#slow burn so slow it's glacial

[dsabian]

It's been a year since I finished this.

Not sure how tf that happened, but I'm still pretty pleased with myself 🤣

Well, I've done it. I have tonight posted the final chapter in my 100 chapter Merlin fic o.O

It basically asks, and then answers the question "What if the prophesy was wrong?" Merlin is immortal, it's about 800 years on from canon, and it turns out this was not a question he particularly wanted to know the existence of. But in true Merlin style, he rolls with it, there are unexpected consequences, a smidge of angst, a fair amount of BAMF and a truly unholy amount of fluff.

All in all, I'm pretty pleased with myself.

[jennycalendar]

a deeply feeling woman

this is NOT going up on ao3 (yet?) because it is quite short and i have not decided whether i'm willing to upend like. all of my own established unpublished canon to canonize this nonsense. but the idea hit me today and so now it's written. in which: khalid makes a new friend :) she's a dwarf. they have something very crucial in common.

“Oh!” said Khalid, eyes abruptly alight. “Briar, if you—th-that is, while you, you’re considering the, the best course of action, I…Jaheira, I’d like you to meet…” He squinted nervously around the small, crowded room. “That’s…odd,” he said slowly. “She’s…where did she go?”

“She?” said Jaheira, a slight edge to her voice. “Have you been making friends, Khalid?”

Khalid’s smile softened into a touched, knowing expression. He said, “You’ll, you’ll meet her. It will…clarify things tremendously.”

“Oh, I’m sure it will,” said Jaheira, her tone dropping dangerously.

“There!” said Khalid, and gestured. A stocky dwarven woman appeared to be having some sort of argument with a young human soldier, who, in turn, appeared to be unsuccessfully attempting to back away. “Thea—Thea,” he called. “Would you—that is—?”

Without turning away, Thea said, “Give me a minute, sunshine, this fucking imbecile thinks he can cheat people out of their rightful winnings! Listen, Brathos, you start the game, you lose the game, you turn the coin over at the end of the game, especially when the rest of us catch you trying to fucking rig the game. Fuck’s wrong with you that you think you’re not going to face any consequences? You know what I call my hammer, Brathos?”

“Consequences?” squeaked the boy.

“Consequences,” growled Thea.

“Oh, my,” said Safana, brows raised. “Khalid, do you have a type?”

Entirely ignoring his wife’s scathing expression, Khalid laughed out loud. He pressed his hand to his face and shook his head. “You’ll, you’ll understand when you meet her,” he said. “Thea—Althea. W-w-would you please come over here and, and meet my friends?”

“What friends?” said Thea, turning all the way towards him. “You’ve not got friends. Actually fucking depressing, the state of your social life.”

“You’re my friend,” Khalid countered.

“I repeat.” Thea hefted the hammer. “Actually fucking depressing.”

Edging herself in front of Khalid, Jaheira took in the other woman with a sharply assessing expression. “So,” she said. “My husband has been socializing with you in my absence?”

All the rock-hard irritation of Thea dropped away as her eyes met Jaheira’s. It reminded Briar of quite a lot of songs, which probably wasn’t the thing to be thinking in a moment where Jaheira was meeting some friend of Khalid’s she was already jealous of, but it was sort of hard to think anything else. Thea’s lips parted, her cheeks coloring, and she whispered something under her breath in Dwarvish that sounded almost like a prayer, then breathed, “Luckmaiden, Lady of the Fray, in all your glory, I beseech you, loosen your hold on my heart.”

“…What?” said Jaheira.

Khalid looked positively delighted. “Althea,” he said, “Jaheira. Jaheira, Althea.”

Thea reeled back. “Your wife?” she said to Khalid. Then again, as if confirming, “Your wife.” Finally, “You sadistic motherfucker, I don’t know how you knew but I know you knew I’d—ah, fuck, fuck, I’m going to go end the siege. Can’t be in close quarters like this,” and promptly turned on her heel, all but sprinting for the exit.

“She’s going to what?” said Jaheira.

“Oh, that. Ah. Backfired faster than I thought,” said Khalid, already moving after Thea. “I-I need to sort that out. Briar, would you—”

“Sort what out?” demanded Jaheira, particularly dangerously.

Khalid took in Jaheira’s expressions. He said, calmly, “Thea. Prefers. Women.”

“Pref—” The penny dropped. Jaheira’s face went flaming red.

“Goodbye,” said Khalid, squeezing Jaheira’s shoulder, and darted after his friend.

As soon as Khalid was gone, Briar fell into a fit of giggles. Dynaheir was covering her mouth delicately, but the smile was eminently visible.

“Oh, would you all SHUT UP?!” snapped Jaheira, her blush intensifying. “What was I supposed to think? Khalid is hardly a social person when not in my company, hardly with women—”

“Well, it seems like maybe he found someone who has something really super crucial in common with him!” Briar wheezed. “Like, oh, I don’t know, being really super into you?”

“He didn’t—I didn’t—I have never met—stop laughing, Briar, or I will stop letting you carry the wands of lightning!”

“I haven’t used them,” said Briar, then, “since the incident.”

“What incident?!”

Khalid returned, now with Thea in tow. “Althea,” he said, “l-let’s try that again, yes?”

“Nope,” said Thea, who was already trying to leave.

Jaheira’s eyes darted between Thea and Khalid, almost contemplative, before her blush returned and her scowl intensified. Firmly, she said, “Khalid, you should have opened with the fact that Althea prefers the fairer sex, rather than letting me humiliate myself into thinking—”

“Oh, please!” said Thea hysterically. “You’re hardly the one who’s humiliating yourself here! Khalid, let go of my arm, I’m ending the siege and I’m going home.”

“You, you haven’t even exchanged a, a proper conversation with Jaheira.”

“I am going to say something proper fucking insane to your wife if you let me talk to her,” said Thea, “and you are, no question, the only person I can stand round here. Not burning that bridge. Look, I can end the siege—”

“You ha-have been saying that since you arrived,” said Khalid, “and your only plan appears to be to—to—run at the troops with your hammer.”

“Worked before.”

“Worked bef—” Khalid sent Jaheira a help-me look that somehow also managed to convey quite a lot of irritation.

Jaheira, whose cheeks had finally begun to edge back towards a normal color, rested her hand on Thea’s shoulder. Thea froze. “I would appreciate the chance to get to know you,” said Jaheira, tilting her head and smiling at Thea with an expression of terrifying sweetness. “Properly.”

“Oh, fuck you,” said Thea. “Emotional fucking manipulation, the pair of you. See if I tell Khalid anything again.”

“What did you tell my husband?”

“None of your fucking business!”

Casually, Khalid said, “She—she mentioned a particular weakness for a-assertive, forthright elven women.”

“Fuck off!”

“Well, it does help to have it on the table,” said Jaheira. She actually did smile. “Am I that bewitching, then, that you are desperate to run from me rather than jeopardize your friendship with my husband?”

“Your husband’s the only one round here with integrity,” said Thea resolutely. “Certainly the only one round here I’d trust to keep an eye on things. The other fuckers keep talking big talk about pummeling the crusaders into submission with forces we don’t have; he’s the one looking for a way around that. Good that you and your crew found a way in—if we can get more of you, piece by piece, we might stand a chance. Course we’d stand an even better chance if we went with my plan—”

In a tone of voice that suggested he had said this quite a few times before, Khalid said, “You running in to single-h-handedly dispatch crusaders is n-not a plan, Althea.”

“That’s the one thing he’s wrong about,” said Thea to Jaheira. “But the rest of it he’s right about. Rare to find a fella like that in a line of work like this.”

Jaheira’s eyes had taken on an approving glint. “I agree.”

Thea exhaled, blushing slightly, and said, “Yeah, so. Mind letting go of me? I do mean it, I’m going to say something—fucking outrageous if I keep looking at you, and I can’t do with losing my only friend here.”

Jaheira smiled. "Outrageous? Like what?"

“You aren’t helping.” Khalid steered Jaheira away from Thea. Over his shoulder, he called, “Drinks tonight?”

“On you!” Thea called. “To fucking apologize for putting me through that!”

To Jaheira, Khalid said, “I, I really didn’t realize she’d—that is, she’s a very, ah, d-deeply feeling woman, but I didn’t expect—well.” He smiled ruefully. “I, I was much the same when I met you. Sh-should have considered she might feel sim—similarly.”

“I like her,” Jaheira decided. Her brow furrowed. “Will she derive false hope from that? I do not wish to be inconsiderate, if—”

“Oh, she—she won’t,” said Khalid. “She’s—” His smile softened. “Chivalrous,” he said. “Noble.”

Noble, Dynaheir mouthed to herself. Briar was the only one who caught it.

[beansprean]

Gettin this out before tomorrows eps - still thinking about that wall slam

(continued on Patreon hehehehe)

ID: 1a. Close up on Stede in his new red shirt, holding a quill in his right hand. He looks up from his work with a furrowed brow as there is a loud crash and clattering of scattered objects offscreen. Stede asks, "Ed? What are you doing?" 1b. Reverse shot, full body of Ed, dressed down in his black undershirt, leather trousers, and boots, posed awkwardly against a standing wardrobe. He is leaning back against it, legs too far out and shaking with the effort from his core, one arm splayed against the surface and one arm above his head. On the floor next to him, an ornate golden candelabra has fallen over, holders snapped off and candles rolling away. Ed looks over at Stede, embarrassed, and replies, "Uhh...seducing you? That wasn't expensive, was it?" 1c. Close up on Stede again, smiling at Ed with hooded eyes, quill feather trailing thoughtfully over his cheek. "Oh?" he purrs. 1d. Repeat. Stede startles, realizing the implications, and moves to stand from his seat, flustered, repeating, "Oh!!"

2a. Shot from behind Ed, the wardrobe close up in the foreground and Stede's desk beyond, the cubby bed in the wall between them with curtains half closed. Stede rounds the desk and hurries toward Ed, one hand held out as if to stop him from taking off, shouting "I'm seduced! I'm seduced!" In the foreground, Ed heaves himself off of the wardrobe, leaning forward slightly with one hand braced on the door and the other on his lower back. He says, "Oh, good. Ow." 2b. Shot of them both in profile, knees-up, as Stede reaches Ed, arms held out hesitantly as if waiting for permission to grip his waist. Stede asks, red-cheeked and concerned, "So you...are we ready for this?" Ed grins at him, replying, "I said slow, not glacial, babe." He braces both hands on his back and leans his upper body backwards with a loud 'crack!' Stede mumbles, "Alright?" Ed assures him, "Never better." 2c. Repeat. Ed leans back again against the wardrobe, more confidently this time, back arched, right hand braced above him and left hand at his hip, curling a single finger in a 'come hither' motion. He grins up at Stede through his eyelashes and teases, "Hop aboard, Captain." Stede immediately straightens up, eyes going wide and face burning red.

3a. Zoom in, waist up. A blur of motion as Stede rushes forward, gripping Ed by the front of his shirt with both fists and pushing him backwards past the wardrobe to slam into the adjacent wall. Ed reacts with wide-eyed surprise, cheeks flushed, stomach exposed, one hand flying up toward Stede's shoulder. 3b. Repeat. Stede crowds Ed against the wall to mash a passionate kiss against his mouth, fists gripping his shirt tightly beneath their chins. Ed immediately melts into it, eyes closing, right arm looping around Stede's neck and left hand pressed to the side of his throat. 3c. Zoom out slightly as they break the kiss, Stede moving his head back only enough to make eye contact, their noses still overlapping. Stede, looking a bit bashful, asks, "Too much?" Ed smiles giddily at him, flushed and pleased, right arm winding tighter and left hand moving to cup Stede's cheek. Ed replies, "No, no, not at all, mate. I'm into it." 3d. Repeat. Satisfied with the consent given, Stede pushes forward again to kiss at Ed's neck, hands releasing their death grip on his shirt to start moving underneath it, cupping Ed's pecs. Ed lets his head fall back against the wall and throws both of his arms around Stede's neck to keep him close, one leg hiking up against his hip. Ed giggles, still wearing the same silly, satisfied grin, and quips, "Not so much of a gentleman in the sheets, eh?" /end ID

[comatosebunny09]

denial → acceptance | sylus

summary: you’ll settle for what you can get if it means he’ll keep you around a little longer. even if it means (seemingly) playing second fiddle. genres: romance, fluff, angst warnings: steaminess, blood mention, reader implied to be female, unrequited (not really) feelings, feelings of inadequacy, self-esteem issues, idiots in love, tender touches, incredibly self indulgent, profanity, slow burn notes: limerence, but the only thing standing between sylus and the reader is the reader’s own head. thank you for dropping by. the rest will be up on ao3 shortly.

You’ve done this many times before—been summoned to his quarters for a debriefing and occasionally for him to tend to any injuries you sustained during your negotiations.

This is nothing new. But the prospect of being laid off haunts you a lot lately, especially in light of recent events.

You know—the ones involving a certain pretty hunter invading your lives and quietly shoving you out of the picture.

The glacial door handle leading to Sylus’ study bites into your palm. You turn it, steeling yourself against the worst outcome. It’s a routine check-in, nothing too serious. So you sure as hell aren’t shaking when you duck into his office. Greeted by warmth and the aroma of mahogany intermingled with sandalwood and worn books. You cautiously shut the door as if any bit of noise could set him off. Spur him into firing you faster.

The speakers of his record player bleed something homely. You’re swathed in the serene glow of the wall sconces, flanked by towering bookshelves. You maneuver around them, the regal carpeting swallowing your footfalls. You follow the vibration of his voice. By the tone of it, you know he’s on the phone talking business.

You slow to a stop in the center of his study. Find a thatch of white hair settled behind a long, cherrywood desk. He looks up, ingesting you with eyes the color of sunset. No matter how many times you’ve been in his presence, he still manages to siphon your breath with how handsome he is.  

‘You wanted to see me?’ you mouth once your wits return to you.

Sylus studies you for a beat, expression unreadable. Motions to you with two fingers, and you waste no time heeding him. He pats the polished surface of his desk beside him, signaling for you to sit. You swallow, offering him a twitch of a smile and a nod before propping yourself on the cold, sticky finish.

Still engulfed in his convo, Sylus rifles through his drawer. You catch bits and pieces of what he’s on about. He pulls something from within, the telltale gleam of a tin box causing the tension in your shoulders to let up. He sets the first aid kit down, and you watch him fish out some antiseptic and a few cotton puffs.

Ah. You did get a little banged up, didn’t you?

Caught an errant punch to the temple during your negotiations with the hunter. She was still learning the ropes, learning to flex her status. You intervened when the arms dealer got a little ornery, sicking his guards on you. Two women thinking they could hustle someone like him in place of Onychinus’ kingpin? Unheard of!

You fought your way out of the fray, of course. Took a few hits to get Hunter Girl out of there unscathed, but you both lived to see another day.

You hiss as the sting of disinfectant brings you barreling back to the present. Sylus stiffens the slightest, surveying you with a rueful pinch to his brows. You fix him with a disarming smile, and he gets back to work. You’ve had worse. Nearly lost a limb or two. Still, he’s gentle as he blots at the dried blood on your forehead, and it’s just like old times.

You study the shine of his shirt buttons as he treats your cut. Watch his Adam’s apple bob, the tendons in his jaw flex. You resist an urge to snicker. If you didn’t know any better, you’d swear he was pouting. His precious little doll, a little bruised and battered, like he doesn’t have someone else to occupy his mind. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t get upset when you return to him scathed.

When he’s satisfied with his cleanup job, Sylus packs up the kit after smoothing a stripe of salve over your scrape. Props his phone on his shoulder, and you bristle when worn finger pads skate over your cheek. When they push some baby hair away from your face, slide under your chin. His touch is reverent as he tilts your head back, examining you for any other wounds.

You give him a cheeky look, shaking out of his touch. “I’m fine,” you whisper, leaning back on your hands and crossing your legs. He slides back into business mode, releasing you from that intense gaze to focus on his call, albeit a little reluctantly.

Occasionally, Sylus chuckles, the sound of it vibrating in your chest. Idle fingers smooth over the jut of bone in your knee, his gaze intermittently wandering to yours. He’s surprisingly handsy tonight. A part of you wonders if this is alright, given the unspoken bond that blooms between him and his precious little hunter.

Still, you can’t deny how soothing his touch is. You were just a nervous wreck a few minutes ago, fretting over the state of your job. But he won’t let you go, will he? Not when he can touch you like this. Wrap slender fingers around your calf, pressing reassurance into your skin with his thumb.

Maybe you’re delusional. You’re but a substitute for the woman he truly pines for, but you’ll settle for what you can get if it means he’ll keep you around a little longer.

You’re more exhausted than you let on. Eyes slide shut, your body lulled into tranquility by the potent warmth Sylus exudes, the languorous glide of his fingers, and the soft music flowing through the room.

��Of course she’ll be there,” Sylus drawls through the darkness behind your lids.

You peek an eye open, met with an amused look from your boss. Whatever he’s on about on the phone, you figure no good will come from it. You’re too tired to pursue it, however. He’ll fill you in on the details later. Probably needs you to play all pretty and seductive to some scumbag threatening Sylus’ status as the king of the underworld. Whatever he needs from you, you’ll provide.

You always do.

—

At some point, you dozed off.

You feel him before you see him. Moving. A shift of fingers, the squeak of cloth against a lacquered surface. He brings you back to consciousness with the burr of his voice.

“I take it the negotiations went well.” It’s rhetorical in nature, but you pry your eyes open, met with the sight of Sylus watching you. Chin propped on folded hands, expression humored.

You bow forward, burying your elbows in the pockets of your knees. So close, you catch wind of the scent he carries. The warmth he exudes. Capture the little flecks of amber embedded in his irises. You school your mouth into a smirk, that wall of playfulness erected as you fix his collar. Watch the veins in his throat jump. “Oh, they went stellar.”

He quirks a brow at your blatant lie. A deaf person could taste the sarcasm in your tone.

“How’d you manage to get that,” Sylus interrogates, tapping his temple.

“Fell down the stairs.”

A laugh is huffed. A weighted palm pats your thigh. Draws away slowly, leaving your body atingle. “I find that hard to believe.”

“Scout’s honor,” you insist, a sardonic hand hovering over your heart.

He studies you for a beat or two longer. “You don’t have to shield her, you know.” Her being one exhaustingly kind hunter.

In truth, you don’t. You don’t owe her much of anything, unwillingly roped into being her shadow. Showing her how to pull the strings of Onychinus, doting on her like a younger sister. But you won’t ever fix your mouth to admonish her in front of your boss.

Not when she’d so effortlessly wormed her way into the space between his ribs. Stole his interest when you’d spent years poking at that shell around his heart.

“She won’t ever get better unless you light a fire beneath her from time to time.”

Your sigh is weighted. You know Sylus would kill you if you left his prized possession to the wolves. You lean back on your hands, feigning nonchalance. Inspect your nails. “Yeah, yeah. She’ll get there. Promise.”

You lapse into silence after that. Just Sylus observing you with keen interest below the gentle croon of the music. He’s looking for a tell. A weakness. A crack in the visage you so carefully constructed. When you don’t reveal any signs of pursuing this particular conversation further, he sighs heavy. Leans back in his leather chair, tapping his fingers together.

“In any case, I think you should take a load off.”

A scoff erupts from your throat. You? A break? Your gazes interlock. Oh shit—he’s serious.

“Is that what you were on the phone about? Orchestrating my sweet escape?”

He toys with a pen on his desk, idly twirling about in his chair. His amusement hasn’t let up in the slightest. “You could say that.”

“I find that hard to believe. That you’d let me run off to some remote part of the world to kick up my feet.”  

He fixes you with a wounded look. Mirrors your gesture from before, a hand raised in mock oath. Voice all smoky and low. “Scout’s honor.”

You chuckle. Pointlessly kick your feet, looking down at your lap. You missed this—this comfortable banter. This battle of whims. You’d gone without it for too long, sidestepping your acquaintance to make room for the new woman in town.

“I’ll be joining you, of course,” declares Sylus, breaking up your reverie.

You stiffen, dazed. “Oh.”

A prickle of giddiness creeps into you. You peer into his eyes. He’s all sincere there.

No pretending like the prospect of pairing up with your boss isn’t tempting. The last time you did a bit together was when Hunter Girl joined his entourage. Thereon, you’d been at his side less and less.

“Been a while,” you note offhandedly.

“Has it?” He’s tapping away at his phone. Making quiet money moves, coordinating things you can’t be bothered to follow until he makes it your problem.

A part of you can’t help feeling like this is a ruse. A cover for something more nefarious. Why on earth would Sylus go on vacation with you? Still, you’ll play along until he reveals the contents of his mind. Maybe you’re better off not knowing what’s amiss until the last moment. You don’t want to ruin whatever blueprints he’s already drawn up.

Suddenly, he stops what he’s doing. Slides closer, bracketing either side of your thighs between long arms. Chest pushes against your knees, a smirk twitching his lips. His voice steeps a few octaves as he says with a salacious tilt of his head, “You should get some rest. Your room’s already set up if you wish to stay here.”

Rest? The time projected on the wall behind him bends in and out of focus. It is pretty late, isn’t it? He notches his chin against the slope forming between your thighs. Eyes glint with something you mistake for fondness as his thumbs cruise over your quads.

It’s as if he’s prodding about in your mind, sensing all the questions there. Your apprehension. “The jet will be departing at first light tomorrow. I’ll fill you in on where we’re off to then. You should sleep while you can.”

You nod, contemplating ruffling his hair. He’s something akin to a puppy, looking up at you like that. Unguarded, touching you with all the tenderness of the world. It wouldn’t be much to return his affection. But he doesn’t belong to you, does he?

Instead, you wrench yourself off the desk. Raise your hand in casual goodbye over your shoulder, easing out of his study, blissfully unaware of his eyes boring into your shoulder blades.

Maybe sleeping will do you some good. Help you shake off these feelings threatening to take hold of your psyche again.

And maybe you’ll wake up with more sense tomorrow.

[eldrith]

˗ˏˋ Dead Men Don't Sing ˎˊ˗ Jacaerys Velaryon

jacaerys velaryon x fem!stark!reader words: 9.5k requested: yes synopsis: “it is rather custom to marry within the bloodline,” jacaerys admits, hesitating, “but there are other duties,” he murmurs, “–ones that even the Gods cannot ignore.”  notes: thank you to the anon who requested this, it was months and months ago <3 i found this written and dusty in my drafts and realized how much i liked the concept of it so i finished it up, changed up a lot of plot (sry). peace & love (thinking abt when @softspiderling said that cregan & r had chemistry in this fic. fuck you) warnings: canon-typical marriage betrothals. something something heavy belief in the divine right of kings (cringe!), jace is so in love again guys, fluff and flirting, feelings of anxiety & worry, heavy on politics and the targaryen prophecy. doubts of magic and light religious tones. kissing. requests closed. masterlist.

THE CRYPTS BELOW WINTERFELL ECHO WITH FOOTFALL.

A dripping thing, echoing through low ceiling and sliding over stoned walls; your pace moves slow, measured. 

Aboveground yields a morning snow; it is no harvest season, yet you worry so of the rime which curls its way over the tender shoots of crop; kissing a delicate crust atop glacial lakes in the near distance, lining the roofs across Winter Town. 

Down below such crust of earth, the crypt holds no true warmth, instead boasting a rather eerie silence; though you’ve always felt drawn to such quietude in certain times – moments punctuated only by the rustle of fur cloaks, the steady drip of tallow wax candles that burn beneath the proud visages of ancient stone.

A gentle sigh escapes your lips. 

Your breath, barely visible in the cold, dissipates like a whisper of a cloak around a corner; The man beside you paces with deliberate slowness, though still his long strides force you to quicken your own. 

A familiar rhythm from childhood. 

He broods – or perhaps merely reflects; it is difficult to tell, though his introspection proves an unwelcome distraction and concern alike. 

“You think far too loudly, brother.”

Your voice, a stone dropped onto the serenity of a glassy pond; stirring, your brother beside you lets out a soft huff of amusement, turning to glance at your profile. "Aye, it seems I do,” he acquiesces, though he seems more than content to leave it as such.

And the ensuing quiet – his scrutiny of your features becoming almost unsettling. You purse your lips, folding your arms over the furs that ward off the chill, slowing to a halt – he, in turn, slowing beside you.

“Cregan,” you cast a guarded glance his way, “I appreciate your company, but…” You pause, clearing your throat, “Why did you ask me here?”

You cannot ignore the furrow of his brow, nor the weary sigh that escapes him. “I do not wish to burden you with troubles, sister,” he murmurs, his gaze drifting – mindful of spirits; watching, listening. “But there is something we must discuss.”

You, softly gesturing for him to continue under the flicker of torchlight. 

Yet, he does not speak at once; instead, guiding you further along the shadowed path. You allow him the moment of silence, a foreboding drop stirring unbidden in your chest. Has the time come to prepare for the Wall – will you set the Greybeards alone to fight in the Southern war? Dribbling wax slides over the edge of a wyck - a white tear falling to the frozen earth below. Winter is coming, you know; and so does war. 

You stop before a weathered stone – Cregan, his face so hardened even with young age; you recall in the earliest recess of your memories a more youthful visage – the brother who dangled you by the ankle in the Great Hall; who dragged you along to target practice in the yards, who met your gaze with mirth when you were scolded at the dinner table. Much has changed. 

“A raven came from Dragonstone this morning,” his voice is steady – the mention flares a mild concern in you; your brows furrow. 

“Different from the letter that arrived at my chambers just moments ago?” You wonder – the scroll was penned by Prince Jacaerys; though this is an occasion not extremely uncommon, as you’ve grown to write to him often in the past months of his departure. 

But your brother nods. “Aye.” He affirms, “It was signed by Queen Rhaenyra.” 

You blink up at him, breath bated – palms, growing moist though the cold nips gently at your nose: Never has the Queen herself sent letter by raven. Cregan utters your name, and you meet his gaze. 

“Prince Jacaerys has asked for your hand in marriage.”

Of the many possibilities you’d imagined, this was not one of them; shivers of flattery over your spine, quivering your breast in an icy shock.

And a scroll unread, perched upon your drawing table in your quarters – has Jace written to you to ask you himself? Your lip, plump under the pressure of your teeth. 

Though not wholly unpleasant, it is still a sudden shock to you, and your mouth opens – then closes with a soft click. You find yourself momentarily lost for words.

A breath, warm against the cold, escaping your mouth, fingers restless within your thick gloves. “Did–” You pause, clearing your throat, willing your heart to steady its foolish race. “Have you sent a response?”

A flicker in an otherwise stoic facade, gone in an instant: Some amusement laced into his visage that vexes you in a way only a sibling can.

 Quietly, your brother denies. “It was requested by the Prince for you to send a response yourself. The Queen wishes to be assured this is a marriage that will bring strength to the realm – one that will be strong from the beginning. She does not choose the future queen regent lightly, it seems.” 

A heat that grows twofold; and a sprouting dizziness as the proposal hits you. The future queen regent – Gods be good. 

The proposition is far from traditional. 

As the sister of the Warden of the North, you have always assumed your path would lead to a marriage with one of the High Lords of your own region – though with great war comes change, you understand well – and Cregan has mentioned it satisfactory to find a Targaryen princess among your House; perhaps you and Jacaerys will serve in such a steed. 

 A glance to the stone man before you; an ode, to Torrhen Stark. The King Who Knelt. 

A shiver of reality. Leave Winterfell, as a Targaryen bride – to go to the war brewing in the South – and there grows a flicker, beneath your concern. Hunger, pride. 

You’ve always known what’s expected of you; and Starks do not shy nor cower from responsibility. 

“This is no small task.” Your words, quite blunt as they often are – another nod from Cregan. 

“I remind you,” He assures, “It is no done deal.” 

A flicker of your lashes as your breath clouds before you; above your head, you wonder if the flakes which flutter from the sky have ceased in the wake of the day’s far sun. 

It is indeed a thought to consider; the North, your endless horizon of snow and stone – of moors and fields, of steep slopes and commanding eminences, carved by the hands of gods more ancient than the first of men. 

That cold kiss of wintered forests, of towering pines in snowed shadows; gnarled branches of the Wolfswood, icy rivers of threaded silver untouched by the frills of southern decadence; and the cold less endured than revered, a landscape of beauty drawn within the fierce devotion of its people. 

An unshakeable and profound sense of soul that tugs you towards the frozen earth, to the bodies brought back through turns of Winters, of endurance, of love, of life. 

“I would mislike to leave Winterfell,” You admit; a child once more, tucking toes beneath warmed covers as you hid from shadows upon walls. 

Perhaps he recalls those same nights; when you’d stayed awake against the syrupy droop of eyelids, listening to your Lord father’s tales of hunts and beasts beyond your comprehension. 

“As would I regret to let you leave,” His voice comes after a moment. “Your insight is not to be understated. Perhaps this is why the Queen wishes you to join her council in my stead.” 

Another shock to you – to marry the Prince, yes, but to join the Queen’s council? A flash of pride, conspicuous, licking up your spine – though you’re lost in the trappings of memory; of loss, of life. 

“What is it father said?” You muse quietly, watching shadows flicker over a contoured face of stone. “The South…Where men smile with daggers behind their backs.” 

Some huff from weary lips. “I hold no concern for how you might fare against a dagger, sister.” He reminds you; your fingers, calloused in the grooves of a longbow – you placate a wry huff, mind saturated with thoughts. “A serpent's lair, the Crownlands are.” He gruffs.

It is solemnly that you nod; a wistful memory of your Prince, curls entangled with the sharp wind, embedding pearled snowflakes into tresses. 

“I am not without my own doubts,” Cregan slowly admits, “Leaving the North – in wartime, as well – holds few assurances of safety, even at Dragonstone.” 

Your voice is considerably less steadfast than it’d been an hour past, when you’d directed the letter from the Prince to wait until your duties with Lord Stark were through – “I would not leave my home, my charge, merely for some Prince.” You mutter. 

Yet, the glance from your brother brings a small grin to your lips. 

He perhaps agrees with your stubborn resolve; you two, cut and sewn from the same sturdy cloth, borne with the same pelts upon your back. A tilt in his visage, looking at you. 

“Our father’s word was given. It is our duty to uphold it.” He murmurs; and then, a melting of such a look – as if Lord Stark has retreated, yielding Cregan in his wake: “You’d be queen one day, long after the war.” 

Still reeling, a warmth to your face as you consider the Prince – rosy cheeks, with that smile brighter than snow; he, with a fur cloak gifted to him in his visit to treat with your brother those months ago – a regal face, if you’ve the grace to know what such a thing is. 

The boy with kind words and genuine laughter; a fleeting brush of his hand on yours as he’d greeted you to his ancient beast; The square of his shoulders as he’d solidified Northmen for his Queen mother’s banners. A look, shattered and wet, as he mounted his beast in the wake of his brother’s death. Septa’s voice from the vestiges of adolescence: Heavy is the crown, my dear. 

“It is my duty,” you murmur more to yourself than to your brother, “To Winterfell, to the North. To our Queen… and the realm.” 

Cregan’s hand finds your shoulder in a grasp, “Sister.” Your eyes meet his own. “I would not have you do it if I did not believe it was the right choice. Jace is a good man. He will treat you right.” 

Indeed, a union of your house and the Prince’s would strengthen the North; you could ensure the maintenance of autonomy – and loyalty, a venerable duty long upheld by your house for hundreds of years. A marriage that serves not only your people, but such enduring legacy of kin. 

“Just as well,” He adds, “the prospect of marrying Jacaerys might prove rather agreeable to your sensibilities, would it not?”

He jests. The corner of your eyes narrow as you shoot him a sharp look; a smile emerging despite your efforts to conceal it. The warmth of anticipation creeps across your cheeks, a delicate flush across your face despite your valiant efforts to contain it. 

"You overreach, brother,” you speak, though both you and he can hear the fondness in your voice. 

A quiet moment, in which a memory surfaces – Jacaerys, bidding you farewell months past; a pain in his eyes, ragged with grief and urgency to return – his younger brother, killed by Aemond One-Eye.

A shaky kiss upon your knuckles, the cracking of a voice otherwise proud; the last glance of that massive beast swallowed up by the clouds. Your heart skips a beat at the knowledge of him, as your own. 

“I will marry Prince Jacaerys,” You agree, hoping to conceal the eagerness from your tone, “...for the good of the realm."

Cregan huffs, pulling you into a brief embrace, your eyes both stuck on the statue before you. "Aye, and perhaps a bit of warmth for your heart, too.” He jests; a rare occurrence, and certainly in these days of war and the eve of winter. 

“Is that not what you’d wish for your sister?” You jest in return, hiding the fluster of your cheeks. 

His expression sobers minutely. “You bring honor to our house.”

The long, stone face of Torrhen Stark watches your breath rise and fall from your lips. 

Hesitance melts away, leaving a giddiness, a sense of duty softened by an affection in your heart. “A wolf in the South,” you murmur. 

And a dragon at her side.

VERMAX IS RATHER DISPLEASED TO FLY NORTH AGAIN. 

Huffs and whining screeches; saged scales that melt tiny flakes of snow around the saddle - Jacaerys consoles his steed with a huff of amusement. “Se iōrves kessa daor umbagon syt mirre, Vermax.” He insists; The cold will not last forever. 

It is not until the sloping valleys and rolling mountains give way to dusting of snowcaps and frozen-earth that his stomach begins to burn with that odd feeling; excitement. 

Trees that reach up towards the heavens – ever green in their life, barely stirred by the beating of Vermax’s wings high above. 

Otherworldly, the North is; and Winterfell, with towering walls, sprawling courtyards, the frosted roofs that glint even through the thick of cloud – pure earth, that ancient knowledge within the ground, held for thousands of years past. Wisdom, sewn into rings upon rings within trees – depths of icy pools, glistening cold as glacier’s tears even in the dead of summer. 

Something, an aching feeling returns; not an ache for home, but for you. 

Eyes, amber and anticipatory, searching the grounds so far below – a wall, dark and thick in the sprawl of the low cirque. Vermax breaks through the clouds with a call, the whipping Northern wind blowing icy shards into Jacaerys’ inhale. Still, he looks with a fire, an intent – battlements, courtyards, all bustling and brimming.

The familiar banner of black and red, raised by the men sent weeks ahead in anticipation of the Prince’s arrival – and the Stark banner, hanging large enough to just see from the outskirts of Winter Town. 

The East Gate opens; a company awaits his arrival, bustling in the yard of the Great Keep – squinting against sharp air as Vermax circles in agitated descent. It is an odd thing, to see the expressions of men, women, and children become clearer in descent – to see the fear, the astonishment, the reverence in the ancient being in the sky. But he searches each visage turned up towards him; and then, there – with a grin and a flip in Jacaerys’ stomach, he finds you. 

Piled, swathed in thick furs that bring out your hair; standing straight beside your mass of a brother; a warmth that blossoms into heat as your head tilts, tracking Vermax in the sky.  

A heavy thud against the muddy ground encrusted with a fresh layer of crisp rime; the rich shades of green across the North have been kissed by some fae of frost that barely cowers under the heat of his ancient creature – and though it retreats in his molten wake, Vermax huffs at the feeling of frost and snow. 

Jace dismounts Vermax; pressing his forehead to the dragon’s thick neck, the warmth a final solace before he faces the unforgiving weather of the North – a mutter to his steed, running his palm over the scales, “Sȳz, vermax.  Ao ipradtis; ao gōntan sōvegon sȳrī.” 

Good, Vermax. You must eat; you flew well. 

He is accompanied, then; two dragonhandlers bowing to him, draped in borrowed furs as they tend to his weary beast. It is rather comfortable, to hand him off to them; a luxury, he supposes, when they are here to tend to the Valyrian rituals that will come in just over a week’s time. A skip in his heart as he thinks of the night to come: You and he, bound for life. 

His title is announced in the quiet of the Keepyard; he enters, feeling rather foolish as just one man faced with such a company – his eyes, unable to unstick themselves from you. The young Lady Stark; the Northern Star, some have called you; He finds himself agreeing. 

Head high, he walks as the prince he is, nodding to Lord Cregan; Formal proceedings that are blinked away in moments with a very present preoccupation of trying to keep his stare off your face. 

And then, after a lingering moment, ravens circling the sky, wind howling down the slopes of distant mountains, Cregan steps forward, arm extended – Jacaerys returns his grin, a camaraderie returning in his chest. 

In the grasp of his forearm, in the rough hug he shares with his friend, Lord Stark murmurs. “I see now why you were so reluctant to leave the first time, my Prince.” Cregan’s voice, rich with mirth; a sheepish grin that grows upon Jacaerys’ expression. Laughter between them, as easy as it ever was, the weariness that’d built in Jace’s flight northward dissipating. “I’ve been told a wise man knows when he’s found something worth returning to, Lord Stark,” Jace quips in response, the heat on his face deepening when his gaze darts in a glance towards you. Your brow, lifted at his words; full of grace but with a smattering of warmth across your cheeks, a small smile. 

The cold air seems to have brought a flush to you – dipping into a graceful curtsey, the wolf clasp of your cloak catches in the cloudy light of afternoon. His heart flips as you greet him: “My Prince,” and gods, your voice – “I hope you and Vermax found no undue hardship enduring such a journey.” 

It’s all Jacaerys can afford to bow deeply in return, eyes remaining on your own gaze; a gesture of respect and courteousness, but a strike of something far more personal lingering behind his stare. Your palm is bare, he’s shocked to see; and lifted within his own, his lips brush over your knuckles. 

Your cheeks darken, and he feels his heart race. “The purpose is far worth the journey, my Lady.” His voice, earnest, polite. 

Your smile widens just so. 

THE GREAT HALL IS DOUSED WITH LIT HEARTHS. 

The celebration is a swell feast – Jacaerys sits, having dined on a hearty meal and several goblets of wine: Roasted game, honeyed bread, mulled wine. At the high table he sits, and the din of the hall rumbles around him, drifting slowly into the high-beamed ceiling. 

A lingering storm has momentarily lifted in the warmth of familiar faces, of the unrelenting bite of cold that still yet lingers in bones weary from flight. There is a dread that has stayed within Jacaerys for many turns of moon now – a mourning thing, one that has left him with less and less smiles to divulge with each passing day. 

The horizon brews; a clouded thing, one dark and full of smoke and whispers – and yet here he sits, warmed by furs, by hearth, by ale – and by you, aside him. 

A girl no older than himself – a friendship kindled merely in the beginnings of formality, of happenstance; polite smiles and high chins, eyes lingering as he followed your brother into the study. 

A peculiar thing it is now, to sit beside you, to feel that string pull between you so inevitably; and though he is turned away from your warmth, well engrossed in a discussion with Lord Stark, he feels that tension – that tautness that soon will be severed with unseen shears, which will seal a dream conjured years before your birth. 

And throughout the evening, his gaze has more than often wandered to your own visage, carved in those same harsh winds of beauty – a smile warm and true, a depth sinking into his stomach; for as Jacaerys has dined heartily, his appetite for food has given way to an appetite for conversation. 

The hall boasts cheer, laughter; an odd thing, in the tide of coming war, in coming strife even this far North; the Lord returns to the Wall not even a fortnight after the wedding, and with him goes half the rations of crops saved through the Northern harvest. 

With Jacaerys will go his new wife – and with you, a secret untold to any but those who sit the throne. 

The fire in the hearth is great, and it swallows Jacaerys’ eyes as he sips from his cup; licks of flames, screams unheard through halls – the final breath of many, the staggering gasp of death. 

Outside, snow blows harsh and cold against the walls – a breath of winter, howling and iced. 

It is a song that lingers in Jacaerys’ mind, even as the music inside the hall crescendos and the ale flows; and finally, he is torn from his trance with the departure of a lord from White Harbor from before you, leaving you finally by your lonesome. 

Jacaerys turns to you – and at his stirring, you glance to his hoping gaze; your cheeks warmed in the same breath as his own, you glow in the firelight. 

He gestures gently before you, towards the hall brimming with people, “A celebration in our honor, yet it seems finding a moment alone has proven rather difficult.” His voice remains as warm as he’d hoped, though evergreen and mantled by duties, by composure. And you, a flower of grace and stoicism, nod kindly - he's always found the dance of formalities to be amusing.

“It seems the whole land has anticipated your arrival once more, Prince Jacaerys.” Your voice is tinged with that same warmth he remembers from those moons ago.

He ought to accept your kindness with compliment; or perhaps ask how the owl that’d nested in the rook outside your chambers during his last visit fares – but indeed he is met with that insistence of passing time, of his mother’s words fallen onto his shoulders; of a whispered dream of years to pass and years still to come.

When he looks at your visage, honeyed by the glow of firelight, some warmth mixes shockingly with an icy knowledge of what is to come. 

“It has been too long since we last met,” He says - and, perhaps in a moment of insecurity, his lip is bitten and pulled from pearled teeth. “I have missed your company.”

He does not miss the soft growth of affection that blossoms upon your countenance, nor the shift in your hips as you turn to face him more, your fingers absently tracing the rim of your goblet in a mirror of his own nervous habit. 

“And I have missed yours,” your voice is equally quiet to his own, in some conspiratorial hope to remain private while remaining in a room full of guests. Your lip is caught between your teeth just as his was – he wishes to unfurl it with the soft of his thumb. “Though, I confess, it is strange to know that soon we will no longer need ravens to speak to one another.”

A soft chuckle from his lips – a thought indeed that crossed his mind after sending his last raven Northward; and in the shadow of looming war, what a relief it may be to have you beside him. 

If he were any more a fool, Jacaerys might worry indeed for your safety in the coming times – and though that thought lingers still in the stoop of his mind, he is no more ignorant to your abilities than he is admiring them. 

A memory, one of fresh falling snow and the youthful innocence of only half-year ago; before the shift of tides, before the moonlit jaws of Death found his brother – before the death of the young one in the Red Keep, and the fall of Rhaenys and Meleys just days ago at Rooks Rest; before it all, when still the horizon brimmed with a more peaceful hope for settled war, there was time of laughter. Of a hunt drawn about for a Royal Guest in Winterfell, when he came with wishes of an alliance, of oaths sworn in blood and brotherhood. The hunt brought anticipation - and, in his foolish Southern ways, Jacaerys had wondered if you’d see he and your brother off in the courtyard of Winterfell – perhaps with a favour of yours to gift him, and a kiss upon his cheek for well-hunting. 

It was not such delicate smiles and whispers he was met with; no, instead he found another horse, saddled with your frame and a bright grin upon your face, your hair plaited away from your peripherals and a longbow strewn across your back. 

A fond memory, those days watching you traipse across snowstruck Wolfswood – and the snap of a string, the fall of a buck into the earth below. Your grin, your appearance; so unlike your kin, and yet so shared in hardiness with your brother – a warmth now so foreign in a world laced by such ominous ideas as fate. 

Jacaerys chuckles at the memory, and also at your words, sobering as they are light. “Strange,” He repeats, tilting his head to you. “-But welcome, I’d hope?” 

And though it is a tease sent with the efforts of putting the thick tension of betrothal at ease, there still lingers a fear of the answer; and a leak of hesitance in his words. 

When you hold his gaze for a moment, he nearly doubts the flicker of affection that still drips from your rosy cheeks. But your expression softens, and your earnesty is undeniable. “Of course,” You beam and it sends his heart into a flutter, “It will be quite welcome.” 

And it is in this moment, a quiet one, that Jacaerys nearly cracks; a split that would leak out the foreboding world of prophecies, of danger and fear and worry – if only in search of some comfort, of some assurance that the truths he lives are merely the whisperings of a bloodline destined to rule. 

Though he loses the moment when you turn to the revelry before you; and Cregan rises from his seat beside Jacaerys, drawing his attention away from blistering flames and flurries of chill that strike through his heart. 

YOU FIND A MOMENT TO CATCH YOUR BREATH IN THE MORNING.

The sun is high in the sky for such an early hour; perhaps a reflection through of the sheet of thin gray which stretches from one horizon to the other. A sweet light over the rather empty training grounds – and your skirts drag along snow as you brush hair from your cheek, nocking another arrow. 

The target, more than plenty paces away, is riddled with arrows from your work – the bow in your hands, warm and smelted to the form of your grip, carries that same woody scent from youth. You draw back with an inhale. 

Though you know very soon of a presence in the morning courtyard; You can feel the gaze upon you as soon as he enters. And with a small tremble, it occurs to you – no matter where the Prince goes, it seems you can always feel him near. 

You resist a small grin, exhaling as you release the arrow; it embeds itself into the center of the target, a light thud that presses your heart against your ribs. 

Jacaerys watches you; this, you know – and you nock yet another arrow. 

The prince leans rather casually against a post just a few paces to your right, though there is little casual about the heat of his stare upon you – your glance is merely through the side of your lashes, a short thing in effort to pretend you are less effected by his presence. 

Though, you cannot deny the burning in your cheeks, a determination in your throat as you draw the bowstring once more. 

A murder of ravens scatter across the sky to the South – you let the arrow fly; It notches just to the right of your previous shot. A smile, tugging the corner of your lips once more before you drop your arms, glancing to your audience. 

“Impressive as ever, my lady,” Jacaerys muses; his gaze is imbued by lashes and the sun, though there is some esteem within his stare that brings a flutter to your stomach. 

Impressive. 

A heat on your cheeks – as if you’re a blushing little maiden, complimented for the very first time. Though, you remind yourself, he’s spent his life in the highest courts of the land; he himself squired for many years, acquiring fair skill in such trades – and you hum, mind filled with visions of men from all stretches of the realm and beyond – jousts, tourneys, all to show at the King’s court. 

 “Well,” You brush the hair from your cheek once more against the faint wind, nocking and drawing a fresh arrow, much less focused this time, aware of his gaze burning through your frame. “I’m sure Southern men like you have seen feats far more impressive.” You tease, eyes locked down the line of the arrow.

Jacaerys huffs a small laugh at your jest, stepping further into the training yard. The wind blows, and you wonder if you should have taken another fur; but his voice is warm and you are put at ease.

“Perhaps,” He agrees, voice nearing your focus, “But some Southern men certainly know to appreciate what we cannot find back home.” 

You’re lucky you’ve released the arrow just as he finishes his sentence; your stomach flips, butterflies sprouting within your chest at his gentle flattery. He is quite the charmer - and though you find amusement in his attempt, still grows your warmth at the attention.

It is still in the courtyard, and Jacaerys nods toward the target, where your arrow has hit the mark. An approving hum, brows lifted to underscore some coming point: “Like a woman who can outshoot any knight in the realm.” 

A blatant praise – and you lower your bow, hoping to suppress the blush creeping up your cheeks. “Why don’t you try your hand?” you suggest, your tone teasing in attempt to flit such fluster upon the Prince instead. 

He grins in a way that brings to mind a time less full of strife – always one for a friendly back-and-forth; Hands upon the hilt of his sword, Jacaerys shakes his head. “I’m not foolish enough to challenge you, my lady. I’ve learned to respect northern steel – be it by sword or arrow.”

You tilt your head, unable to school such a playful glint in your eyes. “So you’ve come all this way just to be bested by a woman?”

A provocation; perhaps testing the waters. And it shows in his expression, the stark divergence between your brother’s personality and your own; you suspect he is pleased with the opportunity. 

His grin, as you’d hoped, only widens – cheeks reddened by the morning chill, eyes bright against the sun. “I’d consider it quite an honor.” A flick of his gaze to the target and back. 

A roll of your eyes – highly inappropriate for a lady, especially to the Prince - but he only seems to find it more amusing. The smile tugs at your lips; you tamper it with your teeth, “I don’t believe flattery helps your aim, Jace.”

At his nickname, his cheeks seem to glow – a name he’d insisted you’d call him in the dark solitude of the Godswood during his initial visit to Winterfell those many moons ago. 

He shakes his head, ever the charming Prince: “My aim is of no consequence. I am more than content to watch you hit the mark every time.”

The space between you has begun to narrow, and you can just make out the freckles which kiss the bridge of his nose. You hold the bow to him, “Come now, my prince.” You insist – and he acquiesces, stepping forward with a growing smirk. 

You, in effort to see the blush upon his cheeks again, send him a smile. “Aim for the center, and you might impress me.” 

The look he gives you is mildly amused; his shoulders, proud and brushing against yours as he handles your weapon. Deft fingers wrap around the bow as he tries to mimic your stance; and it is rather clear, as it’s been the handful of times you’ve seen him in the yard sparring, that he is far more comfortable with a sword in his hand than a bow. 

And your smile grows at this; the heir to the Iron Throne, trying to impress you with a weapon that is not his own. 

Your amusement is not so concealed; in a moment, he glances to you and huffs, arms still stretched to aim for the target. “I see your confidence growing, my lady,” he chides, and you lift a brow – he grins boyishly, eyes returning to the target, “Perhaps you mean to humble me.”

A feigned thoughtfulness as you tilt your head, tresses of silken hair glinting against your furs, “Humble you, Jace?” You feign surprise, blossoming at the growing smile upon his countenance, “That seems an impossible task.” 

There's a warmth lying low beneath your jest – and whatever sharpness delivers with your wit is softened by the candid affection you hold for your newly betrothed. He laughs, and it is a song you wish to remember for the rest of your years.  

His cheeks are that same very pink you’ve cherished for many moons - and he lets the arrow fly; though it strikes the target, it lands fingers shy of the center, and you conceal a laugh. 

Your prince sends you a look, and though his mouth opens with some likely sharp words of humility, he is interjected by another voice in the yard. 

“–Impressive,” Cregan’s voice cuts through the morning wind, startling you and Jacaerys alike. Jacaerys turns, hands lowering the bow as he nods almost sheepishly; Cregan steps closer – an expression only mildly imbued with amusement. 

He regards you first, then your betrothed. “I see our prince has found a new skill.” 

Flustered as though caught stealing wine from the feast table, you busy yourself adjusting the bowstring; and though Jacaerys chuckles, the sound is tight. 

“It seems I’ll need more practice,” He says easily, eyes flickering to your own warm gaze and leaping away when heat creeps onto your cheeks. Cregan merely claps him on the shoulder, a grin small and amused upon his visage, “Come with me, then. You’d best not distract my sister.”

A sheepish glance with hot cheeks between you and Jacaerys before you bow to him, sending a sharp glance to your brother.

The two leave you to your practice in search of a hearth in which to discuss before; and you nod to them, cheeks alight and eyes trailing over the silver dragon holding together the Prince’s furs. 

THE DAY JACAERYS TELLS YOU IS A DAY BROUGHT ON BY A SQUALL OF ICE AND SNOW.

Since his arrival, days have fallen in succession of clear skies and silent winds; and with the weather has brought a change in your betrothed. You have spent most days watching frost curl over begging pines from your chamber windows with growing unease - though your warmth is still shared well and kind between you, Jacaerys grows agitated in his time away from the war; a thing you understand too well, and wish to ease in the coming days. 

And, unlike the days of his arrival, there is too much to do now to any longer relish in the still-present small moments – the times which bring in the smell of holly and pine, of clove and spiced wine, of wide smiles and the steaming scales of your betrothed’s ancient accompaniment. 

The wedding has been planned – and in only a few more days, you and Jacaerys will become one; you will whisper words long thought and wondered, you will bind your palms, you will share your blood. 

Though in no way unsure of the union, still lingers the presence of something unspoken – in the growingly distant amber eyes, in the insecure stuttering of words, in the shaky palm which soothes over your own underneath leathered gloves. It seems Jacaerys furrows his brow in riddles more and more these days – and a darkness follows, some weight that brings his lips to drop and his voice to taper in the ends of sentences. 

You have begun to wonder once more why indeed a union between you and Jacaerys was so suddenly proposed by the Queen. 

Your breath shows against the casement; The day has brought with it more than a chill – and in search of an excuse, you wonder if the Prince has drawn a large enough hearth, if he has found furs thick enough to stave the chill. Yourself, a girl sewn and grown from Northern soils, still finds a strike of shiver from your veins when you rise from your own hearth; and so, with a small flash of worry and a gathering of pelts from your own bed, you set off to the guest quarters. 

JACAERYS SITS BEFORE HIS HEARTH. 

He welcomes you with a nod and a gesture to join him upon the settee; you deposit the armful of furs upon his bed with a gentle breath and murmured words – and though it is well into the morning by now, Jacaerys looks as though sleep evaded him in the night previous – teeth-bitten lips, mussed curls, a heavy gaze that lingers upon the melting flakes of snow in your hair. 

It is only moments of gentle conversation; a tale of the nesting owl above your chambers that brings a gleaming smile to Jace's eyes, a wonder of the turned crops coming from the Neck; mere half-hour passes before he, ever mindful, shifts towards your visage. 

“What troubles you?” he wonders – a stare that leaks with some unknown vulnerability, that stiffness that has still pervaded the pair of you despite your comfortability. 

And perhaps that very observation is it; you swallow down the rising resistance - a melting of icy hesitance, a heavy weight shared between shoulders so different yet destined.

Jacaerys watches unblinking – you notice for perhaps the first time the signet ring that perches upon his smallfinger, glinting black and ruby in the daylight. Your own ring – a wolf, dark and proud, sits upon your middle; and you wonder how indeed a wolf will fare in a den of dragons. 

You’ve spent enough time with Jacaerys – though this has been swaddled in the nest of the North; your own comfort of life, of family and that sweet soul-binding heritage. Perhaps what troubles you is this – of the impending binding of your life to his own by duty and blood: To know him and be known for the rest and beyond; of fighting a war not of your own making but of your own fate – and yet, with your love and devotion for him fostered and growing, leaking from your very core, it still feels foreign.

“I do not know,” you admit in a surge of emotion, glancing into the open pit of emotion within his gaze. “I cannot help but wonder…why,” you utter slowly, eyes shifting under the uncomfortable embrace of vulnerability. 

And his own vulnerability shows upon his sleeve as he turns to face you fully, drawn in silhouette from the glowing embers that warm the chill in your heart. “Why?” He repeats, eyes searching your own. 

You do not fear your betrothed; you know nothing but faith and conviction laced between your hand and his own. Jacaerys is of good blood; not in the sense perhaps that his ancestors might boast, but that of the same very blood your Northern people acclaim – honorable.

He, even in the unlikely instance of a lack of a lasting affection or love, will always hold you honorably as his wife, and in time his Queen – and this, indeed, you hold in common.

You will perhaps always hold flame for Jacaerys, even if time passes in your marriage and he does not hold such equal affections – and this is some comfort in itself, to know that he will protect you no matter where you lie within his heart. 

 Your words come easier in the passing moment, as Jacaerys awaits your gospel with the veneration of a knelt pilgrim – and you come to understand that somewhere within his breast is a flame alight; an affection returned, with your name burning there. 

Your lips part, and his eyes track the motion. 

“Our union. It is…” You swallow, “Unusual.” 

Your heart aches only in the flickered trace of sorrow that paints his gaze; he leans back to the settee, an expression clouded by unnamed emotions. It is not any absence of affection, then, from either of you – a coupling not lacking in love, then, but instead marked by a trace of fate that drags your heart into worry. 

After some time, your prince speaks. “It is rather custom to marry within the bloodline,” Jacaerys admits, hesitating. Amber eyes, flickering deep into the hearth, as if trying to light the embers that die down with just his stare; you wonder, faintly, if he could. His words are an echo of many nights swirling in doubt above your bedposts – and to hear them, a warmth of relief in your breast.

 “But there are other duties,” He murmurs, “–ones that even the Gods cannot ignore.” 

His tone has reduced to a rather trance-like state; your eyes, roaming the rich of his furs before focusing in the distance; a ring of clouds, circling the light of the sun just out of view. 

Beams of heavenly breath, breaking through the cold sky; a break in the squall, some gasp of mercy from the Old Gods – and a ring of light, sprouting from Jacaerys’s head. It is some ancient song, an echoing you’ve only truly felt in the silence of the crypts low below your feet – you blink twice at the sight of such a reverent sight, his grace outlined in the slope of his nose, the pout of his lips. 

His voice is lower than a whisper when it comes once more. 

“Aegon.” 

Rather struck by the light of heaven’s breath breaking around Jacaerys, your brows furrow; you tilt your head, rising to follow as your betrothed leaves the settee. His eyes are stuck on the flutter of snowflakes from the heavens, his back aflame with the fire of the hearth – and he stops before the window, blinking away frost. 

An odd, ancient feeling stirs in your mind – your shoulder brushes the fine tailoring of his cloak as you join him at the casement overlooking the Godswood; Your voice is clear against the blanket of quiet. 

“The Usurper?” 

His lips are pursed for a moment before a gentle shake of his head. “The Conqueror.” 

It is once again awakened – this seed of uncertainty, the knowledge of the trickling poison which drips from the old blood of Valyria and poisons the minds of those men upon their Stone – but you tilt your head to your Prince, considering his words. 

A breath that plumes against the crawling chill of snow, and Jacaerys’ voice is distant once more. 

 “I’ve heard his song.” 

Perhaps Jacaerys has been kept inside too long: In that way the cold can take a man’s mind – curl around it with frost, trickle ice into veins so sewn with fire; turn him mad. 

You take a small step closer; cold air upon your face, the warmth of his arm brushed against the peak of your shoulder.

It is an attempt, youthful and unsure, at comfort – though he accepts it as he turns to look at you. A gentle gaze, the kind he’s always saved for you, warming the side of your visage; you’re much too gone in thought, eyes stuck at the peek of red bleeding through the pines in the distance. 

The leaves are frosted, though they remain ever crimson, ever watching. You whisper to Jacaerys, eyes upon the godswood. 

“Dead men don’t sing, my prince.”

YOU FIND YOURSELF REFRESHED IN THE BREAK OF WINTERSNOW THAT AFTERNOON.

The Godswood; a sheltered overhang provided by the sprawling branches of the Weirwood – your knees floated within the chasmous snow pelted fresh-fallen and sweet onto the frozen earth.

Jacaerys rests near you – perched on what below lies a boulder, he watches the flakes fall gentle onto the surface of the pooled spring behind you, your quiet words deadened in the blanket of snow. 

The wind is forgiving today – and you can only hope, as you rise from your knelt position before the tree, that it will extend its mercy unto the ceremony in three day’s time. 

There is only the plume of your breath and the muffled compaction of your boots against the settled snow that accompany the short distance to your betrothed. 

Steam rises in tendrils from the warmth of the pond’s depths; a simmering fate from the icy flakes which flutter onto its surface, giving the last breath of their life in sacrifice for its own. 

“How fares Vermax?” 

Your voice carries with it that sullen evergreen repose – Jace looks up at you from where he sits, a small smile gracing his countenance. “He has found a cave to the West.” 

You nod with a knowing smile, lowering yourself to perch beside your betrothed upon the soft snowed earth, your furs dark against the bright kiss of the Gods. “I wondered if he might,” You murmur, recalling the natural springs not unlike the one you sit before; their warmth a relief to any who are graced by their presence within the caves of the slopes. “It would do him well to return home soon.” You murmur, eyes roving over the hands, ungloved and calloused with cold and fight, which rest in Jacaerys’ lap. 

Perhaps in resistance to the weather or from the heat of your attention, he flexes his lithe fingers; and with the breath he takes, he looks to you. “He’s never quite agreed with the North.” He admits with a soft smile. You nod thoughtfully, wondering indeed how such a being of fire could fare against the land of ice. 

“And his rider?” You wonder then, eyes hinged on a swaying pine in the distance, its needles shed of snow as a pile falls to the ground. 

Jacaerys looks at you with that expression once more – a warm one, but one hesitant by nature. “I’d say he is learning to weather it,” Jacaerys answers with a lingering smile, though his gaze shifts momentarily to the horizon, where the faintest sliver of dusk begins to creep through the flurry of snowflakes. “He's come to learn that it grows on a man, much like its people.”

Your lips curve in a bout of shy flattery, and you shake your head. 

A loss for words stretches on into more; the water is calm in its reflection, and you watch snowflakes flutter from the stretch of gray, kissing your hair and tangling in your lashes. The clearing is large, though still so very intimate – it is not long before your thoughts meander to the days ahead, to the many preparations still to be done despite your moment of respite. 

After a beat, you speak into the blanket of quiet. 

“Three days.” You muse, blinking away flurries of white and turning to your betrothed. “Does it not feel strange to you, that in so little time, we are to be bound?”

Jace exhales, his breath clouding the air which swirls before you, and you look up to him in wait. He tilts his head just so, blinking away flakes as they come to kiss his flushed skin. You watch them melt to his lips with some faint lick of envy. 

His voice is hardened by the deadened air of winter, though you know there is nothing but kindness laced within. “There is no hesitation in me, if that is what you ask.”

A warmth pools within you at his chosen words, at the thought of he and you, under the very tree which you now sit, joint in hands and bound by blood. 

Perhaps it is that small yearning that festers unsaid in your heart – or it is the residual worry of his words of songs and men long-dead this morning in his chambers; but you press on gently. “And why is that, my Prince?” 

He looks into your eyes, then – and you see some search for verity amidst the downfall of snow; your fingers are cold, and they itch to hold his own. “Do you hold your own reservations?” In his tone holds no such judgement; merely the curiosity of a boy no older than one and twenty – and you, in the same turn of years, shake your head. 

“No, I–” Your lip is bitten once more, and his eyes remain upon them despite the flush on your cheeks. “I suppose I just wish to know,” You whisper, swallowing thickly, “If it is all… for strategy.” 

Jacaerys takes a moment; you allow it, watching as the flakes fall into the curls, as his eyes skim over the Northern edge of Winterfell, falling somewhere far, far beyond. “It is not simply a duty for me,” He chooses, tracing your visage with the care befitting of one who’s known you for life. “I believe you know this.” 

And perhaps you do; you smile under his accusation, tilting your head. “I suppose so, though I should like to hear you say it,” You admit, looking towards the very horizon he’d worried over. A murder of ravens, cutting dark through the gray blur of afternoon. “You speak too much in riddles these days.” 

It seems as though your words penetrate whatever foggy worries swirl within his sharp mind; and he nods solemnly. 

“You’re right,” and his voice is quieter now, guarded; unsure whether to reveal what such odd whisperings might mean. “I must have you know,” he starts, glancing to you, “that my care for you goes beyond duty.” 

His words are a balm to the brunt of fate that now befalls you; his cheeks as pink as your own, and he whispers kindly. “I have long held an affection for you in my heart, and hoped you might feel the same.” 

Any words of agreement are halted upon your lips when Jacaerys takes another breath, one laced with the weight of a realm divided: “But after Lucerys…” He clears his throat once more and you are struck with his pain.

Your palm finds his knee in some hope of comfort provided; his own falls atop it. “Princess Rhaenys and Meleys fell at Rooks Rest while I travelled North; a war wages still - and yet I had to come. I know you wonder why, and you deserve to know.” 

And you wait with breath bated, as you have for many days in wonder of why indeed now seemed fit for the Prince to come to the North for you. 

“My mother… shared something,” he begins once more, his tone low, “Passed down through our blood, through King and King – from long before Viserys, to my mother, and now me... A prophecy.” 

Your stomach has grown a pit of anticipation, some dreadful cloud gathering above you. Your Prince blinks to you shortly, brows drawn in consternation - as though it is a far crime and violation, what he is to tell you. 

And then he begins: words strung with the cloudiness of destiny, of doubt lingering in a stream of worry – and you sway where you repose, in a blinking dread when mentions come of a common enemy, of a terrible winter long to come.

And you, then, are struck with thoughts – of the long nights at Castle Black; of the men who patrol the wild lands, who speak in hushed voices and train with hard hands – of the old memory of Death, which lingers in the dreams of Northern children and on the tongues of Septas sat before hearths. 

You turn your gaze from the Weirwood’s branches above to Jacaerys, who looks out over the horizon to the breath of twilight leaking through.

A song – a dead man’s dream; of the ice of the north, he explains, and the fire of Valyria. 

It is a cold many minutes in which you breathe, a dread lingering between you and your beloved prince, hands clasped together and hearts beating as one. It does not do well to play on a foolish man’s beliefs – though your prince is no foolish man, and the hands of fate are too tightly bound. 

“You speak of fire and blood,” you whisper finally, “Of dreams that burn through the night?” 

The eve that falls is quiet, and the wind forgives your trespassing. He nods solemnly, your prince; and his absence of further response lets your mind wander.

Swirls of snow dance along the footprints left in your previous wake; the wind blows strands of hair across your vision.

Jacaerys’ eyes are amber pools and you drown in them, in the heat that has grown in the knowledge of words dreamt by a long dead man, in the legacy which leaks through each new crowned Targaryen. You drown in the knowledge that perhaps, in some way, a truth rings within this so-believed prophecy; secret as the lands which lie far to the North.

Your lips are wetted gently, shaking your head as you continue your thought. “But magic does not only run hot,” you murmur, “It does not only belong to the South.” 

His expression turns – and a weight which indeed shrouds him finds you too, cocooning you and your betrothed, binding you with threads of fate long ago tied and drawn. The woods whistle with the breath of winter, and you hear their song. 

“It is in the roots of the tree, in the bones of this land,” You admit, “My ancestors prayed to the Old Gods, and in return they whispered in the wind, spoke in the silence. And they, too, endure.”

Jacaerys shifts beside you and your palm is taken into the cradle of both his own. “I do not wish to burden you with such things.” He murmurs - and a memory of your brother's same words the day this very betrothal became so; it is forever, then, that the men of your life will wish to protect you from harm.

In the moment’s breath, you speak quietly: “–But such things are ours now, are they not?” You wonder aloud; and in the relief of a smile, he nods smally.

“There are threats to face sooner; I know it is no small ask to bring you into the throes of conflict. But perhaps our blood,” He murmurs, cheeks tinged pink, “might one day save the Realm.” 

An odd thought – but still one that does not change the truth: You go into the heart of the fire in three days��� time; but you will go with Jacaerys, and you will not be alone. A wolf in the South – and a dragon by her side. 

In the lingering peace of companionship, Jacaerys huffs gently. “I wish I could have done more,” He murmurs, “Ensured a proper betrothal.” His cheeks remain stained in that crimson colour against the fading light of the sky, and you resist the longing feeling to feel his lips against your own. 

You laugh, a short thing in the muffled quiet, “It matters not, Jace,” You promise, a smile small and kind upon your visage. In his shift, you slide gently between his knees – and your palms squeeze his own. 

“I’d have courted you,” He insists in that boyish nature you remember from those moons ago – and the air that’d frozen your lungs in the moments fallen behind has thawed into a budding giddiness. You smile at his tone, tilting your head. “Is that right, my Prince?” You tease, lifting your brow, “Taken me for strolls in the gardens, picked me flowers?” 

His smile is so boyish and hopeful; your heart skips as he nods. “Of course.” His grin grows softer as you shift. 

It is when the space between you narrows in a moment that you purse your lips gently, eyes tracing the curve of his own cherried lips. “Though my duty is to the North, it is also to the Queen,” You begin. His eyes fall to your own lips. “And to you. I hold love for you in my heart, Jacaerys,” You admit, cheeks warm, “And I am quite pleased to be your wife.” 

His hand leaves your own – and in its ascent, you see a slight tremor; when your face is cradled by his palm, you let your eyes flutter shut. 

It is only a momentary shock when lips, cold and light, press to your eyelid; a brushing so gentle, you wonder if it will not melt into the snow itself. 

Jacaerys’ breath lingers, a quiet warmth as he moves to your other eye, kissing away the flakes of snow which cling to you in reverence. A stirring in your breast as your hands find his cloaked arms, strong beneath your grasp; a whisper into the earth around you as snow falls. 

He pulls away only in a plume of warm breath that you feel against your visage; your eyes open to find his own, warm and wanting. A fire burns in you, and it calls his name – somewhere in the distance, Vermax roars. The edges of the pond lap over a small crust of ice, and your touch warms against your betrothed. 

“I was made for you,” He murmurs, lips chilled against your warm cheek; and you believe it. He says your name, and it falls from bitten lips with a desperation that sets your nerves ablaze; "I will love you with everything I am," He promises; and fingers trace the curve of your jaw, a gentle thing – a lingering of breath with your own, a hitch to your lungs as desire claws at your throat. Your smile is small and melts under the weight of heat.

In a moment, you cannot bear the space which lingers, small and unforgiving, between you; Without hesitation, your palms slide over his furs, kissed with snow – and soon, you card your hands through the curls at the nape of your betrothed’s neck. 

It is a pull towards your awaiting lips, and soon Jacaerys kisses you soundly. 

Hands slide to your waist, dropping from your jaw to cradle you between his legs, flush in the heat of shared life; and you, a blossoming flutter of affection and anticipation for nights to come. Hands tremble – yours, around his neck, his, curved around your waist. 

The snow falls heavier still – and a howl of wind that blows you closer to Jace, a short share of giggles between you, giddy and alight with some small kernel of hope. The Godswood is quiet, and your lips slide together in a shy, lingering sweetness; he pulls away from you only to press small kisses upon each exposed breath of skin you offer, and you laugh into the quiet, heart beating as one. 

“I am yours.” 

And for some time, a soft exploration of affections beneath the sprawling limbs of the tree – and the words fall from lips taking and giving, smiling and sighing, pursuing and pressing. 

The woods sing with the bells when supper is called; and so with hair tangled, cheeks warm, you rise together. 

Arm in arm, your betrothed and you retrace footprints kissed with the gift of fresh-fallen snow; words quiet and half-burdened with the weight of the future – but still remains the lingering of hope, the promise of love even in the dreary eve of fate. 

The Godswood of Winterfell echo softly with footfall; The warmth of the Great Hall awaits you both. Jacaerys presses a kiss to your knuckles, and you push open the doors together.

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[thebenjiblackwoodexpress]

Devil's Snare part.3

Aemond Targaryen x Reader

Description: Aemond tests his handmaiden's resolve not to fall in love with him and might just be rewarded for his efforts. But rumours surrounding the dismissal of Aemond's previous handmaiden threaten to derail their budding romance.

Previous part

Writer's note: Thank you so so much to everyone who follows this story. Your comments genuinely make my day 🥺. Aware Aemond has been fighting for his life to get Y/N to love him at an absolutely glacial pace...hopefully this will make up for the slow-burn thus far ;) Also I got carried away so there will definitely be a part 4 if everyone still cares for it.

Warnings: female reader, slight mention of blood/injury detail, slight angst, Aemond has some anger issues, mention of Granny Vhagar, potentially ooc Aemond (though I stand by him being a total sweetheart with the person he loves), so long it's not even funny anymore.

Y/N felt a headache coming on, though she could not tell whether it was from contending with her conflicting feelings for Prince Aemond or if she was coming down with an illness.

Of late, the Prince had become bolder and always seemed to be touching her or inhabiting her space in some small way, as if tethered to her by some string she could not see. Although he never crossed the boundaries of what was appropriate and seemed to always be watching for her response. His hand would graze the small of her back as he reached round her to take a book from his shelves or his fingers would brush against hers as she handed him a goblet of wine. Before, he had always sat across from her in his favoured chair when she came to him with questions of what she was reading with Helaena, or he simply asked her to sit and talk with him.  Now he had begun to sit beside her on a chaise, close enough that their arms and thighs pressed together and his knee brushed against hers as he turned towards her to speak.

Only the other day, when the Princess had beckoned him over to look at Y/N's needlepoint on a dress she was mending for Helaena, he had positioned himself right behind her seat, one arm falling upon the arm rest, and leaned over her shoulder close enough for her to feel the reverberation of his chest as he spoke, sending her heart racing. "I am blessed to have a handmaiden that is both pretty and skilled in equal measure, sister." She rarely felt his eye stray from her when they were together in his chambers or Helaena's, and felt his gaze even as they crossed paths in the halls of the Keep during the day.

There were few periods of silence between them as from the moment she entered his chambers, Aemond would be asking her all sorts of questions about herself and about her day. Nothing was too insignificant for he seemed to want to know everything. And so she found herself complaining to him of his brother Aegon's new manservant who had begun to develop airs and graces, ordering the handmaidens about, much to her chagrin. Realising Aemond had been silent for a long time, Y/N began to feel slightly self-conscious she'd been boring him.

"I apologise, my prince. I'm wittering on about nothing."

She turned from him, feigning organising the items on his desk though she had already rearranged them earlier that day. She heard his soft tread approaching her before his hand covered one of hers to stop her movements. "Everything you have to say is important to me." His hand wrapped more fully around her own as he brought their joint hands towards him. Y/N knew she should pull away, that she shouldn't accept such intimate touches from the Prince, but she couldn't bring herself to do so, her own feelings for him having spread like wildfire despite her best intentions. Aemond graced her with a conspiratorial grin, leaning down to chase her eyes as they nervously flitted from him to the tapestries over his shoulder. "Would you like me to dispatch him for you?"

Y/N snorted at his jest and immediately covered her mouth with her free hand, embarassed that the sound had escaped her in front of the Prince. Aemond only chuckled and pulled her hand from her mouth so he had both gripped in between them. "Pease do not try to suppress your laughter around me, little one. I am gladdened to have been the cause of such a sweet sound." Y/N was certain she was blushing furiously at the Prince's attentions. Seeming to sense that his handmaiden was feeling overwhelmed, Aemond gently squeezed her hands before releasing her, only to raise his hand to brush a lock of hair behind her ear. "I hope to see you in the morning, Y/N, before I leave to train. That will be all for this evening." Y/N only nodded at the Prince, slightly dazed by his tender touch as she gazed at his handsome features. She found herself wanting to trace the contours of his face with her hand, to run her fingers along his cheekbone. Aemond's smile only grew in response, prompting Y/N to inwardly shake herself and turn to leave. When she reached the door she chanced a glance back to find him still watching her as if expecting her to turn back to him. His knowing smirk had her quickly flipping back round to exit his chambers.

As the morning sun cast a warm glow upon the Red Keep and its inhabitants began to waken, Aemond awaited the arrival of his lovely handmaiden to see him off before he left for the training yard. He was satisfied with the progress he had made to endear Y/N to him. Since he'd realised she at least harboured some attraction for him, he'd continuously tried to test the waters of her feelings, hoping with time their currents should strengthen into something more substantial, that she would come to reciprocate his love for her. He did not wish to make Y/N uncomfortable, ever aware of her shyness, or for her to feel duty bound to accept his touch. So he analysed her reactions carefully each time he initiated any physical contact with her or paid her compliments. Every time she simply blushed as he purposefully brushed his arm against hers, instead of shifting away from him, a gratified smile would ghost onto his face. Her reactions renewed him with confidence, assuring him that his attentions were not unwanted, his pursuit of her not without hope.

Looking up with a smile as the door to his chambers opened, his face fell as a different handmaiden entered than the one his heart yearned for. A heavy feeling of dread came over him almost immediately. Had something happened to Y/N. Was she unwell? Had she been mysteriously dismissed as his previous handmaiden had been? When the new handmaiden could not provide him with an explanation of Y/N's absence, he stormed from the room in the hopes that his sister Helaena might have knowledge of Y/N's whereabouts.

"Do you know where Y/N is? She did not attend to her duties this morning."

Helaena looked up from the tapestry she was sewing, alarmed by the abruptness of her brother's arrival and the slightly demanding tone of his questioning. "She complained of a headache yesterday and I sent her back to the servant's quarters to rest when she felt well enough to stand. Mayhaps it still ails her."

Aemond felt his chest constrict with worry and his voice came out quieter than he would have liked at his fears having been realised. "She is unwell? Should I go to her, ensure she is comfortable and being cared for?"

Helaena rose to take his hand "Most assuredly not, brother. It would only raise unwanted questions from the household staff and Y/N should be left to rest. Perhaps send her a token of your affectation instead, do you know which flowers she favours?"

Aemond nodded at her suggestion, his sister was wise and he trusted her judgement, though he knew others were quick to ignore her. "Of course, she has expressed a preference for bluebells."

Helaena's eyes glazed over as she considered this and Aemond patiently waited for her to share what she was thinking. "I believe you can find some on the eastern side of the Blackwater. I spotted them while flying overhead with Dreamfyre."

Aemond swiftly raised his sister's hand to his lips.

"Thank you, sister. I will ride out with Vhagar hence."

At the scratchy feel of her throat that had swiftly accompanied her headache, and the nausea that washed over Y/N in Helaena's room, she realised she was in fact ill. Awaking the next morning, she felt even worse than she had the day before, finding it difficult to move her head without pain and she groaned quietly as she rose from her bed to prepare for the day. It took her one attempt to stand to realise she would not be able to work that day, as a wave of dizziness sent the room spinning and she fell ungracefully back onto her bed.

"You look terrible. Are you sick?"

Y/N raised her head just enough to look at her friend Celeste.

"I feel terrible too. Can you ask the matron to find a replacement handmaiden for me today?"

Celeste nodded before grinning at Y/N. "Oh but how will Prince Aemond do without his favourite handmaiden?"

"I don't know what you mean" Y/N rolled her eyes at her friend, causing her to scoff.

"Don't give me that. I've seen the way he looks at you when we pass him in the halls." Y/N blinked in surprise that anyone else had noticed Aemond's regard for her, that it was not just a figment of her wishful thinking.

"How does he look at me?"

"Y/N, he only looks at you. I rarely see him cast his gaze elsewhere."

Y/N suddenly felt grateful for her fever, as she was able to use it as an excuse for her flushed cheeks.

A light tap against the door of her shared room woke Y/N in the late afternoon. Pulling herself up, though her limbs felt heavy as lead, she opened the door to be met by a young squire holding a large bouquet of bluebells.

"Prince Aemond wished these to be delivered to you."

Carefully taking the flowers from the squire and thanking him, she shut the door. Leaning down to smell the fragrant perfume of her flowers, Y/N smiled at the Prince's thoughtfulness and care for her.

Aemond felt sick with worry, he'd not heard any news of Y/N for days and he was beginning to think he'd have to fall back back on his original plan to go down to the servant's quarters and check on Y/N himself. The soft click of his chamber door opening had his head snapping up as it did everytime, just in case it was Y/N. His heart soared at the sight of the very object of his thoughts on the threshold. Aemond strode up to her, taking her smaller hand in both of his, his expression one of gentle concern.

"Have you been very unwell?"

His handmaiden looked somewhat bashful under his steady gaze, but he found he could not look away, even to save her from embarrassment. His eye flitted rapidly over her face to memorise her features oncemore, not having seen her in several days.

"I am well now, I apologise for my absence." Y/N titled her head up to smile softly at him, causing his heart to stutter. "I must thank you for the flowers you sent. They were beautiful and brightened my day."

Aemond squeezed her hand gently in response, his heart gladdened that his gift had been so well received. He leant down to whisper teasingly in her ear.

"I will gladly bring you as many flowers as should please you if you will only smile at me so prettily."

Aemond chuckled at the look of shock on his handmaiden's face, releasing her from his hold and grabbing his sword, giving her a chance to collect herself. "I am headed to meet with Ser Criston, but I hope to continue our conversation later."

Aemond paid no mind to the audience that had gathered as he continued to parry every blow that Ser Criston levelled at him. His concentration was broken, however, when he spotted his handmaiden in his peripheral vision walking through the training yard, basket in hand. He noted that she had stopped to watch and threw himself into the duel with greater fervour, wishing to impress her. In a brief moment of distraction, as he redirected his attention back to Y/N to gauge her reaction to his swordsmanship, Criston's sword nicked his torso. Aemond hissed in pain, looking down to see blood beginning to spread across his tunic, though he did not think it could be deep. Criston lowered his sword immediately, panicked at having actually injured Aemond, who he'd come to see almost like a son. He had expected him to block his blow easily, not having counted on the Prince's distraction.

Y/N ran to Prince Aemond's chambers, tripping over her skirts in her haste. She'd heard of his injury in the training yard and could barely contain her concern as news of it flew about the Keep. She felt a flash of embarrassment as she remembered how she'd stopped to watch Prince Aemond duel with Ser Criston, impressed by his skill as he seemed to dance around his opponent. Though she'd left before he had been injured and needed to confirm for herself that he was not badly harmed. Flinging open the door without knocking, she burst into the room panting for breath. "My Prince, are you..."

The rest of Y/N's words got away from her as her eyes fell upon the Prince in question sitting on the edge of his bed, shirtless. She cast her eyes over the Prince's bandaged chest and torso, looking for his injury, but realised she'd been staring for far longer than was appropriate and quickly looked back up at his face to find him smirking at her. He could not be so gravely injured if he was still able to manage that, Y/N thought, embarassed by her own wandering eyes.

"Come here, Y/N."

Aemond's voice pulled Y/N towards him without her ever realising she'd been moving, although she stopped at a respectable distance away from him.

"Closer Y/N, I will not bite."

Y/N grew immediately suspicious of the mirth in the Prince's good eye and his teasing tone, but she took the final few tentative steps until she was positioned directly in front of him.

Aemond positively grinned up at her. "You are welcome to look."

Y/n's mouth fell open in shock at his meaning and she was certain she must look like a fish with her gawking. The Prince gave her no time to refute his allegation of staring, though in truth she had been. She could not deny even to herself that she found him beautiful.

"It is your fault after all." This startled her. How could he blame her for his injury? She had not swung the sword at him.

"My fault? What can you mean, My Prince?"

"I was merely distracted by your beauty, a stroke of luck for Ser Criston who could not have bested me otherwise."

Y/N took the time to swallow thickly, feeling slightly dizzy.

"You should not say such things, it is inappropriate. You are a Prince and I am a servant girl."

Aemond surveyed her for a moment, his eye trained on her face as he looked up at her.

"Does it make you uncomfortable?"

Y/N knew she should tell Aemond that yes, it did make her uncomfortable, pretend she didn't feel anything for him. That would have been the sensible thing to do. But she could not bring herself to lie anymore. Not when he was looking at her as if she placed the moon and the stars in the sky each night. Rather, as if she were both the moon and the stars for him.

"No."

"Then I do not care."

Aemond snaked a hand around her waist and pulled her towards him so abruptly that their knees knocked together and her hands fell onto his bare shoulders to steady herself. When he received no objection from the lady, Aemond wrapped his other arm around Y/N and pulled her down onto his lap. Tilting his head down, his nose grazing against her collarbone, he spoke against her skin.

"I always want you this close."

The door opened abruptly as the maestor entered the threshold. Y/N rose quickly, practically ripping herself from Aemond's arms, cheeks flushed with embarrassment at the position he'd found her in with the Prince. Head down to avoid seeing the judgement in the maestor's eyes, she sped past him without looking back. Though she still heard Aemond angrily shouting at the maestor for "scaring her" as she strode down the hall and an involuntary smile rose on her face.

Y/N tried to clear her thoughts of Aemond, but the terrible rumour she'd just been made privy to by Helaena's maid sent all of the feelings she'd tried so hard to repress bubbling back up to the surface. She had just begun to give into his pursuit of her only to find out he had pursued his previous handmaiden in the same manner, leaving her with child and dismissed from the household staff, so the rumours went. In hindsight, she'd been foolish to believe the Prince could ever truly care for her, feel anything deeper for her than mere attraction. Perhaps it was the chase itself he valued and she felt an uncharacteristic rage rise within her at such callousness.

Brusquely entering the Prince's chambers, she ignored the way his eyes lit up at the sight of her and the way he rose to greet her from where he'd been reading. She pretended not to notice, side stepping him with a simple "Good evening, My Prince", to begin lighting candles, the light of the day having waned. Aemond caught her wrist, stopping her in her movements, and gently turned her towards him.

"Has something happened? Have I done something to displease you for you to act so distant?" He raised his hand to brush some hair out of her eyes but Y/N recoiled from his touch, side stepping him again.

"I do not wish you to touch me. I have been made aware of your last handmaiden's fate and do not seek to follow her."

Aemond's eyebrows furrowed in confusion, his jaw clenching. "I do not know of what you speak, Y/N."

Y/N heard her own anger and sense of betrayal seeping into her biting retort. "Would you so soon forget her? Did she not bear your child. Was she not promptly dismissed by the Queen for it?"

As her words registered, Aemond's face blazed with indignation and he spoke through gritted teeth.

"You think me such a villain? That I would be capable of such depravity?"

"I do not pretend to know the ways of a Prince."

Aemond's voice was colder than she had ever heard it, though tinged by a note of insecurity. "I never did such a thing. Indeed, I have no idea as to why my mother dismissed the handmaiden, only that it was not of my own doing."

Y/N searched his face for the truth of his denial, but she could not find it within herself to believe the Prince could want her when he could have a noble lady or a princess if he wished. And she could not shake her suspicions as a result.

"It does not make sense for you to have behaved as you have towards me. What possible other reason could you have for pursuing a lowly servant girl?"

"So this is what you think of me? That I am a monster who preys on the hearts of young maidens only to ruin them?"

Y/N startled at the unbridled rage on the Prince's face. When Aemond's fist swung out and connected with the nearby cabinet Y/N shrieked and turned her head to the side, bracing for a blow that never came. A few moments of silence passed before she dared to look up. Aemond was looking at her with his mouth parted in shock as if she had struck him instead. "Did you think I would strike you?" His voice came out softer now, though this did no good to calm her nerves, which were still on high alert. She tried to brush away the tears that were rapidly forming and causing her vision to blur, not wanting to feel any more vulnerable than she already did. At the sight of her tears, Aemond took a step towards her, his arms held out as if to comfort her. "Please don't cry my love, I would never harm you." She took a frantic step away from him, cowering against the wall closest to the door. A look of acute pain fell across Aemond's face and he halted where he stood, arms falling back down to his side. She could see his fingers twitch slightly, as if it was only with a concerted effort that he was able to stay where he stood instead of going to her. Y/N hated the note of hysteria that laced her voice as she breathlessly gasped out her next words. "Can I leave?"

Aemond's head fell and she heard him take a sharp intake of breath before looking back into her eyes. His movements slow and considered, he opened the door for her and stepped aside to let her pass, though she heard a slight tremble in his voice. "I would never keep you here against your will." Y/N judged that he was telling the truth from the sincerity in his eye and all but ran from his chambers.

When Y/N entered his chambers the next morning, Aemond tried to apprehend her to apologise, to ask for her forgiveness. He had felt so hurt, so angry that there was a possibility Y/N should think of him as negatively as others seemed to, when he valued her opinion of him above all others. He'd purposefully made himself a formidable warrior, someone to be feared and respected, in response to the indignities and abuse he faced as a child. But he had never wanted Y/N to be afraid of him. He had only spoken her name before she rushed out "I only came to make my survey of the room and take the empty goblets, My Prince." Aemond was silenced by the trace of panic in her voice, how she should feel so afraid that she flew about the room to complete her duties and be free of him as soon as possible.

The following day Aemond had looked up hopefully at the sound of his door to see another maid entirely enter his chambers. On the third evening, Aemond did not expect to see Y/N, beginning to fear she might never feel comfortable to seek him out again. He resolved that if another day passed he would have to storm down to the servant's quarters to apologise to her if she would not come to him. It had been torture to be without her, so accustomed was he to seeing her everyday, and he felt he could go mad from missing her. Worse still was the knowledge that he had frightened her so severely that she should think he would harm her. The very thought struck horror into his heart and his head fell into his hands.

Y/N felt somewhat cowardly feigning illness so she did not have to see Aemond, another maid stepping in to fulfill her duties instead. But she had learnt the truth of his previous handmaiden's departure from the Princess Helaena, that she had indeed fallen pregnant, but with the child of her sweetheart who she promptly married. And now she felt ashamed at having levelled such awful accusations at the Prince. He had only ever been kind and a gentleman to her, only ever respected her boundaries and made sure she was comfortable with each one of his advances. Surely he would not wish to see her again. And yet she felt she must at least apologise for her part before requesting a new post.

Around the Hour of the Bat, a slight creak of wood alerted Aemond to his chamber door opening. He shot up from his seated position at seeing his beloved standing in the doorframe, her hand gripping the handle as if prepared to bolt at the slightest provocation. He cursed himself at his rapid movements, which had caused Y/N's eyes to widen and her to take a step back away from him. He wished he could pull her to him, hold her and tell her over and over that he would never harm her. But he knew that assuring her of this would require a much more delicate approach. Her name fell from his lips as a reverant whisper "Y/N."

Something in his expression or voice seemed to calm Y/N enough for her to softly close the door behind her and take a few tentative steps forward. Though, with grief in his heart, he noted how she would not meet his eye. Her voice came out so quiet and timid he could hardly bear the evidence of the fear he had wrought in the one person he wished to protect and care for above all else.  "You are not still angry?"

Aemond took one step forward and then another as he watched carefully for any signs of distress, aware she was like to be flighty. He approached until he was close enough to touch her, though he refrained from doing so just yet. "I was wrong to raise my voice at you, and to lash out so that you should think I would strike you. Your misapprehensions were entirely understandable and I bitterly regret being so blinded by anger that should never have been directed at you, the one I love."

Y/N's eyes shot up at his words, her brows pulled together quizzically. "You love me?"

Aemond smiled sadly down at her. "I adore you. I am sorry indeed if I have not expressed this clearly enough."

Gently taking one of her hands in his own he started to pull her towards the chaise in the centre of the room. She followed without complaint but still looked wary of him. Once she was sat, he knelt before her and took both of her hands in his this time. Aemond tried to endow each of his words with weight to express the truth of his love for her as he gazed into her face. "If you can find it in yourself to forgive me Y/N, I will make you a promise now that I will never again raise my voice to you, nor will I ever comport myself in such a brutish manner before you. I would never harm you, my sweet girl" He slowly raised a hand to rest it on her cheek. "You are most precious to me. I wish only to see you happy and safe, for you to let me love you. If you permit it I would make you my Lady Wife. But, if you do not think you can ever feel safe in my presence again and you wish to part from me I will try to bear it."

Aemond feared he had mispoken when Y/N's eyes watered until her head fell forward to rest on his shoulder. His hands rose up slowly to hold her against him, one hand tenderly placed against the back of her head. He waited patiently for Y/N to speak but felt relief roll over him at the thought that she had looked to him for comfort. "I love you, Aemond."

He gripped her to him tighter, feeling that no words could be sweeter to him. He had hoped for so long to hear her say those words, for her to return his love and yet now he still feared he might lose her. Aemond tried not to panic and hold Y/N more steadfastly against him as she pulled back to look at him seriously, seemingly now in control of her emotions, her face level with his. "I want to trust you, to trust in your intentions. I will believe you if you say you love me as I know now that I was wrong about your previous handmaiden. But you must realise I am a servant. Can you really wish to marry me? "

Aemond beamed at Y/N as he realised she did not wish to cast him aside, that he could still acquit himself to her and prove his intentions. Smiling at her, his eye softening, he raised his arms to place them on either side of her. "It is my greatest and most earnest desire that you become my wife. You would no longer be a servant but my Lady" He hesitated for a moment, thinking of how he could put into words his devotion to her. "I wish only to continue in your light." Aemond lightly trailed a hand down her arm, his heart beating erratically as he awaited Y/N's answer. Aemond stilled as she raised her own hand to rest against his cheek, worried that the slightest movement from him would cause her to reconsider her actions. Leaning into her hand he placed his own atop to hold hers in place and briefly closed his eyes in bliss at her touch so willingly given. "Then I will marry you."

Aemond wasted no time in sweeping Y/N back into his arms, letting out a laugh as the pressing weight of her potential rejection lifted, leaving behind only joy in her acceptance of his love. When he felt her gently push against his shoulders he immediately pulled back, concerned he'd somehow misread the situation and only dreamed she had agreed to marry him. His mind quickly quietened at her loving gaze, only to begin racing again as she unexpectedly pressed a chaste peck to his lips. Y/N had hoped to convey her own feelings for Aemond by initiating a kiss, but she immediately felt embarassed at her own inexperience, sure she had not done it correctly. Aemond was only too happy to take control, feeling an overwhelming sense of affection rise in him at her innocent gesture and the bashful look on her face. Smiling at her, he pulled her to him to capture her lips with his. Aemond tightened his hold on her waist as she wrapped her arms around his neck to bring him closer.

If you got this far you're a legend. Thank you so much for reading. I have ideas for at least another part so pls let me know if you want me to continue.

@nanawaffles

@youknownothingjohnwatson

@jjkysnk

@callsigncrushx

@misspinkonmars

@hyacinthesiss

@bitchyfestivalbouquet

@truly-abysmal

@void21

@sapphiresandferrari

@pinkykats-place

@superintenseart

@idonotknowenglish

[melon-fodder]

-> KINKTOBER MASTERLIST <-

♡ WARNINGS: piss, reader has a pussy, p in v, creampies, holding it, fisting (yeah, like, up to the wrist), pet names: baby, princess, good girl

♡ WORD COUNT: 1.7k

♡ NOTE: I don’t have much to say other than I’m a lil freaky and I hope you are too. enjoy~

Togame lives a life of relaxation. He moves on his own time, slowly even when he’s enjoying something. Especially when he’s enjoying something. 

Now, for example–he has you speared open on his cock, your legs wide, dangling over his thighs as he rolls his hips into you at a glacial pace. You whine in frustration, head falling back to rest on his shoulder as you take in heaving breaths. 

“Jou…” you whimper, shuddering when he smooths a hand over your tummy, “Jou, please.” “Shh, be patient, pretty girl. You can take it.” His voice is low against your ear, making your skin prickle with goosebumps.

The pace, you can handle. Maddening as it is, you’ve gotten used to it over your time spent with him. It’s the added pressure inside of you that’s making tears burn at the back of your eyes, similar to the burn growing between your hips.

“Here, why don’t you distract yourself,” he suggests, and you can hear the sly tone of his voice, nearly letting some of those tears fall when he grabs your cup from the bedside table and presents it to you. “Come on, baby, just drink a little more.” You pout but part your lips for the straw when he holds it to your mouth. “I’ll be done soon. Just keep sippin’ ‘til then.”

The idea of taking in any more water is enough to make you go crazy, but… 

It’s the way he’s nuzzling into your neck, the way he murmurs the sweetest words to you, how his green eyes are probably shining with affection even if you can’t see them. 

So, you do as he asks and start swallowing little gulps of water. It feels like it goes directly to your bladder, stretching you to your limit. All the while, Togame keeps his slow pace, using your pussy to his liking for what feels like forever. You know you must be strangling his cock with the way your clenching, trying to keep yourself from letting go the way you want to. “

“Just keep getting tighter n’ tighter–fuck–” You hear that tell-tale hiss, and he suddenly asks you, “you ready for me, princess?”

“Yes,” you gasp, “yes, please, please,” because the quicker he cums, the quicker he’ll let you pee. 

The next couple thrusts are hard, hitting you where you least need them to. Fat tip rubbing over your g-spot, your jaw drops in a silent scream, stars dancing in your vision with every snap of his hips. “Don’t know how much longer I can hold it,” you tell him, voice warbling. He doesn’t seem to hear you, too lost in his own climax, dick twitching with every line of cum that paints your insides. “God… so fucking good,” he groans, movements slowing to a stop as he pants. His fingers dance over your stomach again, and your thighs tremble, flexed with the effort of not relieving yourself. Your whole body is shaking in fact, and Togame coos at you as he comes down, tells you, “just a little bit longer, okay? M’gonna make you feel so good.”

You bite your lip hard as he carefully slides you off of him, laying you down on the bed the two of you had prepared before you got started with this. You’ve always kept a plastic sheet over the mattress because, even on the nights that you don’t participate in this particular type of play, you still have a habit of getting messy. On top of the plastic are several absorbent pads that you could unfortunately only find in the pet aisle at the store, but… desperate times.

You can feel Togame leaking out of you, warm and thick, running down the curve of your ass. He sits between your legs, stares at your used pussy for a moment and licks his lips. 

“If it starts hurting, let me know and I’ll stop, ‘kay?”

You nod, heart picking up speed in your chest. He had told you he wanted to try something a little different tonight, which is exactly what he told you months ago when he got curious about piss play in the first place. 

You’re not scared; you trust Togame. You just have to fucking go. You’re already hurting, already full, ready to burst. The worst part is that you know how good it’ll feel to let go, that relief as warmth flows out of your body… You need it.

A breathy moan escapes you as Togame gently slides two fingers into your hole. You’re wet from your own slick and his spend, and your walls, though swollen with arousal, offer no resistance. He massages you for a little while, chuckling at the way you flutter around him before he adds a third finger. 

“Mm… f-uck!” You lurch upward when he taps your g-spot, a sob bubbling from your chest as that burn intensifies. “Can’t–can’t hold it if you d-do that.” “No?” he presses against it again, this time while slowly rubbing a thumb over your clit, and you sniffle as you feel piss start to dribble out of your little hole. “Ah, ah, not yet. Still gotta fit two more fingers,” he says in a dark tone. “Wanna get this pussy all nice and stretched before she makes a mess.” Your eyes roll at his filthy words, core throbbing with desire as you think about Togame fitting his whole hand inside of you. 

“That get you hot, baby?” he teases, leaning down to kiss your tummy as he works his pinky inside of you. 

The stretch of your hole is almost enough to distract you from the stretch of your bladder, but it’s so full, and the angle of his fingers are putting pressure against it from the inside, and god, you need to pee–you need to so badly, you might actually cum when you do. You hiss when Togame spreads his fingers inside of you, twists his wrist back and forth, makes a stirring motion. Every action is met with a cacophony of lewd squelches, your cunt sucking him in further and further, begging for the last addition.

Fingertips slip just past your entrance–you can’t tell how many, but he uses them to stretch you a little more, gently pulling the gummy tissue to make room for his thumb.

“Deep breath, baby,” he tells you, but breathing isn’t an option. You haven’t taken a full breath in what feels like hours. All your focus has been on not wetting yourself, on holding it all in.

You grunt and whimper as Togame works his thumb inside of you. It’s a slow process even when he gets most of it in. He rubs your thigh and peppers your hips with sweet kisses, all while praising you– “doing so good for me, fuck, you look so pretty like this.”

“Nngh, Jou–so… much…” “I know, I know, but you’re stretchin’ so nice. Just gotta push a little bit more.” With his free hand, Togame grabs the bottle of lube off the nightstand and pours a generous amount over the top of his hand. The slide may be easier, but you still struggle to take his palm. 

“So close, almost there,” he promises, circling your clit in a way that usually relaxes you, but you’re still tense–coiled as you try to hold yourself together. “You ready to let go?” he asks, and you can barely even nod your head, tears streaming from your eyes as your lower lip trembles where it’s held between your teeth. 

“Go on, baby. You can make a mess now.” An audible sob echoes in the room as you will your body to relax, and as soon as it does, Togame pushes in the rest of the way, his fist fitting snugly inside your pussy as you shower his forearm with piss. 

Your eyes roll, moan rising in pitch and volume as he wiggles his fingers. The weight of his hand–his whole fucking hand–and the bliss of relieving yourself has you unraveling. Waves of euphoria crash over you, scorching relief spilling from your cunt and pooling beneath you. It drenches the pads between your legs, seeping up to your back and coating your skin in a warm, damp sheen.

You’re gushing around him, squirting and creaming and peeing all at once, and the whole time, Togame controls you like a puppet, shallow thrusts against your cervix pushing more and more fluid from your body–fuck, it won’t stop. It won’t stop. You’re crying and drooling, quaking in his hold. Your legs kick weakly, uselessly, hips rolling on their own accord. It feels so fucking good. Hand stuffing your slutted-out pussy, fingers touching parts of you that neither of you have felt before. He’s in your guts, pushing against your doughy insides and milking everything from you. 

“Pussy’s so soft, Jesus fucking Christ…”

You yelp when he shifts to lay on his stomach, fist still stuffed inside you. Mouth latching onto your clit, you squeal, “too much, too much, too much!”

But, Togame just groans, sucking on the swollen bud while curling too many fingers into too many spots–fuck, fuck, he’s gonna make you cum again. He’s gonna make you– He slurps loudly, lapping at your stretched cunt and greedily drinking whatever fluid gushes from you. You can’t tell anymore, not with the way he’s pressing against your bladder from the outside, not with the way your insides ache for another orgasm. 

“Gimme everything you got, baby, that’s a good girl,” he groans, tonguing over your clit over and over, licking up every stray drop and dribble that leaks out of you.

He places a few wet kisses on the inside of your thighs, hand finally stilling inside of you, and you’re able to take in a huge, shaky breath. 

“Holy fuck,” is all you manage, and Togame laughs.

“Yeah. Holy fuck is right.” Another sloppy kiss right between your hips before he rises to his knees, “wanna know the best part?”

You lift an eyebrow, his handsome face swimming in and out of focus. Only now can you see what a complete mess you’ve made of him. His face and neck are dripping with you–even his bangs are wet, plastered against his forehead. Togame smirks, obviously not uncomfortable in the slightest.

“Best way to safely get my hand outta you is to make you cum again.”

[bee-the-loser-recs]

☼My The8/Minghao One-shot Fic Recs☼

𖤓 The letter By @toruro 26k, Idol Minghao, Jun is reader's brother, fluff, angst, long term pining, slowburn, childhood friends to lovers

𖤓 Oh my By @toruro 13.6k, strangers to lovers, mutual crushes, fluff, reader is roommates with Vernon, Svt as one big friend group, smut

𖤓 Flight of the stars By @toruro 13.3k, race car driver Minghao, physical therapist reader, shoulder injury, fluff, angst, smut

𖤓 Red (k)nights By @toruro 6.7k, royalty au, princess reader, knight Minghao, established lovers, fluff, returning from scouting, slight secret relationship, smut

𖤓 This idiot of mine By @mirisss 3.7k, school au, bad boy Minghao, clumsy nerd reader, fluff, affectionate teasing, oblivious reader

𖤓 Fixer upper By @seungkwansphd 9.5k, blind date au, strangers to friends to lovers, ignoring feelings, fluff, slow burn, smut, cute, matchmaker & Minghao

𖤓 Avant-garde By @hoyoungy 4.1k, college student reader, painter Minghao, fluff, adoration, reader loves his painting, so cute, I have revisited this so many times :D

𖤓 Muses By @luvidzy 5.5k, small town au, summer holidays, falling in love, artist Minghao & reader, fluff, cuties

𖤓 Lowkey By @viastro 3.6k, dancer au, college au, pining, embarrassment, dance club, fluff, reader sobs after confession

𖤓 Since we were eighteen By @viastro 1.8k, best friends to lovers, drunk confessions, reader breaks up with their ex cause their in love with reader, fluff

𖤓 Better with you By @viastro 3.1k, friends to lovers, summer fair au, fluff, humour, nauseous reader, cute, love confessions

𖤓 Playing cupid By @sluttywonwoo 4.5k, college au, party, confessing feelings, valentines day party, fluff, smut, pining

𖤓 Once bitten By @sluttywonwoo 3.2k, vampire Minghao, college au, locked in a museum, project partners, aphrodisiac venom, smut, some fluff, slight enemies to lovers

𖤓 Light of my life By @escapewriter 2k, Minghao's birthday, celebration/cute date, painting and lighting lanterns, fluffy, so cute

𖤓 Hi (I love you) By @wheeboo 5.5k, college au, painter Minghao, photographer reader, falling in love, hidden feelings, fluff, really cute

𖤓 Academic infatuation By @berriesandjunnie 2.5k, teachers au, art teacher Minghao, Chinese language teacher reader, fluff, everyone is rooting for them

𖤓 Introverts By @berriesandjunnie 3k, highschool au, Chinese exchange student Minghao, introvert reader, bullying, fluff, fighting back, cute

𖤓 Felix felicis By @blue-jisungs 7k, Hogwarts au, Slytherin Minghao, Hufflepuff reader, project partners, cute dynamics, fluff, angst, mentions of social anxiety

𖤓 Apple of my eye By @rubyreduji 2.4k, Descendants au, Evil Queen's son Minghao, Snow white kid's reader, fluff, bullied reader, soft Minghao

𖤓 Glacial pace By @wonusite 5.3k, college au, fake dating, mutual pining, idiots in love, fluff, finally getting together, communicating, smut, meddling friends

𖤓 To love easily By @minghaoyoudoin 13.5k, college au, fake dating, photographer Minghao, ex Joshua, catching feelings, fluff, angst, smut

𖤓 Moonlight By @ilwonuu Brother's best friend trope, Jun is reader's brother, fluff, pining, oblivious lovers, Jun ships them, smut

𖤓 Minghao + historical au By @husbandhannie 6 one-shots, historical au, duke Minghao, duchess reader, marriage of convenience, falling in love, fluff, smut

𖤓 Love has no language By @renaiswriting Platonic Jun x reader x Minghao, college au, exchange student reader, learning Korean, exam stress, supportive behaviour

𖤓 Headliner By @horangboosadan SMAU one-shot, non-idol au, photographer Minghao, college student & cleaner reader, fluff, developing relationship

[secret-smut-sideblog]

Possession

Gale x F! Sorcerer Tav

18+ enemies to lovers (sort of), antagonistic relationships, crossed signals, misunderstanding, physical roughness, rivalry/jealousy, mean domGale, rough sex, manhandling, semi-public sex, consensual voyeurism, light humiliation, masturbation (m!), fingering (f!), oral (f!), face sitting, p-in-v, pulling out

With natural challenge and charge between them and a misstep at connection, an unexpected competitor appears in camp. Things come to a burning head between sorcerer and wizard...

Masterlist

-

Magic ran through her body. It was deep inside her bones, a force she could not reason with even if she tried. As vital as breath.

So as Gale explained Weave to her, she rested her chin on a curled hand. Giving him a highly bemused smile that he was entirely unaware of.

"The simplicity that Magic of the Weave - An Introduction supplies is quite misleading. Though those unfamiliar must start somewhere, I suppose." He held the small tome up in demonstration, letting it fall flat in his palm to a page he had affixed a colored tab to.

"Like here!"

He began reading aloud a passage, Tav smiling wider at the unconscious raise of his pointed finger.

"While that is accurate," He snapped the book shut, turning to look at her. "To distill the Weave so crudely down to a new student is akin to stealing their capacity for wonder. So much of the power of the Weave is in its limitless beauty, to rend it so small is a disservice."

"Not all spellcasters experience magic in such a profound way as you do." She offered, that bite of jest falling back into her words.

"Ah, I've forgotten." He sighed, leveling her with a withering stare. "I'm speaking to a sorcerer."

She felt her smile widen even further.

"And I'm speaking to a wizard. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that you kiss those books to sleep at night."

His ears filled with blush, pulling the tome off of his lap and setting it with an annoyed thump on an ever growing pile.

"As I've said, no sense of wonder." He sniped.

This was a dance they did. He would talk her through a concept she was already familiar with and, inevitably, get frustrated with her teasing. But he kept coming back, a new topic, a new book, to dissect to her. A dog with a bird in its teeth.

"I really do think it's sweet. Your love for your craft. Maybe you'll be a teacher one day, you clearly have a knack for it." She sighed out her last words in a mock weariness.

"Though I could argue I experience magic just as deeply as you do, wizard. Maybe I should be the one giving you lectures."

His eyes seemed to light at the thought, turning to her expectantly.

"No," she raised her hands. "I'm not going to be the one to break that hopeful glint in your eyes. My relationship with my magic is not nearly as fulfilling."

He stared at her, stubborn. Turning fully towards her, eyes held in unwavering interest.

"You're very irritating." She stated.

He scoffed.

"I'm well aware. But go on, enlighten me."

She gave an exaggerated eye roll, then fell quiet. Bowing her head in concentration, allowing the slow closing of her eyes.

The sound of rustling fabric next to her as he leaned forward.

As she focused in on her power, the sensation, the fluid of it, she felt it rise along her body. Lifting the ends of her hair, air crackling with chill. She leaned her head back, feeling the delicious cold move up her spine.

Speaking in a hushed, vulnerable voice.

"It's ice water in summer. It's the chill of early morning. It's the plunge of a hand into a cool river."

Her eyes slid open, her gaze falling back on her hands. Now alight with glacial magic.

"It's the hunger of winter. It's the icy maw that swallows the unprepared. It's the frigid grip on skin, stealing breath away. Lulling so sweetly into sleep, burning alive."

She stared at the curl of her palm, frost lines traveling in slow pulses down the valleys of her veins.

"What you call Weave I know as blood. Inescapable and as giving as a blizzard. It's not about learning, it's about controlling."

Her eyes finally rose to his and found him scribbling in the front leaf page of Magic of the Weave. Looking up at her expectantly, his hand pausing as she fell quiet.

"Are you... writing this down?" She stared at him in disbelief.

He looked down at his pen, then back up at her, innocent confusion tilting his head. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"By Drizz't's Blades, can you not be an academic for one second?" She huffed, rising to feet.

"Just like a wizard, you bear your wounds and their taking notes. Gods."

He looked at his work again, his own frustration creasing his brows. Opening his mouth to surely argue.

"Save it." She held her hand up flat. "You've got your research. Frigid drow is a compelling footnote in your paper. Goodnight, Gale."

Her feet took her away on frosted grass. Hands clenching at her sides, ice cresting over knuckles. Feeling his eyes following her back.

Turning the corner on the largest crimson tent.

"Karlach! I need thawing!"

-

"You know he didn't mean it like that."

Karlach's blistering hand rubbed in circles along the ice holding her bare back. Melting it down only to have new sheets bloom behind her hand.

"I dont know that." Tav hissed, the tight hurt in her chest speaking.

"Oh, come on. He's far too sweet on you to be studying you like an experiment."

"He's not."

"He is. Hells, Tav, it's obvious."

Tav rose her legs to her chest, leaning on her knees. Pushing her chin into the curve of her folded forearms. Angry tears spiking her eyes, quickly turning to frozen rain pooling.

"That's just how wizards are, mate. They digest the world through books. If anything, it was a massive compliment that he was taking notes."

She picked at the seam along her knee. Turning her head into the fold of her arms with a shaky sigh. Focusing on Karlach's heat to bring her body back down from the threatening squall.

"I just want to be..."

She tried to gather her words, but an angry lump sat frozen in her throat.

"I know, baby. You want to be understood. But that shit hurts."

Tav nodded, reaching back to squeeze Karlach's knee.

"Thank you." She sighed, ice water slipping down her temple and the curve of her nose.

"Of course, Frost. Elemental bitches gotta stick together."

Tav let out a wet laugh, chill air leaving her in a burst.

Leaving her tent, she gave Karlach's shoulder one more grateful squeeze. Misty eyed again, seeing how happily she pulled a frozen Clive to her chest. Her spell set to last through the night.

Though her ice was often a burden, it was setting up to be a sweltering night. Passing by each tent, she tapped on canvas. Setting the temperature down with an incantation, hearing grateful sighs and soft thank you's from within as she made a loop. Slipping a bottle of cooled blood into crimson canvas, chilled fingers taking it eagerly.

She eyed the deep turquoise tent, soft light still dancing inside. Sighing, she stepped forward on quiet feet. Stopping to kneel down and straighten the piles of books that he had haphazardly left.

Crouched on haunches, she rose her hand. Pressing a cold palm into canvas. Giving him a little extra in silent apology.

Hearing no acknowledgment outside of a pausing of movement, she rose back on feet.

"Goodnight, Gale." She hushed.

Turning back to the lone point of her black tent, at the lowest slope of their small world. Faded with scrubbed away symbols of Lolth. Smiling at Minthara's tent opposite hers.

Her fellow drow laid inside, leaned back on her hammock. Sharpening a dagger with the precision of a practiced war matron.

Giving her an affirming nod as she cooled her tent.

"I'm retiring for the night." Tav spoke in Undercommon, the words sliding out so much more natural. Minthara respoding in kind.

"I'll take watch." Rising from her lounge, she sat her dagger back with a snap. Heading up the slope.

"Rest well, sister."

Finally alone, she entered her tent. Content to wallow in her sharp hurt.

As she settled, lighting a candle, pulling a spidersilk robe around her waist, a new shape revealed beneath her pillow.

She cut her eyes, picking up a tome.

Impractical Magic, Volume 1.

Another sat beneath it.

Book of Poetry.

She flipped through them. A beginner's book, written by a wizard, about the nature of elemental sorcery and a small book of poems. Recognizing her own speech patterns from her attempt at explanation earlier in the prose.

She shot to feet, angry chill rising through her neck. The books gripped in her fist.

Ripping aside turquoise canvas. Casting Private Sanctum on his tent as she stormed inside. Tossing the books at his feet.

"Are you mocking me?"

He glanced at the books, eyes rising to hers. Turning his head in that maddening tilt.

"You have wildly misunderstood my intentions."

Her hands twitched into fists again, breathing hard through the frost.

"Okay, then dumb it down for me since you're so superior. My meager education couldn't possibly rise to the occasion."

He rose to feet, his breathing picking up with hers.

"Why do you keep inferring that I find you lacking? How have I made that impression?"

She nearly screamed, biting her icy tongue. Turning from him to face the tent wall as furious tears rose again.

"Hey, don't turn away. I'm trying to understand!"

His hand pulled on her bicep, and it snapped a fracture in her frozen lake.

Wrenching his wrist, she forced his arm behind his back. Flipping him to the ground, knee pressed into his spine. Taking his hair in a tight bunch, forcing his head into a turn on his pillow.

He gasped, his back arching into her hold. Body so unbearably warm beneath hers.

"Don't touch me." She commanded. Pressing her knee harder.

He tried to nod, but her fist held harder into his hair. A soft moan left him, hips rising into a curl.

"Don't go into my tent again. Or I will do far worse than this."

"Is that a promise?" He gasped.

She raised her lip in a snarl. Lowering her head down to his ear, hissing into the well.

"You're too soft and warm to talk back, wael faern. Or do I need to show you that?"

"I'd love a demonstration, if you don't mind."

She smiled dangerously, pinning his arm under her knee. Hand snapping down on the side of his throat.

He breathed hard under her constricting fingers, eyes fluttering up into lids as her cold tongue drug up the curve of his ear.

She pressed the full freeze of her body into his back, chuckling darkly as he shivered.

"Too cold? I thought so."

Rising off of him with a shove, she twisted her fingers into her magic. Glaring down as he turned to stare flushed at her.

"Enjoy the heat."

With a pull, she removed her chill on the tent. The air filling sweltering again as she ducked out into the night.

-

"No Gale today?" Astarion clicked his tongue in mock disappointment. Shouldering his pack to accompany her.

"No. I'd rather not see him." She responded in a clipped voice.

"Cold." He lilted. "But I do so enjoy that about you."

Karlach and Minthara met them at the crest of the trail. Blue light still bathing the sleeping world.

"Any reason we're heading out so early, soldier?"

"She's avoiding her kicked puppy."

"Do you want to stay back, Astarion? I'm sure you could use the beauty rest."

"Would you like me to educate the spawn on manners, sister?"

"Gods, I'm going to hate you two together."

Her eyes darted back to the distant point of camp. Seeing a soft light ignite inside his tent.

"Enough talk. Head out."

-

"Shadowheart! To me!" Tav called.

Rolan moaned out what sounded like 'Where are we?' His eyes rolling loose in sockets as he coughed.

"My camp, we're not close enough to Last Light. Now focus on breathing." She hitched his arm higher over her shoulder.

Minthara took up his other side, face stoic.

"Shadowheart! We have wounded!" Tav called again, eyes tracking around the camp.

She rushed down the hill, hands lit in magic. Potions gathered under her arm.

"Injuries?" She urged, Tav and Minthara laying him on a soft patch of grass. Halsin came up behind Tav, his hand coming to Rolan's forehead. The other braced on her back as he kneeled down.

"Shadow wraiths. The curse almost got him." Karlach gasped, running up to the gathered help.

"He's very near death." Halsin urged, hand lighting along his forehead. "Something's wrong, he's burning up."

Tav leaned back and whipped off her robe, kneeled in her underclothes.

"Lift him." She instructed. Halsin appraising her with an impressed glint.

The druid lifted him easily into a slump.

"What's going on?" Gale's voice rose over their heads.

Tav arched her thigh around Rolan's lap, taking up his weight into her shoulder. Her chest pressed to his, she snaked her hand inside of his robe and untied it at the waist. Letting it fall back as she spread her hands on his bowed back and pressed into him.

Halsin and Shadowheart took up at his sides in front of her. Speaking healing magic into his body.

"Breath, faern." She hushed, pulling him to her.

Rolan's breath filled and emptied shallowly against her neck. Burning into her skin.

"I'm going to get colder now, take a deep breath." She warned in a soft voice.

She focused her temperature down, feeling him try to pull away weakly.

"Good, that's good." Halsin encouraged, spreading a hand between hers. "He's stabilizing."

Rolan whimpered into her shoulder, arms coming up to grip into her back. Body shaking with cold and frustration. Tears hidden in the fall of her hair.

"I know, I know." She hummed, hands running through his long hair. "You're alive. Feel your anger."

Rolan wouldn't leave her side, even after his body had cooled. Leaning his head in exhausted shame.

"We'll head out for Last Light, first thing in the morning." Tav instructed, her gathered companions nodding. The fire burning low between them.

"Return Rolan to his family and secure the whereabouts of Oliver. We should search where we last saw him."

Rolan's head rose, staring down at her.

"Family?"

"Yes, we found your siblings in the prison at Moonrise. They were on their way back to you when we found you."

His eyes filled with tears again.

"You saved them?"

She nodded, then was taken into him.

He pressed a kiss into her lips, hands cupping her face in desperate joy. Pulling away with spilling tears.

"Thank you." He breathed.

She smiled up at him.

"No trouble."

Rolan smiled back, then turned his head. His eyes widened in confusion, then settled into a cold stare.

Tav followed his gaze.

Gale sat across from Rolan, glaring dark under his brow at him. Fingers digging on his thighs.

"Something you'd like to share?" Rolan chided, tilting his head in a slow challenge.

"Oh, not presently. After all, your health is far too important." Gale's voice came out in a low warning.

The air crackled with malice. A silent combat taking place between eyes.

"Gods, you wizards are like fish too close in a pond. Get over yourselves." Shadowheart scoffed, rising to feet.

"I'll set you up in my tent tonight." Tav turned to back to Rolan. "I'll occupy myself elsewhere."

"I'm sure there's enough room for the two of us." Rolan purred, eyes lighting in petty accomplishment as the shadow darkened next to them.

"And I'm sure you'll freeze to death."

"Mmm, I'm still a mite warm, actually."

Gale rose to feet, shoulders hard with effort.

"Tav, a word?"

"My tent is there." She pointed down the slope, rising to feet. "Get some rest. We have a long walk come morning."

Gale came to her side, rushing forward. Caging her body forward with his own. Fast steps forcing her body to a brisk walk.

His hand came up to pull on her wrist, finding her pace not removing them quickly enough.

"I will end you." She promised, his hand falling away with a huff.

"Okay, we're beyond the treeline. I think we're far enough from the wizard I just helped."

She crossed her arms, leveling an unamused stare at him.

"What do you want to say?"

"Why did he just kiss you?" Gale hissed. Ducking his head down low to her.

"Ask him. I haven't detected his thoughts."

"That's not funny."

"It wasn't a joke."

He huffed breath hard, chest heaving. Eyes burning.

"You're impossible." He growled.

"I'm a drow. Bitch comes free." She tilted her head up at him. A mean glint in her eyes.

"Why? Are you jealous, wizard?"

His back bristled, eyes widening in contained rage.

"Do you need healing, too? Do you have wounds for me?" She stepped forward in a challenge. "Show me where it hurts, and I'll lick it better."

He held his ground, and she stepped forward again. Egging him on.

"Come on. You're clearly angry with me." She smiled. "Spit your venom."

"I'm not angry with you."

"No?" She stepped into him.

"Then why are you so warm?"

His eyelids lowered into a grimace, panting as she pressed into him.

They breathed into each other's space, his hands arching in hard clenches at his sides.

"Then what are you feeling towards me, Gale?" She hissed, staring into his dark eyes.

He finally snapped, crashing his mouth into hers.

His mouth pushed, desperate and mean. Wide hand gripping into the back of her hair. Breathing hard through nose. Tangling into her in angry pulls. Demanding fingers pulling at her clothes.

She pulled out of her robe, ripping into his ties. Disrobing him with the same aggression. Pressing her body hard into his in rolling waves. His heat battling her rising cold.

"Down." He growled into her swollen lips. Pulling her by the hips roughly to the forest floor.

"I don't take orders from you." She breathed, falling under his body.

"Shut up." He hissed, pulling her bralette down to her ribs in a hard yank.

Mouth diving on a hard peak.

Her back curled up in pleasure, gripping into his hair.

He lapped at the buds, playing mean fast strokes that he pulled up into his lips. Sucking in hard popping pulses.

Her head arched back, panting into the grass. Cunt flooding with slick, hips arching up into the tone of his belly.

He forced his hand between them, cupping her cunt and pushing her hips hard into the earth.

"I'm going to make you regret kissing him." He promised in a dangerous rumble. Eyes glaring up at her in dark slits.

"Do it, then." She breathed, her eyes burning ice.

"I dare you."

He ripped her panties off, eyes smoldering anger. Wrenching under her thighs and lifting her hips high into the air. Forcing her thighs onto his shoulders, holding her up by her ass.

She cried out into her palm when his mouth latched onto her clit. Pulling vicious wet suckles, his arm locking behind her hips as they tried to squirm away. The pleasure near unbearable, his anger leaving her merciless.

Her shoulders writhed on the grass, hips trying to give out. He cracked his hand down on her ass twice, rising her hips back up with a growl.

Her eyes rolled marble in her head as he took her apart, gasping shallow breaths. Already a shameful mess. Delirious with wrenching pleasure.

Frost spread across her belly, orgasm circling dangerously tight. Muffling pleading moans in her throat, coming out as choking whimpers.

He laughed into her cunt, dragging his nails hard down her thigh to get her to gasp her mouth open. Leaving pink scratches in his wake.

Her mouth fell open, the pain pushing her pleasure into an unrelenting high. Gasping out in Undercommon.

"What was that?" He murmured, pulling back to stare down her belly at her.

She glared at him, tightening her thighs around his head in warning.

"No, no, use-" He sucked hard on her clit in hollow pulls of his tongue, her thighs falling back open in a shudder. "-your words."

"Fuck you." She hissed.

"Not what you said." He retorted, pushing two fingers inside her without warning.

She twisted, cunt clenching hard on his fingers. Hooking into punishing slow strikes.

He slapped her ass again. Demanding an answer.

"I said-"

She clamped around his head, twisting him down to the ground. Straddling over his face.

"Rip me apart, wizard."

His eyes lowered into dangerous slits. Grasping her by both hips, forcing her cunt into his mouth again.

She shuddered as he latched back on in near biting pulses. Completely engulfing her clit. Reaching up to pull on her throat, forcing her into an arch forward to push his fingers back inside. Slamming into her beneath, sending jolts up through her pelvis.

She gripped into his hair, face crumpling in desperate pleasure. Hand cupped over her mouth to not shriek.

His eyes cut to the edge of the trees. Pulling her hand down by the forearm and forcing it behind her back.

Her eyes followed, rocking with the force of his fucking.

Rolan stood wide-eyed on the edge a tree, hard cock in his hand.

Gale's hand spread up over her hips and belly in clear petty possession. Cupping her breast, pinching her nipple between his long fingers. Rubbing his nose in it.

Tav couldn't take it anymore, being displayed like this pushing her over the edge. Body buckling as she came hard into his mouth.

He grasped onto her hips, quickly forcing her onto her belly. Cock pushing inside her in a viciously savoring thrust.

She cried out into the dirt, her orgasm still in its throes. Clenching hard onto him, his breath hissing out with his thrusts. Rocking her forward in hard snaps.

"Look at him." He whispered, lifting her head by a pull of her hair. Winding it into his fist.

Her glazed eyes locked with Rolan's. Both of them aghast with shameful pleasure.

"See how much he wants this?" He hissed low into her ear. "Poor thing, he can't touch you. Not like I can."

As if to demonstrate, he circled his fingers hard into her clit.

She curled her head in, hands clawing at the dirt. Choppy begging cries smothered as a second orgasm threatened.

"Gale, I'm-" She pleaded, hips rising higher as it climbed. His hips slamming faster into her backside in response.

It ripped through her, sending her whole torso into shuddering spasms. Back arching down into the dirt as her cum pushed out to drip down his thighs.

Her wrenching contractions forced him to his end. Hand bracing on her shoulder. Pulling out to spill on her lower back, gasping shallow as his pleasure dripped down her spine.

She heard Rolan's muffled release and looked over, seeing his eyes flutter back into his head.

Gale was a preening exhausted shadow behind her. Rolling her ass in his palms in pure accomplished revelry.

She heard Rolan scurry away towards camp. Gale huffing out a righteous laugh.

"Oh, he's going with the others in the morning."

Tav nodded, too fucked out to regain her role as leader. Pliant and loose under his command.

"And you're going to stay with me tonight." He smiled dangerously, clearly enjoying having tamed her.

"Yes, saer." She sighed.

"Oh, do keep talking like that. You're going to be wonderfully obedient, aren't you?"

~

[lai-mar]

Laimar but it’s like. Laios had a platonic crush on Marcille since they met and thinks she’s really cool and respects her a ton, so when they get to know each other, he ends up being like “wow my good friend Marcille is so great” “I love my good friend” “I love my fellow party member” “my FRIEND” and he’s so stuck in the mentality that he doesn’t consider her romantically (he’s repressing) (he’s slow to develop feelings) and it becomes something like “I love my good friend and I will break this evil curse from you and if you weren’t the one with a curse I would’ve taken it anyway. Have I mentioned I love my good friend. My very good platonic friend that I asked to live with me indefinitely and bailed out of jail because I love my very very good friend. My FRIEND” and the funny part is that he sincerely considers her as a good friend but he also treats her differently from other good friends. Because it’s Marcille. And they naturally moved on to something a bit more but he’s still stuck in that mentality.

Meanwhile Marcille was originally dismayed to find out Laios didn’t look feminine lmao so she sees him as Falin’s brother and party leader and she’s like. Okay. I’m getting along with everyone I’m getting a good grade in Dungeoning With People. But then Laios starts saving her and their bond grows and she’s like 🥺 awww and she manages to teach him magic and she’s like yayyy Laios you’re so smart and brilliant :DDDD he’s so weird but I care I want to protect him I want him to thrive I want to stay by his side and support him as king :))) I will love him unconditionally :)) as a friend :)) and they’re orbiting around each other like wow I love my very good friend (they really are good friends but they’re repressed) (glacial slow burn) (friends to friends to friends to ???) (skipped the dating stage to life partners) (basically married without it being said out loud) (leaving wills to each other) (making public appearances together in the kingdom as king and qu— I mean advisor) (woven next to each other in court tapestries) (they will call each other best friends while so much public speculation goes on)

[mrsmarymorstan]

At first I was a bit put out that they were getting rid of the beautiful glacial slow burn of Percy X Vex. The sex scene was everything I wanted of course! But I felt like it was too soon?

Then they started to parallel their raw passion with Kiki and Vax's miscommunication about their fears of death. To show how both of them are deeply in love but pushing things aside just in different ways!

PLUS I think that narratively speaking it is WAY BETTER for the "End Goal" here to be the EMOTIONAL elements rather than the PHYSICAL parts. Their relationship is built not on sexual attraction but romantic attraction!

Yes, we all know they LOVE to bone, but I think the reason they love to bone EACHOTHER so much is BECAUSE it's something that's way more meaningful than it has ever been with anyone else for them.

So yeah, really great choices there! Please release this on Disc at some point pretty please I wanna own this forever and ever 🥹

[jellydishes]

i keep forgetting to let people know when i've written things lol but! i have written an 859 word fic for @keferon's mecha au because blurr and swerve seized hold of my throat and refused to let go. it is located here on ao3 but for anyone who wants to stay on tumblr, it is also included below

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

Blurr blinked slowly up at the fluorescent lights over his bed. His eyelids felt like they weighed ten pounds each, and every time the lashes on his right side (he didn't have any on his left side anymore, and sometimes he remembered that) fanned across his cheek, the world throbbed.

He wasn't sure how long he stared up at that light. Time had become strange, seeping between his clutching fingers like sand or, more accurately, like a thick, sticky sludge. Impossible to really contain and understand but if he paid attention it dragged and left streaks behind.

The nurses weren't there and then they were. He knew they were speaking English and understood the words, but they still didn't make any sense and he knew he wouldn't remember them later.

Pinpricks in his arm. Which one?

Nurses. Smiling teeth set in rictus grins like he knew Swerve had to be, like-

Time skittered again. Smeared like the thinnest peek of the sunset he could glimpse through his window, thrown against the backdrop of the hospital complex in all the vivid colors of a bruise. He moved numb and chapped and trembling lips in the shape of a word for the ghost sitting beside his bed, but by the time the word left him, the ghost was gone and so was any understanding of what he'd been trying to say.

Time. It kept moving, but it didn't. Every day was the day he'd been pulled from the smoking ruins of his old life and new failure.

He opened his eyes. His left saw grey on grey, but his right saw his personal ghost by the curtains. He blinked over geologic eons, lifetimes, a fifth of a second. He parted the raw, open wound in his face and croaked words he didn't remember as soon as he said them.

The ghost gave a start and yelped, and wasn't that funny? A ghost being surprised?

Time stuttered the way Blurr's speech sometimes frustratingly still did, years after he'd taken speech therapy. One moment his ghost stood by the window and the next, he stood next to the bed. It was like magic, even though Blurr had watched him move through every step in between. 'Sufficiently advanced technology,' Blurr thought, or maybe laughed. His throat ached like he had been. He looked up to say it again just in case, just as a thumb smoothed across the left side of his face, stopping just shy of his lower lip.

Blurr blinked up at him in glacially slow understanding. His ghost had gone very very still but he was dead, Blurr reminded himself. Of course he was. "You aren't real," Blurr sighed, tipping his face further into that hand. The peaks and valleys of the burn scars littering that side didn't register more than a hint of pressure, but he shuddered all the same with a gasp of a laugh that felt like it ought to bleed.

"Why not?" His ghost breathed out (wasn't that funny? wasn't that). There was a snort and a rustle of fabric as his ghost bent to join him on his bed. Swerve. It was Swerve, he was, but he wasn't, couldn't be-

Blurr closed his good eye. His damaged eye, which still registered trace amounts of the neural connection with the mech he'd been disconnected from for endless repetitions of today, saw flickering lines and triangles etched in grey. Something jolted disconcertingly in his chest like an old elevator that suddenly remembered that gravity longed to kiss it again. He closed that eye, too. "Because you're here."

"Why wouldn't I be?" Asked Swerve, and without consciously choosing to do so, Blurr lifted a hand that hadn't belonged to him since he'd joined the program (had it ever…?) and gripped onto the front of a pair of frighteningly familiar overalls. Funny wasn't it, that he couldn't remember much of anything about anyone but he remembered every seam and crinkly, burnt edge he'd only ever seen before-

Blurr made a pathetically small noise that might have been a laugh. "Because you aren't mine, never were. Because you hate me. And also because you're dead. That too."

Time stretched thin like a sheet of rubber, and when Swerve spoke again there came that jolt again that made that rubber drop in the center because a stone had fallen onto it and soon it would rip, but not yet. "...The posters," Swerve groaned, and Blurr laughed, genuinely laughed, for the first time since-

"-not dead either," someone was saying, and it wasn't him so maybe it was-

"Of course you are," Blurr wheezed, giggled like trailing bubbles floating up towards the realization that this hallucination would soon end, and Swerve with it. "What else could you be?"

"An alien."

Blurr jolted and opened his eyes to look at Swerve, but his bed was empty and morning light streamed cold and harsh through his window. His fingers ached where they had been curled into clawlike shapes around nothing at all. A laugh built in his chest and built and built, but all that came out was a thin ghost of nothing at all.

[rwrbficrecs]

First monthly faves for 2024 !! ❤️

Leave a message by @sherryvalli (book-verse)

@dot524: In the mood for some cute, heart-melting fluff? This is a one-shot that recounts Alex’s voicemail messages over the years from those who care about him - including Henry.

would you be my love, my love? (would you be mine) by ohprongs (book-verse)

@wilmonsfolklore: a strictly come dancing AU with a lot of feelings that I've been thinking about ever since i read it!!!

even though we know it isn't true by @matherines (book-verse)

@wilmonsfolklore: for everyone struggling with academic pressure, or anyone, really. it's pretty sad but of course there's comfort personified in Henry!!

beyond infatuation, how obsessively i adore you by @waterloolovers (book-verse)

@wilmonsfolklore: a new fandom classic if you ask me. Henry works at the daycare Alex's daughter goes to and their relationship progresses really naturally. the kid content in this fic is some of the cutest i have ever read and this is the perfect fic to go on your reread list for comfort.

And They Were Roommates by @14carrotghoul (book-verse)

@na-dineee: Alex and Henry get to know themselves and each other after they move in together. This story is not sugarcoated at all, very realistic - just how life is, and so so sweet. Also, unfortunately, rather short, but still worth the read - as are many other stories by this author, such as the 'Las flores' series.

Spirit of the Season by @pridepages (book-verse)

@heybuddy-drabbles: A little late to the game but I finally read E.J's Christmas story. Her way of story telling doesn't disappoint in this shorter tale (by her standards). It's not lighthearted and it touches some difficult topics (mostly canon) but it's all worth it because of the way they fall in love through Christmas Eve/night. Can't recommend it enough!

Where There Are Octobers by @iboatedhere (book-verse)

@na-dineee: 31 short chapters that are just really fun to read! Some are post-canon or canon-compliant, others are AUs - but in all of them the characters are so beautifully drawn, true to how we know and love them! A vet AU, a hospital AU, major fluff, even an X-Files AU - and who knows, maybe one or two dribbles will turn into more?! Fingers crossed!

The Art of Losing by bigfishbigpond (book-verse)

@dot524: If you think the mid-story breakup should have been longer and more angsty, here’s the story for you. An interesting and heartfelt story of what Henry and Alex are like apart, and what pulls them back together.

I know that you hate me (Do you though?) by @arand0mdutchgirl (book-verse)

@magnificentandcoolfez: A bit of good ADHD angst (with some comfort ofc). I like the focus on how hard adhd can be and it's a short and good read for those who like comfort that comes in the shape of your crush holding you until you feel grounded again.

blushing ears and beating hearts by @kill8a (book-verse)

@na-dineee: This story is not just slow burn, it is glacial burn. It's an college AU, set in New York, and so slow, so tender, so fluffy - after reading it I was floating on cloud 9 for quite a while. I don't know if you feel the same way, but it's funny how changing one given variable somehow changes the whole dynamic between the two of them. Or is it just me?! Either way, it's so wholesome to tag along as their love blossoms, I still feel so hugged and cared for.

all so human with our guards down by @maxbegone (book-verse)

@myheartalivewrites: a post-apocalyptic story that is unlike any other. There are no zombies or gore, but instead it focuses on rebuilding and the softest love growing between Alex and Henry, surrounded by family and friends. I kinda wanted to live there by the end of it.

The Snow Prince by @orchidscript (book-verse)

@zwiazdziarka: several fairy tale tropes meet to create this absolutely amazing story. It has dreaminess of a fable, best kind of yearning of your favourite slow burn fics and a little bit of adventure of a fantasy novel.

but to say that I'm a rainbow, to tell me that I'm bright (when I'm so used to feeling wrong, well, it helps me feel alright.) by What_Is_A_Mild_Opinion (book-verse)

@zwiazdziarka: Fandom is really sleeping on this one! This story is a canon rewrite with characters reimagined as creatures with animal characteristics. The wordbuilding is so fantastic that even if you are not a fan of long fics following canon step by step, it's absolutely worth to check this even for a chapter or two and get to know these wonderful versions of Alex and Henry. (Alex is literally rainbow.)

safe with me / more than I ever (in a thousand years)by @indomitable-love (book-verse)

@na-dineee: I think the author is very well known among all rwrb fanfic readers. I really, really liked these two stories, like a lot: Two 5+1 fics, one from Pez's point of view, the other from Bea's - unfortunately both characters are given too little attention in the book imho. As expected, both narrators are sharply observing, protective of Henry, loving, honest, tender - and you end up loving Henry (and Alex) even more.

check out our past Monthly Faves here ❤️

[sbdskate]

Laws Of Attraction (Part 7) - DR x lawyer!fem!reader

Summary: McLaren is in breach of contract, dr3 hires a lawyer to deal with the aftermath. Tropes ensue. Slow burn. Enemies(kind of) -> Friends/colleagues -> Lovers

Pairing: lawyer!fem!reader x Daniel Ricciardo

Warnings (18+): fluff, language, slight angst, alcohol consumption, hangovers, sexual themes, self-pleasure, references to sexual activities, NSFW

Word Count: 5,209

A/N: Thank you for your patience while I took a bit of a break. Hopefully it won’t be as long while I finish up *the last part (*hopefully but no promises - iykyk). I hope you enjoy, please don’t be a ghost reader! Constructive criticism is always welcome <3

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Epilogue 1

Daniel woke up the next morning feeling like an anvil dropped on his head. He cursed the alarm but was thankful he had the foresight to set one. It was a tall order trying to sort through the details of the night before. He had his phone, keys, and wallet, so that was a win at least. What time had he gotten back to the hotel? He recounted the most peculiar dream that you had been in his room at one point – he reminded himself to lay off the melatonin, it always made his subconscious mind run wild. It took every ounce of energy to push himself upright, swinging his legs to the side of the bed at a glacial pace. Fighting the throbbing in his head, he almost missed the pills and water on the nightstand and a trash bin next to him on the floor. Drunk Daniel had never been so thoughtful or organized. Maybe it wasn’t melatonin after all. Those familiar butterflies he felt every time he thought of you fluttered away.

On second thought, definitely not butterflies.

After unceremoniously emptying the contents of his stomach, he gladly consumed the gifts you had left for him. He took a much longer shower than usual, doing his best to wash away the anxiety brought on by his hangover. He was going into the last race weekend of the year (maybe two) feeling like absolute shit. The thought of you putting him to bed initially made him giddy but it was overshadowed by fear of the unknown. His memory of the night before was fuzzy at best and but for the physical evidence you left behind, he would have gone on believing the kiss in Brazil was the last time the two of you interacted. Fuck, he had made such a fool of himself. What else had he inadvertently said or done last night? If you had walls up before, you probably now also had a moat, barbed wire, and trained militia on guard. In his efforts to get closer to you, you ended up pushing him away. You were the sun and he was Icarus.

But clearly all was not lost if you had helped him in his hour of need. If he could trust his “dream,” you had called him your friend. You had worn his clothes. You insinuated there would be a world where the two of you would be alone in a bedroom again. If all true, the culmination of those things did not add up to a person who wanted to completely shut him out. Then again, maybe that was you simply being you – that is, a good person who would show the same compassion to anyone whether they were your lover, friend, or stranger on the street.

He hadn’t had this lack of confidence picking up girls since he was an awkward teenager. From the beginning you had been a puzzle. You did not immediately fawn over him and fall victim to his charms. He sensed you may have even disliked him upon your first meeting, though he couldn’t blame you – he had severely underestimated you. Thereafter, every one of your laughs was hard earned which made them all the more sweet. You were accomplished in your own right and impressing you was a tall order, but when he succeeded it felt as though he had won Monaco a million times over.  

He thought back to Austin. So much had gone wrong, but so much had gone oh so right. There was an ease about you that weekend that he had only previously been privy to in staccato bursts. Whatever internal struggle you had been fighting seemingly slowed, allowing him to peel back all your layers. Even in that sad corridor, he could’ve sat next to you in silence for all of eternity and he would have been happy.

Then there was that pesky elephant in the room. In just a few days, he technically wouldn’t be your client anymore. He could get lost in all the tempting possibilities, but he had to stay focused. He’d cross that bridge later. Until then, all he had to do was stay in your good graces.

-

When the day came for your first client meeting in Abu Dhabi, you weren’t sure what version of Daniel you were going to get. You wouldn’t be surprised if he froze you out again like he did after Austin. It would be disappointing but understandable. You had explained yourself more than enough at this point though, and the position you found yourselves in wasn’t your fault. Nobody could have predicted that your client would fall for you when you were selected as counsel for the driver.  You couldn’t control his response, and if you reasserting your boundaries made him that upset then so be it.

No, there were no nerves this time but there was still an underlying anxiety that caused your heart to race. The partner was waiting at the offsite dinner location when you arrived. It was an elegant restaurant, so you had selected a pretty but conservative wrap dress for the occasion.

“Y/n, so glad you could make it,” he said as he extended his arms for a small hug.

“Me? I’ve been at every race weekend, not sure where you’ve been,” you teased.

“I know, I know, it’s been busy. I appreciate all your hard work through this. I’ve told the managing partner about your efforts, we’re all very impressed.” You couldn’t help the growing smile on your face, but you did your best to hide the absolute giddiness swelling in you. That bonus was yours to lose at this point and if this trajectory continued, you could make partner by the time you were 35.

“Thank you for the recognition, but I’m just doing my job,” you feigned in modesty. You knew how many hours of sleep you’d lost over the course of the last few months between the work itself and the constant travel. You knew how much you missed your friends and family during this time, and the other countless sacrifices you’d made along the way. But you would do it all over again for the once in a lifetime opportunity. And you never would have met Daniel - that certainly counted for something. Maybe after last week your relationship wouldn’t be the same going forward, but his companionship until now had offered you an unexpected fulfillment that felt foreign.  

Then, as if someone had read your mind:

“She’s being modest,” you heard behind you, a hand resting on your shoulder. You turned to see him in nice slacks, a crisp white t-shirt, and sport coat. For someone that was probably fighting for their life this morning and suffered through a long media day, he cleaned up very nicely. You did your best not to openly ogle, though he caught the quickened rise and fall of your chest. You couldn’t help but smile back when he gave you his signature grin.

“Daniel, great to see you,” Joe said as he extended his arm past you to shake his hand.

“Likewise, nice of you to finally show up.” His tone and features were so pleasant that he could pass off the genuine dig as jest. Either way, the partner was unphased.

“Well, that’s why I brought in my very best associate to help me out as back up.”

“I suppose I should consider myself lucky then,” he said, smiling back at you. “Though, I don’t think I would call her ‘back up’by any means.”

The familiar heat rose to your cheeks as you bit your lip to unsuccessfully suppress your bashful smile. You gently elbowed him to convey your thanks. Both for defending you but also for the normalcy of the interaction.

You anticipated a level of awkwardness after your nondescript rejection in Brazil, thinking he would try to distance himself as he had after Austin. You wouldn’t fault him if he sat next to Joe, but he plopped down right next to you as though nothing had happened. An unexpected wave of relief washed over you. It seemed clear that you were “good”, whatever that meant. Sure, it helped to have Joe there as a buffer, but the two of you would have probably been fine on your own. The thought gave you solace.

The uneventful meal concluded with a plan of action in place for the rest of the weekend. The three of you made your way out of the restaurant towards the valet.

“I hope the two of you will enjoy the weekend at least until we complete the signing on Monday? Consider it a thank you.” It wasn’t the first time you’d heard that line before, but it felt different this time.

“I’ll have to take some calls here and there, but sure, why not,” Joe responded, oblivious to the fact that the message was hardly meant for him.

“Good, I’ll make sure you guys have your paddock passes for the next few days.”

Of course as if on cue the partner’s phone went off as you exited the restaurant.

“I’m sorry, I have to take this. But hey, great dinner. I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

“Yep, have a good night,” you trailed off as he walked away, smiling through gritted teeth. You watched as he got into the corporate car by himself already focused on something else entirely, even though you were all going back to the same place.

“Typical.” You turned to Daniel, surprised at his observation.

“Could you tell?”

“Seems like we both have bosses who abandon us.” You smiled.

“What an unfortunate bonding experience.”

It was a heavy conversation, but the air was light. You both giggled at your misfortunes. When it died down, he broke the silence.

“Uh, thanks for making sure I was… accounted for last night.”

“Oh,” your cheeks dusted pink. You had such high hopes he wouldn’t remember. Maybe there was still a chance, perhaps Lando had simply filled him in. “Sure, no biggie. It happens to the best of us.”

“I didn’t do or say anything embarrassing, right?” Daniel tested the waters, partially playing dumb. His memory may be fuzzy, but he knew enough. You pursed your lips together.

“Nothing more than usual,” you said with a smile, playing it off. He felt slightly disappointed. He wished you would admit to the kiss along with the hopes you’d bestowed upon him – but maybe it was just in his head after all. Either way, you didn’t seem entirely comfortable with the conversation and that was a clear enough message to him. He knew what he needed to do.

“Can I just say,” he paused. He might need to go back inside for another drink. “- that I’m sorry. For everything. You’re just here trying to do your job, and I’m not making it easier for you. You’ve said no, and I keep trying dumb shit. I should have stopped.”

Your chest tightened. The apology was somehow welcome, appreciated, and warranted. But you also found it endearing which made you like him even more. And it also probably meant that he had lost interest and that last part didn’t make you feel great either. You wanted to tell him everything but doing so would only complicate things. Instead you bit your tongue and gave a polite smile.

“Thank you. Apology accepted.”

“No, thank you. I’ve made an ass of myself over and over again and you put up with it.”

“Well. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from my first celebrity client, but ‘ass’ was certainly in the realm of possibility,” you said cheekily. “Nothing I wasn’t prepared for.” The lie slipped easily through your teeth.

“So you assumed I was going to be an ass?” he asked with a laugh.

“What did Drive to Survive call you guys? ‘Talented, rich, and cocky’?” He crossed his arms over his chest defensively, but his face was still warm and welcoming.

“Don’t tell me you watch that garbage.”

“For research purposes, obviously,” you said sarcastically.

He watched your eyes twinkle and the sly grin that graced your features as the desert wind gently blew your hair around your face, framing it perfectly. You fixed the strand he so badly wanted to tuck behind your ear yourself. Your wrap dress fluttered just so, allowing him to catch a quick glimpse of your upper thigh, contrasting the otherwise modest outfit. He wondered what it would be like to tug at the delicate bow at the side of your waist that kept the whole ensemble together. He caught himself in the middle of his thoughts.

“Since your boss left you stranded, can I give you a ride back?” You looked around, a serious look on your face. You whispered in a low voice.

“Is that… appropriate? I know men and women aren’t supposed to be alone together here.” He wanted to laugh but didn’t want to make you feel bad. Of course the lawyer wanted to follow everything to a T. He knew from experience that the morality laws were loosely enforced at best, but he wasn’t sure how much of that was attributed to his own privilege.

“If it makes you feel any better, I could pretend to be your chauffeur.” The line earned him a laugh.

“An F1 driver as a chauffeur. That’s rich.” He smiled, satisfied with his efforts to put you at ease.

“So is that a yes?”

“Yeah, but the expectations are pretty high.”

“You’ll have to let me know if I have a backup career as a personal driver if this whole F1 thing doesn’t work out.”

The valet pulled around an unassuming black SUV with tinted windows. Without skipping a beat, he opened the back passenger’s seat door waiting for you with an extended hand dipping into an exaggerated bow.

“Your chariot, m’lady.”

“Oh my, what service,” you contrived dramatics with a hand over your heart. Your other hand graciously accepted his while getting into the car. The familiar pulsating electricity coursed through the touch and lingered as you watched him close the door.

“Home Jeffrey,” you said, donning the worst British accent you could muster when he settled in the drivers seat. He peered at you in the reflection of the rearview mirror. You looked relaxed and happy, and that was enough for him. Your eyes locked, and you caught a glimpse of those dimples that could melt polar ice caps.

It was a comfortable ride back to the hotel, a little small talk here and there. He tossed the keys to the valet and helped you out of the car, again trying to memorize the feeling of your palm in his before reluctantly letting go.

He pressed for his floor in the elevator. He looked at you when you didn’t follow suit, wondering for a moment whether he forgot his manners.

“Uh, what floor are you?” he asked politely, hovering over the buttons.

“Oh… I actually ended up down the hall from you.”

“Oh.” A loud silence fell. It was unclear whether the arrangement was fortuitous or simply torture for both parties, the other so close but just out of reach.

The doors opened and you tried to hide a sheepish look as you started walking in the same direction.

“Are you following me now?” he joked. “I don’t need help getting into bed this time, promise.”

You stammered a bit, trying to find the right words but decided to keep your mouth shut. You had begged the concierge to find you any other room but she insisted the hotel was fully booked and there were no other options. But you realized in that moment it would only be weird if you made it weird. Humor was always the best deflection so you decided to lean into it. Your ability to hide your growing smile began to falter. Looking like the cat that swallowed the canary, you didn’t say a word as you walked past him when he finally stopped in front of his door. Only looking back in his direction to wave when you stopped in front of yours which happened to be the room over. You both snorted before dissolving into laughter over the absurdity of it all.

“Don’t worry, I’ll try not to throw any ragers,” you said between fits of giggles.

“You mean I wouldn’t be invited?” he asked in faux disbelief.

“You know you’re always welcome, what’s a party without thee Daniel Ricciardo? I just wouldn’t want to disrupt your ‘high performance athlete’ routine before race day.” He cocked an eyebrow.

“If you threw a ‘rager’, everyone would be sitting in a circle doing face masks with Celine Dion playing in the background like some kind of selfcare séance. And it would be over by 10pm.” The laughter that had finally started to slow picked up again. His heart skipped a beat seeing your nose scrunch.

“Hey now, you forgot the scented candles. That open flame is a safety hazard.”

“You are just too wild and crazy.”

“You know me so well. I’ll do my best to keep it down, no promises though.” The laughter slowed again, but the wide grins remained.

“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow… neighbor.” You smiled, liking the way it sounded coming from him.

“I guess so, good night neighbor.”

You closed your respective doors, each acutely aware of the one wall that separated you.

-

Daniel rubbed the sleep out of his eyes the next morning, aimlessly palming his nightstand to turn off his alarm. He made his way to the bathroom, slowly shaking away his slumber. He was washing his hands when he realized there was more noise than what was coming from the faucet. He turned the water off and listened. He picked out the sound of running water. There may have been music playing from a phone, but it was drowned out by a muffled, unmistakable, offkey voice he could pick out anywhere.

Cuz when the night faaaaallls

My loneliness calls

Boo doo boo DOOP

Ohhhhh I wanna dance with somebody

I wanna feel the HEAT with somebody

yeaAHH I wanna dance with somebody

With somebody who loves me

He smiled to himself listening to you try to do lead, backup vocals, and instrumentals of the Whitney Houston classic, reminiscing back to your performance with Lando in Japan. The warmth that spread from his chest to his toes woke him up, suddenly feeling a renewed sense of optimism for the practice sessions ahead.

As he left to head to the paddock, he heard another door close. His timing was meticulous and he counted his blessings that he should be so fortunate to share more time with you. He couldn’t help the giant smile that grew on his face at the sight of you, immediately imagining you singing in the shower. You double checked for something in your bag before you looked up to meet his gaze. You looked behind you to make sure his dimples weren’t reserved for someone else.

“Hi?” You raised an eyebrow.

“Hi.” He knew he looked dumb, but he didn’t care. He was allowed to smile at you, right?

“You’re awfully happy to see me this morning.” The corners of your mouth turned upward, marked with a cautious skepticism.

“Yeah, h-” He stopped himself. How was your sold out stadium tour in the shower? But if this was a ritual of yours, he didn’t want to miss out on future performances – he did still have three more days with you. “I’m just excited for the practice session.”

Your smile relaxed somewhat. “I’m glad you’re feeling confident. Do you wanna walk over together?”

“Oh, you’re going there too?” He mentally smacked himself as soon as the words left his mouth. Where else would you be going?

“Well yeah. You invited Joe and I, remember?”

“Right. Wasn’t sure if you were off to do lawyer things.”

“I mean I am, but the track is a lot more fun than the hotel lobby. Y’know?”

He did. And the walk there was much nicer with your company. He enjoyed this new morning routine and would be sure to make it happen the rest of the weekend. On his own he may have felt the gravity of the situation more, may have simply gone through the motions to get it all over with, the weight on his shoulders too much to bear. But your presence invigorated him. Helped him believe that there were better things on the horizon. He just needed to clear this one last hurdle and he had the strength to do it. He was consistent in the Friday practice sessions, and your shower version of “Pocketful of Sunshine” the next morning helped him place P10 for qualifying.

You too found this morning pattern soothing. You were pleasantly surprise that you enjoyed your new neighbor more than you thought you would, and happy that what you thought would be a source of stress and awkwardness brought you peace and comfort. When race day rolled around, you had no reason to believe it would be any different than practice or qualifying, other than the fact it was a night race. So you caught up on work in the morning before you got yourself ready as usual. You decided it was a Celine Dion day, happily belting “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now,” unbeknownst to you that you had an audience. In another pleasant turn of events, Joe had given you the ok to leave the work at home, granting full permission to enjoy the race. You initially went for your yellow midi dress, but it triggered flashbacks to Austin. It was best to put it away, no need to risk the bad juju. You struggled to pick something else, changing no less than five times. Somehow you needed to be modest, but in something where you wouldn’t overheat, but it would cool down once the sun set, but it also had to be stylish because you were again going to be surrounded by A-listers across an array of disciplines who looked like they just walked off the runway in Milan. For once you wished you had the ease of just throwing on a suit and being done with the whole ordeal. But the thought got your creative juices flowing, and you settled on a sleek black blazer dress. You threw on the Louboutins you bought with your first Big Law pay check that only came out on special occasions, and topped off the outfit with some big gold hoops for good measure. You could always fake confidence with red bottoms, red lips, and gold hoops.

Even though you had no work with you this time, you had grown accustomed to arriving fashionably early to these events to coincide with Daniel. You gave a friendly knock on his door, expecting him to be ready at the same time as you as he had the last two days. But nothing could have prepared you for coming face to face with the Australian and his Adonis-like figure on full display. Of course he would have no shame answering the door in just a smile and a towel, though with a body like that it was amazing he wore clothes ever.

“Oh! I’m sorry. I. Uh. Um. I-” You continued to stutter as you tried to figure out where to look. You feebly tried to avert your gaze but his beautifully tan muscles demanded attention, from his shoulders, to his pecs, to his abs. You wanted to study and write a dissertation on the tattoos on his arms. You definitely wanted to memorize the line of the towel that hung just so on his hips. But you also didn’t want to make it obvious that you were staring. So your eyes darted from the ceiling, to his body, to the floor, then back to his body, in a chaotic loop.

“My eyes are up here.” His voice dripped with smugness. You definitely couldn’t look there. But you obliged, only to be met with the cockiest smirk you’d ever seen in your life. Your entire body was on fire, and the arrogant twinkle in his eye only stoked it. You knew he was hot. God knew he was hot. Everyone knew he was hot. And he knew it too. And he was having the best time seeing you flustered.

“When you’re done having a stroke, care to tell me why you’re here?”

“You have to be there in less than an hour, I thought you’d be ready to go and we could head down together!” Your tone came off as frustrated. And you were, for more reasons than one. He rolled his eyes.

“We aren’t that far and I don’t take that long to get ready. Give me a few minutes, I’ll be right out.”

“Ugh. Fine. I’ll be in my room,” you said curtly, and spared no time practically running back.

Daniel laughed to himself as he closed the door to continue getting ready. Seeing you lose any measure of control had become one of his favorite things, a stark contrast to your usual moda operendi. He paused though when an unfamiliar sound came from the wall you shared. He stood in front of it for a moment trying to decipher what it was. It sounded like an electric shaver, but why would you need one of those? His eyes widened and the blood rushed to his cheeks and crotch as it dawned on him.

Your hands were almost shaking as you got the door open. You rummaged through your bag to find your vibrator, practically ransacking your room in the process. You definitely had time to rub one out before he would be ready. The picture of his muscly tattooed thighs pressing on the back of yours flooded your brain, back bowed for him with his name falling off your tongue. Your body ached for it to be a reality, one that was so close yet so far. You fell on the bed and pressed the toy where you needed it, eyes squeezed shut, desperately wishing it was the appendage of your friendly neighbor.

Daniel had never gotten ready so fast in his entire life. No doubt, what he just witnessed was the epitome of sexual frustration. Knowing you, you would be quick and efficient about it – he could imagine you splayed on the bed with the hem of your dress bunched up. You probably didn’t even take off your underwear. An internal battle waged within him – whether to rub one out himself or rush to catch you in your immediate post orgasm bliss, the latter ultimately winning. He would have plenty of time later to take care of himself.  

You were so close, when your phone went off.

DR: I’m outside your door.

The disturbance in your momentum should have thrown you off. But the idea that he was basically right there while you touched yourself pushed you right to the edge. Another fantasy intruded your thoughts, imagining what it might be like if he were to come inside and watch you. Your phone dinged again a second later.

DR: Come.

And you did.

You barely had time to come down from your orgasm as you smoothed out your skirt and grabbed your bag again.

“Hi sorry I’m ready,” you said breathlessly as you strode past him.

Daniel chewed the inside of his cheek. He didn’t miss the bright pink flush or the light sheen that graced your features. Your obvious glow matched the flyaways that now stuck out from your otherwise perfectly coiffed hair that made him want to drag you into his room and put that silly little imagination of yours to shame. Demand to know whether your dreams were as good as the real thing with a fistful of your hair in his hand as he buried himself deep inside you. Demand to know whether that stupid toy made you feel like half the woman he did. And that dress. That beautiful dress that hugged your body in all the right places, that showed off its peaks and valleys, that teased just the tip of your cleavage before sealing your tits away like a cruel riddle. He would ruin it. The stiffness in his pants pestered him, and he pushed the impossible thoughts away. He settled on tucking one of the out-of-place strands behind your ear, not missing the opportunity to tease you even if only a little.

“Everything ok? You’re all flushed.”

You bit back a whimper as the tip of your ear fired signals to your core and you suddenly wished your hair follicles had tactile sensors. You would’ve been blushing if your face wasn’t already red.

“Yeah… I, uh, realized I lost an earring. So I had to find it.”

“Did you?” The way his warm brown eyes bore into yours made your stomach do cartwheels.

“Yeah.” Why were you suddenly panting?

“Good. I’m glad you, uh… found your earring.” If you blinked you would’ve missed it, but you could’ve sworn you saw the flash of a smirk cross his face before it was gone. Were you still talking about earrings?

You continued to make your way to the paddock together, you stayed just a pace ahead still hesitant to make eye contact with the driver. You whipped around though when you heard a distinct *click* only to find him with his camera still aimed at you. Another *click*, the flash blinding you momentarily.

“Daniel!” The blush that had finally started to fade came back with a vengeance. He had tried to take pictures of you before, eager to practice his new hobby, and you had politely reminded him that it would pose a risk to your attorney-client privilege (it was mostly a lie, but he didn’t need to know that). But now he lowered the camera, revealing a ghost of a smirk.

“I figured it’s ok since you’re not working. Just want to remember everything from my last race day.”

“We’re in the hallway of a hotel,” you deadpanned.

“You’re right, I’ll take better pictures when we’re outside.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Natural lighting is so much better anyways.” You sighed, reluctantly granting your approval and he internally cheered. You didn’t need to know there was no way in the world he would delete the ones he already took though, that perfectly captured the curve of your backside and your beautiful, bambi eyes looking over your shoulder.

He could’ve gotten lost in his thoughts of you and he would do so happily, but he needed to get in the zone. He tried, but surprisingly the feeling never came. He found he wasn’t really nervous either. After basically processing the five stages of grief over the last few months over his career, there was nothing left for him to prove or fight for. That thought once brought him deep shame, but now it was freeing. Maybe the weight of everything would hit him later, but for now he simply wanted to be in the moment wherever the day led him. At this particular moment, that meant walking to the paddock with you at his side.

-

Tags: @ravenqueen27 @leslizzle @zendayabelova @eitak-t @chiliwhore @wewoo1233 @thatchickwiththecamera

[aethelflaedladyofmercia]

(Somewhat disorganized thoughts to follow…)

So I’m sitting here thinking about Good Omens, as usual. And I’m wondering. What if Aziraphale hadn’t gone to chat with the Metatron?

Because it’s easy to say “awww yisss there would have been love confessions and kisses and everything would be better.”

But would it?

Because as the great Bildad the Shuhite said, “Nothing has to change.”

If there’s anything this 6000-year slow-burn has shown us, these two are content to remain… not exactly the same, but changing in glacially slow ways (and also not really content, but they’ll fucking do it anyway).

I think watching Gabriel and Beelzebub go off together got them both to realize that things could be different. But would that be enough to get them talking? Or would they have just gone off to their alcoholic breakfast, made a few jokes about whatever the hell’s just happened, then wind up back at the shop drunkenly talking about dolphins and bird space ships again, the needle on their relationship barely moved? And stay that way until the Second Coming finally arrived to shake things up?

Because it’s not a question, really, of them realizing something or revealing something. They both know.

Crowley knows what he wants, but he’d rather spend the next thousand years scowling from the sidelines and watching his angel be a happy idiot than actually put his feelings into words.

And Aziraphale—well, he has ideas, more than we give him credit for, he isn’t wholly oblivious, but his ideas are happy little dream worlds he can play out in his mind. He’s waiting for a better deal—not better than Crowley, obviously, but better than the precarious balance they currently exist in. A perfect shiny happy ending where everything is Good and Nice. And he’s willing to wait basically forever, just thinking about how nice it will be when it happens.

They need nudges. They need excuses. Especially Aziraphale. He sets up this whole ball for Nina and Maggie (partially) so he can ask Crowley to dance for the first time, but he’s there every day! You can just ask him to dance any time! He still denies having a “special” person to amnesia Gabriel. He doesn’t remember anything! Literally everyone in Heaven and Hell and also Earth think you’re an item now anyway! Just say the words!

The nudge for him was the Metatron’s offer. Taking charge of Heaven. Crowley at his side. They can make the Good guys truly Good. No one to question whether they belonged together. Happy ending.

Crowley’s nudge, of course, was Nina and Maggie telling him to goddamn say something. And I don’t think any of them realize it, but that had to be his conversation. If the two ladies had come over and talked to Aziraphale the same way (solo), he’d throw all his defenses back up and that would have been the end of it. If they’d talked to angel and demon together, well. These two are idiots. Aziraphale and Crowley would have refused to take the conversation seriously, talked circles around their guests, and left for their breakfast, laughing together over those humans and their ideas.

So for Crowley to get his nudge, he had to be alone when they visited, and for that to happen, Aziraphale had to go have his talk with the Metatron. Aziraphale had to get a perfect enough option to overcome his anxiety, and for that he needed his chat.

Now, am I saying that without the Metatron’s interference they never ever would have moved forward? Maybe. They’re complete idiots, your honor.

Maybe not, though. As I said, they just watched another angel and demon go off together. Would that be enough for Crowley to realize that, hey, actual communication sometimes has good results? Would that be close enough to a perfect ending to assuage Aziraphale’s fears?

I don’t know if we can say for sure. But I’ve been trying to play out that last scene in the bookshop differently to find where the path to the happy ending was, and I think this is the answer. Aziraphale needed to not go to the Metatron at all. They needed to be on their way before Nina and Maggie decided to visit. And then… somewhere in the talking and drinking that followed, one of them would have to take a risk.

And like, have you met these two? They’d be dooooooomed…

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

When Catherine wss transitioning to become an official member of the royal family, was it also as messy as Meghan's? I wasn't an observer but perhaps there could be some similarities?

Nope.

#1 - Kate's transition was much, much longer. Her training most likely began in 2008 after she and William got back together and it continued all the way through very early 2012. (I'm using the announcement of Kate's first patronages and charities to mark her "training wheels" coming off.) This is on top of the "access" she had for the 4-5 years pre-breakup. So all in all, Kate's transition was at least 4 years somewhat officially, then another 4 years somewhat informally and situationally - so about 8 years altogether for Kate to become an official member.

So compare Kate's 8ish-year transition to Meghan's whirlwind 13-month transition (Meghan's move to England/engagement in Nov 2017 to the announcement of her first patronages): Kate had a ton more time to understand what she was getting into and she could take her time learning, acclimating, and managing expectations (everyone else's and her own).

On top of that, Kate has never reached full-time official status. She was supposed to "upgrade" in September 2017 (as announced in January 2017) but then best laid plans - new baby, pandemic, major illness, chemo. So some may suggest that Kate is still in transition. So that's another 11+ years to transition to an official full-time status.

(Also on that note, Plant's theory was that Kate began her 'Princess of Wales' transition in Fall 2018 after returning from maternity leave, when her coatdresses became more formal and kicked it into high gear/made it noticeable in Summer 2019 with longer dress hemlines and more polished, professional looks. With what we know now, the family may have begun their Queen-to-King transition in 2017 so Plant really may have been on to something.)

Meanwhile, Meghan expected immediately to become a full-time working royal because Harry was also full-time working royal, having transitioned to "full time" after leaving the Army. She quit Suits for this, after all. But again, best laid plans - Meghan immediately got pregnant, and then she burned out after 72 days of part-time status.

To me, this proves that William and Kate's plan of "slow and steady" has been incredibly successful. But it is incredibly glacial and in the immortal words of Miranda Priestly:

IMO, both William and Kate could stand to pick up the place a little. Let's break 120 engagements on the royal calendar when Kate is back up to full performance.

Anyway, getting off track here.

#2, Meghan's transition was messy because it also played out in PR and social media, and often at her own hand.

Kate's transition largely happened behind closed doors and away from the public eye. Kate certainly wasn't leaking anything to the press about meeting certain family members or planning what kind of work she'd do. It wasn't even officially confirmed that Kate met The Queen until William spoke about it in the engagement interview, while Meghan was leaking to her sources that she was meeting William as early as November 2016.

That's not to say Kate didn't have her messy moments. I'm sure she did, but they likely played out more privately. In fact, the only "messy" moments I can think of from before Kate married in are:

Carole chewing gum at William's passing-out ceremony. (The papers were horrified because how dare someone chew gum while existing in the same space as The Queen. It wasn't like they were having a personal audience.)

The having fun/going out dancing/drinking nights out with William and/or Pippa.

Leaked comments attributed to The Queen that she wished Kate would do something more productive with her time.

Mean girl rumors of Kate and Pippa vs Beatrice and Eugenie.

And the last one, I don't even know if it's real - Kate received "training" from the BRF on how to get in and out of cars around photographers. (I don't know if it's real because on the one hand, it's the only scene I remember from the Lifetime 'William & Kate' movie but on the other hand, this would've been back in the mid/late '00s when paparazzi were notorious for upskirt photos of young female celebs getting out of cars.)

Others who were around back in those very early days for Kate might have other info/insight.

But bottom line, it was a very different world social media-wise and traditional media wise in Kate's day vs when Meghan came around so that also must be taken into consideration when looking how both women prepared for marrying in, in addition to their own personalities and the position(s) they were marrying into.