#From his childhood to his mother's dying wish | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

daenysthedreamersblog · 7 months ago

Text

KNUCKLE VELVET

Nothing in my heart is hoping you'll come back

Too cold to know what I don't have without you

summary: your main goal in life was to take care of your family, and you had been... until a new peacekeeper comes to your district leaving death and pain wherever he stepped

pairings: peacekeeper!coryo x reader

warnings: MDNI! violence, death, blood, coercion/ manipulation, swearing, power imbalance, hitting, choking, dub-con, oral sex, fingering, p in v sex, unprotected sex, guns.

notes: omggg so this actually was supposed to be a completely different story when i started, but it took a side turn and ended here. its not nearly as dark (so sorry) as i originally intended but hoping where i lacked in darkness i made up for in heartbreak so hope u all still enjoy :)

Death had been your shadow since you could remember, or at least it had felt that way since you were a young child. You saw it for the first time when you nearly drowned in the lake with you sister, it stared at you while you choked on your own short life. It had taken your mother, infected your father, it loomed over you incessantly like a cruel god. You tried hard to keep it at bay, to run from it, make it lose your scent, but it was obsessive, possessive of you. It would come for you some day.

And in a crowded, too-loud, scorching room you saw your death in his beautiful face.

With delicately furrowed brows you shoved the heel of your hand into the dough the ache ever present in your left wrist. You ignored it, focusing on kneading the dough.

Your father was a baker, or at least he had been before he had fallen ill. It wasn't anything special, mostly selling what he could out of your childhood home or trading it for supplies. You got by, your family got by, better than most he always reminded you. It was fine, an easy job, a distracting mundane task that sometimes supplied leftovers you couldn't complain about. So here you were, kneading bread when he no longer could.

You placed the towel over the bowl and wiped your hands off on your apron as footsteps creaked from behind.

"Started without me?" Your sister yawned walking into the kitchen eyeing the three bowls of rising dough.

"Couldn't sleep." You untied your apron and placed it on the counter as she tucked her chin into your shoulder.

She sighed, "You worry too much."

You did, someone had to, but you bite your tongue. "You can clean then." You chuckled walking away from her.

"We should do something tonight." She is already moving the dishes around and wiping off the counters as you look over your shoulder at her, your hand on the wall. "Would be nice to get out of here for a few hours."

You smile, "Sure." And then you disappear down the hallway to your father's room. He's in bed, half asleep when you sit down near his feet making sure he was breathing. "Are you hungry?" You roll your wrist in your hand as you ask him.

His head turns to take you in, "No."

"Did you take your medicine?"

"Yes." His eyes dart to the left and you know he's lying. You sigh as you walk forward pulling open the drawer to find it empty.

You can't look away from it. "I'll get more."

"She is right, you worry too much." He taps his foot against your thigh, "How's my bread?" He ask you to distract you from the tiredness in his voice, from the pale color in his skin, from the fact that he was dying. All you wished then was to take his illness onto yourself so he nor your sister had to suffer.

Once all the bread is made and prepared to be sold, your sister and you leave in the night. You slip on a blue dress and small grey cardigan taking off down the gravel road towards town. Fresh summer air clears the flour from your lungs as you walk next to her arms linked at the elbow a lightness in your step as you try to forget the woes at home.

"Does that band still play?" You asked as the building comes into sight various individuals moving in and out if it.

"Yeah." Her voice is solemn. "They're good but..." It wasn't the same since they lost their singer. She had died in the games, or at least that's what everyone said but you didn't remember, you didn't watch the games if you could help it. Then everyone had moved on like they always did.

You and your sister entered the warm room littered with people from your district and off duty peacekeepers. Most of them were friendly, and the ones that weren't rarely came here on their nights off so you let your shoulders relax. You watched the band perform a few songs with mason jars filled with clear alcohol, even indulging your sister in a couple dances when a familiar face caught your eye, one that had helped you far too often than you deserved. "Last drink?" You nodded your head to the bar. "Don't go too far."

She waved you off still swaying to the tune of the guitar as you disappeared through the crowd. You kept your head down clutching the empty jars as you walked. He was talking as he walked in a perpendicular direction perfectly lining up with where you needed to hit him. You threw a glance over your shoulder the same time your body collided with his, glass jars falling to the floor with a violent crack. "I'm so-Oh." His eyes meet yours as you bend at the knees to try and pick up the broken pieces.

"Medicine." You whisper out when it's just the two of you near the floor. "My father. I need...Please."

He rubs a hand over his face, "I'll try, but...I'll try."

You look at his face knowing he sees the desperation there, "Thank you."

"Need any help?"

Your eyes shoot up quickly staring at a beautiful death.

You've never seen him before, you would know with his clear blue eyes and white blonde hair shining out above the crowd like a beacon. He's standing across from the mess staring down at you, "It was an accident-!"

"You're bleeding." He says drawing your attention to the sudden stinging pain across your palm, the red liquid bubbling up from the fresh cut.

You shake your head, "It's fine."

"We should get that cleaned up." You open your mouth to protest, but he only slips his hand under your arm helping you up. "I insist." You glance back at your friend, Gavin, who often did help you with various needs your father had in exchanged for baked goods, and then you looked back at the other peacekeeper dragging you away.

He leads you towards the back as the band continues to play a loud song. "Sit." He points to an empty barrel, "I'll be right back." And then he disappears back out into the crowd. You glance around the empty room filled with supplies and unused musical equipment. Tentatively, you climb onto the barrel to sit admiring the gash along your hand, the bleeding was slowing, but it did look rather nasty. "They didn't have much," Your eyes shoot up, following him until he stands in front of you with a wet rag and a few bandages. "But it's better than nothing."

"You're new." You observe as he takes your bleeding hand.

He presses the rag to the wound the wince slipping out, "Got in yesterday."

He starts to try and clean it. "Do you like it here?" He scoffs to himself causing the corners of your mouth to turn up. "Dumb question." He glances up at you face close enough your can see the shades of blue in his eyes.

"It has it's charms." He dries off your hand before finding the large gauze pad to tape around it.

"Where were you from?" You regret it as you ask, as a sudden darkness comes over him throwing the room into silence the music a distant thrumming from beyond. You watch him tape up your hand with cheap supplies until it covers the cut neatly. "Thank you."

He doesn't drop your hand, "Are you always clumsy?" He traces the small scar on your pinky.

"Occupational hazard." You watch his face as he looks at you once more the question in his pretty eyes. "I bake, had a few run in with knives."

His mouth quirks up, "I hope you don't often run into knives or off duty peacekeepers."

You take your hand back, "I don't make a habit of it."

"You could...Make a habit of it." He stares down at you his thigh suddenly warm against your knee. "At least certain ones."

You take a sharp breath, "We both know that's not a good idea." You slide off the barrel, chest forced against his as you move and then your sliding past him. "Thank you, again. I should go find my sister."

"See you around clumsy girl."

The blush bites at your cheeks and you hope he can't see it in this light, but you suspect he does as something flashes across his face. You don't stick around to find out as you head back into the crowd. You find your sister talking with another peacekeeper, "I'm gunna head home." You show her your hand.

"Be safe." She smiles going back to her brown haired friend. You glance over you shoulder finding that man who helped you watching you, you should tear your eyes away from him, but he should as well, but here he was, staring brazenly at you something burns under your skin.

You blink shaking your head and turn to leave, tugging the cardigan tighter around your shoulders as you walk home alone. You often did, you never encountered any trouble, but something felt off. The hair on your neck stood up the whole way home like something-someone was watching you.

You turned to look, but nothing was there.

The sun drenches the kitchen in an orange glow as you carefully measure out flour failing to keep it balanced with only one good hand. You scowl down at your bandaged palm as you dump the contents into the bowl. You should just wait for your sister and make her do it, but you opted to let her sleep in to throw yourself into a distraction.

What if he wasn't able to get anymore medicine?

Were you supposed to watch as your father withered away and let death come into your home once more?

You're so lost in thought you don't even hear the front door open until it shuts.

He's standing there in front of the closed door taking up every space he wanted to, and doing it beautifully. You struggle to form the question, to string together a sentence to convey your confusion. He answers anyways, "I wanted to check on you." He motioned with a finger to your hand.

You glance behind him, "How did you kn-!"

He steps further inside before you can finish, taking in the sight of your kitchen/makeshift bakery. "Do you need any help while I'm here?" You know your expression must exhibit the shock still running through your veins as he stands in your home because he smiles softly and rolls up his sleeves, "I'm sure it would be easier than kneading with only one hand."

You submit and take a step back, "Sure uh..." You motion to the bowl, "It needs two more cups of flour." You watch him walk forward, too clean for the room despite the grim coating the tips of his fingers. "You can wash your hands in there." You point to the sink.

"How is your hand?" He asked as he runs his long fingers through cool water.

You glance down at the now tarnished bandage across your palm. "Only stings sometimes." You look back up at him, "My left one gives me more trouble."

He turns off the sink and uses a rag to dry his hands off. "Why's that?"

You watch him with careful eyes move around your kitchen to collect the supplies he made you abandon. "Just years of abusing it." He eyes your left wrist and then scoops out flour. You have to show him how to measure it out properly but he gets it for the most part. You feel yourself relax watching him add it all to the bowl and mixing it.

"Now what?" He asked over his shoulder.

"We let it rise." You walk over to throw a clean rag over the bowl.

"How long?"

You can't help the smile. "A minimum of five hours."

He put his fist against his hips, "Well what do you do while you wait?"

"Make more dough."

So you do. You stand next to him this time walking him through each ingredient helping by throwing in the teaspoon of salt for him. You find yourself laughing as the time slips away, as you sprinkle out the flour for him to knead the dough into. You enjoy the way his body feels near yours, how his arm accidentally brushes against you. He isn't the best, but you had a feeling he never did something like this before, and he was helping.

He wipes the back of his hand across his forehead, "How are you not more buff?"

You flex your right arm, "I think I'm quite scary."

He smirks down at you bringing his hand up to wrap around your bicep, "Terrifying." His hand burns your skin as you stare up at him, as blue eyes drink up your face like cool water on this horrid summer day. He's too close, he's too warm and you watch the droplet of sweat slide down his temple.

Your mouth waters. You blink and step back, "I usually don't make this much in one day."

"So you're using me?" He jokes as you slide the tin to cook the bread in.

"Something like that." Your cheeks are flushed and you gently take the loaf from him to place in the tin. "My sister can do the rest. You probably should head back before you get in trouble."

He nodded, "I brought you something." You open your mouth to protest not wanting to push your luck with all his generosity, but he digs into his pocket anyway pulling out fresh medical grade bandages no doubt from his peacekeeper base.

"Oh I can't." You whisper.

"I insist." He takes your hand anyways your body moving forward slightly. "I feel awful about being the reason you got cut up."

You glance up at him as he takes the old wrap off. "You didn't..."

He only smiles to himself as he cleans off the cut because maybe he was. You remembered hitting Gavin on purpose, remembered picking up shattered glass over hushed conversation, and then he was standing over you fresh blood leaking from your hand. It didn't matter, not truly, at least not to you. It would heal and fade and barely be a memory.

His thumb slides over the freshly clean bandage across your hand, "If you need anything..." Your eyes meet as he holds onto your hand, you want to tell him theres no need. Well there was but he couldn't know that, it would get everyone involved killed.

"You've been kind enough."

"Hmm." His other hand comes up, fingers brushing away flour coated hair from your face. "I don't mind."

You nearly sigh as his fingers trail down your face, "Thank you." You whisper out his fingers holding your chin between them.

"Clumsy girl." Something darkens in his eyes as his body lets off too much heat leaning down towards you.

Your breath catches feeling the warmth of his own against your face. You're not supposed to do this, he's not supposed to do this, but you can't seem to care as a slickness forms between your legs. Your lips part and he's quick to press his thumb into your bottom one the tip poking into your mouth antiseptic and flour leaking onto your tongue.

The floorboards down the hallway creak, and he drops your hand the same time you step away from him. With a blazing blush you try to kindly smile at him to avoid the feelings crawling up your spine, to avoid whatever awkwardness might arise.

He dips his head in farewell and leaves before anyone sees him in your kitchen.

Your sister muses beside you as you move around the small stand tidying it up to busy your hands. The frayed edges of the bandages were a good indication that the wound was healing but you kept it wrapped tight while you had something decent covering it. You trace the line of dust colored tape remembering the feel of his warm palm pressed underneath and you hate the skip in your chest.

You glance up eyes meeting Gavin and all pulse inducing thoughts vanish. He frowns as he shakes his head, your heart plummets realizing he won't be able to get your father any medicine. He's gone the next second as your thoughts pound down on you with every worse case scenario flying through it. You go to look at your sister, but she's speaking with someone.

The peacekeeper she had been with the other night is handing your sister money a tender smile in his lips as he pushes too much into her hand. "My Ma will love these." He points to the loaves he wants. "She misses district cooking, says the flour in the Capitol doesn't taste the same." His eyes find your surprised ones and he only motions to the loaf, "Your sister told me all about your famous sourdough, so I had to come try it out."

"Sejanus." She tells you.

"Thank you." You nod studying him, "Your mother is in the Capitol?"

Sejanus's eyes grow distant. "Yeah." He doesn't continue and you know better than to push.

"Sejanus." You look towards the familiar voice your new blonde acquaintance walking up to his side. "Is he bothering you?" He jokes.

"Quite the opposite." It's your sister that responds an innocent pink tint in her cheeks.

The blonde smirks at you, "I'll wrap these up for you so you both can be on your way." You pulled the loaf back and turned around to wrap it up for him.

"How long have you known Gavin?" You tried not to straighten up even though you felt your body locking up at the mention of him.

"Who?" It sounded so stupid coming out of your mouth, too high pitched as your fingers fumbled with the tie on the bread. You never called him by his name, it was easier to pretend you didn't know him at all.

"Gavin." You turned cradling the loaf in your arms. Your eyes scanned the market, you saw your sister and Sejanus conversing off to the side leaving you alone in interrogation.

You chuckled awkwardly handing over the bread. "I don't know who that is."

But his hand came around yours as you held it out for him, long fingers trapping yours a shock going up your bones wherever skin met skin. "Hmm. Must have been a mistake then."

You offered him a smile, "Do you want anything?" You needed to changed the subject, if he saw you with Gavin somehow besides when you ran into him, if he knew... "Don't you want a little taste of all your hard work?"

"I didn't bring any money." He slipped the bread into his hands.

But you were being rash as you sliced a piece for him, "Here, free sample." You watched him take it, "Don't tell anyone I let you have one."

He popped it into his mouth, "It'll be our little secret clumsy girl."

You turned away to hide your blush as your sister returned, "We should go out again tonight." She tried to phrase it as a question, but her voice was too loud and you had a feeling her and that boy planned it all.

You glanced back at them, at those pretty blue eyes, and your worries seemed to be a little bit smaller. She nudged your leg but you didn't need much convincing wanting to let her have as much joy while she still could, "Fine."

She lets you borrow another dress, a dark green one that falls above your knees flowers knitted along the bodice. You hate that your stomach is in knots as you walk with her, you hate that you're interested in what you will find, interested in him. You knew it was wrong but you couldn't help being intrigued how he made your heart race.

She slides through the crowd with you holding your hand with a rough grip to drag you with purpose. She knew where she was going. "Sejanus!" She beams dropping you hand and rushing towards him.

"I got you guys drinks already." He says holding out two mason jars of clear liquor.

You take it graciously and peer around the room suddenly feeling like you were intruding on whatever your sister was planning for her night. So you push around them and climb onto one of the empty barrel chairs and sip on your drink watching the couples spinning around the dance floor.

"I think Sejanus has a little crush on your sister." You feel his chest against your back first as his words float down to you both of you watching the pair laughing together in serene oblivion. You fight the urge to lean back into him.

You take another drink to calm your nerves as his fingers splay along the table near you. "Is he nice?"

His mouth in near your ear now, lips pressed to the shell of it. "Nicer than me."

You swallow turning your head slightly to take in his face so close to your own, "Are you nice?"

"I'm gentle when I want to be." His eyes take in your lips and then float back up again. You tug at your bottom lip the room suddenly beginning to feel too warm, too small. "Dance with me." He pulls back straightening up.

"Oh that's not-!"

But he has your hand in his, and he's helping you to your feet leading you away to the dance floor moving you around until his other hand lands on your hip pulling you in close. The song is slow, but you barely hear it as your breaths come in too loud with his chest pressed against yours. You let him lead watching the small smirk spread across pretty pink lips as your feet move in tandem with his, "Look at that." He chuckles, "My clumsy girl knows how to dance."

My clumsy girl.

It makes your stomach flutter and you know you should stomp out whatever was growing there, but you let him come closer, let his thumb trail across your left wrist to feel your quickened pulse. "Does it always hurt?" He asked.

"No." You can't look away from him even as his eyes are trained on your weak wrist. "Only when I use it too much."

"Hmm." He stills. Then he's slowly bringing your left wrist towards his mouth to plant a single kiss to the veins running underneath it.

Your face burns, your skin burns, you're overwhelmed by the heat.

Someone shouted and your head whipped around as bodies slammed into one another a fight breaking out in the middle of the room. You took a step forward to find your sister but the hand wrapped around your left wrist is dragging you back, yanking too hard where he shouldn't. He was pulling you from the crowd away from the brawl and people shouting, you looked over your shoulder seeing Sejanus sheltering your sister away as well. The side door flew open and slammed shut making you jump by the sudden loudness as the noise of The Hob became distantly quiet.

You turn towards him in the dark alley and can only get a single breath in before he's moving towards you, backing you up against the brick wall, caging you in.

"What are-!"

He swallows your words with a punishing kiss. You're mind goes blank. You feel his hands under your jaw cradling your face, his tongue grazes your bottom lip begging, baiting for you to open but the shock seals you shut. You taste the moonshine on his mouth, the stale flavor of minty military toothpaste and your hands finally go to his chest to push yourself away from him.

"We can't."

He only digs himself further into you smashing your mouths together once more. This time its his teeth that sink into your bottom lip roughly, sharply, until the taste of rust takes over everything else. You gasp in pain as he uses that to shove his tongue into your mouth. He tilts your face up more melding your mouths together and for a moment you do get lost in it, in the blind overwhelming passion, but theres something else there you don't turn your head towards as he grips you too tightly, like he doesn't want you to slip away into the night.

You kiss him back, you even tangle your fingers in his clothes savoring the way he consumed you.

His hand goes to your waist inching up your ribs with every devilish swipe of his tongue. Your eyes fly open as his thumb slides across the underside of your breast. Your hand goes to his wrist to still him, but he grabs it to pin it to the wall above your head.

"Ouch," You whisper out as he bends the joint too far. "You're hurting me."

His lips ghost down your neck, "Sorry," Your eyes flutter close as his teeth graze your carotid. "Can't seem to help myself."

"We-we should stop." You try to get your hand back but he's holding it too tight. "Someone could see us."

He goes still, finally pulling his head up to stare down at you. "Like who." It isn't a question and your brows furrow, "Are you worried your little boyfriend Gavin will see?"

"Wh-What?" You almost laugh. "I don't even-!"

His hand wraps around your throat, not hard, but enough to shut you up. "You're lying. I know theres something going on between you two, I saw the way he looked at you that night, and again at the market, all forlorn and devastated."

"He's nobody." It hurt you to say that after his kindness all these years.

"At least we agree on that." He yanks your jaw forward to sneer down at you, "I don't like sharing clumsy girl." He drops your hand and lets go of your face letting you roll the weak joint around.

You glance up at him, "Why are you being like this?"

He doesn't look at you just watches as he shifts his foot around, "I'll walk you home." He grabs you by the bicep pulling you from the alley and leading you home.

The walk home is silent as you trudge slightly a step behind him suddenly aware of how naive you had been to become tangled with him. He was a peacekeeper, a pawn for the Capitol, why did you ever think he could be something else too? Yet, you still felt something fluttering as your eyes took in his tall frame, remembering running hands along his muscled chest as he kissed you.

"Thank you." You tell him as he deposits you at your door. He did make sure you got out safely during the fight, and walked you home when he didn't need to. You met his blue eyes, maybe there was more to him than rough edges.

He doesn't respond only takes your face in his hands and kisses you roughly sucking on the throbbing wound along your lip until you groan out in pain again, and even then he keeps kissing you, keeps biting you until he finally steps back. His eyes look you up and down before he turns around and heads back into the darkness.

You watch his figure disappear, you stand there for a moment staring at the space he had occupied tracing the bruising lip he had given you still tasting the sweat, and spit, and blood.

You turn your face to the sun letting the early rays drench your skin. It was quiet out here, away from the district, only the birds and bugs to keep you company while the rest of the world slid away from existence.

You let the grass sway against your feet as you curled your legs underneath you staring down at your freshly uncovered hand. It had healed, but the small pinkish scar ran along your palm. You traced it with a sigh unsure where to place everything you were feeling regarding the man who has now given you two wounds.

As if on queue the ground is being crushed by boots and you whip your head to the side watching him approach you. He stops a few feet away a bunch of dying dandelions in his hand, "Your sister told me you might be out here." You hug your legs to your chest as you watch him step forward more. "I wanted to come apologize. I don't know what came over me. I think I had too much to drink and got angry about something stupid." He stops in front of you, blocking the sun holding out the bundle of yellow weeds. "These are for you."

You study his face, sunlight leaking out around his head like a halo casting his shadow over your body, and then you hold out your hand for him to place them in.

"Angry about what?"

He takes it as a sign and sits down next to you. You glance down at the dandelions. "I would have rather given you roses," He reaches out tucking hair behind your ear making you look at him; you know that wasn't what he had been upset about. His hand trails down your face brushing softly along your bottom lip. You wince slightly, "I didn't mean to hurt you."

"We're not supposed..." You trail off the words seeming ridiculous in your head, but you weren't supposed to be together.

He inches closer to you until his leg is touching yours, "I know."

It didn't seem like it would stop either of you as you feel yourself leaning into his touch, "Just don't do it again." You find yourself saying taking his excuses and letting him cup your face to lean in towards you. Your breath hitches as his whole hand slides along your jaw, body heat radiates off him like the oven in your kitchen after a day worth of baking and you melt into it. You let him turn your body, let him lay it down on the bed of grass.

His bottom lip brushes yours and you close your eyes. You're aware of everywhere his hands are touching you, your hip, your jaw, aware of his thigh against the front of yours. His tongue licks upward hitting your top teeth and you sigh into his mouth as fingers dig into flesh, as your hands come up to his chest, as he kisses you slipping his tongue into your mouth, slowly, exploring the texture and groove of your mouth. Your hands twist into clothing, his grip hardening as you kiss him back gently, tentatively, like you know you shouldn't but you can't help it.

His hand covers your breast, kneading flesh through your clothes and you find your fingers around his wrist, the protest climbing in your throat, but it struggles to come out as his thumb passes over your nipples. It's overwhelming and raw and wrong. None of it makes sense, not as his mouth kisses across your jaw, down your neck, sucking the sensitive flesh as he rolls your nipple through fabric.

You feel his smile against your neck as you moan dragging his fingers down your body to slip under the hem of your dress. Your hand flies to his wrist again as he climbs up your thigh, he lets you wrap your fingers around his arm, "Shh..." He mutters into your skin. "Let me." He kisses down the column of your throat. "Let me make you feel good." He kisses you collarbone and slowly your fingers are slipping off of him. "Good girl." He traces the fabric of your underwear, sliding his fingers under the side as your toes curl into grass.

With another soft kiss he pushes two fingers inside of you. You close your eyes turning your head as you take a deep breath feeling him curling inside of you, feeling him push in deeper.

"Look at me." He whispers as his hand begins to move in and out of you at a gentle pace. You slowly turn your head, the heat staining your cheeks red as you take in his face. "Do you like this?" You bite your lip nodding your head as he strokes a sweet spot inside of you. "Tell me." He mumbles onto your lips.

Your mouth parts in a gasp as his palm presses down onto your clit and he's swallowing your pleasure. "It feels good."

"What feels good?" He's moving faster, his hand thrusting harder into you. He licks into your mouth caressing the moan out of you, "What feels good clumsy girl?"

"You!" You pant into his open mouth sweat glistening off your pounding chest.

He pulls back to stare down at you, "You gunna cum for me?" You squeeze your eyes shut, back arching into him the pressure building in your stomach as his hand shifts to press his thumb down on your clit to move in tandem with his hand. You feel your legs shaking beneath him, "You are. You must." He sighs contently and it's enough to throw you over the edge, heels digging into the ground, hands gripping his shirt as you clamp down around his hand. You have your eyes squeezed so tight the sun blinds you when you finally open them, as the orgasm blows over you like the breeze pushing the blades of grass.

You don't even realize he pulled his hand out until he's standing over you feet planted on either side of your spread thighs.

"What are-!"

His soaked hand is running along his cock, stroking himself over you. "Just lie there." He tells you with his tongue between his teeth, eyebrows furrowed in concentration as he fucks his fist to your exposed body. You want to look away, not stare, not pay attention to the lewd sounds his hand was making as it slid up and down his hard length.

But you can't help it. Not as he pants out curses, not as he drinks in your body, your face like a man starved for water. You meet his eyes, dark and focused on you and find yourself mesmerized by him.

"Take them off." He grunts out motioning to your drenched panties. "Now." You're still shaking from the orgasm, at least you think, as you slide them down your legs. "Show me." He moves his hand faster as your brows furrow slightly. He presses down on your thigh with a hard boot and you bite your cheek to cover the whine of pain, "Show me."

You let your head relax onto the grass as you part your legs for him to stare at your bare cunt. You watch clouds go by in the blue sky listening to him groan as he fucks his hand to the sight of your naked girlhood. You fist the bottom of your dress chewing on your swollen bottom lip.

Suddenly hot ropes of cum splatter across your bare chest and dress as he slowly keeps pumping his fist letting every drop leak onto you.

The world is darker as he blocks the sun once more, like a fallen angel losing its light as his cum dries on your sweaty skin. He tucks himself away before kneeling down across your torso. He runs two fingers through the clumps of white along to tops of your breast, stares at it, then stares at you. "Open." Your lips part slowly and he's pushing his fingers into your mouth shoving cum onto the back of your tongue. "Lick it off." Something strange creeps up your spine, something you are not sure you like, as your tongue swirls around his fingers taking the salty substance down your throat. "My clumsy girl." He flattens his fingers out, pressing your tongue down and then he pulls them out. He runs his hand along your chest once more smearing everything across bare skin, watching it shine in sunlight along your naked chest, slipping it under the top of your dress to coat it along your breast. He takes his hand back, admiring his work, and wipes his hand off on your clothes.

He picks your underwear off the ground and tucks them away. Then he's walking past you, leaving you lying there.

The sun feels colder as it hits your body, as you trace the boot shaped indent he had left in your leg.

A week passes by and you never see him. You find yourself searching for him involuntarily wherever you go. You glance out of your kitchen window to see if he's walking up to your home, you peer around the market to see if he's paroling the perimeter with the other peacekeepers, you even find an excuse to pass by the base to see if he's just beyond the fences.

You weren't sure why you were doing it, you weren't sure why it tugged at something inside of you, you weren't sure why deep down in your subconscious you felt...relief.

You didn't study that feeling too much.

Maybe he had left, shipped off somewhere else far away from you. Maybe he had gotten what he wanted from you and now he would move on to the next naive girl. You hated that he possibly viewed you as naive, you hated that you knew it was true. You had been naive. You always tried so hard to be smart with your heart, but the first glance at a pair of pretty blue eyes had made you forget, made you clumsy.

You shook your head as your fist pounded dough, falling in love with a man like that would be stupid. Falling in love with him would be like falling in love with darkness; frighting and consuming unless the moon was out. You didn't even know darkness's name.

No, you had just let him touch you far more than you should have simply because you enjoyed the way he kissed you, like he wanted to swallow you completely to keep you with him. You liked the way he made you feel like you were wanted, like you were his. You didn't want to be his...well maybe in a different world that had a different answer.

There was something else there, something horrid that chilled your bones whenever he looked at you in certain lights. You found your relief sitting right next to that feeling.

The door creaks open and your head spins so fast hoping he's finally come to see you.

Your heart sinks, "Gavin." You blink to hide worry, "You shouldn't be here."

He comes into the room more, "I know, I'm sorry. I felt awful about.."

"It's not your fault." You offer him a reassuring smile even though its fake. You tried to understand, but mostly you felt angry.

He sighs leaning against the counter across from you, "Well I had to keep trying." He digs into his pocket before sliding the vial over to you. You stare at it too shocked to move, "I was only able to get one but-!"

You're running around the counter to hug him, "Thank you." He pats your back as you pull back to beam up at him like life had somehow been shoved back into you. You step back grabbing up the vial to tuck away.

"Just make it last a month." He tells you, "I don't know when I'll be able to get more."

You nod heading to a cabinet and pulling down two loaves of bread to give to him as payment. You push them across the counter at him, "Thank you." You repeat because thats all you feel; gratitude and hope.

He scoops up the bread, "Your sister has been hanging around that Sejanus a lot."

You sigh, "I know...he seems nice." You smirk over at him, "But you know how peacekeepers can be."

"Oh I know." He chuckles but nods. "He's a good guy, hotheaded about stuff he shouldn't be, but he's alright." He knocks his knuckles against the counter, "I should head out. Take care kiddo." Gavin walks to the door leaving you in better spirts than he came.

You spend the rest of the day cleaning, sitting by your father's bedside after giving him half a dose of the medicine. He doesn't ask where you got it from, and you don't tell him. You know he suspects how but he never brings it up choosing to let you both live in the bliss of unknowns. You wait until he falls asleep to leave his bedside closing the door to leave him in peace.

It's dark outside as you close the curtains on all the windows before picking up the boxes of trash you needed to take outside. You sigh heavily as you hoist them up onto your hip and push the door open.

The outside is quiet and moonless, dark and empty, an amber street light offering the only glow along your home to guide you on the path around the house. Once everything is out of your hands you finally hear the crunch of gravel, the hair on the back of you neck stands up.

You stare out at the darkness feeling it stare back.

"Hello?"

Your body is slammed backward against your home before you're crumpling to the ground. A hand wraps around your arm to pull you to your feet to shove you back against the wall.

Your heart skips. "You're a liar." He snarls in your face before shoving your head back with the palm of his hand. "I hate liars."

"I-I di-!"

He slaps you across the face, it snaps to the side in a stinging blow. "You said he was nobody." You're too shocked to respond, to ask. "Why the fuck was he here?" Ice trickled down your body as you realize he had saw Gavin here today.

You slowly turn your head, "You never came...I looked for you."

An owl hoots off in the trees as his silence engulfs you. He holds your face between his thumb and finger before coming closer whispering onto your lips, "And then you were all over him like the little slut you are." You stare up at the black sky, "Don't even deny it I saw the two of you hugging in your little hovel."

"It's not what it looks like."

He lets go of your face only to slap it the other direction blood filling your mouth as your lip split all over again. He takes a step back and you try to regain control of your breathing.

"You said you wouldn't hurt me again."

"No you told me not to." He grabs you by the hair and flings you to the ground. "And I don't need to listen to you." Your knees hit the dirt first and you try to move, try to shove away, but his hand is twisted in your hair holding you in place in front of him. "You want to act like a slut." You hear him unzipping his pants. "You'll get treated like one."

You let your eyes close and ignore the sounds of him, ignore what is about to happen, ignore that just a few days ago you had wanted this, wanted him. He tugs on your chin and you let him open your mouth to push himself into it until he hits the back of your throat. His hand hits the wall as he sits there on your tongue for just a moment the taste of him dripping down your throat, it taste like the sweat you had seen slide down his forehead in your kitchen, taste like the scent of him when he bandaged your hand and his body had been so close. You despise how good it is, despise that your body warms. He pulls back and slides his cock back into your mouth over and over and over again until fresh tears spill down your face, as spit covers your chin. He pushes your head back, your hands coming up to grip his thighs fighting the urge to touch him more, fighting the urge to bite down to make him stop.

"Fuck." He breaths and a soft moan leaves your throat causing him to laugh at you. "Like my cock that much huh?" He slams himself deep into your mouth growling as your head hits the wall behind you with the force, "Such a fucking whore."

You don't, you can't, you won't.

But your tongue darts out and your nails dig into his thighs and he's fucking your mouth until he spills down your throat.

"Don't swallow it." He commands pressing his forehead into his arm against the wall. You don't because he told you not to as his cock twitches against your tongue until it begins to soften. He pulls it out and tucks himself away before bending down to gaze at your ruddy tear stained face. "How does it taste?" He pushes hair away from your cheeks smiling as you don't respond his cum pooling in your mouth. He shuffles to the side before running something along your hands, "You feel that?" Your fingers trace the ridges, the grooves, recognizing the shape fear pouring out you. "Yeah that's right. I would hate for something bad to happen to you...or your sister." Your eyes try to stay on his face instead of the gun in his hands. "Don't ever fucking lie to me again." A thumb strokes your bottom lip, "Okay you can swallow now."

You gulp it down, letting the remnants of him slide down your throat as your dignity sat in the dirt between your knees. For a moment you stare at each other, his face half covered in darkness, half illuminated by lamp lights, and for some reason you just want him to kiss you again, hold you. His knuckle brushes the corner of your mouth wiping away whatever cum was trailing down your face. He stands up helping you back onto your feet.

You want to tell him to leave you alone as a tear slides out of your eye, but he cups your face. He leans down, brushing his lips along yours. "My clumsy girl."

"I...I'm not..." You close your eyes wondering which part of the sentence you were trying to disagree with, but he kisses you. He tucks his hand into the base of your skull pulling you closer to him and you find yourself giving into the sensation, giving into him. It consumes you, he consumes you, delving into your mouth, tasting the salty tears, the remains of him still wedged between teeth. You can't even break away from him, he has to be the one to pull away first.

"Don't make me hurt you again." He says it so gently you almost agree with him.

You pull back slightly to stare up at his face coated in the night sky. You feel paralyzed in his arms like a fear shaped boot broke through your vertebrae as the question muddled your brain.

How does this end?

"Sejanus!" You sister's voice floats through the room and your groaning as you stand up soothing the ache in your knees. "What brings you out here?"

Your heart stops in your chest as blue eyes meet yours. You hear the blood pounding in your ears as you stare at him, as he stares at you the room tunneling in on him. You can't even hear Sejanus's reply to the question, but he's digging into his pocket for money as your sister moves around the kitchen.

Your mouth feels dry as your eyes look towards the room your father slept in the same time his does. "How is your father?" You snap back to Sejanus who is now looking at you. "Your sister mentioned he was ill."

"He's fine." You clear your throat moving behind your counter.

"What happened to him?"

You're not sure where to look. "He had to work in the mines...it messed with his lungs."

"I'm so sorry." Sejanus says and you genuinely believe him. "I'm supposed to attend medic training maybe I could find some way to help him."

"How kind of you." Your sister replies as she wraps up loaves he overpaid for and suddenly walking outside with him leaving you alone in the kitchen with this man.

The room feels like its squeezing in on you as he drinks in your frightened expression. He moves, coming around the counter to be standing a few inches from you. You watch his hand come up to trace his fingers along your cheek. "Did you like it?" He whispers against your head. "Don't pretend you didn't." Blue eyes flicker around your face and he begins to chuckle at what he finds there, "I bet you fucking touched yourself to the taste of my cock in your mouth, came so hard with my cum still on your molars." He came close, breath fanning around your face, "You would do the same around my cock isn't that right?"

A tear slipped down your cheek in defeat.

"Say it." He cooed hand sliding down your body to grip at the flesh of your ass pulling your body flush against his. "Fucking tell me." He growled teeth against your own.

"I did." You whisper bile rising in your throat as you remembered sliding your hand, still slick from your spit on his cock, between your legs when you came back in the house. "I did."

"Hmm." He takes your left hand running his nail along your ulnar bone. Then he's stepping away from you, turning around, and leaving without another word.

You slide down the wall with your head in your hands confused, overwhelmed, ashamed. There was only one thing to do to stop this tidal wave of psychological torture you were inflicting on yourself.

You wait for the next hanging, you wait for the next distraction when everyone's heads are turned away, and then you slip out into the night quietly making your way to the peacekeepers base. It's sweltering hot as you crouch behind buildings and slip between broken fences to get where you need to go. You feel sweat dripping down your back, sliding down the side of your temple as you keep to the shadows waiting...waiting...

You used to know his schedule so well, but you had become distracted, sloppy and now you weren't sure if you would even see him tonight to plead for his help. This was stupid, this was silly even if you did find Gavin what were you to say? This devious blue eyed man was stalking you, harassing you? You had let him. You had let him into your home, into your life, let him defile you knowing it was wrong, knowing you were courting death. Even if Gavin believed you his commander would just find a way to make it your fault and get you in trouble somehow.

Your shoulders deflated. You felt stuck.

You glance beyond the wall at the medical building. How simple would it be to slip inside and pull what you needed while no one was watching.

You're moving before you can talk yourself out of it, slipping inside the unguarded door to the thankfully empty room. It smells clean with neat unoccupied beds lining the wall and you wonder how much good they could do if they actually offered to help the district's people. It motivates you to start searching, digging through draws to find anything that could help your father. You feel adrenaline rushing through you making your vision too focused as you sift through vials of medicine that wasn't what you needed, your heart is racing, pounding in your ears as the quiet outside beats down on you.

You pause, it's too quiet. You got inside too easy. It shouldn't be this easy. The hair on your neck stands up a feeling you only got when-!

Flood lights creep into the window shining against his beautifully wicked face as the tears slide down your unblinking eyes. You couldn't look away as he slowly walks forward. He comes near you, face pressed into the side of your hair. "Little thief."

You feel him push hair off your neck to trace your jaw. "I didn't st-!"

His hand is around your throat quicker than a snake's strike and he's shoving you until your back hits the metal cabinet against the wall. "You as bad a liar as you are a thief." You claw up his arm as he stares you down, "I wanted to see you tonight, walked all the way to your little hovel just to find out you weren't there." He squeezes harder as your vision pulses at the edges, "Is this a little rendezvous for you and that stupid boy?" You furrow your brows in pain, in confusion so he slams your head back against the cabinet your ears ringing. "Don't play dumb I know you came here for him." He came forward, "You belong to me."

You fingers loosen on his forearm as you plead with your eyes. I know, I know. You try to tell him so he lets you go, lets you breath.

He does and you gasp for air, blinded by it, overwhelmed with oxygen you don't even realize he's shoving his hand inside of you. "Stop!" You croak out. "Please." But it's too breathy as he presses his forehead to yours curling his fingers as you plead into his open mouth. "I didn't-I didn't do..." You trail of into a moan as his palm presses down against your clit.

Blue eyes stare you down and for a moment you forget he's angry, you forget you're scared.

He yanks you from the wall and shoves you face down into one of medical beds. It groans as your hand tries to force yourself up but its too weak so you're flinging backwards towards him as he hoist your dress up. "Don't." You plead. "Don't do this." You swallow, "He used to help my father. I'm sorry. I-I only want you please, not-not him."

He leans down, kissing your shoulder. "Then don't you want this?" You feel his hard length press against your body.

"Not like this." You squeeze your eyes shut, fingers digging into the metal frame of the bed.

"How would you have me then?" His mouth grazes up your neck. "In your little bed spread open for me?" His mouth presses against your ear, "Or would you want to be top? Up against a wall? Out in the grass and dirt on all fours like an animal?"

His teeth dig into your ear lobe, "I-I want to look at you." You had imagined it, on the nights you came to the images of him above you, rocking into you with gentle ease. It was candle lit and sweet and everything he never had truly been. You tried to turn to look at him, "I want to know your name."

"No." He pulls away from you. You lay there for a moment wondering if this was all some sick way to scare you, that he wouldn't actually do anything. "Don't worry. I don't want you like this either." He shifts around and soon enough cold metal is skimming across your inner thigh.

"Wh-!"

He pushes the gun into you before you can breath. You cry out at the intrusion, your back arches as something burns from inside of you that you know you shouldn't like. He pulls it back slightly to push it in again and again and again thrusting the weapon in and out of you until you start panting. "Please." You whimper unsure what you're pleading for and he's too quick to slide his hand underneath you, rubbing circles into your clit as he fucks you into this thin mattress with his gun. You're a mess, your feet struggling to hold you as your climax builds rapidly. You feel yourself clench around it fisting the sheets, groaning into them to muffle the sounds.

You fucking moan.

You're not even sure if its in pain or enjoyment. "Like that huh?" He asked pressing down onto your clit hard, the ridges on the gun hitting some strange delicious angle. "Like me fucking you with my gun." You squeeze your eyes tight feeling the heat pooling in your stomach, you even push your hips back to take more of it. He growls, "Gods you're a sick fucking slut for it."

Maybe you were delirious, maybe you were everything he said you were, maybe it was the fact he could kill you right now with one slip of his finger, but your orgasm slams into and your gushing around his gun like some pathetic whore fingers twisting into sheets. You're overwhelmed with it, the darkness around you blending together as it takes you under and spits you out. You feel him yank it out of you and set it carefully on the bed beside you.

You feel wrong, you feel empty as you lay there against the bed in a post orgasm bliss and all you want to do is cry. "Come here." The bed dips as he sits next to you, his arm wrapping under your body.

"Let me go!" You sob but he flips you around to cradle your shaking body in his arms. "Let me go." You try again, weaker this time as your body leans into his, as his hand strokes down the side of your head. "Let me go..." You close your eyes as more tears stream down your flushed cheeks.

He never does.

He holds you for a while, his chin resting atop of your head while he caresses your body in his arms until the sky outside the windows starts to split into purples and pinks. He unravels himself from you guiding you to your feet, and without a single glance he walks out of the room. You stare after him loneliness engulfing you in its grey flame.

You drag yourself out of the building and back home, your own disgusting pleasure sliding between your thighs the entire walk.

You go to your father's room taking up the seat beside his bed and close your eyes for a second. "You're sad." He said quietly.

"I'm tired." You sigh.

He chuckles, "Same thing." You meet his gaze, "Does this have anything to do with that peacekeeper?" You sit up straighter unintentionally. "He came by earlier looking for you." You can barely hear what else your father says as you stand up going to the bedside drawer. You catch snippets of him warning you, telling you to be careful, but your eyes narrow on the empty drawer.

The empty drawer.

"He was in here?" It cracks on the way out.

But the front door flies open and your sister is standing in the bedroom doorway out of breath and frantic. Your eyes meet and you know something horrible has happened because of you.

Death was breathing down your neck.

The wind blows your unbound hair back as you stare shocked at his shackled feet dangling in a suspended moment in time. You can't bring yourself to look at his face, at that sweet face that had always helped you time and time again. It was pale now, bruised and cold, and dead.

He was dead.

Gavin was dead, hanging there like he had been nothing.

The tears leaked down your face.

"It didn't make sense at first." He starts. You don't even jump at his voice behind you, nor do you move as he comes closer to you. "Why you purposely ran into him that night we met, or why he was watching you in the market, or why he came by your home, but then you said he had helped your father." You take a shaking breath, "Your sick father." You felt him behind you now, "I found all those empty vials in your home, the same vials you were probably trying to steal from the medical building." You hear him digging into his pocket pulling out an empty clear vial and throwing it at your feet.

The last of your father's medicine.

"I-I needed..." You choke out terrified. Because it was empty, because it was supposed to last you another month if you stretched it, but now it was gone and so was any chance of getting more.

"Daddy needed it more."

You slowly turned to look at him, "He didn't deserve this." You can feel his body hanging heavily like the rope was tied to your own hands. You had practically kicked the stool out from under his own feet that sent him hanging.

"No, he didn't." He cocks his head to the side. He steps closer to you tucking hair behind your ear and his gun looms behind him like a twisted guardian angel.

You stare up at him, "You're a monster."

He leaned down and snarled into your mouth, "Yes I am."

He was never going to stop, he was never going to leave you alone.

You shove him roughly and take off flying past the hanging tree, flying past Gavin's dangling body and into the woods behind it. You run further and further into the woods, you know he probably is faster, more trained than you, but you don't stop, you can't stop. Green and brown blur past you as you sprint through the forest. You try to look over your shoulder to see how far away he is, but you're too busy dodging trees, jumping over loose logs.

Then your foot snags of vines and your tumbling into the dirt. Your left hand takes the brunt of the fall and you bite down the cry turning swiftly ready to kick him away from you, but he never comes.

You sit up frantically looking around for him, but he's no where.

It's too quiet, so quiet the sound of your pounding heart blares into you, so quiet you hear the bullet as it whizzes past your head. It hits the tree behind you, splintering wood, and you don't wait as you scramble to your feet to keep running. You don't look back, you don't look down, you just keep running even as your body groans in weary pain, even as the next gun shot sounds off around you.

He was hunting you like the prey he always saw you as.

You pump your arms faster, push your legs harder zig-zagging your way through the trees as bullets hit the trunks around you. You're running faster than you can breath the only noise in your head was the fear pumping through your veins. Your lungs burned hotter every breath that spat out of your mouth as branches smacked off your face, arms, skin, blood splattering in its wake as you ran. You kept running, you kept running even though it hurt more than the idea of giving up.

You threw yourself behind a tree shoving your palm into your mouth to quiet the rattling gasp you took.

He wasn't far, you could hear leaves crunching underneath heavy boots.

You stifled the whimper.

He was whistling to himself as he slowly walked through the woods soft rain drops plopping down on the leaves above. "Clumsy girl," He sang as thunder clapped overhead. "No need to hide from me." His foot slowly snapped over twigs causing you to jump as he neared you.

You hear him shift and then the bullet hit the tree bark shattering around you as you take off again, but this time he's shooting at your feet dirt splattering across bare ankles. He's not shooting at you, he's herding you. And you had fallen for it.

His arm wraps around your neck yanking you backwards and slams you against a tree wet hair slapping across your skin, and then you're staring down the barrel of a smoking gun. He peers at you, "Why'd you run?" You spit at his feet causing him to laugh as he lowers the gun grabbing you by the throat and squeezing. "Why'd you run?" He presses in close, his nose digging into your cheek and you try to gasp at the firmness between his legs, but nothing comes out. You stare upward at the canopy of leaves as it goes in and out of panicked focus, as the life is choked out of you. Lighting cracks across the sky, rain drops hitting your purple face.

He lets go, lets you finally take a breath, lets your vision return to take in his devoid face.

There's nothing there but blue emptiness.

"You killed him." Your voice cracks. "He was just-!"

He takes you by the hair and throws you to the ground. You start to claw at him, kick at him to get him away from you, but he knows your weak spots all too well having studied every bad habit you had willingly showed him and grabs your right hand to pin it into the dirt. With as much strength as you can muster in it you slap him with your poor left hand pain ricocheting down the tendon. In one swift movement he plants his boot on your left wrist and presses down until you feel the fragile bones snap.

He doesn't cover your mouth as you scream, as pain blinds you, as you writhe under him sobbing rain pouring down now around you turning the ground into mud. He pushes hair off of your face, attempting to be tender after breaking your pathetic wrist drinking in the sounds of you agony like a God of pain, like crushing your bones was a form of foreplay. You roll your head away to take in the sight of your mangled hand twisted in all the wrong directions. It feels numb, you feel numb.

Then you are both staring at each other trying to breath. He watches your chest heave, you watch his mouth part eyes finally meeting. You're afraid to speak, afraid to move. Rain melts your skin as you lay there suspended in a moment of disbelief the distant pain washing away into the dirt beneath you.

"Why'd you run?"

"Because I'm afraid of you."

"Wrong answer."

He flips you over to lay you in the wet dirt as he climbs over you his belt buckle ringing in your ears, his gun thrown carelessly into the mud. No, no, no you panic as his hand pushes your skull into the ground smearing it to the side of your face, as you feel him between your legs. You frantically look around and with pain suffocating you, your broken left hand wraps around his gun and you slam it backwards into his head.

He tumbles off of you as you stagger upward pointing the gun at him wavering on your feet.

He laughs at you. "Well go on then." He nurses the bruise forming on his temple. You're shaking as you hold the weapon at him barely able to keep it upright, but he climbs to his feet. "No... we both know you're not capable of that."

"You don't know anything about me." You try to seethe, but it comes out feebly.

"Don't I?" He cocks his head to the side. "I know if you kill me you'll hang for it, and then your father will die too." He takes a step forward until the gun is pressed into his chest. "And who will be there to comfort your dear sister."

You dare let yourself smirk, "Sejanus. You said he was nicer than you."

His features falter for a millisecond, but then the mask is back. "Which we both know isn't nice at all."

Your finger quivers against the trigger. "Anybody is better than you."

His hand reels, and you think he's going to knock the gun from your hand but instead he slaps you across the face the gun firing into the sky. The force of the blow sends you back into the ground, but you're already moving again despite the sting in your cheek, the blood and dirt in your mouth, running through the storm crashing down onto everything. You see the break in the trees, the dark blue expanse of freedom if you could just get to it.

You gasp coming to an abrupt halt.

You look down.

You watch in a calm shock as blood blooms like a rose across your dress.

The pain never registers, not soon enough as your knee gives out first and you collapse back onto the ground watching him tower over you. You press your hand into the wound feeling the stinging anguish it causes while he watches your broken body bleed out on the forest bed. You were going to die, and all you could do was stare up at him while you hemorrhaged.

He turned on his heel and walked away leaving you to die alone.

You started crying then, crying and holding your weeping wound as the realization of it all crept into you.

"Come back." You sobbed out. "Come back." You whispered, rain and tears drenching your face.

Something flapped above you the black bird taking flight screaming your words out into the woods. "Come back." They called, "Come back." You watched them soar above you smudging together through the water in your eyes. It became a sad quiet song to drift you off into nothing if you let it. You didn't know how far into the woods you were exactly, but maybe someone heard the gunshots, maybe you could get up and try to make it home. Your body felt warm from the blood coating you and you figured you'd never make it home ever again.

You waited for Death.

Boots pounded into the dirt coming up towards you quickly scooping up your limp body and running with it. You groaned in pain trying to look up at him but gave up as your body dangled in his arms. He clambered up wooden steps and soon a door was slammed behind you quieting the storm outside.

You finally looked at him as he gently set you on the floorboards. He tears your dress down the middle examining the bleeding wound, and then he's digging. You scream, your vision going away at the sheer excruciating pain of it, you hope you'll just pass out soon but you feel his fingers inside your stomach, hear every wet noise as blood pours out of you.

You barely register the small ping as it hits the floor beside you. You relish the relief even as his hands press your shredded dress fabric into the bullet hole.

"Breathe." He tells you. "Just breathe."

"You shot me."

His brows are furrowed as he pulls the bloody clothes away and stands up rummaging through things. "I need to close it." Stuff clatters to the ground as the shiver racks through you. He comes back hold a fishing hook and line. You try to brace for it as it pierced your skin, as he tries to close the hole he caused. You flinch but the pain is secondary to everything going on around you, all you can seem to focus on is his face.

"You would be beautiful if you weren't so evil."

A ghost of a smile from him, "So, I'm your villain then?"

"Why else are you doing this?"

The muscle in his eye twitched and maybe because you're going to die he actually answers. "My whole life, all I've wanted was power." He pulls the line through your skin again as your teeth chatter. "With you..." He had power over you, he had control and ownership from the first moment he saw you, commanded you and you submitted so easily. He pushed the hook back through.

You weakly smile, "I must be pretty special huh?"

Something crosses his face, something you don't examine too closely. It's gone within seconds his hands tying off the stitch, "You're nothing."

He leans back studying the hack job of a suture he attempted on you, watches blood still slowly trickle out of it as you continue to shake in shock. "Yeah well...my blood is on your hands."

He stares down at his maroon stained fingers and then meets your gaze. He moves for you scooping you up in his arms and carrying you back out of the door. It's still raining as he walks with your limp body, mud squishing underneath his feet and then water, you hear splashing as he wades through the shallow water with you until his chest is submerged. "Are you going to drown me after all that trouble?"

You stare up at grey clouds as your body floats along the gentle waves. He laughs lightly, "No." He stares down at you running a wet hand along your cheek dirt coming away. "I'm cleaning the blood off."

You let him. You let yourself float lifeless in the dark water as lightning scatters across the clouds. You blink. You breath. You try to stay alive as your wrist throbs, as blood continues to spread out beneath you.

His hands are far gentler than they've ever been as they skid across skin cleansing you of all his sins. You can't stop looking at him, as rain drips off his lashes onto your lips quenching a thirst you know shouldn't be there. He looked so peaceful, kind even, the hero in this twisted story and you figured you had died on that cabin floor. Light was going to split the heavens and take your body, or maybe the ground would open up to drag you into hell.

Water sloshed in your ears. Maybe you would be stuck in this in between of your death, forever wounded, with him.

"Will you tell me your name?" You whisper as rays of sun peak out from behind treacherous skies.

He swallows as he begins moving back to shore, "If you don't die I'll tell you my name."

You close your eyes, body swaying with each long cold step he takes back to that cabin. You knew he wouldn't take you home, not until he knew he wouldn't get in trouble for murdering you. He uses a knitted blanket to dry you off and sets you back on the floor. No, you hadn't died yet as the chilling pain racked through your bones, "Am I gunna die?"

"I don't know." He kneels by your side. "I don't know." The rain still softly patters down against the roof as he watches you breath, "Why'd you run?" He whispers.

Your ribs burn as they expand, as they try to get oxygen to your struggling heart. And maybe because you're going to die you actually answer. Your lips part, mouth dry and numb, as tears slide across your face. "Because I'm afraid of what it makes me."

"What?"

"Falling in love with you." You watch his teeth grid, watch his fingers flex. But nothing else. "Will you hold me..." Your breath rattles, "While I go."

He pauses for quite a while, so long that you let your eyes close. The floor boards creak as he shifts, as his body lays down next to yours, as his arm tucks under your head and he pulls you close to his warm chest. You listen to his heart as yours slows. "I'm leaving." He starts, "I leave for officer training in the morning and I'm never coming back."

"Good." You nod. You'll never see him again, and yet it brings new tears to your eyes.

His fingers trace the curve of your ear, "Look at me." You tilt your head up to him and he leans down softly pressing his lips to yours. You pull your face from him letting the shaky breath leave you, and then you kiss him again.

He opens you up gently swirling his tongue into your mouth, caressing your own in its own embrace as his hands shift your body. You whine out in pain, but he doesn't stop until he's hovering over you. You don't stop him either. He kisses across your jaw, down your throttled neck, licking the hand print bruise he had left there. You wrap your good hand around the back of his neck to hold him closer to you as his own kneads into your breast. He keeps moving lower wrapping his mouth around your peaked nipple lavishing it with his tongue, sucking and biting it so tenderly it makes your back arch into him for the cost of more pain.

He moves down more until his head is between your thighs, prying your burning muscles open, kissing your clit first before running his tongue along it. "Look at you," He peers between your legs chuckling to himself, "And I'm your villain." You run your hand along his buzzed hair moaning for it, for him as he traces delicate circles into your clit fingers pushing inside of you making pleasure consume you so much you hardly remember your wounds.

He makes you forget them too easily. He wraps his mouth around your clit and sucks against it pressing down hard with his tongue until you see stars, until he has you completely undone by him. You moan out into the air as you cum against his face feeling him licking at you as you ride through it.

He picks his head up climbing back up your body, he stills taking in the botched wound in your stomach. He runs his tongue along it before kissing it ever so softly.

"Why did you save me?" You ask as you stare up at him listening to him unbuckle his belt once more. "Why did you come back?"

He blinks, "Because you asked me to."

You feel him plant himself between your legs, "Would you stay," A shaky breath. "If I asked you to." You had wanted and feared this and now you're not sure if you could ever want anything else.

He pushed inside of you slowly, stretching you open in sweet agony and relief. It's blinding and painful and nothing could have ever prepared you for how it would fill you completely. You breath into his open mouth on yours, feeling him slide in deeper, deeper, deeper until you're more full of him than yourself. "No."

Then he shifts to pull back, to slam back into you as you cry out in pain. Not at him, at everything else. You stare up at him the hard metal of his dogtags hitting against your face with every thrust. Your nails dig into his back, legs coming around him to pull him closer, feel his warm skin on your own. He nips at your bottom lip and you don't care that it hurts anymore, you don't care that he hurt you at all. He feels too good inside of you. His hand sneaks between your bodies to press into your clit, "Cum on my cock." He groans into your feverish skin the rough chain cooling your skin.

"Tell me your name." You moan tilting your hips for him. "I want-I want..." You want to know it, know him.

He only fucks you harder, unforgivably harder that has you squeezing your eyes in pain and ecstasy. He bites down on your jaw, digs his teeth into your jugular, taking piece after piece of you. He breaks skin, he splits you apart seam by seam until theres nothing left of you. You would let him crush you, break you if he wanted, as long as he didn't let go. You groan out as his tongue laps at the wounds he gave you, as his fingers dig into your waist to thrust into you hard until you finally cum around his cock pounding into you.

"My clumsy girl," He smiles into your collarbone. You're nodding, your arching your back for him, letting your pleasure consume you as his cock hits every deep rooted thing inside of you. You don't even realize he started moving faster, pounding into you harder. His hands grab you by the ribs and he's spilling inside you thrusting slowly as he pushes everything deeper. Until finally he stops moving.

You don't move, you can't. "I was supposed to win." Your chest hits his with every heavy breath, with every sacred word, "And then they died and I got sent here." Your throat feels incredibly dry. "It still isn't enough, I want more." He stares down at your right hand, then slowly traces the white gash along it from the night you met him. "Come with me." Your brows scrunch in confusion at his whispered confessional, "Come with me." He repeats again running his finger back over the scar.

"Where?" You croak.

He brushes his thumb over it once more, "The Capitol."

The images flash across your mind as you watch him. You by his side in pretty clothing sitting in a warm glorious home with food that wasn't leftover stale bread. Images of lounging on soft couches with his arms around you, with kisses sweeter than sugar and sunlight on your naked skin. He doted and cared and made you matter. And after years of constantly caring for others around you, it was an addicting daydream.

But it's gone like smoke on a mirror. You could only see death in his face, and as sweet and tempting that death would be it would be anything but. He wouldn't kill you softly. He wanted you in a cage for only his enjoyment and control and it would break you down until you no longer existed. He didn't truly care, he just wanted to prove he could, prove that he already had.

Blue eyes meet yours, your answer to him being read there as he finally pulls out of you the hollowness ringing through your soul. He stands up, tucking himself away before rummaging through the house he brought you inside of, then he comes back kneeling by your limp left hand. He gingerly takes it and ever so slowly begins to wrap it up tightly to set the bones back in place. You too numbed by the pain to register it, so you watch his face while he tends to your wounds. Then he sets it back on the ground but you grab his fingers before he lets go completely.

You tug on his ring finger. Stay, You say with your eyes in more ways than one, Stay. He could be free here, away from a haunted past that had made him vengeful and power hungry.

He doesn't say anything. He just lays down next to you, pulling you close once more as your eyes shut, as you drift off into nothing within his arms.

By morning he's gone.

You lay on that cabin floor as the truth sinks in. You're not dead, and he's gone.

He was gone. You were happy about it. You glanced around the cabin eyeing the white shirt spread out for you the silver chain draped across it. You reach for it fingers wrapping around his dog-tags.

You trace his name.

You tug the shirt on your body slipping the dog-tags around your neck and with the little strength you have, you stand up. It takes you a while but you leave the cabin tenderly walking back towards the damp shore. You wade out into the water, like he had done with you broken body, and lean back until you were floating weightless on your back, staring up at the bright sun.

He wanted his power, and he never would find that here; it would never be enough for his starving rotted soul. For some reason your heart hurt more than the ever bullet did.

You wished for his shadows. You wished for his death.

Your father died when winter came, it was too cold, and without medicine, once the winter fever set in he never had a chance.

Your sister does all the baking now. Your left hand never healed properly making it too difficult to use it, you try to help her in other ways, but baking reminds you of him and makes the wounds burn even though they were healed, you hate that they healed. You hate him.

You run your hand along the chain around your neck, the dog-tags tucked deep beneath your clothes. All you had left of him was that precious metal and a gunshot wound, and as you watch him sworn in as president, as your sister sells bread beside you, you hope one day Death sends a baker to destroy Coriolanus Snow.

endnotes: hi friends!! hope u enjoyed!! this story legit was so fucking hard to write. it had a whole different concept and characters and everything but it just never clicked with me even tho i had so many ideas but i couldn't figure out how to move through it fluidly. i rewrote this whole thing SO many times bc i couldn't connect with it, had to take a break, and finally ended up here with a version that wasn't what i set out for it to be, but ended up enjoying it a lot more ? i think hormones got to me and i just made it really sad instead of vicious :) but anyways!! love u all so much!!

#daenysthedreamersblog #coriolanus snow #coriolanus x reader #coriolanus smut #dark coriolanus snow #coryo snow #coryo x reader #the ballad of songbirds and snakes #the hunger games #coryo #coriolanus fanfiction #coriolanus x you #coryo x you #president coriolanus snow #coriolanus fic #sejanus plinth #coryo smut #peacekeeper!coriolanus snow

280 notes · View notes

gnocchibabie · 6 months ago

Text

Desire and Blood (Chapter 2)

Pairing: Aemond Targaryen x Targaryen/Strong OC (Jaenara Velaryon)

Tags: AU - canon divergence, enemies to lovers, arranged marriage, Targcest (uncle/niece)

Wordcount: 5.2k

Summary:

Against all odds, the love between childhood friends prevails and the Dance of Dragons is avoided.

However, peace comes at a cost. With the unexpected proposal of marriage between Alicent Hightower's son and Rhaenyra Targaryen's only daughter, can love truly blossom between sworn enemies? Or will Jaenara Velaryon be reduced to a mere pawn?

Love may yet arise where enmity once thrived, but Aemond's relentless pursuit of power threatens to shatter everything they hold dear, including each other.

Notes: Part one is linked here!

If you are liking this series, please consider showing some love on my AO3 posting of this fic :) thank you x

The doors to the council room chamber finally shut, leaving only Alicent and her two sons by themselves. A tense air looms overhead, and Aemond Targaryen sits stiff in his chair, considering all that has just happened.

I am to marry Jaenara Velaryon.

A funny feeling settled at the bottom of Aemond’s heart. Truth be told, marrying his niece was far from the worst possible marriage partner he could imagine. Aemond would never speak it aloud, but he had always found Jaenara strikingly beautiful. While she did not bear the signature Targaryen white hair, she shared their bewitching lavender eyes. Hers had always been an interesting shade, he had thought. And Jaenara had a remarkably Valyrian face. Many people amongst the court — even his mother Alicent — had stated that Jaenara was a spitting image of Rhaenyra in her younger years.

Aemond also admired his niece’s curious personality, which was an understatement. One second, she could be as cold as the winters of the north. A moment later, she would exhibit a kindness and warmth only read about in stories. She was a welcome challenge, Aemond thought.

Jaenara, he remembered, is also a skilled dragonrider. She had a strong bond with her dragon, and had quickly honed many skills and tactics that many within their family — including her brothers, had struggled with.

Perhaps there was more to admire about this match than he initially believed.

Aemond finally raises his gaze to his mother and brother.

“I never thought you’d be one to play matchmaker, mother.” Aemond tells his mother, the slightest hint of amusement in his tone. Amusement to mask his uncertainty. Alicent looks at him incredulously, wondering how her son could joke amidst such circumstances.

“Oh you didn’t know?” Aegon scoffs, “Mother has already done this before. Can’t you see how happy Helaena and I are together? Surely you and your beloved bastard will also be a sight to behold.”

Aemond opens his mouth to retort his brother's jabs but his mother beats him to it.

“Enough!” Alicent slams an open palm onto the table. Aegon scoffs once more and rolls his eyes. Their mother’s eyes hold sorrow. Guilt. She has nothing to say in rebuttal. What could be said in face of the cold truth?

Aemond is about to leave when his mother finally speaks: “You will speak to Jaenara with more respect from now on if you are expected to sit at her mother’s council…” she trails off, as if unsure of her own words.

“I seem to remember you spoke of her the same way not too long ago - what was it you called her? Plain-featured?,” Aegon says, “Though your criticism of Rhaenyra and her litter of bastards has lessened over these last few months. Has the Queen snuffed out your senses too?”

“Aegon,” Alicent’s voice is heavy, “Aemond. Rhaenyra only has everyone’s best interest in mind. She is following her father’s dying wishes - your father’s dying wish. We were both with him in his last moments…” The woman before them clad in green closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.

“I know what has happened in the past. But this is our opportunity to put it at rest…”

Put it at rest? Aemond feels disgust at his mother’s sympathies. They took my eye. They made my childhood the nightmare it was. They chipped away at me bit by bit.

“You say this about the same people who robbed me of an eye, mother,” Aemond responds coolly, “The same people who faced no consequences for this. I have seen how this has tormented you, even years later. As you have with me.”

The prince can see the conflict that bubbles below his mother’s surface. Alicent turns to her son and does something unexpected. She takes her hand in his.

Aemond’s eye softens for the smallest moment.

“My son. There is no mending what has been left in the past. But there is still time to mend the future. I only wish to see you happy.”

He shakes out of his mother’s grasp. “She will do no such thing.”

Aemond stands and makes a brisk exit for the door. Leaving his mother and brother behind, and himself to his thoughts.

Someone will pay the price. And I will make him pay for it in blood.

The prince does not find sleep so easily that night. He challenges himself to imagine the look that would grace his niece’s face when her mother would have to break the news of their arrangement to her. He wondered if her lavender eyes would narrow in disgust, her lip curling in a snarl, anger palpable. Or perhaps she had looked to her mother with quiet surrender, making no reaction and solemnly accepting his hand. He decided she had done the former. Jaenara had always been a rather animated young woman - and that was putting it lightly. Even in their youth she had been this way.

In the quiet of his chambers, Aemond finds his mind enraptured by the princess.

He is reminded of a time she had scolded him when she was a girl no older than six, and himself only seven, for pushing her twin to the ground and giving him a scraped elbow. The only person who managed to stop her tirade had been Rhaenyra. Aemond recalls the young mother scooping her twins into her arms, one flailing around still shouting at him whilst the other had tears streaming down his face. The prince smiles almost fondly from the memory, surprising himself.

The next memory that came to him happened a few years later. Aemond had more often found himself at the center of ridicule, frequently dealt by Jace and Luke. Oftentimes by Aegon too, though he chose to ignore that detail. The young prince had always felt distant to the rest of his family, as though he were different - lesser than the rest of them. And how could he not, as a dragon-less Targaryen. He was a dragon without wings. And his nephews had made sure he was aware of this. Aemond recalled how his blood boiled at the thought that bastards such as his nephews - such as Jaenara - had dragons. And yet, he did not. Was there something wrong with him? Had there been a reason his egg had not hatched alongside him in his cradle? Was he unworthy?

The taunting had reached a new level when Jaenara’s brothers had gifted Aemond a pig. Something he was much more worthy of rather than a dragon - they had said. He remembers when his nephews had revealed the creature to him in the training yard. Even Aegon laughed at him, so loudly it had caught the attention of Jaenara, who had been on the far end of the square speaking with Helaena. Aemond remembered how her gaze had turned to him - how he waited for her to join in on the teasing and laughing.

No such thing happened.

Jaenara bounded over to the group of boys, a quiet storm forming behind her lavender eyes. Helaena had opted to hang back from the debacle, watching the impending uproar with rapt attention.

“Think that’s funny, do you?” Jaenara had asked aloud when she finally reached their group.

Silence.

Jaenara continued, “I seem to remember that you yourself Jacaerys - you have made very little progress in even mounting Vermax.” The young boy averted his attention to the ground, suddenly very interested in a mound of dirt near his feet. The reprimanding had not stopped there.

“And you-” She turned to Lucerys, “You on the other hand may be able to mount your dragon, though you find yourself on the ground within seconds.” She looks between her brothers, and then to Aemond. Each holds their gaze with the other for a few moments.

“Neither of you have any room to be acting as though you are real dragon riders yourselves.” She seems to have finished, turning on her heels and running back to Helaena.

“AND TAKE THAT PIG BACK!” She yells over her shoulder. Aemond watched as his sister and niece strode away, arm in arm. He returns his attention to Jace and Luke, whose faces are the same shade as their house colors. Aegon’s laughter fills the yard again.

This incident had shown Aemond a different side of his niece. For an instant, he was filled with an immense regret for all the times he had ever been cold to her. The times he had called her a bastard. The times he had joined in on Aegon’s belittling of her and her family. She had taken all of that - for years on end - and still defended him. He couldn’t really understand why.

He can do little to prevent his least favorite memory from entering his mind. Aemond takes in a breath and closes his eyes. He remembers the night at Driftmark. The night he had claimed Vhagar. The night he lost his eye.

That time had been different. Jaenara had not been present when the fighting had broken out - not until Rhaena had frantically found her and told her of what was transpiring, unsure of what to do herself. When his niece entered the room, Aemond had been on top of her brother. The sight had sent the young girl into a frenzy and, without fully understanding the context of the situation, she had flung herself onto Aemond and wrenched the boy off of Lucerys.

“Get off of him!” She had screeched. With her arm wrapped around Aemond’s neck, Jaenara threw herself back and they soon found themselves on the cold floor. “What do you think you-” Her question remained unanswered at this moment - this singular distraction turning Aemond’s attention towards his niece. He remembered the bewildered look on her face, her black hair coming loose from her braid. Her white night dress and the light purple robe that clung to her. A bead of blood on her bottom lip. She had always had a bad habit of biting it, Aemond had noticed. Hard enough to draw blood. The blood began to trickle down her chin.

It was the last thing his good eye had ever seen before Luke split open Aemond’s face, from his cheek to his forehead. His own blood splattered onto Jaenara’s powder white gown, staining the cloth forever.

Darkness. A scream.

Aemond sat up in bed, blinking away the rest of the memory. He opened and closed a fist. Yes, he was sure of her response now. Jaenara was not happy about the prospect of this union, and had surely let her mother - and the entirety of Dragonstone - know this. Where she lacked Velaryon parentage, Jaenara’s Targaryen fierceness made up for this tenfold.

She will meet her match.

Aemond would swallow his pride - swallow his grudges against his niece, and become her husband. Though, he decided, she should not expect much from him. He held no love in his heart for her. Surely no romantic love. He would use her as he needed, to obtain what he wanted - power. That, and retribution for the slight that his family had suffered in having Rhaenyra as their Queen. Though some of the weaker members of his family would not see it his way.

He circles back to the dark thoughts that had crossed his mind earlier. He would be doing his soon-to-be wife a favor in getting rid of her twin. She would be made heir to the Seven Kingdoms. It was probably the closest act akin to love Aemond would find himself capable of accomplishing during their relationship. And he would help her to rule. He was nothing if not helpful.

He could make it look like an accident. He had previously considered poisoning Jacaerys. Aemond would not act until a comfortable time into his marriage, so as not to raise suspicion. Though he decided, suspicion would be raised regardless if the heir were to suddenly drop dead in the middle of dinner. He hardly thought that hands clenched around the throat, skin purple, and eyes bulging out of his head would seem inconspicuous.

Poison was out of the question.

Aemond Targaryen feels a sudden sense of dread in plotting his own nephew’s demise. The dread only grows when he truly pictures carrying the act out himself. If he were ever to be discovered, The Realm would christen him with the title of Kinslayer.

To be a Kinslayer is to be despised by The Gods. To be damned to the Seven Hells.

Aemond is unsure if he harbors enough hatred in him to carry out the act, though he certainly is no stranger to being on the receiving end of such hatred.

He considers if he possesses enough complacency to suffer the consequences, should they be dealt. He wonders if his heart is as hard as everyone else believes it to be.

And yet…

Unable to find sleep, Aemond climbs out of bed once more. He dresses and finishes the outfit off with his long black cloak, throwing the hood over his head.

The One Eyed Prince slips out of the Red Keep and ventures into the Streets of Silk, hoping to find some semblance of comfort.

— — —

Candlelight illuminates the face of the young princess as her eyes scan the pages of a rather large, rather dusty book. In the days before their inevitable departure, Dragonstone had become a whirlwind of busy servants and flustered royals. All of Jaenara’s possessions had been packed away and taken to King’s Landing ahead of time with the family’s servants, save for the text seated in her lap. In such a tumultuous time, the young woman found solace in its pages.

Jaenara had read the story of Rhaenys Targaryen, one of Aegon the Conqueror's sister-wives, so many times she felt she could recite the text backwards. Visenya had been a sister more remembered and revered by history for her valor and fierceness as a warrior; though Jaenara found herself drawn to the gentler sister. Rhaenys was more of a revered politician than a feared warrior. To Jaenara, she was just as formidable. She wanted to be like the Queen. Loved and feared.

A knock upon the door turns her attention away from her histories. Jacaerys enters her chambers and lingers at the door for a moment, before resigning himself to sit next to her on the plush bed.

“Jace,” Jaenara breathes, closing the text.

Jacaerys looks over the book.

“Again?” He attempts a small smile.

Jaenara gets up from her place on the bed to create some distance between her and her brother. She places the book on her writing desk, taking mental note not to leave the book behind when she leaves tomorrow. “I find comfort through her in times such as these.” she responds shortly.

Jace sighs, “You have been avoiding me.”

“You have made it easy.”

“Nara,” Jacaerys begins to sound annoyed, “You are not the only person who has had to…adapt to this change.”

Jaenara turns swiftly towards her brother, loose raven tresses swaying behind her wildly, “No, but I am the only person amongst us who had had their hand sold to a snake. You cannot understand my grief, Jace! You are betrothed to Baela - sweet Baela. You two actually like each other. But I am condemned to be the conciliatory sacrifice of this family.“

You are being unfair. Jaenara says to herself — she knows it to be true. You are being difficult. But she cannot help it. Her twin was afforded the luxury of being born a man. A man who did not have to face the same realities she currently found herself in.

Jace shifts on her bed, frame creaking under him. He seems to struggle finding his words, “I…you are right Jaenara,” He sighs, “I do not know what it is like. Just as you do not know what it is like to now be heir of the Seven Kingdoms.”

She glances at him and her twin continues.

“We both have the burdens of our parents to bear. We wear crowns too heavy for us.” Jace is solemn.

Jaenara bites her lip hard and lets out a shaky breath. A sickly sheen of guilt settled in her stomach. It was true that she had not considered what the rest of her family had been feeling of late. She seats herself beside Jacaerys and the bed groans under their weight once more.

“I am sorry Jace.” Is all she can muster up.

Jace places a reassuring hand over her own. “You may yet make some use out of your upcoming marriage.”

Confused, Jaenara looks to her brother.

“Aemond is a fierce fighter. He is well versed in the histories and philosophies. I hear he has become a knowledgeable strategist. He rides the largest and oldest dragon, who is no stranger to battle.” Copper eyes meet lilac eyes. “And with you as his wife, he will be in our pocket.”

“He would be a formidable ally to have. But Aegon holds a seat on mother’s council - not Aemond.” Jaenara asserts.

“I as heir and you as his wife could sway this decision.”

“Mother has not even been crowned and you are already scheming.” Jaenara’s words are not so chiding as they are playful.

“Not scheming. I only hold our best interests in mind.” Jace tells his sister.

She looks him over once more. When had they become so…grown-up?

“You tell me you are fearful of wearing the crown one day…I think you will come to wear it well.” Jaenara softly smiles as Jacaerys scoffs and rises to his feet.

“Just think it over, Nara,” He turns to the door, “You must rest. We rise early in the morning and depart for King’s Landing.”

Before he leaves, he throws a glance at his sister over his shoulder. “I won’t let any harm come to you…from him.”

Jaenara does not let on how much the words mean to her. She has always disguised her true feelings under a cover of dripping sarcasm. “You need not worry about me, brother. Perhaps you should protect him from me.”

Jacaerys laughs and leaves again.

As Jaenara climbs into bed, she considers her brother's words.

Where he may prove to fail as a husband, he could make up for as an advisor. A weapon.

The princess blows out the candle and dreams.

In her slumber, Jaenara is face to face with Aemond Targaryen. He stands opposite to her, in front of a throng of people. She looks down and sees herself clad in an ornate dress of scarlet, white, and gold. Her black hair is pinned up in several twisting braids. The One Eyed Prince looks to his beautiful bride, eye full of admiration. For a moment, she thinks he might love her.

She thinks she may like that.

Suddenly, gasps are heard around the crowd. The gasps morph into shouts, scattered all over the Great Hall. A sharp pain. Jaenara feels a sticky warmth envelop her cheek, and feels something dribble onto her wedding gown. She reaches a trembling hand up to her face, pulls it back, and watches blood soak her palm, dripping below her wrist and all the way down the length of her arm. The wails echoing throughout the hall only grow around her. It is maddening. A sickening pop makes her blood run cold and she watches as one of her eyes rolls onto the floor below.

Her husband’s mouth moves yet his voice comes out delayed, a haunting chorus.

An eye for an eye.

Jaenara wakes to another knock at her door.

“My lady, may I help you dress?”

The princess wills her breath steady and wipes the sweat from her brow.

“Come…come in!” She calls out to her handmaiden.

There was no time to dwell on the meaning of dreams.

— — —

Prince Aemond sits across from Helaena as her children busy themselves with their toys. A handmaiden hands Jahaerys a toy dragon, which the boy launches at his brother.

“I think I will be glad to see them today,” Helaena says suddenly, looking up from her embroidery, “In truth, I have missed Jaenara.”

Aemond continues to watch his niece and nephews play as he answers his sister, “You may be the only one amongst us who feels that way,” He mutters, “Though I do remember how close you and Jaenara were as children.”

Helaena had been an even lonelier child than she was now, as a lonely young woman. Always murmuring words that his family could not understand, and did little in trying to understand. Aemond had always felt sorry for her. But Jaenara did not seem to mind her aunt’s off putting nature. He recalls them as young girls, running throughout the castle gardens together, trying to catch butterflies. He remembers as they grew older, a few young ladies in court had taken to calling his sister, Helaena The Hysterical.

Before Aemond could put an end to the name calling, Jaenara had done it herself. The girls in court would not so much as look at either of them wrong.

And most of all, Jaenara listened to Helaena. Something nobody in his family seemed to do. Not even him, in truth.

“I would hope you two can become close as well,” She gives her brother a wistful look, “You are to be married.”

“I think us siblings are doomed to hold strained relationships - at best - with their marriage partners.” Aemond replies.

Helaena looks down at her sewing. Maelor and Jaehaerys fight over a wooden horse. Aemond’s sister remains in front of him, though she looks as though she is worlds away.

“Those child led astray finds solace in the embrace of the sea.” she whispers.

Aemond’s attention is redirected from children to mother. A silence passes over him and his sister’s handmaids.

More innocuous ramblings, he thinks.

A servant enters the door to inform the sibling’s of The-Queen-To-Be’s arrival.

“Come, sister,” Aemond begins, “Alicent will be waiting for us. She wishes to receive our family in the Great Hall.”

Helaena sets down her embroidery and looks up at her brother, “A dragon’s ambition foretells his own undoing.”

Aemond chooses not to hear her words.

— — —

Jaenara and her family’s reception in the Great Hall could not have felt more strained. Guarded expressions and tight lipped smiles adorned Alicent and her children - though Aemond and Aegon had not smiled at all. Helaena seemed blissfully unaware of the anxious energy surrounding her. Jaenara had sent a secret smile her way - a genuine one. And though she felt her uncle’s eyes boring into her, she refused to meet his gaze.

Rhaenyra had been displeased by the whole ordeal, hoping to ease tensions at dinner. Jaenara found herself remembering the last dinner she had shared with her entire family and thought it to be an impossible task.

Jaenara had spent the time before dinner settling into her new chambers, though all her belongings had already been settled into place before her arrival. The room felt more inviting than her chamber’s in Dragonstone, which were drab and dreary. Though, this was the only silver lining she could find about her circumstances thus far.

When the time had come to prepare for the evening, the princess disrobed from her riding leathers, the smell of dragon peeling off along with them. Her handmaidens help her to dress in a gown that Rhaenyra had picked out for her.

I do not even have the agency to dress myself now?

Jaenara stepped into a dress of crushed velvet, a dark teal in color. The neckline was embroidered with pearls, illuminating her collarbones. The sleeves of the gown hang loosely and open at her wrists, revealing a pale cream color which lines the teal. A belt of silver bangles mixed with pearls hangs around her waist, crested above the teal, cream, and aquamarine shades of fabric that pool to the floor. The attire bore the unmistakable air of Velaryon fashion. The wearer, not so much.

Portions of Jaenara’s dark silky hair were re-braided into a ring, as if it were a crown sitting atop her head, while the rest of her hair remained loose. Black waves ran down her back like a waterfall.

Her ladies had been told to do this, to help her into a fine gown. To adorn her ears and wrists with bangles. To fix her hair in a way that flattered her face.

To impress him.

She almost laughs out loud at the thought. Jaenara figured that Aemond would find her as charming as he had found that pig he’d been gifted all those years ago.

She decides to regard him similarly, despite her thoughts drifting to long platinum hair that she envied so much.

Her maids had finally finished with their work.

Jaenara is sitting around a great wooden table in the dining hall, with the entirety of her family. Servants have begun to deposit plates filled with meats and vegetables and pies and cakes all around. The clanking of plates and silverware fills an otherwise quiet room. Jaenara is begrudgingly sitting next to her uncle, and Jace and Luke shoot her looks of pity from across the table. She picks up her glass and takes a swig.

Suddenly, Rhaenyra Targaryen speaks, “I wish to clear the air,” She begins and everyone looks up from their plates. Alicent Hightower seems especially stiff.

“I do not wish for this to be a time of tension and formalities - though I do thank you,” She looks at Alicent directly, “for your welcoming reception earlier today. I want us to speak freely amongst each other. I want only what our father, Viserys, wanted.” She makes a gesture towards her siblings at the end of her sentence. Aegon clears his throat.

“There is much to discuss in the coming days, but I want this to be a night of camaraderie and celebration.” Her mother stands, drink in hand, “Let us raise our glasses-”

Jaenara feels herself melting into her chair.

“-To the union between my cherished daughter, Jaenara Velaryon, and the prince Aemond Targaryen. May their union bring strength and prosperity to our noble houses, and may it be blessed by the gods." Her voice held a hint of cautious optimism, echoing the hopes and dreams of a realm poised on the brink of new alliances.

Jaenara lifts her glass, as well as her attention to the man next to her. Aemond is already looking at his niece, a smirk on his face.

To everyone’s surprise, Alicent Hightower rises from her seat. She looks less burdened from the words of Rhaenyra.

“Thank you, Your Grace…for your unflinching understanding.” The two women share a look, “And to Jaenara and Aemond. A lovely match indeed.”

Helaena begins to clap, though no one else around the table shares her sentiments.

Aegon lets out an audible laugh at the toastings, “Apologies,” he adds quickly, “I am just so - overjoyed by this…marriage.” His voice drips with sarcasm.

Jaenara forces a smile, though her eyes shine with a different expression, “I am happy this match pleases you, uncle.”

However, Aemond does not let the jab pass unanswered. "I hope your joy does not swell too greatly, brother," he retorts, "for dragons have been known to breathe fire when overshadowed."

Jaenara sits up straighter when she sees Aegon roll his eyes and throw back his cup. She regards Aemond with a quizzical gaze. The princess regarded Aemond’s retort as nothing more than a brotherly spat. Before any more slights can be passed around, the servants finish bringing out the rest of the food. The family begins their dinner and small conversations break out amongst those resigned to sit next to each other.

The princess watches her brothers laugh with Baela and Rhaena. Sees her mother and step-father speak with one another. She pushes her food around her plate.

The sudden sound of Aemond’s voice makes her jump, “The cooking of the castle staff does not please you?” he asks, amused.

Jaenara stops playing with her food and her eyes cut away to her uncle.

“The first conversation you wish to have with me - in years - is whether or not I like our meal?” her voice drips with condescending skepticism, “As if the fate of the realm hinges on my opinion of pigeon pie?”

He tsks at her, “Always so difficult niece. I am only attempting to make conversation. An endeavor that seems beneath you - a pursuit you avoid at all costs if it is with me.”

“You are just…quite bad at it.” Jaenara remarks.

It is Aemond’s turn to take a sip of his drink to hide his annoyance.

“I do enjoy that…costume you’re wearing. But you are more a Targaryen than a Velaryon - don’t you agree?” Aemond says lowly.

Jaenara knows his remarks are meant to be demeaning, though she tries to take it in stride. She was a Targaryen after all. And she was pleased that she acted so much like one that people took notice, even if it was Aemond. But an insult was an insult all the same.

Exasperated, Jaenara turns to the prince fully, “Is this what I can expect when married to you? Insults thrown at me for all my days to come? You should know I can deal them out as well, twice as hard.”

Aemond chuckles, “You are too easy and quick to provoke, Jaenara. You are too tense.” She sees something flicker beneath his eye.

Aemond took pleasure in goading his niece, reveling in the predictability of her fiery responses. More silence passes between them. The prince watches Jaenara force a few bites of food into her mouth and continues to eavesdrop on conversations around her. Daemon whispers something to Rhaenyra, and her mother takes a glance at her daughter and half-brother. Jaenara winces.

“You asked what you can expect being my…wife,” Aemond’s surprisingly soft gaze is already fixed upon her, “You can expect a union that does not harbor any illusions of love. But one founded on mutual…respect. Understanding. We shall navigate this pact with the grace and duty befitting of our situation if you would only allow it.” His words somehow put her at ease.

Jaenara is perplexed. Maybe her mother had been right in saying that Aemond had changed. Though she was skeptical of his remarks. It was yet uncertain whether they could truly let go of all that had transpired in the past.

Although, the princess felt ever the faintest tinge of disappointment at his words.

“Well…” She begins, though her words do not come out as strong as she would like them to under her uncle’s intense stare, “I am…pleased to hear that. We do not have to feign ignorance then. I expected nothing more from us.”

To Jaenara’s dismay, Aemond seems amused. It is not so often she stumbles over her words. His gaze lingers over her. He takes notice of the pearl that sits prettily below her collarbones. He watches her eyes fall to her hands, which she wrings in her lap. Jaenara finds that she does not like how being at a loss for words makes her feel, and decides to throw back her drink, trying to find comfort in the bottom of the chalice.

#hotd #house of the dragon #aemond targaryen #aemond targaryen x oc #aemond targaryen fanfiction #aemond targaryen imagine #hotd fanfic #house of the dragon fanfiction #the one eyed prince #aemond one eye #aemond x oc

339 notes · View notes

lorhaghanima · 6 months ago

Text

how much the audience of hotd hates alicent hightower will never not be surprising for me.

she IS the complex character you all wish for. she loves her children deeply (she literally puts her life in danger repeatedly because of them, what about sacrifice?), but she hates everything they are: targaryen, royalty, results of her parenting mistakes, proof that she was never enough even though she did everything expected (what about duty?) of her, viseris' unwanted children (but ones he FORCED her to bear), the only thing left of marital rape.

she loves rhaenyra since they are childhood sweethearts, and both mothers, and both women in the world that will always be cruel towards them (everywhere in the world they hurt little girls), but she can't help but hate her: she is everything she could never have - a beloved daughter (you were always his favourite, but otto did nothing but use her), a woman who has right to pick her own partners, who has loving and lovable children, who are not looking so targaryen-ish (having nothing of her, and everything of their father, who neglected them nevertheless), a power to be who she wants and to protect herself (dragon). and rhaenyra does everything she wants and nothing she has to do, alicent rules and sits in the council and takes care of a dying husband and STILL it's not enough and taken for granted.

she hates and loves her father. she hates and loves criston. she hates and loves her grandchildren.

she is poisonous and she is poisoned. she is a saint, she is a martyr, and she is a villain and abuser and destroyer. she is queen and she has everything to do with how her children turned out to be, she is their root, she is their core. and at the same time she has no control of anything that has happened to her - she did not pick her father, her friendship or its end with rhaenyra, her marriage, her children. there's no way all of this could've turned out to be happy. she is sansa that never was saved from joffrey (broken, hopeless, betrayed by her own family). she is cersei if jaime died during roberts rebellion (powerless, lonely, forced to have children that are never truly yours). she is lyanna that stays alive after giving birth to jon (realising there's no such thing as love, that your only goal in the world is to bear children, and if they do not fulfill some stupid prophecy - they are not wanted by their own fathers). she is elia who lives (a mother of abandoned children, a living woman, but your husband prefers a ghost). she is daenerys that never got her dragon (just a shadow of a husband that died and you feel equally relieved and terrified by it). she is any woman in this world that isnt empowered by some magic, or superpower, or prophecy, or even men. she is as powerless as power hungry, as broken as whole, as doomed by the narrative as she could be.

and what you call her is "bitch", or "terrible mother", or "whore", or " stupid".

#alicent hightower #hotd #hotd season 2 #hotd sexism #team green #house of the dragon #hotd meta #queen alicent #hotd alicent

195 notes · View notes

madame-fear · 1 year ago

Text

*ೃ༄ 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍 𝐍𝐄𝐄𝐃𝐋𝐄𝐒 𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐑𝐔𝐏𝐓 𝐒𝐈𝐋𝐊 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐒 .ೃ࿐

★ amira speaks!: this was requested by my most beloved @juliavilu1, I hope you enjoy this dear and it was what you expected! I found it super fun to write. Thank you for the idea! 💕 ˗ˏˋ ꒰ summary : being the daughter of Lord Bartimos Celtigar, a close ally to Rhaenyra Targaryen, you have grown up next to Lucerys Velaryon; your childhood best friend... And crush. By the time you receive the news of his betrothal to Lady Rhaena, you distance yourself for years, not even being able to attend her funeral after dying during childbirth. But when Lucerys finds you once again in King’s Landing, attending a feast his mother as Queen had invited you to, he decides that he won’t easily let go of you. ˗ˏˋ ꒰ word count : 21.3k (this is the longest I have ever written 😳)

˗ˏˋ ꒰ genre : Friends to lovers, angst to smut ˗ˏˋ ꒰ pairing : Lord!Lucerys x Celtigar!Reader

WARNING.ᐟ THIS FIC CONTAINS ; jealousy, slight angst, Rhaena dies during childbirth, slight mentions of blood, neck kissing, praising, reader’s first time, body worshipping, P in V, seated missionary, unprotected sex, creampie, and overall soft smut.

“Do you think we will be able to avoid war, Luke?” you inquired sheepishly, craning your head to stare at him.

The soft sound of the seawaves clashing against the beachshore was the only thing heard amidst the night as well as the faint noise of the cool windy breeze, bringing a soothing comfort. Both Lucerys and you laid on your backs against the sand, quietly admiring the bright stars in the darkness of the night as you spoke to one another. Arrax peacefully slept by your side; his pearly scales glistening under the moonlight.

It wasn’t unusual for you to surreptitiously sneak away from your chambers late at night with your childhood best friend Lucerys Velaryon whenever your family visited his own at Dragonstone, only for him to take you towards Arrax, fly on dragonback around the Dragonstone castle, and lay down on the beach before having to return to your private quarters. Ever since you grew up a bit, that was a common routine for the two of you to follow.

The war was imminent — inevitable. No one wished to provoke it, much less his mother Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, but everyone knew it was there, and the time to prepare for war would eventually come. You dreaded the mere thought of it, but you always sought and found comfort by simply being by Lucerys’ side.

The realm was coldly divided, and his mother Rhaenyra would have to fight hard for what was her birthright. Such times were complicated to deal with, and you knew you would have to be greatly prepared for what was yet to come... But knowing you had a great loving friend to rely on, was all that soothed you.

Or at least, you wished to think of him merely as a great best friend. It was quite obvious what you genuinely felt for him, despite you wouldn’t even admit it for yourself — yet, you were endlessly teased by his and your own family. You — in a flustered manner — always disregarded such teasing remarks when they mentioned how head over heels you seemed for him, but deep down inside, you knew there was some truth to it.

At your question, his head tilted towards your side to stare at you. A soft huff escaped from him, feeling uncertain on what to answer. “Well,” he began, frowning slightly. “I’m not quite sure, my dear.” his nicknames to you had always been endearing, and they never failed to make you timidly grin. “We can only hope so. But I’m afraid, war is always inevitable.”

A frowny smile appeared on your lips. While you wished to believe war could be easily avoided, part of you knew Lucerys was right — war is always inevitable. You knew you had to prepare yourself for the worst, and in like every war, your Houses would have to get good allies. And with alliances, came betrothals — and knowing how most betrothals were — unwanted, unhappy, or both — you dreaded the mere thought of having your parents choose a Husband for you. If you could, you would choose to get betrothed to Lucerys; but you knew that situation was solely hopeless daydreaming.

The young Velaryon Prince knew about your discomfort regarding betrothals, and he always made sure to comfort and soothe your mind out of such thoughts. Though, Lucerys daydreamed as well about having the chance of choosing you as his wife some day. You were the only girl he had ever laid his eyes upon, and desired to have — and he knew he would be able to give you all the love and care you deserved to have in the world.

Unfortunately, as expected, Luke got betrothed to his cousin Rhaena. It wasn’t bad, since he got along her, but she clearly wasn’t you — the one Lucerys only longed to have.

A few moments of silence loomed over you, being only able to hear the way the tides clashed against the beach shore, occasionally hitting against some small shells or rocks. “I don’t want to get betrothed just now, Luke.” you muttered quietly, fixing your gaze on the sky, which despite being dark, the stars scattered across it and the moon brought some calming lights. Lucerys stared at you with his hazel green eyes in a dreamily manner as you spoke. “I wish I had the full liberty of choosing whomever I want to marry, instead of praying in hopes of receiving a sweet, kind husband.” you continued, “If we all had such liberty to choose the person we truly love, everything would be less complicated.”

And he couldn’t agree any more with what you said. But his betrothal was already settled, as much as it pained him. “I know. It would be less dreadful, and it would feel less… Forced.” a soft sigh escaped from his lips, frowning briefly. “And I wish I could break off my own betrothal, but I have no word against it.” there was certain reluctance coming from him in telling you, but sooner or later, you would have to know about it — and he would much rather tell you about his betrothal himself. Furrowing your eyebrows in confusion, you didn’t waste a single second in turning your head around to stare at him, believing you misheard him. What did he mean with… ‘Break off his own betrothal’?

Propping your body with your elbows in the sand, your staring remained on him. “What? What do you mean?” doing the same thing as you did, he slightly laid on the sand, but used his elbows to prop himself. His rosy lips partly opened as he was about to begin explaining, but you kept talking. “Luke, are you…” the words trailed off for a moment, lingering on your lips before you could say them. It felt bitterly venomous to even acknowledge Lucerys had already been betrothed. It couldn’t be, you wished to deny it. “You are betrothed, already? To whom?”

As you awaited for his response, you could feel your heart loudly thumping against your chest, to the point it was as if it nearly escaped from your chest. Swiftly, his tongue passed over his lower lip, huffing faintly. You didn’t seem very pleased at the news, and neither was he; but it was eventually expected. “I have been betrothed to my cousin Rhaena.” he began. A soft scoff escaped helplessly from you, clenching your jaw discreetly. “I got betrothed to her the day we went to King’s Landing for the first time after years.”

A knot had been formed quite tightly on your throat as you attentively listened to his words. Your chest rose and fell continuously as you managed to hold yourself back from allowing the tears threatening to spill to expose how you felt — seemingly making your emotions worsen with the dreadful passing of the seconds. Your heart dropped abruptly, and it was a burning pain mixed with jealousy. You knew this day would come, and every passing day it was overwhelming to even be reminded of him getting betrothed, and you as well.

“I see.” you managed to mutter, swallowing all your own emotions that seemed to wash over you violently. You didn’t even know how to answer, you felt perplexed at the sudden situation. “Well, it was expected for both of us to eventually betrothe someone. At least, she will be lucky to have you as a husband.” gods, each word that came from your lips was one more painful than the other. Saying them felt like poison, completely bitter.

A frowny smile appeared on his lips, as he gently took your hand in his, squeezing it ligthly and caressing your skin with the tip of his thumb. In a sense, he tried to soothe you by giving you some physical affection like he always did, but it felt more painful than comforting. “I hope you find happiness and are very much loved with her, Lucerys. Because you deserve it, and you deserve to be appreciated every day of your life.”

It seemed as if you nearly spew out those words dreadfully, and you were; but as well, you genuinely wished for him to be filled with an immense amount of love... The same immense amount of love you could give him every single day, until your last breath. Love killed you, thorned you apart brutally — but there were duties to follow. And you couldn’t easily object against them.

Lucerys had known you ever since he had memory, and probably, he knew you better than you could possibly know yourself. The prince noticed the struggle in your features, and the faint voice tone that managed to not break in between words. You felt upset, and it blended along notorious sadness simultaneously. Softly, he exhaled, and leaned closer to you, close enough for you to feel his sweet boyish scent, while he continued to tenderly squeeze your hand in his own.

“I wish the same for you, (y/n). And even a thousand more things, more than you could imagine.” closing your eyes slowly, Lucerys pressed his lips against your skin, smooching your cheek. Gods, if only you could feel his lips against his own, and savour him. “I have never met someone like you. I hope you get betrothed to someone who knows how to cherish and pamper you properly.” he was wishing you nothing more but mere well-being in every sense, as were you with him — why did it have to profoundly hurt the way it did? A shaky sigh escaped from your lips, opening your eyes slowly as he pulled back from the smooch in your cheek.

The look you carried in your eyes made his heart sink. In a way, instead of noticing how you had to hold back the way you truly felt, he preferred for you to talk to him about it, but Lucerys knew that wouldn’t possibly happen. “Thank you, Luke.” was all you replied, a bit shortly. Softly, you stood from the ground, progressively letting go of his hand. And even so, his warmth ghastly lingered on your delicate skin.

His hand returned to lay on the ground, feeling the small grains of sand under his fingertips, watching you stand up with his green eyes. “I think it’s time for me to return back to my chambers, Luke. I do not wish to rest late, or get scolded by our parents.” giving you a single nod, he rapidly stood up along you, briefly shaking off some sand from his clothing. “I understand, and agree. Let’s go, before anyone finds we aren’t in our chambers.” a small, sheepish grin tugged lightly at the corner of his lips, notoriously trying to lift off the tension felt looming in the atmosphere.

You hesitantly returned the grin Lucerys offered for a few seconds, and followed him towards Arrax to fly back closer to the rocky castle — the pearly coloured dragon seemingly feeling the emotions of his rider, and awakening from its sleep. Swiftly, you climbed into the dragon’s back, right behind of Luke, and wrapped your arms tightly around his body as he commanded orders to his dragon in what you understood as High Valyrian. While you clung to his body, your cheek rested firmly against his back. And while you wished to enjoy the last dragon ride before having to return to your chambers and have a deep rest, your mind couldn’t help but keep wandering off to his future marriage to Lady Rhaena.

The warmth emanating from his body was bitterly endearing, having the need to keep clinging to him as if your life depended on it. But you knew, the more you grew up, that you would eventually have to learn to live with the friendship you maintained, and perhaps, keep certain distance to respect the each other’s betrotheds to yourselves. And despite acknowledging that, you weren’t willing to suffer from a heartbreak, or longing for his soothing touch.

Years had passed since you had been told of Lucerys’ betrothal by none other than himself, got married, and was officially named as the Lord of Driftmark.

Throughout all those passing years, you had kept in touch with him. Raven letters were often sent by him, and you replied back. But ever since Luke got betrothed and married his cousin, you had decided on keeping your distance with him as much as it hurt you; and even if you still wrote letters to one another, your feedback was short and slightly cold at times. Your visits to Dragonstone were delayed, and most of the times if your father had to have a meeting with the Black Council, you now rarely travelled along him.

Lucerys noticed your cold distance immediatly. From the moment he observed your reaction to the news of his betrothal to Rhaena, he knew you had done your very best to put on a straight face without your voice breaking, or tears spilling from your watery eyes. Your abscense was more hurtful than anything else. All he had to cling to, was the shared memories of your sweet laughter, whispered gossiping to one another, and how you never failed in comforting one another no matter the inconvenience.

Of course, he had the replies y he received from your letters; but they didn’t seem as light and sweet as they used to be, they seemed gloomier, and distantly cold. Lucerys adored you, even more than he could possibly adore his wife — as bad as it may sound — and himself, and if he had the possibility of changing his betrothal, Luke would have immediately broken it off just to marry you.

Recently, you had been informed by your father that Lucerys’ wife and Lady of Driftmark, Rhaena, along her newborn babe, had passed away during a difficult childbirth. Not only she had lost too much blood trying to give birth to the child, but as well the babe had taken too much time until it finally came out; and it was too late for both of them, immediatly passing away together.

Guilt burdened on you upon hearing the news. Especially, when you reminded yourself about the negative thoughts and bitterness you naturally had about her — yet, you couldn’t never have wished for such tragic event to happen. And the burden weighened even stronger when a traditional Velaryon funeral was held for her, and instead of assisting to it and visiting Lucerys to check on him, all you managed to do was solely write a letter to him offering your deepest, genuine condolences.

You had to admit to yourself, you felt wrongly awful for not having enough strenght of seeing him once again in person, but you were afraid of it being too awkward, or making him feel worse about the situation somehow. You didn’t want to further avoid him, however, you did, despite not wanting to admit it to yourself.

Until, destiny seemed to push you towards him, without you consciously realising. An invitation had arrived to you, from none other than Rhaenyra Targaryen, whom had managed to become the rightful Queen after winning the war against the Greens, and she was throwing a feast in King’s Landing. Much like you had done with Lucerys when his wife and babe died during childbirth, you had merely sent Rhaenyra a raven letter congratulating her for winning what was her birthright — for being the True Queen.

It had been years since you last saw her personally as well. Ever since you were a child, she had treated you as if you were her own sweet daughter, and she was like your best girl friend during your childhood, and teen years. After such victory and at the invitation to her feast, you never doubted in accepting in a heartbeat. And shortly after accepting to attend the feast, you prepared yourself to travel to King’s Landing.

A mix between eagerness and nervousness lingered on you during your travelling to King’s Landing. Of course, it was all because of the mere excitement you had after not seeing her and her family for many years, and you felt keen in properly congratulating her personally, and chatting together. Perhaps even to meet other allies of hers.

As soon as you arrived to the feast in King’s Landing, the atmosphere felt far more calming than you remembered. The environment was beautifully decorated, just properly for the feast. Soft, lovely music played in the background the moment you got into the feast, meeting other Lords and Ladies in there, and of course, you had the chance of seeing Rhaenyra once again after such a long time, greeting her cheerfully and even getting to chat a bit with her to catch up on how your lives had been.

As the time passed by, you decided to go chat with some other Lords and Ladies. And to have some fun with yourself, you kindly accepted the hand of a Lord that had offered himself to dance with you, amongst other people dancing. You had long forgotten about you own worries, giggles continuously spurred from your lips as you danced with another Lord, talking together about things that didn’t matter much. Gracefully, your dress spun along your gentle movements, and the jewellery you wore jiggled.

From afar, the young Lord of Driftmark, Lucerys, stared at you with both his arms behind his back. His green eyes carefully observed your every delicate movement, helplessly feeling a tinge of jealousy overwhelm him slowly and dreadfully at the sight of you laughing along the other Lord. Gods, you seemed even more precious than he remembered. More mature, and with such beauteous features that made his eyes remain fixed on you. It surely couldn’t be a coincidence, for you to be there, Lucerys had to approach you, and chat with you after many years of exchanging brief raven letters.

With gentle footsteps, Lucerys walked towards you. Your laughter was as endearingly sweet as the last time he had heard it during your shared youth, nearly intoxicating. Carrying a gentle grin, he cleared his throat as he stood next to you, and the other Lord. Both of you turned your heads around to stare at the person clearing his throat, and when you spotted Luke, your breath stopped for a moment. Your eyes went slightly wide, noticing with surprise how tall Lucerys had grown in comparison to when you were younger, nearly towering you, and how matured he looked. Your breath hitched as you fought back a timid grin, feeling your heartbeat thump rapidly against your chest. The way he stared at you with his green eyes… Seven Hells, you could melt right there in the spot.

“My Lord, my Lady Celtigar.” Lucerys greeted, and you gave him a single bow down with your head. As his gaze moved from staring at the Lord briefly, he then stared at you; his eyes lingering on your features for a few long seconds. “I hope you don’t mind, if I steal the Lady Celtigar’s hand from you?” a faint rosy hue crept on your cheeks, as the other Lord immediatly agreed with a smile, giving Luke a final bow with his head before bidding goodbye, and leaving the two of you alone — which, that’s just how Lucerys wanted to have you. All alone for himself.

As Lucerys offered his hand to you, you took it right there, walking with gentle footsteps as to dance together, just like you were doing with the previous Lord. “My Lord Velaryon,” you greeted playfully with a shy grin. “I’m pleased to see you once again.” the atmosphere was far from tense, as you would’ve imagined. You did feel slightly timid around him, but merely because he looked intimidatingly precious, and fully matured like a proper Lord — far from the shy, insecure young Prince he used to be.

Placing your other hand on his arm, you gently danced around together amidst other dancing Lords and Ladies, continuing to hear the gentle music in the background. “I could say the same, my Lady. You’ve grown to be even more beautiful than you already were.” immediatly, you scoffed at him, trying to dart your stare elsewhere as to hide the notorious blush growing across your cheeks. “Oh, shut up, Lucerys. If you think that about me, what is there left for me to say about you?” But Lucerys noticed your fluster right away, and along your teasing retort, it all served to fulfill his pride.

As he gentle held you, spinning around together softly while dancing, silence briefly loomed between the two of you. It wasn’t a bad silence, but the more the seconds kept passing, the more it left place for your own thoughts to occupy your mind. And the burdening guilt had returned to you. The guilt of knowing his wife and babe had died during childbirth, and not having been there for Luke when he surely needed it the most. Your tongue swiftly passed over your lower lip, faintly clearing your throat.

“I-I’m terribly sorry for what happened to Lady Rhaena and the babe, Luke.” you muttered shyly. The young Lord looked down at you, attentively listening. “I also apologise for not having been there for you. I should have.” gently, his thumb passed over the hand that held his own, smiling down at you. “Don’t apologise. You really don’t have to, I understand.” some relief washed over you at his words. “I did receive the letter you sent me, and that was enough for me. I don’t want you to apologise for anything.”

Helplessly, your grin widened at hearing how Lucerys softly comforted you. The warmth of his thumb running across the skin of your hand felt just like the last time he had touched you like that. It felt as if your skin screamed to be touched by him again. “Thank you, Luke. I really did miss you. I hope you know I never stopped thinking you, not even for a single day.”

His eyes twinkled gently. While it was fun to tease you on the inside because whatever thing he said it made you become immediatly flustered, it was now your turn to feel a sense of pride washing over you at the sight of his pale cheek turning a dark shade of red. Lucerys had greatly missed you, and your absence was notoriously felt by him. How could he not miss you, his dear friend... And the woman he so dearly adored more than anything?

“I have missed you terribly as well, vēzos qēlossās ñuho, more than you could possibly imagine.” my sun and stars, as he often fancied nicknaming you. Another trait you had missed from Lucerys, was all the nicknames he had only for you, and no one else. Luke knew just how much you loved High Valyrian, and how you appreciated hearing him talk in it, and he wasted no time in teaching you, and talking to you in Valyrian.

“I have needed you by my side more than anything else in my life. And now, the Seven have brought us back together.”

One thing the young Lord had for sure, is that now that you had returned right back into his arms after yeaes of not seeing each other, he wasn’t willing to let you escape so easily from him. You weren’t going anywhere.

Hours had passed since you arrived in King’s Landing and joined the feast. The nerves you had through your travelled had long washed away from you, now feeling a state of tiredness from all the dancing, laughing, and hyperactivity — and also, you still felt the keen emotion remaining on your veins of seeing Lucerys again, and having great fun with the boy you had always held deep into your heart, unlike no other.

An exhausted, yet gentle huff spurred from your lips as you reached the dimly lit chambers to spend the night in, and get some proper rest before parting back to where you belonged. The wooden door slightly creaked, shutting it closed behind of you the moment you entered. And as soon as you were in, your fingers immediatly moved in a lazily hurried manner to untie the laces from your dress.

You already had enough fun for the day, and you couldn’t await any longer to surrender yourself into a deep slumber. Beginning to open your dress slightly to free yourself from your clothing and change into a nightgown, your eyes were half lidded with tiredness. And before you could manage to fully undress, a hushed knock outside your door was heard. Furrowing your eyebrows in confusion, you turned around.

“Come in.” you chirped gently, curious at who knocked on your door late in the evening. The door was swiftly opened, creaking once again, only to reveal Lucerys. It was hard for you to fight back a smile at the mere sight of him. As soon as his hand closed the door discreetly behind of him, you could feel his eyes curiously lingering on your body, admiring it as your dress was loose. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

Trying hard to fight the blushing in your face, noticing the way he took in your figure for his own delight, you shook your head. “N-No, of course you aren’t. I was just preparing myself to sleep.” you explained, “I supposed you were already in bed?” in response, Lucerys simply shrugged. “Yes. But I couldn’t really sleep.” he replied shortly. His arms were both hidden behinds his back, gently approaching you with quiet footsteps.

Your eyebrows kept furrowed, awaiting for him to keep going. Some moments of awkward silence remained on the atmosphere, noticing how Lucerys seemed to struggle whatever he had to tell you. His hazel eyes remained on the ground, before raising his sight and staring at you. “I can’t sleep, knowing you’re finally here with me, after all these years.” he managed to whisper out. It seemed slightly shy, but at the same time, you knew his words were genuine.

“When I say I missed you, I truly mean it. I wish I could have seen you more often, like we used to do in our youth.” nibbling discreetly on your lower lip, you stood stiff in front of him, playing with the hem of your sleeves. “I never cared about whoever I married. That was supposed to be part of my duty as a future Lord—” abruptly, Luke paused for some seconds, before continuing. “—But the only person whom I genuinely adored ever since I have memory, and never stopped thinking about, was you.”

Lucerys stood right in front of you, shadowing you slightly with his height. Your sight was raised to stare at him in disbelief, feeling heat rise your cheeks. Nervously, Luke placed his hand on your cheek, beginning to caress your skin with the tip od his thumb. “You have no idea how I have longed for you; how not seeing you as often as we did when we were younger made me need you more than anything.” his thumb slowly moved towards your lower lip, brushing it. Your lips partly opened, losing yourself on the way he gazed down at you.

“I can’t hold back the fact that I love you. I’m in love with you, and I would anything to prove it to you, and have you by my side for the rest of my life.” for him, in a way, it was a relief to get those words off of his chest. Lucerys was undoubtedly devoted to you, and he never laid his eyes upon anyone else, but you. Unconsciously, you allowed the weight of your head to fall against the palm of his hand, melting at the feeling of his thumb stroking your cheek sweetly.

Without answering, your eyes were fixed on his own for a few seconds, appreciating the silence that had formed between the two of you. Suddenly, you tiptoed, firmly gripping his clothing to quickly pull him closer to you as he leaned further, and your lips immediatly locked against his own for the first time ever. Kissing him was an urgent need that you desperately craved. After many years of daydreaming about savouring the taste of his lips, you finally had the opportunity to do so, and you took it.

His lips tasted like seasalt, and at the same time, they were endearingly sweet, as well as plump. Initially, your actions took Lucerys by surprise... But much like you, ever since he had fallen head over heels for you, not one day passed without him fantasising about holding you in his arms, tasting your lips, and being more intimate with you. You kissed with such vigor, and so fervently that neither of you were aware of what you were doing, or were even aware of your surroundings anymore, as Lucerys placed one of his hands behind your neck, pulling you closer to deepen the kiss.

You were desperate to feel his body pressing against yours, to feel his warmth seeping into you. You wanted him, and you needed him. Your hands caressed his chest as they moved up and down, playing occasionally with the buttons of his clothing, trying desperately to gain some kind of feeling for his skin. Quietly you gasped as Lucerys abruptly pulled away from your lips, leaving you heavily panting, just like he panted. In disbelief, you stared at him notoriously desperate to keep kissing him, and he softly scoffed.

Sliding one of his hands on your waist, he moved to sit on the edge of your bed, falling down into the mattress with a huff. His hand then patted gently his lap. “Come. Sit on my lap.” he offered, smiling at you invitingly. Happily obliging, you did as he offered, immediatly approaching closer to him just to sit on his lap, weighing on him very softly, and wrapped your arms firmly around your neck. A smug grin appeared on his rosy lips as his hands were on your waist, caressing you with his fingers slowly.

You pressed yourself tightly against him, lowering down your face to press a smooch agaisnt his lips, to which Luke rapidly reciprocated. “You should sit on my lap more often.” he whispered, trailing kisses from your cheeks, lowering himself to your jawline, and approaching your neck. “It makes you look prettier, more than you already are.” his hot breath against your sensitive skin made you shiver softly, gasping as he spoke in a low tone, and kept pressing tender pecks on your neck.

One of his hands that rested on your waist moved slowly downwards, attempting to lift your dress to slip a hand under it, grasping your skin. Throwing your head back to give him further access to your flesh, you hummed quietly as your eyes were closed. His sight was raised to stare at you, as his other free hand played with the laces of your dress. “May I keep kissing and touching you?” you opened your eyes, looking down at him. A smile tugged at the corner of his lips, scraping his nails across your skin teasingly as one of his hands was under your dress, touching your leg.

If it were for him, he could take you right there, and pamper and show you just how much he adored you more than anything else in the world. But his mother taught him how to be a proper, respectful gentleman — he preferred to have your full consent before allowing his impulses to act by themselves, especially when it came to treating you.

You returned the way Luke gazed at you, with warmth and love, shyly smiling down at him. Leaning closer to him, lowering your face, you placed a gentle kiss onto his cheek, resting your lips there for several seconds. Luke’s lips curled into an easy smile, feeling your lips against his cheek, and gently craned his head slightly to kiss your lips. “Yes, you may. And you don’t need to ask for my permission, Luke” you agreed, closing your eyes once again, allowing him to continue with exploring every inch of your skin with fervor.

Lucerys leaned forward to place feather light kisses along your collarbone and on your throat, his touch almost feverish as he took you in his arms. He continued to pepper kisses on your neck, moving to your breasts, and your chest began to ache from how hard your heart was beating. You growled silently as one of his hands began untying the laces of your dress, loosening your clothing from your body as his lips focused on placing tender, yet desperate kisses on your breasts.

Writhing slightly on top of him, quiet moans spurred from your lips needily. Your hips began grinding against him, sliding a hand behind the back of his head, interwining your fingers between strands of his brunette messy hair. The sound of your muffled moans were drowned out by the sound of your pounding heartbeat, the sensation so sweet that you couldn’t help but feel the need to do it again and again, until it became unbearable.

Unable to wait any longer, you bit your lip sharply to suppress another moan. Your body tensed as Luke lifted your dress by it’s hem, up to your stomach. “You’re so precious, I could take care of you—” he whispered, interrupting himself briefly, moving his hand to caress your stomach with his fingertips in a slow, dedicated manner, until they travelled downwards to play with the waistband of your underwear. “No, I will take care of you so perfectly — like you deserve to be taken care of.” beneath you, you could feel his growing erection poking against your clothed, moistened genitalia; achingly throbbing in need to feel him.

It felt as if you were dreaming. Such things could occur in your fanaties — and yet, you were. Overall, despite the notorious eager wave of emotions washing over you, you felt rather nervous. It was the first time in your life you would ever have such intimate moment, only having known about what other ladies experienced, but never having the opportunity of doing it yourself. What comforted you, was the thought of Lucerys being there to guide you through, and knowing just how gently delicate ans patient he always was around you.

You swallowed, as you were pressed firmly against his lap, grinding against each other unconciously; the room being filled with your heavy pants. One of his trembling hands moved in a hurried manner to unbuckle his belt, loosening his trousers and rapidly lowering his pants. Attentively staring at his actions, your breath sharpened. You placed your hand on his chest, catching his attention. “Luke, wait–” you whispered, nervously.

Lucerys’ eyebrows knitted in worry, being afraid he might have pressured you, or even made you feel uncomfortable, as he patiently awaited for you to continue. “P-Please go slowly, and gentle. I-It’s my first time.” you awkwardly admitted, keeping your gaze elsewhere timidly as a blush crept on your skin. A sigh of relief escaped from him, knowing you were merely wishing him to go slow and gentle.

He quietly chuckled, pressing his lips against the corner of your lips, and placing several kisses on that zone as his other hand cupped your cheek tenderly. “Of course, my love. I wasn’t planning on treating you otherwise, either way.” your eyes closed as a smile grew on your own lips, feeling loved and pampered by the young Velaryon Lord. “Please continue, Luke. I need you.” you whispered back, moving your head to meet your lips with his own.

A growl of approval came deep from his throat. The hand that cupped your cheek let go of it slowly, and moved downwards towards his underwear, tugging on the fabric. He removed them quickly, before leaning forward to place light pecks on your lips once more as your own shaking hands removed your panties, sliding them through your legs quickly and tossing them apart.

Once he did lower his underwear, he pulled away slightly, resting his forehead against yours. “If you wish me to stop, tell me. I could never try to hurt you in any way, my sweet.” Lucerys spoke softly, almost shyly; and who could blame him? You were as delicate as the petal of a flower. But you didn’t want him to stop, not now.

You gave him a small reassuring nod, encouraging Lucerys to continue. The young Lord smiled to himself, finally pulling out his erection, feeling it’s tip poke against your wet folds, rubbing himself teasingly; which made several groans escape from you. You straddled him, wrapping your legs around his waist. His panting became heavier, ocassionally hitching his breathing as your moist folds grinded against his tip, which leaked precum. Both his hands gripped firmly your waist, trailing kisses all across your neck in between gasps.

Slowly and carefully, moving his hips, and helping your body move down to him, his erected member slipped inside your tight entrance. Initially, the stinging, burning sensation of your inner walls being stretched made you groan; immediatly hiding your face in the crook of Lucerys’ neck, and digging your nails deep into his skin. His arms were wrapped tightly around you, staying still at the sight of your reaction, looking down at you with concern.

“A-Are you alright, love?” Lucerys knew ladies took their time until they adjusted themselves during intercourse. And for you, Luke was willing to be as patient and loving as he could possibly be. With a hitched breathing, clinging yourself to him as he peppered the top of your head with kisses, you nodded weakly. You awaited until you adjusted to his size, feeling your slick increase as it leisurely turned into a pleasant sensation.

“Y-You can continue, please.” you mumbled in a whisper, placing a soft kiss on his shoulder blade. A smile grew on him as one of his hands caressed the back of your head, playing with the strands of your silky hair lovingly — as if Lucerys admired every bit that composed the entirety of yourself. And with a gentle movement, holding firmly your waist with one of his hands, he kept pushing further inside slowly. A high-pitched groan escaped from you, moving down on his cock.

Your soft moans and pants became louder, the more used you became to the feeling. Despite your sweet sounds encouraging him to go further, his movements remained gentle and slow, yet deep. “G-Gods,” he breathed out, as you moved your face, encountering his own, to press a quick sloppy kiss. “Y-You feel so tight, and you take me s-so well, issa jorraelagon—” continous growls escaped deeply from his throat as your pussy tightened around his erection with each penetration. “I-Is it okay if I move faster? I-I promise I will still be gentle,” he inquired in a low tone, moving his green eyes to stare at you, awaiting to know if you felt comfortable and ready enough. You nodded vehemently in approval, nibbling down your lower lip to hold back your pleasured grunts.

Desperately, beginning to progressively move faster — much to your delight, heard in your high-pitched whines —, his lips found their way to your sensitive neck, making you throw your head back to give him more carnal access. “S-Seven Hells, your skin f-feels like I’m kissing soft silk, you’re beautiful.” he praised, using softly his tongue to pass it across the soft spots in your neck, occasionally nibbling on them while he pressed you all the way down against his throbbing cock.

“A-And you taste so sweet. F-Fuck, I adore you.” a soft fleshy sound accompanied the simultaneous pants spurring from your mouths, which then became slightly loud moans despite the urge of holding them back. His hips moved upwards, making his thrusts against your wet cunt become more intense, hitting deeply against your sweet spot. With each pound against that one spot, his name escaped relentlessly from your mouth. “L-Lucerys,” you growled, as his lips continued focusing on your neck, throat, and moving to your collarbone; in each kiss, a cry of pleasure spurred helplessly from him.

“I-I love you. I love you more than y-you could possibly imagine... More than anyone else.” he murmured into your neck, sucking and nipping at the tender skin there with the gentlest touch he could muster. With each word that passed between his lips, a moan left you with each breath, his hips moving even harder as he let himself get lost in your intimate encounter.

This wasn’t like having intimacy with his previous, now deceased wife — that was done for mere duties and responsabilities; to bring heirs to Driftmark, the ones that would sit in the Driftwood throne. This, was an intimate act strictly out of love. It was a moment Luke always longed to have with you, the person whom he truly desired unconditionally, and the one whom he was willing to give his entire heart and soul, and all of the love that he had. “Skorkydoso kostagon ao sagon sīr vok, se gevie? A-Ay jorrāelan–” (how can you be so perfect, and beautiful? I love you.) You owned his heart, and you most certainly belonged with him.

As his pace quickened, you were able to grab onto his shoulders to support yourself without letting go of him, feeling his muscles tense underneath your fingertips as he continued to move into you. He was going fast enough for both of your bodies to come undone with a mix of ecstasy, but at the same time, pure love that was expressed in his gentle — yet intense — thrusts, kisses, and words of praising. Your slick was coated well enough all across his throbbing member, making it easier for him to slip in and out of you with fervid intensity.

A knot formed inside your stomachs the deeper and faster his thrusts were against your moistened cunt, hitting against your overstimulated folds. Your violently legs shook as they were firmly wrapped around his body, while he continued to hit your sweet spot that made you absolutely weak, clinging to him needily the closer you felt to coming. Both your arms were around his neck, slightly digging your nails deep into the skin of his back.

The panting that escaped from both of your lips intensified, becoming loud growls and moans as the knot inside your stomachs tightened, feeling as if it was about to loosen at any moment. His cock became harder inside of you, pulsating; as you couls feel your own slick coming down faster. Eagerly, while one of his hands remained gripping your hip to help you with your own movements, his other hand went to the back of your head, intertwining his fingers in between strands of your hair, pulling you closer to him.

“Avy jorrāelan,” (I love you) Lucerys whispered against your lips, grasping them against his own. “Nyke kostagon mērī jorrāelagon ao.” (I can only love you), he continued, as his lips needily locked with your own, tilting his head slightly as to deepen the kiss, feeling your intensifying hot pants continously hit against your skins. You could feel your orgasm approaching, your core tightening as your stomach twisted in an increasingly uncomfortable way.

A loud groan escaped deep from your throat against his lips as you felt your walls tighten around his pulsating cock, milking him, and your own cum violently coming down as a flush of wetness. His hands firmly gripped both your hips, pressing you all the way down his shaft. A loud groan pleasantly escaped from him, feeling his cum shot several spurs inside of you, provoking in you to feel warmth in your stomach.

“Fuck,” he cursed under his breath, parting is lips aqay from you briefly, resting his forehead lazily against you. A grin curved on the corner of his lips, chuckling breathlessly to himself as both of you tried to calm down from your simultaneous orgasm and release. His fingertips caressed your hips with a shaky movement from the arousal, remaining buried deep inside of you.

Copying his previous actions, you released a panting giggle. “I-I quite liked that, Luke.” you whispered, rubbing the tip of your nose against his own lovingly. Humming contentedly, Lucerys returned the affection. “You have no idea how much I missed you, my Lord Velaryon. And how many times I imagined for this to happen.” a faint rosy pins hue formed on his cheeks, as his chest rose and fell slowly, trying to catch his breathing.

Without thinking it, both his hands cupped your cheeks, and his lips began exploring your face by littering you with delicate kisses — tresting you as if you were made of glass. “My sweet princess,” Lucerys whispered, not fighting back a smile. His index finger fell to your arm, moving it downward to explore your skin, feeling it delicately on his digit, until it reached your hand. “I could say the exact same to you, and many other things. You are so perfect, physically and personally, I would despise it if any other Lord had your attention.”

Immediatly your arms were wrapped against his neck again, giggling as you placed your lips on the tip of his nose. Gods, his heart was melting at how much pure love and desire he felt for you. It could combust from being overwhelmed at his own affection. His green eyes fluttered shut, allowing to be pampered in those little kisses coming from your pretty lips, leaving their warmth on his flesh.

Lucerys let his head tiredly rest on the crook of your neck, inhaling discreetly as to feel your endearing honey scent intoxicate him. How could he have not missed you? And now that you were there with him, having had sexual relationships and shared kisses and feelings, you weren’t going to so easily escape from him now. Merely remembering how you distanced yourself after his betrothal felt like a burning, stinging pain on his heart.

His arms were protectively wrapped around your waist, growling in delight quietly. Lazily, Luke placed a kiss on your shoulder blade, opening his eyes to look up at you staring at him adoringly.

“Nyke jāhor daor ivestragī ao jikagon, issa prūmia. Ao jāhor daor dakogon qrīdrughagon hen issa dombo.”

♡ taglist : ♡

@jjamieberry @anemicroyalcore @countsmoon @beeebo234 @manuholland6 @keiratonks @kyuupidwrites @tchatso @phantasyy @tasty-nutella @mstxdes @valeriecash @cookielovesbook-akie @zzz000eee @bellarkeselection @feliuuuksks @visenya-reigned @maria699669 @mariaelizabeth21-blog1 @sweethoneyblossom1 @jamiemydeer @snowprincesa1

#lucerys velaryon x reader #lucerys velaryon x reader smut #lucerys velaryon smut #prince lucerys x reader #luke velaryon x reader #hotd x reader #house of the dragon x reader #hotd x reader smut #house of the dragon x reader smut #hotd x you #hotd x y/n #house of the dragon imagine #house of the dragon x you

684 notes · View notes

animeredhead101 · 7 months ago

Text

Dad Hood DP x DC Crossover

Completed

The Devil Wore a T-Shirt by DisillusionedDanny :

After a one-night stand, Danny finds himself pregnant with Red Hood's kid. Now he finds himself as a dad to a small child with an important decision to make. Does he tell Red Hood he has a child? Or does Danny raise the kid by himself? Word Count: 24,778 Completed

Nothing But The Dead And Dying (back in my little town) by Umei_no_Mai :

Dan has just been rescued and is feeling a bit shorter than usual. Jason Todd has just been petitioned like he's a feudal warlord, which has never happened before but he could maybe get used to. They can probably make this work so long as Batman doesn't stick his nose in. Yeah, like that'll happen. Word Count: 123,925 Completed

my boy, my son by DisillusionedDanny :

In desperate need of a vacation, Danny has Clockwork turn him into a five year old so that he can have the childhood he never got. Soon, five year old Danny finds himself running wild in Gotham only to be kidnapped by some weird teenager in a costume who decides that Danny is going to be his son. What's Danny to do but accept this new weird guy as his new dad and become a super cool crime fighting vigilante with his new adopted family who have no clue he's a two thousand year old ghost king? Word Count: 18,210

Dad Hood by JaxinKH :

After a wish gone wrong, Danny has reverted to a child and sent to Gotham. Jason doesn't know how the kid ended up in his appartement, but he is now stuck looking after him. How hard could it be?

Word Count: 18,236

On-going

It's Not Sugar by ConspiracyCrows :

Ellie is destabilized and nearly killed by Vlad while trying to make another, "better", clone of Danny. In order to stabilize her she was de-aged to about 7, and now has chronic issues balancing her ecto the same way a type one diabetic has issues balancing blood sugars. In fact that's the cover story the pair use when Danny enrolls Ellie at Gotham Academy. The one favor he will allow Vlad to do for them. While Vlad seems to have finally come to his senses about Ellie, Danny won't let him anywhere near her ever again. Which is why they moved to Gotham in the first place, Vlad won't step foot there. It also helps that Lady Gotham is more than happy to have the Realms' Ambassador to the Living in her streets. They settle into Crime Alley, and Danny may or may not have forgotten to introduce himself to the Haunt owner, assuming Gotham would handle the niceties as he gets Ellie settled, and handles the pressing issues of the negotiations between the city, the realms, and those denizens of both who want or need one thing or other. Word Count: 23,052 On-going

Imprint by Hashtag_DriveBy :

He screwed his eyes shut, held his breath, desperately wished that he was back in his safehouse, alone and blissfully unaware. But the weight in his hands remained, and when he opened his eyes, it was to the bean-shaped 'fuck you' the Lazarus Pit had kindly bestowed upon him, arms and legs folded up against his front beneath off-white muslin while tiny lips smacked softly.

What the fuck.

What the hell was Jason supposed to do now?

Word Count: 119,791 On-going

If you find a vigilante in the dumpster by lunamugetsu :

The plan was simple, Jazz and her now de aged brother would go lay low in Gotham, act as a mother-son duo. Wait as Danny heals up by absorbing the ambient ectoplasm leaking from the city and Vlad gives the green light that he has a safe place they could stay. Plus with the blessing from the Ghost of Gotham and knowing that even the GIW wouldn't dare to encroach on Batman's territory, it was a pretty safe plan. That was until a certain vigilante just keeps on finding himself in their dumpster. / / It was a normal night of patrol for Jason. Beating up a bunch of criminals. Shooting them with bullets (they're rubber bullets Bruce! Calm down!) Get stabbed by them. Pass out from blood loss in the place he was taking refuge in Wake up in an apartment, his wounds bandaged and all. And to a black haired blue eyed kid staring at him. "I found you in the garbage!" Word Count: 120,002 On-going

Please Don't Take My Sunshine Away by FearlessHades :

After escaping from the GIW, Danny crash lands in Gotham. He's six years old, his entire life has burned behind him, and one of the Gotham vigilantes is running around with a stifled Core. What's a kid to do?

A Jason Adopts Danny fic featuring De-aged!Danny, family feels, and Jason's Grand Master Plan going completely off the rails.

Word Count: 53,233

The (Un)Living Weapon by Anonymous :

They had only planned on raiding the facility. They hadn't expected it to be barren. Apart from a kid, chained and muzzled. With eyes of Lazarus water. Jason didn't intend on getting a kid out of the whole ordeal, but unlike Bruce, he is ready to kill to keep him safe. Word Count: 47,483

Mending a Family by Katelover98 :

Sequel to Creating a Family.

I decided to write this after getting such a good response on that fic. However, I wrote this new fic here instead of updating it in case anyone liked the open ending and didn't want more to spoil the way I left it. There won't be an overarching plot but a bunch of one-shots that show how Jason went from no family to a family that would kill and die for him.

This fic won't have a set schedule so I'll update when inspiration hits. That means one week I might update daily and other times it might take a while. It'll depend

Fair warning, I don't know much about Roy Harper, but I've done a bit of research so when he shows up, hopefully, he'll be well-written.

Word Count: 45,852

Visitant Lights by Shynnohwen for Cielle_Noire, AcesAndSpades72, foldingfacets :

After a run in with Vlad that left the entire Fenton family turned into little children and a subsequential kidnapping by what they think are ninjas the Fenton family escape to Gotham to lay low and figure out how to reverse their ages as Sam and Tucker help where they can, growing sense of dread as months goes by and they are no closer to fixing this. Danny, frustrated at lack of progress and tiny body, runs into the Red Hood while stealing his wheel to replace the one he broke. This results in Jason and the Pit Madness co-parenting, Dick mistaken for a stripper, Tucker unknowingly becoming Oracle's archnemesis, Sam believing the local coffee addict is a serial killer, Damian taking on an apprentice, various members of the Rogue Gallery becoming self-appointed uncles and aunts, Amity Park becoming a hellhole full of supernaturally powerful people trying to survive, Damian trying to get a certain Fenton adopted into his family, and Joker developing severe and crippling phasmophobia. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Now has a TV Tropes! https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fanfic/VisitantLights Word Count : 82,890

#jason todd #danny phantom #ao3 fanfic #crossover fanfiction #danny fenton #dc universe #dp x dc crossover #red hood #dad hood

189 notes · View notes

eroguron0nsense · 1 year ago

Text

Garp Rant #11543

Because I'm something of a Certified Garp Hater/extremely obsessed with this man, and because Tumblr people seem to like my Garp takes and/or find them extremely pain-inducing, here's another one for funsies! Again, Garp is an incredibly written character and I massively enjoy his moral failings and human shortcomings, hence why I won't shut up about how much he sucks. So we all remember Garp crying in front of Ace during his imprisonment and awaiting his execution, lamenting the fact that his son and grandson could have maybe avoided this horrible horrible fate that awaits them at Marineford if they'd just become good marines like he'd tried to press them into. Every time he says it, he sounds more desperate, sadder, and angrier, like he's experiencing the stages of grief and going through denial, anger bargaining all at once, lashing out at his grandkids for supposedly causing him grief by defying his wishes, or maybe praying or wishing for a world where they could have followed in his footsteps and lived happily ever after. And when Ace hears that again at Impel Down, he says this:

Here's the thing though: Ace is unequivocally correct Garp should, by all rights, know this. He lived through the fallout of Roger's execution. He knew long before that exactly what would happen to Roger's loved ones and anyone the government could get their hands on who'd ever associated with him. Even before they started committing femicides/infanticides in Baterilla trying to end Roger's bloodline, he knew that the Marines were going to target completely innocent people in the name of purging the bloodline and cementing their "victory" over the greatest threat they'd ever faced. He specifically had to smuggle Rouge out of there so she could give birth to Ace, and all the while dozens of families were being brutalized by his peers and having their lives torn apart. That was the cost the Marines were willing to incur to kill a hypothetical infant, and years later, when that very same child is set to be executed, Sengoku goes on a remorseless public tirade about the necessity of killing babies and the horrible trickery and audacity Rouge displayed by dying so that they wouldn't kill her baby too.

Garp knows every single piece of this information in painful, excruciating detail. He's so horrified by it he feels the need to fulfill this wish of Roger's because he knows blameless people will die. He has Ace raised in secret to protect him from Marines who are figuratively and literally out for his blood. And yet, throughout this boy's childhood, he clings to the notion that maybe, just maybe, the people he knows regularly commit atrocities, who have carried out at least 3 genocides that we know of in Garp's lifetime, who were willing to commit mass infanticide for a woman and child they hadn't verified the existence or identity of at the time, would have accepted him within their ranks and turned a blind eye to that information when it eventually, inevitably surfaced. That Ace can find salvation from the people who stole every loved one he ever had before he was even born, who slaughtered his mother's community and pushed her to her death, and were slavering at the opportunity to kill her. That even though Ace was born in direct opposition to them, has had a target trained on him before he was born, these people who tried so goddamn hard to kill him would surely welcome his presence and not murder him the second they found out if he could just be a compliant model soldier and make himself useful. It's hammered home pretty effectively–especially in the manga– and One Piece has never been known to be subtle in its messaging, but I swear to God I see so many people echoing the notion that Garp's attempts to force his grandchildren into serving the Evil Empire was done because he knew was their only shot at safety from the WG, and I fucking despise this take. Ace saying that he could never be a marine here in Impel Down isn't some young man's rationalization for his (beyond valid) desire not to subscribe to the preset path Garp laid out for him; it's literally the only logical conclusion if you know literally anything about the circumstances of his birth and upbringing, and Garp only thinks that the leopards wouldn't eat Ace's face because he's fucking delusional This in and of itself is extremely telling of how horribly warped Garp's perception of the Navy is, and how deeply he's willing to buy into the Marines and their warped propaganda no matter how many glaring examples he sees throughout his life that counter his worldview, but let's not forget that this applies to Luffy too. This is slightly hairier, in that if Luffy was a) the sort of person who could willingly accept a career in the marines and b) managed to cling really, really tightly to his grandfather's coattails and legacy, there might have been a very, infinitesimally small chance that he could have joined the Navy. The higher ups know that Dragon is Garp's son and therefore Luffy is Dragon's by logical inference, but I could see some AU where Luffy is a fundamentally different person and manages to build himself up in the Navy if not for two things I think warrant examination. It's pretty evident, and Dragon explicitly confirms, that Luffy being known as his son would have put him in incredible danger, only feeling comfortable with acknowledging it and the possibility of actually reuniting with his child after Luffy was both publicly recognized due to factors beyond his control, and proved that he was more than capable of holding his own. But I want to draw attention to this one otherwise pretty silly little gag moment between Garp and Sengoku when they learn that Luffy's broken into Impel Down, and present a theory that's kind of a reach but also not really

Now the phrasing here kind of interests me, in that it ties back to earlier demonstrated patterns that the Navy uses repeatedly in collective punishment for the families and loved ones of their primary targets. Rouge and Ace barely escaped the mass murders intended for them because of their connection, but Tom was also originally sentenced to death for having had a connection to Roger, and ultimately chose that as the offence he wanted to be sentenced for at Enies Lobby. Law, as a child survivor of Flevance, has multiple hospitals try and turn him in to the World Government to be killed when Cora tries to find someone to treat him because their policy is to pull out the roots and salt the earth whenever they deem a person or population politically inconvenient. Robin's flashback shows us Akainu blowing up a refugee boat on the off chance that one of those people that they were planning to evacuate might have gotten past their initial screening for archaeologists/poneglyph readers. At Marineford, Akainu specifically targets Luffy not because of his prior offences or even his attempt to rescue Ace, but because he's Dragon's son and his and Roger's bloodlines need to be eradicated. This is not an institution that is in any way reluctant to destroy anyone tangentially affiliated to a designated enemy, and Luffy being the son of the worst criminal in history seems to put him right in line with all of those other cases. In light of this, and Garp's massive blind spots and wishful thinking regarding his peers and employers, it's not that much of a stretch to assume that the only reason Garp's exempt from being targeted like Dragon is because of his popularity/symbolic importance/utility, and that Luffy likely wouldn't have been safe even if he weren't a pirate. Garp's circle of confidantes/friends in high places is powerful, but clearly there are factions (Akainu, Ryokugyu etc) that would be substantially less willing and who are given preferential treatment by the Elders and Celestial Dragons. There might be something to read into based on the fact that Garp is the only known person from a D bloodline who's achieved massive success in service to the World Government and not defected from the Navy after realizing its true nature (props to Saul), and therefore he might project the fact that he's been rewarded by the system despite being a "sworn enemy of the Gods" onto his family, but that still doesn't account for the massive, delusional arrogance he displays in insisting that, despite everything–especially, especially the murders committed in pursuit of Ace, that robbed him of his birth mother and community–the Navy is the best and safest place for either of those boys. TLDR Garp not wanting his grandsons to have a bounties on their heads is one thing, but it says a lot that in spite of everything he knows, he's willing/determined to put Ace and Luffy in an environment that's extremely dangerous for them –and in Ace's case 100%, unquestionably fatal– because he's so convinced that compliance and the platonic ideals of "justice" and military service/hard work being rewarded by the system could supersede all of that.

#monkey d luffy #one piece #portgas d ace #marineford #trafalgar law #trafalgardwaterlaw #nico robin #monkey d garp #monkey d dragon #sengoku the buddha #akainu sakazuki #admiral akainu #portgas d rouge #marineford arc #one piece spoilers #op spoilers #jaguar d. saul

474 notes · View notes

godihatethiswebsite · 2 months ago

Text

Simon Riley x reader - Hot Cocoa

CW: childhood abuse, implied alcohol and drug usage, angst/comfort

You didn’t know it at the time, but it was more than just a cup of hot cocoa.

Soft hands–so unlike his mothers–never having been braced against the impact of another’s cruelty, yet clutching his with the same maternal insistence as you slip the steaming mug of sweetness between the gnarled, calloused proof of his misfortunate life.

There is no preamble of cracked leather; no metal branded welts to be found from a diseased monstrosity who does not care if they are hidden. Simon’s knuckles are intact, not bruised nor split against his sperm donor’s chin. Sentinel instincts are rendered obsolete without the triggering sniffles of his traumatized sibling. No need to keep playing the brave little soldier – the screams of nearby children are not born from brutality.

Doe eyes gaze up at him with an exuberant sparkle, no glassy haze plying you into absent submission. Water molecules of heated breath turning crystalline vapor in the frosty night air hold no trace of ABV – no lingering aroma of whiskey sorrow. The tremble in your bones is from a lack of knitted mittens, not survival induced adrenaline spikes. Frozen fractals catch in silken strands kept immaculate and washed, a polished sheen so unlike her familiar limp straw, reflecting the untarnished soul within he’s done his best to keep pure.

The failure of his mother’s visage haunts his waking past, but the dying warmth of her love renews in an unexpected presence.

He never told you of the act – the ritual of younger nights in a bygone civil hellscape. When the door had finished rattling on rust weathered hinges and the taillights of abuse were all but distant fireflies. When his brother crawled out from his false sanctuary of childhood innocence, having braved the monsters beneath the bed rather than the one he still called ‘papa’. When the woman who should’ve loved them better remembered who she was, the pain of mottled flesh replacing the lucidity of the mind. When he saw his mother for who she was: a woman worn down by sadistic malice. Who was just as much a victim with the scars left on her skin, the pockmarks on her elbows forced there by a stronger hand, the blonde hairs scattered and bloody pulled like cobwebs from her scalp.

Red rimmed eyes spoke wordless apologies for the naivety of her past; for the regrets of choosing wrong the father of her children, the life she wished she had the chance to go back and undo.

A dead end promise to fix the mistakes of their future – someday.

He clung to the cheap disposable cardboard like the memory of crawling into a threadbare twin, shadows kept at bay with the weak glow from Tommy’s nightlight. The kettle whistled as the pair of them settled, packaged powder dumped into chipped ceramic and brought to them with a shaky smile. He would never voice aloud his own preference for less marshmallows, to give force to the cracks already shattering her resolve. If not for her sake than for his brother’s.

The expression on your face brings him back from gloomier times, wrapped up in festive cheer all windswept and frost bitten, a backlight of radiance from the bustling market stand you purchased the beverages from. He watches as overeagerness singes your tongue, the small yelp of complaint soothed by a mouthful of whipped cream, the pain doing nothing to retract from the unbridled joy you feel in this simple cherished moment.

You.

A gift–he knows–sent from heaven by the broken woman he forgave so very long ago. Her promise to him taken physical form.

It’s so much more than just a cup of hot cocoa.

It’s healing.

Masterlist

#i think we all could use a little comfort #godihatethiswebsite #over the rainbow #call of duty #cod #spooky scary skeleton #simon ghost riley #simon riley #cod ghost #ghost x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #simon riley x reader

129 notes · View notes

goodqueenaly · 2 months ago

Note

do you have any theories as to why Ned didn't return Willam Dustin's body to the North? Even accounting for the fact that he probably couldn't have reasonably suspected that this would lead his widow into nursing a decades long grudge against House Stark, it seems out of character for him to just leave the corpse of a cherished northern companion in Dorne

It’s important to remember the context of Willam Dustin’s death - that is, the events of the tower of joy. Net had not just experienced Willam’s own death (not to mention the deaths of his other northern companions, still less the deaths of the Kingsguard members). He had also witnessed the death of his beloved sister, while simultaneously discovering the existence of (as yet unnamed) baby Jon. Ned was dealing with a situation both personally traumatic and practically highly complicated and delicate - one in which Willam Dustin’s death, and the question of his body’s fate thereafter, was only a single part.

In this situation, I think Ned had to make hard decisions about how he was going to proceed. He had to dispose of the bodies of both his comrades at arms and the fallen Kingsguard in a way that wouldn’t arouse suspicion about the circumstances of their deaths; he had to provide for the baby nephew whose mother may have made his welfare her dying wish to her brother, and whose very existence was a potential bombshell for the rebellion he, Ned, had just helped lead to victory; he had to return his much-loved sister to her final resting place among the Starks, as she had also requested; and he had to go back to Winterfell, along the way breaking the news - or a version of the news - of the tower of joy to those families affected - not just Lady Barbrey, but also Ashara Dayne (not to mention the Glover, Cassel, Ryswell, and Wull families presumably as well).

So I think Ned decided that the best course of action with respect to Willam Dustin’s body was to bury it at the site of the now-demolished tower of joy, along with the bodies of the rest of the fallen men. As a matter of practicality, it would be much easier burying Willam and the others there than try to drag the bodies of eight men however far it would be from the relative remoteness of the tower of joy to the nearest silent sister to strip the bodies to bones (a rather specialized skill, as Barristan ruefully reflects when considering what to do with Quentyn Martell’s body in Meeteen). It was not, I think, that Ned did not care about Willam Dustin: indeed, the fact that Ned selected Willam as part of the very small party Ned compiled to accompany him on his mission to find Lyanna speaks I believe to Ned’s trust in Lord Willam’s skill and discretion. Nor do I think Ned was trying to insult Willam’s memory, the Dustins, or Lady Barbrey in this moment; after all, I don’t think Ned was trying to insult the memory of Ethan Glover; his own beloved late brother’s squire, or that of Martyn Cassel, a familiar face of Winterfell Ned had likely known from early childhood and his trips home from the Eyrie (not to mention Arthur Dayne; a knight Ned seems to have deeply respected). However, in an extremely sensitive situation, where the greatest level of secrecy had to be maintained, trying to get the five dead northerners, not to mention the three dead Kingsguard, to a silent sister or a motherhouse of silent sisters to have their bones preserved might have seemed like an excellent opportunity to raise questions about what the Lord of Winterfell and the Lord of Greywater Watch were doing with so many notable dead warriors (including Kingsguard missing from every major latter stage battle of Robert’s Rebellion), beyond the considerable practical impediments to doing so. If Ned cared most deeply about his late sister, and his promises to her, above anyone else who perished at the tower of joy - and I’m sure he did - it was also practically much easier for Ned to take the single body of Lyanna to be stripped to its bones without as much in the way of questioning, and leave his dead companions and the dead Kingsguard as fallen in battle not otherwise specified.

Of course, because Ned had to maintain strict secrecy around what truly happened at the tower of joy, there was no way to explain all of this detail to Barbrey. If Ned was willing to intimidate into silence even his own wife on a line of questioning dangerously close to the events around the tower of joy showdown, he was certainly not going to tell Barbrey the full circumstances of Willam’s death and burial. Barbrey’s feelings of grief for the man I think she loved were undoubtedly real and valid, and by extension her bitterness toward Ned for seemingly prioritizing his sister over her late husband, but Barbrey also could not know why Ned had done what he did, nor what personal cost Ned believed he bore in being unable to return the bones of any of the men who had perished in the shadow of that tower.

#asoiaf meta #willam dustin #barbrey dustin #Eddard stark #tower of joy

90 notes · View notes

mysouleaten · 10 months ago

Text

ITS GOING TO GET COLD..

PLATONIC! izana & kakucho x PARENTAL! reader

summary ... izana and kakucho make a promise to their mother, promising to come back home safe and well... one of them didn't get to fulfill that promise

warnings ... angst, hurt/no comfort, izana being soft before his death, death, author's second time writing angst.. aaand its not proofread

three shots.

three shots to the chest izana kurokawa took for kakucho

blood was pushed out of his mouth as it leaked down his chin and down his throat

but even while izana was slowly dying from blood loss he moved his eyes to look at kakucho who was leaning over his body

"im..sorry kakucho.. but- ..but I don't think ill make it home.. for mom"

kakucho's eyes widened with tears and izana calling their adoptive parent 'mom' for the first time... he just wished it was under better circumstances

he izana coughs "can..you make it home for me?.. tell ma I love her.. that I've always loved her.."

"izana- yes- please stop taking.. you can tell her that yourself!" kakucho stumbles over his words

"hey..you two, come back home ok? promise me you'll only come back with few injuries" [name] their legal adoptive parent asked with a quiet voice

she stood by the front door of izana's and kakucho's childhood house

izana looked over his shoulder and smiled "don't worry, we'll be fine, no one is going to beat us"

kakucho nodded, agreeing with izana

they both gave their parent a warm hug izana departed to his bike first while kakucho stayed behind

"kakucho, please keep each other safe, ok? I don't want any calls from the hospital!" she chuckles

kakucho just laughs a little "don't worry mom, we promised, didn't we? we'll be back home soon!"

kakucho turned around to leave the porch and got on his own motorbike and waved to his mother while izana smiled softly at her before they drove off together

"oh please be safe.. I love you two so much I couldn't bear losing you two.."

izana looks up at mikey "my mother.. real mother, she's home alone.., can... you keep her safe for me alongside kakucho..?"

mikey stood silent and kakucho's tears started to build up more "izana! don't say that! we promised we'd come home together...i promised her t-that!.."

"y..yeah we did, huh?.. shes probably already made lunch for us..

but it's going to get cold.."

kakucho couldn't bring himself to knock on the door

he stood there for what seems like forever.. the words that izana spoke replaying in his mind like a broken record..

"she made lunch for us.."

"it's going to.. get cold"

"tell..mom I love her form.. me"

"..keep her safe"

"don't let her cry..."

don't let her cry? how was he going to do that? he knew the minute he uttered the words of izana's death.. she was going to break down

he finnly opened the front door and entered the home

it was dark. he closed the door behind him and looked around, on the left side of the room the kitchen table had lunch that their mother made for them but it got...cold

she probably was waiting for so long for them to get back.. like they always did.. together

he then looked to the right and saw the TV on, and a figure peacefully sleeping on the couch

he slowly walked around the couch, kakucho stood in front of his parent and gently shook her shoulder and she woke up

slowly blinking away the sleep and looking up at kakucho with a hopeful smile but then it turned into a light frown and she looked around

she was looking for her oldest son..

"wheres.. izana?"

kakucho sucked in a sharp breath "h-he didn't make it mom...."

nothing could have prepared him for the violent sob that left his and izana's mother that night..

taglist ... @coryfromtokyo

hahah im still really rusty at writing angst :)

I SWEAR IF THIS DOESN'T SHOW UP IN THE TAGS ILL GO NUTS

#OH THIS GOT A LITTLE KICK TO IT..#tokyo revengers #tokyo revengers x reader #tokyo rev x reader #tokyo revengers fluff #tokyo revengers angst #izana kurokawa x reader #kakucho x reader #izana kurokawa #kakucho #angst #post not showing up

177 notes · View notes

hells-plaid-angel · 11 months ago

Text

Dean had the lung capacity of a deep-sea diver. After years of holding his breath as he drove through tunnels, he'd honed the skill, only gasping for breath when the Impala's windshield broke through the darkness and into the light. The habit had formed as a child but lingered into adulthood as most childhood fantasies did.

As a boy, his father raised him on superstition. If you made a wish when the world was swallowed by blackness and you could hold your breath until the end of a tunnel, that wish would come true. Over the years he'd wished for a hundred stupid things. He'd wished his mother was still alive, that he lived a normal life or that a pretty girl would look his way. He'd wished his father had been the one who'd died in the fire. He wished he didn't feel that way.

Once Dean had blacked out in the backseat of the Impala when driving the I-90 through Boston. He'd come to with Sammy squealing like a stuck pig and John Winchester cursing like a sailor. For the next year, being in Massachusetts made him feel light-headed.

Kids and old men are similar in their love of rituals. Dean was no longer a child, but he wasn't ready to call himself an old man. The ritual had changed over the years, but at its heart, it was always the same.

Dean found his new ritual each night he woke from a nightmare. That night, he found himself in the bunker. The image of his hands covered in blood lingered in the darkness of the room. He held his breath wishing for the dream not to be true. He only breathed when he switched on the lights and found his hands clean. In his dreams, Cas was always dying.

The nightmares weren't helped by the fact that the angel had died, numerous times. His sleep-addled mind took time to sort fact from fiction. Had Cas come back this time?

Dean Winchester knew better than anybody that death didn't always stick. Dean Winchester knew better than anybody that the universe liked to make him suffer. Both statements were equally true.

In the nightmare, Cas had died in his arms. He'd awoken, held his breath, switched on the lights and choked out a breath, which sounded suspiciously like a sob. When the drowning feeling reseeded he found himself exiting his bedroom, searching for the object of his nightmares as a drowning man searches for land.

Dean would never admit to himself he was looking for Cas, but the knowledge was there. There were many things Dean knew but wasn't ready to admit.

Dean found the angel in the library of the bunker, absentmindedly flicking through ancient texts and Sam's collection of trashy fitness and lifestyle magazines indiscriminately. A heavy weight on his chest dissipated. Cas looked up at Dean's sharp inhale. He could breathe again.

"Hello, Dean," the angel greeted, as though he were late to some prearranged meeting.

"Morning, Cas," Dean spoke, for lack of a better topic of conversation. He collapsed into the seat beside Cas.

"It's currently 3:15 a.m. and the sun isn't scheduled to rise until 5:25."

"Thanks for the weather report, buddy," Dean griped. His tone lacked the usual exasperated edge he used when Cas said something that struck him as particularly alien, which was often.

"How are you, Dean? You seem... unmoored."

People in the twenty-first century didn't use words like 'unmoored'. Dean knew exactly what Cas wasn't saying. Dean seemed upset. If there was one thing Dean didn't cope well with, it was being anything less than 'fine'. They were experts in each other's pathology, which would always feel strange. Dean wasn't used to being known.

"Can we talk about something else?" Dean had been working on the concept of denial. However, avoidance was fair game.

"If I'm going to be staying here long term, I want to buy better magazines," Cas stated, tossing the magazine haphazardly. He'd been staying for longer than usual. Dean kept feeling like he was holding his breath, waiting for the angel to disappear.

"We can drive into town come morning. Need to clear my head anyway."

"You haven't been sleeping well," Cas observed, his eyes shifting their attention to Dean. The blue-grey eyes said more than his words. His eyes were an ocean to an inexperienced swimmer. Not everyone could read them. Dean could. There was something more to them. A strong rip beneath steady water. There was a storm raging beneath the surface.

"It's creepy that you've noticed that," Dean remarked.

"You haven't been very quiet."

Dean wondered how much Cas heard. Did he talk in his sleep? Did he call out Cas' name in the night? Had the angel heard the moments of weakness where Dean had let himself muffle sobs behind his hand?

"This isn't changing the subject."

"I've been changing the subject all week. Evidently, it's not working," Cas' voice was resolute.

He and Dean shared their stubbornness, which always led to unproductive stalemates. They were two bucks with their antlers interlocked, starving and trapped in their own idiocy.

"The thing about being human, Cas, is that things don't magically just get fixed because you want them to." Dean rebuked.

"I'm aware, but have you actually tried to fix it?"

They were fighting. Why were they fighting?

"Talking never really solved much in my line of work. You know that."

"Is this about work?" Cas questioned.

They hadn't had any difficult hunts in weeks. Cas knew it wasn't about the job. He wanted Dean to know he knew.

"It doesn't matter what it's about. That's not the point. You don't get it." Dean felt the truth pushing its way up to the surface.

"Then help me understand."

"The problem —." Dean began before he felt anger or frustration choke the words from him.

"The problem is you keep dying."

He'd expected Cas to baulk at the confession. Dean wasn't one for sharing fears or feelings. What he hadn't expected was the look of horror that settled on the angel's face.

Dean scowled and scrubbed at his cheek, quietly cursing himself when his palm pulled back wet. Over the years, he'd gotten good at crying quietly. He hated that he was able to hide it from himself. Men didn't cry. Dean didn't cry. It was a lie, not so much a superstition, but a fable. A story he told himself.

"Dean I — I didn't realise my death... affected you so much. I apologise for the oversight," Cas spoke slowly, as though deliberately choosing each word with care.

How the hell could Cas not know his death, every goddamn one, hurt Dean? Cas was family.

"Yeah, well, I pegged you for a lot of things, Cas. Stupid wasn't one of 'em. So just... Be careful. I'm going to bed," Dean mumbled, praying for a quick exit.

Cas grabbed Dean's arm as he passed, stilling him. Dean felt the restriction return to his throat. He held his breath. He wished Cas knew what he meant without having to say it out loud.

Neither man spoke. The silence stretched long and loud between them. Cas clung to Dean's arm like a dying man to a life raft. For his part, Dean was just trying to stay afloat. Slowly, almost imperceptibly so, Cas' palm slid down to hold Dean's hand. Dean let him, which was as good as a confession.

There would be no confessions. A confession implied guilt, something that Dean had in droves, but not about Cas. It wasn't a lie so much as it was a fable. If a story was told long enough it became history.

He and Cas were still in the dark, biding time between apocalypses. He wished that when they finally found themselves in brighter times, there would be no need for confessions.

193 notes · View notes

seancekitsch · 4 months ago

Text

Can’t Stand Me Now; a modern Aegon x Stark! reader fic

CHAPTER TWO: Everything is Embarrassing

Y/N Stark and Aegon Targaryen. Aegon Targaryen and Y/N Stark. Inseparable since both eldest children met at Kings Landing University, until they weren’t. One night of drunken passion ruins it all.

Five years later, Aegon is coming off a broken engagement to Larissa Lannister and sends a risky Instagram DM to none other than Y/n Stark.

series masterlist here

warnings for the series: smut, smoking, drinking, friends to strangers to lovers, angst, fluff, more to come as needed

You wake up at dawn, shades nonexistent over the large window that covers most of the wall in Aegon’s living room. It’s warm, cozy, and genuinely you consider going back to sleep. The hangover has yet to hit you, but you know it will as soon as you’re vertical, so you stretch from your spot laying sprawled across the couch. Only, a disgruntled meow stops you from raising your arms too much.

“Oh, Sunfyre!” you whisper, “I’m so sorry, little man, I wake you?”

The massive orange furball responds with his own stretching, but then very quickly gets himself comfortable again, purring next to your face as he settles back in to sleep. You reach for him to wrap an arm around him, kissing his little kitty shoulder blade as he relaxes on the pillow. It breaks your heart, knowing he still settles in with you after all this. He had barely been a year when it all went down, and yet he still snuggled up to you as if just yesterday you were calling yourself his mum and carrying him around Aegon’s flat like a baby to show him things on the high shelves he had never seen. You wish you had seen his terrible twos, wish you had seen the slow transition from the still kitten shaped thing he was to this adult long-haired house lion.

A snore from the other room breaks the spell. It’s then that you remember the full gravity of where you are. Where the hell even were you? Where was Aegon living these days?

You’re extremely careful in untangling yourself from Sunfyre, who makes displeased little noises but does not lift his head up again. You roll yourself off of the couch, thankful of socks hitting carpet not making a noise. Sunfyre looks so cute, you cannot help but press another kiss to his forehead as you shove your feet into your shoes from last night. Your discarded jacket gets slung over your shoulder as you very carefully undo the lock on the door and slip through it with as little noise possible.

Success. Avoidance at its finest. You all but run down to the street below, happy to meet the bright sun, despite the fact that it makes you feel like your eyeballs are about to pop like warm grapes. There’s that hangover, immediately in full swing as the street air hits you. You almost curl inward on yourself, your jacket and purse clutched tight to your ribcage as you survey your surroundings in the daylight. Right, you remember looking for the stop last night. Four stops north of yours, easy peasy. Your feet guide you down to the track, and your body autopilots you home.

Unfortunately, you realize as you look at a dying phone, you’re going to have to miss class with Sara. She’ll no doubt be bitching about it later when you’re both working at the shop. She works there, more or less, as a way to just spend time with you. Sara doesn’t need the money, as your father still pays her credit card. He’s always done that for Sara, whether it be out of love for the baby of the family or guilt, he’ll never say.

You don’t know if you should even say it, but the parentage of yourself and your siblings has been a long speculated question. Yourself, the eldest, looks a lot like Dad’s secretary, but you are Mother’s favorite. Cregan is definitely Mother’s, because she spent your entire childhood complaining about his pregnancy. Sara you both knew was from an affair, Mom having moved into the ski cabin when Dad brought her home, but still she opened her arms to your baby sister and that was that. Aegon’s family is maybe the only one you’ve met that’s more dysfunctional than yours. Maybe money breeds it, you have to think, and maybe that’s why the thought of taking any of the Stark family fortune after university makes you feel sick and exhausted. Maybe that’s why you won’t go home, even though the past five years despite all of your successes have had you running from a southern ghost.

Your shop opens on Saturday’s around noon, which means that you have plenty of time.

You shower, shave, grab a sugar free redbull from the rack you have dedicated for them in your fridge, you water plants. Everything to mimic the behavior of someone who doesn’t have a raging hangover.

And as eleven rolls around, you almost forget the circumstances of your morning, as if it never happened. Today could be salvaged, and everything could seem normal.

You can tell the exact moment that he wakes up, though, because your phone practically becomes a bomb in your palm. He calls, incessantly, unrelentingly, constantly. You let the call miss six times, a tiny act of revenge against him. It feels petty, but you don’t owe him the twinge of guilt. If anything, he owes you everything.

“What?” you finally answer on the seventh call, hoping that if he hears you’re awake and angry, he can finally stop calling.

“You’re gone!” he exclaims, strain evident in his voice, “You’ve gone… where?”

You roll your eyes. Did he really expect you to stay?

“I went home, Targaryen,” you spit his name like a curse, “You made sure I was safe and I thank you for that but really whatever game you’re playing I don’t want to play.”

You sigh, putting it on speaker phone so you can rest your face in your hands, leaning against the counter as frustration brings back your headache. A dull throbbing that Aegon has created within you.

“I’m not playing any game.”

“You text me like a fuckboy.”

“I text everyone like a fuckboy.”

Ugh, he’s impossible.

“I really really want to talk to you.”

“Speak!” you nearly shout, growing increasingly annoyed.

“It’s not something that we should do over the phone, it’s important. I don’t want us to stay apart,” he says, his voice sounding watery and stressed on the other end. Is he fucking kidding? The ache turns red, until it’s all you can see in your anger. His family may say they are fire made flesh, but they are nothing compared to you in this moment.

“I’ve had to get along without you for five years now,” You seethe into the phone, frustration making your face hot, “I think I can continue the trend.”

“But I can’t —“ you hang up while he’s mid response, and tears flow instantaneously. You wipe tears away, breathe deeply, and decide that you will not let the backslide happen, you will not let Aegon in just to abandon you again. You will not be vulnerable, not if you can help it. You feel as if you’ve already let enough show. Between last night and today, you’ve given too much away. If you were smart and unfeeling, you would have easily blocked his message without reading it and you would not have been too hungover to go to barre class this morning.

However, you are probably only smart, and very often feelings cloud your judgement. If your father, or Cregan were here, they’d say it was because of the south’s influence on you. Far and few Weirwood trees grow down here, and they’d claim it’s your lack of connection to the Old Gods that makes you so brash and conflicted. And maybe they’re right, you think for a brief second. Aegon has always clouded your mind and judgement, though you always liked it that way. Any ‘me’ became ‘we’, and that’s went for professional as well as personal endeavors; from internships to party hosting to a very long string of failed relationships. He would get fired, his parents would attempt to cut him off, he would fight (sometimes even physically) with his siblings and cousins, he’d get dumped, and you’d be there patching him up and helping him dress for interviews. He’d accidentally scare away suitors, you’d get turned down for loans, complain endlessly about your flat, and he’d come over and hold you and help you think of business strategies and help you take your mind off guys while ordering take out on his own dad’s card. You never saw anything as a failure, though, because you and Aegon were always cleaning up after each other.

You sigh as you throw your phone down on the counter, shoving your hands in your jackets pockets to retrieve your keys and wallet so you can transfer them to your purse for work. Only, your left hand touches something that is very much not either thing you need.

You pull it out slowly, a polaroid picture, one thats been bent up.

Aegon's smiling at you in the picture again, this one a subdued, almost thoughtful smile. You're holding a bottle of champagne next to him, winking at the camera. The two of you are surrounded by boxes and candles; The night he helped you move into your first flat you had saved money for. Mr. Cole had taken the picture, a quick snap after a long day of unloading one of the Targaryen vans. Aegon had slept over that night, despite the face that you only had a mattress with no bed frame.

There’s marker on the back, faded pink sharpie that says, in Aegon’s sloppy scrawl:

FAVORITE ONE

When you turn it over again, you finally let yourself feel the emotion you’ve been trying to avoid. You let yourself do what you never wanted to do again.

You admit to yourself that you miss Aegon, more than anything, and sob.

“Guess what I’ve got!”

Aegon’s voice booms across the apartment, still echoing from the lack of rugs or furniture, no where for the sound to go but bounce off the walls and ceiling. Your head jerks up from where you’re digging in a box, only to find him in the doorway blocking your exit. He’s clad in short green velvet shorts, a grey sweater vest with nothing underneath, and the disgustingly dirty Converse you’d tried to throw out multiple times. And in his hand… fuck. Two squirt guns, shaped like penises. Right, you should have known that instead of helping his butler with your boxes that were in a van, he was going into the sex shop below your flat. It wasn’t an idea set up, but it’s the biggest flat that fits your budget, and at this point in college you rather die than call up dear old dad for some money. Hell, maybe you’ll even apply to the shop below for some extra throw around.

“No,” you gasp, already knowing what he’s doing. He tosses one of them your way, and by the way it clatters next to you, it’s clear that it’s full. Oh, it’s on. Aegon shoots, cold water hitting you between the eyes.

“First blood!” he shouts, and you spring into action giving chase behind him. The two of you tear through the small flat, jumping over boxes and behind chairs to dodge the attacks. Aegon tries to think ahead, bolting down the hallway to where your bedroom and bathroom are, still not set up minus a shower curtain and a bare mattress. You grab him by his vest, trying to slam him into the wall to slow him down.

You fully intend to take him out execution style. He falls sideways, catching himself against the door frame to your bathroom, taking one knee down as you move to the opposite door way. You stand there, penis gun gripped in both hands. Aegon holds both of his hands up in mock defeat, the trigger of the water gun hanging on his pinky. He smiles up at you sheepishly, his hair a mess and water running down the side of his cheek. You lower your gun, right between his eyes.

“Do you admit defeat to the northern forces, M’Lord?” you ask him, putting on a voice you think one of your warrior ancestors would have.

“I…. I…” he draws out, and then springs, leaping at you. His arms circle around your middle as he pushes you back through your bedroom door. You land hard on the mattress, the springs squeaking as you bounce onto it. Aegon jumps on top of you, messing up your hair and play wrestling you as if you were one of his brothers.

“You fucking asshole!” you shout, but you’re giggling as you play slap at his back and relax into the grip. He stops only when he gets comfy on the mattress, slumping against it and bringing you with him in a weird half cuddle pile of a position.

He drops his head against your chest and squeezes you, sighing as he does.

“Promise me nothing changes, yeah?” he asks, sadness seeping into his tone.

“Age, I’m only gonna be two stops away now, its not like I’m moving back to Winterfell,” you laugh, but your hand comes up to comfort him, caressing his damp hair. Neither of you move until his stomach grumbles, and you push him off you.

“Pub?” you ask.

“Pub.” he confirms, water guns and boxes already forgotten as he helps you back up.

Everything was that easy with Aegon.

An hour later, you find yourself in the back office of your shop, Sara up front and tending to customers. Your eyes are still a little puffy and red, but it’s nothing that a little incense and eyeliner cannot make an excuse for. When Sara had seen your face, she decided not to bitch at you for ditching her this morning, instead opting for the normal Saturday routine. You owe her at least two coffees and a bottle of wine for not making you talk about it.

Saturday is always a fun day, bustling sidewalks and people stopping in big groups, the brunchers making large purchases fueled by mimosas and bloody mary’s that help keep the lights on. You always take the post-brunch rush to review and pack online purchases, as Sara is lovely with the trendy college crowd and makes astronomical sales. You swear that she should go the influencer route, her charm and poise her strongest suit and clearly endearing her to everyone.

Order packaging is much more your speed. It’s a methodical, almost mindless task. You have all of your designs organized perfectly, so each order is simply pulling items from their designated little slot on the wall. Everything lined up like an old school mail organizer, custom dark wood shelves holding every piece arranged by size and color in specific labeled slots. You've taught yourself to love monotony.

You pull and package seven orders before one of them gives you pause.

First off, it’s over eight hundred golden dragons. Thats more than half of your flat’s rent. Its all men’s clothing: a black tunic, a bespoke blazer with a gold chain slipped through the lapel and connecting into the pocket, multiple pairs of chino pants, and your favorite thing you’ve designed, a gold duster that goes over the middle and ring finger designed to look like the snapping upper jaw of a dragon’s mouth.

This’ll be a fun one, you think, grabbing your basket and kicking over your step stool to get started.

It’s the special instructions memo on the order that makes you freeze, and you read it once, two times, three times.

“You won’t let me talk, so let the money talk instead.”

This is Aegon’s order. Aegon will be wearing these clothes. Your designs, some of which he had even watched you draft.

You can’t help but laugh as you shake your head at that. Same old Aegon, same old humor. His charms always worked on you. You could never say no to each other, no matter what. You keep staring at the message, wanting to reply with something snarky, wanting to do something to egg him on like old times. You realize now how large of a hole his departure left in you. It was cavernous, really, and you’d never noticed it until now. You click on his email address, fingers hovering over the keyboard.The shaking of your hands stops you, though.

It really is too easy to fall into old habits.

#aegon targaryen x reader #aegon ii x reader #modern aegon #modern aegon x reader #aegon x reader

108 notes · View notes