he did with no complaints. Normally when the two of you were in Madrid, England or other parts of Europe it was you in Jude’s position. To be fair he was like the top footballer in the world. But without fail, anytime the two of you were in America, it was you getting stopped on the streets and you found it hilarious whenever Jude assumed it was for him.
“Thank you!” the girl squeaked before running away.
You let out a chuckle before facing Jude again. His brows were slightly furrowed because most times you got stopped for a photo they would at least ask for a group one after. The two of you had kind of become an it couple which was sort of hilarious in some ways.
The media painted the two of you as these very put-together couples, with you being a high-fashion model and him being a classy footballer. Oftentimes the top of you were spotted in pristine outfits, tennis matches, or red carpet premieres. While there was nothing wrong with that image, when it was just the two of you it really was like being teenagers in love. You lounged around, watched movies from the couch, ate greasy food, went on late night walks, laughed loudly, and just drove around with no plans in mind.
“Are you jealous?” you teased, snatching one of his fries.
“Hardly,” he scoffed.
“I’m convinced,” you said, “Better get used to it. I’m quite a big deal around here.”
That was true to Los Angeles. One because you had grown up here and two because of your recent breakthrough in Hollywood. But the World Cup had put some footballers on the map in the U.S., including the Jude, so you wouldn’t be surprised if he also had some local fans.
“So I heard,” Jude said, “This year’s top model, cover star for over 20 magazines, Victoria Secret Angel, and the newest Bond girl.”
You blushed at his praise. Despite Jude’s own success he did seem marveled at your own fame, it never felt like a competition between the two of you like your past experience dating other celebrities.
“You forgot to mention WAG,” you laughed, as that was what most sports magazines referred to you as.
“Nah if anything I’m the boyfriend to Vogue's September cover star,” Jude grinned.
You chuckled again, as the two of you finished up your meal. Once you were done, you suggested walking around the plaza. Jude agreed, wrapping an arm around your waist and pressing kissing to the top of your head.
After doing a lap around the plaza and giggling about nothing, the two of you walked back to the car. He made a big deal opening your door door only to walk over to the passenger side. You tried hard not to laugh.
Once at home, the two of you got ready for bed, occasionally brushing against each other or bumping one another’s hips while you changed and brushed your teeth. Tucked underneath the sheets, You snuggled into Jude’s side while looking for a movie to watch.
Jude suggested an old Bond film which you were about to agree to until to realize what day it was.
“Holy shit the Lakers are playing!” you said, immediately switching to ESPN.
Jude let out a groan knowing how this night was going to end. But still he laid there with you in his arms as you were enamored by the American sport to him. Every time you turned to him to explain a play, Jude pressed a kiss to your nose knowing that these next few weeks in the city of stars would be the best time. Only because he got to be with his sweet American girl.
sypnosis. A wedding night where you and your boyfriend, Jude, created a moment so unforgettable that everyone already knew whose wedding they would be attending next.
contents. fluff . we love a supportive family
warnings. cursing . mild-suggestive at the end?
jude’s masterlist
You didn’t even want to be there in the first place, but your cousin had dragged you into it anyway.
“Oh, come on, Y/N! It’s just the bouquet toss!” the bride standing in front of you pleaded.
“I’m probably not going to catch it anyway…” you muttered, looking around at all the women gathering in the middle of the ballroom.
“You never know.” She winked before glancing at Jude, who only laughed.
“Go on, love,” he said with a smile. “It won’t hurt to try.”
With a sigh, you stood up and handed your glass of champagne to your boyfriend.
“Fine. But only because you’re my favorite cousin.”
“Yay!” she squealed before jogging back to the front of the room, getting ready to throw the bouquet.
You walked over, staying close to your table where Jude was still sitting.
This wasn’t your first bouquet toss.
And somehow, you had missed every single one.
You winced as an old memory came back.
You were only twenty, a little drunk, and it was the fifth bouquet toss you had joined. Your older cousin had thrown a beautiful bouquet of roses, and for a second, you thought you had it.
It brushed against your fingertips...
Then it landed right in another girl's hands.
You didn’t know why it hit you so hard, but your eyes filled with tears. You just stood there, frozen.
Before you knew it, the tears were falling.
Your mom noticed right away and hurried over, wrapping an arm around you.
“Oh, sweetie. It’s alright.”
You had completely embarrassed yourself that night.
You cried for hours just because you didn’t catch the bouquet.
Your parents told everyone you were only emotional because you were drunk, but they knew the real reason.
It had always been your dream.
To catch the bouquet.
To believe that maybe one day, it would finally be your turn.
On the drive home, your dad spent the whole ride trying to cheer you up.
“Sweetheart,” he said gently, “there will be more weddings, more bouquet tosses, and one day, it'll be your turn.”
Your brother sat beside you, trying—and failing, not to laugh.
“And besides,” your dad continued, “you’re still too young to get married. First, you have to meet the right person. The one you'll spend the rest of your life with.”
You cringed at the memory.
After finding out how much of a scene you had made, you never wanted to join another bouquet toss again. Even when someone managed to convince you, you never really put an effort to try to catch it.
Of course, that never stopped your brother and cousins from bringing it up.
To this day, they still thought it was hilarious.
“First, you have to meet the right person.”
Your father's words echoed in your mind.
Without even thinking, your eyes drifted to the man sitting a few feet away, still holding your champagne glass.
Jude.
He looked at you with a small, encouraging smile, giving you a little nod as if to say, You've got this.
You couldn't help but smile back.
Funny enough, you met Jude only a month after that embarrassing bouquet incident.
Back then, you had just started working at a small coffee shop near the city. It was your very first day, and you were still trying to remember the menu when he walked through the door.
He was one of the regulars.
You ended up taking his order.
The moment your eyes met, everything around you seemed to disappear.
It was as if the whole shop had gone quiet, leaving only the two of you.
For Jude, it was almost the same.
He immediately noticed that the voice greeting him wasn't the usual cashier's. When he looked up and saw you smiling at him, something in his chest fluttered in a way he had never felt before.
Neither of you believed in love at first sight.
At least... not until that day.
After that, Jude started coming to the coffee shop even more often.
What used to be three visits a week somehow turned into one... sometimes even three visits a day.
He always had a reason.
"I needed another coffee."
"I forgot to grab a muffin."
"I was just passing by."
You quickly caught on that his excuses weren't very convincing, but you never complained.
You found yourself looking forward to seeing him every day.
Eventually, he gathered the courage to ask you out.
After three months of talking, late-night phone calls, and getting to know each other, the two of you finally made it official.
That was four years ago.
And somehow, every year with him had been even better than the last.
"The one you'll spend the rest of your life with."
Your father's voice from that memory echoed once again.
Looking at Jude now, sitting there with that same gentle smile he had always given you...
You couldn't help but think...
That was what your dad had told you four years ago.
And now...
You were sure it was Jude.
The only person you could ever picture when you thought about your future.
The only man you wanted to grow old with.
The one you wanted to spend the rest of your life beside.
He had been that person ever since the day you met.
"Three!"
The person holding the microphone startedcounting.
You turned your attention back to your cousin, who stood with her back facing everyone, bouquet raised in her hands.
"Two!"
Without thinking, you took a small step forward.
Your body moved on its own.
Just like it always used to.
"One!"
The bouquet flew through the air.
The room instantly burst into chaos.
Women laughed, squealed, jumped, and bumped into one another as they all reached for the bouquet.
You jumped too, stretching your arm as high as you could.
It was coming your way.
Closer.
Closer...
You reached for it.
Almost...
But instead of falling into your hands—
Your shoulders dropped, and you stopped moving.
Gasps filled the ballroom.
You didn't catch it.
No one did.
The bouquet had gotten caught on one of the large crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling.
For a second, everyone simply stared.
Then the ladies burst into laughter before trying to reach it anyway.
They crowded underneath it, jumping and reaching as high as they could.
Before you knew it, you were stuck in the middle of them.
People bumped into your shoulders from every direction, and all you could do was try to keep your balance.
The bouquet was simply too high.
At least for everyone standing on the floor.
Giving up, you carefully slipped out of the crowd and started making your way back to your table.
You had barely taken a few steps before—
"Whoa!"
A pair of strong arms wrapped around your waist.
Before you could even react, the ground disappeared beneath your feet.
You let out a surprised gasp.
Looking down, you found Jude laughing as he effortlessly lifted you onto his shoulders.
He looked up at you with the biggest grin.
"Come on, love!" he called, his eyes sparkling with excitement.
Before you could protest, he rushed straight back toward the crowd with you sitting safely on his shoulders.
The women around you burst into laughter at the sight, some gushed, quickly moving aside as Jude pushed his way underneath the chandelier.
"You're the tallest one here now," he laughed. "Go get it!"
A wide grin spread across your face as you looked up.
The bouquet was finally within reach.
You stretched out your arm as far as you could, your fingers wrapping tightly around the stems.
"I got it!"
Cheers exploded around the ballroom.
The room filled with applause, laughter, and excited screams as you held the bouquet high above your head.
You looked toward the stage to see your cousin squealing happily, jumping up and down with pure excitement. Beside her, her newly wed husband quickly wrapped an arm around her waist, laughing as he tried to stop her from bouncing right off the stage.
The sight made you laugh.
Then your eyes found Jude again.
He was looking up at you with the biggest smile, cheering louder than almost anyone else in the room.
As if he'd been happier about this than you were.
Carefully, he lowered you back onto the floor.
The moment your feet touched the ground, he pulled you into a warm hug.
"I knew you'd get it," he laughed.
Before you could even answer—
"What the fuck!"
Someone pulled you right out of Jude's arms.
You blinked to find one of your cousins staring at you with wide eyes.
"That was the cutest thing I've ever seen!"
"You finally caught the bouquet!" your brother laughed, shaking his head.
This time, though, there wasn't a hint of teasing in his voice.
He sounded genuinely happy for you.
People all around you were smiling.
Some were gushing over how sweet Jude had been.
Others were patting him on the back, laughing and telling him he deserved an award for that move.
A few guests were already joking that this meant the next wedding would definitely be yours.
Your face grew warm.
Looking through the crowd, your eyes met Jude's once again.
There it was.
That familiar feeling.
The way your heart seemed to skip before beating even faster.
It was the same feeling you had the first time you saw him walk into that little coffee shop.
The same feeling you got every time he smiled at you.
Four years later...
Nothing had changed.
If anything—
You had only fallen more in love with him.
A smile tugged at your lips.
"I love you," you mouthed across the room.
For a moment, everything else faded away.
The laughter, the music, the cheers around you...
None of it mattered.
Jude's eyes never left yours.
They softened, filled with nothing but warmth and love.
A slow smile spread across his face before he quietly mouthed back, "I love you more."
Beside Jude, you caught sight of your dad.
He gave Jude a proud pat on the back before looking over at you.
A knowing smile spread across his face as he walked your way.
"I told you so," he said with a grin.
You laughed, shaking your head.
"Oh, don't start."
"I mean it," he chuckled. "Four years ago, I told you there'd be more bouquet tosses. I told you one day it'd be your turn."
Your eyes dropped to the bouquet still clutched in your hands.
"And I told you that first, you'd find the right person."
His gaze shifted to Jude for a moment before returning to you.
"I'd say you did."
Your heart swelled.
You glanced back at Jude, who was already looking at you with that same gentle smile.
You smiled to yourself.
"Yeah," you said quietly.
"I think I did."
A few moments later, the excitement had finally settled down.
You found yourself standing off to the side with your family, still holding the bouquet in your hands.
Now it was the men's turn.
The garter toss.
Jude had never joined one before.
He knew it was basically the same as the bouquet toss, except instead of flowers, the groom threw a lace garter.
"You better catch that one," your dad told him with a grin, giving him a gentle push toward the crowd.
Jude laughed, giving your dad a quick salute before sending you a wink that made your cheeks warm like a school girl.
The groom stepped onto the stage, taking his place.
He looked at the crowd with the most serious expression he could manage.
For a few seconds, nobody moved.
Then he suddenly broke into a grin.
Holding the white lace garter up for everyone to see, he pointed dramatically at the crowd before swinging his arm back.
With one quick throw—
The garter flew across the ballroom.
The men immediately reached for it.
Some jumped.
Some pushed.
Some completely missed.
Jude barely had to try.
Thanks to his height, all he had to do was take one small jump and stretch out his arm.
The garter landed neatly in his hand.
"Yes!" your dad shouted so loudly that you nearly jumped out of your skin.
Laughter filled the room.
Standing in the middle of the crowd, Jude held the garter high above his head.
Then he spread both arms wide.
His signature victory pose.
The exact same one he always did after scoring a goal during his matches.
You couldn't help but roll your eyes.
"So dramatic," you mumbled under your breath, even though you were smiling from ear to ear.
Your heart wouldn't stop racing.
Bouquet.
Garter.
Somewhere behind you, a few guests started cheering even louder.
"Oh, they're definitely next!"
"Looks like we'll be coming back for another wedding soon!"
Heat rushed to your cheeks again.
You looked at Jude.
He was already looking at you.
Still smiling.
Still wearing that same proud grin.
And somehow...
Your heart beat even faster.
Slowly, Jude started walking toward you.
He took his time, not rushing a single step, as if he wanted to make you wait just a little longer.
A smug grin rested on his lips.
There was a playful spark in his eyes, the same look he always gave you whenever he knew he was about to make you blush.
And judging by the warmth spreading across your cheeks...
It was working.
The guests quickly caught on to what he was doing.
"Ooooh!"
"Someone's feeling confident!"
"Get her, Jude!"
Laughter and teasing filled the ballroom.
You covered part of your face with one hand, already feeling your face burn.
"Oh my gosh..." you mumbled, trying to hide your smile.
Jude only chuckled.
His eyes never left yours.
With every step he took, your heart beat a little faster.
By the time he finally stopped in front of you, he was wearing the biggest, most satisfied smile you'd ever seen.
"So..." he said, twirling the lace garter around one finger.
"I guess we make a pretty good pair."
You laughed, shaking your head.
"You're impossible."
"And yet," he teased, leaning in just enough for only you to hear, "you still love me."
Your smile softened.
"...Unfortunately."
He placed a hand dramatically over his chest.
"Ouch."
You couldn't hold back your laughter.
The rest of the night seemed to fly by.
Before you knew it, guests were starting to head home, offering one last hug and another round of congratulations to the newlyweds.
While Jude stayed behind chatting with the groom, you walked over to your cousin to saygoodbye.
The moment you hugged her, she leaned close with a knowing smile.
"I'm so happy for you."
You frowned, confused.
"For me?"
She smirked and glanced toward Jude, who was laughing with her husband across the room.
"You have no idea how long we've all been waiting for this."
"We?"
"Me, our cousins..." She laughed. "Even your brother."
Your eyebrows shot up.
"...My brother?"
She nodded.
"We've been making bets."
You pulled back just enough to stare at her.
"You guys bet on me?"
She burst into laughter.
"Not in a mean way!"
You crossed your arms, pretending to be offended.
"We always tease you about... you know." She smiled sheepishly. "The bouquet incident."
You groaned, covering your face.
"I knew it."
"But honestly?" she continued. "We've all been quietly hoping your moment would finally come."
Her eyes drifted to the bouquet still resting in your hands.
"And tonight... it finally did."
You looked down at the flowers, still unable to believe you were actually holding them.
“Not gonna lie," she added witha grin, "you and Jude completely stole the show."
Your eyes widened.
"Oh no..." you said, immediately feeling guilty. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to take the attention away from you."
“What?" she laughed, gently nudging your arm. "No! Don't even think that."
She smiled warmly.
"If anything, it made tonight even more memorable."
She glanced over at Jude again before looking back at you.
"The way he carried you on his shoulders just so you could reach the bouquet? Most romantic shit I’ve ever seen."
She placed a hand over her heart dramatically.
"I swear, half the room almost started crying."
"And the other half couldn't stop laughing."
You couldn't help but laugh with her.
"It was sweet."
"It was very Jude."
Your cousin nodded. "Exactly."
She gave your hand one last squeeze.
"It was one of my favorite moments of the whole wedding."
After one last hug, you made your way back to Jude.
He was already waiting for you, standing by himself with his hands in his pockets.
The moment he saw you, a smile immediately appeared on his face.
"Hey, beautiful."
His arms wrapped around your waist, pulling you closer.
"Tired?"
"Very," you sighed, resting against him. "I think my feet are actually dying."
Jude laughed softly as the two of you slowly made your way back to the car.
But as you walked, his attention fell to your heels.
More specifically, your feet.
The smile on his face slowly faded when he noticed the red marks and slight swelling around them.
He frowned.
"You've been wearing these the whole night?"
You looked down, then shrugged.
"I mean... yeah."
Jude looked at you like he couldn't believe you had endured that much pain without saying anything.
He knew you.
He knew you would rather suffer quietly than ruinanyone else's night.
And after hours of standing, walking, and jumping around just to catch that bouquet, he could only imagine how much your feet were hurting.
Before you could say anything else, Jude suddenly bent down.
In one quick motion, he lifted you into his arms.
You let out a surprised yelp.
"Jude!"
He carried you bridal style, completely unfazed by your shocked expression.
"You honestly have to stop doing that," you sighed, quickly wrapping your arms around his neck for support.
A laugh escaped him.
"You mean carrying my girlfriend?"
"Yes," you said, looking at him. "You keep scaring me."
Jude only smiled, adjusting his hold on you.
"I'll stop when you stop pretending you're not hurt."
You opened your mouth to argue.
But you couldn't.
Because he was right.
You leaned your head against Jude's chest as he carried you toward the car.
The warmth of his body and the steady sound of his heartbeat made you relax completely.
"Did I ever tell you how sexy you look today?" Jude asked, looking down at you with a smile.
You let out a tired laugh.
"Yes, Jude. You've been telling me the whole day."
"Exactly," he said proudly. "So just wait until we get home—"
"Jude!" you quickly interrupted, your face turning red. "There are people around!"
He only laughed, clearly enjoying how easily he could make you blush.
Neither of you noticed the wedding bells hanging nearby gently swaying in the night breeze.
Their soft ringing followed the two of you as you walked past.
"Oi!"
A familiar voice suddenly called out.
You turned your head and saw your brother standing nearby, watching the two of you with a look of fake disgust.
"Quit acting like a married couple," he teased. "It's not your honeymoon.”
Your eyes immediately went to the bundle of cash in his hand as he casually tucked it into his pocket.
You stared at it for a moment.
Then realization hit you.
The bet.
Right.
Your brother had bet on you.
But the sight of the money made you wonder...
Did he bet on you actually getting your moment?
Or did he bet against it, like most brothers probably would?
A small smile crossed your face.
Your brother noticed.
His eyebrows furrowed.
"What?"
You shook your head, still smiling.
"Nothing. Love you."
He rolled his eyes.
"Whatever. Love you too."
Despite his teasing, he stepped forward and helped Jude open the car door for you.
"Remember," he said, pointing at the two of you, "you guys aren't married yet. It's not your honeymoon, so no funny business."
"She needs rest," he added, looking at Jude. "She already had a long night."
Jude looked down at you with a playful smirk.
"Oh, she'll be having a really long night alright."
Unfortunately for him, your brother heard every word.
His face immediately twisted in horror.
"Ew, mate."
He covered his ears dramatically.
"That's my sister!"
"He's joking," you reassured your brother.
He was still standing by the car window, peeking inside with a playful glare aimed at Jude.
You heard Jude clear his throat.
"I'm not."
You immediately turned to him.
"Jude."
He tried to hide his smile, but the smug look on his face gave him away.
Your brother looked horrified.
"I heard that."
You couldn't help but laugh, shaking your head.
"You two are impossible."
After saying your goodbyes, you finally closed the car door, leaving your brother still standing therewith a suspicious look on his face.
"Remember," he called out through the window, "she needs rest!"
Jude simply waved.
"I know."
Your brother narrowed his eyes.
"Good."
The moment he walked away, you turned to Jude.
"You enjoy teasing him, don't you?"
He glanced at you with a grin.
"Maybe."
You rolled your eyes, but you couldn't stop smiling.
The drive home was quiet, filled with soft laughter and little moments between the two of you.
When you finally arrived, Jude helped you out ofthe car, carrying your heels in one hand and holding yours with the other.
"You know," he said softly, looking at you, "You were beautiful tonight."
You smiled.
"You told me that already."
"I know."
He stepped closer, his voice lowering.
"I just don't think I told you enough."
Your cheeks warmed as his hands gently rested on your waist.
The playful confidence from earlier softened into something more tender.
"You really have no idea what you do to me, do you?" he whispered.
You smiled, teasing him.
"Is that why you were showing off with the garter toss?"
He laughed.
"Maybe."
A small pause passed between you.
Then he leaned closer, pressing a gentle kiss to your lips before smiling at you.
"But mostly because I love seeing you happy."
Your expression softened.
"And tonight?" His eyes met yours. "Tonight reminded me that I can't wait for all the other moments we're going to have together."
Your heart skipped.
The bouquet had been a dream you chased for years.
But Jude?
He was the person who made every dream after it feel even better.
author’s note. I couldn’t sleep and then I remember this one video that inspired this, I couldn’t stop myself from writing this. I had to! Lol
synopsis — after reader overhears jude calling her constant presence “annoying,” she quietly distances herself from him and his family. but as the silence she leaves behind grows impossible to ignore, jude realizes the girl he’d taken for granted was the one he’d been falling in love with all along.
# warnings: very faint angst, fluff, hurt/comfort
# wc: 5.9k
# mia’s note: while i finish up the last chapters of amongst it all i wanted to leave one of the things i had written a long time ago but never actually took the time to post. it’s long but i love it so much. reqs are open now for anons to because apparently i had them off?? with sooo much love, mia
masterlist
the first time jude noticed her, she was ten years old and sitting cross legged on the kitchen floor because she insisted the tiles were colder than chairs.
jobe had dragged her inside after school with grass stains on both of their knees and a football tucked under one arm.
“mum!” jobe shouted. “we’re starving.”
his mother looked up from the stove before smiling. “and who have you kidnapped today?”
y/n answered before jobe could. broad smile on her face. “i came willingly.”
jude, thirteen then, barely spared her a glance as he walked through the kitchen toward the fridge.
she, however, watched him like he’d personally invented gravity. and that’s when it started.
it became something everyone noticed eventually. not in the exaggerated way children teased each other, but it was just there. you could notice it without much effort.
whenever jobe invited her over, she’d end up lingering wherever jude happened to be. if jude was practicing free kicks in the garden, she’d find an excuse to sit on the patio with homework she never actually touched. if jude was watching football in the living room, she’d suddenly be interested in whichever teams were playing. if he walked into the kitchen, she’d somehow already be there asking jobe if he wanted a snack.
she wasn’t subtle. never had been. never really tried to be either.
she would ask jude questions no one else did.
“did training go well?”
“what boots are those?”
“did your ankle ever stop hurting?”
she remembered things. too many things. things that the best friend of your younger brother shouldn’t really remember.
one afternoon she looked up from helping jobe with homework and casually said; “you have trials tomorrow, right?”
jude blinked. “yeah.”
“i’ll be rooting for you.”
it was simple and quick. she said it without even expecting a reply. as if just stating something that he shouldn’t need to overthink.
she smiled before looking back down at the maths sheet as though she’d simply commented on the weather.
he remembered thinking that she was weird. not in a mean way, just weird. odd.
because why did she know that?
years passed. jobe and y/n stayed inseparable. jude became a professional footballer. they were basically the same, only older.
the visits never stopped. if anything, they became more frequent.
whenever jude came home during breaks, y/n always happened to be there. helping his mum bake, watching a movie with jobe, sitting outside with headphones around her neck laughing so hard she nearly fell off the garden chair.
it didn’t necessarily mean she was there for him. she really wasn’t. she was there because it was her home now too. that’s how she felt about it.
she’d wave when he walked in anyways. always.
a soft greeting with that sweet smile that seemed to never fade. “hi, jude,” like she’d been waiting for him.
he’d nod, small smile that didn’t always reach his eyes, respond nonchalantly. “alright,” and keep walking.
she never seemed offended. never pushed. never expected conversations longer than a few minutes. but she existed around him close enough to notice, and far enough not to get in the way.
his teammates figured it out before he ever did.
one summer, several of them were staying over while training nearby. jobe had invited y/n around because they were planning to watch a match together.
she walked into the garden carrying chips and lemonade and greet everyone with that same enthusiasm she always carried herself with.
“hi!”
and then she’d look at jude.
“hi,” with a completely different voice. smaller and softer. almost shy.
she had never been particularly shy. kept to herself maybe a little, never nervous in normal settings though.
so it wasn’t a surprise when one of his teammates noticed instantly.
after she disappeared back inside, someone elbowed him. “dude.”
“what?”
“that girl.”
“what about her?”
“she’s in love with you.”
jude nearly choked on his drink, laughing uncontrollably. “no, she isn’t.”
“oh, come off it. you didn’t see the way she looked at you?”
another teammate laughed. “i’ve seen insurance sellers less committed than her.”
jude rolled his eyes, a bit more serious now. “she’s jobe’s friend.”
“exactly.”
“so?”
“so she’s been staring at you for ten minutes.”
“i wasn’t even talking.”
“that definitely didn’t stop her, mate.”
the conversation dissolved into laughter. jude tried laughing too, but it was a different mindset now.
he couldn’t stop noticing.
the way she’d unconsciously turn toward him whenever he spoke. how she’d laugh louder when he made jokes. how she’d immediately ask if he wanted another drink before anyone else. how she always chose the chair closest to him without seeming to realise she’d done it. how she remembered tiny details he’d forgotten he’d ever mentioned.
it was a lot. it wasn’t normal.
then came the teasing.
“oh look.”
“there she is.”
“your little shadow.”
“jude’s biggest fan.”
he denied it every single time. rolling his eyes and drifting the topic to anything else.
“she’s just friends with my brother.”
“mhm.”
“nothing else.”
yet the jokes kept coming. and eventually, they started irritating him.
not because of y/n. she hadn’t done anything wrong. but everyone kept making it into something.
every time she walked over; “there she comes.”
every time she smiled; “oh, she’s looking.”
every time she asked him something; “damn, she’s obsessed.”
he started becoming hyperaware of it. of her, of where she stood, of whether people were watching, whether they were going to make another joke.
instead of simply seeing y/n, he started seeing everyone else’s reactions to y/n.
and resentment quietly settled somewhere it never should have.
it happened during another barbecue.
the house was loud as it usually was. children running through sprinklers and music floating from the speakers with adults talking over one another.
y/n and jobe had gone inside to find ice cream while jude leaned against the fence with three friends.
one of them nodded toward the patio doors. “so, when are you going to tell your girlfriend?”
jude groaned. “for god’s sake.”
“what?”
“she’s not my girlfriend.”
“you sure?”
another snorted. “mate, she follows you everywhere.”
jude rubbed a hand over his face, irritation overflowing. “i know.”
“so?”
he laughed, but there wasn’t any humor behind it. nothing was funny, he just needed the conversation to end.
“it’s honestly…” he searched for a word. one that wasn’t mean but one that could explain the situation. “…annoying.”
possibly the worst choice of wording ever.
his friends were no longer laughing. smiles had dimmed a bit as well. he was being serious.
“i can’t go anywhere in this house without her appearing.”
one of his friends chuckled. “that’s harsh.”
“i’m serious. i walk into a room and she’s there. i go outside and she’s outside. it’s like having a second little sibling.”
another laugh, but jude only shook his head. “i just want one visit where she’s not attached to my side.”
one of them muttered. “damn,” not even being funny. but there was genuinely nothing else that they could’ve said. jude wasn’t being nice.
he shrugged. “i don’t mean to sound horrible, but it gets old,” he looked down at the grass. “i don’t even know why she likes me. i’ve never done anything.”
none of them noticed the kitchen door had opened. or that y/n had frozen halfway through stepping outside. a tub of vanilla ice cream in one hand, spoons in the other.
her smile disappeared so quietly no one saw it happen. not even jude, seemingly too busy speaking his mind.
she stood there for perhaps two minutes. long enough to hear every word and long enough to understand exactly what he meant.
then she turned around and walked back inside without making a sound.
jobe found her standing in the laundry room. she was staring at the washing machine doing absolutely nothing.
“you alright?”
she blinked, being pulled out of her thoughts. “oh. yeah.”
“you found the ice cream?”
“mhm.”
“then why’re you in here?”
she looked toward the hallway.
for a second, jobe thought she’d cry. her eyes did that little thing where they watered, but this time it wasn’t out of happiness like it usually was.
instead, she smiled. “i’m suddenly not very hungry.”
“you sick?”
“no,” she handed him the tub. “you take it.”
“what about you?”
“i think my mum wanted me home anyway.”
jobe frowned. “no she didn’t.”
y/n sighed. “i know,” her smile trembled. “but i’ll pretend she did.”
before he could ask another question, she was gone.
the first few days, jude didn’t notice. not really.
life had a way of swallowing small absences before anyone realized they were gone, and he was fairly busy. like any other footballer was.
training started before sunrise, recovery sessions blurred into media obligations, flights, matches, interviews. by the time he came home, he barely registered that the house was quieter or that there was an absence that was impossible to miss.
it wasn’t until the following saturday. he walked into the kitchen, already expecting to hear two voices arguing over something ridiculous. it was mostly the same thing: jobe insisting pineapple belonged on pizza, y/n insisting it absolutely didn’t. or y/n stealing chips from the cupboard only for jobe to yell; “mum! she took the last packet again!”
but instead there was only silence. just his mother humming while she stirred a pot on the stove.
jude opened the fridge. “where’s jobe?”
“training.”
“and…” he hesitated. “…y/n?”
denise looked up. “oh. she’s not coming over much lately.”
he nodded absentmindedly. “right.”
he grabbed a bottle of water and left. it didn’t really bother him. it didn’t feel strange.
not yet.
then another week passed. then another and another.
and he noticed she’d vanished.
there was no extra backpack by the front door, no shoes kicked off in the hallway, no voice calling “hello?” before she’d even stepped inside, letting herself in like it was her house. no asking his mother if she needed help cooking, and no laughter spilling upstairs because she and jobe had found another stupid video to laugh at.
nothing.
“is y/n busy?” the question slipped out before jude realized he’d spoken.
jobe didn’t even look up from his phone. “dunno.”
“you haven’t seen her?”
he nodded. “i have.”
“so why isn’t she here?”
jobe shrugged. “she doesn’t come over anymore.”
“why?”
another shrug. “says she’s busy.”
that should’ve been enough. people got busy. they grew up and had lives to live. only issue was that y/n had never been too busy. not for jobe, not for his family, and not for him.
his eyes drifted unconsciously toward the empty chair in the garden.
the one she always chose. every single time.
and wondered why he didn’t like that she wasn’t there.
a month. one whole month and he hadn’t even seen her once. not even by accident.
until family dinner. his mother had invited y/n’s parents over, something she’d done for years.
jude almost smiled to himself while walking downstairs. absentmindedly and without questioning why. he just expected things to feel normal again.
expected y/n to already be sitting beside jobe and expected her to grin awkwardly when he walked in.
jobe looked up. “oh, jude’s here.”
she turned and barely glanced at him. “hi.”
just one word. polite, no smile, no dirty look either. but it felt dull.
then she turned straight back to jobe. “did you finish that game?”
“yeah, but you would’ve hated the ending.”
“no spoilers.”
“i wasn’t gonna—”
she laughed. it didn’t look staged or fake. but how dare she? like jude wasn’t standing three feet away.
for the rest of dinner she never addressed him once. if she needed salt she asked jobe, if she wanted another drink she asked his mother, if someone asked the whole table a question she answered everyone except him.
she wasn’t being rude. y/n was never rude. that almost made it worse.
but she was being indifferent. like he’d become another chair in the room.
and he didn’t like that.
his mother noticed first. after dinner she quietly nudged him while washing dishes. “you two alright?”
he frowned. “who?”
“you and y/n.”
“what?”
“she hardly spoke to you.”
“oh,” he shrugged, looking back at the dishes. “didn’t notice.”
his mother gave him a look that clearly said she knew he was lying. but she didn’t push.
the dinners kept happening every few weeks. every single one looked exactly the same.
y/n arrived, hugged his mother, teased his dad, spent an hour laughing with jobe, helped clear plates, thanked everyone, and went home.
jude existed somewhere in the background.
she never sought him out anymore. never accidentally wandered into the same room or asked about training. never remembered his matches.
never looked at him. not really.
and that hurt him more than he’d ever imagined it could.
it became embarrassing how often he caught himself searching for her.
walking downstairs expecting to hear her. coming home wondering if her shoes were by the door.
listening for her laugh before remembering she didn’t come anymore.
then little things started surfacing. tiny things he’d never appreciated.
his mother sighed one afternoon while baking. “i miss her.”
jude looked up. “y/n?”
“mhm.”
“why?”
his mother smiled softly. “she always helped without asking,” denise looked at him. “made tea, set the table.”
“kept me company.”
the house suddenly felt empty. and it was weird because there was definitely people there.
jobe noticed too. though he’d never admit it directly.
one evening jude found him sitting alone in the garden. football balanced between his feet.
“no y/n?”
jobe kicked the ball lazily. “no.”
“you two argue?”
“nope.”
“so?”
“i don’t know,” jobe frowned. “she just stopped coming around, i guess.”
one afternoon jude was cleaning out an old cupboard looking for a charger.
instead he found a tiny notebook. blue cover with dog eared corners.
he flipped it open absentmindedly. he didn’t know who it belonged to, but he laughed at the thought of it being jobe’s.
then he froze.
every page was covered in football fixtures. england matches, champions league nights, training schedules.
written in tiny handwriting with stickers and words highlighted in so many colors.
he recognized it instantly. this was something that belonged to y/n.
there were notes beside certain dates. those were surrounded by extra stickers.
“wish jude luck.”
“ask how recovery went.”
“don’t forget his birthday.”
a folded receipt slipped from between the pages.
he unfolded it and found a photograph. years old with folded corners and faded color.
jobe was making a stupid face, y/n laughing so hard her eyes were closed, and jude. standing beside them looking mildly annoyed because someone had insisted he join.
he couldn’t even remember the picture being taken, but y/n had kept it. all these years.
his chest tightened and his hands trembled slightly.
he carefully slid everything back exactly as he’d found it and didn’t mention it.
that night, he couldn’t sleep.
his friends’ voices echoed through his head.
“she’s obsessed.”
“she’s always around.”
“your shadow.”
then his own.
“it’s honestly annoying.”
he squeezed his eyes shut. he hadn’t just rejected a confession or simply said he wasn’t interested.
he’d mocked y/n’s presence. someone who’d spent years making his family feel warmer. someone who’d celebrated every goal he ever scored. someone who’d never once asked him for anything.
and she’d heard him. he was sure of it.
she’d heard every word.
the realization settled slowly and painfully. it wasn’t just that y/n had stopped following him around or that she’d grown out of him. she’d stopped feeling safe around him.
and he was realizing just now.
a few days later, jobe wandered into jude’s room without knocking.
“you did something.”
jude looked up from his phone, frowning. “what?”
“to y/n.”
his stomach dropped as he put his phone away. “why do you think that?”
“because she won’t come over.”
“so?”
“so she loved this house,” jobe’s voice was unusually serious. “she practically lived here. i ask her every week and she always says no.”
jude swallowed.
“what reason? ‘busy.’ and she’s obviously lying,” jobe looked directly at him. “i’ve known her since we were ten. i know when she’s lying. you did something.”
jude stared at the floor. “i don’t know.”
“liar.”
the words lingered long after jobe left.
jude admitted it to himself. he knew exactly what he’d done.
he just hadn’t realized how much damage one conversation could do. because it wasn’t only her discomfort towards him, but he’d taken his mothers and his brother’s person and pushed them as far from them as he could without meaning to.
it got worse when he started noticing her everywhere.
a café she’d recommended. a song she’d once played in the car. a mug she’d accidentally left behind that his mother refused to throw away.
he’d hear someone laugh in public, turn his head, and feel disappointed when it wasn’t her.
he’d score during a match and look toward the family section without thinking. as if expecting to find one familiar face beaming brighter than the rest.
she wasn’t there. of course she wasn’t.
and every time something inside him sank a little further. so deep it became impossible to deny.
he hadn’t been annoyed by y/n, he’d been annoyed that everyone else noticed her feelings before he did. embarrassed by the teasing. too immature to separate her quiet affection from his friends’ jokes.
so he’d taken his frustration out on the easiest target. the person who deserved it least. the one with the sweetest smile.
and now the silence she’d left behind echoed louder than she’d ever spoken.
by the end of the second month, jude realized something that made him sit awake until nearly dawn.
the house hadn’t become quieter because y/n talked a lot; it had become quieter because she’d filled every room without trying. he just hadn’t understood it until she stopped.
and perhaps the cruelest part of all was that the only reason he finally understood how much she mattered was because he was living in the emptiness she’d left behind.
by the third month, guilt had stopped feeling sharp, but it was heavier. the kind that followed jude everywhere.
it waited beside him in the gym, sat beside him on team buses, appeared in hotel rooms when the television was on but he wasn’t watching.
it even found him during matches. after goals. after victories. during celebrations where everyone else was smiling.
he’d catch himself looking toward the stands.
it was ridiculous. she’d hardly ever come to his matches. she preferred watching from home because she claimed, very seriously, that she got less nervous through a screen.
still he looked. every time. and every time he was met by the same disappointment.
and he had no one other than himself to blame.
“you’ve been weird,” trent dropped onto the bench beside him after training.
jude didn’t bother looking up. “i’ve always been weird.”
“no. you’ve been…” he searched for the word. “…quiet.”
“i’m tired.”
“no, you’re something else.”
jude laughed once, but it lacked its usual warmth. “you sound like my therapist.”
“i’m serious,” trent nudged his shoulder. “did something happen?”
jude almost answered. almost said it aloud.
i broke someone’s heart without even realizing she’d handed it to me.
but he chose to shrug his shoulders. “nah.”
one rainy tuesday, he came home unexpectedly because training had been cancelled.
the house was empty except for his mother, who was sitting at the dining table with a cardboard box.
he walked to where she was and saw what the box had inside. old photographs, birthday cards, school drawings.
jude sat beside her. “what’re you doing?”
“sorting,” she smiled. “i’ve been meaning to for years.”
he reached into the box absentmindedly and pulled out a picture of jobe missing two front teeth. y/n beside him with scraped knees.
himself in the background looking deeply offended because someone had forced him into the frame like always.
his mother laughed. “you remember that?”
“no.”
“you complained for ten minutes. ‘why do i have to be in every picture?’,” she imitated his younger voice perfectly.
jude smiled despite himself.
then another picture. y/n sitting on the kitchen counter, decorating cupcakes. flour all over her nose and denise beside her laughing.
another.
christmas. y/n wearing the paper crown from a cracker while his dad pointed the camera at everyone.
another.
jobe’s birthday. y/n holding the cake looking grumpy because she insisted she’d drop it if she didn’t concentrate.
another.
summer barbecue. y/n asleep on the garden swing with a book resting on her chest.
his mother noticed where his eyes lingered. “she really grew up here.”
jude swallowed. “yeah.”
denise looked back into the box. “i miss having her around.”
he stared at the photograph. “so do i.”
the words came quietly because he hadn’t meant to say them aloud.
his mother looked at him and asked gently. “did something happen?”
the house was quiet for a minute. long enough for rain to become the loudest thing in the room.
“i think…” his voice cracked unexpectedly. “…i think i hurt her.”
his mother didn’t interrupt. she waited the way mothers somehow always knew when silence was more important than questions.
jude rubbed both hands over his face. “my friends kept… making jokes.”
“what jokes?”
he laughed bitterly. “that she followed me everywhere. that she had a crush on me.”
his mother raised one eyebrow. “she did.”
“i know. i know that now,” he shook his head before correcting himself. “i knew then. i just…” he sighed. “i got embarrassed. and one day they brought it up again,” his stomach twisted. “i called her annoying.”
his mother went completely still.
“i said i couldn’t go anywhere without her and that she was attached to my side. that i wanted one visit where she wasn’t around.”
his voice became quieter with every sentence. “i didn’t know she was behind me.”
the rain outside filled the silence as his mother looked down at the photographs scattered across the table.
“oh, jude.”
heartbroken. for both of them. because she knew who her son was, but she also knew who y/n was. sweet and patient y/n.
“she heard all of it?”
he nodded. “every word.”
his mother closed the photo album. “i wondered.”
“you wondered?”
“i couldn’t understand why she suddenly looked uncomfortable here,” she looked toward the window. “i thought maybe she’d simply outgrown us.”
jude felt sick. “no.”
his mother reached over and squeezed his hand. “you owe that girl an apology.”
“i know.”
“no,” she looked him directly in the eye. “you owe her one without expecting forgiveness.”
that’s what was jude was the most scared about. that maybe she wouldn’t forgive him because she really didn’t have to.
he wanted her to anyway.
he spent the next week trying.
twice he drove toward her house. twice he turned around.
every version of the conversation sounded selfish.
i’m sorry because i miss you.
i’m sorry because i realized i like you.
the apology couldn’t be about him. it had to be about what he’d done.
fate, however, had different plans.
it happened at jobe’s match, a local charity event. jude had agreed to come support his brother and he had arrived late.
he stopped abruptly when he saw y/n.
she was standing beside the refreshments table helping hand out drinks to children while laughing at something a little girl had said.
she looked exactly the same and completely different.
she hadn’t noticed him yet. she was smiling with that same charisma she had always had. the one he loved so much but realized too late.
his feet moved before he’d fully decided to.
“y/n.”
she turned and smile slipped gradually. like she’d folded it away.
“oh, hi.”
there it was again. that polite voice. the one she’d started using after that afternoon. the one that wasn’t rude but lacked sweetness.
he hated it.
“can we talk?”
she hesitated and looked toward the children waiting for juice. “i’m helping.”
“i’ll wait.”
she blinked as if she’d expected him to give up. but twenty minutes later she walked over to him.
“what did you need?”
jude suddenly forgot every sentence he’d rehearsed.
“i’m sorry.”
she looked at him. though there was no trace of surprise on her face, she did look as if that was the last thing she’d expected him to say.
“i’ve been trying to figure out how to say this for weeks—months. and every version sounded wrong,” he took a shaky breath.
“you heard what i said, and there isn’t a version of it that isn’t awful.”
y/n stared at the grass between them, unable to look at him just yet.
“i was embarrassed. i let people teasing me become more important than…” he looked at her. “…than your feelings. i spoke about you like you were something i had to put up with when really…” his laugh broke halfway through. “you were just… being kind to me.”
y/n stayed quiet.
“i made you feel unwelcome in a place that felt like home. i took something safe away from you.”
he closed his eyes for a second as he felt his chest tighten. “i’m so, so sorry.”
y/n finally looked up and her eyes were glassy.
“i kept wondering what i’d done.”
his heart stopped. she sounded small. so small. and it was him who had done that.
“i thought maybe i’d been too loud,” she laughed softly through her tears. “or talked too much,” she paused to regain her breath. “so i tried talking less. i thought maybe i bothered your parents. so i started leaving earlier,” her voice trembled. “and then i heard you.”
“i realized…” she shrugged. “…it was just me.”
jude closed his eyes. every word landed like another weight on his chest.
“it was never just you. it was me. i was immature and i was cruel and i hurt someone who had never done anything except care about me.”
she wiped quickly beneath one eye. “i stopped coming because i didn’t want to make you uncomfortable anymore.”
“i know,” his voice sounded barely above a whisper. “and i hate that that’s what you walked away believing.”
she studied him for a long moment. “so what changed?”
the question was fair. of course it was.
“what made you apologize now?”
he smiled sadly. “you disappeared.”
she frowned slightly.
“i don’t mean physically, i mean you disappeared from…” he gestured helplessly. “…everything. the house, my family… my life.”
“my mum misses you, jobe misses you.” he swallowed. “and…” he laughed once. “so do i.”
she didn’t answer. she had no idea what to say. she was hearing things she’d convinced herself would never hear because it wasn’t jude who she had blamed.
“i never found you annoying. i found it embarrassing that everyone noticed you because they noticed before i did.”
y/n frowned. “noticed what?”
he held her gaze. “i stopped looking for reasons you’d always be around and started hoping you would be. so when you left…” he smiled through wet eyes. “it felt like someone had taken all the light out of my childhood home.”
y/n stared at him. searching his face and making sure this wasn’t guilt speaking. making sure this wasn’t pity and he just didn’t want to make her feel more pathetic than she already was.
“you really hurt me.”
“i know.”
“i cried all the way home that day.”
his eyes closed.
“i thought i’d embarrassed myself.”
“you didn’t.”
“i thought…” her voice cracked. “…if the boy i’d liked for years couldn’t stand being around me then maybe i was just…”
she couldn’t finish what she had tried to say. it was too much and there were too many mosquitoes and she didn’t like crying in public.
jude stepped forward instinctively but then stopped himself.
“i’m not going to ask you to forgive me, okay? you don’t owe me that. i’m not even going to ask if you still feel the same. because after what i did, i haven’t earned the right to know.”
y/n looked at him for what felt like forever.
and then very quietly said. “i don’t think those feelings ever went away. i just buried them.”
she smiled softly. but jude felt satisfied when noticed this time it was real.
“for what it’s worth, you were never actually annoying either.”
he laughed. his shoulders finally dropping for what felt like the first time in months. “i can work with that.”
she shook her head, smiling despite herself.
“i didn’t say you were forgiven,” she hesitated. “but i think i’d like to come by your house again.”
“and…” she glanced at him. shrugging her shoulders. “…i missed you too.”
he stared at her, almost afraid to believe he’d heard correctly.
“so…” he asked carefully. “can i walk you back to the pitch?”
she pretended to think about it. “hm. i suppose. but only because jobe’s probably wondering where i’ve gone.”
he smiled. “and because you don’t want him thinking i’m annoying?”
she groaned, laughing as she lightly nudged his arm. “oh, don’t ruin the moment.”
he caught himself smiling wider than he had in months.
three months later, the bellingham house sounded like itself again.
it happened so gradually that no one could pinpoint exactly when y/n had started letting herself stay until midnight again. or when she stopped asking, “is it alright if i come over?” and simply walked through the front door with the familiar “hello?” like she’d done since she was ten.
denise had cried one evening while y/n was helping wash dishes.
she wrapped her arms around her and whispered. “i’ve missed having you here.”
y/n had hugged her back just as tightly. “i’ve missed being here.”
neither of them mentioned why she’d ever stopped coming. some wounds didn’t need reopening once they’d finally begun to heal.
jobe, however…
jobe noticed everything.
he noticed that jude somehow always knew when y/n was arriving, that y/n unconsciously saved the seat beside her, that whenever jude came home from training, the first person he looked for wasn’t his parents anymore.
it was her.
one evening they were all watching a film, or at least attempting to.
jobe was invested. his father had fallen asleep twenty minutes earlier and his mother was pretending not to.
y/n sat tucked into one corner of the sofa, jude on the other.
that was how it started.
then halfway through the film, jobe reached for the popcorn and paused.
“hang on,” his eyes narrowed. “when did this happen?”
y/n blinked with a small frown. “what the hell are you talking about?”
“you two.”
both of them looked down simultaneously.
without either of them consciously remembering it, they’d ended up shoulder to shoulder. y/n’s legs tucked beneath her and jude’s arm resting lazily behind her on the sofa. their hands intertwined.
y/n immediately let go, but jude didn’t.
he simply looked at his brother. “what?”
jobe stared shaking his head unbelievably. “no. what? when?”
jude shrugged. “a while ago.”
“a while?”
“three months?”
“three months?!”
his voice cracked and his parents woke up.
denise yawned. “what happened?”
jobe pointed dramatically. “they’ve been dating for three months.”
“yes, jobe, i know.”
jobe whipped around. “you knew?!”
“i’ve known since the second week.”
his father stretched casually. “i thought everyone knew.”
jobe looked personally betrayed. “i didn’t know.”
dating jude turned out to be nothing like she’d imagined when she was younger. at ten she’d thought it’d be grand gestures like flowers, fireworks and movie-like moments.
instead it was ordinary. wonderfully ordinary.
it was jude waiting outside her university lecture with two coffees because he’d remembered she’d had an early class. it was y/n bringing dinner to his apartment after late training because she’d noticed he’d forgotten to eat properly.
it was grocery shopping together and somehow spending forty minutes arguing over pasta sauce. it was falling asleep halfway through documentaries neither of them had actually wanted to watch.
it was peace.
no guessing. no pretending she didn’t instinctively drift toward him or that he didn’t instinctively reach for her.
one rainy afternoon she wandered into the bellingham kitchen where denise was.
eventually she spoke. “you know…”
y/n looked over.
“i used to think you’d marry one of my boys.”
she nearly dropped the knife. “excuse me?”
she laughed. “not because you had a crush. i didn’t even know about that until much later.”
y/n hid her face. “oh my god.”
“i just couldn’t imagine you belonging anywhere else.”
that evening jude found y/n sitting on the back garden swing.
the same one she’d fallen asleep on years earlier.
rain had finally stopped and everything smelled like wet grass.
he walked over quietly. “you disappeared.”
she looked up. “i wanted five minutes.”
“without me?”
she smiled teasingly. “i know. terrible.”
he sat beside her and y/n rested her head against his shoulder.
“you know…”
“what?”
“i still catch myself wondering if i’m bothering you.”
his entire body softened. “you really believe that?”
“sometimes,” she paused. “it doesn’t last long but…” she shrugged. “that day stuck with me.”
jude nodded once. “i know, baby.” he reached for her hand. “i don’t expect it to disappear.”
“it shouldn’t,” she looked at him. “you hurt me.”
“i did.”
“and some days i remember it.”
he brushed his thumb across her knuckles. “when you do, you tell me. i don’t care if it’s ten years from now.” he kissed the back of her hand. “if i have to apologize for that day for the rest of my life i’ll do it.”
she laughed through watery eyes. “you’d get sick of saying sorry.”
“i don’t think so.” he leaned closer.
a breeze stirred the trees around them.
somewhere inside the house jobe shouted,
“mum, where’s the garlic bread?”
his mother shouted back, “ask y/n.”
y/n laughed instinctively. she looked toward the kitchen windows glowing warm against the evening sky and then she answered just as loudly.
“top oven!”
jobe yelled back. “thank you!”
jude smiled.
“what?” she looked at him.
“it feels like home again.” he kissed her forehead and then he intertwined their fingers. “you’ve always been home.”
this time, when she smiled there was no hesitation behind it. no fear that she’d overstayed her welcome. no instinct to make herself smaller.
because the girl who had once quietly slipped out the back door, convinced her presence was a burden, was gone.
and in her place was someone who knew, with complete certainty, that she was loved. not because she stayed out of the way but because she had always, without realizing it, become part of the family long before she ever became jude’s girlfriend.
the porch light flickered on as the sun disappeared.
his father blamed the oven. his mother blamed jobe.
y/n squeezed jude’s hand. “c’mon. they’re probably setting the kitchen on fire.”
he stood with a grin. “probably.”
she started toward the house and he caught her hand before she could get very far.
y/n turned. “what?”
jude smiled in that quiet, unmistakably fond way that was reserved only for her now. “i’m really glad you came back.”
y/n’s expression softened. “i know.”
she stepped back toward him, rose onto her toes, and kissed him gently. “when you apologized,” she murmured against his lips, “i wasn’t sure if we could ever get back to what we had.”
he tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “we didn’t.”
she frowned slightly.
“we got something better.”
she believed him completely.
together, they walked back into the warm, noisy house. where someone was already shouting their names, where dinner was almost certainly burning, and where neither of them would ever again have to wonder whether they belonged.
oscar piastri x yn! bellingham | request — here | masterlist
"i like your big sister, she has your same face, and I tried to win her, Over with my cynical humor and yacht rock music taste." despite being the older sister of jude and jobe bellingham, that doesn’t stop them from being protective when it’s revealed who oscar piastri has a crush on…
face claim : zendaya
note — (manips by me as always) thank you for the request, hope you enjoy !!!! likes, reblog's and comments are appreciated ⟡˚౨ৎ⋆
Liked by user1, user2 and 273,825 others
F1Gossip Does Oscar Piastri have a crush...?
In a recent video the McLaren drivers were asked "Who is your favorite football player?" in which Norris replied "Oscar is going to say Bellingham, but not Jude..." upon further inspection the only Bellingham that Piastri follows is Y/n Bellingham the sister of Jude and Jobe Bellingham 👀
view all comments...
user1 oh i'd never go outside again
user2 oscar should've slapped tf out of him
->user3 LIKE?!?? why are you outing my crush man!@!?!?
->user4 i would've exposed him right back 😭
user5 i mean she IS gorgerous so..
user6 he's so messy for saying that bruhh
user7 his reply being to blush
->user8 he was SPEECHLESS
->user9 bro was SO red oh my-
user10 now why the hell would he say that?? 😭
user11 lowkey scared to see bellingham's reaction to this
user12 oscar might need to hire security after this
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♬ Sade ‧ Paradise
Liked by judebellingham, oscarpiastri and 1,318,362 others
ynbellingham ooh what a life
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user1 vibes are perfect
user2 no selfie :(
->ynbellingham didn't want to embarrass the bros
->judebellingham alright
->jobebellingham that's crazy
->user3 well is she lying..?
user4 oscar still in the likes, he really dgaf
user5 you are such a sade song 💌
user6 TRULY living the life
user7 alright what do y'all think of oscar? judebellingham jobebellingham
->judebellingham no comment
->jobebellingham ⬆
->user8 oscar you might wanna watch out...
->user9 either he doesn't gaf or he REALLY gives a fuck.....
user10 do you need a sister in law..?
user11 come on oscar daon't be shy... leave a comment
user12 why am i nervous for oscar now 😭
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ynbellingham posted a story !
view all story replies
user1 WATCHING F1?!?!??
user2 of all races u picked the one oscar won....
user3 this face card mama
user4 a selfie after your last story is sooooo
user5 heyyyyy jude 🤭
user6 ty for this jude pic queen <3
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oscarpiastri posted a story !
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ynbellingham guess i picked a pretty good race to watch
->oscarpiastri if i'd known you were watching i would've invited you to the race
->ynbellingham didn’t want to give you performance anxiety yk 🤕
->oscarpiastri right right right
->oscarpiastri your presence would’ve caused a 20 car pile up
->ynbellingham see! glad you understand
->oscarpiastri also i do want to apologize for my teammate saying all that and having your comments full of people talking about me…
->ynbellingham it’s fine lol
->ynbellingham but you didn’t have to make your teammate say my name to get my attention ☺️
->oscarpiastri if i’d known that then i would’ve messaged you sooner 😉
->ynbellingham mhmm so you free anytime soon…?
->oscarpiastri i can make myself free if need be
->ynbellingham send your number so we can chat some more
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Liked by judebellingham, oscarpiastri and 3,118,262 others
ynbellingham omw 🛫
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user1 this hair is so so good i can't
judebellingham where???
->ynbellingham do i need to tell you everywhere i go?
->judebellingham YES
->jobebellingham 100%
->ynbellingham you're welcome to tag along
->jobebellingham I HAVE PLANS
->judebellingham IM on my way
->ynbellingham i was joking jude
->ynbellingham JUDE
->ynbellingham i hate you
->user2 THEY ARE SOOOO
->user3 such a little brother i canttt
user4 living my dream life im sick
user5 the face card is always so insane im speechless
user6 the hello kitty keychain... i knew i liked u for a good reason
->ynbellingham im a woman with excellent taste
->user7 TRUST we know mama
user8 wait but WHERE are you going...??
user9 Muse, the legend, the myth x
user10 loving your active era
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Liked by ynbellingham, oscarpiastri and 5,736,518 others
judebellingham recently 🍃
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user1 IS THAT.....
user2 no way did jude post oscar piastri before y/n
ynbellingham 🥐🏝📽
->user3 THE PASTRY KASURGLIU
->user4 this is conformation 100%
->user5 THEYRE INSANEEEE
user6 he's trying to distract us from how good he looks in the 1st picture
user7 did he just hard launch oscar and not let y/n do it!??? 😭
user8 them three all hanging out is still crazy to me
user9 HE MET THE FAMILY.....
->user10 AND WENT ON VACATION WITH THEM
->user11 oscar knew not to play with it came to y/n
user12 the way we all know that's oscar from his back is sooo-
user13 does this mean that oscar got the brothers stamp of approval
user14 girl the concept of oscar and all the bellingham's having family dinner is KILLING MEE 😭
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Liked by ynbellingham, judebellingham and 4,736,518 others
oscarpiastri Enjoyable one that!
view all comments
judebellingham 🙌😍🔥
->ynbellingham easy with the 😍
->judebellingham damn my bad
->user1 she said "oscar is not a group project"...
->user2 that's HER man
->user3 the heart eyes was a little much 😭
user4 Killing it brother
user5 GO OSCAR🧡✨🏆
ynbellingham so so so proud 💗
->oscarpiastri thank you for coming angel 💗
->judebellingham easy with the "so"
->ynbellingham this is why jobe is my favorite
->user6 jude takes the role of being the middle child very serious
->user7 he somehow always finds new ways to annoy y/n..
user8 MY GOAT OSCARRR
user9 okay ynbellingham be honest did they interrogate him..?
->ynbellingham lot's of threats but it ended with everyone getting ice cream so it was fine lol
->user10 not surprised 😭☠
user11 just tried to sneak in y/n...
user12 audibly gasped when i saw the 5th picture
user13 so deserved!! well done
jobebellingham where was my invite..?
->ynbellingham in the group chat..
->judebellingham i have the messages!!
->user14 the kids are fighting again
->user15 omg they are such siblings i canttt 😭
user16 MY FAV DRIVER IS A WINNNNNER
user17 i can't believe he bagged THE y/n bellingham 😭
user18 he's got all the bellingham's approval how cute 🤭
user19 second to confirm it after jude did LOLLL
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✎…… this was going to be shorter but i just kept adding stuff mb <3
also if there are any jobe and jude names mixed up it's because i swear i have undiagnosed dyslexia
Oscar wants you more than any stupid song could ever say, really.
masterlist ✩ pairing: oscar piastri x best friend!reader
wc ✩ contains: 1.9k ✩ fluff, friends to lovers, small mentions of alcohol
🍵: lets all suspend our belief that olivia's album came out last year see request
✩ ✩ ✩
see replies ⬇️
user1 ive shipped them since he was in like f3
user2 wait they go back that far??
user4 yess girl, they’ve been besties foreverrr
user8 theyre dating i thought??
user6 noo :(
user5 shes soooo fine i need her
user3 theyre such bi panic lol
user7 especially the ones where theyre all silly before her friend points out the fans taking pics
user1 YESSS and shes taking pics on her camera
user8 praying they see the light of day
user4 petition for yn start a jpeg account loll
oscarpiastri and yourusername added to their story!
[oscar’s caption: she made me wear eye patches 😔] [your caption: he’s hidingggg 🐝]
story replies:
yourusername you literally asked for them
oscarpiastri i asked what they WERE
oscarpiastri big difference
yourusername just admit that you love being skincare queen
oscarpiastri a what now?
yourusername don’t play
yourusername and i know you used my topicals back at yours
oscarpiastri oh
oscarpiastri maybe don’t leave your random shit in MY bathroom then
yourusername it was expensive u ass
oscarpiastri i’ll get you more 😇
yourusername …
yourusername you are forgiven
oscarpiastri i’m not hiding im just shy
yourusername there’s like a million people at every race
yourusername fym ‘shy’??
oscarpiastri they don’t count
yourusername and i do?
oscarpiastri yep
yourusername so ur only scared of my camera?
oscarpiastri only because i know you’ll post me when im barely decent
yourusername i think you always look good osc
yourusername thats why
oscarpiastri oh i look good?
yourusername don’t get smug. i take it back now
oscarpiastri you can’t ;)
Long ago, you learned a good party after a win, especially with the team you lived and breathed almost as much as Oscar, was never something to pass up. Even with music blasting throughout the building and pounding within your chest, and sweat dripping unless you were stood directly under the AC, it was still the best place to be on a Sunday night.
As soon as everyone got to the club, Oscar had been swept away by fellow drivers and mechanics. It was not long until they were chanting his name throughout the entire room. You knew they’d get carried away but he needed to unwind so you found your place somehwhere in the crowd and chanted alongside half of the city. Oscar had promised to find you later on and that he did.
About an hour or maybe even two hours into partying hard, your friend emerged from the crowd with the largest spread of smile you hadn’t seen on him since his first win.
He stumbled right into you at some barstool, reeking mostly of tequila and faintly of cologne. Usually, he only sounded tipsy by this point in the night, so you knew there was something doing heavy lifting in his system.
His boyish smile slipped into something serious when he saw you speaking to a man.
“Man of the hour, how ya doing?” He said to Oscar, holding his hand out.
Oscar ignored the hand to slide his around your waist, and it sent shivers down your spine. You two were always a little more touchy than normal friends, and you always credited it to being so close, always knowing what the other was thinking and whatnot. Your body still went rigid and you truly had no idea what to do.
“Osc, this is, uh, sorry what did you say your name was again?” you gave the man a bit of an awkward chuckle as you felt Oscar’s fingers grip a little tighter.
“William.” The man replied. Then, he glanced between the two of you, smoothly pulling his hand back to the counter where his drink was. “Congrats on that win, mate.”
“Thanks, mate.” Oscar rasped through his teeth. “Maybe you should leave her alone now, yeah? A bit too old don’t you think?”
The man’s face tugged into a small scowl followed by a smug smile, “Well, I think she’s old enough to make her own decisions.”
Oscar wobbled on his feet, prompting you to wrap an arm around his warm torso. He tried to take a step towards the man but just as he did, he slid off his barstool then disappeared into the crowd.
Oscar turned towards you, you who was already looking up at him with pinched eyebrows. “Wanna take a shot with me?”
“You’re wasted,” your face softened at the soft beaming face of his.
Oscar leaned down into the crook of your neck and whined, “Come on, just one?”
His breath felt good— and it felt right, on your neck. He took up space exactly where you wished for him to for years. Melting right into him wasn’t an option for a club in the middle of Monaco but you wanted it to be. Your hand came to his hair, not letting it tangle but it felt nice for the moment.
“We drove your car here, idiot,” you reminded him while stroking the nape of his neck from an awkward angle. He stood up, removing himself from you as he pat his jeans, eventually coming up with his car keys. “Thanks.”
All that training surely had not gone to waste, you knew it whenever you did gym days together and he ditched his shirt for efficiency or something. But the deadweight of a man holding onto you until you had gotten him in the passenger of his sleek, black McLaren, was not anticipated enough.
Thankfully, his apartment building wasn’t far from the club but the traffic in the tunnel made it seem like forever.
“Fuck, you’re so pretty all focused,” Oscar slurred. He fidgeted with your phone which he grabbed from the console and sighed, “You’re the only one I trust. I just love you so much, you know?”
With eyes glued to the road and hands gripping the steering wheel, even though traffic hadn’t moved in a good couple minutes or so, you responded calmly, “What?”
The man’s slumped body in the passenger seat shifted, turned from the window, “I love you.”
“I, uh, I love ya too, Osc.” You replied.
“No, like, I love love you.”
His accent was smooth and sweet when slurring out his confession, and it sent heat practically everywhere in your body. It bloomed within your chest and nestled itself right between your racing heart and rib bones. From the passenger seat, he called your name in a singysongy way, and when you turned just slightly to look over, his eyes were half lidded and plastered to you.
“You’re so drunk.” You remarked, smirking, hoping to joke your way out of it.
“Not that muchhh.” He whined and almost reached across the console but stopped himself.
Once you got him out of the car and into the elevator, he had only sobered up enough to stumble his way to the couch. He was cute like this, always was. You couldn’t help but giggle when he almost missed the landing, flopping head and shoulders first onto the suede cushions.
You walked into his mess of a bedroom to grab a couple blankets and an extra pillow, knowing his throw pillow were nothing to compare. When you walked back down the hall, he was already sound asleep, or so you thought. With a comforter in hand, you placed it over him, smiling to yourself.
Oscar’s face like this was overtaken with softer features. His jaw wasn’t tight like in all those post race interviews and he wasn’t making some confused face at you for dipping your fries icecream. If you wanted to, you swore you could’ve counted every freckle that danced around his face and arms and legs. Sometimes you tried to.
“Stay…please?” Oscar mumbled out, pleading like he once sounded all those years ago in school.
You nodded softly, kissing the crown of his head and leaning back the recliner that sat just next to the couch.
You awoke to an empty flat. No Oscar, no faucet running in the bathroom, not even the TV to keep you company. It feels cold and empty without him there, and you’re almost never in his place alone so now it just felt weird. He left a small note stuck to your phone.
Be back soon ;)
You wondered where he went but you were glad he was okay, even if there was gnawing feeling in your chest, worrying if he had regretted the night before. It wasn’t like him to just up and go, not without trying to wake you up at least. After waiting around for over half an hour for him to respond to your frantic texts, you got up and headed to the kitchen.
His pantry was always fully stocked with a variety of snacks, a perk of a man who traveled constantly and barely had time to cook at home. He always had your favorites from pop tarts to candies that he heard you say you liked once at 17 and suddenly there was never a jet ride without ‘em.
You smiled down at the bag, grabbing a couple gummies to chew on while cracking not one but three eggs into the sizzling pan coated in oil. The new song you were obsessed with, spilled into the kitchen all the way from his bluetooth speakers in the living room. You were listening to it on repeat, stepping around the kitchen, spatula in hand and treating the tiled floor like a personal karaoke stage.
As the lyrics to ‘stupid song’ by Olivia Rodrigo tumbled from your mouth, barely the correct ones, you hadn’t heard the door open nor click shut.
Oscar had been peering around the corner from the hallway for a good couple minutes before you spun, eyes open wide and mouth gaping at the man staring you down. He had a boyish grin spread across his lips and his hands were full with a colorful bouquet and a bag.
You dropped the spatula and reached behind you to turn off the stove with frantic hands.
“Uh, how long have you been standing there?” you awkwardly spit out.
“Long enough to remember how good you sound when no one’s looking,” Oscar replied.
The embarrassment burning your cheeks quickly drained, being replaced by annoyance as you turned around, back facing the Australian.
“Can’t believe you actually came back,” you grumbled while dishing the eggs from the pan.
You heard shuffling and suddenly Oscar’s voice was a lot closer than before.
“I’m sorry for leaving. I honestly had no idea how to face you after last night and I didn’t want you to think I didn’t mean it,” he replied.
You turned around and faced him, having to look up only slightly, “Did you? You know, mean it?”
Truly, you hated the slight tears that fell the instant his softened brown eyes met yours. Trying to blink them back was absolutely useless. Oscar’s hand came to your jaw and his thumb swiped at the rolling droplets.
“Hey, hey, I’m sorry. I am, I swear.” His voice was low and gentle, which wasn’t new to you but it felt different now. “I love you so much, you have no idea. I should’ve said something more than the note, but I wanted it to be a surprise.”
He stepped to the side, revealing a box of muffins from your favorite bakery and the same bouquet you’d first seen him just minutes prior.
That was when you lunged into his arms, wrapping your own around his neck. He stumbled backwards just a bit before crashing his lips into yours. Oscar's lips were soft, a bit sweet with the same gummies he’d obviously taken along, but most importantly, they were all your own.
He slid his tongue against yours after biting down on your lip and practically inhaling you entirely. He wanted every inch of you memorized, so his hands went everywhere from your back to your waist and finally your thighs, lifting you effortlessly onto the counter. You hooked your legs on his hips, wrapping them around him without breaking the kiss. It deepened, and with that, his groans against you travelled with his lips down your neck. He couldn’t get enough of you as you whispered your love back to him over and over until he was satisfied.
A little while later, you were eating your now shared breakfast at the table, talking about all the times you almost confessed but held back. Oscar thought it was ridiculous given the amount of time it actually took him to say something and how he wished he would’ve been slightly more sober.
“How’s the eggs?” You asked, leaning back into him and shifting on his wide thighs.
“They’re decent, I’m mostly distracted by the view at the moment though,” he gravely hummed in approval and pressed a kiss to your neck.
“Just decent?”
“Yeah, fine, they’re amazing.” He conceded with an eye roll. Oscar kept a tight grip on your waist to anchor you to his lap and quite a comfortable one at that.
liked by yourusername, mclaren, lando, and 427k others
oscarpiastri did i mention i love spa?
alexalbon mate when did you get a cat?
oscarpiastri couple months ago
alexalbon ???
yourusername sorry albono
alexalbon you’re both blocked
userlol he loves spa yet most of this post is either yn or a pic she took
user2 lol he loves her so bad
user4 the paris pic THEYRE SO CUTE
yourusername you’re such a slob jesus
oscarpiastri im organized
yourusername you call sauce everywhere organized?
lando what no piggyback ride just bc im not named yn?
oscarpiastri 😕
user8 lando what do you know 🤨
user3 WHATS THE CATS NAME
user5 yourusername pls pls spill
user9 if i could climb that man’s back i would too yn
charlesleclerc that cat looks familiar
maxverstappen what does this even mean
charlesleclerc they are not slick as the kids say 😃
maxverstappen you’re not even 30
user7 ok but who’s ‘wolloam’
user8 her ex maybe?
user7 i don’t even think she has an ex remotely close to that name
user9 could be an inside joke?
user7 whoever he is, he woke up possesive oscar lmao
liked by oscarpiastri, mclaren, nicolepiastri, and 829k others
yourusername the cat’s name is honeybee btw 🐝
oscarpiastri you free on sunday?
yourusername better question is are you??
oscarpiastri for you ;)
user2 slide 5? #NEEDTHAT
user3 osc is mad lucky
user2 first slide oh my heart
userlol the flowers are the same from when they were seen in the car omggg
user5 a real man iktr
alexalbon whyd yn name it that ?
oscarpiastri because she wanted to 🤷♂️
user9 ‘bc she wanted to’ 😭😭😭
nicolepiastri hope you didn’t find any sharks while diving
oscarpiastri yn made me pet one actually
yourusername and he didn’t even cry!
oscarpiastri 😐
yourusername love you!
user1 i love them so bad
summary oscar and yn are childhood best friend but fans want them to be together
pharmacy student x oscar piastri
series masterlist ⋆ masterlist
𓂃˖˳·˖ ִֶָ ⋆☕︎⋆ ִֶָ˖·˳˖𓂃 ִֶָ
oscarpiastri not the home race i wanted but it's always good to visit australia🇦🇺
tagged yourusername
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user we love you (mclaren do better!!)
user not u tagging them😂
user omg someone give him a spiritual cleansing or something 🙏🙏
user that second pic😂 looks a 100% real
user wait who is the girl????
user yn, his childhood best friend!!
user they are so cute<3 i love that they maintained their friendship after so many years
user i know🥺 he posts her every time he visits
yourusername your welcome for helping you with your workout 💪
oscarpiastri so that's what they are calling it these days🤨
yourusername yes!☺️
𓂃˖˳·˖ ִֶָ ⋆☕︎⋆ ִֶָ˖·˳˖𓂃 ִֶָ
yourusername "a pharmacist is just an educated drug dealer" i joke as my eyes blur from all the hours i spent studying
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friend lol same girl i am extremely tired😭😭 i need exams to be done
yourusername me too but we are almost there!!
yourusername i am prescribing myself a gilmore girls sized coffee and keep going
user imagine looking this beautiful while stressed with uni i could never
user we stan an educated queen
oscarpiastri you got this✊
yourusername thank you osc<3
user she calls him osc too??🥺
user you didn't know?? you HAVE to watch that video mclaren posted last year where she and lando are fighting about it😂
𓂃˖˳·˖ ִֶָ ⋆☕︎⋆ ִֶָ˖·˳˖𓂃 ִֶָ
yourusername uni dump & supporting my boy from afar 🫶🫶
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user they are adorable
user is it wrong if i say i ship it?
user girl join the club we've been here YEARS
user ynoscar nation rise🙋♀️
user she calls him my boy and you want me to believe they are not in love???
user me when i am delusional
user they are just friends let's not make it weird
user how am i making it weird if they are posting as if they are dating😭
user WHERE? they are literally not omg do none of you have friends?
user whatever i will come back to this when they hard launch
user sure🤡
oscarpiastri i can't wait to see you
yourusername getting on the plane rn<3
user wait is she visiting for the gp????
user and his bday is soon too🤭
user oh my god i love them
𓂃˖˳·˖ ִֶָ ⋆☕︎⋆ ִֶָ˖·˳˖𓂃 ִֶָ
oscarpiastri posted a story
facetime buddy
story replies
↪user calling her buddy as if she's not the love of your life, you are not fooling anyone
↪user just kiss already
𓂃˖˳·˖ ִֶָ ⋆☕︎⋆ ִֶָ˖·˳˖𓂃 ִֶָ
piastriupdates oscar and yn at the japan gp
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user they are in love.
user please god let oscar have a good weekend🙏 i can't take it anymore
user heart eyes piastri🥺🫶
user my mind can't process the fact that they are not together like i am sorry but that's a long-term relationship
𓂃˖˳·˖ ִֶָ ⋆☕︎⋆ ִֶָ˖·˳˖𓂃 ִֶָ
yourusername japan gp in papaya
tagged mclaren, oscarpiastri
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user her face card is Unreal
oscarpiastri was that pic of me really necessary?
yourusername yes🫶
user lmaooo
friend sorry to be annoying but i have a question about your notes😩🙏 when you have a minute please explain it to me bc i feel like i don't understand anything and i am panicking
yourusername call me babe! i studied on the plane, so it's fresh in my mind. don't panic we can go over it<3
user she is GORGEOUS if oscar is not going to date her i will
user back off she's mine🤺🤺
user no way, i loved her first
hattiepiastri i think oscar loved her first🤭
user JFJFKDKD HATTIE WHAT
user is this— is this confirmation?
mclaren you are pharmily yn🧡 ♥︎liked by author
yourusername THE PUN JWJFKDJ ily mclaren (but the car better work this weekend 🔪🔪)
mclaren yes ma'am we'll try🤝
𓂃˖˳·˖ ִֶָ ⋆☕︎⋆ ִֶָ˖·˳˖𓂃 ִֶָ
oscarpiastri p2 and then an amazing birthday week! thank you all for your love❤️
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yourusername YES OSC P2 LETS GOOO so proud of you🫶🫶🫶🫶
user the way she was smiling during the podium ceremony>>
user and how he searched for her?? they are so in love
user yn in that first pic: "you are doing amazing sweetie!!" ♥︎liked by yourusername
user two weekends where he didn't get to race, yn shows up and he gets a podium... i am just saying
user i like your theory keep going-
user you cannot convince me this is not a soft launch
user this is practically a hard launch
user you belong on the podium🙏🙏
𓂃˖˳·˖ ִֶָ ⋆☕︎⋆ ִֶָ˖·˳˖𓂃 ִֶָ
yourusername happy birthday to the one who has been with me through it all💖 so glad i decided to befriend you when we were little because now i can say i know a formula 1 driver
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user lmaooo the caption
user not them sleeping at school 😂
user wake up!! baby oscar and baby yn pics just dropped!!
user how did she convince him to do facemasks lol
oscarpiastri thank you yn❤️
oscarpiastri i am so glad we met too🫶
user 🥺🥺🥺
user he's the softest boy ever i love him
𓂃˖˳·˖ ִֶָ ⋆☕︎⋆ ִֶָ˖·˳˖𓂃 ִֶָ
piastriupdates oscar was seen at an airport
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user he looks so good😩😩
user where is he going? does he have any sponsor's event we don't know about?
user and if i say this us bc yn is graduating this week what then🤭
𓂃˖˳·˖ ִֶָ ⋆☕︎⋆ ִֶָ˖·˳˖𓂃 ִֶָ
oscarpiastri she's officially a pharmacist!! but i knew that already because she always makes everything feel better. i love you❤️
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user user I TOLD YOU SO
user okay perhaps you were right...
user THANK YOU
user congratulations yn👏🎉
user WE GOT CONFIRMATION
lando congrats yn!! oscar, how does it feel dating someone smarter than you?
oscarpiastri pretty good ngl 🤭
user hard launch🥺🥺
yourusername i'm addicted to you and there’s no cure (i would know lol)
You sat on the couch, sprawled out, trying to rest. Of course your eyes seemed to be totally fixed on Beau. Beau and your two week old daughter. You smile, watching him sway gently with your daughter tucked against his chest.
“College Beau was hot,” you admit. “Boyfriend Beau was even better.” You say thinking fondly on your dating days as you get off the couch, crossing over to him.
He arches a brow. “And husband Beau?” You step closer, sliding your hands over his waist carefully not to disturb your sleeping baby.
“Pretty great.” You grin.
“Pretty great?” he repeats, offended. You grin up at him before glancing at the baby.
“But Daddy Beau?” You bite your lip, letting your eyes drag slowly over him. “Daddy Beau is definitely my favorite.”
His mouth curves into a smug smile and he laughs a little.
“Yeah?” He asks.
“Yeah.” You lean up to kiss the corner of his mouth. “It’s honestly a little rude how sexy you look holding our baby.”
Beau glances down at your daughter, then back at you.
“You hear that, Bug? Mommy thinks Daddy’s hot.” He whispers.
“She does not need to hear that.” You tease.
“She deserves to know her dad’s still got it. Besides it’s kinda how she got here.” He says winking at you.
“You’re unbearable.” You laugh.
“And still you married me,” he reminds you, stealing a proper kiss. You grin at him.
“Of course, I had to make sure my babies came out cute.” You tease. Beau laughs.
“I knew you just married me for my good looks and athletic genes.” He retorts. You giggle.
“Oh shut it.” You say, kissing his lips softly. He smiles against your lips, his hair messy, eyes sleepy. Yet he’s never looked more handsome to you.
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