↪ closed starter for steffon arryn ( @arcan3ly ) in the royal gardens of the red keep.
comfort comes easier to jocelyn when it does not bear the face of an immediate family member ─ making themselves useful by carrying ( not dragging, after the earful they had received from one of the healers ) basketfuls of clean linens to conceal their true purpose in the sickrooms ( watching over the unmoving figure of their stepmother as she floats in and out of the fever ) allows them to avoid their sisters and the vicious whispers that drag the death of their mother and the plague that had swept through the stormlands back to the forefronts of their thoughts. embarrassingly, they had spent the morning with their head on the sweat - soaked sheets of their stepmother's sickbed, hiding their tears against the mattress until the servants had called them out of the room ─ their tears were not ( only ) for helvis, but for the memory of their mother, too, and that guides their feet to the gardens, where a familiar face makes their feet quicken. ❝ fuck off. ❞ jocelyn does not care to see if they have offended the curious onlookers that drag their gazes over the baratheon and the arryn, finding dull vindication at the scurry of feet. they press their arm against steffon's, staring quietly at the shrubbery. ❝ ... how is your sister ? ❞ they do not specific which one, allowing steffon to spill his thoughts without restriction.