We could be a force, you and I

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (TV) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Lyonel Baratheon/Dunk | Duncan the Tall Characters: Dunk | Duncan the Tall (A Song of Ice and Fire), Lyonel Baratheon Additional Tags: Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Bathing Together, Hand Jobs, Semi-Public Sex, Blow Jobs, Rimming, Anal Fingering, Kissing, Neck Kissing, Felching, Come as Lube, Spit As Lube, Hair-pulling, Lyonel Baratheon Has a Hair-Pulling Kink, Praise Kink Summary:

Dunk wished to rinse off a hard day’s ride, only to have his bath interrupted by a—very handsome—stranger.

Hey!!! Since I'm taking some time to get the next three chapters out at once I wanted to sprinkle in teasers from the chapters as I finish them!!!! Since chapter 8 is now done, I wanted to give you your first sneak peek, and hopefully I can get yall another from this chapter if you would like it or chapter 9 once its been beta read!

Give me any feedback you have and enjoy!!

Chapter 8- TEASER

Lyonel came at him again. Faster this time. Angrier. The practice blade whipped toward Harwin's shoulder with vicious intent. The kind of blow that would leave bruises if it landed, maybe worse.

Harwin caught it on the flat of his own blade, felt the force of Lyonel's desperation sing through the wood, then pivoted smoothly. He let Lyonel's own momentum carry him past, let the man's body commit fully to the strike before there was nothing left to strike. As Lyonel stumbled forward, Harwin brought his blade up and tapped him once, deliberately, between the shoulder blades.

A point. Undeniable.

It would have ended any ordinary bout.

Lyonel turned slowly, and his cocky, self-assured grin was gone. "Do not patronize me, you cunt," he said, voice low and dangerous.

"I am trying very hard to avoid wounding your body as well as your pride in front of your men.

"My men have seen my blood before."

"They have also seen their lord command himself respectfully. Do not rob them of that memory."

Lyonel's face turned hard as stone. Then he did what he always did when anger failed him: He reached for cruelty instead."You've grown so fond of your leash, you've forgotten it's a leash at all, haven't you?" Lyonel asked, his voice dropping to something venomous.

"All these years at my shoulder, and for what?" Lyonel's words came faster now, each one sharpened to a point. "So you could stand there and pretend obedience was loyalty? So you could convince yourself that being nothing but a dutiful dog was somehow noble? That following at my heel day in and day out made you more than what you are?"

He took a step closer, and there was something almost desperate in the cruelty now, as if he needed Harwin to strike back, to grant him permission to bleed.

"You wear your servitude like armor, Harwin. Like it’s something to be proud of, but we both know what you really are. A hound that's forgotten how to bite."

The courtyard held its breath. Even the wind seemed to hesitate.

Harwin felt the words cut through him, clean and cold.

Lyonel’s face dropped almost at once. A flash. Regret, surfacing too late. “Harwin, I didn-” he began.

No.

No, not this time.

Harwin moved fast.

He did not think.

Thinking would have softened him. Thinking would have remembered the wound, the wine, the loneliness, the weeks of watching his oldest friend devour himself one mean little bite at a time.

Lyonel had wanted to feel something, so let him feel this.

Harwin ducked low and struck him with his shoulder and forearm, hard into Lyonel’s middle, angled just wrong enough to catch the healing injury beneath the robe.

Lyonel made a sound that was half grunt, half broken breath. His legs went out from under him.

He hit the dirt on one knee first, then a hand went down, the practice sword clattering away. He coughed once, harshly. Then again.

The men under the archway surged forward instinctively.

Harwin lifted one hand without looking, and they stopped. All of them, immediately. Showing without hesitation where their loyalties truly lie at present.

Lyonel stayed bent over, one arm wrapped around his side, hair hanging loose around his face. Then he began to laugh. Low at first, then ragged and painful, until at last harder. The sound rose through the courtyard like something escaping a locked room.

Harwin stood over him, breathing hard, sick with himself and satisfied in equal measure. “Are you finished?” he asked through panted breath.

Lyonel laughed again, coughed, and spat into the dirt. “Thank the Gods, Harwin,” he said hoarsely. “There you are at last.”

Harwin crouched and seized him under the arm, hauling him close enough that no one else could hear. "You have gotten what you wanted, yes?" he said into Lyonel's ear, his voice low and vicious with fear and something rawer still. I don't know if you came looking for a fight because you needed to feel something, or proof that I can see that you are, in fact, still bleeding, and needed to know whether or not I fucking care enough to push back? Well, congratulations – you have your fucking proof."

His fingers tightened on Lyonel's arm, hard enough to bruise. "Now go to your fucking room. No detours to the cellars for more wine. Go the fuck to bed and wake up sober. Be done with this foolishness, Lyonel. Or else your men and the whole bloody castle will begin to see the cracks for themselves. Go, before they see that you're coming apart at the seams and taking all of us down with you."

Lyonel's laughter died against his shoulder. For one breath, he sagged there, all the terrible bright weather gone out of him at last. Harwin held him upright. Then Lyonel’s hand came up and patted Harwin’s cheek, absurdly gentle.

“Thank you,” Lyonel murmured. "For everything."

Harwin wanted to strike him again. Instead, he pulled him up to his feet.

Lyonel swayed, caught himself, and looked around the yard. The men stood frozen beneath the archway, faces carefully blank in the way men looked when they had seen too much and were trying to remain loyal by pretending they had seen nothing at all.

Lyonel gave them a shallow bow that nearly became a collapse.“Gentlemen,” he said, voice rough but almost pleasant. “A stirring victory for Ser Harwin. See that his songs are written poorly. Show me some mercy and recount him as ugly or fat, perhaps.”

No one laughed. Or even regarded him. They all kept their eyes on the stone, reluctant to meet his gaze.

Lyonel’s mouth twitched as though he knew he deserved it.

Then he turned and walked back toward the castle, one hand pressed to his side, robe shifting open in the wind.

The men stood now beneath the archway with the frozen unease of those who had come expecting spectacle and been given something too intimate to name. Denys looked pale enough to be ill. Eric, who stood beside him, had lowered his gaze with the careful obedience of a man refusing to witness his lord’s humiliation any longer than duty required. Then Farron took one uncertain step after Lyonel as he limped past him.

“My lord-,” the young man began to say.

Lyonel did not turn. Farron reached out, not touching, only offering the shape of help, and Lyonel lifted one hand in answer. No words. No anger. Not even strength enough for a jest.Only a small, dismissive motion, sharp enough to sever the offer while it still hung in the air. Farron stopped as though he'd been struck, and Lyonel continued on without so much as a glance back.

Harwin watched him cross the stones. Each step looked deliberate now, chosen with care and disguised poorly as pride. His shoulders were set too stiffly. His breath came too shallow. The robe, half open in the hard torchlight, revealed the fresh scar at his side—barely formed, still angry red and purple at the edges, a raw seam that looked as though it might split open if he breathed too deeply.

He had wanted impact. Wanted his body to answer what his heart refused to speak. Wanted the world to crack open and bleed the way he was bleeding, from the inside out.

Harwin should have felt satisfaction in that. Should have claimed some small victory from the sight of Lyonel brought low, from the proof that even a man like him could be reminded of his own fragility. But all he felt was the weight of it—the particular heaviness that came from breaking something you'd spent years trying to hold together.

Instead, his own shoulder ached from the blow, and his stomach sat sour beneath his ribs.

Lyonel had made it nearly halfway across the yard when one of his loose boots caught against an uneven lip of stone.

It was not much.

On any other night, it would have been nothing at all, but tonight it nearly took him down.

His body pitched forward. One hand shot out, found only air, then landed against the stone wall beside the narrow passage. The impact sent a shock of pain through his side sharp enough to steal his breath, sharp enough to bend him nearly double for one terrible moment. He didn't cry out. Would never allow himself that indignity. But the sound caught in his throat anyway, something raw and animal that he swallowed back down before it could escape. His teeth clenched. His free hand pressed hard against his ribs as though he could hold himself together through sheer force of will. Then, after a few moments, he straightened. One vertebra at a time. One breath at a time. Until he stood again, trembling but upright.

His body pitched forward. One hand shot out, found only air, then landed against the stone wall beside the narrow passage. The impact sent a shock of pain through his side sharp enough to steal his breath, sharp enough to bend him nearly double for one terrible moment. He didn't cry out. Would never allow himself that indignity. But the sound caught in his throat anyway, something raw and animal that he swallowed back down before it could escape. His teeth clenched. His free hand pressed hard against his ribs as though he could hold himself together through sheer force of will. Then, after a few moments, he straightened. One vertebra at a time. One breath at a time. Until he stood again, trembling but upright.

Catch up on chapters 1-7 now so you can be ready for the big three chapter drop!!

I know it's been a while since I updated my fic, and I just wanted to leave y'all with a little teaser for chapter 9 while I'm finishing up edits for chapter 8 from my lovely editor @duesternis. This has not been edited, so if you see mistakes, just squint and look past them 🤣🙌🏼 The reason I've been taking so long to post is so I could have a bunch caught up, so you aren't kept waiting in suspense during these next few chapters.

I hope you enjoy this snippet, and I promise I'll be updating soon!

Catch up here ->-> The Knight of the Storm

The Stranger stood by the hearth.

The dead watched from the corner.

And Lyonel... stood by the door.

Not a memory now. Not Ashford's bloodied lord beneath an elm. Not the storm figure at the rise. This Lyonel was different. Solid in a way the others were not, real in a way that made Duncan's chest ache with wanting. Dressed in black leathers, soaked through by rain, water pooling at his boots. His hand still pressed over his chest as if he had brought the pain with him across the miles, as if the distance between them had carved something vital from his ribs. His eyes burned in the firelight—not with anger, but with something fiercer. Grief. Fury. Love made desperate and shapened into a weapon.

"You were supposed to come back to me," Lyonel said, and his voice cracked on the last word.

Duncan's mouth trembled. His throat worked uselessly.

Egg went silent beside him, his small hands stilling on Duncan's face.

Duncan did not know if he had spoken the words aloud. Did not know if the voice belonged to fever, the gods, or some truth too old for sense. Ssome bond that had pulled taut across leagues of storm and stone until it sang like a bowstring. He only knew that Lyonel looked at him as though anger had been the last wall left standing between his heart and ruin, and now even that was crumbling.

"I tried," Duncan managed, the words barely more than breath. "I tried to make it back to you."

Egg's breath broke on a sob.

Lyonel crossed the room.

No.

He could not have.

He was at the door, then near the hearth, then crouched beside Duncan as if the space between them had folded rather than been crossed—as if the world itself had bent to bring them together. The dead watched him pass, their hollow eyes following his movement. The Stranger was moved back by him by one painful inch, yielding ground it had never yielded before.

Lyonel crouched close, so close Duncan could smell the salt and rain on him, could see the tremor in his jaw. His lips came near Duncan's ear.

His voice was no longer angry. It was raw. Stripped bare.

"Stay alive," he said, and it was not a request. It was a command. A plea. A prayer to gods neither of them believed in.

Duncans eyes burned with tears as he leaned into the spectre's touch, into the impossible warmth of him.

"You ridiculous, stubbborn fool. I'm coming. Just wait for me. Do you hear me? Wait."

"I'm tired," Duncan whispered, and hated how small he sounded. How defeated.

"I do not care." The words came fierce, almost savage. "You do not have my permission to die."

It sounded so much like him it seemed real. So real in fact that Duncan smiled, even as the tears spilled hot down his temples.

Lyonel's hand came to rest on Duncan's chest.

Over the hollow where the pull had lived for months. That strange, insistent tug that had drawn him south all these weeks through blistering heat, rain and ruin.

Duncan felt it.

He felt the weight of that hand as surely as he felt Egg's fingers gripping his own. Warm through wet linen. Broad and steady. Real in a way that defied reason. Impossible, and yet..

Perhaps it was fever.

Perhaps it was the Stranger's final kindness, cruel and beautiful, giving a dying man the shape he most wanted before leading him into the dark.

Perhaps it was something else. Something older than the Seven. Something that lived in the space between heartbeats, in the pull of tide and moon, in the way a man could feel another's pain across a hundred miles of storm.

Duncan did not know.

He only knew that the pull in his chest answered—surged toward that touch like a wave toward a homeward shore.

Lyonel bowed his head until his forehead nearly touched Duncan's temple, until Duncan could feel the ghost of his breath against his skin.

“Please, just wait a little longer, I promise I'm coming.” he whispered.

Duncans breath shuddered.

He had not known until that moment how desperately he still wanted to be here when Lyonel arrived.

Wait.

He just needed to wait.

Wait.

The word broke something inside him.

But already the hand on his chest was fading, warmth bleeding away like water through sand.

"No," Duncan whispered. "Don't—please don't go."

Egg made a small, frightened sound beside him.

Lyonel's face blurred at the edges, dissolving.

The Stranger lifted his head and began moving through the dead.

And Duncan understood then, with sudden terrible certainty, that the vision had come too late for him

But it was not too late for Egg.

The boy had shelter. A roof overhead, solid stone between him and the storm. A fire crackling against the cold. Water to drink. Horses tied secure and waiting. Bernnard would come—he had to. He'd promised. And Lyonel would come. Duncan knew it now with the last clear piece of himself that remained. Knew it the way he knew dawn would break, inevitable as tide.

The pull had not led him astray. It had drawn him here. Not to the keep itself, perhaps, but near enough. Close enough for Egg to be found. Close enough for him to be kept safe when the end came.

That was what mattered. That was what the pull had promised, in its own way.

Egg would be safe, and that would have to be enough.

Undying Devotion

Drawn for My Liege: Queer Knights in Love, an artbook by Nova & Mali and Dame Productions!

I don't have a great imagination—I don't get a lot of genius ideas that come to me in wholecloth. I also don't come up with plots very easily, and my eyes are bigger than my stomach a lot of the time—I'll want to write about, idk, a heist, but I won't know how to come up with a heist to write about.

When I was a baby writer? Even an intermediate writer? I totally would have used AI to get around that stuff. I would have used it to help me come up with ideas and prompts, I would have used it to help me come up with heists and backstory and evil villain schemes, and all sorts of stuff. I know I would have, because I'm inclined towards laziness and impatience, which is why I'm a decent cook but a bad baker. I would have skipped the messy boring steps of figuring out what I wanted to write about—and how to do it—so that I could tell the kind of story that I wanted to tell.

And so I never would have learned that I don't get genius ideas that come to me out of nowhere, because imagination for me happens on the page, not in a daydream. I have to sit down and start writing in a character's voice, and then the idea unfolds itself (or it doesn't! and that's instructive too!). I never would have learned how to write my way through topics I find intimidatingly complicated—sometimes that means learning to write an actual heist story, and sometimes there's ways to tighten the focus on the parts of the story I'm actually interested in. Learning what to put in soft focus and what to keep in the foreground and what you can leave in impressionist watercolor and what has to be photorealistic is part of the craft. Realizing you don't have the skill to do something yet, or don't have the skill to do something easily yet, and figuring out how to do it anyway is how you become a better writer.

I don't know that there's a solution yet. I can't even blame the baby writers making these choices, because again, I 100% would have done the same thing.

But it makes me so sad, because there's all these young artists who aren't learning the things they should be learning, and that means they're not going to get better. Maybe the art they're making right now will seem better than what they could have made without AI, but it's not going to improve. And the thing about AI is that it can't innovate, it can only repeat and remix. So what's going to happen to those writers in ten years, when their skills haven't grown from where they are now, ie baby-intermediate big-eyed and small-stomached writers? They're not gonna level up. There are so many stories that won't get told.

idk. I'm really glad I'm not a baby writer right now. I'm glad I have a foundation of skill that I can keep building on, so in ten years I won't be the same writer I am now.

if you're a baby writer, and you've used AI, I get it, and it's okay—but it's not good for you. it's not good for your art. it's false nutrients. I want you to grow. That's not going to help you grow.

It makes a ton of sense to me that you could be legitimately writing good stuff right now with the assistance of AI. I think if I fired up Claude or Chatgpt or whatever, right now, and asked it to give me a plot, or to give me a scaffold, or to add a complicating element, I could write something really good. Because I'm a decently good writer, and more than that, I'm a decently good fanfic writer—I'm used to folding in ideas and plots and story elements that aren't original to me, and doing something fun with the result. I think I could use AI to make something, in this moment, that was 1) inclusive of sincere artistic labor on my part, and 2) a really fucking good story.

I bet there are a lot of writers who are doing exactly that, and who feel angry that people are treating the whole work like it came from nowhere, instead of something that they made themselves, when they DID make it themselves—most of it, or part of it, or the seams of it, or something. That really makes emotional sense to me. I would absolutely, ABSOLUTELY be doing this if I were nineteen. I cannot stress how much I would be doing this, and feeling happy and proud of the output—and I wouldn't even be wrong, because I WOULD have put real work into it, and it WOULD be good.

but aside from all the other reasons I find genAI repulsive—the climate damage, the theft of time and labor and expertise, the damage it's doing to literacy and truth and the foundations of what it means to communicate with another person across time and space—I'm a big enough age to know empty calories when I see them.

that story would be good!!!

but it wouldn't help me with the NEXT story. what it would teach me as an artist is how to write a story with AI, and that's naturally the skill I'd keep leveling up, because whenever I hit a weak spot, I'd use the AI to help me, and my other creative skills would atrophy and atrophy and I wouldn't be learning how to do anything NEW, and eventually, you bet your ass my taste would atrophy too, because that is how palates work. it's olestra for the brain. it feels like it's filling you up, but it's not. it might taste like a real potato chip on the tongue, but you'll die of malnutrition if you tried to live off it (and you'll have a really bad time in the bathroom later.)