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Heartburn | Ch.1.

contents (sfw): Dunk x fem!Reader, Modern AU friends to lovers rom-com with pregnancy in the future chapters. Drunk everything (walking, talking, dancing, flirting), one HR violation, humour, mutual pinning, not-actually unrequited crush, awkwardness, sexual tension.

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synopsis: By your intel, Dunk and Raymun attempt to crash Lyonel's opening party to secure Raymun a deal. It all gets a little out of hand with the amount of consumed alcohol.

word count: 7K

a/n: Banner by me, dividers by @strangergraphics, proofread by @hextoken! Freaking out, aaa!

Dunk’s vision is blurry. Whenever he looks down at his hands, he’s pretty sure he still has what rounds up to ten fingers, he’s just not certain if each palm has exactly five. Every wobbly stride he takes produces three small trots from Raymun at his side, and he’s trying really hard to focus on his friend’s plan. They are going over it for the third time.

“She said he’s gonna be there, an’ it migh’ be a good window,” Raymun says. He’s palming his pockets every now and then and sighing, relieved.

“Wai’, wait—” Dunk stops. “She’s gonna be there?” The sudden halt makes him dizzy. When he looks down he sees only one of his fingers, pointing vaguely forward.

Raymun stops too. He looks at Dunk, near offended by the change of topic. “Who?”

Duncan winces. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?” Raymun smirks and slowly starts to walk again.

Dunk wills his feet to move. “That thing where y’act thick so I’ve to say it out loud,” he says, catching up to Raymun with merely three drunken swings on the wet pavement. One of his feet lands in a puddle. “Fuck’s sake—I’m askin’ a plain question.”

“You are physically incapable of askin’ a plain question in the state of ye,” Raymun says, and Duncan thinks with some long-forgotten sober part of his mind that they must look like the most basic comedic relief ever written into the backstory of some serious film.

He places a palm on Raymun’s shoulder and looks at him long and serious. “Ray.”

His friend’s eyes are dark and bleary. When Duncan focuses enough, they stop being four eyes and return to the normal human two. He wishes he wasn’t so malleable and didn’t let Raymun talk him into dressing up—contact lenses sting more if your eyeballs are suffering massive dehydration by buckets of lager. He’s also sweating horribly and is convinced it wouldn’t be so visible if he was wearing a T-shirt instead of an actual shirt. The collar became unbearable at the second pub they went to, and Duncan had to undo two buttons of it, which makes him feel too slutty for his liking.

All in all, Raymun is a good friend and he deserves all the best things. Duncan doesn’t remember exactly when the friendship happened, he just knows it was in a pub. Raymun doesn’t remember either—each of them states a different pub and a different date if asked, so when they want to celebrate their anniversary they do it twice, and in two different pubs.

Raymun looks at him a minute with an unbearable smugness plastered to his face until it melts away into a shrug of retaliation. “Aye, she’ll be there, yeah,” he groans.

“Ah, for fuck’s sake.” Dunk gives Raymun’s shoulder a gentle annoyed push and starts walking on.

Grand. Every opportunity he’s had to impress you, you were either occupied by getting impressed by someone else or Dunk was doing a terrible job of it. By now he’s sure you see him as a guy who always bumps his head on low-hanging lamps and spills the first part of the pint on himself before it reaches his mouth.

Once, Dunk thought he’d had a window open too. Or a hatch. A crack in the wall, more like. Some sort of opening big enough for a man to get his hopes through and then catch them on the way back.

It was shortly after you’d met, and a couple of weeks into Rowan and Raymun dating. They had dragged everyone to a pub quiz, then abandoned ship halfway through under the world’s thinnest pretext, leaving behind a sweating jug of lager, a half-filled answer sheet and a team name so stupid Dunk still cringes about it. You didn’t win, but you did manage to provide the most ridiculous answers to each question. By the music round Dunk was cracking up so hard he snorted beer out of his nose. He remembers you wiping his chest with a napkin and laughing with an absolutely adorable drunken cackle he’s never heard again after that.

He remembers exactly what you were wearing and exactly what you smelled like—clementines, mostly, and something warm and cake-like. He remembers your hand wrapped around his wrapped around a pen when you were changing the answers last minute. He remembers pulling a strand of hair out of your mouth. He remembers cowarding out and giving you a pat on the back instead of kissing you when the moment was right. There were enough that night to furnish a small flat. A week later Rowan was chatting utter shite about your new boyfriend, and that was that.

A person would think two years is enough time to get over a thing that never happened. Duncan has instead gone through it in phases. At one point he decided his attraction to you felt so fierce only because some extraterrestrial force had marked you off special and unreachable, same as stars or the moon or discounted flats with south-facing windows. Then he thought he simply needed to meet more women, because he is not dead and in fact finds plenty of women cute. He found Rowan cute the first time he saw her—palming the back of one of his students’ fathers in the car park. Long before Raymun. He gave it further thought when, a week later, she was palming the back of a different father with equal commitment and better posture.

It took Duncan some time to piece together Rowan’s actual occupation, and then an amount of moral fortitude bordering on sainthood not to sell her out to Raymun the minute they were introduced proper. Dunk tries not to judge people too harshly. It paid off, because to Duncan Rowan is living proof that life throws people in different directions and love can straighten a lot of things out. Raymun is happy with her.

Right. Raymun.

“Oh, don’t start,” he calls after Duncan. “You’ve been moonin’ over her for the better part of two years.”

“I have not!” Duncan shouts.

“You have so,” Raymun pants from catching up with him. “Every time she walks in a room your face goes all… I dunno. Big.”

Dunk huffs. “My face is always big.”

“Don’t be smart with me. I’m nervous.”

“You’ve checked the ring six times since we left the last pub.”

Raymun winces. “Seven.”

“Jesus.”

“I’m serious, Dunk.” He grabs Duncan’s arms above the elbows and tells him the plan for the fourth time. “Lyonel samples the cider, likes it, gives me a meetin’, I get somethin’ real started. Somethin’ proper. Then I ask Rowan.”

“You were always askin’ Rowan,” Dunk blurts dimly.

“Not with a business plan, I wasn’t.”

“That’s not why she loves you.”

“Lovin’ someone ain’t enough to spend a life with them,” Raymun says, and Dunk strongly disagrees. He finds loving someone the very first reason to spend a life with them. “We’re ‘ere. Look—”

Gold light from a neon washes over Raymun’s face. Dunk looks at it first, then up, where the sign blinks the name Laughing Storm. He remembers what he was told about it in pieces: that it’s Lyonel Baratheon’s new venue. That Lyonel Baratheon is a rich man who was born rich and smiling, and who manages to multiply his fortune through multiplying fun. That the plan includes Dunk and Raymun crashing Lyonel’s opening party, catching him half-drunk and pliant, and charming him with a sample of Raymun’s cider and a pair of crooked, working-class smiles.

It doesn’t explain at all why Raymun keeps palming the pocket with the ring instead of the one with the bottle. Dunk wonders if Raymun, once this works out, is going to march off into the night and kneel for Rowan right then and there, or whether the ring is just a token for luck.

“Right,” Raymun says, putting his phone away. “Ready?”

“For what?” asks Dunk, and the same second he does, the door creaks open. Things pour out through that slit: a spill of orange light, low thumping music, and a foot dressed in a slipper, and Dunk knows this foot by sight only. When he looks up, you’re measuring both him and Raymun with a baffled glance.

“Lads,” you say. “I said you need him drunk, not yourselves. What the hell have you dragged yourselves through?”

“‘Twas a quest for courage,” Raymun says. He sways a little. Gives you an innocent shrug, and Dunk gets to see you cracking.

“Fine.” You roll your eyes. Sweet. “God, I’m so happy for you,” you squeal then, throwing your arms round Raymun’s neck. “She’d say yes without any of it, but just know I’ve prepped him up for you a little.” There’s a wink.

“Wha’did you do, lassie?”

“Ah, nothing,” you say, opening the door wider. “Just went on and on about how this shithole has a great potential for a summer garden, and with summer coming we’d need a summer drink—” You give an inviting motion and Raymun takes a step through. “And how apple cider mimosas would be perfect for that.”

“There’re apple cider mimosas?” Raymun asks, already inside.

“There are now,” you tell him. Then, you turn. “Hi, Dunk. Long time.”

“Yeah,” Duncan nods. He leans in for some sort of greeting, forgetting no such thing is needed nowadays. During the descent, he sees up close how long you must’ve been up and how chaotic the evening is proving. Your hair is a bit unruly, and your makeup a bit smeared. There’s a crust of mascara in the corner of your eye, and the middle part of your lipstick is eaten off. Forehead and chest glow with sweat a little. Before he gets to say anything else, you’re hugging him.

“It’s good to see you,” you say into his shoulder. “Hm, you look nice.”

“I’m so drunk, lass,” he says, of all things. He’s bowed over you, with his hands holding your waist, and his nose melting into the crook of your shoulder. It might be that you smell like the inside of a butter almond biscuit packet, he thinks. And clementines.

“Dunk,” you say. “You alright? Do you need some water?”

“N-no, I jus’—” He straightens and gets dizzy and hot all of a sudden. “Maybe, yeah.”

“Come on, then.” You take his hand, lead him inside, and Dunk wishes his palm wasn’t so clammy.

The place looks strange and hits him from several directions. Warmth first. Then smell. Meat, wax, citrus peel, singed rosemary, perfume expensive enough to smell faintly bored with itself. A band is sawing through some quick Celtic thing in the corner hard enough to make the fiddle sound like it’s going to fall apart in the player’s hands. Long tables run the length of the room under cloth draped low from the ceiling, and every inch of wood not occupied by candles has been burdened with food. There are pears gleaming under sugar glass, oysters on silver, dark bread torn open by hands better moisturised than Duncan’s, and bottles standing about with the confidence of things bought to be seen before they are drunk.

Lyonel, apparently, has chosen to decorate the place as if a stag fucked a theatre troupe and they all came here to celebrate it. There are antlers fixed to walls, antlers hanging from chains, antlers worked into candelabras. Half the guests seem to have interpreted the invitation as a dare. Velvet capes. Gold masks. Bits of armour worn over silk for no practical reason. One woman passes in something sheer and medieval enough to make Duncan worry she might catch cold in a draught and sue the organisers.

You are wearing a little black dress. Dunk, who had spent the walk here feeling overdone in a shirt, feels suddenly underdone in it too.

You bring him to the bar and park him by the brass rail. Up close the counter is one single slab of lacquered dark wood, polished enough that the candlelight sits on it like liquid gold. A bartender appears the instant your fingers lift. Dunk has never seen service move that fast outside a hospital and even then only if someone is actively bleeding out.

“Water,” you tell the bartender, then glance at Duncan. “And maybe something with salt in it before you pass out on Lyonel’s reclaimed oak.”

The glass set in front of him is cold enough to hurt. He drinks. The water tastes of lemon and cucumber and money.

For a minute he just stands there swallowing and looking. He never knows what to do with wealth when it stops being theoretical. To him ownership has always meant a thing that does a job and keeps doing it. A kettle. A car. A lock. A pair of shoes with another winter left in them. Here, half the objects seem to have been acquired to prove they had no need to be.

He looks at you again. At your bare arms mostly, the neck under the updo, and then the sensible shoes beneath all this lunacy. “How come you’re not dressed like the rest of the circus?” he asks.

You snort. “Because I told Lyonel I’ve done enough work on this place without having to come as part of the decor as well.”

Dunk smiles into the rim of his glass. “He took that well?”

“He said I was wounding the atmosphere.” You accept your own drink from the bartender without looking, like this sort of obedience is ordinary to you. “I told him the atmosphere could survive one woman dressed like she has rent to pay.”

That gets a proper laugh out of him, and it comes easier than he’d expected. Dangerous, really. He hasn’t been alone with you in months and his body takes to it at once like a bad habit.

He looks out over the room again. “D’you like it?”

You follow his gaze. The lights. The costumes. Lyonel’s curated idea of old fun done up with modern plumbing and a monstrous budget. Duncan hears himself think the mean thing. Of course maybe you do. Why wouldn’t you. This sort of life probably explains the men: journalists with interesting hair, photographers who own scarves, editors who say things are seminal and nod seriously. Not many primary-school P.E. teachers in a room like this, unless they’ve come to unclog something.

You lean one shoulder on the bar. “I like looking at joy,” you say. “And at love. And Lyonel likes sharing it.”

Dunk turns to you. The answer lands deeper than the question deserves it and for a second he can only look. You say those things as if they are visible substances. Joy. Love. Things a person might spot glinting in a room if they stood in the right place.

Before he can recover himself, Raymun’s voice cuts across the band. “Dunk!”

He looks over and finds Raymun standing near the far end of the room with the bottle in one hand and all his nerves in the other, and next to him—of course—is Lyonel Baratheon. Even from here he looks like some well-fed pagan deity somebody has tricked into a button-down. The deer antlers are real enough to be frightening. His face is all amusement. His eyes are fixed on Dunk and nowhere else.

Dunk feels, with perfect clarity, that he would rather be hit by a slow bus.

You touch his forearm. “Go,” you say.

“He’s lookin’ at me.”

“Yes, Dunk. That is generally how eyes work.” He cuts you a look. You smile, but kindly. “He’s not that scary,” you say. “Just… be yourself.”

Duncan glances down at his shirt, his glass, his large damp hand, then back at the antlered millionaire waiting across the room. “That seems a harsh ask.”

You give him a playful push and watch the crowd part around him in two obedient lines. He apologises to everyone. Staggers once, corrects. You expect him to get smaller the further he goes, but somehow doesn’t. There’s a wet patch blooming between his shoulder blades and you catch yourself thinking it would not look half so appealing on a smaller back.

Why your soft spot for Duncan keeps getting softer every time you see him, you have no idea. He has signposted lack of interest in someone like you often enough by now, mostly by letting every offered chance pass him by in broad daylight. Whenever he gets an opportunity to know you better, he asks the sort of questions that tell you exactly what he thinks of you: that you are an ambitious girl with one eye on the next rung and both hands busy climbing. Which is, of course, nonsense.

Working for Lyonel, with Lyonel, has been a blessing in a world where brand management and copywriting usually get done by some important person’s ambitious daughter or cousin or nephew, or a girl the important person badly wants to see in their bed. Lyonel does not even have room for you in his bed. There is a waiting line and you are not blessed with eternal youth to make it there in time. Being treated like someone whose brain is worth respect feels better anyway.

So, you are grateful for your job. A list of things you are grateful for begins with Rowan dropping out of university. Her escort work had been insane, but it fed your poor, stuck-in-a-tiny-flat lives with stories nobody puts in magazines unless they have first scraped all the truth off them. It also gave her enough contacts that, after squeezing yourself through several very tight sieve openings, you got to first offend, then impress, then charm Lyonel into giving you a job.

And then there is Duncan. Another thing to be grateful to Rowan for, and maybe sometimes curse her a little, too.

He looked at you like he was afraid about his soul getting eaten, which at first, you thought was a good sign. Then, he turned out to be someone who's fuelled by gentleness and vastly different to all the places you had gone looking for love before. Which, perhaps, should have made him easier. Instead it made him rare, and therefore difficult in the way things become difficult when they are decent.

Once you thought, with the sort of certainty that usually precedes humiliation, that this was it now, this was a window, this was a man finally about to kiss you if you only angled your face right and did not lose your nerve first. You all but gave yourself neck trouble trying to beam the invitation into his skull. He patted you on the back goodnight.

A week later you were on a date with a magazine editor who spoke warmly about political despair and had a dick as spiritually robust as a noodle. After him there was the photographer with beautiful wrists and the emotional stamina of a tired five year old. Then a journalist who said your writing was ‘surprisingly muscular,’ by which he meant that he was alarmed to find a woman had written it. There were others. Good coats, limp spines, jobs that looked impressive typed out in black on white. You kept trying, largely out of habit. Repetitive insanity starts looking like a plan after enough years. By your books, still better than fucking up a friendship.

You’ve heard yourself sound unbearably sad in your response to Dunk’s question and hope he will either not notice it or file it under everyone having had too much to drink in this establishment. This is about helping Raymun propose to Rowan so you at least have an example of a happy couple to look at and be around while managing your recurring heartburn.

Across the room you can see Lyonel pouring the offered cider into an elaborate golden goblet. Raymun is pale as chalk except for the furious carmine blush on his cheeks. Duncan stands right behind him, hunched, hands in pockets, his temple glistening in the candlelight. He looks like he’s holding his breath while Lyonel brings the glass to his mouth.

He takes one sip. Looks inside as if the contents are going to reveal spiritual knowledge, then downs it all in three large gulps and gargles on the last one. You giggle from your spot—you know by now he’ll invest, just make the boys sweat for it a little longer.

Then, Lyonel puts the goblet down and looks straight at you. He crooks two fingers.

You finish your drink because there is no point in pretending not to understand a summons delivered with jewellery that expensive, then weave your way through the room towards them. People are already watching. They always do when Lyonel is drunk enough to become ceremonial.

You pass Raymun first, who looks on the verge of either securing his whole future or vomiting on it. Duncan is beside him, still with his hands in his pockets, though the posture has changed. Less hunch now. More brace.

By the time you reach Lyonel, he is beyond wasted in that particular rich-man way which still leaves enough coordination for trouble. He opens his mouth, seems to think better of words for a second, and slaps your ass.

You react immediately, but Duncan reacts too. He pushes Raymun clean out of the way and leans over Lyonel, blinking through murder.

For one beautiful beat the whole thing hangs there. The band keeps scraping away. The candles’ wicks pop. Lyonel, sunk in his chair under the antlers, looks up into the face of a man who could probably fold him into a more useful shape.

You put a hand on Duncan’s chest, and give him one glance that says wait. The alcohol in your system has turned recklessness into bravery, so you reach sideways for the nearest glass of water, and throw it in Lyonel’s face. “Now,” you say, “we’re even.”

Lyonel gapes. First at you, then at Duncan. Water runs from his lashes and into his beard. Then, he starts laughing.

“Sorry, darling,” he says. “I’m so—wasted.”

“You are,” you agree.

“But not so wasted I haven’t noticed this extraordinary coincidence between you not shutting up about cider all afternoon and this cider now finishing me off.” He points the wet rim of the goblet vaguely at Raymun, then more precisely at Duncan. “Do you know the lads?”

“Did you like the cider?” you ask.

“I did,” Lyonel says, grinning. “Do you know the lads?” He points again with two ringed fingers towards Duncan, who is still standing there like a storm in a shirt, and Raymun, who has now achieved a full and even red.

You fold your arms. “Does it matter?”

A beat. “Only if they don’t dance,” Lyonel says. “Because we’re all going to dance now, and tomorrow you will remind me about this, yes?”

A smirk splits your face. You lean, close enough to be eye to eye with him, and say, “They dance.”

Raymun makes a sound so hopeful it nearly qualifies as religious. Duncan turns his head and looks at you with the frightened expression of someone who has been told his mortgage depends on rhythm.

You catch his hand before he can decide to flee, and give it a squeeze. “It’s alright,” you mutter.

It isn’t, exactly. It is Lyonel. Nothing around Lyonel is ever quite alright. It is, however, survivable.

Lyonel lurches to his feet with the confidence of the extremely rich and the very drunk. One antler catches the lower tier of a candle chandelier and nudges it swinging. Somebody yelps. Lyonel doesn’t notice. He takes two steps towards the dance floor, then turns, as if struck by an afterthought, and slaps Duncan’s buttock with a crack loud enough to turn heads three tables over.

“You looked upset not to get one, lad.”

For a second Duncan just stares at him. It is an expression you do not know how to read. His eyes are fully engaged, measuring and bright, while the rest of his face has gone dead plain, as if it has stepped out for air and left the bones behind. Then something in him gives.

He laughs.

Lyonel points at him, delighted. “That’s what I’m after.”

Before you can keep hold of Duncan, Lyonel steals him clean out of your reach. He drags him by the wrist towards the centre of the room and shoves the antler crown off his own head onto the first passer-by willing to accept temporary authority. The band, sensing an event the way bands always do, kicks the tune into something faster and more violent.

People begin clearing space before anyone asks them to. Raymun, with the survival instincts of a man who has just seen investment and possible marriage open on the same hinge, vanishes sideways to the edge of the floor and starts clapping above his head. Duncan gets spun once by Lyonel’s grip and nearly misses his footing, catches it, then squares himself with a look of deep suspicion, as if dancing were a trap set specifically for the broad.

Lyonel beams at him like he’s about to either bless or mug him. He stomps on Duncan’s foot once, and the crowd holds its breath. Then, he misses every other time. They fucking chase each other across the boards. Bump into people, nudge the candlesticks and rattle food on the tables, until it’s Dunk’s heavy foot that lands on Lyonel’s and everything goes quiet.

For a second, you forget how to breathe too, because your boss folds in half and looks like he’s about to retch on Dunk’s shoes. Then this absolute madman flips his hair, braces himself on Duncan’s chest and laughs so loudly the Laughing Storm turns to tempest.

People flood the dance floor. Raymun snags you by the waist and pulls you in too. The world starts spinning dangerously as you’re passed from one person’s arms to another’s, until everything settles on Dunk. He reaches you and cheats the queue by simply not letting go once he has you. One turn becomes three. Somebody else reaches for your hand and Duncan keeps it anyway, grinning like a thief who’s decided theft is legal if done with enough charm.

You have never seen him smile this much. He has pointy canines and a crooked grin that suits an adolescent boy better than a man his size, and somehow that only makes him more handsome. His hair burns copper in the candlelight. His cheeks are all scrunched by laughter. You could kiss him now and suck some of that purest joy out of him for yourself.

Instead you let him swing you round again.

His arms nearly lift you off the floor anyway. There is very little dancing in it and a lot of being steered. Dunk seems to know only three moves: stomp, turn, and catch. The last one he does very well. Every time your footing goes a bit uncertain on the boards he puts you right again with both hands, as if setting something back on a shelf. Once he gets bold enough to spin you out by one hand and back into him and looks so pleased with himself after that you laugh in his face.

Soon things go soft around the edges in the way they only do when a party has passed whatever point people usually mean by party. You and Dunk drink more. So does Raymun, out of triumph now instead of nerves. At some point someone produces little fried things with herbs on them and Duncan burns his tongue and pretends he hasn’t. At some point Lyonel gets his antlers back and wears them backwards. At some point the band slows to songs with more sway in them than beat, and the room begins thinning not by the door but by dissolution. Coats appear on arms. Lipstick migrates onto glasses. Candles shorten. The rich begin looking tired exactly like the poor do, only better dressed.

By the time Lyonel climbs onto the edge of one of the long tables and sits there like a king at the end of his own feast, he is very nearly asleep into his hand. You come up to him and touch his knee. “I’m calling you a taxi.”

“Mmph,” he says.

“You’re done.”

One eye opens. “Am not.”

“You are sat on the food.”

Lyonel glances down at himself, considers this, then waves a hand in the general direction of agreement.

Raymun comes over with the bottle tucked under one arm and gratitude written all over his face. “Lyonel, I—”

Lyonel lifts one finger. “T’morrah,” he says thickly. “T’morrah, boy. ‘Fore noon if y’like pain.”

Raymun laughs in relief hard enough to bend.

Between the three of you—and mostly Duncan—you get Lyonel off the table, into his coat and outside into the damp night, where a taxi is already idling at the curb. He folds into the back seat with the solemnity of a very wasted emperor being removed from battle. Before the door shuts, he points vaguely at you.

“Garden,” he says.

“Yes, Lyonel.”

“Cider.”

“Yes, Lyonel.”

Then, he is gone.

The street feels strange after all that heat. Cooler than it should be. Quieter too, though the music still seems to be beating faintly in your bones.

Raymun turns to you first and hugs you so hard you nearly lose a shoe. “Thank you,” he says into your hair.

You hug him back just as hard and, annoyingly, feel your eyes sting. “Now you’ve no excuses,” you tell him. “She’s waiting for you.”

He pulls back, smiling in that dazed, hopeful way people do when their lives are about to split into before and after. Then he looks between you and Duncan. “You two gettin’ home alright?”

“I need t’walk it off,” Duncan says.

You nod. “We’ll walk.”

Raymun studies the pair of you for half a second too long, like he suspects the night has one more idea left in it. Then sense, or drink, or Rowan wins. He points down the road.

“Right then. Pray for me.”

“As if you need it,” you say.

He laughs, squeezes your shoulder once, claps Duncan on the arm and heads off into the dark. When he’s gone, the quiet settles properly. Beside you Duncan shifts his weight and looks down the street, then at you.

Right. Dunk’s head is buzzing and the streetlights sway a little. His hair feels stiff from sweat and wherever his body has perspirated to make the shirt damp he’s now feeling the night licking him and making goosebumps rise on his skin. He hopes he doesn’t smell too badly.

“Aye, so—” He clears his throat. Looks down at you to find you trembling and holding your bare arms. “Cold, are ye?” he asks. Your head shakes with exaggerated nods. “We can share a taxi, if y’want.”

“N-no,” you say. Then sigh, sheepish. “I’ll throw up if I get into a car.”

Duncan nods, smiling. He will too. “I’d offer ye my shirt, only it’s manky.”

You nod as well, though he does not think you mean to. You are mostly just shaking. You look him over as if weighing something in your head, mutter, “Jus’—” and sway hard enough that he catches you by the waist before the pavement does. Your arms come round his middle, firm and familiar in a way they have no business being, and you nuzzle into him.

“Let’s just do this, alright?” you mumble into his shirt. “It’s not far if I… remember correctly.”

He stands there with his arms hovering off you for a beat like a fool, then puts one round your shoulders and the other hand on your forearm. “Sorry,” he says. “For the smell.”

You huff a laugh against him. “I think we’re evening out, if you mean the sweat.”

You smell nice no matter what you smell of, he thinks, then prays with unusual speed that the thought has indeed stayed in his head where it belongs.

You both start walking, crooked together. For a little while the silence is easy. When it stops, both of you speak at once.

“You did a good thing for Raymun today—” you say, like normal people do.

“—and how’s your boyfriend?” Dunk asks, like the idiot he is.

It makes the pair of you slow a little. Chuckle around the awkwardness, and Duncan wonders how uncomfortable he’s managed to make you. He does not answer your thing. You let him get away with it too.

“I’ve given that up for now,” you say instead.

He perks up, because all logical parts of his brain are currently out of order. “Run out of dainty men of culture, have ye?”

You slap him lightly on the stomach. “You’re so mean.”

Dunk grins down at you. “Mean, am I?”

“It’s not fair,” you say. “I’ve nothing to be mean to you about.”

“How’s that?”

“I don’t see any honest women hanging off your arm, do I?”

That gets him in the cheeks a bit. He grumbles something low and useless and decides he should move the conversation before it does him harm. “What about Lyonel?” he asks. “Is he always that handsy?”

You laugh, then glance up at him in a way that makes him sorry he asked and glad he did. “You’d like that, would you? My protector. Ready to smash his teeth.”

Dunk frowns. “It’s no way to treat a lady.”

You make a small sound at that and press in closer, which he accepts very seriously. Then, with dawning terror, he feels you inhale deeply at his shirt.

“Lyonel’s not bad,” you say. “I can manage a bit of HR violation.”

It makes something in him sink for a minute. That you should have to manage it at all seems to him a rotten arrangement.

By the time you turn onto his street he is feeling sorry in advance that the walk is ending. It has been the best part of his night, which is saying something, because the night has included music, nuclear mix of alcohol, and a wealthy man in antlers trying to break his toes. Just holding you like this, though, and having you to himself a while—it puts the rest in the shade.

He slows without meaning to. “That’s me,” he says.

You unglue yourself from his side and pat his chest. The place you were against goes cold straight off. Dunk looks at you and wants, with unusual clarity, to kiss you stupid.

“Thanks for the escort,” you say. “Make sure you drink some water before bed.”

He blinks at you, confused. Baffled, a little, because it comes to him all at once that he has just been walked home and you still have blocks to go alone. “Wait,” he says. “No, I’ll walk ye. C’mon.”

He starts forward. You put both hands to his chest and stop him, smiling like this is all very funny. “I can manage,” you say. “It’s not far. And I feel a bit better.”

“No, you’re not walkin’ alone.”

“Yes I am,” you say. “Stop this.”

You are standing right in his way. Duncan breathes out hard through his nose. “Don’t push me, girl,” he mutters, and bends. Then, his arms go round the backs of your thighs and he swings you over his shoulder.

“Duncan!” you yelp. Bat your funny little fists against his back and kick one foot so hard your slipper falls off. “Dunk, my shoe! Bloody hell, put me down!”

“That’s what y’get for bein’ stubborn,” he says, giving the backs of your thighs one firm settling pat as he walks on.

You keep fighting him, but you laugh all the way through it, bent over his shoulder and kicking your remaining slippered foot at the air. “What has got into you?”

“You. Apparently.”

“Dunk!” you bark another laugh. “You’re showing my fanny to the good citizens of Ireland!”

“There’s no one about.”

“There could be!”

He is half gone by now. Your weight on his shoulder feels too good. Warm and live and trusting in spite of all put upon evidence. The backs of your thighs are soft under his hands, and when his fingers keep brushing too high, near where thigh turns into ass, he is not nearly sorry enough.

Your chest knocks lightly against his back with each step. He has the absurd thought that he could carry you straight into his bed like this and not even mind the state of his flat unless the state of it were biblical. He tries to remember if there are socks on the floor. There definitely are. He also thinks, with much greater urgency, that he would not make it all the way to the bed if he got you there. He would end up pressing you to the wall first.

“Please,” you whine, the laugh breaking thin through it, “I’m going to puke all over you in a second. If you have to be such a knight, at least carry me with a little more dignity, for fuck’s sake.”

That, he relents to. Not fully, because he is still drunk and still himself.

He slides you down off his shoulder by degrees, keeping hold of you so your feet never find the ground. One arm shifts under your thighs, the other braces your back, and you do the rest without needing told—arms round his neck, legs coming round his waist, your body settling against him with a closeness that wipes the grin off his mouth for a second.

You are face to face now. You look pretty. Too pretty for the state of the hour and the amount of drink in both of you. Your hair is a mess. Lipstick mostly gone, and he could make it fully gone. You’re breathing hard, and your chest is flattened against his enough that he can feel the shape of each breath.

“That dignified enough?” Dunk asks.

You stare at him, then let out a helpless little laugh. “You have to come back for my shoe,” you whisper. “You’re insane.”

He shakes his head. “I’m drunk.” Then, because there has to be some thread of practicality left in the world, he says, “Now. Where’s that precious shoe?”

He turns back the way he came, but his eyes stay on you. Your face changes a bit. Solemn, maybe. Or tired. Or maybe just close enough now that he can no longer pretend not to see when a thought moves over it. Your mouth is right there, glistening and sweet-looking in the streetlight.

He swallows. “Where’s the shoe?” he asks.

“Right in front of you,” you say.

Still looking more at you than the pavement, he crouches with you in his arms and feels for the thing one-handed, patting the cobbles until he finds the soft little shape of it. He lifts it up between two fingers.

“Is that the one?”

You nod.

He stands again. You slip a little in his hold and he hoists you back up with one small bounce, instinctive, easy. Your noses brush.

“Dunk—” you breathe.

“Shh, shh,” he says, though he has no idea what he is shushing. Himself, mostly. The whole night. The bit of him that will lose nerve if given even five more seconds.

Your hands tighten at the back of his neck. “Hush, girl,” he says. Breathes hard for it, like the shoe has just added a ton to carried weight. He decides to let himself sink into it in small increments. Rests his forehead on yours a minute and there’s no protest. Presses his nose into you, and no protest either. “I’m never gonna be that brave again,” Dunk says.

You close your eyes. Thighs round his waist twitch a little like you’re kicking a horse to start. Your tongue comes out to wet your lips and wets a little bit of his as well. Heat spears through him, from the top of his head down to heels. “How’re you brave now?” you ask.

“Like this,” Duncan says. He flattens his mouth to yours. Slow. Drunken a bit, and like he’s holding back the eagerness to not make himself look too foolish. He squeezes his eyes shut and pushes on. Your mouth opens and tastes of sweet warm alcohol and dancing. He wedges his tongue inside, licks yours and nearly drools from it.

You answer so ardently he could die. Your hand slides into his hair, fingers scraping his scalp just enough to make something ugly and helpless tear out of him. He groans into you. The sound comes back through your lips hot. His fist closes round the shoe and the soft leather yields under his grip.

“Dunk—” you moan, and then, God help him, roll your hips.

His breath rasps through his nose. He keeps kissing you because stopping would mean thinking, and thinking would finish him. Your tongue catches his again. Your teeth graze his lower lip. The whole of him seems to go liquid and feverish around the fact of you in his arms, warm and willing and moving.

“Dunk,” you say again, pulling back only enough to get the words out. “Take me home.”

He freezes. His eyes open, but he does not unslot his mouth from yours. Something in him drops clean through. He thinks you mean your home. Thinks of letting you down at your door and going back to his own flat with this still on his mouth, this still in his hands, and has to swallow against the misery of it.

You look at him, dazed and shining. “Your home, silly,” you whisper. “Your bed. Take me—” You kiss him again, quick and wet and hungry. “Take me there. Now.”

For half a second Duncan just stares. Then, whatever poor part of him was trying to keep the night decent slips its lead. “Aye,” he says, trying not to shake with it. “Aye, lass.” Then, he turns for his building with a purpose no sober version of him would recognise.

#heartburn

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