#he thinks he's marilyn monroe or something | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

aphrodeiities · 7 months ago

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ᴘɪꜱᴄᴇꜱ ᴛʜᴇ ɢʀᴇᴀᴛ

DO NOT COPY OR STEAL MY WORK. IS A FAME POST.

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♇ this post centres around pisces, neptune and the twelfth house, and how it is an underrated home of fame.

♇ neptune rules over cameras, glamour, paparazzi, stalking, projection and film, all strong themes of the realer side of fame, specifically paparazzi, stalking and projection.

♇ [in my opinion, i think the 12H, Neptune and Pisces are the most alike compared to the other signs and their rulers.]

♇ on the other hand, ten houses from the 3H is the 12H, 10 in astrology ruling over fame, career and publicity and the 3H governs over magazine and marketing, things celebrities have to be involved in to attain fame.

♇ to understand this post, we need to get into the symbolism of pisces, and hold on tight for this for you to understand! as pisces does represent neptune/poseidon, the sign pisces also represents is Jesus. the most known man, the most known person specifically.

♇ and even though social media does joke about it now and then, he is the most known "nepotism" kid. people with pisces placements especially in their big three or those who have jupiter in pisces are known for something specific, because Pisces gives it a boost because of the connection it has with Jupiter. [in traditional astrology, Jupiter ruled over Pisces], and Jupiter is supposed to symbolise God. and in shorter terms, it gives the nepotism boost to Pisces.

♇ before i go deeper, i am going to use examples of celebrities, their twelfth house and how fame was for them and how it impacted them.

CELEBRITIES WITH PISCES IN THEIR BIG THREE OR JUPITER. [can work with the rest of the big six, but im focusing on the big three].

⟶ examples

PISCES ASCENDANTS ⬎

MICHAEL JACKON.

WHITNEY HOUSTON

ELLEN.

PISCES SUNS ⬎

RIHANNA.

CINDY CRAWFORD.

GRIMES.

PISCES MOONS ⬎

MICHELLE OBAMA.

MARTIN LUTHER KING.

KIM KARDASHIAN.

PISCES JUPITER ⬎

MEGAN FOX.

AMBER HEARD.

LINDSAY LOHAN.

SHORT EXAMPLES OF THE 12H AND ITS IMPACT WITH SOMEONE'S FAME ⬎

MARILYN MONROE

had cancer in the 12H, cancer is moon ruled and the moon rules over audience, and its clear that marilyn monroe had a big audience, like the moon, she was worshiped, and due to hollywood, she represented what a woman, "should be".

marilyn also had pluto in the twelfth house, and this points to her being exploited, sexualised and abused in the industry.

her twelfth house ruler is in the seventh house which conjuncts the moon, and she had a known relationship, [jupiter conjunct moon], this insinuates her known relationship was with a man in power, the moon symbolises country and jupiter can symbolise politics and leader-ship, and she had a known affair with JF Kennedy.

BEYONCE

had virgo in her twelfth house, and people always have continuous critique with her, this can also imply she has much critique for herself, but with her twelfth house having the planet jupiter, it helps her having a giant and loyal fanbase.

beyonce also has saturn in the 12h, and this implies of longevity in fame, saturn doesnt always mean something is going to be cut short! on the other hand, her 12H ruler being in the 12H can point to the distant energy she has with her, she could have fun with her fans but there is still an out of reach essence she has to herself.

the 12H ruler being in the 12H can also indicate to why people might've picked up that she might be doing drugs. this could also insinuate another way of how people are nit-picky when it comes to beyonce.

on the other hand, her 12H ruler being in the 12H shows she only shows a part of herself she wants people to see.

MICHAEL JACKSON

aquarius in the twelfth house, and was known to be erratic and unique, he also used his platform to spread awareness.

his 12H ruler being in Leo points to his excessive amount of fame, the uranus being in leo implies on how he was known everyone where in the world. his uranus in the 13°, a degree which means the first to do something; which conjuncts venus the planet of dancing insinuates of his creation of the moonwalk.

his uranus is also in the sign of children, and had many controversies surrounding kids. [along with people thinking his children arent his].

with his 12H ruler being in Leo, the house of cameras and glamours, points to how he is one of the most photographed people on earth.

ARIANA GRANDE

sagittarius in the 12H, known for her adaptability in different cultures, the jupiter influence gives her a very big fanbase.

12H ruler in libra and is known for her romantic controversies, with her Jupiter having. the 5° which shows they're known in the industry they're specifically in. her jupiter also conj moon in the 6th degree, and people critique her love life and it is always in the public, the moon ruling audience.

12H sagittarius in the 2 degrees, and is known for her aesthetic.

RIHANNA

12H in pisces and is known for her glamour, beauty and fashion.

venus is in the 12H and she is a muse for many people.

juno in the 12H and she was paired with many people, so many people expecting who and what to be her husband, though everyone was aware with who her soulmate was. asap rocky.

12H ruler in capricorn and is known for being a capitalist, rich and business oriented.

another 12H ruler in aries, and has a known controversy with the abuse she had suffered through by chris brown.

12H ruler in aries conj uranus and was known for her fierceness and come backs.

MEGAN THEE STALLION

12H aries and is known for her "sexiness" and rapping. her 12H ruler is in Leo and is known for her sexual dancing, specifically twerking, and her body shape is usually spoken about

her 12H ruler is mars and went through a scandal that involved violence, and with the 12H ruler being in the 21st degree, it entails of her being known for being a stallion, along with her jupiter in sagittarius.

neptune in the 24th degree and a lot of people think she is a liar, and i noticed a lot of people who have their 12H ruler conjunct the moon do get famous.

KRISTINA PIMENOVA

taurus in her 12H and was known for her beauty, she also has mars in her 12H and was really pushed into the industry.

12H ruler in the 1st degree and was pushed as the most beautiful girl. her neptune is in the 10H and a a lot of people wanted to be her because of her status and looks.

12H in a young sign could imply getting into the industry at a young age. she also has mars in taurus in the 12H and is also known for dancing.

MADISON BEER

12H in aries and is known for her sexiness. and her 12H ruler is in scorpio and she had plenty of controversies.

saturn in the 12H it took time for people to appreciate her music. her saturn is also in taurus.

11H in pisces in aqua 3rd degree, and had much people make rumours about her.

12H ruler in mars the 11th degree and had revenge porn against her, or you can say just had people expose her nudes.

pisces in the 11H and many people on the internet project their insecurities onto her.

DRAKE

leo in 12H and he is known for his ego, his 12h ruler conj pluto and a lot of people talk about his sexuality.

neptune in capricorn got into more fame due to a popular company, yung money. he has a pisces jupiter and is known for his multiple times to have a wife, he has proposed many times he was able to make a necklace out of them.

12th degree on his moon and is known as an incel. he has his neptune in the 3rd degree and a lot of people make fun of him.

12H PLACEMENTS ⬎

PISCES/NEPTUNE IN THE 12H - known for music, could get a lot of stalkers, people might have a perception of who you are supposed to be and could be known for taking a specific drug, like weed; ex, rihanna.

ARIES/MARS IN THE 12H - known for their sexuality, could be bullied on social media, might get access to fame easily, but could be objectified; ex, madison beer.

TAURUS/VENUS IN THE 12H - known for your beauty, might feel like people might not take you seriously, people could be shallow towards you, you could have a less intense celebrity life; ex, kristina pimenova.

GEMINI/MERCURY IN THE 12H - could be known for your adaptability, many people might want to mimic you, could be photographed a lot and known for your style; ex, cher.

CANCER/MOON IN THE 12H - could hide their true identity to the world, is the face for something, likes privacy but are never given it; ex, marilyn monroe.

LEO/SUN IN THE 12H - easily stand out, seen as a trendsetter, are known for their beauty, people might compare themselves to you all the time; ex, bella hadid.

VIRGO/CERES IN THE 12H - people will be critical of you, nosy about your life, though you would be a big muse and inspiration for the people, majority of 12H dont like attention or responsibility due to the gain of fame; ex, doja cat.

LIBRA/JUNO IN THE 12H - people will really copy your aesthetic, most likely to be posted on social medias like pinterests and tumblr. very photogenic people, untouchable energy, which could be linked to the hera influenced; ex, lily rose.

SCORPIO/PLUTO IN THE 12H - are usually the face for something, stalked by everyone, specifically the paparazzi, could sometimes be harassed by people for not acting how they were expected to behave. have a lot of influence, they do something other people start doing it; ex, jennie kim and princess diana.

SAGITTARIUS/JUPITER IN THE 12H - have very large fan bases, are expected to be role models, have to find a specific way to sustain their popularity, and other people might want to relate to them and get upset if they cant; ex, kylie jenner.

CAPRICORN/SATURN IN THE 12H - fame can either come really quick to people with capricorn or saturn in the 12H or it could take its time. how they handle fame is their karma, could be preyed on by authority, and when they pass, they become legends and known for something specific; ex, aaliyah.

AQUARIUS/URANUS IN THE 12H - known globally, get away with a lot of stuff, known for their visuals plus aesthetic since it is unique, they have a lot of controversies revolving around love, and might feel like they cannot get away from fame; ex, michael jackson.

YOUR FAME DUE TO WHERE PISCES AND NEPTUNE IS IN YOUR CHART ⬎

PISCES/NEPTUNE IN THE 1H - fame for being beautiful, creative, and would feel distant and would have a lot of people project and fantasise about you; ex, michael jackson a pisces ascendant, and ariana grande who has neptune in the 1H.

PISCES/NEPTUNE IN THE 2H - fame due to singing, fame for being beautiful of their aesthetic, have ways of always making money and has controversy with lovers; ex, megan fox has pisces in her 2H, and lana del rey who has neptune in her 2H.

PISCES/NEPTUNE IN THE 3H - known for their creative ideas, good writers, could have a popular relative or is the popular relative, and another musician indicator. could also be known for their philosophy; ex, jeon jungkook has his pisces in his 3H, and beyonce who has her neptune in the 3H.

PISCES/NEPTUNE IN THE 4H - famous family, controversy with family/marriage, do a project that can set them for life and could be in a famous group; ex, kim kardashian who has pisces in the 4H, and emma watson who has neptune in the 4H.

PISCES/NEPTUNE IN THE 5H - get very popular because of their looks, usually have kids within their rise to fame, can tap into anything creative and succeed. brilliant actors and actresses have these placements; ex, nicolae kidman who has pisces in the 5H, and angelina jolie who has neptune in the 5H.

PISCES/NEPTUNE IN THE 6H - amazing producers [music and film], are known for their interaction with drugs or people might have conspiracies with them taking drugs, health issues are put onto blast and usually stand out in a project that has many people and are usually the main character; ex, britney spears who has pisces in the 6H, and kanye west who has neptune in the 6H.

PISCES/NEPTUNE IN THE 7H - like to please their fans, controversy with marriage, be careful with deals/contracts that you would sign, sometimes other people might think you are distant and you guys are likely to have iconic fashion moments; ex, bella hadid who has pisces in the 7H, and mariah carey who has neptune in the 7H.

PISCES/NEPTUNE IN THE 8H - usually leave a big legacy, victim/subject to memes, or being made fun of by people in the industry, tough relationship with addiction and have a big fandom which can make them excused a lot; ex, marilyn monroe who has pisces in the 8H, and michael jackson who has neptune in the 8H.

PISCES/NEPTUNE IN THE 9H - loved due to their charisma, loud and big personalities, partake in business all over the world and are wanted by foreign companies, and have a moment when they're under fire due to the public; ex, angelina jolie who has pisces in the 9H, and rihanna who has neptune in the 9H.

PISCES/NETPUNE IN THE 10H - likely to be models, have contracts with big brands, many people look up to them and have much expectations for them, could also be people who are in political power or are connected to them; ex, victoria beckham who has pisces in the 10H, and princess diana who has neptune in the 10H.

PISCES/NEPTUNE IN THE 11H - are usually easily excused, famous due to a private circle [political power on theories like illuminati], usually say things they are not meant to say, can either be easily liked or hated by the public and this can give online fame, or could get famous because of the internet; ex, miley cyrus who has pisces in the 11H, and billie eilish who has neptune in the 11H.

PISCES/NETPUNE IN THE 12H - people usually want to be them, long-term fame, another model indicator, and can be people who get into relationships with people who are known in the industry; ex, gigi hadid who has pisces in the 12H, and zendaya who has neptune in the 12H.

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st4rbwrry · 7 months ago

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━━━ ℎ𝑜𝑡 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑓𝑖𝑟𝑒 .ᐟ t.f

warnings 𑄽𑄺 2.4k. fem reader, lowercase intended, she/her pronouns, heavy infatuation, oral [ f + m.], mention of car sex + alleyway, small argument, impact play, choking, strangers to whatever, dacryphilia, toji gives sugar daddy vibes with the sugar, kissingggg, missionary, unprotected sex, average pet names, lots more but i don't feel like listing, minors aren't allowed!

━━━ ꒰ 𝑚𝑜𝑐ℎ𝑎'𝑠 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡𝑠 .ᐟ ꒱ ; for my bestie bc she screamed at me for more toji fics. @thecoochiefairy

lust is a dangerous thing. it can make a person commit unspeakable acts for someone they desired profoundly. never would you have expected to give yourself to a stranger, to some man you met in a bar at two in the morning. this same man now had you eating at his face drunkenly in public areas, gaining weird stares from others. when you looked at him, an otherworldly entity possesses you, a sexual demon. there's times where you can't stop biting your lips or sulking your eyes submissively to him. touching him, stroking or tugging at his sable hair you loved so fucking much. this person makes you drop to your knees behind an alleyway while he fucks your mouth as he pleases. eats you out on his knees in the darkest and furthest corner of a movie theatre.

fucks you in mostly public areas, which was way out of your comfort zone, but you adapted, because you yearned him as fucking badly. an equal infatuation. he drives you crazy. he gets a kick out of you choking him while you ride him in his dark gray audi, eyes rolling back with every drop your ass makes to his broad thighs. seeing the sweat dip into the crevice of your breasts as your neck narrows back and your singing his name in sweet symphonies of salacious moans, fingertips digging into his thigh you grip for balance as you bounce and shake. toji's irises darken at you with captivity, mouth open as he inches his face closer to catch your nipples to suck.

"what does your pussy taste like?"

from the corner of your eye, you could see the man flick his dragon embroidered silver lighter, the lid shutting and opening as he smirked dully at you, waiting impatiently for your answer. his stare on you makes you feel powerful, yet that power would soon subjugate once he shows you just how powerless you are while fucking you senselessly. it's so vivid, the night you met him. what renders you immobile while thinking of it is how much you ached for him that day, the terrible throbbing of your clit, the pool of arousal in your panties as he shoved you up against the wall, chest pressed to your back as your ass ground onto the bulge in his jeans, his mouth on your neck greedily.

"angel tears," was your answer, a joke of course. but he'll never forget the way your eyes clocked down to his thighs, leaning closer to rest your hand on his body, manicured nails trailing up to his dick. in that moment, his entire chest fueled with fire. the answer was amusing. trying to give him something to look forward to while adding in your comedic sense of humor. toji was feening for the taste of you.

as his tattooed hands slither up the back of your thighs, under the black marilyn monroe dress you attired, you moan from the coldness of the rings settled on his long, thick fingers. he kept his promise when he said he'd 'eat your pussy til' you're crying for me to stop.' toji never stopped. it was the first time in your life where you came four times in one night. breathing wetly against the wall as you drooled and tears stained your cheeks. feeling heavenly suffocated by his scent, air compressed as his arm locked around your neck and he fucked you hard in the same position, spanking and assaulting your clit with his fingers, telling you just how much of a pretty slut you are.

toji was someone you didn't know you needed until you craved him every second of the day. when he's at work, a place he ultimately needed the majority of his focus to be while tatting clients, you'd be a brat and send him videos of you touching yourself. of course he'd be the one to watch them while reducing his volume, usually having music play in his shop. the both of you have a thing for filming. there's dozens, if not hundreds of videos the two of you shared in your phones. when he'd come by your house after, he'd make sure to keep his phone in his back pocket, grabbing your neck the moment he enters and roughly connecting your lips, slipping his tongue inside while callously groping your ass, bringing you closer.

he'd spank you for misbehaving. sitting on the couch, legs spread as you crawl to him and the cock he rests in his hand, demanding you handle it, taking him deep in your throat until he wants you to sink on it, riding him as your legs tremble and you call him his special name. daddy. mediocre to most, but he might as well take advantage of it with how good he takes care of you. aside from sex, he treats you like a princess. buying you all the things you wanted, making sure your bills were paid even if the two of you didn't live together. catering to your every naughty need. utmost affection. in a way, he felt like your sugar daddy. though he didn't like the title, and the both of you agreed on a no strings attached relationship . . . he's yours and you're his. labels weren't his deal.

it's a gray day in hell when you've actually manage to piss him off. it's rare. usually when he's sexually frustrated he tends to be mean, tugging you around, hitting your ass harder than he should but always apologizing after he releases it all, choking the air from you, spitting in your mouth . . . the usual. when he's pissed, he's pissed. toji does his best with refraining himself from hurting you, but when you push him to a limit of ignoring him, he doesn't appreciate it. especially after all he does for you.

you want to say it's the middle of the night when you hear banging at your front door, already tucked comfortably in bed with your bluetooth eye mask looping rain forest or thunderstorm noises. the darkness makes your vision blurry as you stumble from bed, bare feet tiptoeing towards the door, oversized deftones tshirt barely covering your ass. you had a feeling it was toji, assuming he must've forgotten his spare key to your place. so when you go to unlock and turn the knob, you see his tall, heavy body before you. he tilts his head to the side, jaw clenching with his hand resting above the door, black tee rising up to show a bit of his belly and the dark trail of hair leading down his abdomen.

"now she fuckin' answers," is the first thing he says, seethes actually, dropping his arm and running his pierced tongue over his lower lip.

"toji," you suck your teeth, soon after yawning, eyes half-lidded as you fought with your body to stay awake. "what time is it?"

"near three. do you know how many times i called you? where the fuck do you get off ignoring me?"

now he has your attention, lifting your head and scowling at him, crossing your arms over your chest. "who the fuck are you talking to like that? it's too late for this bullshit. i'm fucking tired."

"i. don't. give. a. fuck," he breaks down his sentence, your entire body now flaming with anger. "you mean to tell me you have all this energy to fuck around and go to parties with your girlfriends but can't pick up the fuckin' phone when i call or text you? now i'm nobody to you?"

"i forgot," you shrug carelessly. "it's not a big deal. you see me damn near every day. i'm a grown ass woman. i have a life too, you know."

every word you're saying comes in one ear and goes out the other. honestly, he could care less about an explanation. he already forgave you the minute he saw you dressed in one of his shirts, knowing full well you're naked underneath. but since he built up this much anger, he couldn't pussy out. he'll stick to his plan. it stuns you when he reaches forward to grab your neck with one hand, pulling you close and lowering his face to your level while closing the door behind him, finally stepping inside. it's pitch dark other than the three candles you have lit in the studio apartment and the large flatscreen rerunning adult swim cartoons without volume.

"keep your fuckin' mouth shut," he growled. you pull in a sharp inhale as he swiftly turns you around to face the bed. "walk."

to be truthful, you weren't going to disobey him at all right now. it's late, you were tired, and maybe just a little horny. you didn't have the strength to pick a fight. toji looked worn out himself, building up all this frustration on top of working all day was fucking him over, at this point just needing a quick fuck to knock him out. he's trailing behind you until your knees hit the edge of the bed, flabbergasting you by sloppily mouthing at your neck and grinding his dick against your ass, free hand roaming around to slip between your bare thighs, rushing his fingers over your clit, whining from his touch.

"toji," you whimper, shifting in your spot, trying to remove the fabric off your body, temperature rising the more he groped at your flesh and kissed your neck. your knee is now lifted onto the bed giving him better access slip his fingers into your cunt, already wet for him.

"pussy always wants me, doesn't it?" toji groans as he licks behind your ear, spanking your ass, smirking at your tiny pleas and failed attempts at answers.

he grants your wish by relieving you of clothing, the cool air surrounding your home hitting every inch of you, picking you up to lay you flat on your back. the tips of your fingers hover over your lips as you stare up at him, his eyes glinting under the moonlight, loving to watch him toss off his shirt and unbuckle his hefty belt, your favorite sound of his zipper flying down. like the good girl you are, you keep your legs up to your chest, biting your lip as you crane your neck to study the way his dick springs up to hit his stomach, toji hissing from sensitivity. he's aching hard, veins on the underside pulsating towards his precum leaking tip.

he's quiet, his only priority as of now is fucking you raw, until the both of you cum, until you're equally spent and knocked out into slumber. aggressively, he slaps your hand away after seeing you play with your clit impatiently. toji's wide palm holds onto your left knee, keeping you spread open, arching over you to give you a kiss, shoving his tongue in your mouth, that metal ball rushing over yours, moaning into his mouth as you feel him rub the tip hastily on your clit, side to side, keeping his lips locked with yours.

you're rolling your hips into him, kneeding at your tits before he's sitting straight on his knees, jeans still clinging to his waist. toji gathers a ball of saliva and spits onto his dick, giving it a few strokes and finally sliding deep into you, to the hilt, so deep your back arches and you can feel prominently every vein throbbing inside of you. his palm strikes the side of your cheek, "focus right here."

sometimes he doesn't understand that it's not so easy staying present like he wanted, not when he felt this good. his pelvis touches yours now, toji twitching inside of you, rolling his neck back, a small 'mhm, fuck' slipping out as his pupils switch white for two seconds. the gruffness in his tone makes your stomach flip.

"you drive me crazy, girl," toji groans thickly, the ball in his throat jumping after he swallows before wrapping both of his hands around your neck, choking you and slamming his hips so hard you hear your wooden platform below crack only a bit. "don't you, girl? huh?"

uncaring, you kept contact with toji nodding your head to answer as the walls in your throat swell, making it impossible to breathe properly, but that wasn't an issue. the only one was how fucking godlike toji appeared when he fucked you; black hair flowing, tattooed chest and arms painted like an art canvas. godly sculpted abs. thick thighs that slapped amongst your own lewdly. the chain swinging around his neck, his masculine scent of tobacco vanille. he turned you on without doing much.

your ears start to ring from the lack of air flow, toji noticing your knees buckling and slowly losing their posture. he takes his hands away, to which you're kind of upset but he makes up for it by bringing his body closer to yours, physical touch the highest level of intimacy to you. toji hugs the top of your head, holding your face in his chest and you use that as an advantage to wrap your arms around his broad back, legs spreading even wider to fit him in between. he's so much deeper now, and you're sure you won't last long. your nails dig into his shoulders as he fucks you harder, mouth ajar with tears filling your eye sockets, monotonously whining 'fuck, fuck, fuck' after each heavy thrust he delivers, his weight on your body immensely gratifying.

"i'm sorry, baby," you choke between whines, toji's only response is breathy moans, insanely vocal, hissing and slamming harder once you let him know you're cumming, cursing wildly as you tighten around his cock until you do cum, and he grunts the moment you toss your head back and shift your hips up to fuck him back, quivering in his hold.

"yeah, fuckin' do that—nnh," he can barely finish his sentence as you move faster, locking your ankles tighter around him until he's at his limit, whimpering and pulling out, lazily jutting his hips over your stomach where he cums, falling completely onto you.

he knows you have no reason to apologize. he may have overreacted just a little, but he knows you'll talk about it in the morning. he rolls to his side after a few minutes, huffing and cradling your face in his hands before kissing your forehead, holding you close. he's asleep before you are, not okay with the fact that he has outside clothes on your bed right now, trying your best to shuffle down and pull his jeans entirely off of him without waking him.

#jjk #toji smut #toji fushiguro #fushiguro x reader #jjk fushiguro #toji fushigro x reader #toji x you #toji x y/n #toji x reader #jjk smut #jujutsu kaisen #𝜗ৎ ˚⋅ 𝖘𝖙𝖗𝖆𝖜𝖇𝖊𝖗𝖗𝖞 𝖈𝖆𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖓 𝖔𝖋 𝖉𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖒𝖘.

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mediumgayitalian · 8 months ago

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“Come here, you dweeb. Let me fix it.”

Will pouts, dragging his feet over and slumping half on top of him. Nico allows it with a smile and a roll of his eyes, pinching Will’s shoulder. He doesn’t react except for a wounded noise, muffled in Nico’s lap, so the situation is evidently quite dire.

“It’s just hair, Will.”

“But I worked on it!” He shifts around until he’s got his head in Nico’s lap, face turned towards him, body curled up on the grass around him. Nico brushes his tangled bangs off his forehead, meeting his big sad eyes. “I spent forty minutes with a stupid brush! And yet!”

“And yet,” Nico agrees, unable to appropriately school is face into one of somber understanding. Will scowls at him for his lack of proper sympathy, a little bit of genuine hurt in his eyes, so Nico leans down and kisses right between his brows in apology. He seems mollified, if only slightly, or at least he leans into Nico’s touch and stops mumbling quite so much.

“‘S’not fair.”

“Mhm.“

“Your hair listens to your instructions.”

“Yep.”

“Even Cecil’s hair listens to him, and no one listens to Cecil.”

Nico purses his lips thoughtfully. “I think Austin listens to Cecil.”

“Yes, I know. It’s an ongoing issue. I’m trying to train him out of it.”

“And how’s that going?” Nico murmurs, curling a strand of golden blond hair around his finger.

“Oh, well, I’m doing my best, so of course it’s going horribly.”

Nico snorts. He resists the urge to hold his palms to Will’s cheeks and kiss every single freckle at light speed, because he will screech something about how Nico is one-upping him in the romance department or something stupid like that. Instead he settles for looking at his dumb dramatic boyfriend’s face and marvelling over the fact that the cutest boy in the entire world, and Nico is being totally objective, hunts around camp until he finds whatever tree Nico is hiding under and curls up into a ball around him and trusts Nico to hold him while he complains about stupid things that genuinely hurt his feelings a little. It’s nice. So many people at camp are still so rigid around him, like he’s collecting information for their judgement day or something. Will prefers to exercise his lesser-known Apollonian talent of being a bigger drama queen than the god himself.

“Stay still,” Nico says softly, moving Will around so he’s laying perpendicular to Nico, now, head centered in his lap and staring up at the sky. Will sighs and squirms a little and turns his head to press a kiss to Nico’s knee, scrunching up his face and releasing it, and then settles in the position.

Humming something soft that exists on the fringes of his foggy memories, he sinks his hands into Will’s hair.

“It’s not that bad,” he promises, moving slowly and pausing whenever he comes across a knot.

Will harrumphs.

“I mean it, Marilyn Monroe. You can tone down the histrionics.”

“I used gel.”

Nico flicks a dried clump of it onto Will’s forehead, amused. “I can see that.”

“I followed every single one of Mitchell’s instructions!”

“I bet.”

“And yet!”

“And, yet.”

Nico has a sneaking suspicion that someone made a comment about Will’s hair, in the last few weeks. He can never confirm it and Will has been shifty about it every time he asks, but Nico has noticed the uptick in hoods and hats the past month and his little flinches every time Nico reaches up and tugs on it. Despite being oddly confident about the oddest things — why he is so proud of being able to fit his fist in his mouth, Nico will never know — Will is very sensitive to how people think of him. He needs to know he’s liked, and when people don’t like him, he gets…desperate, pleasing. The opposite of Nico, who becomes worse in an attempt to push them away on his own terms.

Nico leans down and presses a long, lingering kiss to his forehead.

“I like your hair, you know.”

“It’s a stupid mess.”

He smooths down a handful of it, pressing it over Will’s eye. He manages to keep a straight face for one, two, three seconds before he huffs a laugh, batting Nico’s hands away. Nico grins.

“I like the stupid mess.”

“Yeah, well, you like a lot of weird things.”

“Like you?” Nico suggests, pressing another kiss to the tip of his rounded nose.

“Shut up.”

Another strange thing about him, that Nico has to duck his head to hide his automatic smile: he gets embarrassed easily.

Nico never expected it of him, with all the dorky, medical-themed pickup lines and general shamelessness in his affection towards everybody on Earth, but especially Nico. When the poking, prodding attraction is turned on him, however, he shuts down like an overloaded Playstation. Nico can sometimes see the error messages playing behind its eyes. It’s hilarious.

“Will.” He pokes him in the cheek. “Hey.”

“What,” Will grumbles.

“I think you’re beautiful.”

Watching the slow spread of red from below the collar of his shirt to the roots of his hair is a delight. Nico watches in glee, wrestling Will’s hands away when he tries to slap them over his face.

“Shut up! Leave me alone! Go — flirt with somebody else!”

“You’d curse them to speak in rhymes for ten years,” Nico teases.

Will makes an agonised noise. “Who! Asked you! Shut up!”

“You’d sic Kayla on anyone who so much as winks at me, you jealous bitch.”

“I would not!”

“You would so. You rolled your eyes at everything Percy said for three weeks when you found out I used to crush on him —”

“I did not!”

“— and you didn’t even have the balls to ask me out, back then.”

“You are a — peddler of falsehoods! A prevaricator, a perjurer, and a fabulist!”

“And you sound like you swallowed a thesaurus,” Nico snickers. He catches the hand Will flails at him, pressing a kiss to the wrist, which only serves to fluster him more. He decides to take mercy when the kisses he trails down his arms result in one loud, long, tortured screech, pulling back and giving him some space.

Notably, he doesn’t move from Nico’s lap.

“I like it,” Nico admits, once Will has calmed down some. “I like that you’ve liked me for so long.”

Will peeks through the fingers he has covering his eyes. “It’s embarrassing.”

“Yes.” Nico squeezes his shoulders. “And endearing, which seems to be your sweet spot.” He presses a much softer kiss to the underside of Will’s ear, lingering there until he sighs, slumping under all the tension finally leaving his body. “I love you, Will. I love your clumsiness and your rambles and your nose and your freckles and your awkwardness and your jealousy and your hair and I love you, Will, all of you. Even the embarrassing weird parts.” He kisses him again. “Especially the weird parts.”

Will breathes slowly, carefully, evenly, face pressed to the inside of Nico’s thigh. His long eyelashes tickle his skin. Nico can feel the press of his Adam’s apple when he swallows, pulsing against his calf.

“I never thought you were a freak.”

Nico brushes his knuckles over his cheek. “I know.”

“I used to — talk about you. All the time. And your oxytocin levels.”

He smiles.

“I know.”

“Lee had a — chart.” Some of the flush rises back up in his cheeks. “A ‘Days Since We’ve Heard About Di Angelo’ chart.”

Nico bites his lip. Hard.

“The number never got higher than six.”

“…I am trying really, really hard, Will.”

Will sighs.

“You can laugh.”

Nico cracks up, trying desperately to muffle his giggles in his bitten fist. It doesn’t work very well, but the glare Will sends him is somewhat softened by the smile twitching at the corner of his mouth.

“Gods, you are — a mess.”

“Mhm.”

Nico cups the side of his face. Will turns, slightly, enough to press a kiss to the centre of his palm and then stay there, eyes closed, breathing against his sword-callused skin.

“I love you too, by the way. Obviously.”

“I know.”

“Don’t Han Solo me, you bastard.”

“Go ahead and try to stop me,” Nico challenges, grinning into the passionately indignant kiss Will presses to his lips, finally, letting Nico curl his hands in his hair.

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celestiamour · 1 month ago

Text

₊˚✧ ❛[ every baby needs a da-da-daddy ]❜

ft. hugh jackman x f! reader — rpf

╰₊✧ some sweet softie who enjoys being home his baby little diamond toys┊1.2k words

song: every baby needs a da da daddy - marilyn monroe contains: no disrespect to hugh, this is purely fictional!! sugar daddy hugh & sugar baby reader, no smut, unspecified age gap, mentions of insecurity

➤ author's note: happy late birthday to the daddiest of daddies & the dilfiest of dilfs! this is my first hit at writing rpf, so it might not be very good, but it was still fun to write! i’m not sure if rpf is something i’ll write again, but who knows!

sugar daddy! hugh jackman who you kept at arm’s length at first, resisting the charms and allure of an older man who promised to treat you right and seat you in his lap of luxury. you’ve never been in such a relationship before (although you’ve always entertained it), much less being with an actor with as much renown as he did, so you tried putting him off by insisting you would only accept princess treatment and wouldn’t take anything short of the best. being a little bit of a brat would either put him off because he’s too old to deal with that or entice him even more with the challenge, and he’s obviously the latter because he would be more than willing to buy you an entire castle if you wished for it.

sugar daddy! hugh jackman who quickly figures out that everything you were saying before didn’t hold any weight as you’ll feel guilty if he does something as small as being a gentleman who pays for your half of the meal, so you’re just going to have to get used to being spoiled. he might even encourage you to quit your shitty underpaid day job with all the rude customers and pursue something you’re actually interested in, whether that’s becoming an artist of any sort or seeking out high education to get the qualifications for your dream job, he’s more than willing to provide for you while you work towards your goals and will reward you every time you accomplish one of them.

sugar daddy! hugh jackman who often needs to leave early for work, so when you wake up in your shared bed, you’ll find a few notifications on your phone: the first being a few hundred dollars he sent for you to treat yourself while he’s gone, the second being a cute dad selfie of the place he’s at, and the third being a message wishing you a good morning with the reminder for you to take care of yourself and that he loves you. if he’s traveling for a press tour, then he’ll give you the option to go with him or not because he knows it can be exhausting, but he’s willing to fly you out to his location at the drop of a hat because he constantly misses you so much.

sugar daddy! hugh jackman who likes to take you out for fancy dinners every now and then, but he really prefers to stay in and make home-cooked meals with you. he finds that making food together is more of a bonding experience than simply eating together, and loves to hug you from the back and guide your movements with his hands on top of yours as you chop vegetables or something. also he’ll only buy the highest-quality ingredients, ones that could give you an aneurysm from a glance of the receipt alone even though he thinks it’s worth the price for the better taste and health benefits.

sugar daddy! hugh jackman who surprises you with expensive jewelry and beautiful custom-made dresses which cost more than what you usually would be able to make in a month. he doesn’t make a big deal out of it either, just drops a shopping bag filled with glittery tissue paper in front of you with a smile waiting for you to open it. feel free to gasp and smack him for making such an impulsive shopping decision just because he thought of you when he saw it, but expect him to pout and pretend to be offended. nothing is “too much” for his darling.

sugar daddy! hugh jackman who acts as your personal chauffeur and drives you around in which car in his collection you want, taking you to the mall, to see a show, to an outing with friends, and wherever else you want to go. the passenger seats are perfectly adjusted to your preferences and have your things sticking out of the side compartments with his large hand being a comforting weight on your thigh, drawing circles into your skin while reminding you that you look perfect and don’t need to continuously fidget with your appearance.

sugar daddy! hugh jackman who isn’t what you expected him to be considering his age. you thought he was just some old man who might have been a snob with his status, but he’s a genuine down-to-earth man. even with the salt peppering his hair, smile lines, crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes, and glasses, he still laughs like a young man and has a sharp mind with insightful knowledge that came with life’s experience. not to mention his godly body which you get the pleasure of watching him work on, cheering him on when he lifts weights while you stand on the sidelines or even join him. he sometimes says you help keep him young, but you know that he’s the most extraordinary man you’ve ever met.

sugar daddy! hugh jackman who, although you struggle to admit it, makes you feel insecure at times. he’s hugh jackman, the wolverine, the greatest showman— someone who is larger than life while you’re just someone who met and caught his eye by chance. although he doesn’t seem to mind what others think about your relationship, you aren’t blind to it and worry constantly about ruining his image to the public eye as well as those around him who may not approve of your unconventional relationship. it seems like something built on money rather than love, and although you felt that way at first, it’s clearly grown into something more than that.

sugar daddy! hugh jackman who can see right through you as soon as you start having these thoughts, don’t think you can hide it from him. he’s very perceptive and will ask what’s wrong immediately, giving you his full attention and taking any opportunity for you to run away from this confrontation. he’s an open book with you and would like it if you were with him as well, but if you aren’t ready to tell him yet, then he’s fine with giving you room to gather yourself.

sugar daddy! hugh jackman who feels his heart break into pieces when you tell him that you just don’t feel good enough to be with him. he’ll hold you and wipe away your tears which began to streak down your face once the words were out, assuring you it was never something that crossed his mind even once and how he wishes you could see how lovely you were in his eyes. anything he can do to change the way you think about this topic, he’ll do, and if you don’t think there is anything that can be done, he’ll compliment you even more frequently and put more time aside for you to show how much he really treasures you.

sugar daddy! hugh jackman who becomes more open about your relationship when people ask about it, showing he isn’t ashamed about it and is very proud to call him yours. he’s fantastic at tearing down any negative rumors about you and deflecting criticism, protecting you by turning each question into a session praising how wonderful he thinks you are. there’s not much to it, he’s just some sweet softie who enjoys bringing home his baby little diamond toys and giving her the lavish life she deserves.

#📜. her works #hugh jackman #hugh jackman x reader #hugh jackman fanfic #rpf #rpf x reader #rpf fanfiction

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mermaidgirl30 · 4 months ago

Text

✨Dark Shades of Innocence Lost Part 5: Just Stay✨

Club owner! Joel Miller x fem! reader

Series Masterlist

Summary: Joel takes you on a date to his favorite diner.

A/N: This chapter gets angsty real quick, so I’m sorry 😭 But it’s so so important for the plot and the next chapter. We will get through it, besties 🥹 This fic is my baby, and I am just so happy with how it’s turning out. I want to hear all your thoughts! Thank you to @joelmillerisapunk for beta reading for me 💕 Next chapter is almost done so promise I won’t make you wait long! Comments and reblogs always make my day, I hope you enjoy 🩵

Word Count: 7.6k

Rating: Explicit 18+ only MDNI

Chapter tags: Fluff, Joel being cute and flirty, yearning, a lot of angst, feelings, doubts, no use y/n, no outbreak! au, Joel takes reader on a date, a lot of tears, switching POVs (I’m terrible with tags, so let me know if I missed anything!)

Dividers by @saradika-graphics

It’s Thursday, the night of your dinner with Joel, and you’re currently sitting in his truck, twisting your fingers nervously into the fabric of your dress, your smile a mile wide as you listen to Joel’s Southern accent put you in a hypnotic trance.

God, he’s so handsome.

“Think you’re gonna like this place,” Joel smiles as his thumb taps against the leather steering wheel. His truck hums to a stop in front of a lit up small diner that reads Sal’s in bright blue letters.

“I’m sure I will.” You smile over at him before he puts the truck in park and unlatches his seat belt, slipping out of the driver’s side while you climb out the passenger’s door, pulling down your white summer dress over your thighs.

The truck ride to dinner was anything but boring as you listened to Joel talk more about his daughter and some of their adventures they’ve been on before she went off to Greece to study abroad. You wondered what happened to Sarah’s mom, but maybe that was territory for another time. Besides, you still don't know what this thing is between you two, but it’s starting to feel a lot more like something serious and not just something casual. And that absolutely scares you to death.

“After you,” he nods as he holds the door open for you and leads you in, one large hand clasped on your lower back as if his touch is steadying your galloping heart.

When you step in, an old jukebox sits at the entrance, lit up in neon green colors as an Elvis song vibrates through the overhead speakers. Leather booths sit against the brown painted walls as pictures of The Beatles, Marilyn Monroe, and old movie stars hang around the diner. It’s an old timey theme that goes with the bar that sits at the front with a big glass case of pies and desserts on display. It’s very homey and comforting.

Yeah, you definitely like this place.

“Wow. This is really cozy,” you say as you look around all starry eyed at the little diner.

Joel looks down at you, and a crooked grin tugs at his lips. “That it is.”

A waitress in a red apron waves the both of you over with two crisp menus. “Hey, Joel! Table for two?” The perky brunette smiles as Joel nods.

“Hey, Kat. Yeah, table for two, please,” he replies as he pushes you forward in the direction of the back booth she leads you to.

“Come here a lot?” you giggle.

“How’d you guess?” He smirks, brown eyes flicking over you as he pulls his hand away, allowing you to slide in the leather seat across from him. His knees brush lightly against yours, and a jolt of energy bursts through your bloodstream.

“So, what’s your go-to here? Since you obviously come here a lot,” you laugh as you pick up a plastic menu and scan the various burgers, sandwiches, milk shakes, and old fashioned dinner items that all sound absolutely delicious.

You hear him chuckle over your menu, slowly lowering it so you can see that glimmer of onyx in his eyes as a smug smile crosses his lips. “Usually jus’ go for the old fashioned cheese burger and a chocolate shake.”

“Not bad, Miller.”

He smiles and nods your way. “And you? What kind of shake girl are you?” He leans on his elbow on the polished table and gazes into your eyes. You have to catch your breath as you stare at him, his slicked back dark hair, grey threads catching under the dim lights, a dark blue flannel with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, the top buttons undone to expose dark hair peeking out from his muscular chest, his black watch glinting every time he turns his wrist. He’s just so good looking that he makes it really hard to concentrate on anything else.

You fold your arms on the table and gaze into honeysuckle eyes. “Usually just a strawberry shake kind of girl, if we’re talking classics.”

He gives you a small smile, but before he can say anything else, the blonde waitress comes up to the table. “Well, what do we have here? Joel Miller bringing a girl to the diner? My, thought I’d never see the day,” she laughs as she sets two waters down on the table.

Joel’s face reddens as he rakes a hand slowly down his greying scruff. “Guess I jus’ had to find the right one first,” he smiles, flicking his eyes over you as your breath catches in your throat.

He’s never brought a girl to his favorite restaurant before? You were… the first one? Oh.

“I see,” she says as she takes a minute to trail her eyes over you. You see her mouthing ‘she’s pretty’ to Joel, and now it’s your turn to blush as Joel nods his head and lays his eyes over you again. “Well, what’ll it be? Your usual?” she asks, taking out a little notepad and a black ink pen to write with.

“The usual for me. What do you want, sweetheart?” he asks, and you swear you see Sienna cup her mouth and giggle into it when he calls you sweetheart.

“Can I get the grilled cheese with French fries, and a strawberry shake?” you ask nicely as you hand her back the menu.

“Sure can. Can I get you anything else?” she asks as she twirls the pen around her freshly manicured fingers.

“Oh, can I also get a side of ranch?”

“No problem. I’ll get that order in, and I’ll be right back with your shakes. Let me know if you need anything else.” She flips her blonde ponytail and flashes Joel a bright smile as she walks off toward the back.

“Ranch dressin’, huh?” he chuckles, shifting his weight in his seat.

“Only the best dipping sauce in the world,” you confirm with your head held high.

He laughs and gives you a smile. “Haven’t tried that before. Guess I’ll have to tonight,” he beams.

“Guess you will,” you say with a raised brow.

You take a generous sip of water and swish the bendy straw around nervously, looking up from under your dark lashes as you take a deep breath. “So, first girl you’ve brought here?” you ask with your brows raised in question.

He taps his index finger on the edge of the table and nods. “Besides Sarah, yeah. First girl.” Your eyes lock for a few seconds, and you feel your heart skip a beat at the intention that burns in his dark brown irises.

The questions slur through your mind. Is this an actual date? Does this incredibly handsome man really like you? Is he wanting… more? Do you want more?

The tension gets interrupted as Sienna comes back and hands you your milkshakes. “Here ya go! Food should be out soon, sugar. Be back in a few.” She whisks away and leaves you two alone again.

You pull your eyes off Joel and slip a straw into your strawberry shake, mixing it around until your nerves dissolve into the liquid. “So, read anymore Fourth Wing?” you ask after taking a sip of your shake.

Joel wipes his mouth with a napkin and dips his silver spoon into his chocolate shake. “Actually, quite a bit. Made it to chapter twenty-two.”

You lift your eyebrows in surprise and smile. “Oh? And?”

He drops the spoon from his mouth and spins it around his chocolate shake meticulously. “Pretty good. Dain’s kind of an asshole, but Violet’s kinda badass. And the dragons, the fighting? Not bad, angel. Can see why you like it.”

You giggle and take another sip of the strawberry goodness, letting it slide down your throat as you feel it close up the moment his brown eyes flick back toward yours. “It is really good, just wait till you start the second book.”

“The second book? Already think I’m gonna read the second book?” He smirks, one eyebrow stretched up as he licks his bottom lip clean of chocolate. The sight makes you weak in the knees.

“Figured you’d read it for me,” you whisper just loud enough for his mouth to drag up in a full on grin.

“Well, when you put it that way, ‘course I will. I’d read anything you put in my hands,” he smiles. His knee brushes against yours, and your heart hammers in your chest as you engulf yourself in the smell of him, in his gorgeous brown eyes. Even from the wafts of burgers and fries, you can still smell that woodsy cologne floating around your senses. And you want to drown in the very essence of him.

You bat your eyelashes at him and smile. “In that case, I’ll make you a list,” you giggle.

“I’m holdin’ ya to it, angel,” he chuckles as he takes another generous sip from his chocolate shake.

The music switches over to an old Beatles song, and after you stir the spoon around your shake, you decide to bring up Sarah again. “So, Sarah. She like this place as much as you?”

Joel chuckles and shakes his head. “Nah, not as much as I do, but she does like it. Brought her here all the time when she was a kid.”

You smile at that, thinking of Joel helping her up on one of the barstools, him laughing as he joked with his daughter, his warm smile gleaming in the sunlight as he took her on different adventures and did fatherly things like take her to the park, to the dinosaur museum, maybe even played Barbies with her. You giggle at the image of that. He must’ve been such a good father, you can see it in the way his eyes glisten and crinkle when he talks so fondly about her.

Suddenly, you get the sudden urge to ask about her mother, wondering where she fit into all this. Surely she’s still around, maybe closer to Joel than you think. You work up the courage to ask as you stir the spoon mindlessly in your strawberry shake. “Hey Joel, can I ask you something?”

“Anything,” he says automatically as his brown eyes lift up to yours.

You gulp down your nerves and let them roll off your tongue. “Where’s Sarah’s mom?”

Joel’s eyes widen at the question, and you automatically feel guilty for even bringing it up. He pushes back some tousled curls and sighs, wetting his bottom lip as his eyebrows crease tightly together. “She left us when Sarah was jus’ a baby. Jus’ up and left with no more than a folded note. Haven’t seen or heard from her since.”

Your mouth gapes open in shock, and his eyes gloss over with a hint of sadness as his fingers turn into a tight fist. You definitely struck a very sore topic, and you hate yourself for even asking now. “Oh my god, Joel. I’m so very sorry,” you reply shakily as you let your spoon drop with a plop into the glass cup.

He shakes his head and sighs. “Don’t gotta apologize, sweetheart. ‘S not your fault. Besides, we made it jus’ fine without her. Didn’t even need her.” Again, you see the prickle of a held back tear, and you wish you could just brush away that part of the past for him.

“Well, if it’s worth any consolation, I think you did a really good job. I mean, look at her. Studying to be an architect, traveling around the world? I’d say she took after her smart daddy,” you smirk. That sends a warm smile spreading wide over his mouth, and you can’t help but blush as his eyes flick to yours.

“Smart daddy, huh? That what I am?” He chuckles as he keeps his eyes locked on yours.

You shrug and giggle. “I’d say so.” That makes a deep chuckle fall from his lips as he clasps his hands together on the table, rubbing against your outstretched hand.

You catch your breath and meet his eyes again, nervously brushing your knee against his. “It’s her loss. She missed out on a great guy, didn’t know what she was missing, apparently.” His eyebrows draw together, and his eyes dim with a hint of a glimmer as a small smile curls around his mouth. He looks like he wants to say something with the way he’s looking at you all gentle and prideful, but you’re quickly interrupted as Sienna brings the food to the table.

“Here you two go! Plates are a little hot, so be careful.” She lays the glass plates in front of the two of you with a curt nod and a playful wink as she turns to leave you alone again.

You pick up a hot fry and dip it in the creamy ranch, scooting it over in Joel’s direction as you bite into warm goodness. “Go on, try it,” you giggle as he hesitantly dips his own fry into the white sauce, carefully bringing it to his plush lips. He takes a bite, and a surprising look glazes over his face.

After a few seconds he gives you a small smile and goes back for another one. “Not bad, angel. Not bad at all.” You acknowledge it as a compliment and dig into your grilled cheese, knowing you just metaphorically saved a life by showing the powers of what ranch dressing can do.

“Told you,” you laugh, taking a large bite out of the extra cheesy grilled cheese.

“Mmm, sure did. Gotta start listenin’ to your suggestions more often,” he winks. You just push back a piece of loose hair and smile.

The next half hour is spent delving into your food and flirting back and forth, brushing knees against one another, blushing and smiling probably more than you ever have in your entire life, and it’s all because of this man, this incredibly ridiculous hot, sweet man. How did you ever end up in a diner talking about life with Joel Miller?

Minutes go by, maybe hours. You don’t really keep track anymore. “You were in a band?” you laugh incredulously as you look at his gleaming eyes.

“Sure was. Played the lead guitar. Didn’t last long, but it was fun while it lasted.” He sits back in the booth and spreads his legs wide, like this is the most casual conversation ever and he’s actually enjoying himself.

“Do you still play?” you ask with hope glittering in your eyes.

“Sure do. You ever tried?” His eyebrow raises with curiosity written all over those dark brown irises.

You shake your head at that. “No, always wanted to try, just never got around to it.”

He taps his index finger on the edge of the table, and a small smile curls around that beautiful mouth. “You wanna learn?” He threads his eyebrows together and leans forward, like he’s reaching for a certain answer.

You bat your eyelashes up at him nervously and ask quietly. “Are you offering to teach me?”

He shrugs his broad shoulders and nods. “If you wanna learn then absolutely. Not like I haven’t taught you a thing or two before.” He winks and the giant smirk makes you choke on your water because you know exactly what he’s talking about, and it’s not just guitar strings but something else he’s shown you with those thick, calloused fingers.

Heat floods your cheeks as you look into those smoldering coffee irises. The more you stare at him, the more you want to reach across the table and melt into his glowing soul. “Okay,” you say dreamily, resting your knuckles casually under your chin as you lean against the table and stare absentmindedly at the man with the pretty brown eyes.

“Is that a yes?” He pines, trying to wind his thick fingers around your skull as he searches for an answer that’s right on the tip of your bashful tongue.

“Like… at your club?”

He chuckles and shakes his head no. “No, sweetheart. At my house.”

His house. You don’t know why, but the mention of that has something that feels a lot like bile rising in your throat. His house. That’s different than meeting at the club, even different than this. And suddenly, you realize just what this is, how much more it feels than just sleeping together. This is a date, and that makes your stomach clench in a tight knot at the very thought of what comes next.

When you don’t answer, he reaches over and lays a big hand on top of yours, his thumb sliding along the inside of your wrist as your vision tunnels. Oh god, what is he about to ask?

“I’ve been thinking…” He blinks a couple times and drops those beautiful brown eyes on you, giving you that million dollar smile that makes you weak at the knees. He sighs as he strokes his fingertips over your clammy skin. “What are we doin’ here, angel?”

Your heart halts, and for a second you can’t even breathe, nonetheless speak like a normal human being. “What do you mean?” The words are barely a whisper as they ghost through your lips, your hand tightening against the tabletop.

You know exactly what he means, you’re just too scared to hear those words come out of his mouth.

He slides a hand through his greying scruff and stifles a deep laugh, and then his eyes are piercing through yours like the morning sunrise on a rainy day. “I mean… us.”

“Us?” Your voice is full on shaking, and your breathing is anything but normal now.

He lets out a sigh that sounds a little like frustration, but he doesn’t let his smile and warm eyes falter. “Yeah, us. Me and you, angel. What are we doin’?”

“I… uhhh… we…” Your words are nonexistent, only a form of mumbling and jumbled sounds spilling from your mouth. Joel’s gaze flinches as he waits, his fingertips becoming shaky and dismantled as his jaw ticks. And fuck why can’t you say the words? That you do want him. You want this, you just want everything from this incredible man, but fear stops you. And then the next words that fall from your lips completely ruin you.

You press your knees together and bite your nails into the flesh of your thigh, grinding the words you don’t want to say out like nails clawing down chalkboards. “I mean… we’re just having fun, right?” His jaw immediately drops.

Shit. You’ve just ruined everything.

He pulls back from you, dropping his hand onto his side of the table, and he looks completely wrecked. You see the light in his brown eyes die as he clenches his jaw into a tight fist and runs his hand unruly through his tousled curls.

Shit shit shit.

“Jus’ havin’ fun? Is that all we’re doin’?” His voice sounds garbled like he’s drowning under a faucet, and you start to tremble in place.

Say something, anything to take back what you said. For the love of god, reach for him! But you don’t move, your hand doesn’t even twitch, even though all you want to do is reach for that hand, his arms, his heart. Fuck. But you don’t move. You don’t do a damn thing but freeze.

“I — uhhh… mhm.” You can’t even look at him when you say it because there’s shame written all over your pathetic face, and you really don’t want to look into those disappointed eyes that are reddening with held back tears.

“That right? This right here is all jus’… fun.” His voice is smothered in disappointment, and you swear you hear him mention something about how it was all some game, and that fucking breaks you. This isn’t a game to you, but you can’t seem to make your voice work.

He stares at you, his eyes darkening as a deep scowl forms on his lips. He’s waiting for an answer, but you just can’t do anything to make this better. So you mutter words you don’t mean out. “I… I don’t know.” The look of instant regret threads his face, and he looks like he just found out his dog got run over with the speckles of tears that push through his tormented eyes. And now, you can’t even look at him.

You’re such a fucking coward.

And just to make it worse, the fucking waitress interrupts. “You two lovebirds want some pie?” she asks sweetly. The question makes you sick.

“Nah, think we’re done here. Jus’ bring me the check.” The sounds from his heavy words hit you like a car crash, and you feel regret caving hard in your clenched gut for what you’ve just done.

You dare to take a peek up from under your long lashes, but you regret it the moment you see that weathered stare, that stone-like face that tells you enough. He’s just as devastated as you. Because he thought this was more, and it should be more. But you’re just a girl with a fucked up past who just can’t seem to let go, so you ruin everything you touch.

You’re nothing but a disappointment.

You flick your gaze down to your curled fingers that almost tear through your soft pink dress. This was a special dress, one you thought Joel would like, one you were so excited to wear because his eyes lit up the moment he saw you in it. And now? Now you just feel like Cinderella when her stepsisters tore her favorite, special dress to shreds. You’re nothing but fire ashes that burnt out long ago.

Sienna comes back, and Joel leaves her a fifty dollar bill, not bothering to wait for any change. He doesn’t even say your name when he gets up, he just stands at the door silently and waits for you to follow without even one lingering gaze. You feel just like a lost puppy who lost their favorite owner, and you swear you die right on the spot when you brush up against him and feel him pull back, like you’ve just burned him.

But you did burn him. You scorched him alive.

The truck ride back to your apartment is soundless, the only noise is the faint hum of the engine as the tires drive along the dark road. His music is even muted. Every time you look over he’s either pinching the bridge of his nose, raking a hand heavily through his beard with concern etched painfully in his eyes, or running his fingers roughly through his now disheveled hair. He looks like he’s just been through hell. You did that, you fucking did that. Goddamn it!

You lick your bottom lip nervously, feeling your fingers start to rip through the bottom of your dress. You’re clawing your legs so fiercely that you’re about to lose your fucking mind because you can’t say what you really want to say. So you just stay silent; you just don’t have the energy to do anything else at this point.

When he finally pulls up to your door after that painful ride, he puts the truck in park and keeps one hand clenched tight around the leather steering wheel, only facing forward as his lips form a tight line.

You slowly unbuckle your seatbelt and look at him with swimming eyes, your vision starting to blur as you compose your shaky breath. “I uhh… I had a nice time tonight, Joel. Thank you for dinner.”

His knuckles squeeze the steering wheel tighter, and he barely even looks over at you as he fights to make words tear out of his mouth. “It was no trouble.” No ‘you’re welcome’ or ‘I had a nice time too, angel’. And that makes you want to die.

You curl your fingers around the door handle and pry it open with a shaky hand, but before you slip out you say one more thing that you think will save this whole messed up situation. “Maybe… maybe you could give me that guitar lesson?”

He gulps down a breath and ticks his jaw, his face looking straight forward so he doesn’t have to look you in the eyes. “I… I’ll see you around.”

It’s over.

Your face drops like your heart does in your chest, and you mindlessly step out and let the door close behind you. He pulls out instantly and leaves you standing there alone, tears streaming down your face as you watch the headlights disappear like they were never there in the first place.

You stay frozen in that spot, letting the chill of the night breeze past your bare arms, your eyes bloodshot and wide as you replay the end of the dinner, the part where you fucked it all up.

Your fault, your fault, your fault. And suddenly, you feel as if you just ruined your entire life.

You drag yourself into the apartment, not even bothering to turn on the lights as you slide beneath your cool sheets and shed the tears you held in the past half hour. You let them fall until you can’t breathe, until you can’t think about anything but those sad doe eyes. And that’s the last thing you remember until sleep drags you under. And then there’s just darkness and nothing else but your own stupid mistakes playing through an endless nightmare.

He moves in a fog the next week, his body lethargic and numb as he pushes past blocks of bodies, the echoing music drowning through his ears as he goes through repeated motions he can barely tolerate.

He spends the evenings in the club tucked away in his office where no one can touch him, where he’s not reminded of your beautiful eyes or your dimpled smile. His hand clenches around the whiskey glass as cold droplets collect where his lips meet the edge of the cup, slow sips drinking in the relaxing sting that numbs his buzzing body.

You were supposed to be his, but instead you’re just a ghost that materializes in his memory every fucking moment of every gut wrenching day.

He lets the sting soothe him as he taps his thumb mindlessly against the glass, staring at endless paperwork that keeps piling like someone else will do it. But he lets it sit and sit until the words start to blur on the page, until he’s completely numb from the traces of your last words you ever said to him.

Maybe you could give me that guitar lesson…

And he just fucking drove off and left you all alone without so much as one word to soothe you over. He’s a fucking asshole, but what could he say? You don’t want him like he so desperately wants you. But he really thought you did… he was fucking wrong.

He flips his phone back and forth in his palm, lighting up the screen just long enough to stare at your name and the message button that seems to burn through his eyes. He sighs and lets the phone fall to the desk, turning it face down so he can’t see your name as the pain sets like fire in his chest.

He groans, fisting his disheveled curls through his fingers as he leans his elbows against the covered desk, quietly cursing as he fights to grab his phone and hit the call button. But then he remembers that you don’t want him. Not like he wants you.

He lets out a growl, numbing his mind a little more with the poison he feeds himself, letting lies run rampant through his mind as he fights to see where he went wrong. He thought you wanted him, wanted more. Where the fuck did he go wrong?

He’s so deep in his racing thoughts that he barely hears the door handle jiggle, almost missing his brother that slips in out of the blaring noise of the club.

“Uhh, Joel? You alright there, brother? You’re not lookin’ so hot,” Tommy says slowly as he paces cautiously up to the edge of the mahogany desk.

“I’m fine,” he bites out, a little too harsh as his clipped tone makes Tommy’s mouth tighten.

“If you say so.” He threads his fingers through his greasy black hair that’s slicked back with gel and nods at the messy pile. “You a little behind on paperwork?”

Joel scowls as he clenches his jaw. “I’ll get to it. Jus’ had some other shit come up.” He’s not meaning to come off angry, but that’s what he is. Angry, hurt, shocked, torn apart. Fuck. One girl and his entire world goes to shit.

“You need some help with it?” He nods to the pile again and crosses his arms over his button-up long sleeved black shirt.

“No, I think I can handle it.” But can he really handle it? Not at all.

“Oh okay…” He presses into the back of his leather cowboy boots and shifts his weight uncomfortably. “Well, the boys are here waitin’.”

Joel’s eyes fall as he realizes today is Thursday. The day carved out to play pool with his friends. “Shit, I totally forgot,” he groans, pressing the heel of his palms into his eyes as if he can get rid of the pounding headache that’s taking over his body.

“You never forget. Joel, are you sure you’re okay?” Tommy’s dark eyebrows are furrowed together as his wide brown eyes edge with concern.

“I’m… I’m fine, Tommy,” he answers defeatedly as he lies through his teeth.

Tommy sees right through him, and it doesn’t take him long to realize just why he’s so fucked up in the head right now. “Hey, I haven’t seen that girl around lately. You know, the really pretty, sweet one? The one whose eyes light up when she’s near you.”

Joel sighs and closes his eyes for a breath of a second, his stomach dropping to the floor as he sucks in a painful breath. “She… no. Haven’t talked to her lately, Tommy.”

“Oh.” Joel hears the disappointment clearly in his tone, and he really doesn't want to explain just why he hasn’t talked to you. It’s too… painful. “You wanna talk about it?”

“No. Jus’ drop it.” His voice comes out clipped, and he has no strength to even apologize for being so short with Tommy.

“Alright, alright. I won’t ask.” He raises his hands in defeat and knocks on the edge of the desk. “You wanna come play pool? Maybe have another drink?”

Joel shakes his head no and sighs deeply. “Not tonight, Tommy. Maybe next week.”

Tommy decides to leave it at that, promising to tell the boys he’ll try his best to make it next week. Joel doesn’t say a word, just lets Tommy believe he’ll be feeling better by then, but he knows he won’t. He’ll still be this.

Before Tommy leaves, he peeks his head over his shoulder and tries to comfort Joel the best he knows how. “Hey, if you ever wanna talk, my door is always open. Whenever, night or day. I’m here for you.” Joel just nods and lets his brother fade through the door, closing it as silence takes over his lonely office again.

He pulls his phone out again, flipping through his contacts until he sees your name scrawled on the screen, except in your place is the word Angel with a little halo emoji right next to it. He suddenly breaks, fingers clenching the edges of the phone so tight that it falls to the floor, making your name disappear from his line of sight as his phone goes dead.

Angry, hot tears brim over his eyeline, and then he’s losing all self control as the bitter taste of regret sinks in. He stands up and pushes the overwhelming pile of paperwork to the floor, throwing the whiskey glass at the wall as glass shatters and liquid falls down the black wallpaper. He sends the lamp over the edge next, hearing it crack as his heart breaks just like the pieces of broken glass that litters against the polished floors.

He screams bloody murder as the feeling of pain overwhelms his insides, but the bumping music outside of the room mutes his cries. He topples in the chair, almost gouging his eyes out as his palms press firmly into his eyes, letting the hot tears roll down his sunken face.

He can’t do this. Not tonight, not tomorrow, not ever. He didn’t plan on falling for you, but he fell harder than he’s ever fallen. And goddamn it, he never meant to fall in love with you, but he did and look where that left him.

Alone and heartbroken.

But that’s what happens in continuous hookups where lines are blurred and no boundaries get set. People end up hurt or attached or fall hopelessly in love. And he did, all of those. But he never thought it could ever hurt this bad.

All he wanted since the moment he met you was you. And now, you were just the dark silhouette sitting in the corner of his office. A ghost that never should’ve faded away. But look at you now, just gone, like your deep red lips he never even got to kiss, but god, he wishes he would’ve gotten to taste those sweet lips that probably taste like honey. He’ll regret it until the day he dies.

He should’ve fucking known better than to let it go this far, but it did. And now? He’s lost you for good.

Two weeks go by and you hear nothing from Joel. You send a couple of texts, each very short. You talk yourself out of it, but you at least need to try. The only kind of response you get is the texting bubbles that shortly disappear after leaving you on read.

You walk around in a daze, everything foggy and blurry as you fight to even keep upright most days. You fucked up the best thing that’s ever happened to you all because you were scared to be hurt again. But where did that get you? It just left you devastated and more hurt than you could’ve possibly imagined.

You lose sleep, can barely tolerate the blinding sunlight that reminds you of that damn smile that you probably won’t get to ever see again. You should’ve kissed him, should’ve told him how you felt, should’ve told him about your past you really didn’t want to bring up again, but you were so fucking broken that you couldn’t manage to do any one of those things.

What would your therapist say to all of this? She’d probably scold you and shove more medications at you that you refuse to take. But what’s worse? Not feeling anything or reliving this insufferable pain day after day all because you couldn’t make your words or actions work.

Jesus, you’re a real piece of work. Joel was lucky he got out when he did. You’re such a fucking mess, but you’re an even bigger mess without him.

You stare at the text thread between you and Joel, mindlessly looking for any life behind that screen, reaching for just an ounce of reassurance that he isn’t really gone, but you get none. He’s gone.

The unanswered texts start to blur as tears fill your eyes, and then the panic sets in. The inevitable fear of abandonment and loss hits you like a blinding lightning strike, and then the anxious thoughts and debilitating emotional turmoil takes a hit. Joel isn’t coming back for you.

You click Brianna’s number so fast that you drop your phone and pick it up frantically, fumbling with the flimsy case until you have enough of a hold on it that you start to hyperventilate.

Pick up, pick up, pick up.

Just when you think she’ll let it go to voicemail, she answers with a giddy ring to her voice. “Hey, stranger! You’ve been quiet lately. What’s up? You wanna go out tonight?”

“Bri, I fucked up. I fucked everything up!” Your voice cracks, and the tears start to fall like raindrops down your skin. You can barely hold the phone to your ear because your hand is shaking so badly.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow down there. Breathe. What happened?”

“He… Joel… I…” You can’t even form a coherent sentence because you’re stumbling over your own racing thoughts, and your breathing is almost nonexistent. You’re just a shuddering mess.

“Hey, calm down. Babe, can you tell me what happened?” Her voice is patient, but you know she’s freaking out on the end of the line because you hear her car keys jingle in her hand.

“I… fuck, Bri. I blew it. He left… the questions… I couldn’t…”

“Listen to me. Do you need me to come over?”

“No, I’m… fine.” But you’re not fine, you’re far from it.

“You’re not fucking fine. Did that asshole hurt you?”

“No, just… no…”

“Fuck it, I’m coming over. Be over in ten minutes.” The phone line goes dead, and all you hear is silence as you hold the phone to your ear, waiting for nothing as you freeze and collapse.

You fall into the velvet couch and bring your knees to your chest, covering your eyes as you let the tears soak the material of your yoga pants, clinging to a reality that you just don’t want to deal with now. You don’t want to think about Joel, don’t want to think about how you haven’t heard from him in two weeks, don’t want to think about how fucking badly you want his strong arms around you, and you definitely don’t want to think about how you just ruined the one chance you had to keep the best thing that’s ever happened to you.

You sink into the crevice of the couch, squeezing your eyes closed as tears ricochet down your eyelashes. You faintly hear the rain drizzle from your kitchen window, tapping against the glass like it hears your swallowed cries filling the empty room. It’s just you, the flickering vanilla candle, and your muted cries that fill the staggering silence of your space.

And just when you think you’ve felt the worst, the grief consumes you as those sad brown eyes flicker in your spotty mind. A ghost of the past that haunts your every waking thoughts, and it just reminds you how wrong you went.

Your fault, your fault, your fault.

You’re so busy replaying the scenes from dinner that you barely hear the door being opened. You don’t even notice anyone’s here until Brianna is kneeling down in front of the couch, carefully pulling your knees down so she can look into your red-rimmed eyes.

She places a hand gently on your knee, giving you those sad brown eyes that remind you a whole lot like how Joel looked after you ruined it all. Another tear drips down your cheek, and then she’s soothingly pressing her palm against your thigh.

“Hey, I’m here now.” Her voice is dulcet, and her familiar cotton candy perfume calms you down just like her soothing voice always does when you’re having a breakdown. And in these moments you’re just so lucky to have a friend like her that’ll drop everything just to make sure you’re okay.

“Hi.” Your voice cracks, and you hear a quiet sigh that sounds a lot like genuine sympathy for you.

“You wanna talk about it?” She asks in a somber tone, one that’s not pulling for information, just someone that wants to let you decide what you’re comfortable with talking about.

You slowly nod your head as another tear falls from your tainted face. “When Joel took me out for dinner, he asked what we were, what we were doing. And I… I fucked up. I told him we were just having fun, that none of this was serious. And then… then…” You clench your jaw and fist your fingers into the sunken couch, trying to catch your breath to finish, but Brianna cuts in.

“Oh, babe. No.” Her blonde curls fall into her gentle face, and her light brown eyes glimmer with sympathy as she realizes why you were so worked up over the phone.

Your face falls, and you fight to get the rest of the words out through your gritted teeth. “You should’ve seen how wrecked he looked when I answered, Bri. It was… I never thought looking into a man’s eyes would break me, but that did. He looked so sad…” Your fumbled words deceive you as you break into a sob, Brianna quickly brushing a tear away as she meets your deep red eyes.

“I’m so sorry, babe. Have you… has he talked to you since?” She asks hesitantly.

You shake your head and let your gaze drop to the carpeted floor. “No. I tried texting him a couple times, but he just left me on read…”

The room grows silent for a minute as Brianna’s brown eyes gaze up at you, her golden locks shining in the glimmer of the faint light from the dark fluffy clouds outside. She takes a beat to figure out what she wants to say and when she does, it’s like a soft hug that folds across your entire body. “I think… I think he might be hurting just as bad as you right now. And maybe, just maybe he needed a little space to sort out his feelings? Because from the sounds of it, I think he wanted it to be more. I think he likes you a lot.”

You purse your lips and flick your eyes back to her, trying to shift through her words as they ring bells in your mind. “You really think he wanted more?”

She nods her head and places a warm palm over your shaky fingers. “I know he did.”

Those words just make you shake and start to sob all over as you let messy words spill from your parted lips. “Bri, I wanted to tell him so badly how I felt. How I wanted it to be more, how he’s literally the best thing that’s ever happened to me. That he… makes me feel safe and wanted.”

“Oh, babe,” she sighs sympathetically. “Look, you’ve been through some of the roughest shit I’ve ever seen, but you know what? You’re the strongest, most empathetic, sweetest friend I’ve ever met in my entire existence. And he’d be so lucky to have you.”

“But he doesn’t want me anymore!” Your voice tethers through the room like a broken record, and you fight to stay composed.

“You sure about that?” She cocks her head and gives you that look that says you’re absolutely wrong.

“He won’t talk to me, Bri. And the way he left… well… it sounded like he was saying goodbye.” You hold your breath and wait for the backlash she’s about to give you, but it never comes. There’s only soft words that numb your heavy brain.

“Hey. Let me ask you this, do you want to be with him?”

“Bri…”

“Just answer me, okay? Do you want him?” She emphasizes the word want, and her doe eyes glaze up at you with pure softness.

You gulp and let the word fall dry. “Yes.”

“Then you’re going to get him back,” she smiles, her glittery pink lips curling into warmth.

“What?” Your eyes blow wide, and your hands fall straight to your sides.

“Tomorrow you’re going to walk into that club, and you’re going to tell him exactly how you feel,” she said adamantly.

“No, Bri. I can’t. I…”

She holds up a palm and nods. “You can, babe. I know how much you like him; I can tell by the glow in your eyes every time you talk about him, and your smile? I haven’t seen you that happy in a few years. You’re positively radiant, just like you should be.”

You sigh and shake your head distraughtly. “I was happy until I went and fucked it all up,” you mumble under your breath.

She dips her fingers under your chin and pulls your eyes up to meet hers. “He’d be foolish not to listen to you and take you back, babe. Just trust me on this, okay? He still wants you. I know he does.”

“How do you know?” You mutter out with pursed lips.

“I just have this feeling, okay? You can do this, you will do this. I know you can.” Her smooth voice is so confident in you that you almost believe her. Maybe you can do this, but you have a feeling you’ll just fall and get left behind again.

You curl your lips into a small smile and wipe the last of the tears away with the back of your hand. “Thanks for making me feel a little better, Bri. You’re a really great friend.” You give her hand a tight squeeze and show her just how much she means to you.

She scoffs and flips her golden hair behind her shoulder. “Oh, don’t you get all sappy on me. Come on. I’m taking you to get ice cream.” She tugs you off the couch and drags you through the front door, not even bothering to let you grab your card. “This one’s on me, babe. Let’s forget about men and go soak in some sugary goodness tonight.”

“Sounds good to me,” you smile as she leads you down the winding sidewalk.

Maybe she’s right, maybe you can do this, after all. But the fear grabs a hold of your throat and holds back any faith you have in yourself. You’re going to fucking choke and ruin it all again. But you have to try because living without him isn’t something you even want to think about.

You don’t want to be without him because you’re pretty sure you’re in love with him.

#joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller fic #Joel Miller #joel miller fan fiction #no use of y/n #no outbreak au #no outbreak!joel miller #joel miller tlou #tlou fanfiction #tlou fic #joel miller x female reader

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 7 months ago

Text

1968 [Chapter 8: Demeter, Goddess Of The Harvest]

Series Summary: Aemond is embroiled in a fierce battle to secure the Democratic Party nomination and defeat his archnemesis, Richard Nixon, in the presidential election. You are his wife of two years and wholeheartedly indoctrinated into the Targaryen political dynasty. But you have an archnemesis of your own: Aemond’s chronically delinquent brother Aegon.

Series Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, character deaths, New Jersey, age-gap relationships, drinking, smoking, drugs, pregnancy and childbirth, kids with weird Greek names, historical topics including war and discrimination, math.

Word Count: 6.2k

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💜 All of my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Is it a story worth telling? I think so. It’s better than nothing. It’s better than watching raindrops slither down the cracked concrete walls until the prison guards come back to bloody us again.

Today I’m sending John McCain taps in the shape of the tale of Io. John has a hard time tapping back—they’re doing something to his shoulders, they’re destroying him—but he likes to listen. He’s getting it a lot worse than I am; perhaps even the North Vietnamese fear Aemond’s retribution if I die here. They should be afraid of him. He thinks he owns everything he touches, and he’ll snap bones to keep it.

So anyway, Io was a king’s daughter, a mortal who Zeus saw and wanted and took when her father kicked her out to avoid the god’s wrath. That’s easily half of Greek mythology, right? Zeus appears, irrevocably fucks up someone’s life, vanishes in a plume of clouds and thunder. He leaves human rubble behind him: ribs, nerves, disembodied hearts that leak blood from torn ventricles, minds broken in two. Zeus impregnated Io and then turned her into a cow to hide her from his wife Hera, ever-watchful, ever-vengeful, an aspiring mass murderess. When this disguise failed, Hera condemned Io to wander ceaselessly through the wilderness, tormented by the constant stinging of a gadfly. Eventually, Zeus returns Io to human form and she pops out a few bastard kids, as if Zeus needs any more of those. Then he ditches her and she marries some Egyptian dude. There are other details that I’ve forgotten. I don’t think John McCain will know the difference.

I’m sure you’re wondering how I acquired all this fabled trivia. I don’t seem like the type to lie around under trees reading folklore from religions that died thousands of years ago. You’re right, I’m not. But Aemond is. He would tell the stories, and Helaena would embroider scenes on quilts for us to burrow under in the winter, and I would dramatically act out the best parts (mostly murders), and Aegon would scribble comics in jagged black pen strokes. He has all these notebooks down in the basement filled with his new versions of ancient myths: Poseidon as a horny dolphin, Aphrodite as Marilyn Monroe.

Wait, I remember what I skipped. While Io was roaming across the globe, she bumped into Prometheus—chained to a rock for giving humans the gift of fire—and he cheered her up somehow. I guess meeting a guy who gets his liver continuously chewed out by a giant eagle would make me more appreciative of my circumstances too.

I have a lot of time to myself here in solitary confinement. My social circle is microscopic. I tap to John through the wall, I have dinner dates with Tessarion the rat. And I think about my family. They’re fucked up, but I miss them. I miss going to Monmouth Park with Fosco to bet on horse races, I miss getting hammered with Aegon while he sings Johnny Cash or Beatles songs. I miss my mother and Helaena and Criston. I even miss Aemond’s wife, though I only met her a few times before I deployed. She’s sharp, she’s hilarious. She’s mean as hell to Aegon, and sometimes he deserves it.

At first I wondered why Aemond hasn’t gotten me out yet, but I understand now. It sounds a lot better to have a brother being tortured as a prisoner of war than one who received a Get Out Of Jail Free card. It’s the kind of thing Aemond would consider. He understands which stories are worth telling.

I feel kind of bad for her. Aemond’s wife, I mean.

I don’t think she knows about Alys.

~~~~~~~~~~

On a chilly mid-September morning cloaked in fog, Mimi is laid to rest in the Targaryen family mausoleum at Saint George Greek Orthodox Cemetery in Asbury Park, New Jersey. Most of the golden plaques already have names chiseled into them: Viserys and Alicent, Fosco and Helaena. Aegon will one day be interred beside his wife. You have a spot reserved next to Aemond. All of you have already lived and died and been entombed; all of this was predestined by the stars eons before you had blood or bones.

Ari’s vault—an unnaturally tiny drawer, less than half the size of anyone else’s—is located just above yours. You can’t stop staring at it. You can’t hear anything the bearded priest in his black robes is chanting. Then Cosmo squeezes your hand and you look down at him. Mimi’s other children are somber but seem to be coping well enough—they are used to being raised by consensus, they would probably be more affected if one of the nannies died—but Cosmo always wants to be near you. He gazes up with those vast, wet, murky blue eyes, so much like Aegon’s, and you offer him a sad, reassuring smile. Cosmo smiles back. And you think: Life goes on.

Alicent is sniffling noisily; it echoes off the walls of the mausoleum. Criston—a man with no plaque assigned to him—is trying to console her. Aegon is watching you from across the cold granite chamber, grim and red-eyed in his black suit, the first time you can remember seeing him in one since your wedding. He wears no small gold hoops, only a row of stitches in his right ear. He wants to say something, to do something, but he can’t. Aemond is beside you, a hand heavy on your waist but muttering something to Otto. Back in Omaha, Otto had spent a few hours alone with the medical examiner, and when the death certificate was issued it revealed that Mimi died of a heart defect, a perfectly blameless sort of misfortune, an innate impending disaster. And so that’s what the newspapers printed, and any gossip to the contrary is confined to salacious rumors, untrustworthy and unproven.

When the ceremony is over, journalists are waiting to scavenge for photos and quotes under the guise of expressing their sympathies. It’s a shameless display, though they at least have the decency to wait by the cemetery gates. Aemond and Otto go to meet them. Alicent, Criston, Helaena, and Fosco, protective of the children, keep them far away from the feeding frenzy, hungry-eyed reporters like sharks without fins. Ludwika is reapplying her lipstick. Aegon is smoking a Lucky Strike and talking to his oldest son, Orion, a stilted exchange that holds the promise of turning warm with time.

You sit on a stone bench and Cosmo curls up beside you, rests his head in your lap, dozes off as you thread your fingers through his wavy blonde hair. In the mist there are shadows of gravestones and trees that turn skeletal as they shed their leaves.

“He is okay?” Fosco says as he ambles over, meaning Cosmo. He has his hands in the pockets of his slim black trousers that stop at his ankles. His suit is velvet, his eyeglasses speckled with drizzle from the slate-grey sky.

“He’s alright. He’s resting. Are you okay?”

“Oh,” Fosco sighs mournfully. “I keep thinking someone is missing. We came into this family together, Mimi and I. We got married six months apart. I have never had to do this without her. And I know she had her problems, but she was different when she was younger. She always liked a party, that’s why she and Aegon got along so well at first. But she was so loud and so funny, always telling these long stories, and everyone in the room would be grinning as they waited for the good part. Viserys loved her. Otto loved her. And then she had all those children one after the other, and that was hard, and Aegon self-destructed when he was the mayor of Trenton, and that was worse, and she was supposed to fix him and she couldn’t, the harder she tried the farther he ran from her. She started drinking her Gimlets before dinner, and then after lunch, and by the time you showed up it was never ending. But that wasn’t who she really was. She was like a moon that got smaller and smaller until the only thing left was a sliver.”

This family breaks people. This family kills people. “We’ll make ossi dei morti for Mimi tonight. I’ll help you, and we can teach the kids.”

Fosco smiles, swipes a tear from beneath his glasses, squeezes your shoulder with one wiry hand. “I am very glad you are still here.”

“I’m not trying to race you to that mausoleum.”

Fosco laughs. And then he says as he spies Aegon approaching: “Um…I will go avoid the paparazzi somewhere else.”

“You don’t have to leave, Fosco.”

“It is no trouble. And I suspect you enjoy your very rare privacy.” Fosco gives you a knowing glace and then heads back to where Helaena, Alicent, and Criston are lingering with the rest of the children. Now Ludwika is fluffing her blonde curls with her French tips, a smoldering Camel cigarette tucked between two fingers.

Aegon comes to you through the mist, plops onto the bench, and looks fondly down at Cosmo—now fast asleep, his face smooth and peaceful—before he speaks. “I can’t grasp that she’s really gone. We barely spoke for years, but she was always there, you know? Christ, she deserved better than this. She could have been happy somewhere else.”

“Your children need you.” It’s not the first time you’ve said it, but it’s the first time he believes you. He nods, staring out into the fog. “They have to get away from this whole circus for a while. And you have to learn how to be a real parent.”

“I’ll have time to work on it. I’m staying here. I’ve already been informed.”

You are alarmed. “What? By who?”

“Aemond and Otto.” Aegon says. “When the rest of you fly west, my kids and I will be at Asteria.”

“They’re getting you off the campaign trail,” you realize.

“They’re putting me on house arrest.”

Not seeing Aegon, not being near him? How long can I stand that? “I’m sure you’re relieved. You hate the grandstanding and the media.”

He shakes his head, running his fingers through his hair. “I don’t want to leave you alone.”

“I won’t be alone. I have Fosco and Ludwika.”

“I’ll talk to them.”

“About what?”

“About the fact that they need to look out for you.”

“Aegon, I’ve been doing the political wife thing for over two years.”

“But it’s different now.”

He’s right, it is.

“You’ll call, won’t you?” he asks. “You’ll let me know how the trip is going, you’ll tell me if anything bad happens? Because I can always get on a plane and meet you wherever you are. Otto might pay someone to murder me, but I’d risk it.”

“Of course I’ll call.”

“Hey.” Gently, he turns your face so you can’t hide from him. “Will you be okay without me?”

I have to be. I don’t have a choice. Instead you reply: “I’ll miss the weed.”

The tension breaks and Aegon smiles, and then he pats your cheek twice with his open palm. “Behave yourself.” He waves Ludwika over, interrupting her meditative chain smoking.

“What, what?” Ludwika says. “Are we leaving soon? Yes, it is so sad what happened to Mimi, but us standing around in the rain won’t resurrect her. And I look terrible in black.”

“I can’t be there for the last leg of the campaign.” Aegon points to you. “I need you to pay attention and check in with her at least a few times a day.”

“This is a common request. I should get a degree in it so I can charge people.”

Aegon furrows his brow at her. “What are you talking about?”

Ludwika smirks as she puffs on her Camel. “You are not the first person to ask me to keep an eye on her.” She nods subtly towards Aemond, then sashays off to give a quote to the journalists.

~~~~~~~~~~

In San Diego, Aemond meets with residents of a new public housing complex to hear their concerns about neighborhood jobs and infrastructure. In San Jose, he visits labor activist Caesar Chavez—being treated for debilitating back pain at O’Connor Hospital—and expresses support for the ongoing boycott of all grapes produced in the state. In Sacramento, he attends a Jimi Hendrix concert and receives a standing ovation from the audience; the next day he joins high school students protesting for a more inclusive curriculum. In Oregon, he makes a speech at Portland State University acknowledging the tremendous cost of the Vietnam War—in money, in time, in blood—and pledges to begin dismantling U.S. involvement as soon as he is sworn into office in January. Aemond talks about hope and despair, the bleak reality and the American Dream, and he is so overwhelmed by the crowd that he doesn’t even notice when someone takes his cufflinks as souvenirs. His lack of concern for his own safety exasperates Criston, but Aemond can’t be convinced to increase his security or his distance. If he expects the disaffected masses to carry him to the White House, he has to be real to them.

“What if another Wallace supporter tries to shoot you?” Criston demands. “What if a Nixon stooge stabs you or a crowd tramples you?”

“No one can kill me,” Aemond says, grinning wryly. “I’m not supposed to die yet. I’m supposed to be the president. It is God’s will.” And how can anybody disagree when that appears to be so true?

The earth dies as you drive north, summer withering into autumn. That familiar brisk cuttingness reappears in the air. You shake thousands of hands, smile for countless photographs. Mothers and wives of dead soldiers sob into your shoulder as you embrace them; teenage girls ask how they can get a good man like Aemond. Only one thing is missing from his glorious pilgrimage: something he wants desperately, something he cannot have (though he’ll never know why), you conceiving his child in time to announce it before Election Day. Each morning you sneak a pill and every night you bite the bullet. As often as you can, you duck into Dairy Queens to order lemon-lime Mr. Mistys.

George Wallace is in the South, galvanizing segregationists and accepting the endorsement of the Ku Klux Klan. Richard Nixon is working his way across the Midwest. He has chosen a politically moderate Greek as a running mate, Spiro Agnew; this does not strike you as a coincidence. He even shares a name with Aegon’s second son.

Nixon promises “peace with honor” in Vietnam, which means no immediate end to the draft. He makes speeches about “states’ rights” and “law and order,” ambiguous euphemisms designed to attract Wallace’s white supremacists without alienating too many suburban moderates. He commiserates with those lamenting the proliferation of sex, drugs, and divorce. He says he will return the nation to a more moral time. You wonder what he means. You can’t think of any such refuge in the bloodletting, spine-crushing history of mankind.

A kindergarten teacher tells you in Olympia, Washington, her eyes alight with reverence usually reserved for heroes, saints, gods: “People are voting for Aemond, but they’re voting for you too.”

And you find yourself thinking as a thousand miles roll by beyond the glass of limousine windows: How many people will I condemn if I don’t help Aemond win? How many lives is mine worth?

~~~~~~~~~~

The Hotel Sorrento in Seattle insists on giving you and Aemond the honeymoon suite: a retreat from the breakneck campaign, a romantic oasis for the future president and first lady…according to half the country, anyway. You are in the impractically large pink bathtub, surrounded by snowy dunes of bubbles. The wall to your right is a mirror, foggy around the edges; just a few yards to your left is the king-sized bed. In the top drawer of your nightstand is the card Aegon gave you in July. You aren’t sure where Aemond is, and you don’t especially care. You are relieved to be alone.

There’s a passion-red phone built into the rim of the tub, conveniently located for sudden room service revelations, champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries, steak and lobster. You have a different idea. It’s 7:15 p.m. here, so after 10 on the East Coast. On the steam-slick keypad, you dial the number for the main house at Asteria.

Eudoxia picks up and demands gruffly: “Geiá sou? Ti?”

“Hi, Doxie. Is Aegon around?”

“Where else would he be? Making himself useful somehow? Killing communists, driving a rocket to the moon? No. He is a burden as always.”

“Please be nice to him. His wife just died.”

“And so he cannot put his empty cups in the sink?” Without waiting for a reply, she sets the handset down on the kitchen counter with a clunk. There is distant, muffled shouting in Greek; she seems to back and forth with somebody. Then Eudoxia returns. “Antio sas,” she says, and hangs up just as a phone elsewhere in the house is lifted from its cradle.

Aegon answers with something halfway between a groan and a yawn. “Yeah?”

“Hey, it’s me.”

“Hey!” You can hear it riding the wire like electricity: a rustling as he sits up, a fresh clarity in his skull. His voice is deep, hushed, still husky with sleep. “What’s up, little Io? Any interesting happenings to report from your neighborhood of the solar system?”

“I just left a riveting tea party. Apple cinnamon scones and smoked salmon sandwiches. We talked about what kind of couches I should get for the White House and I wanted to kill myself. Are the kids okay?”

He’s smiling; you can tell. “They’re alright. I could have used you this afternoon. I was trying to help Spiro with his math homework. Trying, not succeeding.”

“Well he’s in middle school and thus beyond your skill.”

“How’s Jupiter?”

You know who he means. “I don’t want to talk about Aemond.”

“Okay.” Aegon says, curious. “So what should we talk about?”

A few seconds tick by, silent and perilous. “Where are you right now?”

“In my lair. Like a beast.”

“Alone?”

A transitory pause. “At the moment.”

“On the shag carpet or your futon?”

Now he’s very intrigued. “Futon. Why?”

“I just want a visual.” Beneath the water, your free hand is resting on the velvety inside of your thigh.

“Where are you?” Aegon asks.

“You wouldn’t believe it.”

“Maybe I want a visual too.”

You chuckle, peeking over at yourself in the mirror. Your skin is dewy with steam; stray wisps of hair stick to your face. “I’m in a gigantic pink bathtub. It’s ridiculous, it’s shaped like a heart and everything. They have a phone installed right here in case I find myself in desperate need of filet mignon.”

“Oh.” And then he hesitates, like he’s afraid to say the wrong thing. ��Big enough for two?”

“More like five. You should get a tub like this for your basement, it would delight the campaign staffers.”

“My basement’s been pretty empty recently.”

Softly, vulnerably, glass offered for him to shatter: “You aren’t seeing other girls?”

“Nah, babe. I want something they can’t give me.”

You picture him, messy hair falling over his forehead, drowsy eyes that gleam with clandestine wisdom. You can smell the smoke and rum that bleeds from his skin. “I wish you were here.”

“In Seattle?”

“No. Right here.”

Aegon exhales shakily, swallows, takes a few seconds to collect himself. “How’s the water?”

“Extremely hot and full of bubbles.”

“So I wouldn’t be able to see you.”

“No,” you say, baiting him.

“But I could touch you.”

“You already have.”

“Not enough,” he murmurs. “Nowhere close to enough.”

“Do you remember what I felt like?”

“Oh God,” he whispers, and you envision him closing his eyes, rubbing his face with the open palm of his left hand. “Yeah. Of course I do. I can’t get it out of my head. But I’ve been trying not to…you know…it felt wrong to think about you that way unless you were cool with it. Like I was betraying your trust or taking advantage of you or something.”

“No, I want you to think about me.”

You can hear Aegon moving around on the green futon, repositioning himself, yanking down a zipper. When he speaks again, his breathing is quick and jagged. “Where’s your other hand, huh?”

“Under the water,” you reply coyly.

“You bitch,” he says, laughing. “I miss you so fucking much. The house isn’t right without you in it. You belong here, you belong where I am.”

Beneath the veil of bubbles and steam, there is no scar on your belly, no infidelity, no campaign, no distance of almost 3,000 miles separating you and Aegon. Your fingers slip between your legs, finding slickness the water can’t wash away. It’s a familiar sensation, though you haven’t felt it in a while: rising steadily until you hit a plateau like a jet reaching cruising altitude. From here, it will either glide along smoothly until it dies out, or eventually turn sharp and painful. “Tell me about you,” you pant.

He can hear it in your voice, a needful surrender that sets him on fire. He can’t believe this is happening; he never wants it to end. “I mean, I’m…I’m insanely hard.”

“Stroke yourself, imagine it’s me. I wish it could be me.”

“Oh fuck,” Aegon whimpers. “Okay, okay…I want you. I want you with my fingers, I want you with my tongue, I want you to beg for it, and then…”

Impossibly, incomparably, your own pleasure is climbing faster than you can reconcile yourself to it, no longer a hunger but a violent aching, a crushing gravity you can’t fight against, a ship being dragged to the floor of the ocean. What’s happening? When will it end? You moan into the phone, amazed yet petrified. You can’t get enough air; it feels like drowning, like dying.

“I need to see you,” Aegon says. He’s close to the climax that you know men experience, he has to be; he’s gasping. “I need to be with you, let me give you what you want.”

“I want you to finish inside me.”

“Io…babe…oh my God, you’re gonna kill me…”

There are sounds out in the front room of the suite: a lock clicking, footsteps, keys and a wallet tossed onto the kitchenette counter. You’re so consumed you almost don’t notice. Aemond is back. Aemond is back!! And every ion of your ascending euphoria evaporates. “Gotta go, bye.”

“Wait—!”

You hang up just as Aemond is opening the bedroom door. He walks in—immaculately tailored dark blue suit, polished black leather shoes trampling soft pink carpet—and turns to you. He has already taken his glass eye out and put on his eyepatch. Vaguely, fleetingly, you wonder where he’s been. His gaze darts to the red phone, your fingerprints in the condensation. “Who were you talking to?”

“My parents.”

If Aemond doubts this, he doesn’t show it. He crosses the room, sits on the edge of the bathtub, peers down at you with an omniscient metallic glint in his eye. He’s always been less a man than a force of nature. “I know this year has been hell.”

You envision Persephone being stolen by Hades, Orpheus searching for his dead wife Eurydice, Charon ferrying souls across the River Styx. “You haven’t made it easier.”

There’s a flash of something in his scarred face, blazing and instantaneous like lightning, and then it fades. He reaches out to touch your hair, swept up and neatly bound with clips and pins. “We can’t forget everything we’ve accomplished together,” Aemond says. “I still need you. You’re my Aphrodite.”

He’s going to tell you to get out of the tub, to lie down on the bed, to open yourself so he can fill you. You distract him, forestalling the inevitable. Each morning Prometheus dreads the return of the eagle that pecks out his liver; as every summer ends Demeter mourns the loss of Persephone. “Any luck with Nixon?”

Aemond sighs, furious, brooding. “He still won’t agree to a debate. Wallace is onboard, he’s rabid for it, he’d show up if we held it in the fucking asteroid belt, any opportunity to spew his idiocy. But not Nixon.”

“Because he knows standing on the same stage as you can only hurt him. People thought he looked bad in 1960, can you imagine now? Television has gotten so much clearer. They’ll be able to count his sweat drops from their living room couches.”

“So how do I get him to do it?”

You look up at Aemond. It’s not a hypothetical question; he’s really asking for advice.

“I have to debate Nixon,” Aemond insists. “It’s close in the polls, which means it will be even closer on Election Day. I’ll underperform whatever is projected, my coalition is less likely to show up when it counts. College kids, hippies, transients. That’s just a fact. But the old people vote. The suburban housewives vote. Nixon’s resting on his political experience and accusations that I’m a communist, an agent of chaos. But I could slaughter him in an hour on ABC.”

You think of the mutilated Vietnam veterans waving their signs and screaming at LBJ from the other side of the wrought-iron gates of the White House. “Challenge him in public. Say that the American people deserve to see the candidates debate, and do it where everyone can hear you.”

“What if Nixon still refuses?”

“Then you call him a coward. You say he must have something to hide. You ask how he’s supposed to square up with the Russians and the Chinese if he can’t even face you.”

Aemond grins admiringly. “You’re vicious.” And he lifts your hand from the rim of the tub so he can kiss your knuckles. Once you licked up drops of his approval like Tantalus, cursed with eternal thirst. Now it is poison that turns your veins black.

“If there’s a debate, everyone should go,” you say, seized by sudden inspiration. “We should have a united front, including Aegon. It can be his return to the public eye. A month will have passed since the funeral, the timing is right. He can pose for a few photos with the kids to show the nation that they’re doing well and distract from any lingering rumors about Mimi.”

Aemond isn’t grinning anymore. He’s studying you with his cold blue gaze; no, he’s trying to intimidate you, to overpower you. “Otto and I will decide what to do with him.”

“He’s a Targaryen. He should be with the rest of us.”

Aemond stands and motions for you to follow, a snap of his wrist like a man calling a dog. “It’s late. Let’s go to bed.”

Panic, tension, an iron sinking in your belly. The water is only lukewarm now, but you don’t want to leave it. “I’m not done yet.”

“Yes you are.”

There’s nothing else to say. Legally, a wife’s flesh is one with her husband’s. You slip as you step out of the bathtub, and Aemond grabs your forearm. Not like he’s helping you; like you’re something he owns.

~~~~~~~~~~

Two knocks, swift and forceful. “Hey, it’s me. You ready? Everyone else is downstairs in the lobby waiting for the limos.”

You hurry to open the door, almost twisting your ankle as you stumble in your heels. They’re an inch higher than what you’re used to. Aemond chose them, and your dress too, and your sapphire teardrop earrings, and the silver chains around your wrist and throat, and your future and your past, and your life itself. It’s mid-October, and the night of what will almost certainly be the sole presidential debate of 1968. Aemond’s retinue is staying at the Hotel Saint Louis. It’s harvest time, the fields beyond the city being reaped of their soybeans, wheat, corn, cotton, and rice, the beef cattle culled in mechanical underworlds. Aegon’s flight must have just landed.

As soon as he sees you his eyes drop, wide and bewitched, ensnared everywhere except your face. You say: “Can you help me zip this, please?”

He blinks a few times, then shakes it off. “Sorry, what?”

“The zipper’s stuck. I need you to get it.”

“Yeah. Sure.” He steps into the suite and stands behind you. The gown is a vivid blue like the Greek flag, gorgeous and shimmering but a size too small. It wasn’t tight a week ago, but now it is, and you aren’t pregnant just always gaining and losing weight in new places, first the baby and then the pill, and it wouldn’t bother you if Aemond didn’t seem so confounded by it. Aegon says as he tugs at the zipper: “I don’t think it’s gonna fit, babe.”

“It has to fit.”

“Even if I miraculously get this closed, you won’t be able to breathe.”

“Do whatever you have to. Just…just…” You push every last molecule of air out of your lungs, suck in your belly, and you hear the triumphant squeal of the zipper. “Yes!” Oh, but Aegon was right: you really can’t breathe. “Okay. Let’s go.”

“You’re not gonna last the whole debate in that. You’ll be sweating more than Nixon.”

“I’m fine.”

“Io…”

“I’m fine. Come on.” You snatch your matching purse off the coffee table by the couch, check your makeup one last time, and hobble in your heels as you walk with Aegon out into the hallway.

At the Kiel Auditorium a few blocks away, the Targaryen children—Aegon’s five and Helaena’s three—are presented for photographs before being escorted back to the hotel by the nannies. And even in the few weeks that have passed since you last saw Aegon’s kids, there have been extraordinary changes. They talk to their father, and he talks back, and he ruffles their hair and rests his hands on their shoulders and asks them about what they’re learning from their private tutors. Cosmo tackles you before he leaves—a powerful bear hug, though he can only reach your legs—and he says he hopes you’re coming home to Asteria soon.

“Me too, kiddo,” Aegon tells him, and then smiles at you; but above his gleam of teeth his cloudy blue eyes, like the Atlantic in a storm, are gloomy and troubled.

As the audience takes their seats and the journalists are poised to capture the best images and quotes of the night, the three candidates and their wives (minus Wallace’s dear departed Lurleen) meet briefly backstage to exchange the perfunctory well-wishes. Pat Nixon is introverted and bookish, though she tries to hide it; but Aemond reels her in like swordfish until her eyes are filled with him. George Wallace gets one glimpse of your venomous glare and escapes, claiming to need one last trip to the restroom before the debate begins. But Richard Nixon beckons you to accompany him to a quiet, discrete corner of the room.

“I tried to call,” he says. He’s a remarkably normal man: medium height, receding dark hair, rough voice, weathered skin, not a god but a mortal, and—you have the impression—more aware of his flaws than his fiercest critics will ever be. “But no one at that damned beach house would ever put me through to you.”

You aren’t sure what he means. “Oh?”

“I never got the opportunity to tell you how sorry I was for your loss in July, Mrs. Targaryen,” Nixon says with unglamorous, plain, genuine compassion. “Pat and I, when we heard, we wept for you. We truly did. And for your husband to be clear across the country…I can’t even imagine. It must have been awful for you. A parent never gets over something like that. It stays with you like a scar.”

“It does,” you say softly.

“I lost two brothers. Arthur died when he was seven, tuberculosis killed Harold in his twenties. God, it just about destroyed my mother. You’re a remarkable woman. You’re lightning in a bottle for Aemond, do you know that? You’re like one of those Kennedy gals, but even better. More personable than Jackie. More intelligent than Ethel…although, to be frank, who wouldn’t be? And you’re not afflicted with any ghastly vices like Ted’s wife Joan. What would Aemond do without you? He’d lose, that’s what he’d do.”

Nixon’s smart, but he’s wounded. He’s capable, but he’s so desperate to prove it. Power could ruin a man like this. “You’re very kind, sir. You did some great work under Eisenhower. Self-made like my father was, a devotee of the American Dream. I believe you have an important role to play in this country…” You smirk, a bit mischievously. “Just not as the president.”

Nixon chortles. “No matter what happens tonight, rest assured that I hate Reagan more than I could ever dislike your husband,” he says, meaning the Republican governor of his home state of California. “You know that bastard tried to primary me?”

“Actors don’t belong in politics.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Nixon says, and then bids you farewell as the lights turn blinding and the curtain begins to rise.

As soon as the adrenaline begins to fade, all you can think about is that you can’t breathe. You take your seat in the audience between Aegon and Ludwika, who won’t stop making jabs about Nixon: “He looks like a troll,” “He looks like a sasquatch,” “Do you think Pat makes him wear a Creature from the Black Lagoon mask in bed so she is not so repulsed by him?” The most you can offer is an occasional distracted nod in response.

“You alright?” Aegon whispers.

“Yeah.”

“You don’t look alright.”

“I’m great.”

“Sure,” he says, and he acts like he’s teasing, but there’s something tremendously sad underneath. He can’t save you from this. He can’t save you from anything. What must that feel like?

On the debate stage—broadcast to a national audience—Aemond performs brilliantly. Nixon salvages what could have been a bloodbath with a handful of clever retorts that Aemond pretends not to be rattled by. The real loser of the night is Wallace, who is brutally attacked by them both: Nixon because Wallace is commandeering some of his voting bloc, and Aemond because of his near-assassination back in May. After an hour, the contest concludes and the candidates descend to the main floor to pose for photos and get lassoed into brief interviews with various journalists. Everyone in Aemond’s entourage besides you and Aegon flock to his side. By now you’re gasping in shallow gulps, close to tears and in agony from your ribs to your wobbling feet.

“I told you,” Aegon says. And then: “Come on. We’ll take the first limo back.”

In the front room of your hotel suite—one yellowish end table lamp glowing dimly, the rest of the space like twilight—Aegon wrestles with the zipper as you struggle for every breath, trying not to pass out. “Ow,” you whine. “Oh fuck, this was so stupid…”

“Don’t let him make you wear shit you don’t want to wear.”

“I have to do what he says, Aegon.”

“He doesn’t own you.”

“Legally, he does.”

He’s tugging futilely at the jammed zipper. “Are you planning on using this again?”

“I believe that would be wistful thinking.”

“You probably look better out of it anyway.” He grabs his Zippo lighter from the pocket of his emerald green suit jacket and flicks it to life. “Don’t move, okay?”

“Okay.”

“At all.”

“Got it.”

You can feel heat, intense but not painful. Aegon has pulled the edge of the fabric as far away as he can from your skin and is singeing it until it turns black and charred and brittle. Then he tucks the lighter back into his pocket and with both hands rips your dress down to the small of your back. Cool air rushes to meet the ridge of your spine; goosebumps prickle all over. Aegon is marveling at you; you can see it when you glance over your shoulder at him. Then he lays a palm against your bare skin, leans into you, inhales everything you’ve ever been: smoke and sex and starlight, strategies, shadows, secrets.

The others will be pouring into the hallway from the elevator any minute. Aemond. Aemond could find us.

“We can’t,” you whisper, hating yourself for it.

Aegon kisses the nape of your neck—so slow, so kind—and then goes to the doorway. You wait for him to leave, but he doesn’t. He’s looking at you as you hold up the ruined gown so it covers your belly and your chest. You gaze back helplessly, wanting him, needing him, a moon chained to another world’s gravity.

We can’t, we can’t, we can’t.

“I’m so sorry,” you say.

And only then does Aegon vanish.

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