ynnlvrs

ungodly nightmare

[ynnlvrs]

please check me out! 🖤🔎🪁

ynnlvr’s wonderland

About me - Masterslist - AO3

~ feel free to drop some asks if want <3

Tags :

Cigarettes under the rain - #cutr

Moonlight Monsters - #mm

Meet me in deja vu - #mmidv

Updates - #schedules

[the-darklings]

lowkey need to see how real!bobby handles his girl's disappearance 🚬..delicious

pairing: bobby franklin x f!reader x entity!bobby contents/warnings: bobby's pov, emotional neglect in a relationship, heavy grief and loss, angsty in general, emotional volatility/verbal cruelty, alcohol abuse (clark), existential/cosmic horror (erasure from reality), self-loathing and guilt (told you he'll be going through it!) notes: we're giving this twink a character as promised! got carried away but surprisingly?? really like how it came out?? hope y'all enjoy, and excited to see if the tide changes on the Real Bobby hate lol.

📹better bobby series masterlist.

Real Bobby notices on a Tuesday.

Not right away. That’s the single most damning thing. The part that’ll eat at him later, that’ll sit in his chest like a hot coal for months, perhaps the rest of his goddamn life if he’s being honest.

He doesn't notice right away.

The first night, he figures you're pulling a double at the store. It's happened before. He eats cereal standing over the sink, leaves his bowl on the counter, sleeps diagonally. Doesn't think about it.

The second night, he's annoyed. You could've called. He almost picks up the apartment phone but gets distracted by something on TV, and the receiver stays in the cradle, your number undialed, and he falls asleep with the light on.

The third morning, he reaches for you.

It's not conscious, really. It's that old reflex in him. The one from the early days. Something he thought he trained out of himself because tenderness was starting to feel like a liability, so he resorted to laziness instead. His hand slid across the mattress toward the warm dip where you normally sleep. But his fingers find only cold sheets. Flat, undisturbed. No impression of a body. And something in Bobby’s chest pinches, just slightly, like a hand closing around a tender nerve.

He sits up. Looks at your side of the bed. The pillow still has the shape of your head from three nights ago. Nothing's been moved.

He checks the answering machine. The red light is steady. No messages. The last thing you said to him—actually said, out loud, in person—was I'm closing tonight, don't wait up. He'd grunted. Hadn't looked up from the TV. He remembers that now.

You stood in the doorway with your keys in your hand and your jacket half-on, and you looked at him. He realises now that you looked at him, really looked, like you were waiting for something, and he grunted.

He calls the store. Clark picks up, says you didn't show for your shift last night. Or the night before. Didn't call in either. Clark sounds worried, but not in a panicked way. Just the clipped, pragmatic worry of a man already calculating how to cover the hours. 

Bobby tries to sound like he already knew, like he's been handling it. He's the kind of boyfriend who would obviously know that his girlfriend's been missing for three days.

He hangs up, stands in the kitchen and looks at the apartment.

Your coffee mug is still on the drying rack. Your jacket's on the hook by the door. Your shoes—the white ones, the ones you wear everywhere, the ones he's made fun of a hundred times—are sitting by the mat. You didn't leave, didn't pack anything. You didn't take your shoes or anything at all.

Bobby files a missing persons report that afternoon. 

The cops tell him to come in the following morning.

The detective's name is Moreno. He's got a desk in the back of the precinct, a cup of coffee that's been sitting there long enough to develop a skin, and an expression that Bobby doesn't like. There’s no hostility. It’s the other thing, the worse one. Interest. 

“So,” Moreno begins, flipping open a notebook. “Three days.”

“Yeah.”

“And you noticed this morning?”

Bobby's jaw tightens. “I thought she was working doubles.”

Moreno lifts his eyes briefly. “For three days.”

“It's happened before,” Bobby says a little defensively. 

“Has it?” Moreno writes something down. Slow, purposeful, the pen moving like he wants Bobby to watch it, to feel the weight of each letter being recorded. “Walk me through the timeline, Bobby. When's the last time you actually saw her?”

Bobby tells him. The doorway. The jacket. The don't wait up. The grunt.

Moreno nods. Writes. “And after that? What'd you do that night?”

“Watched TV. Went to bed.”

“Alone?”

Bobby stares at him. Jesus Christ. “Yeah. Alone.”

“Okay.” Moreno takes a sip of his dead coffee. Sets it down. “We talked to your neighbours, Bobby. Just routine. The couple in 4B, the Nguyens, mentioned hearing arguments. Through the walls. More than once, over the past few months.” He looks up from the notebook. “You want to tell me about that?”

Bobby's chest goes tight. “Couples argue.”

“Sure they do. What were you arguing about?”

“I don't—stuff. Normal stuff. Dishes. Schedules.”

“They said it sounded pretty heated sometimes,” Moreno remarks. “Mrs Nguyen used the word volatile.”

Bobby feels something cold move through his stomach. “I never touched her. If that's what you're—”

“Nobody said that,” Moreno's voice is easy, perfectly calm. The practised calm of a man who's done this before. “But I've got a missing woman who was last seen by her boyfriend, who didn't notice she was gone for three days, whose neighbours describe an argumentative relationship. You can see why I need to be thorough.”

Bobby can see alright. Bobby can see exactly what this looks like from the outside, and the cold thing in his stomach turns to ice because it looks bad. It looks like exactly what it isn't, and there's no way to explain the difference between I was a shitty, negligent boyfriend who took her for granted and I hurt her without sounding like he's making excuses for both or covering his ass.

“We'd like to take a look at your camera equipment,” Moreno says. “Your footage. You're a camera guy, right? Clark at the store mentioned you're always filming.”

Bobby nods. Numbly.

They take the camera. They take the tapes, too. 

Bobby sits on the couch in the apartment and stares at the empty shelf where the equipment used to be, and feels naked in a way that has nothing to do with clothes. The camera was the last layer between himself and the world. They've taken it, and now there's just Bobby, sitting in an apartment full of evidence of his own failures, waiting for strangers to watch his footage and decide what kind of man he is.

They call him back in four days later. Moreno's got a different look on his face now. Still interested, but muddied, thoughtful. Like he's found something he wasn't expecting.

“We reviewed the tapes, Bobby,” Moreno says.

Bobby waits.

“There's a lot of footage of her,” Moreno says carefully. Neutral. Watching Bobby's face the way you'd watch a surface for ripples. “A lot. Some of it she doesn't seem to know about. You filming her while she's sleeping. While she's cooking. While she's reading.”

“The light was good,” Bobby says automatically, the old excuse, and it sounds hollow even to him.

Moreno lets the silence sit. Then, “Bobby. I've got a missing woman. Her boyfriend has hours of footage of her, some of it taken without her apparent knowledge. Her neighbours describe fights. The boyfriend didn't notice she was gone for seventy-two hours.” He leans forward, knotting his fingers on the table. “You see the picture I'm looking at, right? It doesn’t look good. If you want to tell me anything, I can help you—”

“That's not—I never hurt her. I was—”

“What were you?”

And Bobby opens his mouth to snap back with something defensive, sharp. Bobby, who uses his tongue like a blade when he feels cornered, rears up to go, and what comes out instead is:

“I love her.”

Not loved. There’s no past tense here. This isn’t careful distancing of a man constructing an alibi. Present tense, raw, graceless, blurted out like a cough. Like something expelled from deep in his lungs against his will. His voice breaks on her, and Bobby’s eyes burn. 

Moreno is staring at him, and Bobby is sitting in a police precinct with his chain tangled and his crop top wrinkled, his earring catching the overhead fluorescent light. And he looks, in that moment, exactly like what he is: a twenty-something-year-old asshole who didn't know what he had until the world seemingly swallowed it whole.

“I love her,” he repeats, quieter now. Like now that the word is out, he can't stop saying it, like the dam has cracked and the only thing behind it was this. “I love her, and I was—I wasn't good to her, I know that, okay? I know what it looks like, but I didn't—I would never—”

Moreno watches him for a long time. The precinct hums in the background. Phones, footsteps, murmur of voices.

They let him go. No evidence. No body. They're able to confirm his alibi, and ten again.

There’s no proof of anything except the fact that Robert Franklin is a man who films the woman he loves while she sleeps because he can't bring himself to tell her she's beautiful while she's awake.

He goes to the store that night.

Not because he thinks he'll find anything. The cops already searched it. Half-heartedly, briefly, the way you search a place when you've already decided the boyfriend did it, and the crime scene is somewhere else. 

They walked through the showroom and poked around the loading dock. Went down to the storage level, shone flashlights between the flatpack bookshelves and the plastic-wrapped headboards, and found nothing. Because there's nothing to find. 

Bobby just knows that this is the last place you were. 

That your hands touched the furniture down here. The inventory sheets, the shelving units, the boxes of cabinet hardware and drawer pulls you organised on the night shifts he couldn't be bothered to stay for. Your fingerprints are on everything. The ghost of your routine is embedded in the layout of this room. The way the boxes are stacked, the system you developed for sorting shipments by vendor, and the little handwritten labels in your writing on the bins. 

Bobby stands in the middle of it, and he can feel you. He can feel you the way you feel someone in a room they just left—the displaced air, the warmth fading from a surface, the sense that if he turned around fast enough, he'd catch the edge of you disappearing around a corner.

He sits down on the concrete floor. Puts his back against the wall. The far one, behind the shelving unit full of cabinet hardware, the one that feels different from the others in a way he can't articulate. Cooler. Thinner somehow. 

He doesn't plan to talk. But at one point, the silence gets too much, and it just… comes out. 

“Hey, baby. It's Bobby.”

His voice sounds strange in the empty room. Too loud, too small. Bouncing off the concrete and the flatpacks and coming back to him slightly changed, echoed.

“I don't know if you can hear me. I don't—this is stupid. This is really fucking stupid. Obviously, you can’t hear me because you’re not here. But I just—” He stops. Presses the back of his head against the wall. Stares at the ceiling. “The cops think I did something to you. They looked at me like—” He swallows. “I don't care about that. I don't care what they think. I just need you to know I'm looking. Okay? I'm looking, baby. I'm not gonna stop.”

The draft brushes against his palm. Cool. Steady. Like a pulse. 

He comes back the next night. And the next. And the next.

It becomes the only thing that makes sense. The apartment is a museum of his failures. Every unwashed dish, every unanswered question, every space where your things are slowly being buried under his carelessness. 

But the store is different. The store is where you were. The last place your body occupied space. Sitting in it feels like sitting in the shallow end of your absence rather than drowning in the deep. He can think down here. He can talk. He can say the things he should've said when you were standing in the doorway with your keys in your hand and your heart in your eyes, and he was looking at the TV.

Hey baby. It's me. Found one of your socks behind the dryer today. The fuzzy ones. I put it on the dresser. Just in case.

I keep thinking about Thanksgiving. When you burned the rolls, and I said, "guess we're going to my mom's next year", and you laughed, but you weren't really laughing. You were hurt. I knew, and I didn't fix it.

I'm sorry about the rolls. They were good. They were a little burnt, but they were good. You made them, and I should've eaten every single one.

Bobby pauses. Picks at the concrete with his thumbnail. The storage level smells like particleboard and cardboard. Somewhere deep in the room, he can feel that draft again. That impossible nowhere-breeze he still hasn’t found a source of.

I was thinking about that morning. In the kitchen. You were making breakfast, and you turned around with a spatula and asked if I wanted toast, and the light was behind you, and I—I felt this thing. This huge thing. Like my chest was going to crack open. And I said, "sure." I said SURE. You were standing there in my kitchen looking like that, and I felt the biggest thing I've ever felt, and I said sure and loaded film into my camera like it was nothing.

It wasn't nothing. It was everything. I just didn't know how to—I couldn't—

Bobby stops. Presses the heels of his hands into his eyes.

I was so scared you'd see how much I needed you and you'd leave. So I made you leave by not letting you see. That's the dumbest shits anyone's ever done. Baby. I'm so stupid.

He comes back every night. Even when there are no words. Even when he just sits with his hand on the wall and his eyes closed, breathing in the sawdust and the nothing-draft, feeling the concrete thrum against his palm like a second heartbeat.

No leads. No calls. No breaks in the case because there's no sightings, no signs of a break in, nothing. Eyes follow him around town, full of questions and suspicion. There's those who genuinely believe he did something to you. It's stupid, so fucking stupid. He's many thins, but he would never—

Except he did. He did hurt you. Just not in the way these people think.

So Bobby keeps coming because this room is the last place you were. And as long as he keeps sitting in it, as long as he keeps talking to the walls, you're not gone. 

You're just somewhere he hasn’t found you yet.

Month two.

The news spreads the way news does in a place like Santa Clara.

A slow seep through the neighbourhood, through the strip mall. The regulars who used to come to Clark's store for dining sets and bed frames and the occasional impulse-buy end table. A girl went missing. She worked there. The police questioned her boyfriend. No arrests, but you know.

People stop coming.

Not all at once. But the thin trickle becomes a drought. 

The regulars find reasons not to visit. Other stores, other errands, a sudden preference for the furniture place on Stevens Creek that doesn't have a missing-person case attached to it.

The showroom gets quieter. The displays gather a fine layer of dust that Clark used to wipe down every morning, and now he only gets to it every other day, then every third day, then whenever he remembers. Which is less and less because Clark is a man watching his business die and his marriage fracture. 

He can feel both things slipping through his fingers at the same speed, and the bourbon is the only thing that makes the slippage feel like someone else's problem.

So Clark hires Kat. 

Not because he needs a full-time replacement. Frankly, customer traffic no longer justifies it, but the showroom needs a body in it. A presence. Someone to make the store look like a place where things are still happening. Kat is bright and cheap, and she doesn't ask about the missing girl, at least not at first, and Clark is grateful for that.

Bobby notices her the first time he comes in for his nightly visit to the basement. 

She's behind the register, leaning against the counter with a pen behind her ear, doing something with a stack of delivery receipts. Radio plays something tuneful from a boombox she's brought from home. Dark hair. Quick smile. She looks up when the door chimes and gives him that particular once-over that Bobby used to live for. The slow sweep, the lingering, the way women's eyes always catch on the chain, the earring, the slice of toned stomach under the crop top. 

She says, “We're closed.”

“I know. I'm not shopping.”

She watches him walk past the display couches and the dining sets, then down the stairs, all with undisguised curiosity. Bobby doesn't turn around.

The second time, she asks.

“You're the boyfriend, right? Of the girl who—” She catches herself. Has the decency to look uncomfortable. “Sorry. Clark mentioned it.”

“Yeah.”

“I'm Kat,” she says. “I'm covering her shifts.”

“I know.”

Bobby keeps walking. Past the model bedrooms with their fake pillows and fake lamps, down the stairs, into the storage level where the real furniture waits in boxes. He sits on the floor. Presses his palm to the wall.

Hey baby. It's me again.

That night, back in the apartment, Bobby can't sleep. He lies on his side of the bed with his hand on your side and stares at the ceiling. The silence is so complete it has a texture, thick and too heavy. He gets up. Goes to the living room. Stands in front of the shelf where the cops put the tapes back, lined up in a neat row they were never in before.

He picks one up. Turns it over in his hands. The label is in his handwriting. A date, nothing else.

He tells himself he's looking for clues. That's the reason he gives himself as he threads the tape into the camera, plugs it into the TV, and sits on the floor with the remote in his hand.

The apartment is dark except for the blue wash of the screen. He's going to watch the footage with detective's eyes, with Moreno's eyes, looking for something everyone missed: a person in the background, a car that didn't belong, a moment where your face changed because you knew something was coming. He's going to be useful. He's going to be the kind of boyfriend who solves this.

And there you are. In the kitchen. In the morning light. Turning around with a spatula in your hand, your hair messy from sleep, one of his t-shirts hanging off your shoulder. You're saying something—he can't hear it over the lump in his throat, but he can read your lips, do you want toast—and the light is behind you, exactly the way he remembered. 

You're so beautiful, so real and so present on this tape that for a second Bobby forgets. For one perfect, idiot second, his body forgets you're gone and his hand almost lifts to touch the screen. 

Then the moment passes and you're still in the TV and he's still on the floor and the distance between those two things is the rest of his life.

He watches everything. All of it. Hours. The sleeping footage that made Moreno look at him like that. Bobby sees it now, sees what it looks like from the outside, and he also sees what it actually was: a man so stunned by the existence of this person in his bed that he needed the camera between them to survive it. 

You in the kitchen. You reading on the couch with your feet tucked under you, turning pages with one hand, the other hand resting on Bobby's thigh without thinking about it. He filmed that too, the hand, just the hand. Five minutes of your fingers against his jeans because he couldn't say you touching me is the best thing in my life, so Bobby recorded it instead. You at the store, sorting inventory, your lips moving along to the radio, and you catch the camera, and your face does that thing—the mock-exasperated smile, the Bobby, stop that you never really meant—and your eyes are warm. 

Your eyes are so fucking warm. Alive.

He watches until the tapes run out, and then Bobby rewinds them and watches again. He can't help it. The apartment fills with the sound of you. Your voice, your laugh, the particular way you said his name, Bobby, half-scolding and half-tender. For a few hours, the silence has a crack in it and something warm leaks through.

He starts watching them every night. Before the store, after the store, sometimes both. It becomes a ritual. Some sick twin devotions, the basement and the tapes, the wall and the screen, one hand pressed to concrete and the other pressing play.

Month three.

Kat starts leaving coffee on the counter for him. 

It's hot, and it's there every night when he walks in, balanced on the edge of the register next to a ceramic lamp that's been on display since before you vanished. 

She doesn't make a thing of it. Doesn't say I made this for you, or I thought you might want. It's just there. An object in his path. Bobby takes it because refusing would require a conversation he doesn't have the energy for.

She starts sitting on the stairs when he's in the basement. Not coming all the way down, just perching on the third step, legs crossed, chin in her hand, talking to him through the open stairwell. 

She tells him about her day. About the customers, mainly. The couple who spent three hours testing every sofa in the showroom and then bought a lamp, the woman who wanted to return a bed frame she'd clearly had for two years, and some guy who asked if they sold waterbeds. Clark apparently almost threw him out. She's funny, in a way that's different from you. Louder, broader, more direct. 

You were a scalpel. Kat's a blunt instrument, and right now Bobby is so hollowed out that even blunt force registers as contact.

He doesn't laugh. He doesn't encourage her. But he stops telling her to go away, and Kat reads that correctly as the only invitation Bobby knows how to extend right now.

It's the tapes that start to bother him first.

Not anything he can really name at first. It's more like a feeling. Particular unease of looking at something familiar and sensing, at the periphery, that it's shifted. He's watching the kitchen footage—the toast morning, his favourite, the one he's rewound so many times the tracking wobbles at the edges—and something feels off. Bobby stops the tape. Rewinds. Watches again.

You turn around with the spatula. The light is behind you. You say do you want toast. Everything is exactly the same.

Except your face.

Bobby leans closer to the screen. Squints. Your face is… fine. It's your face. Your eyes, your mouth, the way your hair falls. It's you. But there's… something. Some flicker of wrongness so faint it's less than a shadow. Like the difference between a photograph and a photocopy of a photograph. The information is all there. It's just one generation removed from real.

He tells himself it's the tape. Old footage, cheap equipment, the kind of VHS degradation that happens when you rewind the same section a hundred times. He tells himself it's his eyes, his exhaustion, the fact that he's watching the same clips at two in the morning in a dark apartment obsessively. 

His brain is doing what brains do when they're tired and desperate: finding patterns in the static.

He believes it. For a while. He presses play.

One night, Kat is quiet for longer than usual. Bobby can feel her watching him from the stairs, her chin on her knees, the stairwell light behind her making her silhouette sharp.

“You loved her a lot, huh,” she says. Soft. Not a question.

Bobby goes rigid. His hand is flat on the wall. The draft tickles against his palm.

He turns his head. Looks at her. And whatever's on his face, he knows it’s not warm. It's the Bobby that bites, the one who gets mean, and Kat sees it happen, feels the temperature drop. The wall goes up behind his expression like a bulkhead slamming shut.

“I still love her,” he says, cold and flat. Corrective. Present tense.

He turns back to the wall. Kat is quiet for a long time. Then she gets up and goes back upstairs, and Bobby hears her footsteps cross the showroom floor above him. He closes his eyes, pressing his forehead to the concrete. He hates himself for being cruel to one more person who didn't deserve it or ask him but did you do it?

But he can't— 

He can't let her use the past tense. He can't let anyone use the past tense. Because that means it's over, and it's not over. It's not. You're somewhere, he can feel it. 

Bobby is a man sitting on a concrete floor talking to nobody, and the only woman who ever mattered to him is gone, and the last thing he gave her was a fucking grunt.

He can't live in that version. He won't.

Month four.

Bobby starts going through the inventory records. 

Your handwriting is everywhere. The logs, the labels on the bins, the sticky notes on the shelving units, reminding Clark which shipments need to go out first. He sits in the storage level with the binder in his lap and traces your letters with his fingertip. He can hear your voice in the loops and slants. The way you wrote like you talked, quick and slightly messy, always abbreviating things so he had to ask you to translate.

The tapes are getting worse.

He can't deny it anymore. The wrongness he felt at month three has deepened into something visible, a decay he doesn't need to squint to see. 

Your face has lost something in the kitchen footage. Nothing he could point to, nothing a stranger who'd never met you would notice. But Bobby has watched this clip a thousand times, and he knows the terrain of your face the way a sailor knows coastline.

Something has shifted. 

Your eyes are the right colour, but the light behind them is dimmer, muted, like watching a candle through frosted glass. Your mouth moves and the words come out (do you want toast), but there's a fraction-of-a-second delay. The audio arriving just a breath after the lips, and it gives your voice a quality that makes the hair on Bobby's arms stand up. A dubbing. A sense that someone else is speaking through you, almost perfectly synchronised but not quite. 

He goes through the other tapes. One by one. Methodical. The sleeping footage first. And you're there, you're sleeping, but the quality of your stillness is wrong. Too still. A person breathing doesn't look like that, doesn't have that uncanny smoothness, that mannequin-serenity. 

The footage of you at the store next. Sorting inventory, lips moving to the radio is the worst affected so far. Your hands look right, but they move in a way that's almost, almost correct. The way a marionette's hands move when the puppeteer is very good. Bobby watches your fingers sort through drawer pulls and cabinet hardware, and he knows that those are not the hands that touched him.

He doesn't tell anyone. Who the hell would he even tell? Moreno? Hey, detective, the girl on my tapes is turning into something else? Yeah, same one that went missing and everyone thinks I secretly killed! His mom? Terrence? They already think he's losing it. Or, worse, they would think he’s high again.

They already use that voice with him now. The careful tone people use when they're managing a dangerous animal. This would be the thing that tips it, the thing that sends Bobby from grieving boyfriend to guy who cracked.

He starts making a list of his failures instead. 

An erosion in reverse. Every day, some new memory surfaces, a moment he discarded when it happened and now can't stop replaying. Each one is worse than the last because each one is a place where he had a choice and chose wrong and didn't even realise it. Or maybe he did. And that’s worse.

The night you came home excited about something—a movie, a book, something a friend said, he can't even remember what it was, and that fact alone makes him want to put his fist through drywall—and you'd been lit up, talking fast, gesturing, and he'd been reviewing footage on the couch.

He'd said uh-huh without looking up. Not even once. Not once during your entire story did he lift his eyes from the viewfinder. You trailed off mid-sentence and went quiet, and Bobby hadn't looked up then either.

He tries to find that moment on tape. He knows he was filming that night. The camera was always running, always capturing, the viewfinder his permanent excuse for not being present. He scrubs through the footage looking for it. Looking for your face lit up. Looking for the moment you dimmed.

He finds the timestamp. And what Bobby sees makes his stomach drop.

You're sitting on the couch. He can tell it's you by the posture, the clothes, the way you're tucked into the corner cushion with your legs folded. But your face. Your face is… smeared. Like a thumbprint pressed across wet paint. The features are there, technically. But only technically. Eyes, mouth, nose. But they've lost their arrangement, their specificity.

The uniqueness that makes a face your face instead of just a face. 

Bobby is looking at you, and he can’t tell what you look like. He’s lived with you, slept beside you, fucked you in every spot in your shared apartment, filmed you obsessively for months, and yet he’s looking at a tape from four months ago, and he can’t reconstruct you.

The audio is worse. Your voice—the one he knows better than his own, the one that said his name like a bell, half-scolding and half-tender—is distorted.

Vowels flattened, consonants dissolved. That familiar melody of your speech now reduced to a low warbling tone that doesn't sound like language anymore. It sounds like a recording of a recording of a recording. Each new generation losing fidelity, losing you, until what's left is just the shape of where a voice used to be.

Bobby ejects the tape. His hands are shaking so hard he almost drops it. He puts it back on the shelf and sits on the couch in the dark and doesn't move for an hour.

He sits with the inventory binder the next night and reads your handwriting and says to the wall:

Something's happening to you, baby. I can't—I don't know how to explain it. But something's happening to the tapes, and I think it means something's happening to you. I need you to hold on. Okay? I need you to hold on because I'm still here, and I'm not leaving. I need you to still be you when I find you.

I think I got scared of how much I needed you. So I stopped letting myself need you. And that's not an excuse. I know that's not an excuse.

The truth is, I wanted to be there so much that it was destroying me. I wanted you so much it made me fucking mean. I loved you in a way I couldn't control, and I've always been an idiot who quits everything. Who gives up when things get too big and scary. You were the one thing that made my hands shake, and I hated it, and I needed it. I needed you because you saw me. I didn't know how to need something without resenting it.

So I resented you. For making me believe in myself. For making me need something other than the weed. And I showed it by turning away and turning away and turning away until you thought I didn't feel anything at all, when the reality is I felt everything. I felt too much. I've always felt too much, and I've never once known what to do about it except hide behind the camera and make a dumb joke and let the moment pass.

He pauses. Slams the binder shut. Runs his hand over the cover where your coffee ring stains the cardboard.

I should've told you about the toast morning. The spatula. The light behind you. I should've put the camera down and told you right then.

I should've told you every morning.

Baby. I can still see your handwriting. I need to—I need that to mean you're still somewhere. That this is just the tapes. That the tapes are old and I'm tired and you're fine, wherever you are, you're fine and you look like you and you sound like you and when I find you I'll know your face.

Month five.

Kat touches his arm.

It happens on a Wednesday. She's handing him the coffee, and her fingers brush his wrist and stay there. A half-second too long. Warm. Intentional.

Bobby stares at her hand. Looks at her. She doesn't look away.

“You know,” she says cautiously, “you don't have to sit down there alone every night. You could stay up here. Sit on one of the display couches. They're actually pretty comfortable for fake living rooms.” She smiles. Not the interested once-over from the first night. Softer now, more careful.

Bobby takes the coffee. Goes downstairs.

His pager buzzes against his hip later that night. He unclips it, tilts it toward the light. Kat's number. She must've pulled it from the staff contact sheet Clark keeps.

He looks at the little green screen for a long time. Clips the pager back to his belt. Presses his forehead to the wall.

That night, at home, he puts in the toast tape. It's become a test now, a compulsion. He checks the way you'd check a wound, needing to see if it's gotten worse, even though looking makes it worse too. He sits on the floor in front of the TV and watches the kitchen footage load.

The spatula is there. The counter. The window with the morning light. The t-shirt hanging off one shoulder. Everything in the frame is crisp, real, and correctly rendered.

Except there's no one holding the spatula.

Bobby's breath hitches. He leans forward, hands shaking. Rewinds. Plays it again.

The spatula lifts. Turns. The t-shirt shifts on a shoulder that isn't there. Or is there, maybe, but wrong. A smudge of colour where a body should be, a heat-shimmer distortion where your outline used to sit. The light comes through the window and falls on the kitchen counter and on the empty space where you stood, and there is something in that space.

Not nothing, or blank tape, but a presence that has no edges, no features, no face. A blur. A smear. The visual equivalent of a word on the tip of your tongue that won't come.

The audio says — — toast — and then dissolves into a sound that Bobby can only describe as the noise a voice makes when it's being pulled apart from the inside. Each syllable stretches thinner and thinner until it snaps, and what's left is a low, sustained hum that sounds like buzzing lights in an empty hallway.

Bobby presses stop. Ejects the tape.

He goes to the shelf. Pulls another. The one where you're reading on the couch, your hand on his thigh. He puts it in.

Your hand is gone. His thigh is there. Bobby can see his own jeans, the denim folded at the knee. That specific wear pattern on the left leg. But the hand that used to rest on it has dissolved into a faded wash, a blurry disturbance on the surface of the image, like someone pressed their palm to a fogged window and then the fog closed over the print.

He puts in another. The store footage. You sorting inventory.

The bins are being sorted by no one. Cabinet hardware moves through the air. Drawer pulls lift and settle into containers by themselves, organised by a system invented by a person the tape can no longer render. The radio plays in the recording. Bobby can hear the music. Unchanged. But the voice that used to sing along to it is gone. Replaced by a low, pulsing tone that rises and falls in a pattern that almost, almost resembles the melody you used to hum, if he listens hard enough, if Bobby presses his ear to the speaker and closes his eyes and believes—

He can't. He can't believe it hard enough. The tape runs, and the inventory sorts itself. The radio plays somewhere underneath it all in a frequency that used to be your voice.

Bobby puts every tape in, one by one. Every single one. And on every single one, you’re fading. The early tapes—the oldest ones, the ones from before the store, from the first months—are the worst. 

On those, you’re gone entirely. The frame exists, as does the light. But the space you occupied is smooth and empty, the image healing the wound of your absence like skin closing over a wound.

Reality itself seems to be deciding you were never there and quietly, methodically, is editing you out.

On the very last tape he checks, the most recent, he can still see you. Barely. A silhouette that won't resolve. A shape in the doorway that could be a person or could be a trick of the light. He pauses the tape and stares at the shape, and it looks like you the way a cloud looks like a face. If you want it to, if you squint hard enough and ignore the parts that don't match.

Bobby sits on the floor, holding the remote, staring at the paused frame. He understands, with a certainty that bypasses logic and settles directly into his bones, that you’re being erased. Not just from his life. Not just from the apartment, the store, or the neighbourhood that forgot you. From reality. From any evidence that you existed at all.

The tapes were his proof. Not for Moreno, or the cops, but for himself. Proof that you were real. That the toast morning happened. That your hand rested on his thigh. Love, in all its messy, imperfect shape between you, was real. That you sang along to the radio and burned rolls at Thanksgiving. That you stood in doorways waiting for him to look up. For once in his life, to just look up and see you. 

He filmed you because he couldn't tell you he loved you, and thought the films would be enough. They were going to be the evidence he'd have forever, the record of what he felt even when he couldn't say it aloud.

And now even that’s being taken.

He doesn't go to the store that night. He goes straight to the basement and puts his whole body against the wall. Not just his hand. His whole body, chest, cheek and palms flat against the concrete. Maybe he’s going insane, finally, properly insane, but he talks until his voice gives out.

Don't go. Whatever's happening, whatever this is—please. Don't go. I know I didn't earn you. I know I don't get to ask you to stay when I didn't give you a reason to stay. But I’m asking. I'm begging. Please.

I can barely remember your face, baby.

I looked at the tapes, and you're not—you're going away. You're going away, and I can't stop it. The last version of your face I have in my head is from the doorway, the night you left, and I didn't even LOOK at it. I fucking grunted. You were looking at me, and I was looking at the TV. Now your face is disappearing from my own tapes, and the last real look I had at you I wasted on a GRUNT.

Baby. Please don't make me forget what you look like.

The wall breathes against him. The draft. The nowhere-breeze, cooler than the room, steady, almost rhythmic. Like breathing. Like something on the other side pressing back, watching him.

Bobby lifts his head but he's alone down here.

He stays until morning anyway.

Month six.

The apartment is starting to forget you.

Your shampoo ran out first. Bobby couldn't bring himself to buy more, so the shower shelf has a gap now.

Your magazines are buried under his mail, his camera equipment that's migrated back to every flat surface because there's nobody to complain about it. The coffee mug—your mug, the one on the drying rack—he put it in the cabinet. High shelf. Behind his. He can't see it when he opens the door, but he knows it's there. 

The tapes are blank.

Completely blank. Clean, smooth, unrecorded type of blank. As if the camera was never pointed at anything, as if the record button was never pressed. Hours and hours of footage simply un-happened. 

Bobby put in the toast tape last week, and what played was thirty minutes of soft grey nothing. The gentle hiss of virgin magnetic tape, the sound of a medium that has never held information. He put it in the camera, connected it to the TV, and watched nothing. Rewound it. Watched nothing again, ejected it, held it in his hands, turned it over and read his own handwriting on the label. 

The date, just the date. The label is the only proof left that something was once on this tape, because the tape itself has forgotten.

All of them. Every single one. He checked them all, one after another, on a Saturday afternoon with the curtains drawn. By the time Bobby reached the last one, he wasn't even surprised. Just hollow. The shelves are full of labelled cassettes that now contain nothing.

A library of blanks. An archive of absence.

He has no pictures of you. 

He realises this with a physical lurch, sitting on the floor surrounded by dead tapes. He has no pictures of you. 

Bobby the camera guy, Bobby who filmed everything, Bobby who pointed the lens at you while you slept because he couldn't survive the sight of you without a barrier, and somehow, he has no proof you exist. The tapes are blank. He never took photographs because the camera was always rolling. And the only image of your face he has left is the one in his head, and that one is fading too. 

Just the ordinary human erosion. The way memory smooths out detail over time. Six months of absence turns a face into an impression, an atmosphere, a feeling-where-a-face-used-to-be.

He remembers your eyes. He thinks. He remembers warmth, colour, the way they changed in kitchen light, and the blue wash of the TV at midnight. But he doesn't remember their exact shape. Doesn't remember if the left one was slightly different from the right. 

The details are blurry; the tapes can't tell him anymore, and no one else can, either. You’re being unmade—from the record, from the world, from his own goddamn memory—and Bobby is the man who was supposed to preserve you, who pointed a camera at you for years, and he couldn't even do that right.

He still goes to the store. Every night. Without fail. 

Even when it rains, or when he's sick, or when his hands shake on the steering wheel, driving down at eleven PM. He sits on the floor, and he talks. Sometimes he brings the coffee, your order, and a paper cup from the place on El Camino that makes it the way you like best.

Bobby sets it on the concrete beside him like a place setting at a table for two, and it goes cold while he talks. Eventually, he pours it out in the utility sink by the loading dock, rinses the cup and drives home.

It's getting harder to believe.

He can feel it. 

Faith eroding the way your shampoo scent eroded from the pillow, the way you eroded from the tapes, gradually, then suddenly. Six months. People don't come back after six months. The cops have functionally closed the case. 

Bobby's mom called and talked around the subject for forty minutes before finally saying honey, maybe it's time to— and Bobby hung up on her. His buddy Terrence sat him down at a bar and said, awkwardly, carefully, the way everyone talks to Bobby now, man, I know you don't want to hear this, but— and Bobby walked out before he could finish the sentence.

He knows what they're going to say. He knows because he's been saying it to himself at three in the morning, lying on his side of the bed with his hand on the cold spot you should be, a thought looping in his brain: she's not coming back. She's not coming back.

But Bobby goes to the store. And he sits on the floor. He puts his hand on the wall. The draft is still there—that impossible nowhere-breeze, cool against his palm—and it feels like breathing. Bobby presses his whole body against the concrete.

This space is the last thing that still holds you. The tapes gave you up. The apartment gave you up. The neighbourhood, the cops, his friends, his mother, everyone has let go. Bobby presses himself against the wall every night because this is the one place in the world that still has you in it. The last surface that carries your imprint, and he’ll not leave it. 

He will not let the last proof of you go.

Bobby thinks about who he was seven months ago, and the contempt is so total it's almost cleansing. 

A twenty-something-year-old asshole in a crop top who thought he was too cool to say I love you, who hid behind a camera lens because looking at things through glass was easier than looking at them with his bare, stupid, cowardly eyes.

He had a girl who made him breakfast and stayed up waiting for him. Who asked do you even want to be here anymore and answered her with don't be dramatic because the truth was too enormous and too terrifying to fit through his teeth.

The camera was supposed to be the thing that kept you. The proof, the record, the insurance policy against loss. He filmed you because he couldn't hold you, and now the film is empty. His arms are empty too, and the only thing left is a dusty basement with a strange wall and a man who doesn't deserve the comfort of it.

Robert Franklin, who quit everything, who let every good thing in his life rot through neglect and cowardice—Robert Franklin refuses to quit this. 

This is the one thing he will hold onto with both hands. Because if he lets go, he has to look at who he is without it, and that person has nothing. That someone is an idiot with a camera and a crop top sitting in an empty apartment full of blank tapes, where he ground something beautiful down to dust because he was too chickenshit to be soft.

So he goes. Every night. He goes.

Month seven.

Clark is drunk.

Bobby can tell before he's through the door. 

The showroom lights are on, but the sign is flipped to CLOSED, and the radio's playing louder than usual from somewhere in the back. When Bobby makes his way past the dining displays, he finds Clark sitting in the leather recliner. The expensive floor model, the one that's been here since the store opened, with a bottle of Jim Beam wedged between his thigh and that look on his face. 

The one Bobby sees in the mirror. The look of a man whose life is falling apart.

“Bobby.” Flat. Not unfriendly. Voice of a man who's been drinking past sloppy and into something cold and brittle on the other side. “Right on time.”

“Clark.” Bobby eyes the bottle. “Where's Kat?”

“Sent her home early.” Clark takes a long, gulping drink. He's still wearing his work shirt, that same button-down he always wears, but it's untucked and the collar's stained. He looks like he's been in that recliner for a while. “Sit down.”

“I'm going downstairs.”

“No.” Another wet gulp. His eyes are red but steady. “You're not. That's what I need to talk to you about.”

Bobby stops.

“Linda kicked me out,” Clark says conversationally. The way he'd talk about lumber prices or a late shipment. He gestures around the showroom with the bottle. “So I'll be staying here. Back office. Maybe downstairs, if I can clear space between the Scandinavian imports.” The joke almost lands. Almost. “Which means I need the room, Bobby. All of it.”

“You're—what?”

“I'm saying you can't come here anymore.”

The words land like a slap. Bobby's hand tightens on the strap of his camera bag.

“Clark—”

“Seven months.” 

And there it is. That thing that happens when Clark drinks, when the bourbon strips away the politeness and the it's not my place and the careful middle-aged-man diplomacy, and what's left is just the raw compressed anger of a man who's been swallowing his own resentment for months.

Clark is a man who holds everything down until the whiskey lifts the lid and whatever's underneath comes out scalding.

“Seven months of you in my basement. Seven months of—do you know what's happened to this place since your girlfriend disappeared? Do you? Because I do. I watch it every day. I watch the customers not come in. I watch the phone not ring. I watch the neighbourhood look at my store like it's a goddamn crime scene and take their money to Stevens Creek because nobody wants to buy a dining set from the place where a girl vanished.” Clark's voice is rising, a deep rumbling anger spilling outwards. “I built this store. And now I'm sleeping in it because my ungrateful wife thinks I'm a failure and my customers think I'm cursed and the only person who walks through my door every night is you, Bobby, sitting on my floor, talking to my wall—”

“That's not my fault —”

“She's not down there.” Clark slams the bottle on the end table. It cracks the mahogany finish, and he doesn't notice or doesn't care. “She's not in the walls, or the ceiling or the goddamn floor, son. She's not inside a goddamn flatpack bookshelf.”

Bobby sucks in a breath. “You don't know that. Nobody does.”

“Yeah, I do.” 

Clark leans forward. Red-eyed. Steady. And the thing he's been holding between his teeth for months comes out. The ugly thing that isn't about Bobby at all, it's about Clark, about a store that was failing before you ever disappeared and a marriage that was cracking before the customers stopped coming.

A man who needs someone to blame because the alternative is looking in the mirror and seeing his own fingerprints on everything that's broken. And right now, tonight, drunk and newly homeless and sitting in a recliner in a showroom full of furniture nobody's buying, Clark has found his someone.

“She's either dead,” Clark says, and the word just hangs there, settling on Bobby's skin like hot oil spilling over— “or she left you. And either way, son. Either way. You need to stop. Because I can't have you down there anymore. I can't have this—this haunting—attached to my store. I'm trying to save what's left, and you sitting in my basement every night is—”

He stops himself. A crack appears in Clark’s anger, a fissure where the sober Clark underneath can see what the drunk Clark is doing. Using Bobby's grief to deflect from his own failure. Blaming a missing girl for a business that was haemorrhaging money long before she vanished, for a wife who kicked him out because Clark worked sixty-hour weeks and never once asked how her day was.

Clark knows. Underneath the bourbon, he knows. And the knowing makes his face twist with both sadness and fury.

“Bobby.” His voice changes. Drops. The anger drains out of it like water from a cracked glass, leaving only the exhaustion underneath. Clark rubs his eyes with one hand, and suddenly, he looks old. Older than he is, tired in a way that has nothing to do with the hour. “I didn't—that came out wrong. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said it like that.”

Bobby doesn't hear him.

Because Bobby is already moving. Past the display couches and the model bedrooms with their fake pillows and fake lives. He shoulder clips the corner of a dining table hard enough to shift it on the showroom floor, and the door chimes behind him when he rips it open.

The night air hits him, and he's in the parking lot, his hands are on his knees, and he's breathing in short, ragged, tearing bursts that feel like they're coming from somewhere below his lungs. 

Somewhere that's been sealed shut for seven months and has just been cracked open with the words she's either dead or she left you.

Dead or she left you.

Dead.

Or she left you.

He can't fucking breathe. He can't—the air is right there. Santa Clara night air, warm and full of eucalyptus and car exhaust, but he can't get it into his lungs. Because Clark said dead, and that word is a door Bobby has refused to open for seven months, and now it's open, it's wide fucking open. 

And behind it is a version of reality where you’re in the ground somewhere and the last thing he ever said to you was a grunt and your last memory of him is the back of his head and the blue light of the television and the sound of a man who couldn't be bothered to look up.

And the tapes are blank. And your face is gone. And there is no record anywhere in the world that you existed except the label on a cassette in Bobby's handwriting and in a basement he's just been locked out of.

“Bobby. Bobby, wait—”

Kat. Coming around the side of the building, car keys in her hand. She didn't go home. She was sitting in her car, headlights off, engine off, just sitting there, and she's been doing that, he knows she's been doing that, waiting for him, watching the door. And he's never said anything because acknowledging it would mean acknowledging everything it implies.

“Bobby, hey, stop, are you okay? I heard him through the door, what did he—”

Bobby straightens up. Pivots toward her. And he knows—somewhere in the functioning part of his brain, in the part that isn't currently on fire—that she doesn't deserve what’s coming. She's been nothing but kind.

Coffee on counters, stairs and parking lots and pager numbers he never called back. She never once asked for anything in return. She’s a good person standing in a parking lot trying to help a man who’s bleeding out from a wound she didn't inflict.

But the thing inside Bobby right now is not rational. It's not kind. It's the wounded animal, the cornered dog, the part of Robert Franklin that has always turned his pain into teeth and aimed them at whoever's closest because the alternative is feeling it. And he…

He can't feel it; if he feels it right now, he’ll come apart on this asphalt, and he doesn't know if he'll come back together again.

“Don't do that. Don't chase me. Don't wait in the parking lot. Don't leave me coffee. Don't—” His voice cracks, and he hates it. Hates the sound of himself breaking in front of her. Another woman who's being kind to him, and he's going to ruin it with his inability to do anything with tenderness except flinch from it. “I'm not going to fuck you, Kat. Alright? Is that what you need to hear? My girl is missing. The girl I love is fucking missing, and I don't know where she is, and I can't—I can't do this. Whatever you think this is going to become. I can't.”

He presses the heel of his hand into his eye. Hard. Grinding the tears back because Bobby doesn't cry in front of people. Even though he's been doing it alone on concrete for seven months, even though the irony—Bobby Franklin pushing away the person trying to be there for him while grieving the person he pushed away by not being there—is so perfect and so cruel it feels engineered. Like the universe is holding up a mirror and saying see? You're doing it again. You learned nothing, idiot.

He knows. He knows he's doing it again. He can't stop doing it.

“I can't,” he rasps. Quiet, broken. “I'm sorry.”

Kat stands still. Her keys dangle from one finger, catching the orange glow of the streetlight. She doesn't step back. Doesn't cry or get angry or tell him to go fuck himself, though she definitely should. Bobby almost wishes she would because it would give him someone to push against.

The tapes are blank, and your face is a smear. Reality is closing over the hole you left like water closing over a stone, and soon there’ll be no evidence you were ever here at all except a man in a parking lot who can't stop saying your name in the present tense.

Kat shifts her keys to her other hand. Takes one step closer. Not touching. Just closer.

She looks at him, and she says, quietly, softly, “I don't need you to love me, Bobby.”

Quiet. Simple. Like she's telling him the time.

Bobby's mouth opens. Closes. His hand drops from his face. The parking lot is quiet. Only the buzzing streetlight fills the silence. 

He looks at her, and he looks wrecked, he knows. Absolutely wrecked, hollowed out and scraped clean from last seven months, standing in a place where the only options are forward into something he's not ready for or backwards into a basement he's just been locked out of, and he doesn't say yes.

But he doesn't walk away, either.

an: ohoho, i'm so excited to hear what ya'll think after that lmao. we're picking up with BB and you next time. stay tunedddd~

[the-darklings]

YOUR 'BETTER BOBBY' FIC WAS SO GOOD! if you ever felt inspired would LOVE to read more about them. maybe another entity attacks them and they get separated? and alone and lost, reader can't help but miss the real Bobby ahhh. anyway, love you, thank you for writing!

I'm so glad you're all loving this idea, because inspiration hit me so hard I wrote this in one sitting. Continuation to this. Def let me know if you wanna see more 👀 warnings: horror (finally got to write my true love), and some gore (nothing explicit/implied) series masterlist.

You've been here long enough that you've stopped counting the hallways.

That, in hindsight, should probably scare you the most. The fact that it doesn't scare you anymore.

The yellow used to make your skin crawl, that specific shade of institutional sick. Now it's just... the colour of home. Better Bobby's taught you that. Through sheer repetition of safety.

Every time he pulls you into a new room and checks the corners before letting you sit down. Every time he angles his body between you and a doorway without thinking about it. Or when he hands you something to eat. You've stopped asking where the food comes from. That's another question that goes in circles every time you try it. He watches you until you take a bite, satisfied, like feeding you is the only task on a list he takes very seriously.

You have a room now. Your room. He found it for you three (days? rotations? sleeps?) ago, deeper in Level 0 than you'd been before, tucked behind a series of turns that he walked so confidently you wondered if he'd planned the route in advance.

It's quieter than the others. The carpet is thicker, the hum lower, and there's a warm patch on the floor near the far wall where some buried pipe must be running. Better Bobby dragged every blanket he'd scavenged into a pile on that warm spot and when you'd looked at him he'd shrugged, one shoulder, earring catching the fluorescent light.

"What? You get cold."

Real Bobby used to steal the covers.

You try not to make the comparison. You try so hard. But Better Bobby makes it impossible because he's everything real Bobby was on your best days. Distilled and concentrated, with all the carelessness burned off.

He touches you constantly. Not sexually, just contact. His hand on the back of your neck when you walk. His chin on your shoulder when you're sitting together. His fingers finding yours in the dark when the lights flicker, which they do sometimes. And in those brief, stuttering seconds of blackness you can hear things moving in the walls and Better Bobby's grip tightens. He says I'm here like it's a fact of physics. Like his presence beside you is as fundamental and non-negotiable as gravity.

It's a Thursday, you think, or what you've decided is Thursday—you've started naming the days by feeling, which probably means you're losing it—when everything goes wrong.

You're walking. Better Bobby's slightly ahead of you, one hand trailing the wall, talking about something. He talks to you the way real Bobby used to, a constant low-level narration.

Except Better Bobby's commentary is about the architecture of this place, which hallways are safe, which ones echo differently than they should. The way the carpet changes texture near certain thresholds you should know about. You're half-listening, comfortable in the drone of his familiar voice, when he stops abruptly.

You almost walk into his back.

"Bobby?"

He doesn't answer. His head tilts slightly, the way a dog would listen toa distant sound. His whole body goes rigid in a way you've never seen before. Better Bobby doesn't tense up. Better Bobby is languid and easy and always, always calm.

"Bobby, what—"

"Don't move."

His voice is different. Stripped of the warmth, the lazy drawl, all the honeyed softness he pours over you. What's left is flat and hard. Something in your hindbrain fires that hasn't fired since you got here because Better Bobby has kept you so safe that you forgot what fear tasted like.

You taste it now. Bright and metallic at the back of your throat.

The lights flicker abovehead. Not the usual gentle stutter or dimming it does at random intervals. This is violent, a seizure of light, and in the strobe of it you spot something at the end of the hallway.

You can't process it. Your brain tries and slides off the shape the way water slides off wax. It's too tall, and wrong. So wrong. It takes up too much space for its size, like it's pressing against the dimensions of the hallway from the inside, and it's looking at you with something that isn't a face.

Better Bobby shoves you behind him. Both hands this time. Hard.

"Go."

"I'm not leaving you—"

"Go. Left, left, straight, third door. I'll find you." He looks over his shoulder at you and his eyes are dark and flat. Ancient in a way that makes your stomach drop because for just a second—just a flicker, shorter than the lights—the thing looking out from behind Bobby's face isn't Bobby, either. "Baby. Run."

You run.

Left, left, straight, except there's no third door. There's no door at all.

The hallway stretches and bends and the carpet under your feet changes from rough to damp to something that feels horribly organic so abruptly you almost skid. You're running and the fluorescent yellow is shifting with you, deepening in increments, and the walls are getting narrower.

The ceiling goes lower suddenly and you realise, with a lurch of animal terror, that you're not on Level 0 anymore.

You don't know when it changed. There was no door, no threshold, no moment. The hallways just... became somewhere else. Like you walked through an edit. A jump cut in reality.

You stagger to a stop. Your breathing is so loud it fills the quiet corridor.

It's dark here. Not quite pitch black, mercifully. There's light, but it's coming from somewhere wrong. Faintly blue, sourceless, the colour of television static.

The walls aren't yellow anymore. They're concrete instead. Industrial. Stained with something you refuse to look at closely. The ceiling is a mess of exposed pipes and dead wiring, and water (you hope desperately it's water) drips in a strange pattern that sets your teeth on edge

It's cold here. You're shaking, you realise a moment too late.

You press your back against the concrete wall and slide down to the floor, pulling your knees to your chest and try to make yourself small. Try to make yourself invisible. Because Better Bobby isn't here and without him you're nothing in this place.

Just soft, warm, alive thing in a place that is none of those things.

That's when you see it. From the corner of your eye.

It assembles itself in pieces in the dark, the way a photograph develops, the way something reveals itself to you only once it's already too close.

Teeth first.

A grin. Too wide and white, wrong, hanging in the blue-black dark about thirty feet down the corridor. Human teeth in a human smile except there are too many of them and the smile is too wide. It's not attached to anything you can see, either. Just the grin, suspended, luminous. The way a Cheshire cat would look if the Cheshire cat wanted to kill you.

It doesn't move. You don't breathe.

Then it's twenty feet away.

You didn't see it move. You didn't blink. Not once. It was thirty feet and now it's twenty and the grin hasn't changed, not even slightly. The same frozen rictus of delight, and you understand with a sick, cold certainty that it's not walking toward you. It's just... closer. Like the distance between you is a thing it can edit. A number it can change at will.

Fifteen feet. The grin widens. You didn't think it could widen.

You can see more of it now, or rather you can see the shape of more of it. The suggestion of a body behind the smile, darker than the dark around it, a silhouette that doesn't quite hold its edges. And the sound. There's a sound now, low and wet, like someone trying to laugh through a mouthful of something thick. A gurgling, hitching, delighted sound.

It's happy to see you. Whatever this thing is, it's so, so happy that you're here.

Ten feet. You can feel the cold coming off it. Not temperature, exactly, something else. An absence. A pulling. Like it's drawing the warmth out of the air between you one degree at a time and feeding the grin with it.

You open your mouth to scream and nothing comes out.

"Close your eyes."

The voice comes from directly behind you.

You didn't hear him arrive. You didn't hear footsteps or breathing or the rustle of fabric. He's just there, the way he's always just there. His hand closes over your eyes from behind, firm, warm, his palm flush against your face, fingers curving over your brow.

"Close them. Keep them closed. Don't open them until I tell you to."

Better Bobby's voice is calm. Completely, impossibly calm. The same tone he uses when he's telling you to go back to sleep after the lights flicker. But underneath it—deep underneath, in a register you feel more than hear—there's something else now. An edge that doesn't sound like Bobby at all.

His hand lifts off your eyes. You keep them shut. You squeeze them so tight you see colours behind your lids. Bright, bursting phosphenes, and you press your face into your knees and you hear him move away from you. Toward it.

Then the sounds start.

You can't categorise them. You won't.

There's a tearing sound. Not fabric, or paper; something denser, wetter, something with resistance. A sound like a dog shaking water from its fur except heavier and it ends in a crack that reverberates through the concrete floor and up through your spine.

The gurgling laughter changes pitch. Goes higher. Then higher still. Then it's not laughter anymore, it's something between a shriek and a frequency. A sound that vibrates in the roots of your teeth, and underneath all of it is a low rumbling that you realise is coming from Better Bobby. A sound no human throat should make, a sound like tectonic plates grinding in the dark.

There's a splash. Something hisses, like water on a hot pan. The shrieking cuts out—not fades, cuts, abruptly, like someone hit a switch—and then there's a long, wet, dragging sound that moves away from you down the corridor and fades into the pipes and the dark.

Silence.

There's a ringing in your ears. Your fingers feel numb, heavy. You're biting the inside of your cheek so hard you can taste blood in your mouth.

Footsteps. Normal ones. The soft pad of sneakers on concrete.

"Okay, baby. You can open your eyes now."

You do. Better Bobby is standing in front of you, looking down at you with that soft, tilted expression. Same white tee. Same denim shorts. Trusty camera over his shoulder. Not a drop of anything on him. Not a wrinkle. His hair isn't even mussed any more than usual. His earring catches the faint blue light and throws a tiny star onto the concrete wall and he's smiling at you, gently, like you just had a bad dream and he's here to tell you it's morning.

There's nothing in the hallway behind him. Nothing on the floor. No sign that anything was ever there at all, except a faint smell. Ozone, copper and deeper beneath that, an almost rotten stench. You try to examine it but it's already fading.

You don't ask. You can't ask.

Your body moves before your brain does. You launch yourself off the floor and into him so hard he actually rocks back a step. Better Bobby, who's never been moved by anything in your presence, who stands in front of horrors like a wall moves this time. Your arms lock around his neck and you bury your face in his chest.

You're shaking. So violently that it's almost convulsive, these full-body tremors that you can't control, and the sound coming out of you isn't crying exactly. It's more animal than that, a high keening thing that you'd be embarrassed about if you had any room left for embarrassment but you don't, you used it all up being terrified.

Better Bobby catches you. He doesn't stumble again. His arms come around you and they're solid and warm. He holds you so tight that the shaking has nowhere to go, like he's absorbing it into himself, and one hand cradles the back of your head, pressing your ear against his chest. His heartbeat is steady, steady, so steady, and how is he so steady, how is he always so steady—

"Shhh. I got you. I'm here. It's gone."

You can't stop. You're gripping his shirt in both fists, knuckles blanching, and you're gasping against his collarbone and he just...

He holds you. Doesn't rush it. Or tell you you're okay or that it wasn't that bad or any of the things real Bobby would say in later months to make you feel silly for being scared. He just holds on and rocks you, the smallest movement, his cheek resting on top of your head.

"You're safe, baby. Nothing touches you. I promise. Nothing ever touches you."

Your voice comes out cracked and ruined. "What—what was that, what did you— how did you—"

He hums gently. "Don't worry about it."

"Bobby, that thing, it was—its face, it was smiling, it was—"

"I know." He pulls back just enough to look at you. Tips your chin up with his knuckle. That lazy smile, easy and warm and so perfectly Bobby it makes your chest splinter. "I know what it was. It's gone now. Don't worry about it."

"How did you get rid of it?" you rasp.

His thumb strokes your jawline. "Does it matter?"

"Yes."

He looks at you. For a moment something flickers behind his eyes. Something vast and patient and very, very old. Then it's gone, and he's just Bobby again, warm-eyed and soft-mouthed, tucking your hair behind your ear.

"I told you, baby. Nothing gets past me." He kisses your forehead. Slow. Gentle. His lips are warm and the concrete corridor is freezing around you. You lean into him like he's the last source of heat in the world. "Come on. Let's go home."

He takes your hand.

You let him lead you.

He leads you back through the concrete and the pipes and the blue-dark, his thumb rubbing circles on your knuckles, and you don't look behind you.

Not even once. Because whatever he did in that corridor is something you have decided you don't need to see the aftermath of, and also because some part of you—the part that still thinks clearly, the part that Better Bobby hasn't quite reached yet—understands that there is no aftermath.

That whatever Better Bobby does to the things in the dark, he does it completely. He doesn't leave evidence. He doesn't leave remains. He unmakes them, and he does it wearing Bobby's crooked smile, Bobby's silver earring and Bobby's cut-off shorts like a costume. Like a skin, like a love letter written in someone else's handwriting.

The concrete gives way to carpet. Just as abruptly. The blue darkens to yellow again. The cold lifts. The hum returns, and for the first time ever you're grateful for it. The way you'd be grateful for the sound of traffic outside your apartment window because it means you're back in the world, or at least, back in the only world you have left.

Your room. The warm patch. The blankets.

Better Bobby guides you down, wrapping the blankets snug around you. He tucks himself behind you and you press back into his chest, his arm winding around your waist. You're still shaking faintly, these little aftershock tremors, and he absorbs every single one.

"Sleep, baby. I'm right here."

And you close your eyes and you think about real Bobby.

You think about the apartment in Santa Clara. The kitchen counter where he used to roll joints with the window open because you didn't like the smell building up inside. The way his camera equipment colonised every flat surface, cables and lenses and that one light diffuser he was so particular about. You used to complain it and he used to say babe, genius needs room to breathe and you'd throw a dish towel at his head while smothering a grin.

You think about the night you fell in love with him. Not the day you realised it (you'd known for a while by then) but the night it actually happened.

You sitting on the hood of his car in a parking lot off El Camino Real, sharing a joint, and he'd turned to you with the camera for once not in his hands and said, so disarmingly, you're the most wonderful girl I've ever met, and his face looked stripped of its usual cockiness. Bare. Scared. Young.

He was so young. You both were.

You wonder if he's sitting in that apartment right now with the TV on and the lights off, not really watching, just existing in the space you used to fill.

You wonder if he's looked at your toothbrush in the holder next to his. If he's opened the fridge and seen the leftovers you made two nights before you vanished (was it two nights? you're losing track of the real timeline, it's blurring at the edges, and that scares you more than the grin in the dark) and whether he ate them or whether they're still sitting there. Slowly going bad, a small decomposition that mirrors something larger in your life.

You wonder if he's picked up his pager. Scrolled to your name. Stared at it.

You wonder if his thumb hovered over the button the way it used to hover over the shutter release—that perfect hesitation, that half-second of do I or don't I—and whether he pressed it or whether he set the pager down and rolled over. Told himself he'd deal with it tomorrow the way he's been telling himself he'd deal with you tomorrow for months now.

You wonder if somewhere under the indifference and the exhaustion and the slow-growing cruelty there is still a version of Bobby who filmed you sleeping because the light was good. Who cut a Metallica shirt into a crop top with kitchen scissors and held it up like a trophy. Who said hold still, the light's doing something crazy on you and meant I love you, you're beautiful and couldn't say it any other way.

You wonder if that Bobby still misses you.

You wonder if he'd ever come looking.

Better Bobby pulls you closer. His mouth finds the spot behind your ear. The one real Bobby discovered during your second date together. The one that makes everything go quiet inside your skull.

"You're thinking again," he murmurs.

"I know."

"About him."

You don't answer. You don't have to.

Better Bobby is quiet for a long time. His breathing is slow and even against your back. The lights hum their tuneless hymn in your ears. Somewhere deep in the walls, something moves again, and you tense at the scraping sound.

Better Bobby's arm tightens around you. A reflex, instant, protective, the one thing about him that never feels performed.

"He's not coming, baby," he says softly. He doesn't say it meanly this time, either. Not triumphant. More so sad. Almost like he wishes it weren't true, for your sake. Because even this thing that wears Bobby's face and unmakes grinning horrors in the dark doesn't want to watch you grieve. "You know that."

You close your eyes.

You do know. Maybe you've known for a while now.

Maybe that's why you stay.

[the-darklings]

OKAY WAIT YOURE THE RIGHT PERSON I HAVE TO TELL THIS TO: Coraline AU x Backrooms AU for Bobby Franklin x reader

Okay so Bobby and reader are together but he’s grown brasher, ruder and arrogant these past few months. Long story short, he’s grown tired of you and he treats you like shit. But he hasn’t really broken it off yet. He can’t bring himself to. He’s grown used to you and he doesn’t wanna go through the whole process of breaking up and moving out and whatever whatever. And you love him too much to do anything, so you just deal with it. Hoping that one day he’ll be how he used to when you first got together.

So one night at the store when you’re pulling a night shift alone, (Bobby had left early, he wasn’t gonna stay and do night shift with you asshole) you hear thumps coming from the lower level. You’re scared but you grab a hardware knife and keep it close as you quietly go down to explore the noise.

Once you reach the extra storage level, you hear it: Bobby’s voice calling from inside the wall. At first you’re convinced that you’ve gone crazy. But no, it’s him. And he’s gently luring you in, “babe, I can see you. gosh you look so cute with that scared look on your face. come here.” You look around in confusion, but a tiny thump from behind the wall grabs your attention. “Yes. Here. C’mere babe.”

You stop in front of the wall. And when you lean in close to press your ear against the wall, poof you stumble into the room and fall on your ass. Your head spins as you blink awake, and immediately you’re hit with ugly neon yellow wallpaper. You look around the room before your gaze locks on … Bobby?

You freeze in surprise. There he is, same white shirt and denim shorts, same camera dangled over his shoulder, and a sickeningly charming smile on his face that you haven’t seen since the beginning of your relationship. Something isn’t right. He doesn’t smile at you like that anymore.

But before you can say anything, he’s walking closer to you until he’s gently cupping your face in his hands. “Hello babe, missed you. You are NOT going to believe this place!” Slowly, with an arm draped over your shoulders, he’s guiding you further and further away from that spot on the wall that you came in here from. You look around. Something makes your stomach churn with unease. It’s yellow everywhere, hallways everywhere. Yet ‘Bobby’ seems to know this place like the back of his hand.

When you finally snap and ask him who he is, he simply smiles that sickening smile again before cupping your cheeks and pressing a tender kiss on your lips. “It’s me, Bobby. Better Bobby.”

Now he just has to convince you to never leave him again. To never go back the ‘other Bobby’. To a dull life where ‘other Bobby’ can’t love you as best as he can. That he’ll never neglect you like ‘other Bobby’ that he can be better. That the only condition is that you stay in here with him forever.

[part 2]

The thing that makes Better Bobby so dangerous is that he's not a bad time at all.

He's not some obvious monster wearing Bobby's face wrong. He doesn't glitch. He doesn't flicker. He's warm. He's present in a way real Bobby hasn't been in months. Maybe longer, if you're honest with yourself, and Better Bobby makes you honest because he makes you feel safe enough to be.

The first few days—hours? time is slippery here, the fluorescent lights don't change and there are no windows and Better Bobby just shrugs when you ask how long you've been here, says does it matter, baby? and the worst part is you can't think of a good reason why it does.

The first stretch of time is almost easy. Dangerously, seductively easy.

He finds rooms for you. Not just any rooms, the good ones. Quiet ones, with carpet instead of that damp yellow tile, where the humming of the lights isn't quite so loud.

He sets up a little nest of blankets he found god-knows-where and pulls you into his chest and plays with your hair and talks to you in that low, lazy voice. The one real Bobby used to use on Sunday mornings when neither of you had anywhere to be. He asks you questions about your day. Your day. When's the last time real Bobby did that? When's the last time real Bobby looked at you while you were talking instead of at his pager or through the viewfinder or at literally anything else?

Better Bobby looks at you like you're the only thing in the room. Which, technically, you are. But still.

And he keeps you safe. That's the part that really gets its hooks in.

Because the Backrooms aren't empty. You learn that fast. There are sounds in the deeper hallways, wet dragging things, clicking, something that might be breathing if breathing sounded like it was coming from a throat that was never designed for air.

The first time you hear it (really hear it, close, too close) you freeze, and Better Bobby is already moving. He steps in front of you. Puts his body between you and the sound without hesitation, without even breaking his sentence, one arm reaching back to keep you behind him. His hand finds your wrist and holds it. Firm. Certain.

"Stay behind me, baby. I got you."

And he does. He always does.

He knows which hallways to avoid, which doors not to open, what corners to take wide. He navigates this place like it's his, and maybe it is, and you try not to think about what that means.

When something skitters in the walls at night (at what passes for night, when he dims the lights in whatever room he's chosen and curls around you like a barricade) he doesn't flinch. Just pulls you closer, mouth against your temple, murmuring you're okay, I'm here, nothing's getting past me. And nothing does.

Real Bobby wouldn't even stay for a night shift.

That thought makes your chest hurt every time. You try to push it away but Better Bobby's already noticed the expression on your face. He notices everything, because he's always watching you with that soft, focused attention that reminds you of how real Bobby used to be behind the camera. Seeing things before they happen. Anticipating you.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Liar." But he says it gently. Kisses your forehead. Doesn't push.

And you start asking questions. Carefully at first, then less so.

How did you get here?

"Same way you did, baby. Found a way in."

But when? How long have you been here?

"Long enough to know how to keep you safe. Isn't that what matters?"

That's not an answer.

"Sure it is." That smile. The one that used to make your chest ache when real Bobby aimed it at you across a room. "You're just not hearing what you want to hear. Ask me something else."

What are you?

"Bobby."

You're not Bobby.

"I'm Better Bobby." He says it like it's obvious, like you're being a little slow, and there's even a flash of that real-Bobby sharpness in it, that dry teasing edge, and it's so perfectly him that it makes your throat close. "I'm the one who stays, baby. That's all you need to know."

But where did you come from?

"Where did you come from? Where does anyone come from?" He tilts his head at you the way real Bobby does (did) when you said something he found cute. "You're going in circles, you know that?"

And you are. That's the thing. Every question leads back to the same place: I'm here, I love you, stay. It's a closed loop. A hallway that turns and turns yet looks different at every corner but deposits you right back where you started, standing in front of Better Bobby while he smiles at you like you're the whole world.

The architecture of this place and the architecture of his answers are the same. Endless. Repeating. Warm enough that you stop noticing you're already lost.

Because he does love you. Or whatever he does, it's close enough that it feels the same in the dark when he's holding you and the things in the walls are quiet, his heartbeat steady under your ear. It feels like love. It fits in all the spaces where love used to be. And he never gets tired of you. Never rolls over with his back to you. Never sighs when you walk into the room like your presence is a weight he didn't ask to carry.

He carries you willingly. Happily. Endlessly.

And somewhere above you, somewhere beyond the yellow and the hum, real Bobby is probably just now noticing your side of the bed is cold. Probably just now checking his pager. Probably frowning, not out of worry but out of inconvenience. Because your absence is a disruption to his routine and not a hole in his chest. Or is it?

Better Bobby presses his lips to your hair. "You're thinking about him again."

You don't answer.

"He's not coming for you." It's not cruel, the way he says it. It's gentle. It's the gentlest thing anyone's said to you in months. "You know that, right? Baby, look at him. You know he's not coming."

And the worst part (the part that keeps you here, that makes you curl into Better Bobby's chest and close your eyes and let the yellow blur behind your eyelids) is that he might be right.

[the-darklings]

𓈒 ˳ ˳ 𝐁𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐁𝐎𝐁𝐁𝐘 𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓.

Bobby's been a shit boyfriend for months. When you disappear through a wall in the basement of Clark's furniture store, you wake up in the Backrooms, where a better version of Bobby is waiting. One who actually shows up, one who loves you, one who never, ever wants to let you go.

bobby franklin x f!reader x entity!bobby

cw: emotional neglect, psychological horror, backroom entities/lore, implied creature violence, emotional manipulation by non-human entity, alcohol abuse (secondary character), grief/loss, verbal arguments (no physical violence), angst.

𓈒 asks/mini concepts 𓈒 𓈒 𓈒 playlist

‽ part one / concept. ‽ part two. ‽ part three. ⸘ interlude: entity 0 ‽ part four.

extras:

҉　- main story canon compliant piece.

Ꮺ୧ making out w/ better bobby. Ꮺ୧ better you! ҉　 Ꮺ୧ "baby." ҉　 Ꮺ୧ "open your mouth." Ꮺ୧ pillow fort. Ꮺ୧ in the beginning. ҉　 Ꮺ୧ my, what long tongue you have. Ꮺ୧ sunlight. ҉　 Ꮺ୧ slow dancing. ҉　 Ꮺ୧ rib time. Ꮺ୧ conceiving w/ bb. Ꮺ୧ bb watching you w/ bobby. ҉　 Ꮺ୧ intimacy hdcs w/ BB. Ꮺ୧ memories. ҉　 Ꮺ୧ cuteness aggression. Ꮺ୧ twins au. Ꮺ୧ mr. kitty. ҉　

⎋ M.E.G. ENTITY 0 — RESEARCH FILE INDEX:

↹ MEG-ENT-0000-ADDM-██ — Restricted Addendum: Reproductive Capability Assessment (Filed Under Protest)

[ratgirl300]

wait hear me out.. maekar feeling insecure for a moment + mirror sex to cheer him up YUPPP

A Vision in the Mirror

18+ MDNI

Maekar Targaryen x f!Reader

Summary: After a less than satisfactory hunt, Maekar needs his sweet wife to cheer him up.

AN: Is anyone else wet in here? Foaming at the mouth at this idea y'all know I love making him insecure lol. Hope you enjoy it! <3

Warnings: Smut, hunting, insecurity, some violence, fem reader

4.4k Words

Maekar should have known a hunt was a bad idea.

None of his boys were really any good at the sport. Daeron prone to slipping from his horse, Aerion all talk and no brain, and Aegon bringing up the rear, stopping to sniff flowers and chase rabbits. The older Prince already felt a headache coming on, the children’s squabbling bringing a grimace to his face. 

All day it had been a back and forth between the sons; who should ride in front, who was the better shot. At one point Aerion tried to knock his youngest brother from his horse, causing the party to stop temporarily for a good long lecture about Targaryen propriety. Maekar rubbed a hand down his face as a light rain pattered around them. He reminisced on the years where a hunt would have been nothing but a chance to show off. Young and strapping, he’d ride ahead, taking down his prey with the same ruthless efficiency he used on the battlefield. It had brung him great pleasure to win; the victory being a chance to prove himself to the older boys around him. 

Nowadays, the ache in his back after a long day sitting at council, the crick in his neck if he slept strangely, his knee acting up when the air drew cold, were stark reminders of skills lost to time. Sure he was still a formidable fighter, besting squires and knights alike in the training yard and swinging a mace with the power of a man far younger, but he felt the edges of himself soften. His body, once hard and rippling with muscle, had eased some over the years. He was not as quick as he once was, nor did he have the same all-consuming drive to violence he now saw in none but his second son.   

Maekar knew you liked the gentler side of him. 

The bit of his heart that deep down yearned for the comfort of your arms. Which needed so badly to have you pressed against him, lips on your skin and hands in his hair. He’d fought against you, tooth and nail, for so long when you first wed. keeping you at arms length and refusing to take you to his bed. Certainly a lovely young lady like you wasn't

 interested in an aging prince, why force you to participate in what was surely a slight on your honor? 

As time passed, you’d wiggled your way into his heart, weaved yourself into his and his children’s lives until he could not remember why he’d been against the marriage in the first place. 

He thought of you as he rode behind his sons, absentmindedly picturing the lovely gown you were probably wearing, and the way said glow clung to your figure. He’d taken the boys out before dawn, leaving you reluctantly in bed with a kiss pressed to your brow and a promise of a swift return. So far there'd been nothing to show for it but damp cloaks and a poor attitudes.  

Maekar pictured you at the gates when they returned. You certainly had better things to do than wait around for your husband, but it eased him a little to think that you might miss him when he was gone. He planned to jump from his horse, take you in his arms, and kiss you there on the steps of Summerhall, decorum be damned. He almost smiled at the look of confusion and disgust that would surely grace the faces of his children at their father’s blatant affections. Perhaps he would even have a kill to present to you. Something with a lovely pelt you could fashion for the coming winter. A chance to prove himself, to provide for you, had him sitting up straighter in his saddle and casting his eyes across the gloomy forest. He could take down a stag or a boar, something hearty and impressive, it certainly would show he’d not lost his touch. 

Maekar had all but decided that he’d ride ahead like he did in his youth when a shout rang out in the wood.

“Come now, I have done it!” 

It was Aerion’s voice, sharp and clear. The older Prince scowled as he spurred his horse forward, joining the group surrounding the victor. 

Aerion was on the ground now, proudly standing above a fallen elk. The beast was enormous, a deep brown coat and arching antlers distinguishing the creature. A strange feeling overtook Maekar at the sight of his son- and the rather impressive kill. For the first time in a long time, the boy’s smile held no sign of smugness or cruelty, only the unbridled joy of someone who wanted to impress their father. 

Maekar tried to hide his grimace as he dismounted, awkwardly patting his son on the shoulder as he took in the fallen animal. He had to admit, it was a perfect shot. The arrow had pierced the elk through the eye, so quick he certainly hadn’t felt the pain. 

“Good, it’s- it's good.” 

He wasn’t sure what to say, but he was sure it wasn’t that. Aerion nodded, so gleeful he hadn’t quite caught on to the older Prince’s words. 

“Soon I’ll be beating you in the yard as well, father.” 

The words were, for once, meant to be harmless. An admission of a dream from a boy who looked up to him. Maekar’s eyes widened, giving a jerking nod before calling for men to prepare the elk for travel.

The hunt was over. 

The ride back to Summerhall had been uncomfortable for everyone- except maybe Aerion, still riding the high of his victory. 

Maekar took up the rear of the party, insisting he was only keeping an eye on his children. In reality, the gloominess surrounding him seeped into the other boys; Daeron was halfway to a drunken stupor, and poor Egg could do nothing but sit quietly and try to avoid conversation. 

How could he have let an elk, an animal of no small size, slip from his sight before he could take it down? He stewed in his anger, the mere thought of losing the edge he’d spent so long sharpening made the grip on his reins turn white. How foolish it was, to be upset at a son accomplishing something most grown men could not. He should have felt proud- and he did, truely- but there was also the creeping hand of jealousy, climbing up the Anvil’s spine. He was impressed. Aerion clearly listened and learned from the extensive lessons he’d tried to bestow on all of his children, and now it meant that he was no longer the only powerful blonde in the family.   

As the party cleared the gates, Maekar saw what he’d been dreaming of since leaving so early that morning. You were there on the steps, a soft gown of pinkish red flowing around your legs and a smile so bright it almost made up for the rainy afternoon. He dismounted in the courtyard, and watched as you quickly moved down to join them. You lifted your skirts as you descended the stairs, and Maekar had to look away at the glimpse of your ankles. Fiddling with his bridle, he did not turn as you approached. He felt you before he saw you, soft fingers running across the tips of his hair.

“Dear husband, tell me, how was your sport? You’re looking a little damp.” 

He could hear the jest in your voice, and any other day, his lip may have quirked up at the sound, but now he could only look down his long nose at you with a barely restrained glower. Your eyes widened at the expression, confusion evident on your lovely features. 

Maekar’s head snapped away from you when he felt a tug on the reins. A stableboy, not much older than Aegon, was attempting to guide the warhorse out of the courtyard- much to the chagrin of both the horse and her rider. 

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” 

Commotion stopped as the Prince’s voice rang out, hard and rough. The boy looked like he’d rather be anywhere else at the moment. He dropped the reins, falling into a deep bow. 

“Forgive me, my Prince. I was- well I was trying to- begging your pardon-” His small voice wavered under Maekar’s harsh glare. The older man was breathing heavily, chest heaving under his leather and fists clenched. You stepped in, a hand on your husband’s shoulder and a soft smile for the boy. 

“It is alright, he meant no slight by it, only doing what he’s told.” 

Instantly, Maekar felt slightly calmer at the sound of your voice. He let the leather fall from his grip, though his glare did not waver as the small boy led the beast away as quickly as he could. You were already looking at him when he turned back to you, a grin on your face as you moved closer, raising up on your toes and bracing your hands on his chest for the kiss you he was hoping for. 

Maekar leaned forward, tension seeping from his body with the promise of your lips, when he was interrupted again.

“My dearest stepmother, look at what I’ve brought for you.” Aerion’s voice cut the Prince like a knife. He looked so pleased as he presented for you, bowing low and showing off the remarkable feat. You politely applauded him, complimenting his skill and thanking him for his gesture. It took everything in Maekar not to grab his boy by the collar and ask him just what he thought he was doing. He knew Aerion was only proud of himself, just as he knew, as the younger Prince did, that you would give him the praise he wished for. 

How could I, Maekar thought, in the midst of my son’s first victory in the hunt, want my wife’s kindness to myself? He’d convinced himself he’d failed Daeron, allowing him to spiral so far into drink and sorrow. This could be a step in the right direction for all his sons, so why did he still feel so blind with rage? Why could he not pat his boy on the back and tell him he was proud, that it was good of him to treat his stepmother so kindly? 

Aegon had now joined them, the youngest recounting the shot in dramatic detail, Aerion butting in to give his own commentary. Maekar felt a pang in his heart at the sight; his boys, surrounding the woman he loved, his own little family. Why could he not join them? Egg held tight to your hand as he tried to pull your attention from his older brother, the two of them beginning to bicker at the inconsistency of the stories. You calmly stepped in, attempting to bring them both down but only adding another voice to the argument. 

Maekar’s head was swimming, a ringing in his ears that made him feel like the courtyard was spinning. It was almost too much to bear.

“Enough, all of you, silence.” He all but shouted. The three of you stopped, turning to him as the breath left his body in short bursts. Immediately, regret set in deep. Aerion’s face fell, in the way of a child so desperately clinging for a parent’s attention. Aegon’s lip wobbled, face scrunched at his father’s scolding. Your brows drew together, a hand rubbing the youngest boy’s back as you glared up at your husband. Maekar felt the heat climbing up his neck, burning his ears and flaming his cheeks. 

Briskly, the older Prince turned on his heel, storming away before he caused any more grief to his family. 

 The door swinging open did not surprise Maekar in the least. He’d known, from the second he’d fled, that you would soon follow, determined to get to the bottom of his immature behavior. He turned from the fire and braced himself for the words he knew were coming. 

“Would you like to explain why you’re acting like a child?” 

Maekar sighed, how could he tell you how embarrassed he was? You gestured for him to talk, bringing your hands up in question and tilting your head. “It was… a difficult morning.” He finally replied. 

“A difficult morning, that’s all you have to say for yourself?” 

“And what am I supposed to say?” Maekar bit out, “That I was outperformed by a teenager? That my own son bested me in a sport I taught him?” 

You stepped closer to him, a hand on his shoulder. It grounded him, just a little, as you thought of what to say.

“Maekar, my love, you cannot think Aerion taking down that elk was anything but a compliment to you, and all the hard work you’ve put into training that boy. He looks up to you, I think you upset him.” Your voice was a little softer now, squeezing his shoulder and looking up at him in a way that made Maekar’s heart break. He was fully aware that you were correct, that he should be proud of the young man his son was becoming. He squeezed his eyes tightly and shook his head. 

“I did not mean to slight him.” 

“I’m sure not, but the hurt is still there.”  

Maekar nodded, taking your hands in his and bringing your knuckles to his lips. 

“You will apologize to him, then?” You asked softly.

Your Prince nodded slowly.

“I will tell him he performed well.” 

“You will tell him how proud he’s made you today.” 

Maekar grunted, a grumbled hum leaving his mouth. You smiled softly.

“Darling, you are proud of him, I can see it on your face.” 

“Very well then, woman.” 

You pressed up on your toes, kissing his jaw softly before taking his face in your hands. 

“Why are you fighting, my love? What is troubling you? Tell me, please.” 

“It is nothing.” He cut in, answering quickly. 

You gave him a look.

“Maekar, I can see something hurting you, let me help.” 

“Aren’t you disappointed you’ve been given to a man who’s gone soft?” 

You laughed, almost in disbelief, before realizing he was being serious. 

“I certainly wouldn’t call you soft, husband. Where would you even get that notion?” 

He turned his head from you, fingers brushing against your hips as he struggled with how to answer. 

“There was a time no man in the Realm could best me.”

Oh. 

Realization began to dawn on your features. Maekar continued, voice low. 

“I was never the clever brother, or the one who could charm a room full of noblemen. I certainly wasn’t the one maidens fawned over.” The grip on your hips tightened, “But once, with a spear in my hand, I was second to none.” 

Your face softened at his admission. You rubbed a hand over his chest, pressing your fingertips over his heart and feeling the rapid beat, betraying his hardened demeanor. 

“My love, you and I both know you are more than capable of the same power you had in your youth. I have seen it, you have nothing to fret over.” 

He shook his head.

“You weren’t there today. I should’ve seen it, the man I once was would never have let a kill escape. I have weakened, my dear girl, grown soft.” He pressed his forehead against yours, “It is my duty to keep you safe, to keep our children safe. How can you accept me as a husband worthy of you, worthy of protecting our family, if I cannot succeed in a fucking hunt? What if something happened, if someone tried to hurt you?”

Maekar spat the last words out, gritting his teeth like the very thought pained him. You thought for a moment, contemplating his words before you pressed a kiss to his chin. 

“Come here, husband.” 

You stepped back, taking his hand in yours and slowly pulling him deeper into the room. He followed you, he would always follow you, as you stopped before the great, bronze-cast mirror. 

“What are you-” 

“Hush now, dearest.” Lavender eyes followed you as you reached up and unclipped his cloak. The thick velvet fell to the floor, and was soon preceded by his leather doublet. He took your hands, stilling your movement. 

“You do not need to try and ease my spirits, woman.” 

“I only wish for you to see you as I do, the man I love.” 

A shiver cut through him as you freed your hands, tugging his linen shirt out from his trousers and running your nails up though the hair in his stomach. The fabric came up over his head, baring his chest to the mirror. 

You bit your lip, eying him up and down and rubbing your hands up his chest. He scoffed, rolling his eyes and crossing his arms. 

“You look ridiculous, little lady, mooning over an old man.” 

The words were sharp, but the deep red around his neck and over his ears betrayed his true feelings. You gripped his hips, pressing kisses between his pecs and rubbing your nose against the silver hair. 

“You’re so big, so strong. Know, my dearest, that I always feel safe with you near.” 

A low groan escaped him as you grabbed the front of his trousers. You looked up at him expectantly. 

“I don’t deserve you, my darling wife.” Maekar grumbled, stroking your cheek with his fingertips. You kept your eyes on his as you unlaced him. Suddenly, he was naked before you, scarred and pale, reflecting back at him. He turned his head away. You walked around him, pressing yourself to his back and sliding your arms around his thick waist. You were warm against him, a lifeline in his troubled mind. 

“I want you to watch, handsome man, look at yourself as I touch you.” Your voice was soft as you mumbled against his spine, kissing up the flesh of his back. Maekar reluctantly listened, forcing his eyes back to the vision before him. His cock was ridged, angry and hot against his stomach. A shudder ripped through him as your hands slid down his front, pressing fingers into the soft flesh before you wrapped a fist around the base of his length. 

“Fuck, woman.” He groaned out, hands clenched at his sides. You stroked down the length of him agonizingly slow, squeezing the girth and rubbing a thumb across the dribbling tip. Your other hand gripped his hip, keeping him flush against you. 

“You’re so good to me, husband. Always thinking of me. My strong man.” 

He moaned at the praise, a whimper leaving his lips at your sweet words. The softness of your palm caressed him, a firm grip pulling him towards the edge. A guttural sound fell from his mouth when your free hand came down to cup his sac, gently fondling him. 

“Look at you, so lovely.” 

Maekar’s flesh was flushed rosy, a sheen of sweat glistening in the candlelight. Muscles taught, shoulders broad and square, no longer the angry boy of his youth, but a man grown. His stomach clenched, nearing the overwhelming precipice as you touched him. 

 And then your hands stilled. 

The Prince growled:

“Have you lost yourself?” 

He felt you giggling against his back. “I’m not done with you yet, old man.” 

Your teeth bit into him playfully, scraping at the muscles of his back before you walked around to stand before him again. His brows furrowed, cheeks red and chest heaving. The smirk you gave him made his cock throb. 

“Help me out of this, then.” You said, turning your back to him and gesturing to the laces of your gown. Immediately, Maekar surged forward, lips pressed to your hair as he tugged on your ties. You laughed softly as he dragged the fabric from your body, letting it fall alongside his own clothing before gripping the neckline of your shift. The cotton tore like tissue, splitting down the middle as he ripped it from your body. A gasp left you. “Maekar, I liked that!” 

“I thought you liked me strong?” He grumbled, pressing kisses against the side of your head before continuing down your neck. His hands reached around you; gripping your breasts, sliding over the curve of your stomach, pulling your hips against him. 

You wiggled around, turning back to him and pulling his face down to kiss him proper. Arms came round his shoulders, gripping the muscles to bring him closer. He held you firmly to his chest, an arm banded around your back as he fondled your bottom with his other hand. 

“Mmm darling, you’re so hard for me. big, hard man.” You teased against his lips. He growled, slipping his tongue into your mouth when it opened. Quickly, you pulled away from him again, kissing down his neck and chest before stepping out of his arms. 

Maekar tried to pull you back, chasing your lips to kiss you again. 

You grinned at him, grabbing his shoulders and pressing downward.

“No husband, on your knees now.” 

The Prince’s breath caught in his throat. 

Slowly, he sank down, knees hitting the scattering of clothing before the mirror. Your hands found his hair, scratching his head and running your fingers through his beard. He gripped your hips, turning his head to kiss against your palm and wrist. You joined him on the ground, a quick peck to his mouth before you spoke:

“I want you to watch how well you please me.” 

Maekar heard the waver in your voice as you turned, hands bracing on the floor in front of you as you leaned forward and presented yourself to him. 

You were wet.

Slickness coated the insides of your thighs, gooey heat glistening on your folds. Had the sight of him in the mirror brought you to this? He groaned at the sight of you giving yourself to him. Large hands found your bottom, squeezing the flesh and gripping your hips. He ran his knuckles up your spine, gently stroking your hair and pulling it away to expose your back. 

You shivered.

“Maekar, please. Take me, I’m yours.” 

Who was he to say no to his lady love?

Maekar took himself in hand, rubbing the achy tip of his cock through your wetness. You let out a choked groan as he lubed himself on your own arousal. 

“Gods woman, how good you feel.”

The thick of him notched at your opening. You met his lavender eyes in the mirror as you pressed your pelvis back against him, sheathing his cock in your core. He moaned, grabbing at your hips and pulling you until he was fully inside. His eyes cut down to where you joined, your puffy cunt stretched tight around him. 

A roll of his hips had your back arching, a shout leaving you. It was all the encouragement he needed, pulling out to the tip before thrusting back flush against your ass. His eyes rolled back at the sight of your flesh jiggling at the force. He set a hard pace, holding you firmly as he bullied his cock into your cunt. 

Your eyes were blown wide, mouth open as he pounded you. Maekar slid an arm around your waist, pulling you up against his chest to expose you fully. The new angle made you shout his name, hand grabbing at the back of his neck to steady yourself. 

“My lovely girl. My beautiful, beautiful girl.” He groaned against the shell of your ear as he kissed at your neck. Your knees shook, and you leaned against him as your strength weaned. His hand gripped one of your bouncing breasts, squeezing the flesh and rubbing your nipple. You whined for him, begging nonsense. 

A vision, you were, reflected in the mirror. He couldn’t deny he felt powerful; pleasing his wife, holding you close as he fucked himself into you. His arms flexed, keeping you up with your back to him. 

Maekar felt himself reaching his peak again, but grit his teeth at the thought of leaving you unsatisfied. His hand on your stomach slid further down, finding your clit and teasing at the nub. You writhed against him, arching your back as your cunt clenched around him. 

“Fuck, you take me so well. Made for me, sweet girl.” 

His voice was rough, hoarse from groaning your name against your neck. Your walls fluttered around him.  

“Give it to me, my love. Watch yourself fill your wife.” 

Maekar’s hips stuttered at the whine in your voice. His fingers moved faster, circling your sensitive clit. He’d be damned if you didn’t come on his cock. 

You quickly began clenching around him, a vicelike grip sucking him in as he pushed you over the edge. Your orgasam came with a cry. Tears peaked at the corners of your eyes as the overwhelming feeling of him, wrapped around you and buried inside. He very quickly followed, the feeling of you finishing because of him stunning his senses. Hot come splattered inside you, filling you as he continued shallowly thrusting. You sagged against his chest, pelvis wiggling at the overstimulation. He slowed his fingers, pressing against your clit as he came down from his high. 

A quiet sob left your lips, your hands grabbing at his arms to keep him close. 

“Shhh, I have you now, sweetling.” He mumbled, wet kisses pressed against your cheek. A small part of him was extremely pleased at the state you were in; hair wild, sweat-slick, a ring of sticky white spend where the two of you were joined. You were gorgeous, chest heaving as you tried to catch your breath. 

And then you smiled at him. 

A small one, a sweet grin that had him giving you one last thrust at the sight. You let out a broken shout. 

Maekar reluctantly pulled himself from you, a wet noise ringing out in the quiet room. He collapsed back, pulling you into his lap. You let him pull your spent body against him, arms coming around his neck lazily as you tucked your head against his chest. 

“You’ll come to me next time, when you feel this way, won’t you? Instead of snapping at stableboys.” 

Your voice was soft and breathy, but Maekar snorted at your ability to tease him in your current state. He pressed a kiss to your brow, before tilting your chin up to kiss your lips. 

“If this is how you’ll ease my mind, I’ll do whatever you ask.” 

It was your turn to laugh, kissing him back and biting at his bottom lip. You stroked a hand down his chest, scratching softly at the silver hair.

“I’m glad to hear how simple it is to turn your mood. You think you can go again, old man?” 

Maekar was certain he could find the strength for you.

[cintoasted]

the perfect way for maekar to make up for it. 

cw : modern au. age gap.reader is 20s and maekar is 40s, bimbo reader. old grump!maekar. insecurities. bondage. blow jobs. smut. 18+ MDNI

a/n: this series is like home for me, so glad to be back here. the end bit is like the post credit scene of the movie. as usual I haven’t proofread it yet and with how long it’s taken me to post, I’m just happy to have something out there.

recluse neighbour series

you are responsible for the content you consume. make sure to read warnings before proceeding with any of my fics

Maekar doesn’t exactly quite understand how he got himself roped into this— literally. His hands tied to the posts of the bed, leaving him completely hard and at your mercy. 

It started with you mumbling between kisses about how he still needed to make it up to you, and even after willingly offering to go down on you for the better part of the day, which Maekar would have been more than happy to do, you still didn’t seem quite happy. 

Not unhappy per say— No, Maekar knew that look, he’d just been too stuck in his own guilt to see it. The one with your eyes looking mindlessly around, and the way your ears reddened at your own thoughts. You were plotting, probably had been for the better part of the morning, scheming away about all the ways you were going to make him beg for your forgiveness. 

He shouldn’t have asked, should have just shoved himself between your thighs until you forgot about the thought all together, but Maekar wanted to make it up to you— he still does, even with his wrists shackled to the bed and his naked glory laid out for you on a plate. 

Fuck. Just looking at you crawling up between his legs has him leaking at the tip. He’s done for, he knows it, His hands are already fighting against the restraints, only you tied them pretty well. What did you work on a boat or something before? The more he seemed to struggle, the tighter the rope got, digging into his skin with a burn. 

“Be careful, old man,” you slyly sneer, crawling towards him. Your fingers splay themselves over his thighs, wrapping around before digging your nails into his skin. He tenses under your touch, and you see him ooze out his reddened tip. “So sensitive.” 

“Stop teasing me,” he growled through clenched teeth, before letting out a frustrated sigh. “Please.” 

You pout, shoving those wet lips together. “But we’ve only just begun.” 

Maekar hisses when you finally touch him, pressing that pout against his sobbing head. You giggle at his reaction, before slowly darting out your tongue just to get a taste of the salty fluids. 

You moan at the taste, licking up more of the liquids unable to stop yourself from letting your tongue swipe over his sensitive cock. It tastes good— better than before, and your eyebrows draw in as you look up at him. 

“You taste nice,” you say, like you’re questioning him. You lick out again when he opens his mouth, swiping up the remnants and letting them sit on your tongue as you watch him struggle. “Different.” 

“Pineapple juice,” he manages between a strangled breath as your hand reaches around his cock. “That's all— huh— Daeron would give me before I got here.” 

You hum, half satisfied with the answer and half wanting to see him break even more as you press your lips against him. “Did you miss me?” 

“Fuck— Yes.” 

“How much?” You ask, in a soft whiny voice. 

“So fucking much,” he huffs out, pink creeping up his neck all the way to his cheeks. 

“Missed my mouth?” You all but ask before wrapping your lips around him. 

“Yes,” he lets out in a heavy breath, eyes falling closed for a second as he loses himself in the feeling of you. “Missed it so much.” 

You hum around him, sinking your mouth over him until he’s hitting the back of your throat. You suck him, pulling yourself up before slowly going back down again until you hit an agonizingly painful rhythm. 

You can feel him tensing underneath you. You can feel the way his muscles clench and unclench as he fights the urges not to fuck himself up into you. He lasts all of two minutes before he’s shoving his cock down till it hits the back of your throat, no warning at all just the feel of his thick cock filling your mouth and the tip reaching so far back you’re unable to do anything but gag. 

You pull off immediately, lifting your head up and away from him till all he’s able to do is fuck into the air in front of him. 

His hips lift two times before he gives up, letting out the most delightful strangled whine— Oh, yes. A whine. 

“Don’t look at me like that,” he spits, pink running up his pale skin. He seems embarrassed but hugely angered by the fact you get to witness him like this, nostrils flaring and eyebrows furrowing in. 

You pout, one nail running through the coarse white hairs on his inner thighs. “I’ve barely touched you.” 

“That’s the point,” he snaps, pulling at his restraints. He only retracts backwards, falling back onto the bed with a heavy sigh. “You’re going to ruin me.” 

“And here I was thinking I already did.” 

He looks up at that, seeing your cunning smile as you crawl between his thighs again. Your hands running up his lower abs before positioning your mouth over his cock. He can feel your breaths against him, the heat from your mouth driving his over sensitive cock mad. He swears he only needs a minute in your mouth and he’ll be a goner. 

“Be a good boy and play nice,” you giggle, kissing his tip. 

You’ll regret that, he’ll be sure of it but for now he has to fight the urge to use your mouth as his personal fuck toy. 

It takes everything in him. Every ounce of strength in him to hold back from bucking his hips up into your mouth. His fingers dig into the palm of his hands till his knuckles turn white and his heels press into the feet of the bed, resisting the desire to move. 

He just wants to touch you, is that so bad? After months away from you he just wants to run his hands across your body, to play with those perfect breasts of yours until you’re huffing and puffing into his mouth about how unfair he’s being. The irony. The cruel fucking irony of it all. 

He bites down on his bottom lip when your mouth engulfs him again— bites down so hard that he knows he’ll leave a mark. Your wet mouth feels so nice over his cock, sucking tightly and hollowing those cheeks of yours around him. You can’t fit all of him in, but with the rest you use your hand, dragging the saliva dripping from your mouth over him. 

Fuck—He almost slips up when your tongue guides around his length, when you head pulls up for a momentary second to catch breath, his hips give way a little, but he manages to stop them before you notice him chasing the warmth of your mouth. It’s only a few seconds away, then your head right back down, bopping up and down over his cock. 

He wants to grab your hair, wants to fist it into a bunch in his hand and guide you over him. Slow and steady at first, before he eventually holds your head in place for him to rut inside your mouth. He’s always in control, he’s used to it —Not this. Having you take control, waiting for him to stiffen in his mouth, listening to his breaths growing shorter just so you know he’s close and you can pull off him with a giggle and sly smirk. 

He’s at his wit’s end, what might have only been ten minutes feels like an hour and he’s so overstimulated he thinks he’ll cum just from the sensation of your breath. 

Don’t ask him a single fucking question. He doesn’t know anything. Not what shirt of his you’re wearing, or what colour is the ceiling. He’s completely lost, spraying out curse words like their nothing and begging you— or maybe demanding from you— sweet mercy. 

Eventually you give in, letting him needly rut up into your mouth, screaming out “Fuck” in the lewdest grunt before spilling hot ropes of cum into your mouth. You swallow all of it as well, humming in delight at the taste as you keep your eyes attached to his, letting him watch just how much you enjoy this. 

It takes a second for him to calm down, before he falls back down on the bed, desperately trying to catch his own breath. 

“Ruined,” he mutters out, eyes barely opening. 

You crawl over him, before lying yourself on top of him. 

“Don’t ever ask me to do that again,” he tells you, his head falling into the crook of your neck. “Ever.” 

“Promise,” you whisper, before placing a chaste kiss on his shoulder. “It was fun though.” 

“No—” 

“ —I mean if you asked me sometime in the future, I wouldn’t be opposed—” 

“ —No,” he says with certainty, lifting his head till his nose is touching yours. 

He’s beautiful like this, cheeks flushed and skin damp with sweat. A bit of his hair falls in front of his face and the thick beard is something you can easily get used to. There’s parts of you that wish you told him sooner, wishes you were clearer with your feelings from the start. 

“What?”

“Just admiring you that’s all,” you answer, with a small smile. “Keep the beard, me thinks.” 

“Oh really?” He asks, raising his brows. 

“Like the way it feels on my thighs,” you tell him. 

“Untie me and you can feel it again.” 

“Or I could just leave you and sit on your face.” 

His lips fall into a firm frown, eyebrows drawing in again. 

“Or not.” 

“So who are you?” 

It’s the last question you expected to get from Maekar’s youngest son this morning, after only meeting him for a few hours the night before. 

You guess it is unusual, this random stranger showing up to his birthday party with his older brother and having awkward conversations with his father. You just thought he might not have picked up on that. 

“Because you came in yesterday with Daeron and Aerion but then you were in my father’s room last night,” Aegon continues, looking up at you from his bowl of coco pops. 

You place the mug down, letting out a little huff as you thought about how you’re going to explain to the boy you still hadn’t quite put a label on your relationship with his father. Your eyes drift to Daeron who’s nursing a bloody mary in his hands across the table— the one he swore would cure his hangover— before turning to Aerion who’s already smirking down at his own plate food waiting for your answer. 

“Well– uh—” 

“She’s my girlfriend,” Maekar intervenes, stepping out onto the patio to join you. His hand falls to your shoulder, before he takes a seat next to you. “Or partner. Just whatever we feel like calling it.” 

“But I thought you two hate each other?” Aegon questioned, eyes widening at the sight of you. 

“Hate? What on earth would make you think that?” Maekar asks. 

“The fact you guys kept screaming at each other last night.” 

Daeron snorts, tomato juice spurting out of his mouth. Aerion can barely contain himself, face turning red as he tries to hold in his laughter. 

“And she said the f word many times,” Rhae adds. 

“Fuck, you mean,” Aegon says. 

“Oi watch your language,” Maekar snaps, pointing at him. 

“You say it all the time.” 

“And you kept saying it as well last night.” 

“I’m allowed to say it. I’m a grown up.” 

“That still doesn’t excuse you from saying it to each other last night.” 

Maekar’s mouth opens again, finger pointing out as if to fight his cause but you interject first. 

“We had a lot of arguing to do last night and then like grown ups do we forgave each other for it,” you try to explain, looking across the table to the two eldest sons who seem unable to hold themselves together. “Right?” 

Maekar nods in agreement, “Of course.” 

dividers by @/chrisssiren

[non-picturesque]

It Had to Be You › 4

Modern AU! Baelor Targaryen x fem!wife!reader

( modern au!post accident. memory loss ，but he's finding his way back ，even if he has to take a different path. reader and baelor are around the same age ，plus valarr and matarys <3 )

Baelor is relearning his own life moves through the routines of a household that knows him completely; breakfast with his sons, a wife who knows him better than he does, before stepping back into the company he was a part of and discovering that the hardest part is not the work he has forgotten, but the people who haven't forgotten him.

Word Count: 9.6k

[Chapter 4/?]

For the first time since returning home for almost a month, Baelor woke before everyone else on a Friday.

The house remained wrapped in the peculiar stillness that existed only in the earliest hours of the morning. No distant conversations drifted through the hallways. No doors opened or closed somewhere on another floor. Even the staff had not yet begun moving through the house openly. Pale sunlight filtered through the curtains, softening the bedroom in muted shades of gold and silver.

For several moments, he remained where he was, staring up at the ceiling while the familiar unfamiliarity of the room settled around him.

Beside him, his wife was still asleep.

She lay turned slightly away from him, one arm tucked beneath her pillow, hair scattered across the fabric. The careful distance that had existed when they climbed into bed the night before remained unchanged, a quiet boundary neither of them seemed eager to disturb, even after weeks together. It should have felt strange sharing a bed with someone he couldn't remember marrying. Instead, the sight had become unexpectedly comforting. There was something reassuring about waking and finding her there, as though her presence had gradually become one of the constants anchoring his new reality.

Moving carefully, he slipped from beneath the blankets and crossed the room.

The adjoining dressing room illuminated automatically the moment he stepped inside. Soft recessed lights brightened overhead, revealing a space large enough to rival some of the apartments he remembered from his twenties. Dark wood cabinetry stretched along every wall. Glass-fronted wardrobes displayed rows of suits arranged with meticulous precision. Shoes occupied their own dedicated section, polished and organised by style and colour. Watches rested inside velvet-lined drawers. Ties, cufflinks, belts, and pocket squares all occupied carefully designated places.

The room felt deeply personal in a way that made him strangely self-conscious. Everything around him belonged to someone, and that someone happened to be him.

Yet it still felt as though he were walking through the possessions of a stranger.

He moved slowly between the wardrobes, fingertips brushing lightly across the hanging jackets. Navy. Charcoal. Midnight blue. Dark red. More suits than any reasonable person could ever need. Every piece was tailored. Every piece was chosen by a version of himself he couldn't remember becoming.

Eventually, his hand settled on a charcoal jacket. The fabric felt familiar beneath his fingers, even if the memory attached to it remained absent.

"You've been standing there for ten minutes."

The voice broke through his thoughts.

Baelor glanced over his shoulder. His wife had appeared in the doorway without him noticing.

Her hair remained slightly tousled from sleep, falling loosely around her shoulders. A silk robe was tied casually at her waist, and a mug of coffee rested in one hand. Without the polished composure she carried through most of the day, she looked younger somehow. More approachable. Less like the woman who managed executives and board members and more like the person who stole an extra five minutes beneath the blankets every morning.

"I have?" he asked.

"You have." Amusement lingered in her voice as she crossed the room.

She stopped beside him and offered the mug. Baelor accepted it immediately, grateful for both the coffee and the excuse to stop staring at the wardrobes. Now sharing the same mug and plate doesn’t feel like the strangest thing to do.

"I was trying to decide whether this is something I'd still wear."

As he spoke, Baelor lifted the charcoal jacket slightly from its hanger, studying it with the same concentration someone might devote to a photograph recovered from a forgotten past. The fabric was immaculate, the cut sharp without being flashy, expensive in a way that wasn't immediately obvious. It looked like the sort of suit a man would wear for years rather than a season. Yet despite holding it in his hands, he couldn't summon any feeling of ownership. It might as well have belonged to someone else.

His wife followed his gaze toward the jacket. "You would. You loved it."

The answer came so quickly that he looked up from the hanger. "Confident answer."

A smile tugged at her mouth as she took another sip of coffee. "You bought three almost identical versions."

Baelor stared at the suit for a moment longer before glancing toward the wardrobe. Now that she had said it, he could see them. Three charcoal jackets that differed so little he wasn't entirely certain he could tell them apart without looking at the labels. His gaze shifted back to her. Then to the jackets again.

"I've become boring."

The laugh that escaped her was soft and immediate, warming the quiet room.

"You've become predictable."

"And that’s supposed to be better?"

"Sort of." Her smile widened slightly as she shook her head. "It makes shopping easier."

The corner of his mouth twitched upward despite himself.

Standing there in the soft morning light, surrounded by wardrobes filled with evidence of choices he didn't remember making, he found the exchange oddly comforting. Every object in the room seemed to belong to a version of himself that existed just beyond reach. The suits, the watches, the neatly arranged drawers—all of it felt like clues left behind by a man whose life he was now expected to step back into. There were moments when that realisation felt overwhelming, moments when he caught himself wondering whether he was somehow trespassing through another person's routine.

Yet she never seemed uncertain.

She spoke about these things with the confidence of someone who had watched those choices happen in real time. Not grand milestones or life-changing decisions, but small things. Which suits he preferred. Which shirts he replaced too often. Which habits had become so familiar that she could predict them before he made them.

For a few moments, neither of them spoke. The silence felt natural as they stood together among the rows of carefully organised wardrobes while sunlight gradually crept farther across the floor. The dark wood glowed softly beneath the morning light, and reflections shimmered faintly across the glass wardrobe doors. Around them hung the physical evidence of twenty years he couldn't remember living, yet somehow the room no longer felt quite as intimidating as it had when he first stepped inside.

Perhaps it was because she was standing beside him, calmly translating pieces of his life into something he could understand. Or perhaps it was because, little by little, the stranger whose clothes filled these wardrobes was beginning to feel less like a stranger and more like someone he might eventually come to know.

Eventually, she tilted her head slightly as she watched him standing motionless in front of the wardrobes, coffee cradled between both hands, while he studied the endless row of jackets as though one of them might hold an answer. The morning light had grown stronger now, spilling farther across the dressing room and catching on polished wood, glass panels, and brushed metal fixtures. Everything looked orderly, established, lived-in. Everything belonged to a life that was apparently his, yet still felt as though he had wandered into someone else's space.

"Nervous?"

The question pulled his attention away from the wardrobe immediately.

He glanced toward her, finding her leaning lightly against one of the cabinets, her robe tied loosely at her waist, her own coffee resting comfortably in one hand. There was no teasing in her expression, no attempt to minimise what he was feeling. She had simply noticed.

Baelor lowered his gaze to the mug warming his palms and released a slow breath.

"A little."

"You'll be fine."

A faint smile touched his mouth as he shook his head. "I'm not worried about the work."

That seemed to catch her attention. Her brows lifted slightly, and she straightened from where she had been leaning.

"No?"

"The work doesn't bother me." His gaze drifted back toward the rows of suits surrounding them. "I'm sure I can catch up."

And he meant it. Reports could be read. Numbers could be learned. Meetings could be attended. The company itself didn't frighten him. What unsettled him was everything attached to it. The people waiting there. The expectations. The version of himself they all remembered.

His fingers tightened slightly around the coffee mug. "What if they expect me to be someone I can't remember being?"

The words emerged more quietly than the rest of the conversation.  The room seemed suspended in the soft stillness of the early morning as sunlight crept steadily across the floorboards. Somewhere deeper within the house came the faint sounds of the day beginning to wake—distant footsteps, a door closing softly—but here, inside the dressing room, the silence remained private.

She studied him for a moment before setting her coffee aside. Then she crossed the space between them. Her attention settled on the jacket he still held rather than on him directly. One hand reached out automatically, smoothing the sleeve and straightening the fabric with an ease that suggested years of habit.

"Then they'll meet who you are now."

The answer was simple. Matter-of-fact. Entirely free of dramatics. She wasn't pretending his fear wasn't real. Baelor watched her quietly for a moment before a small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

"How long have you been waiting to say that?"

A hint of amusement appeared in her eyes.

"Honestly? Since you mentioned you wanted to visit the office."

"You recycle your advice?"

"Frequently."

"I should be offended."

A soft laugh escaped her as she turned back toward the wardrobes. "Should you really?"

"No," he admitted. "I suppose I should be grateful for it."

The smile lingered between them as she began sorting through the jackets. Unlike him, she barely seemed to need to think about it. Her hand moved confidently through the row before selecting a charcoal suit and drawing it free.

"This one."

Baelor accepted it automatically, studying it with mild suspicion. "Why this one?"

She glanced over her shoulder as she reached for a crisp white shirt. "Because you always wore it when you had meetings you didn't want to attend."

"That's an oddly specific thing to know."

A smile tugged at her mouth. "Still think I faked the whole story about being your wife?" The answer arrived so naturally that it left him momentarily speechless.

She continued selecting pieces without waiting for a response, adding a tie and cufflinks to the growing collection in her arms while he stood there trying to process how casually she could reference decades of shared life.

Eventually, surrendering to the obvious, he sighed. "I never said that."

The victorious look she rewarded him with made him suspect he'd chosen correctly.

A little while later, he disappeared into the bathroom, carrying the suit with him. The spacious room was already filling with steam by the time he stepped beneath the shower. Hot water cascaded over his shoulders, easing muscles that still hadn't entirely adjusted to life outside the hospital. For a while, he simply stood there, letting the heat do its work while his thoughts drifted toward the day ahead. No matter how many reassurances he received, the reality remained the same. In less than two hours, he would walk into a building filled with people who knew him far better than he knew himself.

By the time he emerged again, towelling dry and stepping back into the dressing room, he immediately noticed that something had changed.

The clothing he and his wife had selected earlier had been laid out neatly across one of the valet stands. The shirt hung pressed and ready. The suit jacket waited beside it. His watch rested carefully atop the dresser. A tie had already been chosen and draped neatly across the stand, while cufflinks sat arranged beside it as though someone had quietly assembled him piece by piece while he was away.

Something about it struck him unexpectedly hard.

His wife sat at the vanity, fastening a pair of earrings, when she noticed him staring. "You're doing it again."

"Doing what?"

"Staring."

Baelor glanced back toward the waiting clothes. "You set all this out?"

"M-hm."

The answer was accompanied by a smile that removed any possibility of argument.

He shook his head softly before stepping forward and reaching for the shirt. Dressing should have been simple. Most of it was. The familiar motions returned without thought as he buttoned the shirt and slipped into the jacket. But when he reached the cufflinks, he found himself fumbling briefly with one sleeve.

A quiet curse slipped beneath his breath as the cufflink refused to cooperate. He adjusted the sleeve, tried again, and immediately fumbled it a second time. Before he could make another attempt, movement caught the corner of his eye. His wife had already crossed the room. She hadn't looked up because he'd spoken, and he certainly hadn't asked for help. Somehow, she had simply noticed. Without comment or hesitation, she stepped into his space and reached for his wrist. The moment her fingers closed gently around the cuff, Baelor found himself going completely still, watching her in quiet surprise as she took over the task as naturally as if it had always belonged to her.

The movement itself was insignificant. A wife helping her husband finish dressing for work. The sort of thing that had probably happened countless times throughout their marriage.

Yet to him it felt entirely new.

Standing so close, he became aware of details he normally overlooked. The faint scent of her perfume. The damp traces of moisture still linger in a few loose strands of hair near her temple. The silence of the room somehow made the moment feel more intimate.

Her fingers moved deftly to the second sleeve, fastening the cufflink with the same practiced ease before smoothing the fabric at his wrist. What followed seemed almost unconscious. She adjusted the knot of his tie, straightened the lapels of his jacket, brushed away a crease that barely existed, and settled the collar into place. The sequence flowed so naturally that it felt less like a deliberate act and more like a habit ingrained through years of repetition. By the time she stepped back to inspect her work, everything sat exactly as it should.

"There."

Baelor lowered his gaze briefly, taking in the finished result before looking back at her. For a moment, neither of them spoke. It wasn't memory that stirred inside him.

An awareness of how naturally she occupied these moments. How effortlessly she stepped into spaces beside him that still felt unfamiliar to him. She never hesitated. Never seemed uncertain of where she belonged. Even now, in a marriage he could not remember, she moved through the rhythms of their life together with a confidence that made it seem as though nothing had ever been disrupted.

"Thank you," he said quietly.

A small smile appeared on her face. "You're welcome."

Baelor turned toward the mirror once more. The reflection staring back at him still wasn't entirely familiar. The face was older than the one he remembered. The life behind it remained fragmented and incomplete, scattered across stories, photographs, and other people's memories. Yet standing there in a suit chosen by a man he couldn't remember being, wearing a tie she had adjusted without thinking, he found the distance between himself and that stranger felt slightly smaller than it had before.

Eventually, he glanced toward the doorway and rolled his shoulders lightly. "I think I'll head downstairs."

"Mm."

"Get there before everyone else. Ease into the day." The plan sounded sensible enough in his own head. He could sit with a coffee, collect his thoughts, perhaps enjoy a few minutes of quiet before facing breakfast and the rest of the household.

She moved toward the bathroom door, already untying the belt of her robe as she walked. Morning sunlight caught briefly in her hair as she glanced back over her shoulder.

"You have a full day ahead of you. Eat something."

The tone was gentle but left very little room for negotiation.

Baelor raised both hands in surrender. "Yes, ma'am."

The laugh she rewarded him with was brief but genuine before she disappeared into the bathroom, leaving the door partially closed behind her. A moment later, the sound of running water filled the suite.

Alone once more, Baelor lingered for a few seconds in the dressing room. Then he glanced at his reflection one final time, straightened the cuff she had fixed only moments earlier, and headed downstairs.

The anxiety surrounding the day remained. It still sat somewhere deep in his chest, waiting for him to step into a building full of people who remembered him better than he remembered himself. Yet as he descended toward the quiet morning below, it no longer felt quite so overwhelming. Somehow, the simple act of getting ready together had taken the sharpest edge off it. Whatever waited for him at headquarters, whatever expectations, memories, or ghosts of the past awaited beyond those doors, he knew he would not be facing them alone.

By the time she finished getting ready, the house had fully settled into its usual weekday morning rhythm. Staff moved discreetly through the corridors, the distant sounds of activity carrying faintly from other parts of the house. She gathered her things, took one last look around the bedroom to make sure she hadn't forgotten anything, and stepped into the hallway.

As she descended the staircase, the smell of breakfast drifted up from below. Mixed with it were the familiar sounds of conversation coming from the dining room—voices overlapping occasionally, punctuated by the clink of cutlery and the scrape of a chair against the floor. It was enough to make her slow her pace slightly.

The sight that greeted her when she reached the doorway caused her to pause.

Baelor sat at the breakfast table with Valarr and Matarys, a cup of coffee resting near his hand while the boys worked their way through their breakfast. Neither child seemed remotely bothered by the fact that their father couldn't remember most of the last twenty years. They had adapted with a resilience and patience that still amazed her, accepting the situation with the practical simplicity teenagers don’t often possess.

Valarr was in the middle of explaining something about school, speaking with the seriousness of someone discussing a matter of great importance. Across from him, Matarys contributed periodically, usually interrupting with details that may or may not have been relevant. Baelor listened to both with remarkable patience, occasionally asking questions whenever he lost track of names or details.

"So the teacher moved the project deadline because half the class wasn't finished," Valarr was saying.

"That sounds generous."

"It wasn't generous," Matarys immediately interjected. "Nobody did it."

Valarr shot his brother an annoyed look. "Some people did."

"You didn't."

"I was going to. But you know, practice and all."

Baelor looked between them before taking a sip of coffee. "That sounds suspiciously like something people say when they haven't done it."

Matarys burst into laughter, and that only made Valarr groan.

"Dad. You don't even remember me, and you're already taking his side."

"I'm not taking his side," Baelor replied, entirely too calmly. "I'm merely observing that your defence was weak."

Even Valarr failed to suppress a reluctant smile. Standing quietly in the doorway, she found herself unable to look away.

The conversation itself wasn't remarkable. There was nothing dramatic or emotionally significant being discussed. School assignments. Weekend plans. Complaints about teachers. Arguments over whether a football referee had made the correct call during a recent match. The sort of conversation that happened around breakfast tables every day.

Yet that was precisely what made it difficult to watch.

Because it was ordinary. Painfully, beautifully ordinary.

For months, she had lived with the possibility that she might never see this again. There had been nights in the hospital when the future felt frighteningly uncertain, when she had sat beside his bed listening to the rhythm of machines and wondered how much of their life would remain when he finally woke up, if there would be any at all. Even after his recovery had begun, there had been moments when she wasn't sure whether he would ever settle naturally back into fatherhood, whether every interaction would feel strained or cautious because of everything he couldn't remember.

Instead, here he was.

Listening to his sons.

Teasing them.

Laughing with them.

Learning them all over again.

The details were different now. He forgot stories they referenced or needed explanations for things that had happened during the years he had lost. But the foundation beneath it remained the same. The patience. The attentiveness. The quiet way he made each boy feel heard whenever they spoke.

For a brief moment, emotion tightened unexpectedly in her chest. She had spent so long preparing herself for loss that she sometimes forgot to appreciate the things she had gotten back. Perhaps that was why she remained standing there for several seconds longer than necessary, simply watching them.

Eventually, Matarys noticed her first. "Mom's here!"

All three heads turned toward the doorway. Baelor's expression softened immediately when he saw her. "There you are."

The simple familiarity of it nearly undid her yet once again.

She smiled and crossed the room toward them, settling into her usual seat at the table while the conversation resumed almost immediately around her.

And as she listened to the boys continue talking over one another while Baelor attempted to keep up, she found herself thinking that this had once been the most ordinary part of her life.

Now it felt like a gift.

Eventually, however, the clock became impossible to ignore. Half-finished conversations were abandoned. Matarys disappeared briefly upstairs after remembering something important he had forgotten, only to return moments later with no clear explanation of what that thing had actually been.

The familiar weekday rush settled over the household.

She remained seated for most of it, sipping from the smoothie that had been prepared for her while watching the organised chaos unfold around the table. Baelor, meanwhile, seemed content simply observing. There was still a trace of fascination in the way he watched the boys move through routines they clearly knew by heart. Every so often, she caught him studying something—a habit, a joke, a familiar exchange, anything—as though quietly adding another piece to a puzzle he was still trying to assemble.

Before long, the sound of an arriving vehicle drifted through the front of the house.

"The driver's here," Valarr announced unnecessarily, already halfway out of his chair.

Matarys was moving just as quickly. Chairs scraped softly against the floor as breakfast came to an end. The boys gathered their things, accepted last-minute reminders they had heard hundreds of times before, and headed toward the foyer.

Baelor followed them more slowly.

She rose as well, carrying her smoothie with her as the family drifted toward the front entrance together. Morning sunlight flooded the foyer through the tall windows overlooking the circular drive. Outside, the vehicle waiting for the twins stood ready near the steps, its engine already running.

Valarr adjusted the strap of his bag before looking toward his father. "We'll see you tonight."

Not long after, a second car pulled forward. The chauffeur stepped out immediately and opened the rear door. Baelor waited until his wife had settled into the car before following her inside. The chauffeur closed the door behind them with a muted thud, and for a few moments neither of them spoke. The estate slowly receded through the windows as the car made its way down the long drive, sunlight filtering through the rows of trees that lined the property. 

The familiar comfort of home seemed to fade with every passing minute, replaced by something quieter and far less certain. Baelor sat with one arm resting against the door, his gaze fixed on the passing scenery. She noticed the signs immediately. Not because he said anything, but because she had spent enough years beside him to recognise when he was thinking too much. 

The morning had provided distractions, but now there was nothing left between him and headquarters except a drive across the city. The closer they drew, the fewer places remained for his thoughts to hide.

As the city gradually grew busier around them, residential streets gave way to wider roads and thicker traffic. Office towers began appearing beyond the windows, their glass facades catching the morning sunlight. Baelor watched it all in silence, his fingers tapping once against the leather seat before becoming still again.

"You don't have to do anything today, you know."

He glanced toward her. She sat comfortably beside him, her smoothie resting in one hand as she watched the city pass by.

"I know."

"You're not going there to work."

A faint smile touched his mouth. "I know."

She turned slightly then, studying him. "You're going there because everyone wants to see you."

"Are you saying that they'll all be staring at me?"

The smile she returned was warm. "They probably will."

"Wonderful."

Her quiet laugh earned one from him, and for a brief moment, the tension eased. It didn't disappear entirely, but it loosened enough for him to breathe. The relief lasted only until the next cluster of office buildings came into view.

Leaning back against the seat, he stared out the window for another moment before speaking again. "What if it's awkward?"

She raised an eyebrow. "What if what is awkward?"

"This." He gestured vaguely between himself and the city beyond the glass. "The fact that they all know me and I won’t know most of them."

The words lingered between them. It was the part he rarely voiced aloud, the reality beneath the jokes and easy smiles. Every room he entered contained people carrying memories he no longer possessed. Every conversation rested on foundations he couldn't see. His wife remained quiet for a few seconds before answering.

"It probably will be awkward sometimes." The honesty made him turn toward her. "You won't remember things they remember," she continued. "They'll occasionally forget that. You'll occasionally feel frustrated. Some conversations will be strange."

Baelor released a quiet sigh. "Thank you for that incredibly encouraging speech."

That earned another smile. 

"But they'll be happy you're there, I promise." This time, there was no hesitation in her voice. "They've spent weeks worrying about you."

The certainty made it difficult to argue. He looked away again, his gaze settling on the skyline that now dominated the horizon. Towers rose above the surrounding buildings, familiar and unfamiliar all at once. Somewhere among them stood the headquarters he had spent two decades helping build.

"I keep thinking they're expecting someone," he admitted.

She turned toward him. "What do you mean?"

"The man they remember." His reflection stared back at him from the tinted glass. "The version of me who knows what he's doing. The version who remembers everyone's names, their families, and all the things people keep telling me I used to know."

For a moment, she simply looked at him. Then she reached across the space between them and rested her hand lightly over his. 

"They aren't expecting anyone but you."

Baelor met her eyes. Silence settled between them after that, thoughtful rather than uncomfortable. Baelor looked down at their joined hands before turning his attention back to the city. Outside, another cluster of office towers came into view, and there, rising above the surrounding skyline, stood Targaryen Holdings.

Even from a distance, it was very much impossible to miss. The tower was significantly larger than he remembered. Glass gleamed across its exterior, reflecting the morning sun in brilliant flashes as traffic flowed around its base. New wings extended from sections that hadn't existed in his memory, connected by elevated walkways and modern renovations that transformed the familiar headquarters into something far larger and more modern than the building he recalled.

His eyes remained fixed on it as they approached. The closer they drew, the quieter he became.

She noticed that too. Not because he looked frightened. Because he looked overwhelmed.

This was different from coming home. Different from seeing family. Different from reconnecting with friends. Home had shown him pieces of his personal life. This building contained twenty years of professional history—two decades of decisions, responsibilities, relationships, successes, failures, and sacrifices. A version of himself that existed entirely beyond his reach.

As the tower grew larger through the windshield, Baelor found himself staring at it the way someone might stare at a photograph of their own life: recognisable and somehow belonging to someone else from another time.

Beside him, his wife remained quietly present, never rushing to fill the silence. She simply sat with him as the car carried them steadily toward headquarters, allowing him the space to face what waited there in his own time. For the first time since leaving the hospital, he was about to step into the life he had built. And despite every reassurance he had received, his heart was beating noticeably faster by the time the tower finally came into full view.

The car finally rolled beneath the covered entrance, joining the steady flow of vehicles arriving for the morning rush. Employees moved in and out of the building's revolving doors, briefcases in hand and phones pressed to their ears, the familiar rhythm of a workday already well underway.

The chauffeur opened the door. Baelor exhaled slowly and stepped out beside his wife. The headquarters seemed even larger from ground level. Beside him, she reached over and lightly touched his arm. Baelor turned his head toward her.

"Take it easy." Her voice was quiet enough that only he could hear it over the soft hum of the elevator machinery. "No expectations. No pressure. If you're tired, you're tired. If you want to leave, we leave."

A faint smile appeared. "I know."

"I'm serious."

"I know."

The corners of her mouth softened. She wasn't worried about him saying the right thing. She wasn't worried about him embarrassing himself. What concerned her was that familiar tendency he had always possessed—the instinct to push through discomfort, to perform, to meet expectations even when nobody was asking him to.

The elevator chimed, and the doors slid apart.

Immediately, the atmosphere changed.

The executive floor occupied the entire level of the tower, and unlike the busy lower floors, this space was quieter, calmer, almost insulated from the constant movement of the building below. Floor-to-ceiling windows stretched along the far wall, flooding the reception area with natural light and offering a sweeping view of the city beyond. Polished stone floors reflected the morning sun, while artwork and architectural details gave the space the understated elegance of old money and decades of success.

And waiting in the centre of it all stood a small group of people.

His father was already standing there. Standing proud and tall despite his age, silver-haired and impeccably dressed as always, he stood near the reception desk with his hands folded in front of him. Around him were his siblings and several senior executives, men and women who had spent decades helping lead the company. Some faces felt immediately familiar. Others stirred only faint flashes of recognition. 

Conversations ceased the moment the elevator opened. Every head was turned towards the two. For a brief second, the entire floor seemed to hold its breath.

Baelor felt his pulse pick up. The sensation was immediate and impossible to ignore. He became aware of every detail at once—the polished floor beneath his shoes, the city glittering beyond the windows, the weight of dozens of eyes settling on him.

Beside him, his wife felt him tense.

She gave his hand a brief squeeze. "I'll be right outside," she said quietly.

She had barely begun to step back when his voice stopped her.

"Can you stay? At least just halfway through?"

The question came so naturally that he didn't seem to realise he'd spoken until the words were already hanging between them.

She looked at him. For all the confidence he had regained during the past weeks, there was something unexpectedly vulnerable in his expression. Simply a desire not to walk into this particular moment alone.

Her features softened immediately. "Inside?"

He nodded. "If that's okay."

"Of course it is."

The relief was subtle. His shoulders loosened slightly, and he released a breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding.

Together, they walked closer towards the meeting room. Their footsteps echoed softly across the polished stone floor, drawing every eye in the room. For a brief moment, nobody moved. The gathering simply watched as Baelor emerged onto the executive floor for the first time since the accident. Then his father broke away from the group.

The introductions that followed unfolded naturally. No one crowded him. No one overwhelmed him. The executives approached one at a time, offering handshakes, warm welcomes, and brief conversations before stepping aside for the next person. Their restraint felt deliberate, as though an unspoken agreement had passed among them beforehand. Perhaps it did, considering how Maekar seemed to hold back a scowl every time someone lingered for just a second too long. 

 An older executive clasped his shoulder and told him how good it was to see him upright and moving around again. Another greeted him with a grin and remarked that the building had been far too quiet without him. Several greeted his wife with equal familiarity, welcoming her presence without a second thought, as though it would have been stranger if she had not been there.

Throughout it all, she remained quietly at his side. She never inserted herself into conversations or attempted to manage the room. She simply stayed close enough to reach. And he found himself looking for her more often than he expected. Sometimes for comfort, some other times for a look of reassurance. It was almost as if he were afraid that he would be left alone in a room of strangers. Odd, considering that to him, she was a stranger a little over a month ago. 

Beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city stretched endlessly beneath the morning sun. Traffic crawled through distant streets far below, reduced to tiny movements from this height. Around them, the headquarters hummed with quiet activity—assistants moving through hallways, phones ringing behind closed office doors, and some meetings were already underway throughout the tower. Life had continued during his absence. The company had continued. The world had continued.

Yet standing there among family, colleagues, and old friends, Baelor experienced something he had not expected. For the first time since waking up in a hospital bed, he did not feel like a visitor being shown pieces of someone else's life. For the first time, surrounded by people who remembered him even when he could not remember them, he felt the faint but unmistakable sense that perhaps this life still belonged to him after all.

After nearly an hour of greetings and conversations, Maekar eventually rested a hand against Baelor's shoulder and nodded toward the corridor.

"Come on. There's something else you should see."

The small group naturally parted as the brothers began walking through the executive wing. His wife accompanied them, matching their pace as they moved past conference rooms and private offices. Employees they encountered along the way greeted Baelor warmly, and he returned every smile and welcome with genuine appreciation. Yet as pleasant as the interactions were, they were beginning to accumulate. Every face carried history. Every greeting implied a relationship. Every conversation required concentration. By the time they reached the corner office at the end of the corridor, he was already more mentally tired than he wanted to admit.

The office stopped him in the doorway.

Floor-to-ceiling windows wrapped around two sides of the room, filling the space with sunlight and offering a panoramic view of the city below. The desk stood exactly where he remembered it, facing the skyline. A sitting area occupied one corner near the windows. Bookshelves lined an interior wall, filled with volumes that looked simultaneously familiar and foreign. Framed photographs sat on shelves and side tables throughout the room. Everywhere he looked, fragments of recognition surfaced. The room belonged to him. He knew that instinctively. Yet it felt less like stepping into a memory and more like walking through the preserved remains of someone else's life.

Baelor's attention drifted away from the office itself when something near the far wall caught his eye. Several large paper bags had been arranged in neat rows beside a set of cabinets, some standing upright, others bulging noticeably at the sides as though they had been packed to capacity. They looked oddly out of place in an office of this size and stature, more suited to a storage room than the corner suite of a senior executive.

He frowned. "What is all that?"

Maekar followed his gaze and immediately looked pleased with himself. "Your mail."

Baelor turned back toward him. "My mail?"

"Cards. Letters. Packages. Well wishes." A hint of amusement entered his voice. "Various attempts by people to convince you they're your favourite employee. I told you there were still many more back at the hospital."

His wife, curious now, walked over to the nearest bag and peered inside. The reaction was immediateㅡ her eyebrows rose as she stared at the contents before looking into the next bag, then another.

Baelor crossed the room and looked for himself. The bags were packed with envelopes, cards, parcels, photographs, flowers preserved in boxes, and what appeared to be several gifts that had never been opened. The sheer volume of it made him blink. Somehow, seeing months of concern physically gathered in one place felt more overwhelming than hearing about it.

"There are this many?" He asked, referring to the flowers and gifts.

"There were more."

His wife looked over her shoulder. "More?"

"We've already removed some of the flowers before they died and became a bio-weapon."

The assistant standing nearby nodded immediately. "Three separate times."

Baelor laughed despite himself and looked back at the collection.  "You put these cards in paper bags?"

Maekar spread a hand toward the room as though presenting evidence in a courtroom. "We're cleaning up."

Baelor stared at him. Then at the bags. Then back at him again.

While they spoke, his wife had already crouched beside one of the bags. She lifted out a thick stack of envelopes tied together with a ribbon and glanced through the names written across the front.

"I'll help."

Baelor looked toward her. "You don't have to."

"Where do we start?" She asked, ignoring Baelor’s display of kindness.

Maekar’s assistant immediately brightened. Within moments, the two of them were discussing categories, dates, departments, and various systems for organising several weeks' worth of correspondence. The assistant knelt beside another bag and began explaining which cards had arrived first, which had come from international offices, and which gifts had required entire forms to process through building security. His wife listened with genuine interest, occasionally laughing at some story or asking a question while sorting letters into neat pilesㅡalready thinking about how she would tell her husband the story behind each card.

Watching her, Baelor felt a familiar sense of affection. She had somehow managed to make herself useful within sixty seconds of entering the room  …  yet once again.

The conversation gradually pulled the two women toward the collection of bags, creating a separate pocket of activity on the far side of the office. Their voices blended into the background as they worked together, leaving Baelor standing near the desk with his father.

The office suddenly felt quieter.

Sunlight streamed through the windows and spilt across the polished wood of the desk. Beyond the glass, the city stretched endlessly toward the horizon, buildings gleaming beneath the midday sun. The view should have felt impressive. Instead, Baelor found himself appreciating the stillness.

For several moments, neither man spoke. Maekar remained leaning casually against the edge of the desk, hands resting loosely in his pockets. He wasn't watching the city.  "You doing alright?"

Baelor considered offering the automatic answer. The easy one. The reassuring one, everyone seemed relieved to hear these days. Instead, he released a slow breath. "I think so."

One of Maekar's eyebrows rose slightly. "That's not a yes."

A laugh escaped him before he could stop it. "No," he admitted, turning toward the windows. "After all this time, I still can’t lie to you, huh?"

The silence that followed wasn't uncomfortable. If anything, it felt inviting to both of them. There was no pressure to perform. No expectation that he should be optimistic or grateful or positive. Just space to answer honestly.

Baelor rested a hand against the back of one of the chairs and stared out at the skyline. "It's strange."

"Mm?"

"Everyone's been incredibly kind. They seem genuinely happy to see me."

"They are."

Baelor nodded. "I can’t help but feel like I owe them something."

His gaze drifted toward the glass walls beyond the office. Executives moved through the corridors outside. Staff passed by carrying tablets and folders. Meetings continued. Phones rang somewhere in the distance.

"Everyone knows me," he said quietly. "They know my history, my habits, my opinions. They tell stories and reference meetings and projects and entire years of my life like they're talking about yesterday."

He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck.

"Some of the older executives feel familiar. I can usually place them somewhere." A frustrated smile tugged at his mouth. "The newer ones, though..." He shook his head. "Apparently, I've worked with some of these people for over ten years."

A faint smile appeared on Maekar's face. "Some longer."

Baelor groaned. The sound dissolved into reluctant laughter a second later. "You're not helping."

"You don't have to remember everything."

Baelor looked away. "I know."

"Do you?"

The question landed more heavily than he expected. He didn't answer immediately because he wasn't entirely sure he believed it. Some part of him still felt responsible. Responsible for remembering names. Responsible for filling the gaps. Responsible for becoming the version of himself everyone seemed to miss.

His brother seemed to recognise the thought before he voiced it out loud.

"Not today," Maekar said quietly. "Today you're just our guest."

For reasons he couldn't fully explain, the statement loosened something that had been clenched inside him all morning. He hadn't realised how much pressure he had been placing on himself until that moment. Standing in his office, surrounded by evidence of a life he couldn't entirely remember, he finally allowed himself to stop trying to catch up to it.

At least for today.

›

Word spread through the executive floor far faster than Baelor anticipated. What began as a handful of visitors quickly turned into a steady procession of senior personnel appearing at the office door throughout the remainder of the morning. Some arrived alone, others in pairs. A few lingered in the doorway before entering, as though uncertain how much of his time they should take. Almost all wore the same expression when they saw him—relief first, followed closely by genuine happiness.

The office door seemed to open every few minutes.

Another executive.

Another familiar face.

Another person who knew him.

They came carrying stories, memories, and affection accumulated over years he could no longer access. Men and women who had joined the company long after its earliest days spoke to him with the ease of old colleagues. They remembered projects they had completed together, negotiations they had survived, trips they had taken, and crises they had solved. Their recollections flowed naturally, threaded through conversation with the casual confidence of people revisiting shared experiences.

At first, the great Baelor Targaryen navigated it well. He smiled easily. He listened attentively. He asked questions when details escaped him and laughed when others laughed. The interactions felt manageable one at a time. Individually, each conversation was warm and meaningful. Individually, each visitor was kind.

It was the accumulation that became difficult. As the late morning stretched on, the stories began to blur together. Names introduced at ten o'clock resurfaced an hour later, attached to different faces. Someone referenced a late-night board meeting. Someone else mentioned a company retreat. Another recalled a difficult quarter they had apparently weathered together. The details arrived faster than his mind could sort them, pieces of a life scattered across conversations that expected recognition he could not provide.

The office itself seemed to grow busier as the hours passed.

Sunlight shifted across the floor-to-ceiling windows, creeping steadily across the carpet and polished wood. Voices overlapped. The reception desk outside handled a constant stream of arrivals. Assistants moved through the corridors carrying folders and tablets. The hum of the executive floor never ceased, only changing shape as different people entered and left the room.

By noon, Baelor found himself concentrating harder than he had all day.

He noticed it first in small ways: the effort required to remember a name immediately after hearing it, the brief delay before recognising whether he had already met someone that morning, and the growing sense that every conversation required conscious navigation rather than instinct.

Nobody seemed to notice. Or perhaps they were simply too relieved to see him there.

Either way, no one expected anything from him beyond a smile and a few minutes of conversation. The executives were patient. Thoughtful. Generous with their understanding whenever memory gaps became apparent. Yet somehow that only made it harder.

If they had been demanding, frustration would have been easier to identify.

Instead, they were kind.

Endlessly kind.

And the kindness itself became overwhelming.

Several times, Baelor found his attention drifting away from the conversation in front of him toward the far side of the office.

His wife remained near the windows, sorting through months of accumulated letters with the assistant. The paper bags had been emptied across a large table, creating neat piles of correspondence organised by date, department, and location. Occasionally, she would hold up a card while the assistant explained who had sent it. Other times, they would laugh quietly over some note or gift that had arrived during his recovery.

The scene became an unexpected anchor. Every time his gaze found her, she seemed to sense it. She would glance up from whatever she was doing and meet his eyes across the room. Sometimes she smiled. Sometimes she simply held his gaze for a moment before returning to her task.

The exchanges were brief and almost insignificant. Yet each one steadied him. Each one reminded him where he was. Reminded him that there was at least one person in the room whose history he still possessed completely.

As noon approached, the strain became harder to ignore. The office felt warmer despite the air conditioner blasting. The conversations felt longer.  The constant rotation of faces began leaving him with the strange sensation of standing in the centre of a story everyone else understood. He recognised pieces of it. But never enough to assemble the whole picture.

The disorienting feeling remained hidden behind practised smiles and polite conversation.

No one would have guessed how tired he was becoming.

No one would have guessed how often he found himself searching the room for the same familiar face.

When someone finally glanced at the time and suggested lunch, discussions sprang up almost at once. Restaurant names were immediately proposed. Private dining rooms were mentioned. Guest lists began forming before anyone had even decided where they were going. The energy in the room shifted naturally toward the next event of the day, executives exchanging suggestions and making arrangements with the same efficiency they applied to everything else.

Baelor listened to the conversation without truly hearing most of it. Instead, his attention drifted once more toward the windows. Across the office, his wife stood beside one of the assistants of the men in the meeting room. Sunlight caught in her hair as she listened to something the assistant was saying. A moment later, she smiled at whatever comment had been made, glanced down at the letters, and continued sorting.

The sight of her produced an immediate sense of relief so profound that it surprised him.

Not because anything was wrong.

Nothing was wrong. Absolutely nothing was wrong.

The morning had been successful by every measure, right? People had been welcoming, the visit had gone well, and everyone was happy.

Yet as he watched her standing there, surrounded by stacks of correspondence and completely unaware that he was looking at her, he realised how exhausting it had been to spend the entire morning navigating a world that remembered him better than he remembered it.

And suddenly, more than food, more than conversation, more than any celebration the executives could organise, what he wanted most was an hour somewhere quiet with the one person who required no explanations at all.

When Maekar finally looked toward him and asked what he thought about lunch, the conversation around the office gradually quieted. Several executives had already begun discussing reservations and private dining rooms, throwing out restaurant suggestions with the easy confidence of people accustomed to arranging things quickly.

Baelor listened for a moment before his gaze drifted across the office.

His wife was standing near the windows beside the sorting table, a stack of cards balanced in her hands as she listened to something the assistant was explaining. Sunlight poured through the glass behind her, catching the edges of her hair and illuminating the growing piles of correspondence spread across the tabletop. She looked completely absorbed in the task, entirely unaware that he was watching her.

Something inside him settled.

"Actually, I think I owe my wife a lunch outside of the house."

For a brief moment, the room fell silent. Then understanding spread through the gathering almost at once. Several executives exchanged amused smiles. One laughed outright. Another shook his head as though the answer was exactly what he should have expected.

Across the room, his wife looked up at the sound of muffled laughter through the glass door, her attention shifting toward the group.

Maekar glanced toward her before looking back at his brother. A grin slowly appeared. "There he is.!

Baelor frowned. "What?"

Maekar folded his arms. "You haven't changed at all."

The comment drew immediate agreement from several of the older executives. One of them laughed. "Absolutely not."

Another pointed toward Baelor. "We used to lose him after board meetings."

"Every single time," someone else added.

Baelor stared at them. "What are you talking about?"

The amusement around the room only grew. Maekar looked entirely pleased with himself.

"You'd survive six hours of long negotiation meetings, spend the entire day dealing with investors, regulators, acquisitions, whatever crisis happened to be unfolding at the time..." He gestured vaguely. "And then the second somebody suggested an unplanned group dinner, you'd disappear."

"I don't remember doing that."

"That's because you don't remember anything!"

The room erupted into laughter. Even Baelor himself couldn't help laughing. One of the senior executives nodded toward his wife outside. 

"If she were available, we never stood a chance."

Another executive pointed toward the door. "We'd spend twenty minutes planning dinner only to discover he'd already left."

"Half the time he wouldn't even tell anyone."

"He'd just vanish."

The stories continued piling on top of one another, each person apparently delighted by the opportunity to contribute evidence. Baelor found himself looking from face to face in disbelief. His wife, meanwhile, had crossed the office and now stood beside him, clearly enjoying the spectacleㅡoffering a shrug while holding a smile back.

"Is any of this true?" he asked her.

The smile she gave him was answer enough. "Oh, it's true."

Traitor.

She laughed.

The warmth that followed felt noticeably different from the conversations earlier that morning. There were still memories he couldn't access, still stories that belonged to a version of himself he couldn't fully reach, but this felt easier somehow. Less like people introducing him to his past and more like people sharing it with him.

Maekar shook his head. "The point is, you're exhausted."

Several executives immediately nodded in agreement. One pointed toward him.

"You've had the exact same expression for the last thirty minutes."

"I have not."

"You have." His wife didn't even attempt to defend him. That betrayal stung more than the others.

The room laughed again. By now, however, Baelor could feel the truth beneath the teasing.

The adrenaline that had carried him through the morning was fading. The constant concentration required to navigate conversations and unfamiliar memories had begun catching up to him. Every interaction had been pleasant. Yet he could feel the accumulation of them settling somewhere behind his eyes.

The decision to leave seemed to change the rhythm of the room almost immediately. Conversations that had been centred around lunch plans gradually shifted into farewells instead. A few executives stepped forward to shake his hand one final time, offering warm smiles and promises that they would see him again soon. Others simply wished him well before returning to the meetings and responsibilities waiting elsewhere on the executive floor.

Baelor accepted each goodbye with genuine gratitude. The morning had been far more successful than he had expected. Everyone had been welcoming. Patient. Kind. Yet now that he knew he was leaving, he could feel the weight of the past few hours settling over him more clearly.

His wife remained beside him throughout the final exchanges. Occasionally, her hand brushed his sleeve or rested lightly against his arm as people approached. The contact was subtle enough that most would never have noticed it, but he did. After an entire morning spent navigating unfamiliar conversations and half-remembered histories, her presence felt increasingly like an anchor.

Daeron approached shortly before they left. The older man studied him for a moment, his gaze as perceptive as ever. "You did enough for one day."

The comment earned a quiet smile from Baelor. "I'm glad you think so, father."

Daeron's expression softened. "You don't have to prove anything to anyone. Get some rest, okay? We’ll visit you soon."

The words lingered longer than they should have. Perhaps because some part of him had been trying to do exactly that all morning without fully realising it. He had spent hours smiling, listening, concentrating, and trying to bridge a gap that still felt impossibly wide. Hearing someone acknowledge that effort—and tell him it wasn't necessary—eased something inside him.

A few moments later, Maekar was already being pulled back into conversation by several executives waiting to discuss business. Before turning away, he glanced toward his brother and smirked. "You really haven't changed."

The strange thing was that the words sounded believable. More believable than many of the professional accomplishments people had spent the morning describing. Somehow, the idea of leaving a crowded room in favour of a quiet meal with the woman who’s supposed to be his wife felt more familiar than any board meeting ever could.

Eventually, the conversations resumed around them, and the moment to leave arrived naturally. Together, he and his wife stepped out of the office and into the executive corridor.

For hours, he had been trying to pay attention to everything. Every face. Every name. Every detail that might somehow help him reconstruct a life he could no longer fully remember. Now, for the first time since arriving, he allowed himself to simply exist within the environment instead of studying it.

The elevator arrived almost immediately.

When the doors opened, they stepped inside alone. As the doors slid shut behind them, the noise of the executive floor disappeared at once.

Silence settled over the elevator. The gentle hum of the elevator accompanied their descent through the tower while sunlight filtered through the glass panels overlooking the building's interior atrium.

Baelor leaned back slightly against the wall and let out a slow breath he hadn't realised he was holding.

Beside him, his wife glanced in his direction.

She didn't ask if he was alright, didn't ask if he was overwhelmed, didn't even ask how he felt about the visit. She knew him too well for that. Instead, she simply reached over and smoothed an imaginary crease from the sleeve of his jacket before letting her hand fall away again.

The gesture was so ordinary that it almost made him laugh. Somehow, it communicated everything neither of them felt the need to say.

Baelor found himself watching the numbers descend while the events of the morning slowly settled in his mind. Moments of recognition that had appeared and vanished just as quickly.

It had been a good day.

A difficult one.

But a good one.

When the elevator finally reached the lobby, the doors opened onto a completely different world from the one they had left upstairs. The lunchtime rush had begun. Employees crossed the vast space in every direction, weaving between seating areas and security desks beneath the soaring ceiling. Sunlight streamed through the enormous glass walls facing the street, illuminating the polished stone floor and turning sections of the lobby almost golden.

Yet even amid the activity, the atmosphere felt lighter now.

A few employees noticed him and offered smiles or nods of greeting as he passed. He returned them easily before continuing toward the entrance without stopping. There were no introductions waiting for him here. No conversations requiring concentration.

Just the simple act of walking beside his wife through the building. Together they crossed the lobby at an unhurried pace. Outside, the city moved beneath the bright midday sun. Traffic flowed steadily along the avenue in front of headquarters while pedestrians hurried between office towers and restaurants as the lunch hour began.

Before they even reached the revolving doors, Baelor spotted the familiar black car waiting beneath the covered entrance.

Their driver was already standing beside it. The man straightened the moment he saw them emerge from the lobby and moved toward the rear passenger door, preparing it before they even reached the curb.

After hours spent surrounded by people, memories, and expectations, it represented exactly what he wanted now: a quiet lunch, a comfortable silence, and an hour with the one person who required absolutely nothing from him.

tbc.

tag list:

⤷ @h-kitty-world ， @ohsnapitzmarvelficrec ， @ynnlvrs ， @scarletwolfxox ， @h-l-vlovesvintage ， @glitchinmatrixx ， @readingbee44 ， @outpostsworld ， @himbohunnicutt ， @sgmwester ， @kyvillasstuff ， @xxxyukitoxx ˊ˗

[yunyuu]

[fairyysoup]

a sudden desire

pairing(s): baelor "breakspear" targaryen x fem!reader

summary: When Prince Daeron Targaryen refuses your hand in marriage, it puts you between a rock and a hard place. The rock being a deadly sex potion, and the hard place being the heir to the Iron Throne.

words: 21.1k (ahaha. wtf)

cw: explicit, smut, sex pollen, fuck or die, piv sex, unprotected sex, fingering, oral sex (f receiving), virginity loss, hand kink, fluids, belly bulge, mild exhibitionism, implied voyeurism at the end, somewhat forced proximity, brat taming, soft dom!baelor, big dick baelor, baelor is a munch, older man/younger woman, age difference, discussions of pregnancy, breeding kink, mild coercion, this is all very gratuitous, marriage, possessive behavior, noble!reader, reader called 'lady' and 'girl', yearning, poisoning, magic potions, suicidal ideation, sickbed, canon typical sexism, i love you daeron baby but you very much caused this to happen, mildly edited, not beta read

a/n: i made the executive decision to use american english for this instead of the canonical british english of the books. found very little information on the dragon's breath flower as it appears in canon, so i made some bullshit up and based it on devil's trumpet. don't ask me about the capitalization of nothin. Mircalla is named for Mircalla Karnstein from Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu. Maester Florin named bc I couldn't just call the fucker Thorin Oakenshield. whatever

thank you again to my babes @urhoneycombwitch and @runawaywerewolf for being so nice to me while i lost my mind about this <3

ALL MY WORKS ARE 18+ MINORS DNI

The Targaryens believe that they have the fire of dragons coursing through their veins, but you aren't certain that it's true. If they did, you don't see how they could get anything done, at all. Because right now you do, and it's agony.

Everything hurts. From your head to your toes it feels like your body is filled with venom, burning beneath your skin, your muscles all convulsing in waves of destruction that leave you all but incapacitated. Milk of the poppy does not help, and nor does wine. If you were delirious it would probably be more bearable, but unfortunately your mind is devastatingly sharp. It feels like you have even more awareness of everything than you normally do— your skin is so hypersensitive that you can feel every fibre of your sweat-drenched chemise, and you can feel the temperature of every breath you take as it fills your lungs. The lights are too bright, sounds are louder, flavors more vibrant on your tongue. Every little thing that is happening around you gets filed into your mind so that you feel, in no uncertain terms, like you could fight an entire army yourself and survive. If you were able to move beyond the pain.

You've really done it this time. You didn't believe that the potion was anything dangerous; otherwise you wouldn't have put it in your wine. You were under the impression that it was just a little charm, something cooked up by a wise woman to make lovesick people sleep better at night. You expected it to put a gleam in your eye and a skip in your step, but not this.

"Put this in your wine and watch your love blossom like a rose in bloom," the old lady had told you as she pressed the vial into your outstretched hand. She had taken your coin readily enough and ignored the skeptical look that your lady's maid, Mircalla, had given her. "Drink deep. Enjoy the fortune of love."

Fortune of love, indeed. You're dying. You can tell just by the look on Maester Florin's face as he tests the remnants of the bottle in the corner with some convoluted apothecary setup he's constructed on your vanity table. You feel as though you have one eye on the bubbling beakers, and another eye on Mircalla as she sits by your bedside and dabs a damp cloth over your forehead.

"Is there anything I can get for you?" she asks quietly, and you know that she means well, but you have to physically stop yourself from smacking her hand away. The cloth is too rough on your forehead, scratching and squelching in your ears with the sound of the water, which smells of ale and sour fruit. Perhaps the bucket she used to bring the water in previously had been used to brew cider, but now it just makes the water stink.

"Nothing else, please," you croak at her with as much grace as you can muster. You lightly grab her wrist, squeeze it. "Thank you, Mircalla. Your services won't be needed anymore today, I think. I would not want you to see this any further."

"I am not certain that I should—"

"No. Go, please—" You just barely manage to turn your head away before a spasm of white-hot pain rips through your body, and you scream as you plant your face into your pillow. Both Mircalla and the maester jump at the shrillness of it.

"They're happening more frequently," you hear her mutter to him as she carries the bucket toward the door. "Shall I send for someone? A septon, perhaps?"

"Not yet, thank you. I must discuss the lady's affliction with her privately."

You close your eyes as if to block out the rush of sound that comes from the hall upon Mircalla opening your chamber door. You know that most— if not all— of your own family members, have retreated to other areas of the Red Keep. You assume that it's because you've been screaming loud enough to wake the dead, but perhaps there are other things happening in the castle that are more important than you managing to poison yourself.

"Maester," you grumble out dryly, your voice crackling in your throat. Now that the water is gone you aren't being assaulted by the smell of old cider, but the air still reeks of incense and acrid fumes from whatever his alchemy wrought. "I know I am dying. Just tell me why."

Maester Florin clears his throat and shifts on his feet, holding the little glass vial in his fingers. "My lady. You say that you bought this from a market stall?"

"Yes."

"And… did the seller tell you precisely what it was?"

"She said it was a potion," you tell him, tensing as a wave of pain swells up but then recedes before it can hit its peak, "to bring fortune in love. Nothing more."

There is a long silence, and you wonder if the maester has gone back to his work. You open your eyes a crack to look at him, but he is still standing in the same spot, seemingly deep in thought. Finally, he chances, "It is… not for me to ask what use you have of this potion…"

You groan, and it has nothing to do with the pain coursing through your body. You can't even gather the strength to cover your face in embarrassment, so you simply close your eyes.

It is common knowledge within the castle walls that Prince Daeron refused your hand in marriage after you were presented to him. He cited 'conflicting personalities' as the reason for his refusal— however, you had never had a complete conversation with Prince Daeron. There was no possible way that your personalities could be in conflict; you'd barely met him. Which meant that there was another reason for his refusal.

You knew that neither the King, nor the Crown Prince or his brother were pleased about it. It caused immense trouble for House Targaryen; your own family is one of the Targaryens' greatest allies, so it would only cause a rift between the two households if you were to be turned away with no good reason. House Targaryen could not afford to lose your family's alliance, and so you were asked to remain in King's Landing for another two weeks— or, to put it more plainly, until Prince Maekar or another of the Targaryens could convince Daeron to change his mind.

All of the muscles in your abdomen lock up, and what feels like a roaring hot fire rushes through your body all at once. You scream again, your back threatening to arch off the bed with your convulsing. It hurts so much. How could it possibly hurt so much? How could this little vial of fluid be enough to make you feel like you're burning alive from the inside out? You can hear your own scream ringing around the stone walls of the chamber, loud enough to startle a couple crows off of the eaves outside the open window.

While you're still curled into a ball on the bed, catching your breath, you hear a swift knock on the chamber door before it creaks open. There, you catch a whiff of spice and musk, rich and full. Your eyes fly open in horror as the source of the scent steps into the room with all the lordly grace of the seven kingdoms.

"Maester Florin," comes Prince Baelor Breakspear's voice, usually grounding and calming, but right now it hits you like a lightning bolt in the chest, knocking the very wind out of your lungs. "There seems to be much commotion. May I inquire as to how the lady is faring?"

Maester Florin bows. "Your Grace, I—"

"No."

The word tumbles out of your mouth before you can even stop it. Everything was manageable, more or less, until the Crown Prince entered the room, but now… now, his scent fills your lungs, his words are in your ears, you can practically taste him on the air, like peppercorn and sweet juniper. Your heart pounds in your ribcage like it's trying to escape, your blood singing with fire and your skin prickling with sweat.

You don't want to think about Prince Baelor right now. Each time he comes to mind, it's with an enormous wave of pain ripping through your entire body, as though the very thought of him causes the affliction to double its efforts to end you. Even so, in your mind you see the image of the Prince's concerned face when he stepped into your sick room one day ago, to make the same inquiry and send for a maester to attend you.

You have to get out. You have to leave before the next wave of pain kills you.

You're so tense that when you try to flop over on the bed, you look like a cockroach trying to right itself. "No. No no no no—" In spite of the pain in your muscles, you grab the corner of the goose down mattress and pull yourself toward the edge of the bed, until your upper body hangs off the side, limp as a wet rag.

"My lady, that is inadvisable—" Maester Florin rushes towards you as soon as your fingers meet the stone floor. "You will hurt yourself without assistance."

"Has she been like this the entire time?" Baelor's voice remains steady, but there is a newer, sharper quality to it: he's displeased. If you were to chance a look at him, you would see the carefully concealed worry beneath his practiced diplomacy, but you cannot bring yourself to look his way for fear that it might end you.

Instead, you continue trying to throw yourself from the bed, while Maester Florin actively tries to put you back in it. "No, Your Grace. Aside from the— the screaming—"

Florin's hand connects with your shoulder, and you just about punch him, the pain is so excruciating. Instead, you whack your hand against the front of his robes and bunch them in your fist to pull him close to your face.

"I asked you a question, Maester," you growl at him with a livid expression, watching his eyes widen at your sudden outburst. "Why is this happening?"

"You consumed a powerful aphrodisiac." He swallows, his eyes nervously flitting in Baelor's direction.

You make the grave mistake of following Florin's gaze, and you look at Baelor. The Hand of the King stands at the foot of your sickbed, his eyes focused on you, and only you. His face remains impassive, yet his fingers twitch as though he is contemplating what he can do to intervene.

You push Maester Florin away and begin frantically clawing your way back up the bed towards the headboard. You can feel it: the next wave of heat and pain, building in your toes and hands, inching down your limbs. "Nonono— Maid and Mother's fucking tits."

You manage to plant your face in the pillow before you let out another scream, but this time it seems worse, like you might actually split in half from the pain. You don't know how much more of it you can take. You've drenched your threadbare chemise in sweat, to the point that it doesn't really preserve your modesty anymore. All it does is stick to your damp, oversensitive skin, irritating you and making the sensory overload that much worse.

Once the pain subsides, you begin to rip at the offending garment in an attempt to draw it over your head. You're babbling nonsense, fragments of sentences and profanities that you don't even remember having in your repertoire, but you can still hear Maester Florin as he rattles off technical explanations to his Prince.

"—was purchased from a market stall— seems to be a tincture of moonbloom and gilliflower— another ingredient I have not yet identified—"

Before you can manage to muscle the useless chemise over your head, a hand settles on your back directly between your shoulder blades.

"Don't do that, my lady."

Baelor's voice is directly over your shoulder, gentle but stern. His hand presses solidly between your shoulders, holding the fabric of your chemise against your overheated flesh. You blink, seeing nothing but the headboard of the bed and cream colored linen, but feeling surrounded by him. His scent, his touch, his voice, so close and so strong, should hurt. It should hurt, because until now the barest touch has been agony, exacerbating the pain and torment.

But Baelor's touch does nothing. It's the oddest thing, enough to make you stop moving and tensing up for just a moment. You are still too hot, your skin is still too sensitive, but the only warmth and sensation that Baelor's hand brings is… comforting. Relief emanates from the single point of contact, bleeding through your body in tangible ripples that seem to stretch out down your spine and along your limbs.

That is, until the relief settles low. And then it becomes something else, something arguably worse than the pain. Your core muscles draw up tight and aching, and the heat and agony is replaced with devastating, almost crippling arousal.

You gasp, your back arching dramatically like that of a frightened cat, and you practically throw yourself away from Baelor with all the grace of a scared animal. Or, at least, you try to leap from the bed, but your body is sluggish, and Baelor Breakspear is nothing if not a quick combatant.

As soon as you try to take off, bouncing up like one of the crows into the air, Baelor's arm comes around your waist and drags you back down to the mattress. Try as you might to wriggle free and fling yourself to the floor, Baelor is strong, a force to be reckoned with.

"Stop this at once." Baelor's voice is still just as firm, but the gentility with which he orders you is… it's awful. He commands you with kindness and patience. "I will not abide you hurting yourself."

"Already hurts," you argue, although it's more of a lie the longer Baelor holds you.

It's as though he has the cure to your ailment within his very palms. But, while he holds you down, cradling you with your back to his chest, your arousal grows to a horrifying degree. You can feel your core muscles contract and release, the wetness between your legs smearing your thighs. There is a very likely chance that you may cum without any other form of stimulation, and you will not be able to survive that amount of humiliation. Perhaps he cannot abide you hurting yourself, but you cannot abide acting like a whore in the Prince of Dragonstone's arms.

You make a small, frantic noise in the back of your throat, and whimper, "I have to go. Let me go. Please. Please— Please. My lord, let me go. I have to go."

The small skirmish nears its end as you plant your hands on his forearm and try to push it away, but your hands are too weak and his arm is like a steel belt holding you down.

"Go where?" His voice is too close to your ear. You shiver in his arms, clamping your thighs together to stave off the new waves of heat coalescing between them. Goosebumps break out across your skin, and you feel your eyes widen. He sounds so fucking calm when he says, "There are several flights of stairs to descend before you reach the ground floor. Your only other option is the window, and you will break every bone in your body no matter which way you decide to go, unless you can walk. Can you walk?"

Only if you're touching me. You grit your teeth. "I have to try."

"No." It's Baelor who says it this time, and in spite of all your fighting, you can't seem to drum up any more of it.

You have to admit that it's a relief to not be in pain anymore, even if you have an entirely different set of problems to contend with, now. You slump forward in his arms, hanging your head as you dumbly squeeze at the fabric of his sleeve. "It is not proper for you to be holding me this way, Your Grace."

"I fear that it would be less proper of me to allow you to throw yourself from the window," Baelor explains rationally. Still, he releases his arm from around your waist, only bringing a hand up to move your hair away from your face. You have to physically fight not to press your overheated cheek into the cradle of his hand, like a cat seeking out affection. He pauses, and then says, "Maester, you said that you had not identified an ingredient of the tincture. Could it be dragon's breath?"

"No, Your Grace." Maester Florin speaks from across the room, where he retreated back to his apothecary setup. "With respect, I am familiar with dragon's breath. I would have been able to identify its presence with relative ease."

"She smells of it." Baelor does not say it unkindly.

"It is possible that while the tincture is in her system, the aphrodisiac effects may occur outwardly as well." Florin pauses, then clarifies, "That is, it will cause her to look, smell, or sound in ways that… some may consider… attractive, Your Grace."

Baelor remains silent. The implication hangs solidly in the air. You notice almost immediately that the maester did not include taste in that assessment, although it lingers in the subtext. The Prince is being effected by your presence, even if it is not to the same degree that you are being effected by his.

"You never answered my question, Maester," you finally interject. "Why is it killing me?"

You feel Baelor's fingers tense on your shoulder just slightly at the question, but he doesn't say anything. Instead, he waits while Florin seems to flounder for a moment, and then gently supplements, "Please answer the lady's question."

Florin looks deeply uncomfortable. "Your Grace, it's… of quite a delicate subject matter. I hesitate to cause yourself or the lady any offense—"

"Seven above, just spit it out, already!" You swipe your arm across your sweaty forehead, desperate to put an end to the hedging about. "I've been laying here dying for ages! What is it, what?"

"That's enough, now." Baelor holds a hand up to silence you, and you almost think you might bite it, except that he has such beautiful hands. You wouldn't want to mar them. You stare unabashedly at his silver ring and the lines on his palm, and you start… salivating.

Gods be good. You're going to eat him.

Florin hesitates only a second more. "This aphrodisiac… although the recipes differ across various regions, it is normally intended as a… a temporary cure for impotence and infertility. It is… I believe it is primarily used in brothels, to make— er… intercourse more— ehm. Pleasurable?"

You blink. "If it's meant to be pleasurable, then why does it hurt so much?" You still refuse to admit that you're already experiencing the so-called pleasurable function— that is, you're soaking the mattress with it the longer Baelor keeps his hand on your shoulder.

"Well, it is usually taken with the intention of… ehm. Using it for its innate purpose, you see. The aphrodisiac will remain in one's system until it has been expelled during copulation."

Baelor drops his hand from your shoulder and takes a step back. You feel the loss like a punch in the gut— quite literally, all of your muscles tighten at once, and you double over in pain.

Through clenched teeth, you say, "So, you mean I have to… to have sex?" The look on the maester's face says everything you need to know. "Or what? What if I don't? I'm— it hurts so much, I can't— I wouldn't be able to do anything… not on my own."

Your face burns at the admission. The humiliation— the irony of it all is unbelievable. The little lady took a love potion and now can't fuck herself properly enough to get it out of her system. The only hand she reacts to is the one she can't have, because it belongs to the Realm.

Florin chews on his lip while he thinks, and then explains, "This particular recipe seems more aggressive than most. That is likely due to the unidentifiable ingredient. The potion is, essentially, a slow acting poison. If it is not used for its intended purpose… I suppose, generally, there will be immense pain and fits for… three days after ingestion. Delirium sets in after about two days. And then—" His eyes flit from you, to Baelor, and back. "Then, my lady, I'm afraid you will die."

One Week Earlier

Admittedly, you knew it wouldn't work the minute you saw Daeron. He looked green about the face, his eyes so red and bleary that you thought he would keel over at any moment. If you hadn't heard him called 'Daeron the Drunken' behind closed doors, you would have tried to somehow politely ask if he was ill. Instead, you just assumed he'd had one too many before showing up to your presentation in court.

No, you aren't surprised that he turned down the offer of marriage. You were, however, surprised that he did not deliver the news himself. Instead, he sent a servant with a note while you were eating breakfast, and left you to bring it before the King. The entire meeting went over about the way you expected. Prince Maekar went to find Daeron, Prince Baelor apologized for his nephew's rudeness and the inconvenience, and the King assured you that all would be made well.

The truth of the matter is that you have no interest in Daeron, anyway. You do not want a husband who refuses to talk to you, even if his drunkenness was not an issue. Daeron has given you no reason to desire him— at this point, the prospect of the marriage would be a matter of your family's social and financial standing, and your own status as a Princess.

Now that the castle is sufficiently in an uproar about Daeron's refusal, you have made your gracious retreat to the gardens. You don't want to be in the castle any longer than you have to. Your family has already suggested leaving King's Landing in two days' time, and even so, it feels like too long to wait.

From the gardens, you look out over Blackwater Bay, watching ships disappear one by one over the horizon. You have no idea how long you sit there, but the sun slowly creeps lower and lower in the sky, until golden light filters through the leaves of the trees.

"My lady." For how large of a man Baelor is, he is light on his feet. You hadn't heard him approach, and so you jump when he addresses you, spinning around to find him standing a respectable distance away from your bench. When you stand to curtsy, he gives you an indulgent smile. "It appears that you've been out here for some time. I only wanted to ensure all was well."

You fight not to raise an eyebrow at the Prince. "You must have been watching me closely, then, Your Grace."

He squints, then pivots to peer up at the Tower of the Hand, looming over the Red Keep. "Not so close, I should think."

You snicker at that, casting your eyes away from him. Baelor is a handsome man, and kind. You find your awareness lingering on him above all others, and you're beginning to fear that your crush is becoming obvious. You feel nervous in his presence in only the best way, as though you may trip over your own tongue and say something entirely unbecoming just as soon as you open your mouth. That feeling is… refreshing, in the right company. But Baelor is heir apparent to the Iron Throne, Protector of the Realm, and you are simply a noble lady much younger than him, with the prospect of marrying his nephew. Any fantasies you indulge can only be that.

"May I join you a moment?" Baelor asks, and despite your internal angst, you cannot bring yourself to refuse him.

Perhaps it would be more proper to have your lady's maid here with you, but Mircalla has other things to be doing now, and so you sit a respectable distance away from Baelor on the bench while staring out to sea and wishing it was not respectable at all.

"In my week at court, I've discovered that I quite like this view," you say after a beat, to puncture the tight shroud of silence that settles between the two of you. "I enjoy watching the waves. I wonder what it's like to be one of them, sometimes. Rolling always towards the shore."

"Or dashing upon the rocks?"

You hum. "At least they know where they're going, rocks or no."

You retreat back into silence with him, and watch him out of the corner of your eye as he twirls his silver ring around his finger idly. He seems to be thinking hard about something, eyes fixed on the horizon with a purpose. It gives you just a moment to admire his profile— his strong, twice-broken nose, his furrowed brow, the touches of silvery gray in his close-cropped dark hair. The small freckle on his cheekbone. The stretch of his neck from beneath his collar, begging for a pair of lips or a tongue to lavish it.

"My lady, allow me to extend my apologies once more for my nephew's behavior," Baelor says finally, and you turn your eyes quickly back out to sea. "It is not the first time Daeron has been irresponsible with delicate matters. Although, it is also the fault of we who expect responsibility from him, that there must be an apology."

"I don't think it's unreasonable to expect responsibility from a prince," you answer without thinking, and then suddenly remember who you are speaking to. "…Your Grace."

"No. On that, we agree." There is a light chuckle in his voice, a slight humor that you imagine is meant to make you feel more at ease. "I do not imagine that Daeron will take long to rectify his behavior, however."

You feel a girlish temper flare within you at the idea that Daeron could rectify anything. You take a long, sobering breath, smelling sea salt and garden flowers on the air.

"You were married, Your Grace. You know quite well how to approach a—" Woman. You want to say it, but you feel it would be too forward. You reconsider, and continue instead with, "a betrothal. Do you believe that anything Daeron has done makes for a… a loving marriage?"

Baelor considers your question with the attention you would expect from the King's Hand. Then, he answers, "I would not hazard a guess as to the sincerity of Daeron's feelings toward you, my lady. Only he can truly know the answer to that. Though, it may bring you some comfort to know that…" He pauses thoughtfully. "My own marriage was not for love. It was arranged, as duty demanded. But, in time, I do believe Jena and I came to love one another, as well as a match made in service to the Crown would allow. Perhaps your marriage to Daeron would be the same."

You sit with his words. Enter into a loveless marriage, having already been besmirched by the man who you would bind yourself to, and hope that love will come in spite of it all. It sounds like a fool's errand.

"Be that as it may, I believe Daeron has already done some irreparable damage to my reputation." When you see Baelor turn his head just barely toward you, you supplement, "My lady's maid, Mircalla, shares with me the gossip I would otherwise be protected from. Sometimes, it can be… harsh. She is honest with me, which is a quality I admire most, you understand." You look down at your hands to find yourself tearing at your own cuticles in your nervousness. "She told me some hours ago that there are rumors floating about as to why— why Daeron would refuse me. Some speculated that we fought upon first meeting. Others suggest that I am pregnant with another man's bastard. Or— Or that we have already slept together, and that Daeron was not pleased with me. Can you imagine…?"

Your voice fades out on a horrified whisper. Although none of these rumors are true, each of them deal a blow to your reputation in turn. Your eyes sting with tears the longer you think of the different stories concocted about you.

"Although it may satisfy me to have Daeron grovel and beg forgiveness, it makes no difference. From now on I will be known as the whore that Daeron refused."

Out of the corner of your eye, you catch Baelor pressing his lips together tightly, raising his chin just a tick. The Prince is quiet for a moment, while you bite back your tears and turn your face away from him.

"You say that honesty is a trait that you value," Baelor remarks, and waits until you nod at him in response. "Then please trust me to be honest. I cannot imagine that anyone would truly believe that of you, my lady. You see, I have had the privilege of knowing you during your time at the Red Keep, and I find you to be exceptional in every way. I can't imagine it, because I cannot fathom anyone viewing you as anything else."

You finally turn to fix him with a watery stare, and find him looking back at you with such solitary focus that you practically wither beneath his gaze. For the first time, you notice that Baelor's eyes are two different colors. The castle is not brightly lit inside, and you have never been close enough to him to notice it, until now. One brown, one violet, they lend even more of a sense of mystery to his handsome features. You have a mind to mention it— you open your mouth to tell him that they're beautiful, but then you think better of it.

He's the Prince of Dragonstone. The Hand of the King. There is nothing that could bring you together.

Baelor holds a hand out to you, his palm facing upward. You peer down at it for a moment before placing your hand delicately in his. Baelor's thumb gently brushes your knuckles, his hand practically dwarfing your own. His palm is so warm, and when he places his other hand atop yours, your skin feels engulfed in flames.

"However," Baelor says, and locks you in his stare, "I can believe that rumors abound. It is an unfortunate effect of being highborn that many will speak on what they know nothing about. But rumors seldom bear any truth. They reflect nothing of your true nature. I assure you that House Targaryen, Daeron included, will understand that."

You blink down at your hand, enveloped in both of his. Daeron. Of course, all of this is to convince you not to lose hope, that Daeron will change his mind, that Daeron will decide to marry you.

"I… thank you for your kindness, Your Grace," you respond, for lack of anything else to say. You know that he's being as fair in his judgment as possible, but he has a duty to the King and to House Targaryen. Gently, you withdraw your hand from his as you add, "Unfortunately, I regret that my family are displeased with Daeron's refusal. I understand that they have designs on leaving King's Landing in two days' time. While I know that both you and Prince Maekar are quite persuasive, I doubt that it provides ample time for Daeron to change his mind. I imagine he wanted to refuse me the moment he saw me."

"Why do you imagine that?"

You look out across Blackwater Bay, thinking back to your first meeting with Daeron. When you curtsyed, the princeling looked as though he was going to either throw up or faint, or both. At the time, you blamed it on the drink. Now, you're not entirely sure.

"I believe he finds me ugly."

Baelor huffs a short laugh through his nose, so quiet and subtle that you would not have caught it if you weren't sitting so close to him. You turn to look at him, appalled, and find him with a soft, reserved smile on his face.

"Well, don't laugh."

"Apologies, my lady." Still, Baelor's mouth curves up at the edges as though he just can't help himself. You watch him tongue the inside of his cheek, half-amused. "I mean no jest. I just find it rather unlikely, to be frank."

"I can't think of another reason why," you explain, finally letting your true emotions ring through. You're hurt. You had given Daeron no reason to dislike you; you had been agreeable and good-natured whenever you spoke to him. "He sent his refusal via courier. He wanted not to speak to me, and he has been quite avoidant throughout my entire visit."

"It's true," Baelor replies smoothly. "Daeron has behaved abominably. But I do know him to be kind, and mannerly when given the opportunity."

You had given Daeron plenty of opportunities. You don't want to argue with Baelor, but you think that he is viewing your situation only from the position of a Prince of the Realm.

"How many hours in the day are there? How many days in a week? Daeron could have come to me during any of them, and I would have recieved him. Kind and mannerly though he may be, Your Grace," you say, looking over at Baelor Breakspear with a challenging fire in your eyes, "no one can force a man to want, any more than they can force a horse to drink."

Baelor's expression remains frustratingly unreadable. You gaze into his mismatched eyes as though they will tell you something, anything about what he's thinking, but there is nothing there to betray him.

"Daeron would be a fool not to want you," Baelor tells you, his voice low and edged with a finality that makes you want to take it for fact. "Whether he is or is not, I cannot say. Only time will tell."

"Do you say that as a man? Or as the Hand of the King?" you ask him more pointedly than you should.

"Both."

You gaze at each other for a long time, long enough that the breeze picks up and sweeps your hair up in its gust. You watch Baelor's jaw work— as small of a gesture though it is, it is the only thing about him that tells you he's contemplating something. He is no open book, your Prince, and it frustrates you as much as it seduces you. It sets you daydreaming, watching him openly in the cool evening air as his mouth curves vaguely toward a frown. Down by his knee, he worries the silver ring on his finger.

Then, Baelor lifts his hand, and with a touch so featherlight it's almost inconsequential, he brushes your hair away from your brow and tucks it behind your ear. His skin barely even meets yours— you can explain it away as him just being chivalrous, just keeping your hair from flying into your eyes. But it's enough to make your heart lurch up into your throat, nonetheless.

"It's late," you mutter, now that the sun has dipped below the horizon and the garden is bathed in shadow. You swallow the lump in your throat, trying to regain your composure as you drop your gaze.

"It is."

"It's getting dark."

"Yes," Baelor agrees, then finally looks away from you. He squints out across the bay, staring into the distance at the absence of sun. "The dragon's breath will be blooming, now."

"Dragon's breath?" You shake your head. "I'm sorry, Your Grace, I have not heard of it."

"I'm not surprised. It's a night-blooming flower, native to Dorne. There is a crop of them not far off, if I recall. Come, I can show it to you." Baelor stands and offers you his hand once again, and this time, you do not hesitate to take it.

He leads you, arm-in-arm, down the garden path toward the godswood. Just as the treeline begins to thicken in the gloaming, Baelor brings you to a stop.

"Just there," he murmurs, guiding you to investigate a shrub low to the ground, littered with trumpet-shaped red blooms. As he stoops to pluck one from the shrub, he says, "Dragon's breath. They are sweetly fragranced, but do not be mistaken. They can be quite deadly if eaten."

"I'll make sure not to put them in my tea, then," you tell him as you take the flower he extends to you. It smells slightly of jasmine and woodsmoke when you hold it beneath your nose, careful not to let it touch your lips. "It's lovely."

"Yes," Baelor says, watching you closely. His eyes linger on yours for an extended moment, a gentle smile curving his mouth. Then, a serene look crosses his face. "It is said that the First Men would ingest it to convene with the old gods. Whether or not this is true remains to be seen, but I would not advise it, at any rate."

"No, I'd imagine not." You spend a second twirling the little red blossom, the same shade as the red thread in his doublet, the colors of House Targaryen. Quite suddenly, you observe, "They're your favorite."

Baelor is quiet for a moment. "What makes you so certain?"

"You thought of them first. You could have shown me anything in the entire Keep, but you showed me these. Obviously, they're important to you." You peer up at him, and you can't bite back your smirk. "I'm right, aren't I?"

Baelor huffs a small laugh, the second one you've managed from him. The sound of it warms the pit of your stomach. "You're rather sure of yourself."

"That isn't a 'no.'"

"Mm. It's not a 'yes,' either."

You crack a grin. "Okay. Don't tell me, then. But I'm right."

This time, when Baelor tilts his head downward, you catch him smiling, a flash of teeth and a dimple indenting his bearded cheek. It is imperfect, crooked and so very human. He hides it well, but you're able to see it before he gentles his face into a careful mask once again.

He doesn't know that you see it. It will remain your secret, a fascination to look back on when you're in need of comfort. You made the Prince of Dragonstone smile. A real smile.

"Thank you, Your Grace," you tell him quietly, still pinching the blossom in your fingers. "For your company. And your hospitality."

"The pleasure is mine." Baelor looks as though he may leave the conversation there, but then he adds, "One more word before we part, my lady, if you please?"

"Certainly." You step a touch closer to him. A cricket sounds somewhere in the brush. The night is beginning to wake around you, the longer you linger with the Prince. You wonder if you could draw the moment out long enough to see the dawn.

Baelor does not seem overly concerned about it. "I should like to extend an invitation to your family, if you believe they would be willing. Perhaps, rather than departing King's Landing in two days' time, they would agree to remain another fortnight?"

You blink at him. Another two weeks? For what, exactly?

Baelor answers your unasked question, as though he can see directly into your mind. "So that we may have ample time for Daeron to correct his mistake. Of course."

"Of course," you echo. You feel clean out of air in your lungs, stunned for something to say. "Your Grace, I— I would say that my family would have to answer that invitation for themselves. I cannot speak for the lot."

He affords you the most patient of smiles. "I would like to hear your answer before all, if you don't mind."

"Oh."

Another two weeks at the Red Keep. Two weeks for the rumors to spread, to converge and morph into even worse ones. Two weeks for Daeron to insult you by ignoring you, tarnish your reputation by refusing you a second time. Conversely, two weeks for Daeron to decide that he may tolerate your company and accept you.

You look down at the flower in your fingers. Two weeks to search for the sight of Baelor in the halls and in the councils. Two weeks to speak to him again. Two weeks to indulge in that wickedest of fantasies: that you might fall in love with Baelor Breakspear.

"Yes," you tell Baelor, quiet enough that it threatens to be spirited away on the breeze. "Yes, if my family is willing. I would be glad to stay another fortnight, at Your Grace's pleasure."

Baelor nods at you graciously. "Then I will see to your family's response in the morning. Thank you for your acceptance, my lady."

"Thank you for your invitation." You tilt your face towards the sky. "It is quite dark. I fear that I will have trouble on my way back, should I remain any longer."

"Indeed. The fault is mine, entirely. Allow me to walk you to the holdfast."

You make the journey back to the holdfast in comfortable silence. You find that you do not feel even remotely unsafe as long as Baelor is near; otherwise, you would never chance to linger outside the holdfast, even within the castle walls, after dark. But Baelor's presence is a relief. You would trust him with your life. You would probably trust him with even more than that, given the chance.

"My Prince."

You pause in the golden torchlight, only bright enough to illuminate the bridge over the dry moat. Down in the pit there is nothing but blackness, and a sense that if you stepped too close it would suck you in. Turning to Baelor, you have the dragon's breath blossom still in your fingers, and lift it to your face to take in its scent again— sweet, smoky, like a garden aflame. You can understand why he is taken with this particular flower.

Baelor watches you expectantly, a respectable distance away again, as though every part of your conversation this evening had been a diplomatic mission. Cleaning up his nephew's mess. Doing what is right for the Realm.

The idea rattles you. It cuts you deep and hits something within that you thought you'd left in your girlhood— covetousness. The desire to be shown favoritism, attention. To be wanted, not simply tolerated. You are not a girl anymore, but the King's Hand seems to bring her out of you as though it were second nature. You feel the urge to try to bring the boy out of him, which may be an insurmountable task. He is a prince, a warrior and a lord of refined poise and sophistication. But you have never been one to shy away from a challenge.

You step closer to him. Baelor does not move away, but follows you with his eyes, a reserved expression on his face. Perhaps he is trying to anticipate what you may do, but he does not show any signs of backing down. You imagine that he wouldn't, even if you threw yourself at him unceremoniously. If you kissed him like you desperately want to, open-mouthed and wet.

But you are not improper, or desperate. You are a lady, and well-versed in flattery and elegant flirtation. You take the dragon's breath, and you tuck the green stem into the gap between the silk fabric of his doublet and the Hand of the King pin that adorns his chest. It flares up from the pin, as though the fingers of the hand were holding it tight to his heart.

"Keep this safe," you say, your smile hiding your desirous stare. Your fingers rest against his chest for just a second longer than is proper, but you pull them away quickly enough, you think. "I would hate for it to go to waste."

Baelor's eyes soften. "Certainly, my lady."

"You are quite a wonderful man, my Prince." Your innermost thoughts become physical things, they turn balmy on your tongue. "If you may pardon my saying so. I have wanted to for some time, but… the opportunity did not present itself."

Baelor's brows raise just the slightest, but he does not admonish you. "I thank you for the compliment, my lady. You are very kind, indeed." A pause, a breath on the wind. "Lovely."

You stay there, held captive in his gaze. One violet, one brown. Finally, in spite of your sense of self preservation, you tell him, "Your eyes… They really are very beautiful, you know."

You do not wait for his answer or reaction before you bid him goodnight, and all but flee into the holdfast. And so, you are not able to see the way he watches after you with a lingering smile, and a longing gaze in those very eyes.

Present

Baelor sends Maester Florin away with an order to return on the morrow, and to alert the servants that you should not be disturbed. It is not without your notice that after he ushers the maester out the chamber door, he bolts it with a final clang that reverberates in your oversensitive ears.

You lay on the mussed bedsheets, curled into a ball. You are sideways in the bed; there is no point in putting yourself to rights, because the moment the next wave of pain hits you will become a writhing animal once again, a slave to the torrents of agony. Through the stringy, damp strands of your loose hair, you watch Baelor's back.

He leans against the door with both hands pressed flat to the wood, head bowed in thought. Or, is it distress? Perhaps both. You don't quite know what to make of his reaction to your situation, at all.

What you do know is that you feel a wave of heat flash through your body so fast and so sharp that all of your muscles tense at once, and you yelp from the blast of pain. Your head pounds as though your heartbeat originates from it.

Baelor turns at the sound of your anguish, and his face pinches at the sight of you, a small, trembling heap on the bed. "I will fetch Daeron."

"No."

"My lady, please."

He approaches the end of the bed, but you can't do more than follow the sight of his face with your eyes, until it passes too far into your periphery, and you must drop them to his belt. The sight of Baelor's belt inches away from your face is not something that helps your situation at all, however, and so you shut your eyes before your body manages to torment you further.

"Daeron is… unreliable, yes. And irresponsible. I know that you harbor wounded feelings towards him at the moment, but…" Baelor hesitates. Clearly, he knows that he is not making the best case for his nephew. His eyes roam your disconsolate form, and then he finishes, "But he is your best chance at survival. I am certain that he will be agreeable, at least in this pursuit."

"Do you even know if his cock works?"

Baelor is eerily silent. You don't open your eyes to look at him until you feel the mattress shift, and you find that he's sat on the foot of the bed, his back to you once again. His hands loosely grip the edge of the mattress on either side of him, and his posture betrays no real emotion. It is only when you notice the redness of his ears that you realize your words must have unnerved him.

"I would not know, my lady," Baelor answers quietly, after a moment. "Daeron has sired no bastards, as far as I am aware. His drunkenness may prove an issue, but questionable odds are better than none."

"I don't want Daeron. He doesn't want me."

"He is to be your betrothed." Baelor's words are flat, even. Clinical. "I understand that if he had not refused you, then perhaps you would not have resorted to… other methods—"

"I didn't take the fucking thing for him," you finally snap, gritting your teeth against the pain throbbing in your head and in your abdomen.

Baelor's voice surrenders to something inquisitive. "Then, why did you take it?"

Another moment of silence. Baelor is too still, his hand pressed flat to the mattress in front of your face. You stare, unblinking, at the glint of the silver ring on his finger, bearing the insignia of House Targaryen.

"I thought… perhaps there was someone else for me." You take in a shallow breath. "Although, I think my rash decision making outweighs my judgment."

Baelor turns and gives you the most indulgent smile you think you've ever received, even though there is immense pain behind his eyes.

"If you will not have Daeron… perhaps I can call another for you. Ser Duncan may be willing," he suggests, his voice just above a whisper. "Ser Duncan is a good and honorable man. I trust him with my life, and I would trust him with yours."

You stare at him in shock for a moment. "Oh… Oh, yes, of course. Ser Duncan. Ser Duncan. Why didn't I think of that? Ser Duncan the Tall." Baelor remains stoic, nonplussed at your sarcasm. Your stomach cramps up as you blather, "Or, better yet, why not call Ser Donnel as well? The entire King's Guard, even? Drag me down to the Great Yard, maybe they can take turns, pass me off—"

"Enough," Baelor finally snaps, shooting you a stern look. "I will hear no more of that sort of talk from you."

"Or what? Your Grace," you return with a wicked glare. "I will not be foisted off to the first man you think of."

Lit up with the fury of a thousand suns now, and sweating enough to show it, you push yourself up on wobbly limbs and tumble off of the bed onto the bearskin rug on the floor. You land on your aching stomach with a loud, "OOMF," and all the air painfully leaves your lungs.

"Stop this, now." Baelor sounds weary, as though he's bored of a game you're playing.

"No. Leave me." You crawl clumsily across the rug towards the chamber window. "I'm not going to lay there, dying in agony and— and losing my mind. I'd rather throw myself out of the tower. Let me die with quiet dignity and grace."

"Quiet dignity and grace," he eventually repeats, incredulous. He hasn't even gotten up from the end of the bed, but just watches you, fascinated with your display. "You know, I fathered two boys. Theatrics don't impress me, especially when negotiating."

"Yes, remind me again of how you're so amazing at everything, like— fathering sons, and— negotiating," you growl, huffing with the exertion of your endeavor. "Because you're— you're so fucking perfect and chivalrous. The Hammer. With your— fucking— giant, veiny— host of Dornish spearmen."

"My, you're verbose."

It's only when you threaten to tip the table by the window, as you attempt to haul yourself up to your feet, that Baelor rises. He reaches you in three quick strides, snatches you about the waist and throws you over his shoulder, just to carry you back to the bed. Your small amount of spite-fueled energy spent, you merely hang on him like a sack of straw.

Baelor lays you down so that your head hits the pillow, your hands thrown above your head. "Are you quite finished?" he asks sharply, looming over you, his eyes boring into yours. His jaw set, he states, "I am trying to save your life."

"And I am no one's whore." You stare defiantly up into the eyes of Baelor Targaryen, willing him to yield.

And, to your surprise, he does. His eyes soften, his jaw untensing as he lets out a slow, defeated sigh. "No, you are not."

He sits back, his hands still pressed into the mattress on either side of you. You miss his proximity like a lost limb.

"Forgive me. I have been presumptuous in my suggestions. I would never force you into any situation against your will or desires." A pause. "But I cannot sit idle and let you die. I beg you, my lady. Name someone, anyone, who you would trust in this matter. Someone who you would accept. I will bring them to you without question."

You gaze up at him tearfully, and feel another wave of heat blooming in your hands and feet. You press your tongue to the back of your teeth and take in the sight of him, so poised and regal, even when faced with an unmanageable task.

"Baelor."

Your hand— small, clammy with sweat and shaky from the fatigue in your limbs— reaches out and finds his— large, warm, grounding. You pull at his hand, and he lets you. His head turns just slightly, watching you as you cradle his large palm in your two hands and press it firmly against your chest, just below your collarbone.

Whatever this magic is, be it gods sent or gods cursed, it reacts the second his skin touches yours. Your entire body sparks alive with sensation— but rather than the unrelenting heat and pain of the poison coursing through your veins, it's solace. You let out a soft moan at the feeling, like gentle sunlight flooding through your body the moment that his fingers lace with yours.

"My Prince," you whisper shakily, and feel his fingers flex just slightly against your chest. Your heart pounds against your ribcage so hard that you know he feels it. He can probably feel the unbelievable heat radiating off of you. "It's— I feel so much pain. I hear the voices of the guards on the ramparts and I taste— I taste the salt from the sweat on your brow. I feel as though I will rip in two when the waves come, and nothing has made it better except— except you. When you touch me. Your hands on me… it's you."

Baelor is quiet, listening to your rambling speech. Tears stream from your eyes. It is both a relief and a terror to confess what you feel to him.

Then, Baelor removes his hand from your chest and brings it to cup the side of your face. The tenderness of his touch strips you to the bone. You feel like you're breathing only for him, like he commands the very air that gives your body function. His thumb brushes your damp hair away from your face, wiping away your tears with it, and he gazes down at you with such care, such affection.

He says your name softly, but there's a touch of sadness in it. He closes his eyes, breathes in long and slow through his nose. "I cannot do what you ask. You must name another."

"Please." You make a frail noise in the back of your throat, feeling as though you may begin sobbing in a moment. You shake your head, lifting one hand to clutch at Baelor's wrist.

"I cannot," he insists, although he doesn't pull his hand away from you. You don't know if he is bearing in mind what you told him— that his touch is the only thing that keeps the pain from tormenting you. There is palpable tension in his expression, his brow furrowed and his mouth set in a firm line. "I am the King's Hand and heir to the throne. If you were to be gotten with my child, it would cause a scandal."

"I am already rumored to be pregnant, remember? House Targaryen has weathered far worse than a bastard child," you remark weakly.

"But you have not. I would not dishonor you in such a way." When you pout and look as though you may argue, he continues, "Whatever rumors circulate about you, we need not give them merit."

"So you would have me carry another man's bastard, instead?"

Baelor snaps his mouth shut, his expression turning suddenly guarded. He makes as though he may pull his hand back as he turns away from you, and your stomach drops.

"Baelor, no."

You clap your own hand over his, turning to nuzzle into the warmth of his palm. On instinct, you plant your lips against his skin, and it's as though something savage bursts alive within you. Some greedy, desperate thing takes hold as your eyes drift shut, with each breath tasting the warmth and spice of his skin as though your tongue were flush to it.

"Don't let go," you whisper into the cradle of his hand. "If you let go of me the pain will return, and I can't— I can't bear it anymore, Baelor, I can't—"

"I know. I won't let you go, darling." He sounds strained even as he reassures you, but he doesn't remove his hand.

There is a long silence, while you practically lose yourself in the feeling of just… giving in. You relax into the glowing feeling, hot pleasure sweeping through your body, up your limbs and into your core, replacing any pain that had been there before. It's glorious. It distracts you, pulls your mind away from the reality of the situation— that you cannot simply have him hold your face and hope that the poison works its way out of your system on its own.

Without meaning to, you drag your parted lips along his fingers, as though exploring them just with your mouth. His fingers are so long. Slender and dextrous, calloused from hours of sword training. You feel each bump and ridge against your mouth and you're trying so hard not to sink your teeth in. Your lower lip catches on the band of his silver ring and draws back, letting the smallest flash of your teeth graze his skin.

You hear his breath catch, and your eyes fly open, suddenly aware of what you're doing. Baelor watches you from the corner of his eye as you press your face into his touch, his jaw locked up tight, his free hand a fist where it rests on his knee.

You feel as though you should apologize, but you can't bring yourself to. Apologize for what? For desiring him? Wanting him? He's so handsome. His differently colored eyes study you, a painful reminder of it. You stare back at him, imagining what it would be like to trace his face with your lips, as well.

"You told me once that Daeron would be a fool not to want me," you say, and you take a purposefully slow breath, because if you don't you may start heaving for air. "Are you a fool, my Prince?"

Baelor lets out a soft sigh, and looks quickly away from you. His fingers twitch slightly against your cheek. He's silent for a long time, long enough that you begin to fear you've misread him, confused his kindness for something deeper.

But then he tilts his head down, and without looking at you, he says quietly, "I am not, my lady. Though, whether my desire in itself is foolish, I have no idea. I may be doomed for it."

"Then… perhaps we are both doomed," you admit, your eyes practically dancing over his features. "I can't think around my desire for you. All I know is that you— you are all that I want in the world. Scandals and suspicious potions be damned."

"Gods above." You watch Baelor roll his eyes toward the ceiling. When he returns his eyes to you, it's with a look of solemn admiration. He strokes his knuckles along the curve of your jaw. "I'm beginning to believe you exist simply to torment me."

You allow yourself to fashion a wobbly smile. "Me? Torment the Breakspear? Never."

Baelor huffs a quiet laugh, looking away from you in a manner that is almost… shy. You can see his jaw flex beneath his short beard and a rosy flush come over his face, and—

You just made Baelor blush.

You lay with that, watching him in the silence. His hand drifts from grazing your jaw to resting flat against your collarbone again, and you lift your own to trace your fingers languidly along the back of his palm. You can hear his breath come out shaky at the light contact, and it's just enough to give you the clarity to really, truly think about this.

His hands on you could be enough, you realize. You practically came the moment that he touched you, and if this magic can just be expelled from your system by an orgasm, it might be that he doesn't need to do anything more than just… put his hands on you. It feels good enough as it is— the heat of him, the smell and the feeling of him, are all adding to the pleasurable fire burning in your core. But, if you felt his hands go… down…

"Baelor."

His name comes out of your mouth faster than it should, and he snaps his eyes to you with a look of sudden concern, as though he expects to find something wrong. But nothing really is wrong— at least nothing that hasn't been wrong to begin with.

"What if—" You bite your lip, trying hard not to move your hips in any way that could startle him off. Your cunt throbs just at the thought of feeling his hands on your body with no barrier. "What if you just… touched me?"

Baelor seems to think your question over, searching your face for any kind of deception. But you simply stare at him openly, your eyes pleading, heart pounding as you feel his thumb stroke once over the hollow of your throat.

And then, his eyes drift down. They linger on the swell of your breast, heaving under the thin, practically sheer linen of your chemise. Everything is too intimate, too bright in the mid-afternoon sun slanting through the open window, illuminating you. Gods, it feels like you're already naked before him with the way he just stares, undressing you in his mind. It hits you directly between the legs, and you clench your thighs together to stave off the rush of arousal.

Your breath hitches, and Baelor snaps his eyes back up to your face, as though he's just remembered himself. "I am touching you."

"Y-You—" Your breath hiccups in your chest with how hard you're trying not to gasp for air. "You don't know how cl-close I am to— to—"

You clap your hands over your face, feeling a flush of heat throughout your body that has nothing to do with his hand on you. It's hard enough to be begging him for some kind of stimulation, but to tell him how close you are to an orgasm just from his touch is mortifying.

Not for the first time, Baelor seems to be able to see inside your mind without you voicing your thoughts. "Tell me," he plies gently, his thumb sweeping across your damp skin. He remains so composed, even when you feel like dissolving into thin air. "What is it that you feel… when I touch you?"

He's still hesitant, but his voice holds a curiosity that he hadn't made manifest before now. Everything in you winds up tight at the sound. He's not just indulging you, he wants to know. You know that he's trying to be proper— Baelor is a man of restraint, of infinite patience and regard for honor and decency. You know that he's clinging to his morals even while trying to rationalize the problem set before him.

But he bolted the chamber door, you remember. Behind your closed eyelids, beyond the sound of your heavy breathing and his, more measured, you can hear the clang of the bolt reverberate in your ears all over again. His hands pressed to the solid oak, his head bowed in thought. Why would he have locked you in together? Unless…

"It feels like sunrise after a frost." Your voice is muffled behind your hands, because you refuse to look at him while you say such things. You don't think you could bear to see his face, as you confess, "It is as though all of this poison in me changes, and it becomes heavenly. I feel… when you touch me… as though my body is not my own, but yours to— to do with as you please. To mold to your whim. And I would let you, my lord, I— I would have you do anything that you desired to me, and I would ask you only to do it again. I could glut myself on your touch and it would not be enough, it undoes me in ways I cannot explain, I… You set your hand upon my back and I thought… I thought I was going to c-cum—"

You choke off on a quiet, humiliated sob. So there it is, out in the open now, with no way to take it back. Baelor is still frustratingly silent, but you refuse to pull your hands away from your face to look at him, because you can't find it within yourself to be clever or brave anymore.

"You wouldn't even need to— to deflower me," you continue, blathering now, unleashing any thought that comes to mind as a way to fill the silence. "It would hardly even be anything that would be significant to anyone, just— just lay your hand upon me, and I might— I could—"

"Where?"

All things stop at once. Your thoughts, your breath, your heartbeat. You freeze up like he has just found a way to completely obliterate you with one word. You take a sharp inhale to kickstart your lungs again, and hesitantly curl your fingers away from your eyes to look at him.

Baelor's eyes are transfixed on your face, unwavering, his expression open and earnest. He waits for you to answer him, but when it becomes apparent that you can't, he supplements, "Show me where you would have me touch you."

You consider him for just a second, just long enough for the gravity of his words to register. He wants you to show him. It occurs to you to tell him that he could touch you anywhere beneath your chemise— your stomach, your hip, your knee— and it may yield the same results. But you don't.

You take Baelor's hand, the one resting on your chest so steadily, and you move it. He allows you to, watching you all the time, the pupils of his mismatched eyes blown wide. With one hand you pull at the fabric of your chemise, tugging it up your legs, while you guide his own beneath it. As soon as his hand touches the plush skin of your thigh, you both gasp in tandem— but for different reasons.

For you, it's the burst of sensation, the sharp arcing pleasure that shoots up your spine and grips at something tight and cruel in your core, making you stifle a moan. You were right. The proximity of his touch to where you want it most makes all the difference— you fist at the gathered fabric in your hand and try not to rock your hips toward his touch, but your pussy throbs threateningly at the heat of him so close to it.

Baelor is simply startled. His brow shoots up, his jaw slack as he breathlessly murmurs, "Oh, my sweet girl."

You're drenched down your thighs, a fact that you had failed to mention to him. His fingers slip through the wetness there, feeling it against your skin, and his breath leaves him in shock.

"I— I wasn't like this, before." You take a shaky inhale, and tremors travel through your entire body. "Before you."

It's as though something within him cracks, and all of his inner turmoil is laid bare before you, etched across his features like a carving on stone. The fear, the worry, the frustration, all manifest in his pinched brow and the dip of his mouth, the tremble of his breath. But there is something else there, too— raw desire, sharp as a knife's edge. It's in his eyes, in the way that his shoulders draw tight, in the set of his jaw. It's in his hands, the way that his fingers shift and press into the pillowy flesh of your thigh.

Baelor's thumb sweeps along the curve of your inner thigh, the same affectionate, instinctive gesture that it had been as he laid his hand on your chest. But on this part of your body it is more suggestive, and perhaps ill-advised. His thumb glides too close to the core of you and, quite by accident, he discovers that you are bare of any smallclothes.

Your gasp is sudden and loud. The brush of his finger against your bare sex is enough to make you jump, your hand clamping down on his wrist desperately as pleasure dances like pure dragonflame over your nerves. Your cunt pulses, and a feeble moan breaks from you. "Baelor, please."

He halts, and something changes in his expression. Call it the end of resolve, or a breaking point. There is no hiding anything from him now, you know. He has seen everything, knows what you are laying with.

"No more begging," Baelor finally says, and it's a gentle order. This man who has led armies, who has killed and fought to defend his realm, speaks to you with infinite tenderness. "I have you now, darling. I am for you. You need not beg anymore."

I am for you. He is your knight, upholding his vows, taking up his sword to defend you.

You shiver to feel his grip on your thigh tighten just a bit, a final test of his resolve before he moves it. There is a shift beneath the white linen of your chemise, and then Baelor's knuckle drags slowly through your soaked folds.

Your breath stalls in your chest as your mouth drops open. His touch turns you golden. Your body seems to light up from the inside, fresh heat blooming low in your stomach. Heart pounding in your chest, you stutter, "Oh, fuck— fuck, Baelor, this— this is too much, you don't have to—"

He shushes you, and the look in his eyes threatens to undo you more than his finger tracing a line through your cunt. There is a fire in his eyes that was not there before. The fire of a dragon, of a Targaryen. His gaze feels almost like a physical caress as he says, "Hush, now. I do this willingly."

Fuck. His voice is deep, rich and soft as velvet as he stares at you with that unwavering intensity, touching you between your legs. Your Prince. Touching you between your legs. It completely arrests your ability to think. He is slow, methodical in his movements as he is with everything; he glides the length of his finger through your pussy without rush, letting you feel each bump and ridge as they pass over your clit.

With your heightened senses, you can hear how wet you are, and the salacious sound of his fingers gliding through the mess you've made is enough to drive you up the wall. He begins drawing circles around your clit with the tip of his finger, and you melt into the mattress. You feel as though your pleasure and your need have turned you inside out, bitten chunks from your sensibilities.

He's too beautiful. The thought plagues you more and more. Baelor is too handsome, too competent with his strong hands and too gentle with his lust-roughened words. Gods above, you feel like you could cum— you should have cum by now, with how badly your cunt spasms under his attention, how hypersensitive your clit is as he continues tracing languid circles around it.

Then Baelor dips down and sinks a single finger into you, where you leak and ache desperately for him. Your thighs widen to give him more room, and he takes it, pushes in to the knuckle and gives you a practiced crook of his finger.

A sound rips from you— something animalistic and completely unfamiliar, a moan from the very depths of your fevered being. You tighten a fist in the tangled bedsheets and turn your face to the side, trying to hide from him while he makes you unravel at the seams.

"Look at me, darling." At the hushed rasp of his voice, your cunt clamps down hard on his finger. He pauses, halting all movement until you turn your head to open your eyes to him.

What you find in his face is enough to move the endless soul in you. You have spent two weeks etching Baelor's face into your memory— his careful, poised demeanor, the way he steadies his expression to keep it neutral, tactful. You know his cautious smiles, and you know his deeper one, the one that you hold tight to your chest like a secret. You know his kindness, and you know his disappointment.

But you've never seen this. This unbridled lust, his every feature touched by the amount of desire he has for you. He gazes at you like he feels everything you do, and more. Baelor inclines his head, and he appears so composed, as he always does, but his chest is heaving— you can see it and you can hear it, in the rattle of his inhale, in the obvious rise and fall of his shoulders.

"I will have you look at me when I do this," Baelor tells you, his eyes so dark and hungry that the very glint in them is wicked. It unnerves you, runs quick and hot through your veins. "I will have you see all that I give, and know it is yours to keep. Only yours. Do you understand?"

You swallow hard. "Yes, my lord."

"Baelor." His voice is quiet when he corrects you.

"Baelor."

He flexes his finger within you and your face crumples, your thighs shaking where they lay spread on the mattress. His free hand comes to rest on your thigh and makes to pull your legs further apart, prevents you from moving it back to center. It is not a rough or demanding move, but it conveys his message. Stay. Don't move away.

Baelor whispers something in a language you don't understand— High Valyrian, most like, but it makes no difference that you cannot speak it. It sounds warm, seductive in his throat, and a tremble rolls through your body at the sound of it.

Soft moans fall from your lips as he adds a second finger beside the first, and your hips nearly leave the bed. You take him in so easily, a quiet breath of disbelief leaves him, and he shifts, giving you strokes that have you fighting to keep your eyes open and fixed on him. A gentle back and forth, a hot press against the wall of you. Your body doesn't know how to react— hot then cold, trembling and then still, rocking against him and then backing away as though it's too much and not enough all at once.

His silver signet ring grazes you, hard to offset his softness. You're so close, you can taste your release on the back of your tongue like the entire ocean is rising within you. You grab at the pillow beside your head, ripping at it between fingers that don't know what to do with themselves. Your eyes clench shut at the sudden onslaught, your head tilted back on the pillow.

"Look at me," Baelor reminds you, his voice gently commanding.

Quick as he says it, you snap your eyes open again and find his fixed on you, dark and fathomless. There is a sudden surge, a quickening in your breath. "Oh, gods, Baelor—"

It looms like some wretched, evil thing come to destroy you. You snatch at his forearm frantically, trying to warn him, but unable to form words.

"I know. I feel it," he soothes, a palm moving sweetly against your thigh. He squeezes you there, a reassuring touch even while his other hand takes you apart. "You don't have to hold on anymore. I've got you. I've got you."

Your hips lurch towards him, your vision whiting out. His fingers hit a spot both perfect and devastating inside of you, and your mind's focus is whittled down to a fine point, aimed at him.

"Cum for me, lovely girl," Baelor orders. So you do.

He remains constant. Even when the wave rises and breaks within you, even when you writhe and let out a ragged cry, the sound torn from a hidden, previously unknown part of you. Through the seemingly unending torrents, Baelor remains your anchor. He does not change. He does not move. He does not let you go.

You turn pliant in the aftershocks. He gentles his movements— he does not stop them altogether, but turns them lighter, slower. His thumb brushes over your clit, and you jolt hard enough to convince him to finally withdraw his hand.

Baelor watches you closely, his darkened eyes focused on yours, but that familiar tenderness is returning, creeping across his features. The span of his fingers curves around the meat of your thigh, measured breaths leaving parted lips. His other hand is drenched with your fluids, still held cautiously between your legs as though hesitant to pull back entirely.

"How do you feel?" He asks then, softly.

You blink at him, and then up at the canopy over the bed. You're still shaking, your brain fizzling and humming from the orgasm he'd given you. "I don't… I don't know, I— that's the first time anyone has ever— done that…"

Baelor stays quiet for a beat, a small, affectionate smile curling the corners of his mouth. Then, he clarifies, "Do you think that it worked?"

"Oh." Yes, that. You had somehow forgotten that there is an ulterior motive to all of this, that it is not just sex for the sake of sex. "We… We could check?"

The words leave your mouth meekly. You don't want him to let you go. You don't want him to go away. Yes, you want the poison to be gone from your system, but you are greedy. You want him to stay with you and take you until morning. You want him to keep looking at you like that, like he'd swallow you whole, bones and all.

Unfortunately, Baelor listens. He slowly lifts his hands away from you, leaving you entirely. For a few calm seconds, nothing happens. Your body is still awash with the remnants of your orgasm, your skin still tingling with the memory of his touch. You lay there for a moment, thinking, was that it?

But then you look at Baelor again. He stares down at his hand— the one drenched in your arousal. It shines in the mid-afternoon light, strings of it threading between the parting of his fingers as he… feels it. Rubs his fingers against each other to test the silkiness, pulls them apart just to watch it web across the gap in thin strands.

You watch, wide-eyed, as he returns his gaze to your face. And he lifts his fingers to his mouth to suck your wetness from them. His eyes, amber and violet, trained on your expression until they flutter shut, and he groans.

"Oh— gods on fire."

Your whole body tenses up with the fury of it. The pain. It assaults you worse than before, with a ferocity that scares you. There's so much of it that it is not enough to scream— you can't even breathe for it. You curl into yourself and roll, the muscles of your stomach and core pulling taut.

"No. No no no— Baelor." You whimper, blindly throwing your hand back to grab at him. You find a wrist— left or right, you don't know— and pull so that his hand smacks down onto your flank with a lewd sounding slap. "Didn't work. It didn't— fuck."

"All right. All right, my love. Come here." Baelor's hand slides around your waist to gather you into his lap. You slide across the bedsheets with your spine bent into a crescent, knees pulled to your chest. "I've got you. I'm right here, just relax." You jerk involuntarily in his hold, an elbow catching him in the ribs. He grunts, adjusting his arm around you, curling himself over you like a shield. "Relax. Relax."

You will the tension in your muscles to release one by one. You imagine yourself absorbing into him, your head resting on his strong thigh as you allow your body to feel him. The rise and fall of his chest as he breathes, the distracting warmth radiating from the space between his legs. The smell of him there, strong and sweetly arousing. The taste of something on the back of your tongue— sweat and something muskier, something more masculine.

Him. The taste of him, through silk, through smallclothes. Your head spins, and you fight not to turn your head further into his lap, not to nuzzle into the crotch of his breeches and just breathe him into your lungs.

"Stupid fucking sex potion," you mumble angrily once the pain recedes. "Secret ingredient. Bullshit."

"All right," Baelor says again to quiet you, laying his hand on the crown of your head soothingly. You imagine that he understands what you're feeling, though, because he doesn't argue.

"What do we do?" Your voice is thin, a barely-there thing in the quiet.

"We continue."

You turn your head. Baelor is gazing down at you, eyes glittering with affection. He exudes a calmness that you cannot feel, even though your overwrought body relaxes into him. "You want to… continue?"

"We need not stop at one." Baelor pets your head, shrugs a shoulder. "I wouldn't, even under normal conditions."

You stare at him, aghast. "Your Grace."

He gives you a wry smile. "We don't know what this 'secret ingredient' is. Perhaps it needs… more. We can continue until it takes." Another pause. "You'll have to forgive me for my choice of words. It's my first time experiencing the… joys of a sex potion, as well."

You snort incredulously, trailing your fingers along his clothed forearm. "And what if it… takes?"

You don't need to elaborate. What if you become pregnant with his child, like he suggested you might? What happens if you bear the heir apparent a bastard, and still end up married to his nephew? What if you cause a scandal?

"Then… we continue," he repeats. "Come what may." Baelor takes your hand in his, presses a kiss to the back of your palm. You are filled with so much adoration for him that it almost wounds you. It sets up a home in your body, right below your heart. "Whatever happens, it makes no difference. You may have anything that you want from me."

"Even your hand?"

"Especially that."

"In marriage?" Your chest tightens up in anticipation. You gaze up at him, willing him to accept you, clutching his hand like he might pull it away, recoil in disgust. If he were to turn you down now, you think that it might just kill you before the poison does.

Perhaps he feels how hard you tense up in your nervousness. He pulls back just the slightest bit and peers at you, taking in your expression, before his own turns into something open, genuine. His eyes crease at the corners as he traces a single finger down the part in your hair, and he replies, "Yes. I will marry you, darling girl. I should have, the moment I was able to. I should have begged you on my knees."

You smile at the mental image that provides. The Hand and Heir on his knees for you. "I would have liked that."

He gives you the fondest look. "I have no doubt."

You fiddle with his hand. His skin is soft, prominent veins running up the back and to the knuckles. You fit your hand to his like a question, examining the difference in size and shape. The ring on his middle finger, still damp from where it's been. In you. In his mouth.

"Why did you do that?" You don't mean to ask the question aloud, but it comes out anyway.

"Do what?"

You glance at Baelor and determine that he's only asking because he wants to hear you say it, and not because he's really confused as to what you mean. He looks coy, which is not something you've ever seen on him before— but you think that it suits him.

"Taste it." The words feel sharp in your mouth. "You didn't have to. I wouldn't have expected you to."

He breathes in deeply, and exhales on a long, low hum. Then, his eyes find yours again. "There are few pleasures in this world that compare to the taste of a woman. I wanted to."

Your heartbeat thrums in your ears. "And?"

"And you taste divine." A deft finger twists in the hair just at the very top of your head, twirling it around and around in hypnotic circles. "I would taste you again, if you would allow me."

It's your turn to hum. You hold his one hand in both of yours, tracing the details of them with your fingertips. Your thumbs map out the dip of his palm, the raised, sword-strengthened calluses beneath his fingers. The meat of his hand, where it connects to his wrist.

Without pausing to feel embarrassment or shame, you bring his hand to your mouth. You brush your lips over his fingers just barely, before you take them in and suck on them. You hear a shudder in Baelor's breath, but you don't stop. It is an intimate thing, to have his fingers stroke your tongue, to taste yourself on him, to know that his own tongue had been in the exact same place moments ago. You whimper and draw them in deep, your lips fitting around the silver ring against his knuckle, your eyes falling shut. He watches you, allowing you to take his swordsman's hand and fit his fingers between your teeth, trusting you not to bite down.

You sigh as you release them, dragging your tongue along the ridges and dips of his fingers on their way out. "I wanted to do that," you admit to him quietly. "For a while."

"You like my hands, it seems," he muses, a note of approval in his voice.

"Very much." You blink at him, suddenly feeling shy under the intensity of his gaze. "I'll let you have me however you want, my Prince. I only ask that first… you kiss me."

"Is that so? Only a kiss?" You nod, and Baelor smirks. He drags the tip of his pinkie finger gently down the slope of your nose. "You drive a hard bargain. If I kiss you now, I fear I may never stop."

"Don't stop."

Baelor lets out a short breath, and then scoops you up into a sitting position. You grunt in surprise, grabbing for his shoulders at the sudden movement, but you settle with his arm tight around your waist. Your heart skips a beat when he cradles your head in his palm, his fingers tangled in your hair.

"I don't think you understand just how wonderful you are," Baelor whispers, his mouth so close to your that the warmth of his lips practically touches yours. He hovers there, a breath away, and it's torturous to hold back. "You'll be the death of me."

With a shaking hand, you rest your palm against his cheek. You feel the scruff of his beard, the way that his jaw tenses the tiniest bit. "And if I don't kiss you, I'll die."

That seems to finally crack his composure. Baelor brushes your hair away from your face, strokes his thumb over your cheekbone, and closes the gap.

His kiss sends shocks of warmth through you, and you melt into him with a quiet sob of relief. Relief from the tension and swells of pain and fear. Relief at finally being able to hold him, to kiss him, open mouth to open mouth. You clutch at his shoulder, his neck, and swing your thigh over his to sit halfway on his lap.

He moves with you, his strong arms keeping you steady as you sink against him, groaning into you. Each point of contact feels bright, like if you opened your eyes to look you would find yourself glowing where he touches you. But his mouth moves against yours like silk, his tongue against yours, and he tastes like peace. It feels like the end of the storm, the answer to all your problems— even if it is only just the beginning.

Baelor's hand slides down to your lower back, holding you fast, splayed wide across your spine. His fingertips press into the flesh there, pulling you closer, until you're flush against him.

Your cunt grinds down onto the meat of his thigh, and you moan brokenly into his mouth. The sound of his name again, sweet on your tongue. He captures your lips with his, his other hand coming down to grip your hip. He rocks you against his thigh purposefully, swallowing the desperate sound that leaves you when your clit presses into the heat of him, through frustrating barriers of fabric.

You make a small, disgruntled noise, and your hand falls to the belt around his doublet. Nails scratching at the leather, you fumble with the buckle until it comes free. You feel beneath the cover of his doublet to find his soft linen shirt, warm from the heat of his body. Strong muscles tense beneath the lightness of your touch.

You huff a perturbed sigh against his mouth. "You are too clothed."

"You are too impatient," Baelor returns, but there is a huskiness to his voice that makes his words seem inconsequential. He shrugs out of his doublet to let your hands wander over his shoulders, down to squeeze the width of his arms. His beard tickles along your jaw as he presses kisses to your skin, trailing up to your ear. "Lie back, darling."

You recline on a pile of tangled sheets, chemise rucked up around your hips. Heat kisses your cheeks and pulses low in your core, your thighs instinctively wanting to close in on themselves, but they are stopped in their endeavor by Baelor's hips.

The mattress dips beside your shoulder where he leans his weight, hovering over you, a veil of security against the rest of the world. He drags his open mouth across your skin like this is not only for your benefit, but for his. You feel the flash of wet and warmth from his tongue, and your back arches up against him. He moves so slowly, savoring, his breath tumbling across your heated flesh like clouds of smoke.

It feels good. It feels so heavenly that you don't quite know how to accept it— you feel almost as though you should move away, but you would only be condemning yourself to more torment. You are bound to the bed by curiosity, an insatiable need to see what he does next. To feel his mouth touch more of you, places that you never thought to feel a pair of lips, teeth, or a tongue.

Baelor skims lightly over your breasts through the fabric of your chemise, while his hands find the curve of your waist. As he lowers, he ever-so-slowly tugs the fabric up, up, up, until you are bare from the waist-down and left open for his wandering mouth.

Your hands cling to him, one clawing against his back, the other gliding over the back of his head, cradling him to you. You gasp to feel the heat of his tongue on the skin just beneath your ribs. "Baelor…"

He hums in acknowledgement of his name, dragging his lips down over the curve of your stomach and lingering there. Baelor is thorough in a way that shouldn't shock you as much as it does— he lavishes you with his tongue and his lips, the quickest grazes of his teeth making you lurch against him with small sighs and moans. You are entirely alive with feeling, winding you up, until your whole body tenses and releases with it.

Then, he's moving. He passes over your pelvis and your aching, swollen cunt, and goes lower, settling between your knees. You make a little sound, a whimper of protest when you can't hold his head in your hands anymore.

He shushes you with his mouth against the inside of your knee, and then the wet swath of his tongue licks upwards in a way that takes you entirely by surprise. Bold, quick, his face so close and coming towards the most intimate part of you that you startle. "Gods—"

"Let me." It's a quiet plea, hushed against the skin of your inner thigh, one big hand cradling it to his cheek. There's the prickle of his beard, then the soft soothing of his tongue after. "My sweet girl. Let me taste you here."

"Yes," you sigh, even as he's already licking over the trail that your arousal has left, smeared across your overheated flesh.

The aphrodisiac effects may occur outwardly. The maester had said as much, and it becomes more and more apparent that, as Baelor lingers there, breathing in your scent and tasting you on his tongue, he is becoming intoxicated by the poison leeching from you. It's in the way his breath falls unevenly from his mouth, the way his gaze has gone a bit glassy with want, his pupils so wide that his beautiful, incongruous eyes are nearly black.

Baelor takes to you with a wide, flat stroke of his tongue that practically burns you alive. Your back leaves the mattress, your hands snatching at his head. Your cry breaks in your throat with its intensity and pitch, already taken to pieces by the single touch of his mouth to your cunt.

He groans into you— fully moans, as though this is entirely for his benefit and it is not something that he's doing in service to you. It is not a sound that you would have ever expected to hear from him, half-animalistic and far from the restrained, princely figure you've come to know him as. Large hands grasp at your hips and bring you further into his mouth, firm and consuming.

His name leaves you on a squeal. You're being too loud and you know it— through the open window, you can hear birds soar past, voices down in the courtyards. Any and everyone will hear you, and what the Prince of Dragonstone is doing to you, if you can't help it. You barely have the mental fortitude to let one shaking hand leave his head and clap over your mouth to stifle your cries.

He pulls back, releasing your clit from between his lips with a wet sound that makes your face burn. His eyes find yours, and you feel pinned beneath the weight of his gaze. "Do not silence yourself. Let me hear you."

You hesitate for only a second, but he doesn't move. Baelor's eyes remain fixed on your face as you reach forward, then stroke a hand over the crown of his head, a tentative and seeking touch. Then he returns to suck at your clit again, and you have to bite your tongue on a whimper.

He remains there for a long time. Long enough that you begin to think you may go delirious from the pleasure, and not from the poison throbbing and coursing through your veins, effecting him as he tastes you. He drags you to the precipice, to a place where reason and restraint don't exist anymore. There, you threaten to burn alive.

You cum into his mouth with a hoarse cry, your head tipped back on the pillows. It splinters through you like it may both destroy you and rebuild you anew at the same time— there's a rush, a flood between your legs that you don't expect, any more than you expect Baelor to stay there and take it, in all its viciousness.

You can't quite think. You feel him lingering there, his lips and tongue still on you, but it's as though you've been entirely unmade. He doesn't move, just remains solid and capable with his attention on your spent cunt, his tongue still lapping at the wetness that drips from you until you're certain— almost entirely certain— that this is not for the sake of the poison. This is not the potion at work. This is sex for the sake of sex.

"Baelor," you murmur, your voice a bit too high and airy in your throat. Your fingers dig at his scalp for something to make sense of. "D'you think— think it worked—?"

"Mm. You need another." Baelor answers you before you finish asking the question, his eyes narrowed as he rears back. His face is painted in your wetness, glistening around his mouth as he breathes heavily. "Let's not take any chances, shall we?"

"No, I wouldn't want to— to take chances— oh."

Baelor is climbing the line of your body, traversing over you like a panther on the hunt. His parted lips trail a wet line over your stomach, and he nudges your bunched up chemise back, further up your ribs. With trembling hands, you grab the useless fabric and pull it, tugging it frustratedly over your head so that you can throw it across the room.

"My beautiful girl," Baelor whispers into your skin, almost as though talking to himself more than you. His palm smoothes over the curve of your ribs and comes up to cup your breast, a reverent and tender touch, as though simply feeling the weight of it in his hand. "So stunning. Oh, I dreamt of this."

"You dreamt…?" You stutter out a gasp when his mouth closes hotly over your nipple, and your hands fly up to grasp the back of his head.

"I dreamt," Baelor repeats, moving his attention to your other breast with the same amount of care. "I wanted. I wished."

You pull him by the nape of his neck and he moves with your urging, lifting himself over you so that you can kiss him. The dampness of your arousal, still lingering in his facial hair, smears against your cheek as you lick into his mouth and taste yourself, oddly sweet on his tongue.

"Take your clothes off," you grumble against his lips, the slightest note of impatience lacing your tone as your fingers dig against his shoulders.

His linen shirt meets your chemise somewhere on the floor. Your hands find his chest, sliding down over hard muscle padded with soft flesh. He has a body befitting a man of his station— a soldier, hard and lean, bearing the scars of battle but unashamed of them. You trace a scar stretching across his ribs, trailing down towards his navel. Unhurried fingers dance over the trail of hair stretching downwards, guiding you towards the waist of his breeches.

"You're beautiful." It comes out more forceful than you mean for it to— but gods, do you mean it. You want to map out his body with your hands and your lips and your teeth, you want to learn every inch of him by rote, and still never stop once you know all. You try to convey it to him with your eyes, because you can't find any other words to express it. "You're so beautiful, Baelor, you must know."

He smiles, and it's that smile. The one that has haunted you since you saw it last, the one that you want to see over and over again. It causes a swelling feeling in your chest that… probably isn't healthy, but none of this is. It would be death to deny it now.

"You flatter me," Baelor says, his thumb stroking idly against your thigh, where his hand rests. His eyes are soft, flicking over you with so much adoration you struggle not to squirm beneath it.

"I tell the truth," you murmur, slipping two fingers just beneath the waist of his breeches to trace just below the fabric. His breath hitches, and you smirk. "I could always lie, but I imagine you'd see right through it, now."

"It would be very unladylike of you," he remarks, his smile turning sardonic.

"Hm. Can't have that." Even as you say it, your hands are untying his breeches, your fingers tugging until you're able to slip them down his hips. "We both know just how ladylike I am."

One boot comes off, then two, and his breeches shed to leave him in his smallclothes. There is no finesse to his movements— the seduction is over, leaving only sharp intent and the promise of what's to come. Desire wound tight like a spring, loaded to snap at a single touch.

That touch comes when you slip your fingers along the band of his smallclothes, a single, featherlight graze against the laces. Baelor's entire body goes rigid over you, as if you've held a blade to his throat. You guide them over his hips and down his thighs, until he snaps to and shirks them the rest of the way. He whispers your name, something between awe and guttural need forming the word in his throat.

"Baelor," you hum in response when your fingers find him and wrap around his cock. You freeze for just a moment— he's larger than you expected, and the prospect sends a little shiver through you. The Hammer, you think to yourself. Of course. He's hot to the touch, burning and throbbing against your palm, so hard it seems like it should be unbearable for him. But he bears it, for you. "Do you know how many women in the realm dream of this?"

He makes a small noise of warning, twitching in your grip.

Your grin turns wolfish as you pass your thumb over the head, flushed and leaking. "Do you know how many would kill for this? Would die to lie beneath you like this?"

"Heavens above." He shudders out a sigh as you stroke him, his forehead falling to rest against yours. "Don't— you mustn't say such things to me, my love, I— I have to be so careful with you. You have no idea."

So this is what it is, to have him lose his composure. No longer the Prince of Dragonstone, Hand to the King, heir to the Iron Throne— in your hands, he is simply a man. A man who wants, whose breath spills warm across your lips. Whose hips search for yours when you wrap your legs around his waist.

"Would you let me have you, my Prince?" you ask him, and your voice is light, inquisitive. It can't be anything else, because you are just as desperate as he is. You don't have it in you to be teasing, you are simply open with your need for him, allowing your innermost thoughts to surge to the forefront. Your forehead pressed to his, you look up through your lashes to find his eyes closed, squeezed shut in some vain attempt to hold on. "My love?"

His eyes snap open to meet yours, pressed so close that your noses touch. Baelor groans quietly when you guide him between your legs without waiting for an answer— it was a rhetorical question, after all.

But all the same, he replies, "Anything you desire."

Baelor drops his hips, enough to follow the guidance of your hand. He fills you in one fluid stoke, and together you take a long, deep breath.

"You are…"

"Perfect." He finishes your sentence for you, hushed and airy though it is. It feels as though you could be interrupted at any moment with the way he holds you, like a secret, like something that should never been spoken or heard about. Like you are only for him to know this way.

He presses his hips flush to yours, making you keen from the fullness, the exquisite stretch. The potion, for what it's worth, does make everything slicker, easier— you are so swollen and relaxed from his mouth, your body so attuned to his that there is no pain. Only the pleasure of his touch remains.

He moves, and it lights you up from within like wildfire. Your back arches towards him, your chest pressing up against his, and a sound unlike anything you've ever made tears from your throat. Arms blindly snatching for him, you wrap yourself around him as though he may try to move away.

He nuzzles his nose against yours, almost too tender of a gesture for the position you find yourself in. "That's it, darling. Take all of me."

Your mind clouds with pleasure as he rocks his hips into yours. You feel like you're drowning in the skin on skin, stripped to the skin and pressed flush to him. Your hand smoothes down his back, feeling rigid muscle and raised scars there, too.

He withdraws and presses forward, setting a slow, deliberate pace that drives you practically mad. He's so gentle and tender even when everything about him, about this situation, tells you that he wants to let go of his restraint. Widening your thighs on instinct, your hand cradles the back of his head, bringing his lips closer to yours.

"Don't hold back," you tell him, and you feel his breath pause where it fans against your cheek. Even though to try to be commanding, your voice cracks. "Baelor— stop holding back—"

Baelor presses a single, chaste kiss to your lips, and you are too caught up in the moment to realize that it's a warning, a subtle apology before he's shifting. He lifts your hips, planting his knees on the mattress before he pulls you into his lap, your back bent over the expanse of his strong thighs.

You slide down the mattress with an undignified squeak, hands scratching along the sheets for stability where there is none. And then you settle into your new position, gazing up at him with a stunned expression.

He's unbelievably gorgeous. His chest leaps with his breath, tanned and freckled skin glistening with a thin layer of sweat. He pants through parted lips, his eyes sharp and focused as they always are, cheeks flushed. He's a vision, and he's all yours.

Baelor splays his hand flat against your chest, running his palm over the skin where, beneath, your heart pounds a drumbeat loud as thunder in your ears. Then he drags his touch down, between your breasts, over the curve of your stomach. His hand settles warm and solid over your navel, thumb stroking you tenderly enough to make you let out a soft sigh.

But then he's sliding his cock into you again, a wicked thrust that punches all the air from your lungs, and his hand presses down. Your brows draw together, your mouth falling open on a silent moan as he hits something so devastating inside of you that it makes your eyes involuntarily roll back in your head.

"Feel that?" Baelor murmurs, his voice roughened with desperation as he does it again, and again. Pull back, push forward, press down. "Feel how deep I am inside you?"

It comes out so… possessive. Spurred on by the fact that he's the only one to do this to you, the only person to see you like this. Like he's staking a claim to you with each roll of his hips. His fingers rub back and forth over the soft flesh of your stomach, and you do feel it— the tip of his cock as he drives it into you, reaching so deep within you that it makes a faint bulge in your lower stomach.

You sob out an incoherent response, lights dancing behind your eyelids. Your hands, searching for something to hold onto as his thrusts gain momentum, find the pillow above your head. You squeeze it, pull blindly as though it will bring you some respite, and the downy soft padding of it covers your face, smothering the obscene moans that spill from your mouth.

Baelor's hand all but slams down on top of the pillow with a dull thump. You feel the impact through the feather stuffing, a slight bump against the tip of your nose before he's snatching it away from you and flinging the accursed thing across the room. It hits one of the open window shutters and falls to the floor.

"Do not. Hide." It's a snarl released from his throat, his hand coming to cup your chin and pull you to center. "Show me your eyes."

You blink your eyes open at him and bite your lip, trying to keep your whimpering at bay. You watch his core muscles flex with the movement of his hips, his chest dappled with golden sunlight, his jaw tightening with the effort to remain consistent, even when you told him to let go.

"There she is," Baelor whispers, a flicker of awe crossing his features. "My beautiful girl."

His thumb strokes across your lower lip, and without even thinking, you close your lips around it. The pad of his thumb, tasting of salt and the sweet musk of your own cunt, strokes against your tongue. A quiet groan breaks from him, his thrusts turning erratic and unmeasured when you suck hard.

Baelor drops his chin toward his chest, his face drawn in silent agony. "Fuck."

Your cunt clamps down hard around him at the sound of the swear falling from his lips. You don't know why the single word is enough to drive you crazy— probably because you've never heard Baelor curse before, and it's such a juxtaposition to the rest of him. The unshakeable prince brought to shambles by your lips around his thumb, your legs around his core.

Your orgasm mounts suddenly, and your teeth bear down hard on his thumb. It's enough to throw him off-kilter. He hisses through his teeth and pulls you with his free hand, seating himself deep inside you, his hips pressed flush to yours. He slides his hand from your waist downward, through the soft curls of hair on your mound. He finds your clit, brushing a circle around it with the tip of one, impossibly gentle fingertip.

You cum so quickly that the force of it turns blinding and sharp. Your cunt pulses on his cock with an urgency that wracks your entire body. But it is not enough for him that you lay there milking him— no, he has to escalate it.

Just as soon as it hits, Baelor's hand is gripping your thigh, pushing your leg up until your knee hooks over his shoulder, and he bends you. Your thigh presses tight to your chest as he moves over you, his cock hitting immeasurably deeper now. You claw desperately at his back, fingernails scratching, raking hard lines that will be too easy for his servants to notice, come morning.

He doesn't let up, even for a second. Still driving his hips, fucking you through the pulsing of your cunt, his body holding you down against the bed. His thumb slides from your mouth with a wet pop, spit smearing across your cheek as he cradles your face. Baelor replaces his thumb with his tongue, kissing you deeply, reverently, like he can feed all his devotion into you with it.

"Good girl," he whispers into your mouth, dragging his hips back slowly and then filling you back up even slower. You squirm, drowning between your legs from the oversensitivity and the entirely new angle he hits at. The sound that he makes is unbelievably erotic, something between a sigh and a rasping moan that cracks in his throat. "So good for me, my darling."

You cry his name, latching onto him with a trembling hand. "Fuck— Baelor. You need to cum. You should—"

"Don't." He shakes his head, fixing you with a heated look. He swallows, exhaling a stuttering breath. "Not— not yet, I don't—"

But you're nodding against him in retaliation, tightening your core muscles around his cock, squeezing him so hard that he makes a noise like you've punched him.

"Fuck," Baelor grits, hanging his head. "Oh, fucking Seven, you just— just can't stand to lose— can you—?"

Perspiration beads on his brow, and you have the sudden urge to lick it. So, you do. You pull him down by the neck, and he goes, following the urging of your hand like it's a command he's beholden to. You run your tongue across his temple, up and over his drawn brow, and he shudders.

In spite of everything— the overstimulation, the frightening possibility that you might cum again— you manage to break a small, breathless smile. Your mouth finds the shell of his ear, and your voice drops unexpectedly low. "Yield."

He plants his hips against yours, pressing your thigh so far against your chest that your knee almost touches your ear. He cums with an exquisite moan against your cheek, your tongue still pressed to his face to taste more of him, as though you can consume the very beauty from his skin.

You take his hand— the one against your thigh, holding it up around his waist— and guide it down between your flush bodies. Even while you feel him pulse inside you, he follows your guidance without question. He rubs a light caress against your clit, just enough to send sparks shooting up your spine.

You cum again for him, and it's gentler this time— like sunlight breaking through a storm. You give him a soft, relieved moan, while you pulse on his cock and your tense muscles release beneath him.

You both lay there in the feeling, letting the pulsations die down as you settle. And then, he stirs just a bit.

"Better?" Baelor murmurs, nudging his nose against yours.

"Much."

You feel him smile as he kisses you, his hand coming up to cup your cheek. You let him linger there, smiling into your mouth, for a few more seconds— and then you kick your heel against his shoulder, where your leg is still slung up and pinned against you.

He laughs at the disgruntled noise you make, lowering your leg and smoothing his palm up the length of it as he pulls it to rest against his hip. "My strong girl. You're quite the force when you want something, hm?"

"Don't you forget it," you grumble, but there's no real heat to it.

"I'm not likely to anytime soon."

You sigh when he withdraws from you, but only so that he can roll you both, gathering you into his arms. You lay with your head on his sweat-slick chest, his arm encircling your shoulders to hold you close. Relaxing into him, your body spent, you place a hand over his chest to feel his heart thundering beneath your palm.

Both naked, tangled up in each other, you remain like that for a while. Your fingers drawing idle shapes against his chest, gliding through the hair there as it rises and falls with his breaths as they even out.

He's yours. The thought flits through your mind, light as a feather. He's going to marry you. You'll be his wife. Many things about it make your chest tighten. That you'll be the Crown Princess in the process. That eventually, you will be expected to be Queen.

As quickly as your fears bubble up, one thing quells the flood. He's Baelor. He'll take care of you. He always seems to. You trust him to. You… you love him for it.

"You're staring."

You blink, and tilt your head to look up at him. You had been staring, directly at the mess you made between his legs, while your mind whirled in a dozen different directions. You should probably feel embarrassed at being caught, but there's mirth in Baelor's eyes. His hand pets affectionately against the back of your head.

"We're betrothed," you say, in lieu of an explanation.

"So we are."

"The King should probably know."

Baelor makes a short noise. It rumbles in his chest, against your cheek. "The King can wait until the 'morrow. I'm not terribly enticed by the idea of leaving you tonight." He turns his head slightly towards the open window. "After all, I'd imagine most of the Keep knows about it, by now."

You giggle, turning your face towards his chest. You nuzzle into the hair over his heart and breathe in, smelling the comforting scent of his skin. Remarkably, it is less strong than it has been all evening, no longer heightened to the point of overwhelm. You can't hear every damned thing in the Keep anymore— nor can you taste the saltwater on the air from the bay.

"Baelor."

"Mm?"

"I think it worked." You press a kiss to his sternum. "We did it."

"Good." A pause. Baelor heaves a deep sigh. "Do not. Ever. Drink another fucking sex potion. For the love of the suffering Seven."

You tut, a teasing smile quirking at your lips. "So I shouldn't use the second one I have in my drawers, then?"

Baelor's head snaps towards you. When you see the look of terror on his face, you dissolve into a fit of laughter, pulling yourself closer against his side.

He huffs a quiet chuckle, but you can't mistake the sound of relief underlying it. He lays a warm palm against your bare shoulder. "Troublemaker."

"Yes, I am." You bite your lip, trailing your hand down his stomach, your fingers grazing lightly enough that you watch his abdominal muscles tense beneath the touch. "But I want you like this all the time."

"Naked?"

"Unmoored."

You turn your head to find him regarding you with the same calmness you've come to expect from him, but with a fire burning within his gaze. He smirks slightly. "That shouldn't be too difficult for you to accomplish, I fear."

With a hum, you slip your leg over his hips and lift yourself to straddle him. His hands find your waist, steadying you. You raise yourself up, one hand braced on his chest, the other falling to one of his hands. Beneath you, you feel his cock begin to harden again as you place his hand on your breast.

"Then let me begin, my Prince."

The wedding is scheduled for three weeks later, at Baelor's behest. Long enough for the lords of the seven houses to arrive in due course, but not long enough for there to be question if you indeed are with his child.

You spoke about it at length, actually. He was very insistent, seeing as how he was trying to actively put one in you at the time.

On the day of your wedding, you sit in your vanity chair and fiddle with the cuffs of your dress. It is white and gold, of a fabric quality you've never been able to luxuriate in before. It feels stifling. You fear walking in it, breathing in it, doing anything that may damage it at all. You sit with your spine stiff and straight, allowing Mircalla to fix pins into your hair. Several other serving girls flit about the room, attending to various other chores.

When you feel you've just about had enough of the prodding of pins, a knock sounds at the chamber door. Your heart thuds in your chest, and you shift in your seat, hoping that it may be your husband-to-be, come to steal you away for a moment before the ceremony. It would not be unlike him— Baelor is a busy man, but attentive as often when he can be. Even if it is a mere kiss in an alcove, or a five minute interlude in the courtyard, there is always a time and a place that he can find to be with you, to show you his affections.

But the chamber door opens, and your guard steps a foot into the room. "Prince Daeron to see you, my lady."

Daeron? Your brow draws in confusion, but you rise from your chair, regardless. "Enter."

Daeron stumbles into the room with all the grace of a newborn deer. The maids all pause in tandem, and a hush falls over the room as he blinks up at each of them awkwardly, his blue eyes a bit less bleary than normal, his honey-gold hair tied back with a black ribbon for the festivities. "Apologies for my… intrusion?"

"No harm done, my lord." You clasp your hands anxiously behind your back, all the same. "What may I do for you?"

"I had wanted a word with you, my lady. Alone. For only a moment, if you wouldn't mind?"

You think that you would mind, very much. But the longer you regard Daeron, trying to cling to your vitriol, the less you can find any. You are about to be married to the Crown Prince, a gorgeous and honorable man who you are falling desperately in love with, to no one's surprise.

You cannot bring yourself to refuse Daeron— and so, you dismiss your ladies with a courteous nod.

As soon as the door shuts, Daeron is crossing the room and slumping into an armchair by the window. You do not move, but follow him with your eyes as he slouches, heaving an enormous sigh.

"Are you drunk?" you ask him pointedly.

"Always." He flashes you a sardonic smile. You give him an incredulous look. "Necessity compels. But I am here, and not at a tavern, at least."

"Better wine, I'd imagine."

"Mm, yes. Arbor red. An excellent choice, indeed." He pauses, his eyes flicking over you apprehensively. "I came to… apologize, my lady. I fear I have behaved rather badly towards you, and I felt I owed you an explanation."

You only blink at him. "Yes, you do."

"Right." He licks his lips, seeming to collect his thoughts. "Before you came to King's Landing… I dreamed of you."

"How romantic."

"No, not— not so much." Daeron takes a breath and pinches the bridge of his nose. "You see, my dreams… they have a tendency to come true. It isn't always a good thing." He pauses for a long moment, his eyes focused on the middle-distance, appearing to see something that you can't. "When I dreamt of you, it was… I saw you dying, my lady. I saw you on your death bed. And you cursed me for it."

You say nothing, but watch him as his shaking hands smooth against his pants.

"I didn't know what it meant. But I figured, when I saw you, that if I was going to be the reason for your death— in screaming agony— then it would needs be best for both of us if I held no relation to you. If I could refuse you and not speak a word, it would be… you wouldn't have died. And I wouldn't have been the cause."

"But, I have not died, my lord."

"No." Daeron lets out a short laugh, void of humor. "But, you had an affliction some weeks back, did you not? I heard it was rather a close call." He fixes his eyes on you, and he looks so deeply apologetic. Like a kicked dog, he peers up at you through his lashes. "If I was in any way responsible for— for any pain caused, I am truly sorry, my lady. My intentions were noble, I assure you. My execution, however…"

"Leaves something to be desired, yes." You close your eyes, breathe in slowly. Daeron reeks of alcohol, but you don't allow it to deter you from stepping closer to his chair. "In your dream, what was it that I said? How did I curse you?"

Daeron swallows, his eyes flicking around the room briefly. "You said… 'I don't want Daeron. He doesn't want me. I didn't take the fucking thing for him.'" Your face must betray your thoughts, because Daeron regards you closely before nodding solemnly, folding his hands in his lap. "Right. So, it was that."

Your heart pounds so hard that you swear it's trying to leap up into your throat. "Daeron. Whatever you think you saw—"

"It's not for me to pry." His eyes continuously move from your face to various areas of the room, like he doesn't want to look at you head-on. "What I know is that you are well now, and marrying my uncle. And I am happy for you, my lady. I truly am. It has been many years since I saw him smile the way he does, when you aren't looking." Daeron finally chances to look you directly in the eye, and he looks gravely serious. "Do not take this the wrong way, but I think that we would have been terrible for each other. Wouldn't you agree?"

For the first time since Daeron stepped into your chambers, a smile crosses your face. "You know, I think you're absolutely right. We would have killed each other."

Daeron lets out a sad chuckle. "Quite so."

He looks around, at a loss for a few seconds, before he heaves himself up and stands over you. He's quite a bit taller than you first thought— maybe it's because he isn't slouching as much, now.

"Forgive me, my lady. I've taken enough of your time. I wish you a long and happy marriage." He winks. "Only, one not to me."

That finally earns him a giggle from you, and Daeron smiles, before lifting your hand and pressing a chaste kiss to your knuckles. You watch him cross the room, narrowly avoiding bumping into your vanity chair as he moves.

At the door, Daeron pauses and turns back to you with a reserved smirk. "Just so you know. My cock does work. If the need should ever arise again."

He ducks out of the room before the pillow you throw can hit him.

jumpcut mid porn scene to mircalla and florin sharing a blunt outside the laundry rooms like "so do u think they're fuckin or"

[ildico-the-golden]

I want Baelor spiraling about the mere concept of lady in waiting!reader getting marriage propositions. I need him having 27 panic attacks.

This request was totally sending me— 😭 my poor man would've loved a xanax

done considering

Pairing: Baelor Targaryen x f!lady in waiting!reader

Warning(s): Baelor has anxiety (prob), but it has a happy ending!!

The first proposal arrived on a Tuesday.

Baelor knew this because he had been in his mother's solar when the messenger came — had been in the middle of a sentence about grain yields in the Reach, which was not a subject that had ever previously caused him difficulty — when Myriah had accepted the sealed letter, read it with the pleasantly neutral expression she deployed when delivering information she intended to observe him receiving, and said: "Lord Ambrose Celtigar has written to your father regarding a match."

Baelor had finished his sentence about grain yields. He had said I see with the composure that had served him in war councils and throne rooms and every demanding context his life had presented him with. He had excused himself at a reasonable hour and walked back to his solar and sat down and looked at the wall.

Lord Ambrose Celtigar was thirty four years old. Not unpleasant looking, by general report. He held a respectable seat, had no significant character defects that Baelor was aware of, and was by every measurable standard a perfectly suitable match for a young woman of good family and accomplishment.

Baelor sat with this information for some time. He thought about it with the same thorough attention he brought to tactical assessments and pieces of legislation that required careful consideration. He thought about Lord Celtigar's seat and Lord Celtigar's reported appearance and Lord Celtigar's presumably functional absence of character defects. Then, against his better judgement and with the inevitability of a man who has been trying not to think about something for several moons and has finally encountered a reason he cannot maintain the effort, he thought about you. He thought about the particular way you laughed when something actually struck you as funny rather than merely requiring a polite response. He thought about all the moons of carrying something carefully that he had been meaning to do something about and had not yet done something about, and he sat with the full uncomfortable weight of that gap until the candles had burned considerably lower than when he sat down. Then he went to bed and did not sleep particularly well.

The second proposal arrived on a Thursday. Ser Willam Waxley — twenty eight, well regarded, good family, reportedly personable in the specific way that made Baelor briefly and irrationally consider what reportedly personable actually meant in practice and whether it was a quality you would find appealing, which was not a line of thinking he pursued to its conclusion because he had more self-respect than that. He received the information from his mother over correspondence review, said I see, finished his tea, and continued with the correspondence. It took longer than usual. He kept losing his place.

The third proposal arrived the following Monday, and Baelor heard it from one of his mother's ladies who mentioned it to another in passing while crossing the training yard without any awareness that he was within earshot. Lord Patrek Mallister — young, wealthy, the kind of man described by other men as having prospects, which was a phrase Baelor had always found vague and now found specifically aggravating. He held his sword incorrectly for the remainder of the session. His master at arms observed this with the expression of a man who had seen many things in training yards and had made a professional decision to comment on none of them today.

By the second week Myriah had stopped pretending she was telling him incidentally.

She told him directly now, with the pleasant composure of a woman delivering information she had every right to deliver, and watched his face with the specific attentiveness she had been applying to him since he was approximately four years old and had not, in the intervening decades, become any less accurate. "Lord Rowan," she said one Wednesday morning, in the same tone she might use to note the weather. "He sent a very thoughtful letter. Apparently he is an articulate man — the letter suggested genuine consideration of the match. He mentioned his gardens specifically. Considerable, by his account."

"How nice for him," said Baelor, examining his correspondence with the focused attention of a man who was absolutely reading every word and not at all conducting a parallel and involuntary assessment of whether considerable gardens were a meaningful advantage in the context of a marriage proposal.

"They are in the Reach," Myriah offered. "Lovely climate."

"I am aware where the Reach is, Mother."

"I am simply noting that Lord Rowan appears to be a man of—"

"I am aware," he said, with the measured evenness that cost him slightly more than it usually did, "of Lord Rowan's considerable attributes."

Myriah looked at him over the rim of her tea with the serenity of a woman who had already drawn her conclusions and was simply allowing the conversation to confirm them at its own pace. Across the room you turned a page of correspondence with your habitual focused attention, entirely unaware that a man three feet from your queen was conducting his seventeenth silent assessment of the morning of whether the Reach's climate was in any way a disqualifying characteristic in a prospective husband and arriving, frustratingly, at no useful conclusion.

The problem — and he had examined this problem with the thoroughness it deserved, sitting with it in his solar across several evenings while the candles burned and the city went about its business outside his window — was not that the proposals were coming. Of course they were coming. You were accomplished and intelligent and the kind of person who made rooms better by being in them, and proposals were the entirely predictable result of other people having eyes and using them. The problem was that he had been meaning to do something about a feeling he had been carrying for far too many moons and had not done something about it, and now other men were doing something about it, and the window in which doing something felt like a considered and deliberate choice was rapidly becoming a window in which doing something felt like a response to a crisis. He did not want to do something as a response to a crisis. He wanted to do something because it was right and honest and because he meant it entirely, not because Lord Rowan had considerable gardens and the Reach had a lovely climate. The distinction mattered to him. The distinction was, currently, making his life significantly more difficult than it needed to be.

The fifth proposal was from a lord whose name he forgot immediately upon hearing it, which concerned him more than anything else that had happened so far. He had a good memory. He did not forget names. He went back to his solar and sat with the wall for an hour before acknowledging that the wall had never once been helpful and he should probably stop consulting it.

Maekar found him on the battlements on a Thursday evening, which was not unusual — Maekar found him in various places occasionally and delivered his opinions without invitation, which was simply a feature of having a brother that Baelor had long since accepted. "You look terrible," Maekar said, by way of greeting, leaning against the stone beside him with the air of a man who had come here with a specific purpose and was not going to be deflected from it by pleasantries. Baelor thanked him with the composure of someone receiving a compliment and returned his attention to the city. The city, like the wall, was not particularly helpful.

"The proposals," Maekar said.

"I am not discussing this."

"You have been discussing it with yourself for two weeks. Loudly, in the sense that everyone can see you doing it even though you have not said a word." Maekar paused, with the brief patience of a man making a concession to tact before abandoning it. "She does not know. She has no idea — she sorts the correspondence and answers the proposals politely and has absolutely no indication that you are standing on battlements losing your ability to remember lords' names because of it."

"I did not forget his name."

"You called Lord Fossoway Lord Forrest twice in council," Maekar said flatly, "and his name is Fossoway and you never forget names. Do something about it."

"It is not that simple."

"It is exactly that simple. You consider things until other men act and then you consider the consequences of other men acting. Do something about it." He let that sit for a moment, then pushed off the wall and left with the decisive efficiency of a man who had said what he came to say and had no interest in discussing it further.

Baelor stood on the battlements for a while longer. He thought about Lord Fossoway, whose name he had apparently been calling wrong. He thought about Lord Rowan's gardens and Lord Lyonel Tyrell, who had not yet written but whose existence as a potential candidate Myriah had mentioned with the casual precision of someone planting a seed and fully expecting it to grow. He thought about you sorting correspondence with your focused attention entirely unaware that he was up here mangling names. Then he went inside, because the battlements were cold and the wall had already established it was not going to be helpful and Maekar was right, which was an irritating thing to have to acknowledge even internally.

The sixth proposal arrived on a Friday morning and was, by his mother's assessment delivered with a serenity that he found specifically challenging, the most serious one yet. Lord Lyonel Tyrell. Young. Wealthy. The heir to Highgarden.

He sat in his habitual chair and looked at the correspondence he was not reading and thought about Highgarden with the sustained focus of a man attempting to locate a flaw and being unable to find one. Highgarden had gardens that made Lord Rowan's look modest. It had resources and position and climate that were objectively difficult to argue with. Lord Lyonel Tyrell was, by every measurable standard, an excellent prospect, and Baelor was a fair enough man to acknowledge this even when the acknowledgment was deeply inconvenient.

You were at the correspondence table. You were wearing the blue dress — you always concentrated better in the blue dress, he had noticed this some time ago, something in the colour seemed to settle something in you. You had a small ink stain on your left forefinger from where the pen had slipped earlier and you had not noticed and he had noticed and had said nothing, because saying you have ink on your finger would have been a reasonable and unremarkable thing to say and for some reason this morning reasonable and unremarkable things felt slightly beyond him. He was going to lose you to Highgarden. Lord Lyonel Tyrell was going to take you to his considerable gardens and his considerable resources and you were going to sort his correspondence and make his rooms better by being in them and—

"Your grace."

He looked up. You were looking at him from the correspondence table with an expression of mild concern, which meant the expression on his face had apparently communicated something he had not intended to communicate. "Are you well?" you asked, and he said yes, and you looked at him with that observational patience that had always seen more than he planned for, and said he had been quiet, a different kind of quiet, and he told you he was perfectly well with the composure he had left and you returned to the correspondence and he looked at the window and thought, very clearly and very finally, that he was done thinking about Highgarden.

He stood up.

He crossed the room.

He stopped beside the correspondence table and you looked up and he looked at you — at the ink on your left forefinger and the blue dress and the expression that was currently hovering between curious and concerned — and he thought about Maekar saying do something about it with the bluntness of someone who had run entirely out of patience for watching things not happen. He thought about Lord Fossoway, whose name he had been mangling. He thought about Lord Lyonel Tyrell's gardens, which he was done thinking about.

"There is something," he said, "that I should have said some time ago."

You put down your pen.

"Alright," you said quietly, a light frown appearing on your face.

He looked at you — at your face, which was giving him its full attentive consideration the way it always did — and he thought about how he had wanted to do this properly. Considered rather than reactive. Chosen rather than pressured. He had wanted the moment to be right and he had been waiting for the moment to be right and the moment had apparently decided not to wait for him and had gone ahead and arrived anyway in the middle of a Friday morning over a correspondence table with an ink stain on your finger, and he found, standing here, that he did not mind this even slightly.

"I love you," he said. Quietly. Plainly. With the full weight of the words and several proposals in his mind and one brother's bluntness behind it. "I have loved you for some time. I had wanted to tell you when the moment felt properly considered rather than — I had wanted it to be right rather than reactive, and in attempting to ensure that I have apparently been calling lords by the wrong names and holding my sword incorrectly and consulting walls, none of which has been productive. It has been brought to my attention, with some force, that I consider things at the expense of doing them. I am attempting to correct this."

The solar was very quiet.

You looked at him for a long moment, something moving across your face through several registers — the attentive reading quality, and then something warmer and more wondering beneath it, and then something that was almost but not quite a laugh — and you said: "Lord Tyrell."

"Has excellent gardens," he said. "Yes."

"And Lord Rowan."

"Lovely climate."

"And Ser Willam Waxley and Lord Celtigar and—"

"Yes," he said. "All of them. I am aware of all of them in considerable detail, I have been aware of all of them in considerable detail for two weeks, and I would like, if it is at all possible, to stop being aware of them."

The almost-laugh became something more definite, and he stood beside the correspondence table and watched you laugh softly and found that the moons of careful management had nowhere left to go except simply — out. Released. Like something that had been held very tightly finally being allowed to exist without the holding.

"I was not going to accept any of them," you said, when the laugh had settled into something quieter and warmer. "I had no intention of accepting any of them. For reasons that I think are probably apparent."

He went still. "How long," he said.

"Longer than two weeks," you said softly.

The solar was warm and golden and entirely, completely quiet. He reached across the correspondence table and covered your hand with his — the one with the ink on the finger, the one he had noticed and said nothing about, the one he was done saying nothing about — and felt you turn your palm and close your fingers around his with the ease of something that had always been going to happen and had simply required a Tuesday and too many proposals for his liking and one correctly remembered name to arrive.

"I would like," he said, "to have a conversation that is considerably overdue."

You looked up at him with that real smile — the one underneath all the others — and said: "Are you going to consider it first, or simply have it?"

He looked at you for a moment. "Simply have it," he said.

Outside the solar a Friday morning in spring continued with cheerful indifference to the fact that Prince Baelor Targaryen had just resolved moons of careful management in approximately four minutes. Somewhere in the castle Myriah Martell set down her tea with the expression of a woman who had been waiting for this particular Friday since approximately the third moon and found it entirely satisfactory. In the adjoining corridor Maekar, who had absolutely not been listening at the door, walked away with the expression of a man who had said do something about it and had been correct and intended to bring this up at the earliest opportunity and every opportunity thereafter.

You were still holding his hand across the correspondence table. Baelor looked at that for a moment — at your fingers closed around his and the ink stain and the blue dress and the smile that was still present in the corners of your mouth — and thought that he intended to do something about that too. Properly this time. Without the walls and the battlements and the involuntary memorisation of other men's garden statistics. Simply and directly and without further delay, in the manner Maekar had recommended and that he was now prepared to fully endorse.

He was, after all, done considering.

A.N.: I have been sitting with this request for some time. Sorry for being this late, I have not been as inspired as I would have wanted to. Some people have noted that the AKOTSK is kinda dying (or dozing off) and I think I have the same feeling, idk. Guess I need to take it easy for a minute or two. Thank you all for your constant support, you are all champs <3

Taglist: @qardasngan @nerdyinfluencertastemaker @princessphilly @shyravenns @loveslide @dulcebloodhnd @caitlynluna @mongrelcryptid @sacha1slytherin @faithfullyvigilantsliver @alternarabuda @jjubilee-fluff

Want to join the taglist? Leave a comment here!

[celestialwyvern]

WRONG NUMBER II - Aerion Targaryen

SUMMARY - You don't answer any of Aerion's messages but that backfires as he talks to you in person. But even then, you still don't give him much.

CONTAINS - reader is slightly avoidant, aerion is aerion, banter (crack to a point), read part one

A/N - i couldn't tag most of your accounts for some reason so instead i replied to your comments hehe. Also i got carried away ahahahha can you tell...

You remained seated in your car. Staring at the notifications, you didn’t move until your screen turned back to black.

You jammed the keys into the ignition and backed out of the parking space. The drive back home was scary. You kept looking back at your phone, expecting another text to pop up but thankfully none did.

When you finally got home, you locked the front door and leaned against it.

“What the fuck…” You whispered to yourself, closing your eyes.

It was a good thing the next two days were a weekend. A temporary shield. For the next forty-eight hours, you didn’t have to step foot on campus and risk catching a glimpse of his silver hair across the building.

But hiding out in your room didn’t stop your mind from racing. A full day hadn’t even passed when you finally gave in and opened instagram. You pressed the search bar and typed his username into it.

You weren’t mutuals, he never followed you and neither did you follow him.

There wasn’t much to see. He only had one post and a highlight. It was strange trying to match that version of him with the guy who had texted you for the past month.

Though on sunday, while your phone was open on a groupchat, your peace was interrupted.

👻: youre online, i know you see my texts

You stared at the small block of text, your chest tightening. Again, you didn’t reply.

By monday morning, you had braced yourself to go to campus again. It was packed as you walked with Tanselle.

“So I told him if he thinks I’m letting that happen, he’s out of his mind,” Tanselle was saying, before her hand suddenly clamped down hard on your forearm. “Wait. Don’t look but Aerion is heading right to us.”

You looked up anyway.

Aerion was cutting through the crowded walkway. As soon as you looked, his eyes were already on you, his face tense and unreadable.

The people next to you instinctively quieted down, stepping back as he closed the distance and stopped in front of you.

You tried pivoting to the right but he blocked the way, cutting off your route.

“We need to talk,” he said, voice low and rough.

“I’m trying to get to class,” you replied, keeping your voice even, refusing to let the panic show on your face.

“Don’t do that,” he muttered, stepping closer. His form completely covered yours, and you felt suffocated in the open area. “You know exactly why I’m standing here.”

You kept your arms folded around your waist, your posture rigid. A few students walking past were already slowing down, noticing the interaction. “I have to go,” you mumbled.

“No–”

“Aerion!”

A sharp voice broke the tension between you. A girl with long, blonde hair walked over, calling his name as she hurried over. It was Jess—you knew because your friends had told you she was someone he used to talk to before things apparently ended badly.

“Aerion, hold on,” she said, totally ignoring you as she reached him. “Did you get my messages? You haven’t replied to any of–”

Aerion didn’t look at her. He tilted his head slightly, his jaw tight as he dropped a flat, impatient, “not now.”

It was a short distraction, but it was enough. You didn’t hesitate as you grabbed Tanselle’s wrist, pulling her with you as you turned on your heel. You moved as fast as your legs could carry you.

“Whoa–hey! Slow down!” Tanselle stumbled slightly, scrambling to keep up as you dragged her toward the stairwell.

Once you got on the platform between the stairs, you let go of her wrists, your heart still pounding hard.

Tanselle adjusted her tote bag, looking at you with wide eyes.

“What the hell is happening?” She demanded. “You barely explained a thing to any of us and now Aerion is doing this? Since when do you two even speak?”

“I’ll explain later, I promise.” You looked down to make sure he wasn’t anywhere close. “Let’s just go.”

“You’re a terrible friend,” Tanselle grumbled, though she immediately followed you up to the remaining steps.

Five minutes later, the bell rang and you were already sitting at your usual row in Davis’s class.

“Settle down,” Davis silenced the class. “Like I said, today we’re starting the peer reviews on the personal assignment from the start of this semester. You’ll be working with the same partner from the previous project, find them and get moving.”

Your stomach dropped.

Before you could even think about moving, the chair next to you moved. Tanselle was gone, shooting you a sorry look as she settled next to her partner.

You searched around the room when suddenly, Aerion sat down, his shoulder brushing yours as he turned his upper body toward you.

“How long?” he asked, keeping his voice low, but his eyes were drilling into yours.

You turned your head, gaze fixing on your laptop, your fingers resting still on your keyboard. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Stop,” Aerion leaned closer. He looked guarded, a defensive edge tracing his words. “The text about the project. You knew it was me. How long have you known before that?”

The accusation stung, but you didn’t raise your voice. You looked over at him, offended by the fact that this was his main concern.

“A few days before that.” You furrowed your brows. “I didn’t know anything at the beginning. I put the pieces together when I saw you pull out your phone.”

Aerion watched your face, his brows drawing together as he searched your expression. “Then why did you go silent on monday?”

“Seriously?” You paused, “I don’t know, maybe because you basically called me boring.” You scoffed, looking right back at him.

“You barely even acknowledged me, and then what? You texted that your partner who happens to be me was just whatever. Why would I want to keep talking to you after that?”

Aerion flinched. The words seemed to hit him, the defensive wall in his eyes fracturing into genuine surprise. He opened his mouth to say something, his hand shifting on the desk, but a shadow fell over your screen.

“Are you guys actually working, or what?”

Jess had walked up the tiered steps, stopping at the edge of your row. She leaned on the desk, looking down at you with a fake, dismissive smile.

“Don’t take it personal,” Jess said, her voice loud enough for the people in the next row to hear. “He won’t even remember your name next week.”

The comment was explicitly meant to embarass you, and it worked. You felt your face warm up as a few classmates looked over.

But before the silence could stretch, Aerion turned.

The change in him was instantaneous. He looked up at Jess, his face turning cold.

“Go.” His voice wasn’t loud, but it brooked no refusal.

Jess’s smile faltered slightly. “I was just saying–”

“I don’t care,” Aerion interrupted, his stare landing on her in a way that made her step back. “Leave. We’re working.”

The people watching started whispering and nudging each other. Jess’s cheeks flushed a bright red. She wanted to snap back, but caught the total lack of interest in Aerion’s eyes, and quickly turned around.

You sat there, your hands unmoving. The frustration that had been building up since last week slowly started to ease, replaced by a strange, heavy feeling.

Aerion had just defended you in front of the whole class. You blinked twice, trying to process what had just happened.

He took a slow breath. Not looking at anyone else in the room, he turned back to face you.

“Thanks,” you murmured, swallowing as your eyes landed back on the screen of your laptop. You clicked open the peer review rubric Professor Davis had shared to the group. You had to find a way out of talking with him.

“Davis wants us to evaluate the thesis of the intro first,” you pointed out, acting as if nothing happened.

Aerion licked the bottom of his lip, caught off guard by the abrupt shift. His shoulders shifted as you continued looking through the rubric. “What?”

“Is your document open, or do you want to look at mine first?” you answered, tapping your trackpad to highlight the first section of the bibliography.

A frustrated sigh escaped him, you could see his confusion from your peripheral vision, his jaw clenching as he realized you were shutting him out.

He was used to people reacting to him by either backing down or trying to stay in his favour. This indifference was clearly a new territory for him. A difficult one too.

For a second, it looked like he might push past it anyway, his hand tightening on the edge of the desk. Yet he let out a heavy, defeated exhale, pulling his laptop closer. “Mine is open.” His voice was clipped.

For the rest of the period, you kept your barrier firmly in place. You weren’t sure why it was so hard for you to hold a proper conversation with him.

You two texted nonstop for a month. It wasn’t like he was a complete stranger. But somehow it felt like it.

Aerion complied, though his compliance was tense. His fingers tapped against the desk whenever you took too long to read through a paragraph. His focus was entirely divided between the text on his screen and your face.

Every time your fingers accidentally brushed his while adjusting the laptop, he would wait to see if you’d pull away. You always did.

When Davis dismissed the class at last, relief coursed through you.

Snapping your laptop shut, you slid it into your bag and slung the strap over your shoulder. “I’ll upload the comments to the docs by the end of the week.” You stood up, looking him in the eye for a brief, passing second.

Aerion stared up at you from his seat, his throat bobbing as he swallowed whatever he wanted to say.

“Okay.”

You walked to the exit, where Tanselle was already waiting for you. Turning your head for a moment before exiting, your eyes met his.

Reluctantly, you had to tell your friends everything as they kept demanding. No, almost everything.

You conveniently left out the part where you had grown to have this strange, unexplainable, and impenetrable feeling for him.

Tanselle then pointed out how she hasn’t seen Aerion with any girls recently. Everyone agreed, which didn’t help your case.

Yet two days passed without a single notification.

By wednesday, the silence had turned from peace into an uncomfortable, distracting weight. You spent the night trying to study, but your mind kept drifting back to him.

Eventually, you couldn’t resist and opened his chat. You scrolled all the way back to the start, back when he was just an anonymous stranger who made you laugh.

Just as you got to the part where you started icing him out, a new message came through.

You frowned, lips parting as you clicked on the button to the most recent chat.

👻: if you wont talk to me in person, fine

👻: lets do it here

Your heart skipped a beat at the sight of the text. You sat up and paced your room for a full minute before warily typing back.

YOU: What do you want aerion

It felt weird to actually acknowledge who you were talking to.

👻: do me a favour

👻: talk to me like you did before finding out. pretend you dont know who i am

Your eyes narrowed at his message. It was a bizarre request, but the familiar look of the text thread made it entirely too easy to slip back.

YOU: What???

YOU: Fine

👻: tell me everything

YOU: Ok u wanna know what i think?

YOU: I think the guy im paired with in davis’s class is an arrogant prick

There was a long pause. The typing bubbles appeared, vanished, then appeared again.

👻: an arrogant prick? really?

YOU: Yes

YOU: He refuses to talk to anyone outside his immediate circle, he walks like he owns the world, and most importantly he treats his project partners as if they were invisible

👻: maybe hes just focused

YOU: Nope, he didn’t even look at my face

YOU: Can you believe it

YOU: Then he has the nerve to say that im a whatever.. Like sorry i didnt juggle for your entertainment??

A couple minutes passed and you thought he wasn't going to respond, but he was still online.

👻: huh

👻: he sounds terrible

A small, involuntary smile tugged at the corner of your mouth, and you tried your best to fight it down.

YOU: He is, hes mean

👻: i didnt mean to be

The sudden drop of the bit you two were doing made your breath hitch. The text continued.

👻: im sorry about monday

👻: and the thing i said

👻: youre not whatever

You stared at his texts, the honesty of it surprising you. You typed out a reply then deleted it. While trying to formulate a reply, another message popped up.

👻: i have to go

The chat went dead. You sat back on your pillows, staring at those four words, your mind spinning into a frantic spiral. I have to go. What did that mean? Go for the day? Or was this his dramatic way of saying goodbye to whatever you guys were?

You slammed your phone down on the mattress, irritated by the sudden exit. You needed to clear your head.

Sighing, you grabbed a towel and headed into the bathroom to take a long, hot shower, letting the steam wash away the stress of the week.

By the time you stepped back into your bedroom, it was already dark outside. Drying your hair and changing into your pajamas, you picked your phone up from the bed to check the time.

There was a new text, sent just a minute ago.

👻: open the door

You froze, reading the message over and over again to make sure you weren’t hallucinating.

You walked into the living room, your bare feet making no sound against the floor.

You never gave him your address.

The only people who knew the exact apartment complex you lived in were your closest friends.

Fuck, you thought. Tanselle…

Panic flooded your body as you approached the entryway, and right on cue, a knock came from the other side of the door.

Taking a shallow breath, you unlocked the deadbolt and pulled the door open.

Aerion was standing under the dim hallway light. He was wearing a tight gym shirt, his silver hair slightly messy from the harsh wind of the night.

He wasn’t empty handed. His right hand was carrying a bag that looked to be from a bakery. He saw your gaze switching from his face to the plastic. “You mentioned last week that you were eating cheesecake.”

Your brain refused to believe that Aerion Targaryen was standing at your door with a whole cheesecake because of a passing comment you had made a whole week ago.

The wall you had built felt incredibly fragile right now, but you had to keep your composure. Slowly, you stepped aside, opening the door just wide enough for him to move past.

Aerion walked into the apartment, getting his shoes off by the door. He looked at you, taking in your damp hair and pajamas, then walked to stand near the edge of the kitchen table, setting the bag on the counter.

You stared at him, your mind trying to catch up. The tips of your ears went red at the realization that you were wearing only your pajamas in front of him.

“How do you even know where I live?”

“Tanselle,” he said bluntly. “Don’t start a fight with her, I didn’t give her much of an option.”

“Of course...” You huffed mostly to yourself.

You walked past him to the water dispenser, grabbing a clean glass from the drying rack and filling it with cold water. You set it on the counter near him.

“Thanks.” He picked up the glass. Taking a slow sip, his eyes scanned the living room before settling back on you.

“Look,” he started, voice dropping an octave, sounding rougher in the quiet apartment. “I’ll get to the point. I know you think I'm a piece of shit. It's just that I... didn’t know it was you.” His shoulders shifted slightly as his muscles got less tense.

You raised a brow at that. “So just because you didn't know it was me you treated me like that?”

“No. It sounds terrible I know. I guess I was already comfortable talking to you online that I figured I didn't need to talk to anyone in person,” he explained, his tone stripped of its usual cold edge. “When you started ignoring me, it drove me crazy.”

“At first, I thought you knew the entire time. I assumed the worst, but then I started worrying. And I didn’t wanna stop talking to you.” His voice got quiet toward the end.

You didn’t know what to say. The honesty of his words rang through your mind, effectively breaking down the image you have already built of him in your head.

“...And what about Jess?” You asked after a beat and immediately regretted it.

Aerion’s eyes flickered with genuine disgust and annoyance before he shook his head.

“She’s nothing.” He leaned against the counter. “We used to talk,” he hesitated, “then I stopped but she couldn't accept it. She’s nothing.” He repeated, noticing the fidgeting of your hands.

“Oh,” was all you could say. Aerion seemed to recognize the shift in the air. He finished the rest of the water and set it back on the counter.

“I should let you get some sleep,” he cleared his throat, eyes lingering on your lips.

He walked toward the front door, putting his shoes back on. You opened the door, unsure if you even wanted him to leave.

The curiosity that had been lingering in the back of your mind all week finally slipped out. “Before you go... I wanna know something.”

Aerion paused, an amused spark gleaming in his eyes. “Yeah?”

“What did you think of me at the start? Like after you found out I wasn't Michael.”

He let out a low chuckle, a smirk splaying across his face. “I thought you had a ridiculously sharp mouth. You always called me out on my attitude, it was infruriating. But it was intriguing.”

Aerion then tilted his head, turning the tables. “My turn. Why'd you even reply to an unknown number?”

A smile broke through your expression, you no longer felt the need to put on a mask in front of him. “Mmm... being real I'm pretty sure I was just bored and couldn't sleep. I thought it'd be funny and it absolutely was.”

He laughed softly and paused at the threshold, turning back to look at you. “So you're saying you're glad you replied?”

You pretended to think for a second, looking up. “Maybe,” you teased, the familiar banter coming back.

A tiny smile touched his lips—the first real one you’ve seen from him in person. He let out a hum. “Right. I'll remember that. Go sleep now.” He backed up to the threshold, his eyes only leaving yours as he turned around.

“Goodnight.” You called out to him as you closed the door and locked the deadbolt, hearing the thud of his footsteps slowly fade.

An hour later, you tried to go straight to sleep, but you kept tossing and turning. Giving up, you got out of bed and walked to the kitchen, pulling the box out of the bag. You recognised the logo on the box as you opened the lid, it was from the expensive bakery near campus.

The cheesecake looked so incredible, you didn’t bother with a plate. Grabbing a fork, you stabbed the cake and took a massive bite.

After eating a solid half of it directly out of the box, you stared at the remaining mess and pulled your phone out to snap a quick photo.

YOU: [IMAGE ATTACHED]

YOU: I forgot to thank you lol

You didn’t expect him to reply immediately, assuming he was already asleep. But the bubbles popped up almost instantly.

👻: youre welcome

👻: did you save me a bite or are you selfish

YOU: Nope its all for me

👻: next time ill just make you feed it to me

You bit your lip to contain your smile, sliding down onto the living room rug and propping your back on the sofa.

YOU: Hm

YOU: Depends on how well u behave the rest of the week

👻: im always well behaved

Giggling, you quickly texted back.

YOU: Liar

YOU: Anw out of curiosity what do u have me saved as

👻: unknown

👻: until about a day ago

YOU: Huh what is it now

👻: thats for my eyes only

YOU: Oh rly

YOU: Ok then im saving u as row four lol

👻: how creative

YOU: It fits

YOU: Reminds me that ure an arrogant prick everyday

👻: good

👻: think about me everyday

Your heart did a violent flip.

Going to his profile, you debated on actually renaming him as row four, but you decided on Aerion 🎱. The emoji just felt right.

YOU: Just changed it

Aerion 🎱: row four?

YOU: No and im not telling u

YOU: Thats unless u tell me minee?

Aerion 🎱: oh thats how it is

Aerion 🎱: never

YOU: Wow!! Ur impossible im gonna off myself

YOU: Ok im going to sleep before u piss me off more

Aerion 🎱: lmao alright

Aerion 🎱: goodnight dont die

You let out a content huff before getting up and heading back to your bedroom.

YOU: Goodnightt

The next morning, the lecture hall was filled with pre-class chatter. It was history class but your professor fell sick and Professor Davis was there as a substitute.

As usual, you sat beside Tanselle who was vibrating with anxiety, staring at you sideways ever since you arrived.

Leaning in close, she lowered her voice to a whisper. “Okay, you’re scaring me. You haven’t mentioned him once. Are you not going to kill me?”

You let out a small giggle, shaking your head. “Nope. It’s all settled.”

Tanselle clicked her tongue, utterly puzzled. “Wait… really?” So he didn’t actually go to your house then?”

“No, he did,” you corrected smoothly, as if it was completely normal.

A noise of confusion escaped her, her eyes bulging. “What!? He actually came over? And you’re acting like this isn’t wild?”

Just then, the doors swung open, and Aerion walked in. He was late, and Professor Davis didn’t bother calling him out, simply beginning the lesson.

You watched as he walked up the main aisle, expecting him to stop in row four, but he continued walking. He moved past his friends without a second thought.

Then without tilting his head up, his eyes locked onto yours. A warmth instantly bloomed in your chest, a smile growing on your face, and you quickly bit your inner cheek to hide it.

He reached your row and without saying a word, he pulled the chair beside you and slid effortlessly into the seat.

Nudging your chin toward the lower row, you pointed at a few familiar faces who had turned around their chairs to watch him. “Your friends are literally staring at you. They’re waiting for you.”

Aerion followed your glance for a split second before looking back at you. “So?”

Before you could reply, the screech of the microphone caught everyone’s attention. “You two,” Davis barked into the mic, his voice echoing. “If you two have matters that are more pressing to discuss then feel free to take it out of the class.”

The weight of Davis calling you out together made the class go extremely silent, staring back and forth between you and Aerion. You could see Jess staring menacingly from the other side of the room.

Your lips formed into a pout as Davis finally looked away, continuing his talk. Aerion, on the other hand, did not take his eyes off you, his smirk widening slightly at the sudden audience.

He slowly leaned back in his chair and for a moment you thought the distraction was over. But under the desk Aerion shifted. The side of his thigh bumped firmly against yours, deliberately pressing in with lingering heat. A sharp jolt shot straight up your spine.

You shot him a warning glare, but he was already busy on his phone.

A second later, your phone buzzed in your lap.

Aerion 🎱: z

Aerion 🎱: z

Aerion 🎱: z

You hid your hands under the desk, looking down to make sure Professor Davis wasn’t looking.

YOU: Wtf

Aerion 🎱: we cant talk out loud

Aerion 🎱: i have to find other ways to get your attention

You glanced at him out of the corner of your eyes, but his face looked to be absolutely calm and concentrated as he pretended to analyze the projector screen.

YOU: Oh ure a pro

YOU: Wait move ur leg ppl r staring

Aerion 🎱: doesnt matter

Aerion 🎱: if you care move yours then

YOU: Ok nevermind

Aerion 🎱: mhm

Aerion 🎱: what are you doing after class

YOU: Its a free period im probably gonna go to the cafe

Aerion 🎱: wrong

Aerion 🎱: we’re going somewhere

YOU: ??? Hello why wasnt i informed

Aerion 🎱: i just informed you

You almost laughed at that but managed to keep it in, not wanting to draw even more attention from Davis.

YOU: Stop before i get kicked out of the class

YOU: Ok im leaving u bye

Aerion 🎱: stay

Aerion 🎱: hes not gonna see

YOU: If he does im blocking u

Aerion 🎱: i know where you live it doesnt matter

Your lips parted at the sheer audacity of his last message, a rush of heat hitting your cheeks as the memory from last night flashed through your mind.

Looking up from your phone, you caught the subtle twitch at the corner of Aerion’s lips. It was then that you realised that replying to a random message was easily the best mistake you’ve ever made.

[catbayunthestoryteller]

Good Intentions

Pairing: Maekar Targaryen x f!reader

Summary: Maekar is trying to provide a good life for his new wife by removing himself from her company and offering alternatives. He fails. Warnings: a bit of angst because of pining, a bit of smut.

The morning light cut through the high, narrow windows of Summerhall with a pale, wintry insistence, and Maekar Targaryen, prince of the Seven Kingdoms, found himself staring at the ceiling of a room that was not his own. It was decorated with painted vines, a delicate feminine touch he had never bothered to notice before. The bed linens smelled of lavender and something else, something sweet and warm. The weight on his arm was the source of the latter.

You were curled against him like a dormouse seeking warmth, both your hands wrapped around the corded muscle of his forearm as if he were a lifeline in a storm. Your cheek was pressed to his shoulder, lips slightly parted in the ease of deep, trusting sleep. A strand of your hair had escaped your night braid and lay across his tunic.

Maekar did not move.

He was a prince, a warrior, a man who had crushed rebellions beneath his mace and watched men die without flinching. But this, the soft, contented curve of your mouth, the way your breath puffed in tiny, even waves against his sleeve, paralyzed him. He cast his mind back, desperately trying to remember when exactly his careful, honorable plan had crumbled to dust. It was the previous night. It had been a fool's errand, a mission of pure and unparalleled idiocy disguised as magnanimity.

For months, he had constructed a cage for you, gilded and sprawling, and called it a marriage. After the death of his first wife, the mother of his children, the very concept of a new bride had felt like a betrayal, a picking at a wound that had barely scarred over after years. His brother, King Aerys, had insisted. The match was politically sound. You were from a fine lineage, a daughter of a loyal house, and your dowry was a collection of trade agreements and land rights that made the court accountants rub their hands with joy.

And you. You were a pretty thing: young, sweet, blinking up at him at the Sept with your big eyes, he had noted absently, and a slight pout on your mouth. He recognized that pout now, not as petulance, but as a sign of deep concentration, an unconscious expression you wore when you were trying very, very hard to be brave.

At the wedding feast, you had tried to engage him in conversation, your voice a soft, hopeful melody against the droning noise of the hall. He had grunted in response, complaining about the seasoning on the boar. You had blinked, then smiled, a small, tentative thing, and said, "Perhaps the kitchens will do better with the lemon cakes, my prince. Would you like me to ask them to bring some?" Deflecting his rudeness with a kindness so artless and sweet it had made his teeth ache.

He had taken you to Summerhall, the seat of his power and the monument to his own complicated legacy. He gave you servants who curtsied low, spacious rooms filled with sunlight and tapestries you seemed to admire, and a generous allowance that could have purchased a small fleet of ships. He had daughters, Daella and Rhae, who were delighted with you, finding in you a new playmate, a doll who could speak and laugh and teach them new embroidery stitches. His sons were a different matter. Aerion was a burning star of chaos somewhere in Essos, Aemon was at the Citadel, chaining himself to books, and Daeron…Daeron was usually never counted. The thought of his eldest, a dissipated dreamer, brought a familiar, leaden weariness to his gut. But the girls were happy, and you were occupied.

He thought he had it all handled.

Everything was provided, he had reasoned, watching you from across the courtyard one afternoon as you and Rhae chased a butterfly. You were a young maiden. His idea of a comfortable existence was good service, a sturdy roof, a well-stocked armory, and a couple of silent, efficient friends with whom to share a flask of strongwine. He had assumed, in his colossal, self-absorbed ignorance, that your needs were the same.

Until he started to see it. The quiet sigh you suppressed when he answered your sweet inquiry about his wellbeing with a noncommittal grunt at the dinner table. The way your eyes, those big, expressive eyes, would track a young knight in the yard as he laughed with his comrades, not with lust, but with a kind of wistful, academic curiosity. You were studying a creature you had never encountered. Daella, his sweet daughter, was already starting to enter that phase of mooning over singers and sighing at sunsets, a phase he dreaded with every fiber of his being. And you, his wife, a lively girl not much older than his own children, were saddled with a grumpy man whose range of communication with her was limited to tactical assessments of mutton and grunts about the weather. You were drowning in comfort and starved of life.

He could commission solutions. Jewelry? A cascade of sapphires appeared on your vanity. New dresses? Bolts of lace and silks in hues of deep green and amethyst filled your wardrobes. Rare books? He had a first-edition history of the Rhoynar, bound in pale leather, delivered to your solar. You had been effusive in your thanks, your pout melting into a radiant smile, but the smile never quite reached your eyes. The problem, he realized with a cold, hard jolt, was not resources.

The problem was romance. He couldn't morph himself into a handsome young knight with a carefree disposition and light humor, the kind of man who would compose a song for you, who would bring you a wildflower he’d picked on a reckless morning ride, who would whisper sweet, foolish nothings in your ear. He was Maekar Targaryen, a blunt instrument, a man of duty and gristle and a simmering, constant irritation at the world.

His poor wife. You were left to smile and giggle quietly at his dry, caustic remarks about a visiting lord’s speech. And you seemed genuinely amused by them, your laughter a soft, surprised ripple of sound that made him pause, mid-chew, in confusion. You were so deprived of pleasant company that you took what you could get from him, poor sweet thing. The realization had made him want to kick himself.

So, he had formed a plan, a scheme that, at the time, had seemed the pinnacle of rational, self-sacrificing genius. He went through his guards the next day under the guise of a brutal, unforgiving drill. He had them running siege patterns, sparring until their padded armor was dark with sweat, watching them like a hawk. He found the one he was looking for: Ser Elyas, a bastard from the Reach. He was honorable, sharp as a blade, and handsome in that sun-kissed, broad-shouldered way that maidens were supposed to swoon over. His laugh was easy, his temperament unruffled.

"Ser Elyas," Maekar had rumbled, his voice a low thunder. "You are being reassigned. You are now the personal guard to my wife, the princess. You will see to her safety at all times. You will accompany her on walks, attend her in the gardens, and ensure no harm befalls her."

He had made it clear to you on your wedding night that he had no intention of bedding you. It was a cold, blunt statement of fact, delivered not out of cruelty but out of a misguided sense of honesty. He had seen the flash of hurt in your eyes, quickly masked by a composed, brittle acceptance. So, naturally, he reasoned, after some time spent in the company of the charming Ser Elyas, you would come to love him. It was a natural, tragic story. A handsome knight and a neglected princess. He had practically gift-wrapped a discreet, passionate affair for you. It was the least he could give it to you, a substitute for the husband you had probably imagined, a way to satisfy that aching, youthful urge for romance that he, a man carved from stone, could never fulfill.

Yet, from what he observed over the following weeks, the plan had failed with spectacular precision. He would watch from a high balcony as Ser Elyas, in his gleaming plate, offered you his hand to help you over a damp patch of grass. You took it with polite, distant courtesy. You would exchange a few words, an occasional jest that made the knight chuckle, but your expression remained serene, unmoved. Maekar, a veteran of countless campaigns, knew the look of a soldier performing a duty. And your nights, as the quiet reports from your maids confirmed, were spent solely in your rooms. No secret knocks, no furtive shadows slipping from your door at dawn.

He was at his wits’ end. What did you want then? He had given you everything your station and age could desire. What would wipe off that pretty, unconscious pout off your face? Perhaps, he had finally conceded, if he talked to you. A novel concept for a marriage, he knew. He would go to you, and perhaps, in a moment of unguarded frustration, you would let your grievances slip.

The previous night, he had gone to your chamber. Your maid, a timid wisp of a girl, nearly dropped her mending box when she saw him at the threshold. "Leave us," he had commanded, and she fled. You had been seated by the fire, a book open on your lap, and you looked like a startled doe at his unexpected presence, your body going rigid, your eyes wide.

"My prince," you had said, your voice a breathless question.

He had felt like an intruder in his own wife's space. "I…I came to see how you were faring," he had managed, the words feeling foreign and clumsy on his tongue.

You recovered quickly, your innate grace taking over. You poured his wine yourself, and offered him a plate of fruit and honey cake. "I am well, my prince. Truly. The book you sent is fascinating. The accounts of the Rhoynish are almost unbelievable." You were making conversation. You were making it easy for him. And so you spoke for a while. It was surprisingly pleasant and easy.

He found himself relaxing into a chair, debating the tactical blunders of the Valyrian conquest of the Rhoyne, and you had listened with rapt attention, asking pointed, intelligent questions that surprised him. You had a mind, he realized with a start. A sharp, curious mind hidden beneath the pout and the big eyes.

But he didn’t catch any clues. No lamenting a lack of knights, no forlorn sighs about the gardens, no veiled complaints about his absence. Just you, being…pleasant. So, eventually, he rose to leave. "It is late. You should rest."

The change was instantaneous. The spark of animation in your eyes died, replaced by a stricken, hollow look, as if you were wondering what you had done wrong. Your fingers tightened imperceptibly on the spine of your book. "Of course, my prince. Thank you for your company."

He hesitated. He was a man of military precision, and the sudden, palpable drop in your mood was a tactical variable he hadn't accounted for. He was already in your bed chambers. What kind of husband left his wife's bed chamber right before going to bed himself? A churlish one. A neglectful one. The servants would talk, of that he was certain. The walls of Summerhall had ears and mouths. But he did not care what servants would see or say. Their gossip was the chaff of court life. The thought that stopped him cold, that made his feet feel nailed to the floor, was simpler. He owed you basic courtesy, did he not? He had denied you everything else. He could not deny you the simple, public dignity of a husband who shared your bed for a night.

Before he could overthink himself out of it, he gestured to the bed. "Move over, then."

Your eyes, if possible, grew even wider. "My prince?"

"I will not sleep in my boots," he said gruffly, sitting on the edge of a chaise and beginning to unlace them. "I will stay. Just to sleep." He made a promise to himself then, a sacred oath. He would lie down with you, and he would speak to you until you fell asleep, so you would not be insulted by a silent, rigid vigil. Then, he would leave. He had been insulting you for months by refusing to do his duties as a husband, and this small act of presence would at least be a temporary salve on a wound he had no intention of healing.

He lay down atop the covers, fully clothed in his tunic and breeches, a stiff, awkward pillar of a man. You slipped under the furs with a rustle of linen, lying rigidly on your back. The silence was deafening. Maekar cast about for something, anything, to say. "Tell me more about the Rhoynar," he commanded, his voice a little too loud in the quiet room.

And so you did, your voice soft and hesitant at first, then gaining strength. You spoke of the legends, the songs of the Mother Rhoyne, the giant turtles that were said to be gods. He listened, inserting a dry comment now and again that made you giggle, that beautiful, rippling sound he was growing dangerously accustomed to. He stayed, and continued speaking to you about the defensive layout of river cities, the logistical challenges of moving a legion through marshland, until your words began to slur, your breathing deepened, and your face went slack with peace. He had done it. He thought he would leave when he was sure you were deep in sleep. He would just wait one more minute. Just to be certain. The fire had burned down to embers. The room was warm. The scent of lavender was soporific. And that was the last thing he remembered.

Now, it was morning. The maid’s insistent knocking on the door was a relentless, chipper assault on his senses. He was still fully clothed, his tunic creased. And you were curled up next to him, clutching his arm as if it were the most natural, obvious thing in the world. The knocking roused you. You stirred, a small hum of contentment escaping your lips before your eyes fluttered open. Your gaze, hazy with sleep, traveled up his arm, over his chest, and settled on his face. The reaction was not one of surprise, or at least not the kind he expected. It was pleasure. A deep, luminous, bone-deep pleasure that transformed your features. You were smiling. A shy, pleased smile, as if you had just woken from a beautiful dream and found it still real.

"Good morning, my prince," you murmured, your voice thick and honeyed with sleep. There was a newfound confidence in it, a possessiveness that hadn't been there before. "Are you to have a busy day? I thought I might join you, if it were permitted. Perhaps I could assist you with your letters?"

Maekar found himself staring. The words were simple, but the meaning behind them was not. His plan, the handsome guard, the neglected lady, the grand affair, it all crashed down around his ears in a shower of broken, idiotic pottery. He realized his mistake with the force of a warhammer to the chest. You thought your husband was finally coming around. The gift, the miraculous, improbable gift you had wanted all along, was not a surrogate. It was him.

You wanted this. Him. His presence. His attention. His dry, sarcastic remarks. His tactical critiques of ancient river warfare. His grumpy, unyielding, solid self.

All this time, you had wanted him.

He felt a strange, tight sensation in his chest, a feeling he hadn't allowed himself to entertain for many, many years. It was a seed of warmth, cracking through the cold, hard stone he had meticulously built around his heart. He cleared his throat, his voice emerging as a low, rusty rumble.

"You can join me," he said, the words a surrender. "If you wish."

The pout was completely gone now. The smile that remained in its place was brilliant, a sun emerging from behind a lifetime of clouds. It was a smile just for him. And for the first time since he had been forced to take a new wife, Maekar Targaryen didn't feel saddled. He felt, with a terrifying, exhilarating certainty, that he was about to be completely, irrevocably unhorsed.

The days that followed that first, accidental night established a new rhythm in Summerhall, one Maekar found himself falling into with a disquieting ease he refused to examine too closely.

You had asked to assist him, and Maekar, a man who had never refused a direct request from a lady in his life out of sheer, blunt propriety, could find no reasonable grounds to deny you. You appeared in his solar the next morning, freshly dressed in a gown of pale yellow that made you look like a spring daffodil, and settled yourself in the chair across from his great oaken desk. He expected you to be a distraction. Instead, you proved infuriatingly useful. Your handwriting was elegant where his was a cramped, soldierly scrawl.

You sorted his correspondence into neat piles: urgent, routine, and the one you tactfully labeled "probably insincere flattery from lords who want something." He had let out a surprised bark of laughter at that, and you had beamed at him as if he'd just crowned you Queen of Love and Beauty.

This became your habit. Mornings in his solar, you with your neat piles and your quiet, intelligent questions about the running of the lands. Afternoons, you would walk with him along the battlements, your hand resting lightly on his arm as he pointed out the defensive improvements he was making to the eastern wall. You listened with genuine interest, asking about murder holes and arrow slits with a curiosity that was wholly unfeigned. Evenings, you dined together, and your sweet inquiries about his wellbeing were no longer met with grunts. He found himself actually answering you, describing the frustrations of a dispute between two minor landed knights or the irritating news from court. You would nod, your brow furrowed in thought, and offer observations that were often startlingly perceptive.

And every night, the same delicate, unspoken negotiation occurred.

The first time it happened outside of your own chambers, you had been in his rooms. It was late, the fire burning low, and you had been reading aloud to him from a treatise on dragonlore while he sharpened his dagger. Your voice had grown hoarse, and he noticed the way you rubbed at your eyes with the back of your hand. He could not, in good conscience, send you shuffling down cold corridors to your own chambers. The very idea was absurd. What kind of husband kicked his own wife out into the night like a stray cat?

"The hour is late," he had said, sheathing his dagger with a decisive click. "You will stay here."

You had looked at him with that expression again, the one that was half hope and half caution, as if you were afraid of misinterpreting his words. "Here, my prince?"

"In my bed," he clarified, the words coming out more gruffly than he intended. "I will take the chaise."

But you had looked so stricken at that suggestion, your face falling in that way he was growing to dread, that he had found himself amending the plan. "Or I will join you. The bed is large enough. It is not seemly for a prince to sleep on a chaise in his own chambers."

It was a flimsy justification, and he knew it. But the way your expression brightened, the shy, pleased smile that curved your lips, was worth the internal grumbling. He lay beside you that night, a careful distance between your bodies, and spoke to you about the properties of Valyrian steel until your breathing evened out into the soft rhythm of sleep. He awoke to find you pressed against his side, your head on his shoulder, one of your hands resting over his heart as if counting the beats.

This, too, became your habit. You clinging to him in sleep like a limpet to a rock, and Maekar waking each morning to the scent of your hair and the warm, trusting weight of your body against his. He told himself it was for your dignity. He told himself it was a small kindness, a basic courtesy. He told himself many things, and believed none of them.

Then there was the incident with the lamprey pie.

A lord from the coastal holdings had sent a gift of lampreys, and the kitchens had prepared them in a rich, heavily spiced pie. You had eaten only a small portion, politely complimenting the flavor, but within hours you were taken ill. Maekar was in the yard overseeing a drill when your maid came running, her face pale as milk.

"My prince, it is the princess. She is unwell. The maester says it is the lamprey, that it has irritated her stomach something fierce."

He did not remember crossing the castle. He only remembered the cold spike of fear that had lanced through him, the way his heart had hammered against his ribs with a violence that had nothing to do with exertion. He found you in your chambers, curled on your side in the great bed, your face waxen and beaded with sweat. The maester was there, a fussy old man who was doing far too much hand-wringing for Maekar's liking.

"She will recover, my prince. It is a mere gastric disturbance. But she must eat to keep her strength up, and she refuses. The princess will not touch the porridge."

Maekar looked at the tray on the bedside table. A bowl of plain, unappetizing porridge sat there, cooling and congealing. You were facing away from it, your eyes closed, your pout firmly in place.

"Leave us," Maekar commanded. The maester and the maids scurried out like mice before a dragon.

He sat on the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping under his weight. Your eyes fluttered open, and you looked at him with such a mix of misery and embarrassment that it made something twist painfully in his chest.

"I am sorry," you whispered, your voice thin and reedy. "I am being foolish. It will pass."

"You will eat," he said, reaching for the bowl.

"My prince, I cannot. The very thought..."

"You will eat," he repeated, and this time his voice was gentler, an unfamiliar softness creeping in despite his best efforts. He scooped a small portion of the porridge onto the spoon. "Open your mouth."

You stared at him, those big eyes glassy with discomfort, and for a moment he thought you would refuse him. But then you parted your lips, a tiny, obedient gesture, and he carefully slid the spoon into your mouth. You swallowed with visible effort, your face scrunching up, and he immediately had another spoonful ready.

"Good," he said, the praise awkward on his tongue. "Again."

He fed you the entire bowl that way, spoonful by painstaking spoonful, his large, calloused hands surprisingly steady. He did not rush you. He waited between each bite, murmuring gruff words of encouragement that felt foreign and strange, like a language he had never been taught. When the bowl was empty, he set it aside and reached for a cloth, dabbing gently at the corner of your mouth.

Your eyes were wet, but you were smiling. That smile. The one that made him feel like a hero from a song, when all he had done was feed you porridge.

"Thank you, Maekar," you breathed, using his name without his title for the first time. It hit him somewhere deep, a blow he had no armor for.

"Rest now," he ordered, his voice rougher than he intended. "I will stay."

He stayed. He lay beside you, fully clothed, and let you curl into his side. He stayed until your breathing steadied and the color slowly returned to your cheeks. He stayed even after that, watching the firelight play across the ceiling, feeling the steady rise and fall of your chest against his, and wondered what in the seven hells he was doing.

But still, still, he put off the matter of bedding you.

It was not that he did not want to. The realization had crept up on him with the slow, inevitable force of a rising tide. He wanted to. Gods help him, he wanted to. The sight of you in your thin nightdress, the way your hair spilled across the pillows, the warmth of your body pressed against his each morning, it was testing the limits of his resolve, which had never been particularly strong where matters of the heart were concerned. He had simply never had his heart involved before.

But to bed you would be to open a door he was not certain he could close again. He had built his life around duty, around the cold, hard certainties of obligation and honor. He had loved once, and loss had carved a hollow in him that he had believed was permanent. You were filling that hollow, day by day, smile by smile, and the sensation was as terrifying as it was intoxicating.

He was a coward. Maekar Targaryen, who had faced down rebel lords and laughed at the prospect of single combat, was a coward when it came to his own wife.

Then came the night of the kiss.

It was an evening like any other. You had spent the day in his solar, helping him draft responses to a particularly tedious batch of petitions. Dinner had been a quiet affair, just the two of you, and you had made him laugh, actually laugh, a deep, surprised rumble of sound, with a wicked impression of a pompous lord who had visited the previous week. You had retired to his chambers, as had become your custom, and he had told you about the Dragonknight's campaigns in Dorne until your eyes grew heavy.

"Goodnight, Maekar," you said, your voice soft and drowsy.

And then you kissed him.

It was not a forceful kiss, not a demand or an invitation. It was a brief, gentle press of your lips against his, as natural and unthinking as a breath. A goodbye. An act of simple, uncomplicated affection. You pulled back, your eyes already closing, and nestled into your pillow with a contented sigh, as if you had done nothing of any particular note.

Maekar lay frozen, staring at the canopy above him, his heart thundering in his ears.

You had kissed him.

This was his fault. The thought careened through his skull like a loose cannon on a ship's deck. This was entirely, unequivocally his fault. He had done this. He had planted this notion in your head, watered it with his attentions, and now it had bloomed into something he could no longer ignore.

A fortnight ago, you had been helping him remove his heavy outer tunic after a long day of inspections, your small fingers working deftly at the clasps. It had been such a wifely gesture, so intimate and so natural, that before he had known what he was doing, he had leaned down and pressed his lips to your brow. A brief, chaste kiss. A thank you. He had not even realized he had done it until he saw the way you had frozen, your eyes wide. He had cleared his throat and muttered something about the fire needing more wood, and the moment had passed.

But you had taken that kiss, that single, thoughtless gesture, and drawn a conclusion from it. You had decided, in your sweet, hopeful way, that your husband wanted you to initiate affection as well. That he was too reserved, too gruff, too locked within his own silences to ask for what he wanted. And so, with that gentle, trusting kiss, you had reached across the chasm he had placed between you and offered him a bridge.

Did he want you to? The question burned in his mind, insistent and demanding. Did he want you to kiss him goodnight, as if it were the most normal thing in the world? As if you were truly husband and wife in every sense?

He certainly was not complaining. The ghost of your lips still tingled on his, and his body was reacting in ways that were entirely inappropriate for a man who was supposed to be letting his wife sleep. He was not complaining at all. That was the problem.

He should be complaining. He should be panicking. Because this, this sweetness, this trust, this quiet, domestic intimacy, led inexorably to one conclusion. You would expect children now. The thought hit him like a splash of ice water. Of course you would expect children. A princess, a wife, a woman who had been raised to understand that the bearing of heirs was a fundamental part of her duty. And you would want them, he realized with a jolt. You would want his children. Not out of duty, but out of genuine desire. You would want a babe with his silver-gold hair and your eyes, a child you could hold and nurture and love.

Gods be good.

He turned his head on the pillow to look at you. You were already asleep, your face peaceful, your lips still curved in that small, contented smile. You had no idea of the earthquake you had just set off in his chest. You had kissed him and promptly fallen asleep, trusting him completely, utterly unaware of the crisis you had left in your wake.

Maekar stared at you for a long time, watching the steady rise and fall of your breath, the way your lashes cast delicate shadows on your cheeks. His mind was a whirlwind of duty and desire, fear and longing, the cold echoes of past grief and the warm, insistent pulse of something new.

He could not keep putting this off. The realization settled over him with the weight of inevitability. He could not keep lying beside you, night after night, pretending that this was a mere courtesy. He could not keep telling himself that he was doing this for your dignity, when in truth, your dignity was the last thing on his mind when he felt the press of your body against his in the dark.

But not tonight. Tonight, you were asleep, and he was a coward still. Tonight, he would lie here and listen to you breathe and feel the warmth of your kiss still burning on his lips.

Tomorrow, perhaps, he would be braver.

Or perhaps, he thought grimly, you would kiss him again, and the choice would be taken out of his hands entirely. The thought was not as unwelcome as it should have been.

The kisses continued.

Every night, without fail, you would bid him goodnight with that same gentle, fleeting press of your lips against his. It was never demanding, never lingering. It was a question posed in the softest possible terms, a door left slightly ajar, an invitation he could accept or decline as he saw fit. And every night, for the first several nights, Maekar accepted it the same way: by remaining perfectly, rigidly still, a statue of a man enduring a pleasant but bewildering assault.

He felt you withdraw each time, felt the tiny, almost imperceptible slump of your shoulders as you settled back onto your pillow. You never said anything. You never complained. But he knew. He was a dull rock, an unresponsive lump of granite, and he was hurting you with his passivity. The knowledge gnawed at him, a persistent, guilty ache that followed him through his days and haunted his waking hours.

The fifth night, something in him snapped. Simply, as you leaned in to press your customary kiss to his lips, he found himself moving. His hand came up, rough and calloused, to cup the back of your head. And he kissed you back.

It was not a passionate kiss. It was not the kiss of a man swept away by desire. It was a careful response, a returning of pressure, a silent acknowledgment. He felt your startled inhale against his mouth, the way your body went taut with surprise. When he pulled back, your eyes were wide, your lips parted, and there was a look on your face that made his chest constrict.

Expectation. Hope. A question that had been waiting, patient and trembling, for an answer.

Maekar looked at you, at your big eyes shining in the firelight, at your kiss-swollen mouth, at the delicate line of your collarbone visible above the lace of your nightdress. He thought of all the nights he had lain beside you, rigid with restraint. He thought of the way you smiled at him, the way you laughed at his dry remarks, the way you clung to his arm in sleep as if he were the only safe harbor in a storm.

He resigned himself. The decision came not with a sense of defeat, but with a strange, liberating clarity. He did not want to become the object of your resentment. He could not bear the thought of those eyes looking at him with bitterness, with the slow, corrosive realization that your husband was a man who denied you not only his affection but the most basic experiences of womanhood. You were young and full of life, and he had been keeping you in a gilded cage, feeding you porridge and kissing your forehead as if you were a child rather than a wife.

"You deserve pleasure," he said, his voice low and rough, the words feeling as if they were being dragged from some deep, hidden place within him. "I have been remiss in my duties."

Your breath caught. "Maekar..."

He moved before he could lose his nerve. His hands found your waist, and he lifted you as if you weighed nothing, settling you onto his lap with a decisive, careful motion. You were warm through the thin fabric of your nightdress, your body soft and pliant against the hard planes of his chest. He could feel the rapid flutter of your heart.

"I will not take what I have no right to claim," he said, the words a rough murmur against your temple. "But I can give you this. Let me give you this."

His fingers found the hem of your nightdress, and he pushed it up slowly, giving you time to object. You did not object. You only watched him with those enormous eyes, your hands resting on his shoulders as if you did not quite know what to do with them. He touched you gently, so gently, his battle-roughened hands moving with a delicacy that surprised even himself. He explored the soft skin of your thighs, the curve of your hip, the dip of your waist. He learned the shape of you by touch alone, his gaze fixed on your face, cataloguing every flicker of expression.

When his fingers found the center of your heat, you gasped, your head falling back, your fingers digging into his shoulders. He moved with slow, patient circles, learning what made you sigh, what made you shudder, what made your hips buck involuntarily against his hand. He was methodical in his attentions, as he was in all things, and he brought you to the peak with the same focused determination he might apply to a siege.

You shattered against him with a cry that was half surprise and half relief, your body arching, your hands fisting in the fabric of his tunic. He held you through it, his free arm wrapped securely around your waist, anchoring you against the storm of sensation. When the tremors subsided, you slumped against his chest, breathing hard, your face buried in the crook of his neck.

He gave you a moment. Then, with the same gentle efficiency, he rearranged your nightdress, lifted you from his lap, and placed you back onto the bed. He drew the furs up to your chin and pressed a kiss to your forehead.

"Sleep now," he commanded, his voice a low rumble.

You blinked up at him, your expression dazed and soft and so full of something that looked terrifyingly like adoration. "But you..."

"This was for you," he said, cutting you off with a firmness that brooked no argument. "Rest."

You slept. He did not. He lay beside you in the darkness, his body aching with unfulfilled need, and told himself that this was enough. He had done his duty. He had given you pleasure without complicating matters with his own involvement. It was a tidy solution, a clean, surgical strike. You were satisfied. There was no need to get himself fully involved.

This, too, became a habit.

Every few nights, when the expectant look in your eyes grew too pronounced to ignore, he would pull you onto his lap and touch you until you came apart in his arms. He learned the rhythms of your body. He knew the spot just below your ear that made you whimper when he pressed his lips to it. He knew the pace that made you clutch at him desperately, the slower, teasing touches that made you gasp his name like a prayer. He gave you pleasure as a general might distribute supplies to a besieged city: regularly, efficiently, and with a steadfast refusal to partake himself.

He thought you accepted this. He thought you understood the unspoken terms of this arrangement. He was a fool.

It was a quiet evening, the fire burning low in the hearth, the castle settling into the deep hush of night. He had just returned from a grueling inspection of the eastern watchtowers, his muscles aching, his mood as dark as the storm clouds gathering over the mountains. You were waiting for him in his chambers, a book open on your lap, a cup of warmed wine already poured and waiting on his desk.

You were always waiting for him now. The thought should not have warmed him as it did.

The night's ritual had been completed. You were nestled against him, your body still humming with the aftermath of pleasure, your breathing slowly returning to normal. He was preparing to settle you back onto your pillow, to pull up the furs and press his customary kiss to your forehead, when you spoke.

"Maekar." Your voice was soft, hesitant, but there was a thread of steel beneath it that he had learned to recognize. "May I ask you something?"

"You may," he said, his guard instinctively rising.

You were silent for a moment, your fingers tracing idle patterns on the fabric of his tunic. Then, you lifted your head to look at him, and the expression in your eyes made his heart stutter.

"Why do you not want anything for yourself?"

The question hung in the air between them, simple and devastating. He opened his mouth to deflect, to offer some gruff platitude about duty and obligation, but you did not give him the chance.

"Every night," you continued, your voice still soft but gaining strength, "you give me such pleasure. You are so gentle, so careful, so attentive. But you never…" You hesitated, a flush creeping up your cheeks, but you pressed on with the same determined courage you had shown since the day you arrived at Summerhall. "You never let me touch you. You never seek your own release. It is as if you believe you do not deserve it, or as if you think I am not capable of giving it."

"You are capable," he said, the words escaping before he could cage them.

"Then why?" Your pout was there, that unconscious, pretty pout that he had come to know so well. But it was accompanied by a look so loving, so open and earnest and full of desperate hope, that it struck him like a blow. "I could learn. I could learn how to please you, if you are willing to teach me. I am not afraid. I want to be a true wife to you, in every sense."

He felt something cracking inside him, the carefully constructed walls he had built around his heart beginning to crumble. "It is not a matter of teaching," he said, his voice strained. "There are…consequences. You are young. You should not be burdened with..."

"Children," you finished for him, and he was stunned into silence. "You are worried about children."

It was not the only thing, but it was the easiest to admit. He nodded stiffly.

You took a deep breath, and he watched as you gathered your courage, your hands clasping together in your lap. "If you do not wish for children," you said, your voice steady despite the tremor he could see in your fingers, "I can drink moon tea. We can postpone the idea. I have spoken to the maester, and he has assured me it is safe when used sparingly."

Maekar stared at you. You had spoken to the maester. You, his sweet wife, had gone to the old man and asked about moon tea. The image was so absurd, so unexpectedly bold, that he almost laughed.

But you were not finished. "I would like to have a child someday," you continued, and now your voice grew softer, more wistful. "One child of my own. No matter a boy or a girl. And I would raise it with the best of my ability, with all the love I have to give. But…" You reached out, your small hand coming to rest on his cheek, your thumb brushing the line of his jaw. "I would like to have a life first. A marriage. A husband who does not treat me like a delicate piece of glass that might shatter at his touch."

Your eyes were wet, but you were smiling. That smile. The one that had undone him from the very beginning.

"I want you, Maekar," you whispered. "I want my husband."

The walls crumbled. The last defenses fell. Maekar Targaryen, prince of Summerhall, breaker of rebellions and terror of his enemies, looked at his young wife and realized he was only a man. A man who had been fighting a losing battle against his own heart for longer than he cared to admit. A man who loved his wife.

He loved you The truth of it was a physical thing, a weight in his chest, a fire in his blood. He loved your laugh, your pout, your clever mind and your gentle hands and your infuriating, wonderful habit of clinging to him in sleep. He loved your courage, standing before him now and baring your soul with nothing but hope to shield you. He loved you.

"Gods be good," he breathed, and then he was moving.

His hands found your waist, and this time there was nothing careful or clinical about the touch. He pulled you against him, crushing you to his chest, and his mouth descended on yours in a kiss that was nothing like the chaste, hesitant presses of lips you had shared before. This was a surrender. A desperate, hungry admission of everything he had been too stubborn to say.

You gasped against his mouth, and then your arms were around his neck, your fingers tangling in his hair, and you were kissing him back with an enthusiasm that made his head spin. When he finally pulled back, you were both breathing hard, your faces inches apart.

"You foolish, stubborn man," you whispered, but your voice was thick with tears and joy. "I have been waiting for you to understand."

"I understand now," he said, his voice a low, wrecked rasp. "Forgive me. For all of it. For the neglect, for the distance, for the guard I foisted upon you like a fool..."

"You gave me Ser Elyas?" Your eyes widened, and then a surprised laugh bubbled up from your throat. "Oh, Maekar. I thought he was just a very attentive guard. I wondered why he kept trying to recite poetry at me."

Maekar groaned, dropping his forehead to yours. "I am an idiot."

"You are my idiot," you corrected, and the possessive warmth in your voice was his final undoing. "My husband. And I believe you owe me a proper wedding night."

He looked at you, at the mischievous glint in your eyes, at the loving curve of your smile, and he felt something he had not felt in many, many years. Hope. Joy. A future unfolding before him that was not merely duty and endurance, but something bright and warm and achingly beautiful.

"I owe you much more than that," he murmured, and he lowered his mouth to yours once more.

a/n: Liked the fic? You can donate on Ko-fi, your support helps me write more: https://ko-fi.com/catbayunthestoryteller <3

[louloucake]

idk if youve already written this but favorite sex positions with TT/Aerion??

i haven't yet so here are some of trailer trash!aerion's favorite positions! ♡︎⋆. w visuals

doggy on couch ("lazy susan")

one of tt!aerion's favorite positions is you sprawled out on the couch, on your stomach and pounding into you from behind, his hands tangling in your hair, yanking your head back as he grunts with each thrust or his hands gripping your hips hard enough to leave marks.

the worn fabric of the couch creaks under you both, the smell of his cheap cologne and your pretty perfume mixing with the heat of your skin. his cock presses against your entrance, teasing, before he pushes inside stretching you open. he groans when you take him, you're always so so so tight for him!! he won't last long with your walls fluttering like that.

he’ll let out a string of low, guttural curses that get muffled by your gasps. he likes that he can see the way you take every inch, the way you stretch around him, desperate to accommodate him completely. he’ll grip your hips harder, nails digging into your skin, and lean over you, trapping you against the worn cushions.

"look at me, c'mon look at me-" he’ll command, his voice rough and demanding as he picks up the speed, pounding into you with a ferocity that leaves you seeing stars. the sound of skin slapping against skin is loud in the small, cramped space of the living room, echoing off the peeling paint and the bare walls.

face to face

aerion's absolute favorite position is anything with eye contact. on the armchair, on his bed, the front seat of the truck, on the boat…and pull you onto his lap. you straddle him, facing him, and he wraps his arms tight around your waist, his hands wandering up your back to hold you close.

he loves this angle. it lets him look deep into your eyes while he works you open. his grip on your hips is firm, anchoring you so he can lift and thrust up into you with steady, deliberate strokes, grinding against your sensitive walls.

the sight of your pretty face when he hits that sweet spot sends a spark through him. he likes watching you fall apart for him, seeing the pleasure wash over your features, your lips parting, eyes fluttering. cooing a sweet, “i know…i know, baby.”

he’ll tilt his head down to kiss you, messy and hungry, swallowing your moans against his mouth. he LOVES to kiss you, wet smooches against your cheek, jaw and neck- just anywhere he can get to, he’s kissing. his fingers trace patterns on your lower back, feeling the tremors running through you as he rocks his hips against yours. he wants to memorize every expression you make, every sound you breathe out when he fills you up completely, marking you not just with his touch, but with his gaze.

pole position (thigh master)

he'll sprawl out on the bed, one knee bent, and you'll climb over him, straddling his thigh while he lies on his back. his leg goes between yours, pressing up against your clit with every movement.

he loves that you have to grind against him to get it right, that you have to work to find the rhythm. he'll guide your hips, showing you exactly where to sit, how to angle your body so his thigh is grinding against you just right.

his hands will rest on your hips, holding you in place as he lifts his leg up to grind against you more firmly. it's intimate in a different way—slower, more deliberate. he likes watching you squirm on top of him, likes knowing he's controlling the pace without even touching your pussy.

as you start to get comfortable with the rhythm, he'll grab your hips and pull you down so he can slide his cock inside you from this angle. the combination of his thigh grinding against your clit and his cock stretching you open is too much to handle.

he'll hold you there, riding him in reverse while taking your boyfriend sooo deep, all while his leg keeps up the pressure on your most sensitive spot. "look at this ass," he grunts, slapping it lightly, "you're fuckin' soakin’ my leg-" watching your juices slick up his thigh.

[celestialwyvern]

THE PRICE OF SPITE - AERION TARGARYEN

SUMMARY - You and Aerion finally learnt how to love one another but something happens which causes a chain of events.

CONTAINS - angst, hurt/little to no comfort, aerion is physically violent (not to reader), infidelity

A/N - can confirm my friend cried after reading (hi), why do i do this to myself

For the first six moons of your marriage, Aerion Targaryen made it his task to ensure you knew exactly how little you mattered to him.

There was only silence that seemed to gather in the corners whenever the two of you were forced into the same space.

It was an arranged match, a political knot tied by hands other than your own.

To him, you were a grievance. An inconvenient obligation dressed in fine silk.

At the long candlelit tables of the Great Hall, he practiced a cruel kind of erasure. He would sit beside you and look entirely past you, engaging in chatter with nearby lords, his face sneering into permanent boredom the moment your eyes happened to meet.

If he had to speak to you, his voice carried a mocking edge specifically designed to see if he could make you shrink.

But you refused to give him the satisfaction.

You met his arrogance with untouchable detachment that bordered on utter disdain. Where he was volatile, you were a wall of ice.

You answered his biting remarks with indifference that cut far deeper than any screamed insult ever could. You learnt the exact rhythm of his moods, and you learned how to navigate them without ever letting your composure slip.

You lived entirely separate lives under the same roof. If he came into a room, you eventually found a reason to leave it. If you were seated together at court, you looked straight ahead, ignoring the dark weight of his gaze.

You drew just enough blood with your silence to keep him at bay, and he did the same.

It was a marriage built on a foundation of mutual resentment.

You hated the capricious nature of the prince, and he despised your ever strong resilience.

The shift in dynamic happened in the middle of the night during the dead of winter, driven by the horror of Aerion’s own mind.

Targaryens were plagued by blood, fire, and strange dreams. You knew that.

But this was your first time ever witnessing such a thing.

You were pulled from a light sleep by the sound of his breathing. It was frantic, much like someone drowning in a body of water.

When you looked across the expanse of the bed, you saw him. The fire in the hearth had died down to embers, and in the dim light, Aerion looked completely caught in the bars of a nightmare.

His silver hair was damp, clinging to his forehead, and his jaw was clamped so tight you could hear the grinding of his teeth. You looked down at his fingers that were buried deep into the mattress, pulling hard at the fabric.

As the dream finally released its grip, his eyes snapped open. He sat up abruptly, his chest heaving as he stared into the dark room, his gaze wild and confused.

He was suffering under the weight of his own disorientation, his pride violently warring with the panic in his veins.

He had expected you to say something. Perhaps something sharp or clever. He braced for you to look at him with disgust, to see the feared prince reduced to a trembling wreck in the dark.

You didn’t say a word.

You rose from your side of the bed quietly, your movements slow and deliberate so as not to startle the man beside you.

Walking over to the washbasin, you poured a cup of cool water and brought it back to the bedside.

Without forcing yourself into his space, you sat at the foot of the mattress and held the cup out to him. When Aerion simply stared at it with defensive eyes, you reached out and wrapped your hand around his, guiding it to take the cup.

Your touch was steady. Unshakable. You didn’t look at him with pity, nor did you look at him with fear. You remained there in the dark, an anchor while the remnants of his nightmare slowly evaporated into the room.

Aerion drank the water in desperate gulps, his eyes never leaving your face. He was entirely bewildered by you.

The fact that you had witnessed the absolute ruin of his composure and chose to shield it, rather than weaponize it, completely fractured his understanding of you.

It was the second time in his life he had ever felt that helpless, but it was the first time anyone had ever stood in the dark to keep him from falling apart.

After that night, the silence between you changed. It was no longer the distant quiet of two strangers sharing a cage.

A man like him did not know how to handle soft emotions. He knew how to conquer, how to hurt, how to demand submission, but he did not know how to exist alongside someone who held his trembling hands without judgement.

For weeks, he watched you with intensity, waiting for you to use his vulnerability against him. But you never did. You treated him with the same steady presence as you did before.

Once he realized his secrets were safe with you, the wall of indifference dissolved entirely.

The bewilderment warped into fierce infatuation, he became soft by his profound love for you.

The court noticed the shift almost immediately. Aerion, who used to treat your presence like an insult, suddenly became impossibly bearable without you by his side.

During long tedious feasts, he would outright ignore the high born lords trying to win his favour, turning his chair slightly just to watch you eat.

He developed a habit of resting his hand flat against the small of your back, a possessive, grounding touch that stayed there for hours.

If anyone dared speak to you with even a hint of condescension, Aerion’s gaze would sharpen into something so violently cold the offender would pale and excuse themselves within seconds.

But away from the prying eyes of the Red Keep, when the moon hung high, was where the true depth of his devotion lived.

Where it was once a freezing meaningless room, it was now a sanctuary.

Aerion began bringing his duties into your space. He would sit by the hearth late into the night, reviewing maps of the realm or cleaning his sword, extremely content so long as you were in the room.

You had both been so good at hurting each other with words that when you finally turned that wit outward, it introduced something precious.

You would sit up by the window, sharing a single goblet of wine as you both quietly tore apart the nerves of the people you had dealt with that day.

For a man who had spent his entire life surrounded by sycophants and enemies, having a wife who understood his mind was intoxicating.

Sometimes, when you could see the familiar tension creeping back into his jaw, you didn’t even have to speak. You would simply reach out and trace his skin idly.

He would lean his head on your shoulder, shuddering a sigh of pure relief. He would wrap his arms around your waist, pulling you flush against his chest, burying his face in the crook of your neck as though he was breathing in safety itself.

“You have ruined me, wife,” he had murmured one night, his fingers tangled in your hair. “The gods help anyone who tries to take you from me. I would burn the city to ash before I let them look at you.”

You had smiled, pressing a soft kiss to either side of his temples, fully believing that a man like Aerion had finally found his anchor.

You had given him your trust, believing that the fragile love you had built out of the ruins of your hatred was unbreakable.

You had never felt safer. And that was your greatest mistake.

The illusion of safety shattered when the Hall was packed with half the nobility of the realm.

You were seated beside Aerion at the high table, his hand resting warm on the small of your back, just as it always did.

But across the table, a wealthy lord from the Westerlands had spent the evening drinking too much and looking too long. It was a lingering stare that crawled over your skin, heavy with filthy intent.

You tried to ignore it, but you felt the exact second Aerion’s hand went rigid on your spine.

He rose from his chair, and before you managed to catch his sleeve, he closed the distance with the drunken lord who was still sitting down.

With swift brutality, he dragged the man from his seat and slammed him onto the stone floor. The chatter died in an instant as Aerion began breaking the man’s limbs. In a feral, possessive rage, the sickening crack of bones echoed through the hall, choking gasps as Aerion snapped his right arm, then his left, then the rest.

When the doors of your shared chambers finally slammed shut behind the two of you, the air in the room was boiling.

Aerion was pacing, wiping the lord’s blood from his hands with a piece of silk, his chest pounding. He looked at you, fully expecting you to submit to his protection, expecting you to validate the monstrous thing he had just done in your name.

But you were shaking, your face a mixture of sheer horror and confusion.

“You are insane,” you breathed, the words tearing from your throat as you backed away from him. “You broke him. You mutilated a man in front of the entire court over a look! There was no honour in that, Aerion!”

Aerion stopped pacing, his expression shifting to a defensive sneer. “He looked at what belongs to me as if he had a right to touch it,” he hissed, his pride flaring like a wounded animal. “I am a Targaryen prince. I do not tolerate vermin coveting my wife. I did it for you.”

“Do not lay your sickness at my feet!” you yelled, tears of raw fury spilling over your lashes. The image of the man’s shattered bones was burned into your mind, tearing through every ounce of peace you thought you had built with him.

“You didn’t do it for me. You did it because you are cruel. Because you love the blood.”

“I love you,” he barked back, stepping toward you, his eyes flashing with toxic pain. “I gave you everything. I let you see me. And now you look at me as if I am a monster?”

“Because you are!” you spat, the words flying out before you could stop them, cutting straight into the deepest insecurity he carried.

The room went silent.

The frantic heat vanished from Aerion’s face, leaving him hollow.

You had just used the very intimacy he surrendered to you to execute him.

He didn’t yell. His blood stained hands dropped to his sides, looking at you as if you had just ripped his heart through his chest.

You watched as the arrogant mask snapped violently back into place over his eyes, but beneath it, the catastrophic break was unmistakable.

Then, without a single word, he turned on his heel and walked out of the chambers, the doors latching shut with a final thud.

The echo of the heavy slamming door seemed to vibrate long after he was gone.

For a long time, you simply stood by your vanity, your hands trembling so vigorously you had to grip the table to keep your balance.

You closed your eyes, pressing a hand to your temple to steady yourself as a sudden wave of dizziness made the room tilt.

It wasn’t just the aftermath of the argument. It was a familiar fatigue that had been hovering at the edge of your senses for weeks, a persistent nausea you had tried to brush off as stress.

Standing there in the quiet, the pieces suddenly fell into place with terrifying clarity.

The missed courses. The heightened sensitivity to the smell of his leather and wine. The strange warmth blooming deep within your lower stomach.

You were carrying his child.

The realization hit you, completely driving the remaining anger away from your lungs. The bitter words you had just spat at him vanished, utterly consumed by a rush of overwhelming euphoria.

A baby. His babe.

The child he had subtly hinted at, the one you had both secretly begun to hope for.

Suddenly, the horrific scene, the broken limbs, the vicious screaming match—it all felt so small. So terribly foolish.

You looked at the door, your heart hammering against your ribs with the urge to swallow your pride.

You wanted him to walk back through that door, to look into his tormented eyes, take his blood stained hands in yours, and apologize. You wanted to tell him that he wasn’t a monster, because the two of you had just made something so pure.

You sat by the fire, cradling the fragile secret while waiting for the handles to turn.

Instead, the doors flew open.

It was your handmaiden.

She stumbled into the chambers, out of breath, her skirts caked in thick mud from the lower city.

“What is it?” you asked, the soft lingering trace of your smile fading as a cold dread began to prickle at your neck. “Did he ride out? Is my husband hurt?”

“My lady…” the girl choked out, as she buried her face in her hands. “I was down in the lower city. In Flea Bottom. I went to deliver herbs to my sister, and I.. I saw him.”

The coldness spread from your neck, sinking straight into your chest. “He is drinking, no doubt. He has a terrible temper, but it passes–”

“No, my lady, no,” the maid lifted her face, eyes wide with pity. “He was in a tavern, yes. Right in front of the street. The doors were thrown wide open. He was… he was with the common women. Low born girls draped across his lap.”

You froze. The air in your lungs went solid.

“You are mistaken,” you whispered, a sharp laugh escaped your lips, devoid of any mirth.

You tightened your fingers into the fabrics of your skirt, your mind fiercely rejecting the words. “He is a Targaryen, he is furious with me, but he would not do that. Not to me.”

“He wasn’t hiding in the dark, my lady. He wanted everyone to see.”

The denial snapped.

The whiplash of going from joy to the lowest, most degrading depth of betrayal shattered something vital inside your chest. The apology you had been preparing turned into ash in your throat.

Your body went still, freezing as reality washed over you.

Aerion hadn’t made a reckless mistake, he had gone out of his way to weaponize his own body, to drag the intimacy you had bled for through the filth of Flea Bottom out of spiteful vengeance.

He wanted to break you. To destroy the one thing he worshiped, completely unaware that he had just permanently incinerated his own future.

Your hand remained pressed against your stomach as the handmaiden gave you privacy. It remained not out of comfort, but in an instinctive motion to shield the innocent life inside you from the suffocating reality of the father it had just inherited.

And then, the numbness cracked.

A breathless sob ripped from your chest, so sudden and painful it doubled you over. You collapsed forward, burying your face in your hands as the tears came rushing out.

You sobbed for the hard won love that had just been ruined in the dirt. You sobbed for the child growing inside you, a life that would now be born into a broken, unfixable home.

You wept until your throat was raw, completely alone in the wreckage of your marriage.

The dawn that crept through the high windows did not bring light.

You sat exactly where the handmaiden left you, your eyes fixed on the door.

The warmth had completely vanished from your body. You were a ghost occupying a shell that used to belong to a woman who loved a prince.

When the iron latch finally clicked, the sound didn’t make your heart leap. It felt like the final stone being placed on a tomb.

The doors swung open, and Aerion stepped into the chamber.

He was disheveled. His fine doublet was stained, his silver hair uncombed, and he carried the stench of cheap tavern wine, along with the heavy, sickening perfume of the women he was with.

He had spent the night dragging himself through the dirt, driven by a desire to punish you for the words you had hurled at him.

He walked into the room, his chin tilted high. He expected a confrontation. For things to be thrown at him, for you to scream at him, to rage against the humiliation he had intentionally inflicted upon you.

He wanted to break you, because if you broke, it meant he had won.

“Are you quite finished with your theatrics, wife?” he asked, his voice deliberately casual as he closed the doors behind him.

He didn’t look at you directly, walking instead toward the washbasin. “Or do you intend to lecture me further on my shortcomings?”

You said nothing.

The absence of a reply made him pause. Aerion turned slowly, the smugness faltering as he finally looked at you.

You were staring right through him.

It wasn’t the fiery anger from the night before, nor was it the challenge you used to give him during the start of your marriage.

Your eyes were dead, flat, and colourless.

Aerion’s brow furrowed, unease piercing through his drunken self. “If you have something to say about where I spent my evening, say it.” His voice dropped the playful edge, turning defensive.

“I have nothing to say to you, Aerion,” you said.

Your voice was perfectly level. Low. Devoid of any emotion.

He expected you to know what he did—he had ensured your handmaiden saw him.

“You dare look at me like that?” he hissed, taking another step forward, “after what you called me? You pushed me out of this room. You brought this upon yourself.”

“I do not care where you go, nor whose lap you occupy,” you murmured, gaze never shifting to meet his eyes. You smoothed the fabric of your skirts. “You are the Prince. You may wallow in whatever filth pleases you. It is no concern of mine.”

“Stop it,” he snapped, the first crack of genuine panic showing in his voice. He reached out, his hand wrapping tightly around your wrist to force you to look at him.

The moment his skin touched yours, a shudder ran through you. At last, you lifted your eyes to his.

Aerion froze.

He looked into your eyes and found absolutely nothing waiting for him. The sanctuary you had built together, the soft glances, the quiet nights where he had laid his head in your lap.

You had entirely extracted yourself from him. He had gone out to break your pride, and instead, he had permanently killed the only thing that kept him open.

Subconsciously, your free hand drifted down to your stomach. A quiet attempt to shield the tiny babe.

But Aerion noticed everything about you.

Even through the haze of the alcohol, his gaze dropped to your hand. His brow furrowing as a question sparked in his mind.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

He stepped closer, his boots dragging on the stone, his grip tightening on your wrist. “Why are you holding yourself like that? Are you ill?”

Your lifeless eyes met his frantic ones. But as you stared at the state of him—smelling the wretched proof of what he had done—the wall you had forced over yourself cracked.

A hot, bitter tear spilled over, slowly falling down your cheek. Your chest hitched, and a small, broken sob escaped your throat.

“No,” you whispered, your voice shaky as another sob caught in your chest. You didn’t pull away from his grip. His hands, the same hands that touched various women just hours ago.

You let your tears fall openly now, mourning the beautiful future that had just been stolen from you. “I am not ill.”

“Then why–”

“Because while you were down in the filth of Flea Bottom, finding a way to break my pride, I was sitting by the fire realizing our argument didn’t matter,” you forced the words past your trembling lips, a weeping laugh escaping.

“I was waiting for you to come home so I could apologize. Because of this, Aerion,” you looked down to your stomach, “we created this together.

Aerion was unmoving, the catastrophic weight of your words and the sight of your tears crashing into his mind.

Hearing you sob, seeing the absolute grief on your face at the exact moment you revealed the child he had secretly hoped for was real. It destroyed him.

He looked from your tear stained face down to your stomach, his hand trembling so violently that his grip on you slipped. He stumbled backward, his face going completely white.

“No,” he breathed, terror bleeding into his voice as he shook his head. “No. You… you are saying this to punish me. You are lying.”

“I have no desire to lie to you,” you wiped a stray tear from your cheek, your other arm remaining protective over your womb. “You have managed to ruin us all on your own.”

Revulsion hit him hard. He had gone out to win a petty, spiteful war of ego, and in turn he had defiled the sanctity of his marriage the moment it became extremely sacred.

“Wife…” he choked out, his own eyes filling with frantic tears. His hand reached out blindly, desperately, begging for forgiveness he knew he hadn’t earned. “My love, please–let me–”

“Do not touch me,” you shook your head, shielding your stomach from him.

Before the final, bitter whisper of your voice could fully even settle in, you gathered your skirts, turned your back on his outstretched hands, and walked out, just as he did.

By the time the doors shut, you moved through the corridors, vanishing into the shadows of a castle that would offer him no answers.

Aerion remained in that room for hours, paralyzed by the cause of his own ruin, until the remaining alcohol eventually dragged him into a heavy sleep.

When he jerked awake, it was nighttime.

There was no morning light to ease anything. Aerion sat up, his breath catching painfully in his throat as the memories of your tears resurfaced.

“Wife,” he croaked, his voice a raw, desperate whisper in the dark. His hands searched the other side of the bed, fingers searching for the warmth of your skin.

Panic, sharp and ugly, drove the remaining stupor from his veins. He scrambled to his feet, nearly tipping over his own discarded boots as he frantically threw the doors to the dressing rooms, searching the moonlit shadows.

The chamber was empty.

His personal belongings were still there, exactly where he had left them. Yet everything else—every single piece of you, was completely gone.

The wardrobe stood open, stripped of your silks and soft velvet gowns. The vanity table, where he used to lounge and watch you for hours, was bare. There were no oils, no golden hairpins, no lingering scent of your perfume.

You had taken your presence, your warmth, and the unborn child, and you had carried them all away where he could never follow.

He was entirely alone in the darkness of his own design.

Then, as his eyes swept over the empty marble of the vanity, a single ray of moonlight caught a tiny flash of silver.

Aerion approached the table slowly, his chest heaving as he reached out. Resting alone on the cold stone was a single, simple ring.

It wasn’t the Targaryen band he had forced onto your finger on your wedding day.

It was a cheap, slightly tarnished silver band.

He remembered the exact afternoon he had given it to you.

It had been weeks ago, during one of those rare, quiet days when the two of you had snuck away from the guards to walk through the lower courtyards.

A common street merchant had been selling worthless trinkets for copper, and Aerion, in a rare fit of playful mood, had bought the ring on a whim.

He had laughed, slipping the cheap metal onto your finger, boasting that even the filth of the lower city looked royal so long as it touched your skin.

You had smiled at him then, a genuine, radiant smile that had made him feel enamoured.

You had kept it and worn it every day since, it was a private token of the gentle love that had grown between the two of you.

And now, it was the only thing you had left behind.

Aerion picked up the tiny band, the metal cold against his skin, devoid of any of your warmth.

It was the ultimate, mocking symbol of the happiness he had willingly slaughtered over something so small.

A broken sound tore from his chest, a sound stripped of all cruelty, and all arrogance. He dropped to his knees, pressing the cheap silver ring onto his lips as the tears streamed.

Just the day before, he was entirely unaware that the moment he succeeded in breaking your spirit, his own mind would shatter completely.

In the quiet of your once shared chambers, clutching the only thing you had left behind, Aerion Targaryen took his first step into the agonizing madness that would eventually consume him.

[w1tch-hazel]

Angel of Death

cw: classic hurt/comfort, reader is a little insecure but still that bitch, whipped!aerion, cruel!aerion at first, mention of gore, sassy!reader, dumbfuckery from aerion, reader cries, aerion pines, some obviously ooc aerion, character development, inaccurate horseback riding descriptions (I've never touched a horse don't come at me), brief making out scene but ya that's it! If i missed anything lmk in the comments or dm me :) English is not my first language so please excuse any mistakes :/

tags: fem!reader x Aerion Brightflame Targaryen, oneshot, longfic, hurt/comfort

a/n: 2nd time writing lizard boy :P highkey went a little cuckoo with the word count, also sorry this took so long to put out :/ Ya girl's been busy as fuck okay, but here it is!! Hope you like it :3 Idk how to feel about this one though, not sure If I managed to make Aerion's character arc fleshed out enough. But anyway here ya go :))

Masterlist

Dividers: @uzmacchiato

Please leave a comment, like, follow or reblog, it would help me grow my blog :3

Enjoy ۶ৎ

Aerion was never a responsible man. If you can even call him a man. He was more like a boy, most times. Rash, irritatingly smug with a temper shorter than his own stature and an ego larger than the height of his jousting pole, throwing tantrums when he doesn't get his way, and never understands that his actions have consequences. He is, for better or for worse, your husband. Though he has slightly improved his ways since your marriage, for your sake, and for his—since he really didn't like facing your wrath—he still acts up occasionally, from time to time.

Today, he came back to your shared apartments with a split lip stretched into a proud grin, looking positively delighted.

Your brows rise to your hairline, proceeding to furrow in shock and concern. "Good seven, what the fuck happened to you?"

"I'm perfectly fine, elated, even. Today, I have punished a traitor to the House of Targaryen." He let out a laugh, shaking his head and walking to the floor length silvered mirror to admire his injuries.

"Whatever do you mean?" You scowl, standing up too, from the bed where you were sitting with a book.

He turns his head back to you, and scoffs lightly, a smirk plastered on his bloody lips. "Treason. A filthy fleabottom rat who thought it funny to jest about a tale of dragons defeated by cowardly knights. I had the kingsguard cut off his tongue."

Your heart skips a beat out of fear, and at first you don't think you hear him right. "...What? Cut off his tongue!? Has sense truly left your mind? Or has soul left your body?" You sputter, eyes wide with disbelief and horror.

Aerion only huffs and rolls his eyes. "Here you go again. He insulted the house of kings! The house of dragons! What, should I have let him run his mouth in front of me and do nothing while people laughed at my dignity? It's that what you suggest I—"

"You idiot! He wasn't even talking about you, he was what— telling a story? Have you lost your wits, husband?"

His gaze gardens and something shifts in his jaw. "Do not speak to me like that, wife."

You laugh at his audacity, yet there is no humour in it. "I will speak to you however I fucking please, you absolute fool. By the gods, have you no shame? You cut an innocent man's tongue off because he was repeating a children's tale?"

He turns towards you fully, and for the first time in a long time, he snaps.

"He insulted my blood! Dragon blood! The blood that makes my family! If you were truly a part of it, perhaps you would understand."

The silence that follows in the moments afterwards is deafening.

Your voice trembles slightly as you speak and you curse it mentally.

"I see, Your Grace."

No matter how much you tried to convince yourself that Aerion had changed his ways, become better, strived to be a good prince, a good man and a good lord husband, you should have known he'd never fully mean the rare sweet words he whispered to you on quiet nights, or the fleeting touches between your hands as you walked together in the gardens, or even the lavish ways he fulfilled his duty to you, as your lord husband.

He is, and always will be, a little bit of a monster.

His expression immediately softens when he realises the damage hide words just caused. "No, I'm- I'm sorry, angel, I didn't-... You know I didn't mean it like that." He tries to step closer to you, arms extended like he wants to pull you against him.

You shrink away, stumbling to your vanity and snatching the heavy velvet robe draped across the chair. Tugging it on to your shoulders while you try to hold in your tears, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of seeing the effect his cruelty had on you, you grab a lantern and take sharp, hurried steps, rushing out of your marital chambers into the cold stone halls.

Aerion frantically follows after you, of course, and jogs to catch up. "Wait! Where are you going?"

You don't bother with a reply, only increasing your speed until he inevitably reaches you and grabs your arm, not rough but firm, turning you around to face him. He looks panicked. Eyes wide and breath subtly panting, he whispers, "I didn't mean that. Come back, will you? It's late, be cross with me in the morning."

You clench your jaw, not meeting his gaze for longer than a second but rather staring at the wall over his shoulder. "Go fuck yourself. I'm sleeping in my own chambers, henceforth."

For a moment, he almost looks confused. Hurt. Then he frowns, "What? Don't speak nonsense. You're my wife."

Noble women, more often than not, had their own chambers to retire to, separate from their marital beds, as a respite from their cruel or unfeeling husbands.

After you married Aerion, you had also been offered such a room, but Aerion quickly disapproved of that idea and instead brought you to sleep next to him every night. He said, quote unquote, that you'd have no use of your own room— because you are a dragon's wife, and as a dragon's wife, it is your duty to not abandon his lair, lest you make him hunt you down again. You had rolled your eyes but humoured him while fighting a smile behind a goblet of wine on your wedding feast, because you knew the true reason was that he could not stand to be apart from you.

Now, you blink, and an irritating tear rolls out of the corner of your eye. "You've made it very clear where I stand. I wouldn't want to overstep, Your Grace."

He shifts on his feet, clearly agitated and not knowing how to fix his own mess. "Don't call me that. Can we... just come back inside, we can talk there."

He swallows, and then speaks low, so low you barely hear him, with desperate eyes trained on yours for even a sliver of forgiveness. "Please?"

You almost give in.

Clenching your jaw, you spit out— "No. Goodnight, my Prince." Sparing him one last wet glare, you turn and disappear around a corridor. This time, he does not follow you. He knows that you need the space to calm down, and chasing you will only aggravate you further.

Aerion rubs a hand down his face and groans to himself. He's fucked up. Again. (what's new)

That night, he can't sleep. But he doesn't toss and turn, he just... stares. He's on his back, arms behind his head and his unfocused gaze on the ceiling as he thinks.

He thinks about you. That's nothing new, he always does. He would never say it to your face, but there hasn't been a moment in his life since he met you, that you haven't been in the forefront of his mind. On second thought, that's not true, maybe you slip to the back of his mind a few times, and that is commonly when he makes his horrible decisions. You're like the angel on his shoulder, with your sweet smile and kind eyes, loud laugh and glares that make him feel like a puppy kneeling at your feet, not the dragon prince. That is why he calls you his angel. You are his guiding light, you are the voice of reason among the darker whispers in his mind. And he just insulted you. God he has no right to be near you even, no matter how much he reminds you that you're lucky to marry a dragon. He was no true dragon. He was a coward, a coward who hurt his wife out of no other reason than to win an argument.

Fuck.

He needed to make this right.

You weren't faring that much better either. Face smushed into a pillow, tears flowing freely into the satin. Aerion was a cruel man, but he had never before treated you like lesser than a goddess of old Valyria. His words to describe you, not yours. In your heart you knew he didn't mean it. Even if he was cruel, he still loved you with all he had. Sometimes the blinding rage behind his eyelids took over, and he made rash decisions. But that doesn't excuse him for basically telling you that you don't belong.

Since you left your own family to live with his after the marriage, you have felt warmly welcomed by most residents of the keep. But there are times when your own mind plays tricks on you, planting seeds of doubt, that maybe everyone is merely tolerating you, since you are the arrogant prince's bride. And your inability to fully blend in with the royal house of Targaryen did not help. You did not have silver hair, nor purple eyes and dragon-blood flowing through your veins. Yes, many Targaryens, like Baelor or his sons— for example— also did not possess these traits.

But they had something you could never truly achieve. Power. When they talk, people of Westeros listen. When you talk, they merely smile tightly, as if humouring a curious child. It pisses you off. Seven knows you could do so. much. good. if the ministers and the lords could only accept anyone besides the house of the dragons to be in power. It's not like growing accustomed to the Valerian way was very easy, either. Crone knows why all their names have an 'ae' in them. The king expects you to name your child either Vaella, or Rhaemon. Fat chance. The whole ordeal was fucking frustrating, and Aerion knew that. Aerion still choose to hit you where it hurt the most, because you knew you'd never be a true Targaryen. You knew that, and you thought you had come to terms with it. Apparently not, as only a few words of his had made your insecurities come crashing down on your head.

You cry into the pillow until the cover becomes sticky with snot and your eyes start to burn from the strain. Sleep finally overcomes you, a dark mercy from the perils of reality, enveloping you in a rough yet familiar blanket of much-needed silence.

Morning sunlight filters through the big windows in Aerion's room, making the inside of his eyelids turn red as it falls on his face. He frowns in annoyance and turns his head to avoid the glare, arm instinctively reaching for you on the other side of his bed. When his hand finds nothing but cold bedsheets, he opens his eyes in confusion only to remember the events of the previous night, and he closes them again with a sigh. He buries his face into a pillow and screams into it but it comes out sounding more like a frustrated groan.

Fuck, okay, he needed to find you.

He sits up, scrubbing his eyes to rid them of sleep. He throws the covers off of himself and pads to the attached bathroom. Seeing himself in the silvered mirror, he thinks he looks like death. Eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep, his hair mussed up, which you would have smoothed down by now if you were here, and giggled at the way a few unruly strands stuck up perpendicularly. Gods, he could not stand this.

Last night, when sleep avoided him, he had sat at his desk and made a plan to fix this, until at last he could not keep his eyes open.

After freshening up he sat at the desk again, flipping through multiple scrolls and parchments until he found what he had written down only hours ago.

Right, he can do this.

Aerion raps his knuckles on a rotten piece of wood serving as a door. Jaw tense and stance even tender, his eyes flit up to meet the old man who opens the door. The man scowls at the sight of him and immediately slams the door in Aerion's face. This forces the latter to take a deep breath and close his eyes for a few moments before knocking again, more rapidly this time. The man didn't reply. Aerion sighed and turned to his horse, fetching some parchment out from the satchel and scribbling on it for a minute with a charcoal stick until he wrote out a few words.

'I am here to apologise, and to make amends. I mean no harm. I realise that the things I have done to you, and many others are despicable, cruel acts, and I deeply regret them. You do not have to forgive me, and you certainly do not have to owe me, because I am giving you two hundred gold dragons as a symbol of my intention to undo my grave mistakes.'

He bends, sliding the note and a small pouch through the mouse hole in the door, before he straughtens and shakes his head, as if to fling the darkness of his mind away as he grabs his horse's reigns, climbing into the saddle. As we prepares to trot away, a small schwoop noise catches his attention. He turns his head just in time to see the paper and pouch being snatched into the threshold. He can't help but let a little triumphant smile grow as he trots away from the old cottage.

One by one, Aerion visited eight-and-sixty houses. Well, house would be a generous description of what some of the people on his list lived in, but he supposed that was partly his fault. He received a slap or two that day (and didn't want to smite the perpetrators down!) but it would all be worth it to see your smile. Gods, has he missed you. Fuck.

He slumps down on his plush armchair upon reaching the comforts of his own you-less chambers and groans in satisfaction. His back was killing him, but horse riding for a day straight will do that to you.

Just as his eyes start to flutter shut, the doors to his apartments burst open. He frowns and turns his head to tell off whatever stupid servant-

Oh.

It's you.

He scrambles to get out of his chair, smoothening his robes out as he clears his throat, which was suddenly dry.

"Angel. You're.. uh.. here."

"Have you gone completely mad? The treasurer said you spent more than a thousand gold dragons today! Have you be-"

He stayed silent, hands clasped and gaze trained to the floor. This was extremely unusual behaviour from him.

Squinting in suspicion, you step closer. "What have you done?"

He shakes his head and replies quietly, "Nothing."

"Aerion." You cross your arms and glare challengingly. "Tell me this instant. What. Did. You. Do."

He sighs and meets your gaze sheepishly. "I uh... Apologised. To people."

You scoff, "What in the realm are you on about? Which people? And why did you have to spend-"

"The commoners I... wronged. I— well, I gave them all a few hundred gold dragons and, y'know, talked to them. To the ones that can talk, anyway, but uh... That's what I was doing, to answer your question." He interrupted, although not rudely.

Upon hearing his words, your eyes widen and your jaw almost falls to the floor in shock. The exact words going through your mind were-

What. The. Fuck.

Because, well, this is nothing like your husband.

"Who are you and what have you done to my husband? Are you unwell? Are you being serious?" You raise your hand to press the back of it to his forehead in genuine concern and he gently bats it away, instead intertwining your fingers with his.

A small smile creeps onto his lips because, well, you're talking to him again, and touching him. The Maiden knows he has missed your voice. And your soft skin on his.

He blinks out of his trance as his train of thought is broken by you snapping your fingers in front of his eyes.

"Hello? Aerion, are you even listening to me? I asked you a question." You huff.

He smiles wider and shakes his head. "I apologise, angel. I'm alright, I assure you. It's just... I cannot lose you. I can't express how sorry I am for what I said to you, how I said it, and most importantly— the situation that gave rise to our disagreement. Even though we cannot be unmarried by law, I do not want to experience a marriage in which you despise me. So I figured... It's better to not feel the joy of violence, than to not feel the joy of my wife's laughter."

You raise an eyebrow, still a little suspicious.

His eyes widen slightly and he stutters out, "Well, it's not- it's not just because I wanted you to forgive me, I also actually did realise that uhm- that my actions were unacceptable and th-that I needed to- mmph!"

Your lips are on his before he can react, cutting his rambling off. His hands hesitantly come to rest at your waist, warm and engulfing, eyes fluttering shut as he lets out a quiet groan and melts into the kiss.

You pull away and his lips chase yours before you hold his face in both of your hands, forcing him to look into your eyes.

Your voice is soft, yet it carries an edge. "If you ever—and I mean ever—talk to me like that again, or if you hurt an innocent being again, I will see to it that the king creates a new law allowing marriages to be annulled, just so I do not have to be your wife. Understood?"

He only nods, a lovestruck smile on his face.

"Yes or no, you fool?" You scoff, unable to fight a smile.

"Yes, my Queen." He murmurs and turns his head, raising a hand from your waist to wrap around your wrist as he presses a gentle kiss to the inside of your palm.

"Good. Now, I haven't forgiven you just yet, you know."

"That is alright, as long as you are here with me. Hit me, scream, pull my hair out, I don't give two flying fucks, but don't... don't leave me, Angel, alright?" His puppy dog eyes search yours for reassurance, and is rewarded when he gets to watch your eyes crinkle in that signature way that lights up a room when you smile.

"Fine, alright. Idiot. And don't ever disappear like that for an entire day without telling me. Yes?"

"Yes. Ofcourse." He hums, not really caring about what it is you're asking of him. He'd say yes to a million things—and follow through, mind you—if you only never stopped looking at him like that. Like you love him, but you're trying really hard to teach him a lesson he won't forget.

And he won't, trust me.

"Now, you're going to have to explain to the treasurer why a good chunk of your family's coffers are missing. 'Cause I'm not going to." You pat his cheek.

"Our family." He corrects softly.

You don't understand him immediately. "What?"

"Our family. You said my family. It's yours, too."

"Oh." You blink, a little taken aback. "Yes. I knew that."

He nods, a proud sheen in his intent, yet warm gaze. "Good. Never forget it. Even if a dumbfuck like me tells you you're not. Actually, I'm pretty sure they prefer you over me."

You chuckle, "You can't really blame them."

"I know. I can't see why you wouldn't be preferred over anyone, really."

Rolling your eyes, you stifle a smile. "Alright, that's enough flattery. Now take a bath, will you? You stink of horse shit and mud."

He grins, hands squeezing your waist lightly. "Only if you join me."

"Nice try."

"Worth a shot."

a/n: thank you for reading <3

Masterlist

[sedonasummer]

ᴅʀᴇᴀᴍ ɢɪʀʟ ᴘᴀʀᴛ 2 | ᴀᴇʀɪᴏɴ ᴛᴀʀɢᴀʀʏᴇɴ, ᴅᴀᴇʀᴏɴ ᴛᴀʀɢᴀʀʏᴇɴ

─ summary: Daeron told you that you deserved better. Tonight, watching Aerion storm out of your chambers, you finally believe him.

─ pairing: Aerion Targaryen x cousin!reader, Daeron Targaryen x cousin!reader (mentioned)

─ content: toxic relationship | gaslighting | mentions of infidelity | angst | not quite unrequited love | Aerion being the worst

─ a/n: Part 1 here! Thank you as always for your likes, comments, reblogs, and requests.🖤

Aerion did not speak as he pulled you along, his fingers clamped tight around your wrist. The pace was uncomfortable, his stride angry and purposeful, forcing you to almost run to keep up. But the moment you crossed the threshold to your chambers and the door clicked shut behind you, the tension in his arm evaporated as his grip loosened before letting go entirely.

You said nothing. A million thoughts flew through your mind, none of them belonging to this room, to this man.

He dreamed of you.

The phrase echoed in your head, drowning out the sound of Aerion moving behind you. Daeron. Your sweet cousin, your lifelong companion, the boy who had scraped his knees climbing trees with you, who would pick berries and flowers with you when no one else wanted to, and the man who now drank to silence the future. You had always loved him, of course, as family, but his confession in the garden had shifted the earth beneath your feet.

You closed your eyes for a moment and saw him clearly; the sandy hair, the blonde beard that was always a little too unkempt for court, the way his violet eyes had burned with an intensity you had never seen in them before. You deserve better, he had said. Better than him.

Better than Aerion.

The man currently unbuckling his cloak in the corner of the room.

You moved blindly toward the vanity, needing something to do, something to ground you. You stared at your reflection in the polished silver mirror; pale skin, wide violet eyes, hair like spun silver and gold. You looked like a ghost.

Aerion dropped his cloak onto a chaise, the heavy fabric thudding softly. He toed off his boots, kicking them aside with careless grace. He did not retire to the bed immediately. Instead, he stood still, watching you.

You could feel his gaze on the back of your neck, heavy and considering. He was vain, yes, but he was not stupid. He knew the rhythm of your moods, the cadence of your breathing. He knew he took you for granted, secure in the knowledge that you had worshipped him since you were old enough to understand what devotion was. He knew the lords of the realm would duel to the death for a single kind word from you, and yet he treated your affection as his due, a tax he collected without question.

But now the air between you felt wrong. You were not looking at him or speaking to him.

He crossed the room silently but you saw him approach in the mirror, his violet eyes narrowing as he studied your profile. He reached out, his hand hovering over your shoulder before he moved it to the dressing table.

"Let me help you."

He picked up your boar-bristle brush. Before you could protest, he stepped behind you. The first stroke of the brush through your hair was impossibly gentle. He worked slowly, easing out the tangles that had formed during your time in the garden, treated the silver-gold strands as if they were glass.

You sat rigid, hands in your lap. You should have closed your eyes and enjoyed this rare moment of peace from the volatile prince who had claimed you. But you could not.

You felt the phantom warmth of Daeron's hand near yours, the scent of crushed flowers and sour wine that clung to your memory. I would give you everything. The words were a siren song, luring you away from the safety of the shore.

Aerion brushed the length of your hair, over and over, the rhythmic swooshing sound the only noise in the room. He watched your face in the mirror, searching for a reaction, finding none.

"You are quiet," he murmured, pausing with the brush caught midway down a lock of hair.

"I am just tired," you replied, your voice sounding hollow to your own ears.

"It is more than that." He set the brush down on the wood with a soft click. He turned your chair around, his hands firm on your shoulders, forcing you to face him.

"What is on your mind?" he demanded, though his voice was soft. "Tell me."

You looked at him, at the perfect features that had always captivated you, and felt a wall rising inside your chest. "Nothing, Aerion. It is nothing."

Aerion sank to his knees before you, his violet eyes boring into yours. He took your hands in his, his thumbs stroking your knuckles.

"I love you," he said. "I do, and I cannot wait until you are my wife."

The declaration hung in the air, desperate. He was searching your face, looking for the reflection of his own fire. He needed you to need him. It was a vulnerability that terrified him as much as it drove him.

You wanted to believe him. You wanted to be the girl who melted at his feet.

"I know," you whispered. "I love you too."

Aerion closed his eyes for a brief second, a look of relief washing over his face, as if your affirmation was a balm to a wound only he could see. He leaned in, capturing your lips in a kiss. It was slow, deep, and possessive, his mouth moving against yours with a practised skill that you used to lose yourself in. Tonight, you felt nothing but the pressure of his lips and the cold dread settling in the pit of your stomach.

When he pulled back, his eyes were dark, the pupils blown wide. "Good," he murmured. He stood up, pulling you with him, and began to untie the laces of your gown with efficient movements. "Let us sleep. It has been a long night."

You let him undress you, your limbs moving without protest, detached from your will. When you were clad only in your shift, you climbed into the large bed, the sheets cool against your skin. Aerion stripped off his clothes and slid in beside you.

He pulled you back against him, his chest flush against your spine, spooning you with an arm thrown heavily over your waist. He buried his face in your neck, inhaling deeply, his breath hot against your skin. You stared at the wall, watching the shadows cast by the candlelight dance and flicker. The silence stretched, taut as a bowstring.

You felt the change in him immediately. His body, which had been relaxed moments ago, began to tense. His hand on your waist tightened, his fingers digging into your side. He was thinking. He had not missed the way you and Daeron sat close, too close for friends. He had not missed the hesitation in your step when he called you, the way you looked back at Daeron as if you were leaving a piece of your soul on that stone bench.

The jealousy was a living thing in the bed with you, a serpent coiling around his heart. It radiated off him in waves, hot and toxic. He was furious. You were to be his wife, hopelessly in love with him, or so he had always believed. The idea that Daeron, the drunk, the reluctant knight, the dreamer, the disappointment, had encroached on his territory was intolerable.

He shifted closer, eliminating the last inch of space between your bodies. His lips grazed the sensitive skin of your neck, just below your ear.

"Aerion, please. I am tired of this."

He did not stop. His hand slid from your waist to your hip, gripping you hard, pulling you tighter against him so you could feel the hard length of him pressing against your backside. "You have not even tried," he whispered against your skin, his voice vibrating through you.

"Aerion, stop." You tried to wiggle away, but his arm was an iron bar.

He lifted his head, his lips hovering near your ear. "Would your answer change," his voice dropping to a dangerous, silky whisper, "if I were Daeron?"

You shoved his arm away and scrambled to the far side of the bed, turning to face him. The air in the room seemed to ignite.

"How can you say that to me?" you cried, your voice shaking with a sudden, violent rage. "How can you come to my bed, after you were with a servant, again?"

Aerion sat up, the sheets pooling around his waist. He did not look ashamed; he looked annoyed.

"I am a man," he said, his tone dismissive, as if commenting on the weather. He ran a hand through his hair. "The servant was a poor stand-in for you. A necessary distraction, nothing more."

You stared at him, disgust curdling in your stomach. It was written all over your face; the revulsion, the realisation of just how little he respected you, or anyone.

"We will be wed regardless," he continued, his voice hardening. "What does it matter if I bed you tonight or then?"

"It matters because you do not respect me!" you shouted, sitting up on your knees, the bedclothes clutched to your chest. "It matters because you humiliate me at every turn!"

He scoffed, a sound of pure condescension. "When did you become so theatrical?"

You shook your head, tears of frustration stinging your eyes. "You do not love me."

"Of course I do!" he roared, his composure cracking. "I have told as much. What more do you need?"

He moved toward you, reaching out to grab your arm, to pull you back into his orbit.

You flinched and pulled away. "Do not touch me."

Aerion froze. His hand hovered in the air between you. Slowly, he lowered it. The look in his eyes shifted from anger to a cold, calculated glare. This was the Aerion the court feared.

He climbed out of bed and began to dress with jerky, aggressive movements, pulling on his breeches and snatching his tunic from the floor.

"Fine," he bit out, yanking the fabric over his head. "When you stop acting like a spoiled child, I will return."

"I do not want you to return. Ever."

He froze, his hand on the laces of his tunic. He turned to look at you, his expression unreadable. Then he let out a sharp, incredulous scoff.

"You think you have a choice?" he asked softly.

You looked at him, and for the first time, the scales fell from your eyes. You saw the vanity that made him believe he was the sun and you were merely the planet revolving around him. You saw the cruelty that lashed out whenever his ego was bruised. You saw the narcissism that allowed him to hurt you repeatedly without a shred of guilt, because in his mind, your pain was irrelevant compared to his desires.

"You will be my wife. I do not want to be a harsh husband, but I will be if you force my hand."

"Get out," you whispered.

He stared at you for a long moment, as if waiting for you to break, to apologise, to beg. You held his gaze. You felt ill, but you did not look away.

With a final sneer, he turned on his heel and stormed toward the door. He grabbed the handle and wrenched it open, then slammed it shut with such force that the walls shook.

The echo of the slammed door rang in your ears and slowly, slowly faded into nothing. You looked around the lavish chamber; the tapestries, the vanity, the bed you had shared with him so many times. The brush still sat on the dressing table where he had set it down so gently not an hour ago.

You thought of Daeron on the bench in the garden, his violet eyes burning with something raw and unguarded, his voice rough with wine and feeling. You did deserve better.

You would not marry Aerion.