#why would he bring his maester south and leave him in riverrun? riverrun already had a maester

[ladycatofwinterfell]

Dedicating an entire chapter to things surrounding Maester Walys only to find out that according to the wiki he was already dead by this time. Oh im going to scream so loudly, you wouldn’t even believe

[sabraeal]

Family, Duty, Honor [Part 4]

[Read on AO3]

Obiyuki AU Bingo 2021 Game of Thrones AU

It no longer shocks her to awake in an unfamiliar chamber.

It had once; when she awoke that first morning in Highgarden, green silk sheets slick beneath her fingers and the finest emerald velvet as her cage, her stomach had given a queasy lurch, putting her on unsteady feet when faced with her Lord Paramount. In those days she had only just grown used to the rooms above her apothecary, to the quiet that could settle in the air when there was no tavern beneath it, patrons drinking and shouting well into the night. To be plucked from those walls and hung out to be seen like the herbs she cut from the Lord’s forest-- it was too much, even for nerves forged as steely as her own.

But after so many years shunted from one set of quarters to the next-- three alone at King’s Landing, in almost twice as many months-- the fear dulled, until all that remained was the vaguest sense of curiosity, followed by inevitability’s heavy shroud. A girl could not forever anticipate waking up in the same bed when she had no home to return to.

It is, however, nice to be warm.

Shirayuki stretches, the whole of her body suffused with a satisfying ache. For once, it is not the complaint of muscles abused past endurance, but instead the pleasure of ones gently used; the same stiffness roused after a day in the gardens. Save, of course, for the aches in certain places-- places she has never been so aware of, ones that leave a strange heat curled between her thighs.

With a sigh, her eyes blink open; it is still night. Strange; she is not one to stir before the sun. Practically part plant yourself, my lady, Obi would tease her, you never open for anything less than the dawn.

It would be wiser to slip back into slumber, to let this mystery await until she can look at it in the full light of morning. But it is impossible-- her curiosity has been roused. Even now awareness spreads through her body, the hairs on her skin standing and settling as thoughts kindle from their embers. There is silk beneath her, soft and cool against her, and--

And she know this because she is naked, not a stitch of clothing on her.

She rolls from belly to side, stifling a curse as she meets the curtains standing sentinel around her. They are dark, and even shadowed in night as they are, she knows their color-- russet red, the same as the hair on her head. On the bedposts are fish, large trout carved open-mouthed, water spurting and swirling upwards to where the canopy rests. Riverrun, the ancestral home of the Tullys. Her home.

Or at least, so she had thought. I’ll marry her myself, her uncle had said, every word filled with bitterness. Get a boy on her.

Her fingers clench, silk and velvet spilling through her fingers. Family, Duty, Honor. The Tully words; her father had spoken them, that night in Dorne, and she had known as sure as rivers run south that they were hers.

And now she knows why her father had left; why he had taken her mother and ran to where the Harmund’s fingers could not stretch. Fishlords, some called the Tullys, and her uncle earned it by his flopping. Blood might be thicker than water, but it still ran as easy as the Trident in his veins; a trout following the strongest current.

Family may be one of their words, but words are wind. A lesson she should have learned when even dragon turned against dragon, darkening the skies above the Blackwater.

Betrayal stung, but Shirayuki’s heart had long been forged into something stronger than flesh, her mind honed sharper than steel. She may not wield a blade or command armies, but her weapons may be just as deadly, so long as she applies them in their proper place.

Anything can be a weapon, Miss, Obi told her once, dragging a cutpurse by the collar to the Watch. The bruise was still livid on the boy’s face, hardly looking like the apple that had made it. You just have to use the right pressure...and where a man’s vitals are.

Her stomach lays flat beneath her palm, but beneath it, it roils. She wanted to reach out to her uncle, to convince him to her side-- to Zen’s side with logic and reason and perhaps even fondness. She wanted them to talk as equals, but now she sees-- he had never taken her for anything more than a pawn, something to be traded for a better lot. And if she must press what weapons she has to his vitals, she knows just which one she might use.

The mattress shifts beneath her, the night’s silence broken by a soft, muffled groan. A man’s. Memory crests as a wave, tumbling her beneath it-- this is not her chamber at Riverrun but Obi’s. She is warm not from the pan beneath the bed, but from his body beside her. And her nakedness, this ache between her legs is because-- because--

She has already set her plans in motion. This languid satisfaction is from muscles used indeed, and this sting a maidenhead lost.

A soft sigh slips from him, his breath rippling along her back. No, not lost but given freely, to a man who had known it for the gift it was. Not the one she thought would receive it, but nonetheless she does not regret it, not one moment. She had done what needed to be done, and Obi-- well, he had made it pleasurable besides.

Shirayuki shifts, one side to the other, smiling at the thick cocoon of blankets, a man-made mount of velvet and fur. A sliver of bronze peeks through a vent, baring half a face slack with sleep and satisfaction. It’s not his, he says, but that does nothing to stop the fondness that wells in her chest at the sight of it. Nor does it quell the new heat that kindles in her belly.

Obi has ever existed at her side, just at the corner of her vision. A touch away, should she need him; a soft pressure when she needs support. Fond has always been a pale word, a shallow reflection for the depth of her feeling. Simply by knowing he is near, she is safe-- no, she is known, vulnerable and inviolable all at once. That face man not be his, but she knows the way he wears his anger, his joy, his grief, and now--

Now she knows its pleasure too. How his mouth slackens when she touches him. The strangled noise that drags unwilling from his throat when he slides inside her. The furrowed knot of his brow as he draws close to his end, voice straining as he dances at the edge of it.

Wetness coats the tops of her thighs, and oh Maiden and Mother, she could burn alive from the way her cheeks blaze. To think of him like this when he is only providing a service-- it’s shameful. He might never claim his title, the ser he has so greatly earned, but even without a white cloak he is kingsguard still, and this another sacrifice to protect the Iron Throne.

No, not for the throne. Nor for the Targaryen name either. For Zen, who needs the Lord of the Riverlands if he is to ever do more than hold the line. Who needs to bring to the table more than the North if he is to ever convince Dorne to throw their lot in with his.

Shirayuki knows this for what it is, but still, her body reacts. She is no high born lady to think the joining of man and woman a mystery-- if she had not seen animals in the yard, she had too often seen the ones behind the tavern, trying to catch a quick moment before they went back to their own beds. And she knew all too well the ailments that could arise from too many of these trysts taken with little care, or how a lady might bleed before her time if her husband did not take his. But still, even knowing the arithmetic to make two into one, she had thought this might be a more dutiful act, restrained by the weigh of the favor she was asking him-- he had certainly not seemed like a man performing a duty.

Wake me in an hour, he had said, his voice a delicious rumble beneath her hands. I’ll be ready for you then.

She lifts to an elbow, reaching over the man-mound to push aside the curtain. A breath of cool air sighs against her skin, leaving shivers in its wake. By the sky hung in the windows, she had given him more than his hour-- and more than the second she had meant to spare him. If she woke him now, he could press her back against the mattress again, putting his cock where she aches for him still--

And he will, she knows. They must, if this plan is to work. Lies might fool a man, but it would take more than that to trick a maester. Her uncle will not be content to take her at her word, not when it so neatly scuttles his plans, nor when so much glory could be had if he could leverage this child to make himself Hand to the new king. There must be a real, actual child growing in her belly by the time her uncle returns, or all will be lost.

She peels back the layers of his cocoon, enough to sneak a hand through. Soft fingers brush over the cusp of his shoulder, scar ragged beneath them. “Obi.”

He grunts, burrowing deeper into the pillow. It had taken her three years to ever see him sleeping, and even after, he would wake at her slightest sound, at even the threat of her touch. But now--

Now he groans, long legs stretching out, chest arching until his shoulder cups firmly in her palm. And yet, his eyelids hardly flicker.

“Obi,” she tries again, impatience seeping in at she presses closer. His skin is so warm against hers, hard where she is soft. The heat coiled in her belly writhes. “Obi, please, we need to...”

One gold eye unfurls to half-mast, hazy with sleep. Her words are lost, gone like birds on the wind. It had taken all her courage to ask the first time; she cannot bear to dredge up enough for a second.

“Ah, Miss,” he sighs, and, ah, she feels him against her. It. His cock, half-hard, nestled against the forgiving flesh of her thigh. “So insatiable.”

Shirayuki does not pout; no, this pursing of her lips is forbidding, stern. “You did promise.”

He hums, one hand tracing up the curve of her bottom, settling against her back. “I did,” he slurs, sleep thick in his voice, staring up at her through the net of his lashes. “And lucky for you, I’m a man of my word.”

That hand slips up to her shoulder, urging her down, and she gives beneath him. His mouth meets hers on the journey, dragging her into its undertow with a slow, languorous slide. Nothing about this is hurried, like Zen’s kisses, or frantic, like the ones from mere hours ago, but patient, perfect. He hasn’t slept long enough for his breath to be sour, but it’s stale, and she--

Ah, his hand drifts down again, jerking her against him. His cock buries between her thighs, heavy and hard, and she could not care less what he tastes like, so long as he keeps kissing her.

Her own palm slips from shoulder to cheek, nails scraping beneath the bristle of his hair. With a whimper, his hips jerk into hers, leaving them both breathless.

“You’re already wet,” he murmurs, voice thick with satisfaction and wonder. “So wet. And all for me, Miss?”

He should hardly need to ask. He’d pushed her to her back last night, and it’d flowed out of her like a creek swollen in a storm, blossoming over her nightgown. She’d feared he would see it, that he might even smell it as he pressed his mouth to her and know that she had left her own duty long behind, driven now by a needy curiosity. This might all have been her plan, but it was not like her to want, to need. Even now as he rubs himself between her folds, her slit aching for him, empty, she worries that this craving might not ever leave her.

“Obi,” she whines, so unlike herself she might as well be some other girl, the kind that has trysts outside taverns and sees a barn as an opportunity. “I need...”

“Oh,” he laughs darkly against her mouth. “I know what you need.”

Her only warning is the curve of his lips, and then she is weightless, reeling under a force not her own. Like rolling down the hills of Honeyholt, at the mercy of the land beneath her; only it is not the Father’s hands she leaves herself in tonight, but the Stranger’s.

When that breathless moment ceases, she is atop him, pale hands braced upon the bronze of his chest, legs splayed to either side of his narrow hips-- though his shaft no longer sits between them, instead curving along her bottom. Shirayuki shifts, trying to work it beneath her again, to feel the hard ridge of him where she aches, but his hands rest on hers, stilling her where she sits.

Beneath their fingers he is patchwork of scars; unlike this face, they belong to him, the only record of who he was before he came to her, of what he might have been before arrived at the doors of the House of Black and White. Her thumb brushes along the curve of his borrowed cheekbone, heart leaping as he leans into her touch, his smile nestling into her palm.

No, it is not the Stranger she courts tonight, but the Many-Faced God. One in the same, Obi might tell her, a single form of a god that touches every angle of this world, but still--

It is from his jaw whom she has snatched suffering. It is his servant who she has made aid her. Death makes a merciless lord, and she has a habit of standing before his throne, defiant.

Her fingers stiffen where they hook behind his jaw. “I need you,” she says, a whisper so fierce it burns. “As long as you are with me, that is all I will ever need.”

Those shuttered eyes fly open, gold burning bright as a candle in the dim. It’s pale, not coin nor honey nor the intensity of amber, but a spool of golden floss, unwinding. “Miss,” he breathes raggedly, chest stilling beneath her. “I...”

His mouth works, but no sound comes from it. Instead he speaks with his eyes, their wild search of her own conveying more question than words ever could. Her heart pounds with an answer, but it chokes her, refusing to speak itself, refusing to even let her know what it might be, and it is too much, too intense for this moment, this night--

So she kisses him instead. That, it seems, is a language they both speak fluently.

He laughs, joy crashing against her lips. “You say you need me.” He lifts her hips, allowing his head to gently slide down her slit,. “But I think what you need is my cock.”

She wants to protest-- it is not the promise of his size or skill that drew her to his bed in her time of need, and it is surely not what keeps her here, drinking down every drop of his drugging kisses, but--

But he lowers her onto him, shaft nestling between her lips. It’s both what she wants and not enough entirely; more, she needs to tell him, but instead she only whines, leaning into his touch. His fingers flex against her skin, gripping so hard a peach would bruise beneath it, and with a twitch of his hands, he drags her along his length. Her thoughts cease completely-- at least those that are not how his shaft slides along her slit, or the way his cock’s head rubbing at the center of her maiden’s flower, making her skin dissolve in a shower of sparks.

“Obi!” She wrenches herself away from his mouth, trying to gain space, gain her bearings before this heat can consume her. He keeps moving her even still, that steady front and back, watching her with hooded eyes and knowing smile. Her cunt growing slicker with every stroke, anticipating when he might misjudge his angle, and let himself bury within her--

“Obi,” she tries again, shaking herself. She needs to speak, to tell him something--

But instead she looks down, right to where his head plunges between her thighs, flushed and thick and glistening with her own slick. All she can think is how she needs him in her, how she needs him to douse this heat that threatens to consume her whole--

“Obi--” it’s more sobbed than spoken, a fact that might shame her if the whole of her attention wasn’t on keeping herself in a single piece instead of burning into ashes-- “Obi, please--”

“Yes.” His moan throws his head against the pillow, the muscles of his neck straining. “Yes, Miss, I have you.”

He lifts her again, and this time, his cock’s head flicks over where she is empty. She whimpers, an animal wounded, wanting, her hips seeking him out trying to catch that moment of completion. His laugh huffs against the back of her hand, and she nearly scolds him-- how could he be so amused when she could light the glass candle with her skin alone--

And then he is in her, buried in her cunt with no more than the barest stretch. So easy, as if he were made for her.

“All right, Miss?” he asks, little more than a gasp. She manages a moan as his hips twitch beneath her, driving him just a scant inch deeper. Mother, but she wants more, wants all of him. It cannot be possible to be closer than this, but she wants it still, that cessation of space between them.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” His thumbs rub at the flare of her hips, so gentle, before his palms slip. They glide lower, over the soft skin at her joint, cradling her thighs before guiding them forward. Her legs splay, pulling her closer still, sitting more of him inside her, and yet-- she feels more exposed too, vulnerable. It’s an odd angle, one she’s not sure she entirely likes, and she nearly says so until--

Until he surges up into her and paints a field of stars over her eyes, Dondarrion’s banner in full.

Her finger scrabble at his chest, trying to find purchase as he thrusts up. He’s filling her, more than he can before, each stroke touching her so deeply that she’s left gasping, clawing at his skin. She finally clamps her hands around his shoulders, toes curling in the sheets in an attempt to keep her steady. It’s a futile battle; even anchored as she is, moans leap from her, long and low and soft, hips chasing his cock even thought it never once leaves her.

“Obi,” she manages, a gasp rattling from her lungs. “This isn’t--” a moan slips from her, embarrassingly loud-- “this isn’t the best position for--” he leans forward, taking the tip of her breast in his mouth and sucking-- “conception!”

His chest rumbles beneath her palms. “I think,” he sighs, hands sliding down to grab her hips, “that I’ll come just fine like this.”

“I didn’t mean--”

His fingers dig in to her hips, so hard she knows she’ll bruise, but she can’t care, not when he cants her hips and drives her into him, over and over again, his head hitting something in her so right her vision whites at the edge.

“That’s right,” he hums, guiding her along his cock with a savage, almost feral glee. She leans back, letting him hold her weight and his smirk widens. “I’ll spill fine enough inside you, seeing you like this. Plant a seed and let it quicken, and everyone will know just how good you’ve been fucked--”

Her breath catches. This rough talk, it shouldn’t-- she shouldn’t--

She shouldn't like it. She doesn’t like it, she knows for certain; there’d been plenty of men at Highgarden who had made such promises in their cups. Grandfather had always seen them out on their asses, and told them never to darken his door again.

But the way Obi says it, the way he looks at her, pride and desire both-- it’s different. One thumb reaches out to graze her belly, and it draw her gaze down, down to where she can see his shaft pull near all the way out before thrusting again, covered in her own wanting, and Shirayuki-- she cannot last.

The heat between them finally consumes her, hot and cold both, and she is no longer steel, no longer porcelain, but instead putty in his palms from pleasure, slumping over him. His own breath stutters, and with a stifled groan, he spills over, hips twitching beneath hers.

The maesters knew little about childbirth itself; that was a woman’s realm, best left to the midwives they disdained as ignorant fishwives. But on the topic on conception opinions overflowed, an entire shelf in the Citadel dedicated to its methods-- specifically to those that would insure a male heir, even from a woman who had only evinced daughters. Most all of it was hogwash, merely men believing dominate the Mother’s domain as a lord might his lady, but some of it was true, told to her by midwives more experienced than any man in the maesters’ white tower.

Shirayuki knew, in the last bastion of her mind that was not consumed with pleasure, that she should roll off him. That she should get on her back and lift her hips to urge his seed deep inside her, encouraging it to take root. And after that, she should clean herself to prevent any infection from taking hold-- another thing the maesters’ texts found too unimportant to mention. It is what she would tell any woman that would come to her, looking to be taken with a babe, but instead--

Instead she stretches, luxuriating in the warmth of his skin against hers. The maesters and midwives never mentioned this, how close he would feel afterward, their bodies slick with sweat and wanting. They never said how sweet it would feel to have his cock soften inside her, how a simple hand brushed down her spine could quiet even her loudest thoughts.

“Ah,” he laughs, the tips of his fingers teasing at the divot at its base, not daring to curve lower. She wants him too, but she’s too tired to say it, instead just burrowing encouragingly against his chest. “Good morning to you too, Miss.”

“It’s still night.” She traces a scar, a small one right above his breast. it tremors beneath her touch. “Or I suppose it might be the wee hours before dawn.”

He hums, thoughtful. “You should be getting back.”

Shirayuki blinks up at him.

“Don’t look at me like that.” His teeth flash in the dim. “I hate to kick a woman out of bed, but your maids will be up with the sun.”

And all of them would he happy to hum Harmund a tune, should he ask for a song. Especially about his niece’s nighttime dealings. As little as she likes it, she’s lingered long enough.

“Yes,” she sighs, levering herself up. “You’re right, I should...”

She stares down, heart in her throat. Even in the dark she can see it, the pinkish stain smeared across the sheets. The remnants of her maidenhood, dried and set in silk. “Oh...”

Obi rolls craning his neck to match hers. “Ah, well. Do you think they’ll believe me if I say I had my courses?”

Shirayuki spares him a flat look.

“Oh, don’t you be worrying about that, Miss.” He waves her off, using his hips to bounce her leg off him. “It’s not the first time I’ve had to get blood out of silk.”

“But it’s dried.” She lost more than a few good skirts and sheets from that alone. “It’s nearly impossible--”

His hand cups the back of her neck, swinging her gaze around to meet his. “I said I have it handled.”

Her mouth opens, then closes with a snap. It’s hardly be the first time a man like him would have to clean blood from cloth.

“All right.” She pads over to the basin, wincing as the cold water touches her skin. “I’ll only clean myself and then--”

She’ll never know how he can pace a room so fast; one moment he’s at the end of the bed, putting on trousers, and the next he’s standing next to her. Long fingers pluck the cloth from her hand, his mouth curving as her breath catches.

“Let me handle that, Miss,” he murmurs, so close to her they could hold a playing card between them. “It’s my job to take care of you after all.”

The cloth slides down her belly, freezing in its wake, but it hardly bothers her, not when she is but skin wrapped around a living flame. It sinks further still, Obi’s breath fanning across her face as he slips it between her thighs. Her chest hitches when it traces along her slit, so slow, so tantalizing, one of Obi’s long fingers teasing at her entrance.

“Obi,” she whimpers, but it’s the only sound she makes before he covers his mouth with her own. Her fingers curl around his shoulders, trying to keep herself upright, and she slips, just a little, nails digging in--

He gasps. She presses the advantage, slipping her tongue past his lips; all pretense is lost then. The cloth slumps to the floor as his finger sinks knuckle-deep into her cunt, the banked flame in her belly blazing with little more than the slide of his lips and a pump of his fingers. He stirs against her hip; she glances down for a breath, but his cock is still soft, lolling out the gap of his trousers.

To her everlasting shame, she lasts barely more than a few breaths; both surprise and sensitivity working against her. His hips press her hard against the basin, and his finger curves just so, just enough to have her gasping and writhing and riding him to a second fall, Obi grinning the entire time.

“There.” He lifts his finger to his lips, sucking them clean. “Just wanted to make sure it would stick.”

If she’s flushed, at least the dark shrouds it. “I’ll--I’ll see you in the morning.”

She feels him watching as she bends over, gathering up her shift. “With the way I had you, you’ll see me in your dreams first.”

It should annoy her that she knows he’ll be right, but instead-- instead heat flares in her, making her bold.

“Good.” She slides her shifts over her shoulders, and with a single look back, says, “I’ll need you to do it tomorrow, too.”

His face is worth every shade of her blush.