#ldlh desmond

[vivacissimx]

for my own reference / general desmond viserra vibes from love doesn't live here below the cut

[vivacissimx]

i love viserra and baelon but i’ll forever mourn your desmond and viserra and the life they could’ve had together if things had been different. thry could’ve been so good to each other

🥹

[vivacissimx]

The truth is this: any man would desire Viserra. The truth only Desmond knows is this: for the longest time, he didn’t.

for the desmond & viserra enjoyers!

wrote a quick 1k desmond manderly character study 🧜🏻‍♂️ takes place during his and viserra's offscreen affair in love doesn't live here chapter 13~

[vivacissimx]

honestly i can’t imagine the te sion that was going on at viserra and baelon’s wedding, with the manderly’s in attendance and baelon being aware of her affair w desmond… ik delena was lowk living for the drama

IF ONLY!!! viserra & baelon's wedding in this universe was a small intimate affair on dragonstone, and the only manderly present was faline SNOW 🖤 however there is a deliciously uncomfortable reunion with desmond and delena that takes place in part two. the vaelon wedding will probably be a one shot in the swallow songs collection at some point

[vivacissimx]

could you give us some details about viserra and desmond’s last meeting/goodbye ? vivi mentions that they sleep together one last time, but are there any unshed tears ? any last jokes? hugs? how do these two say goodbye to each other when no one is looking?

It's the only time she takes his hand when he offers it to help her from her carriage. She gives him a ring of hers which has a merman and dragon intertwined. It was a gift from Theomore which she ostensibly returns as she gives up the title Lady Manderly, however between them it's symbolic of the unspoken life they could have shared. It's Viserra's way of telling Desmond that she's imagined it, too (how, in another world, they would have been well-matched and in love).

[vivacissimx]

Hi!! Geniune question, what is Theomore and Viserra's relationship like? Like he just comes to her bed every night and leaves one he's done? Has she ever had an orgasm from him? Like what was going on? Was her first orgasm (aside from Delena/herself) Desmond?

I know these are private questions, but again this is an alternate universe fanfiction. So?

I don't mean this in a bad way, just trying to understand. I all written very vaguely, you yourself said you don't want to write anything explicitly too. Which is good I don't need more reasons to hate Jae and Aly or to cry abt Viserra.

Thank you, have a good day.

😭 Lord not that cursed marriage. i can answer, sure. theomore and viserra had a very lukewarm relationship that turned somewhat paternal after she lost her baby (which is also when he stopped maritally r*ping her). prior to that, theomore would basically inform her when he was planning on coming to her chambers so she could "prepare." she prepared by having a glass of wine or two to anesthetize herself. theomore knew she was doing this. he was under no illusions that she was attracted to or enjoyed him but he did think they had a rhythm they'd settled into, both of them performing their duties, which worked for everyone. so, as you can see, he is awful. whether or not she ever felt physical pleasure during these encounters is not really relevant—she was drunk, didn't want him, and felt traumatized to the point that she struggled to sleep in her own bed and became extremely touch-averse in her daily life. her focus during those encounters was purely to endure them. if she did have a reaction it probably disgusted her. theomore and viserra didn't share chambers, either.

yes, delena and desmond are respectively the first people viserra consents to sex/is able to enjoy intimacy with, including experiencing orgasm. both of them were aware of viserra's alcohol dependency and neither took advantage of it—desmond explicitly asks viserra Not to drink wine before they go to bed together i.e. even in-universe theomore's behavior is frowned upon. in fact, in desmond's case, it's only when viserra started initiating casual touches with him that desmond realized she was attracted to him. that said, only delena is aware of the full extent of viserra's trauma around theomore.

[vivacissimx]

Ok but whenever I reread 'love doesn't live here' fic. My image of how Desmond looks like it is always, always Hiccup from httyd. I don't know why but in my mind it's perfect. Everything, including the mourning beard.

quick google search later

yeah i'll support that 🧜🏻‍♂️

[vivacissimx]

Hiii!. Hope you're doing well.

I Have a swallow songs prompt to add drama, of sorts.

I guessed Vis is pregnant in 98AC? The same year Jaehaerys 50ty year of reign is celebrated. Which is written as a grand celebration. Lords from all over came, which would likely include Manderly. I would love to see that special someone's (😉) reaction to that?, of sorts. As well as interactions between Baelon, Viserra and Desmond. And maybe even Baelon telling Desmond he knows.

~XOXO, an admirer 😘😚😘😚

Anyways, take care. Stay hydrated.

i am very well thx, same to you!

okay listen—you guys need to make up your minds on this desmond guy 💀 cause EVERY TIME i put up a little twitter poll about what mini fic i should write next, i always include his POV as an option, and he always comes last. so do you want him or not!!!! AHHH okay i'm calm again.

anyway, desmond & the North in general is actually a subject of some chapters in love doesn't live here part II (tentatively 'under a lilac tree' after the nina simone song) so i probably won't seriously grapple with his feelings about the Baby, or with viserra and baelon's feelings about Him, until then... however a swallowsongs chapter of her white harbor departure from his POV is in the cards. one day. hopefully.

[vivacissimx]

In your opinion, would it be a better option for Princess Viserra, if she had been betrothed to the Manderly heir, Desmond, instead of Lord Theomore?

That is, if the union of the Targs with the Manderly was so necessary, the most logical thing would have been for Desmond to be her fiancé, since he is closer to her age.

well in 'love doesn't live here'-verse, yes definitely! they're both quite prickly when they meet at 16 years old but with time and some covert matchmaking from those close to them, i think they'd find their stride soon enough. it's just that they both have these alpha personalities so they're caught between "can't stand you" and "completely understand you"... but if there's love and respect foremost, then being competitive with your partner can be a love language.

if you mean in canonverse then that's so different - mostly cause we don't actually know desmond's age (because he was old enough to have grown sons and potentially one of those sons could have a grown daughter of an age to marry cregan stark's oldest son, i figured timeline wise it was possible to involve him as viserra's contemporary). depending on his age, it's possible that this would have been the better match on paper.

[vivacissimx]

The part where Viserra is opening up to Baelon, she says she does doesn't love Desmond, but that's not the truth tho is it?

To be honest with Baelon, she has to be honest with herself, which is something she doesn't want to do.

Does she love him?

Is it just a crush?

A comfort in pain?

Or just a momentary pleasure?

Also, Stupid headcanon of mine;

If SOME Maester writes abt Jaehaerys' reign in the future, And the part written abt Viserra, it's written as;

Though the princess Queen (King Baelon's queen) wed twice, her true love was always her Last Delena Fassoway Woolfield.

Hehe just a stupid headcanon😋

ITS NOT STUPID IT'S TRUE!!! VISERRADELENA HIVE ASSEMBLE

naur but being serious, delena is viserra's BEST girl. there's a really invaluable trust between two people who bonded together so young and lived parallel/relied on each other for years. it may not be quite so intense as the other relationships she has but yes, ldlh!viserra learned true friendship, devotion, and sexual pleasure with delena. so in many ways your headcanon is just facts. they're irreplaceable to each other.

onto desmond: she's lying to herself. yes, she loves the guy. ultimately the pivotal question for viserra came down to, a) stick around in white harbor as desmond's mistress out of love for him & because they could probably have a good life together--or b) follow her personal dreams/ambitions aka leaving him behind for king's landing. obviously she chooses the latter, and justifies it with the ol' "what happened between us was a weird brand new type of relationship that no one else has ever experienced & we invented, i'm not gonna linger on it, only we will ever understand what we meant to each other."

(lol. everyone has thought this about A Situation they're in at some point btw, it's just human)

what i wanted to stress in the fic is that there was an element there of her resenting needing him the way she did (to convince jaehaerys to bypass widow's law), because during their big argument he basically threw in her face that she needed him (once he became lord of white harbor, he would be in charge). so it took a lot out of her to ask anything of him. clearly she weaponized his guilt to do so rather than being mew mew big eyes pwetty pwease, but she's still a proud person. the situation upset her. their affair came at a strange time, with the both of them spooked by the knowledge that viserra would be departing soon and pushing them together in this last chance to indulge their unsaid feelings. i do think it weighed on viserra in her transition period, the horrible question of can i live without him, knowing deep down what he means to me?

so saying "i didn't love him" is more an affirmation of "i don't need him & i can live without him" than anything. in reality, they loved each other very much, and will always be quite special to each other.

thanks for the question! ❤

[vivacissimx]

Love doesnt live here has touched me so profoundly that it has been all i breathed for the past few days.

The story is pain, make no mistake, but the beautiful kind, if there is such a thing. Your writing has given this shriveled up jaded woman feelings again. For this, i thank you. I could sing neverending praises of your talent for words 🫶🏻

I loved how there was a planned story about them having a daughter. I feel so strongly for viserra having no one that she could truly call hers, and it’s haunted me throughout. I understand a large part of her growth and healing was her loving herself, but in a world where baelon was blessed in so many ways, i feel viserra got the short stick. (Though such is life, i suppose)

Would you happen to have also planned a spinoff about an alternate universe where viserra marries desmond, and lives happily? I love their relationship, and though it is like denial as a coping mechanism, i feel that our viserra deserves someone who can love her completely.

tysm for reading & for this message! i did (still do) believe that having a daughter would be the perfect culmination of everything viserra and baelon have worked to overcome throughout that fic. not as a reward, if only life worked that way, but as a future they've built together. alas irl life is just so busy rn that i don't have the time to really get into their story again, but i'd love to return to it one day. fingers crossed

desmond manderly is so 😪 i played myself with that man because he was just meant to be viserra's equal, someone she could learn to love alongside, who could help her forgive her own immaturity and learn what a relationship could offer her. what she could offer back. unfortunately i didn't realize how much space would be needed to mourn their relationship, because when people say you never forget your first they might have been onto something!

i haven't a whole spinoff with them being married, but i did write a desmond POV at one time that didn't make it in (just didn't fit, sadly). you can have it if you'd like!

--------------------------

Desmond knows what he likes in a woman.

It's inescapable fact, can be tracked through the faces and frames of every lass he chased in his youth. All there for the world to see, his very own lineage of lovers.

There was the cabin girl first, a Lyseni sailor his own age with roses branded up her arm. A whore kept by her ship’s captain, but she came willingly to Desmond over the moon they spent docked. She cursed loudly in six different tongues whenever he laid with her, and gave him a ribbon out of her hair the day she set sail once more, never to return. (He still has that ribbon, in a box of keepsakes somewhere.)

After her it was more of the same. Rough and tumble. Tavern wenches with wilding blood in them, bloodthirsty bitches who nary spoke sweetly and bit him til they tasted copper. There was a certain blacksmith’s daughter with cracked hands whom he called upon quite often in his seventeenth year, lovely girl who loved to leave him bruised, until his lord and grandsire summoned him to say his attentions had been noticed, and were becoming a nuisance. She married the castle’s cook as a last gesture of his affection, and at times still invited him to her bedroll.

Desmond never accepted of course. 

Two years later, he himself married.

At first, he thought his lady wife would please him well in several aspects, including, to his relief, bedsport. She was wild herself--too wild, he soon found. They were ill-suited even for a lover as generous as he liked to think himself.

For Minerva liked to hold his wrists and ride him as though it was her inside him. She hated his touch on her teats, didn’t even let him see them unless he begged for it. They compromise when they are together for the purpose of childing, his preferences one night, hers the next, but it remains mutually frustrating. He does not stray from her bed, though, takes no whores or mistresses.

The only woman he ever broke his vows with was Princess Viserra. Breaks. He is breaking his vows with Princess Viserra.

How can he explain that to his lady wife? Desmond cannot explain it even to himself. 

Viserra is… nothing he likes. She is beautiful, aye, beautiful as a Valyrian goddess, but also temperamental and haughty and so soft. Desmond cannot be rough with her; she would only scold him, or worse, send him on his way. He gives her no bruises save lovemarks, and only where she allows it. She likes to hold his hand while they make love. Would yelp angrily if he ripped her laces clean in two.

Which is not to say she is not a proficient lover. She is that and more. Fleshy where she should be, shameless in her pleasures. Whether she mounts him or lies beneath, her body moves so erotically it dizzies him. She rarely does it first, but her cunt goes so wet when he speaks words of affection and devotion to her, drowning his good senses away with her grip on his arse urging him deeper. She calls him darling and runs her hands all over his skin, as though it gives her joy just to touch him, and at times she is so inflamed that she enthralls him. Slave to her thighs and mouth and pout, that fucking pout that drives him mad. I need you, please hold me, stay in me, she moans at the end.

Holding him close. Filthy kisses full of spittle and whines that make him hard all over again. Obsessed; obscene.

The truth is this: any man would desire Princess Viserra.

The truth only Desmond knows is this: for the longest time, he didn’t.

Even at eight-and-ten, when he thought of her every time he couldn’t sleep at night, the version of her he imagined was outrageously foul-mouthed and violent. It wasn’t her. It was simple fantasy, and disrespectful at that. 

It was so unrealistic that it wasn’t until his bedding ceremony that he realized there was a problem. Desmond had twisted himself into a self-granted pardon, decided it was merely a matter of his mind being lazy, being bored, that his dreams were no reflection upon his waking hours. The two facets, the Viserra he parleyed with in the day and the Viserra who riled him in the night, were unconnected. It wasn’t her, it was her silver mane tumbling over her lovely shoulders, always causing a stir when she let them be exposed. 

She was the object of his desires yet he did not act on said desires, so what crime?

Desmond absolved himself of wrongdoing for as long as he could, made up lies just so he could touch her skin and repeated them until they felt like truth.

But then she’d smiled so happily when he came to dance with her. But then her soft palm had lain against his bare skin, her silver head sighing beneath his chin. Grasped onto him with the pampered hands of a princess, pressed herself close so that he could keep her safe from the crowd, her who hardly let anyone touch her.

I want you with me day and fucking night, he’d thought viciously, shoved up against the bedchamber doors, his new wife somewhere behind them or perhaps leagues away. I want you to feel how I feel.

She did share his feelings, as it turned out. A part of him had always suspected. Had felt her touches linger. Imagined it on his bare skin.

Viserra is not the sort of woman Desmond likes. She’s too spoiled, too exacting, too refined. She infuriates him, but becomes distraught if he displays annoyance. She refuses to listen to good sense. She vexes him and does not belong in his world and her alliance with Lord Theomore was the biggest miscalculation Desmond had ever had the unfortunate luck to witness. Desmond would do himself many favors by ending their dalliance here and now, walking away as unscathed as he could be by a woman who is fire made flesh…

Cannot, though. Would rather burn alive than sacrifice what little time he has of her, before she finds another man in another castle to care for her as Desmond does.

Viserra is not the sort of woman he likes, but she has never cared to be either. She holds a greater sway over him than mere affection because his she-demon cannot do anything by halves. No, Viserra is not a woman he would say he likes.

Does not hardly need to. For he loves her.

He just... loves her. Could not for the life of him say why.