clumsycopy

The apartment is dim apart from the television, the blue glow washing over the room in uneven flashes and catching against the silver dog tag resting on his chest. For a second you find yourself staring at it, not because there's anything particularly interesting about it but because it's easier than looking directly at him, easier than remembering why you're standing here in the first place.

"Yeah?" he asks distractedly.

It's such a normal response that for a split second you almost hate him for it. Nothing in his expression suggests that the next few minutes might change everything. Nothing suggests that you've spent months building up to this conversation while he's spent the evening drinking beer and watching television like every other night.

You swallow, trying to master what you were about to say. 

"Bobby."

That gets his attention finally. 

His head turns slightly as his eyes settle fully on your face, and you watch the shift happen almost in real time. Bobby has always been frighteningly good at reading people, not because he's particularly empathetic but because he notices things. He notices hesitation. He notices changes in tone. He notices when somebody's smile doesn't quite reach their eyes, when they're forcing themselves to laugh at something that isn't funny, when they're carrying around a problem they haven't found the words for yet.

Sometimes it feels less like being looked at and more like being assessed, as though every conversation is something he's quietly taking apart and examining from every angle before deciding what to do with it, and whatever he finds in your expression makes him sit up straighter almost immediately.

The beer ends up abandoned on the coffee table. The television continues playing somewhere behind him, but it might as well not exist anymore.

His attention settles fully on you, and despite everything, despite all the reasons you're standing here and all the reasons you've spent months trying to gather the courage to leave, there is still a part of you that hates how easy it is to mistake that kind of attention for care.

"Okay," he says simply, shrugging his shoulders as if the conversation is already boring him. "Talk."

You've been rehearsing this conversation since April. You rehearsed it during the drive home from work, while standing under the shower this morning, while lying awake beside him at three o'clock in the morning staring at the ceiling and listening to him breathe. Earlier today you'd finally managed to get it right. You'd imagined yourself saying it without crying, without getting angry, without letting him drag the conversation somewhere else entirely.

Now, standing in front of him while he watches you with an unnervingly focused expression, all of it feels useless. Every planned sentence seems to disappear the second you reach for it, leaving behind nothing but the truth you've been trying to avoid for months.

"I want to end things," you say. "I want to break up."

The television keeps playing in the background. Somewhere on screen an audience erupts into canned laughter, the sound spilling into the silence before fading again, and Bobby just looks at you.

He doesn't react immediately.

He doesn't interrupt.

He doesn't even blink.

He simply sits there watching you with a sort of uncanny stillness, and suddenly you're reminded of every argument you've ever had together, every disagreement that somehow ended with you becoming more emotional while he remained perfectly calm, as though your reaction was evidence that he'd already won.

There had always been something deeply unsettling about that dynamic. Not because Bobby never got angry - he did, but because he was selective about when he allowed himself to show it. More often than not, he stayed composed while you fell apart, and by the end of the conversation you'd find yourself apologising for crying, apologising for raising your voice, apologising for things that had somehow become more important than whatever had upset you in the first place.

Then he laughs.

It's not a cruel sound. If anything, it sounds genuinely disbelieving, as though you've just informed him that the sky is green or that Christmas has been moved to July. For a moment he simply shakes his head, staring at you with a kind of incredulous amusement that makes your stomach drop.

"No, you don't."

The certainty in his voice catches you off guard, not because it's loud or angry, but because it isn't. Bobby says it the way somebody might tell you you've forgotten your keys or misread a date on a calendar. He said it with such complete confidence that for half a second the conversation feels absurd, as though you've announced something impossible instead of ending a relationship. The worst part is that he doesn't sound defensive. He doesn't sound hurt. He sounds convinced.

Your stomach twists.

"Bobby—"

"You don't."

He reaches for his beer again, taking a slow drink without looking away from you, and something about the casualness of it makes your chest tighten painfully. You've spent months working yourself sick over this conversation. You've spent nights lying awake beside him wondering whether leaving would hurt more than staying. You've sat in Diane's kitchen crying into a mug of coffee that went cold hours ago while she told you that love wasn't supposed to feel like this all the time. You've imagined every possible outcome, every argument, every accusation, every attempt to make you stay.

Apparently none of those outcomes included Bobby deciding your feelings were simply incorrect.

"I do."

"No." He shakes his head, setting the bottle back down. "You think you do."

The distinction settles between you heavily, and before he even continues, you can feel the conversation slipping somewhere you never intended it to go. Bobby has always had a way of doing that. He takes what you've said, turns it over in his hands, strips it down, and rebuilds it into something that serves him better. By the time he's finished, you're no longer discussing your feelings but defending them, as though he's the one qualified to decide whether they're real and you're merely presenting evidence for him to evaluate.

You fold your arms tighter across your chest.

"I know what I want."

"Do you?" His eyebrows rise slightly as he dismisses you once again, and the look he gives you is almost pitying.

The question isn't hostile. It would honestly be easier if it were. If he'd exploded, called you selfish, accused you of wasting his time, you could point to it and tell yourself this was exactly why you were leaving. You could walk away from the conversation knowing you were right.

Instead, he looks at you like you're about to ruin your own life.

Somehow that gets under your skin even more than if he'd yelled.

“Because from where I’m sitting,” he says, leaning forward and resting his forearms on his knees, “it sounds like you’ve spent months deciding how unhappy you are without really letting me in. You made up your mind before we even talked about it.”

A bitter laugh escapes you.

“I didn’t keep it to myself.”

“You did.”

“I told you over and over again when things bothered me.”

“No.” The answer comes instantly as he shakes his head, before continuing. “You told me when you were upset. You told me when you’d had a bad day. You told me when I got on your nerves. That’s not the same as telling me you were thinking about leaving me.”

His eyes stay locked on yours.

“That’s different.”

You stare at him for a moment, feeling frustration beginning to build beneath your ribs. Because this is exactly what he does. He takes a conversation and nudges it a few inches to the left, then a few more, then a few more, until suddenly you’re discussing something completely different than what you started with.

“What exactly is the difference?” You ask, annoyance clear in your tone.

“The difference is that being unhappy sometimes isn’t the same as ending a relationship.”

His voice stays steady as he speaks, sounding reasonable. Thoughtful, even, like he’s carefully laying something out for you rather than fighting you.

That’s what makes it so hard.

“If you’d sat me down six months ago and said, ‘Bobby, if things don’t change, I’m leaving,’ we’d be having a different conversation. But you didn’t. You decided everything on your own.”

The worst part is how convincing he sounds.

Not because he’s right.

Because he’s good at making you doubt yourself.

Bobby doesn’t usually lie. At least not in ways that are easy to point at. He doesn’t invent stories or deny things that happened. Instead, he takes what happened and twists it just enough that suddenly you’re talking about something completely different. The facts remain mostly the same, but somehow the meaning changes. By the time he’s finished explaining it, you’re left wondering whether you remembered the whole thing wrong.

You remember sitting on the edge of his bed after he’d read your diary.

You remember the sick feeling in your stomach when you’d realised pages had been moved, the immediate certainty that he had seen things that were never meant for anyone else. You remember confronting him about it. You remember being angry. You remember knowing, with absolute clarity, that he had violated your privacy.

Somehow, by the end of the conversation, you were the one apologising.

You remember crying in his car after dinner with his mother, trying to explain why her comments had upset you and why it hurt that he’d sat there silently while she made them. Somehow the entire argument had become about how embarrassed you’d made him by crying afterward.

You remember trying to explain why filming you during a fight had humiliated you, only to spend the next hour defending your reaction instead of talking about what he’d actually done.

It always went the same way.

You walked into the conversation knowing exactly why you were hurt.

You walked out wondering whether you were allowed to be hurt at all.

“You knew.”

His jaw tightens, and for the first time since the conversation started, you see a crack in that calm certainty he wears so effortlessly.

“I didn’t.”

“You did, Bobby.”

His head shakes immediately.

“I didn’t.”

“You knew I was unhappy.”

“I knew you were unhappy sometimes,” he shoots back, stepping a little closer. “That’s not the same thing, and you know it isn’t.”

You let out a disbelieving laugh.

“Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously.”

His voice remains steady, but there’s more force behind it now, more emotion creeping through the cracks.

“You being upset, you being frustrated, us having problems — that’s not the same thing as you deciding you don’t want me anymore. Those are completely different conversations.”

“They shouldn’t be.”

“They are.”

“No, they shouldn’t be,” you insist. “Because every time I tried to tell you something was wrong, every time I tried to explain why I was hurt, somehow we ended up talking about whether my reaction was reasonable instead of what you actually did.”

Bobby’s expression hardens.

“That’s not fair.”

“It is fair.”

“No, it isn’t.”

The certainty never leaves his voice, not even for a second, and that’s what makes arguing with him feel so impossible. Bobby treats his version of events like established fact and yours like a misunderstanding that just needs correcting. He never pauses long enough to genuinely consider that he might be wrong. He speaks with the confidence of someone who has already decided what happened and is simply waiting for everyone else to catch up.

Suddenly you understand, with painful clarity, why so many of your arguments ended the same way. It wasn’t because he was right. It wasn’t because you agreed with him. It was because he never gave an inch, never allowed uncertainty into the conversation, never stopped pushing until you were too exhausted to keep defending your own reality.

Silence settles over the room for several long seconds while rain taps softly against the windows and the television murmurs forgotten noise somewhere behind him.

Bobby lets out a slow breath and drags a hand through his hair before standing from the couch. The movement isn’t abrupt, but your pulse still jumps when he starts walking toward you.

This time he doesn’t stop several feet away.

He comes close enough that you can smell his cologne.

Close enough that your chest tightens.

For a moment he just stands there looking at you, his expression carefully controlled, hurt and disappointment woven together so convincingly that if you didn’t know him as well as you do, you might mistake it for complete honesty.

Then, slowly, he reaches out and rests a hand against your arm, his fingers curling lightly around your sleeve as though he's afraid that if he moves too quickly you'll pull away from him completely.

The touch is gentle and achingly familiar, carrying the weight of hundreds of other touches that once felt safe.

And somehow that familiarity makes it worse.

“Do you know what kills me?” he asks quietly, searching your face.

You don’t answer.

His thumb shifts slightly against your sleeve, brushing back and forth in a soothing motion that feels far too intimate for this conversation.

“I would’ve done anything for you.”

His voice softens even further, rough around the edges now.

“I still would.”

Something twists painfully in your chest because part of you believes him.

Not completely, not enough to erase everything that's happened between you, but enough that it still hurts to hear.

Bobby sees it immediately.

Of course he does.

He’s always known exactly where your weak spots are, always known which words to use and which version of himself to become whenever he felt you pulling away from him.

The smallest flicker of doubt crosses your face, and his entire expression changes, becoming softer, gentler, more vulnerable.

Like he’s terrified of losing you.

“You think I don’t know I’ve screwed things up?”

He lets out a quiet laugh and shakes his head.

“You think I don’t sit there replaying our fights afterward? You think I don’t think about things I’ve said and wish I’d handled them differently?”

His eyes drop briefly before lifting back to yours.

“I’m not perfect.”

The words sound real.

Maybe that’s what makes them dangerous.

Because if he sounded insincere, if he sounded manipulative, this would be easier to resist.

Instead he sounds like someone who’s finally admitting his faults, someone who's finally giving you the accountability you've wanted for so long.

“I know that.”

“No, listen to me.”

His hand tightens slightly around your arm before loosening again.

For the first time, there’s something raw in his voice—not anger, not frustration, but desperation that seems to bleed through every carefully chosen word.

Like he’s watching something slip through his fingers and genuinely doesn’t know how to stop it.

“I know I’ve messed up. I know I’ve said things I shouldn’t have said. I know there are moments I’d take back if I could. But you’re acting like none of that matters. You’re acting like people don’t make mistakes, like relationships don’t go through rough patches, like two years together suddenly means nothing because things got hard.”

“We’ve had two years to fix them.” The words come out quieter than you intended.

Something flashes across his face before disappearing almost immediately. When he speaks again, his voice is lower, quieter, more controlled, as though he's forcing himself not to react. “That’s not true.”

You can almost see him pulling himself back together, rebuilding that certainty piece by piece.

“Because if you really believed there was nothing left between us, you would’ve left already.”

His eyes lock onto yours.

“You would’ve packed your things and gone weeks ago.”

His hand slips from your arm, only to settle lightly against your shoulder.

“You wouldn’t still be standing here talking to me.”

You swallow hard, but he keeps going. “You wouldn’t still care whether this hurts me.”

His voice drops even lower.

“You wouldn’t be crying right now.”

The words hit harder than they should.

Not because they’re true.

Because he knows exactly where to aim them.

He takes every bit of guilt, every bit of love you still have for him, every ounce of compassion you’ve never managed to stop feeling, and turns it back on you until your hesitation sounds like proof, your kindness sounds like a promise, and leaving starts to feel like an act of cruelty instead of self-preservation.

Part of you knows exactly what he’s doing. You can see it happening in real time. The way he grabs onto every uncertainty and stretches it wider. The way he takes every complicated feeling and reshapes it into evidence that you’re making a mistake.

“You still love me.”

The words are quiet but impossibly certain.

You look away.

Bobby lets out a breath.

“See?”

His hand falls from your shoulder.

“You do.”

“That doesn’t change anything.”

“It changes everything.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“It does.” His voice cracks slightly.

“If you still love me, then how can you stand there and tell me there’s nothing worth saving?”

You close your eyes for a second.

Because that’s the question, isn’t it?

The question that’s kept you awake for months, the question you've asked yourself over and over again whenever you imagined finally walking away.

How do you leave someone you still love?

How do you walk away when the feelings never disappeared, when the problem was never a lack of love but everything that came attached to it?

Part of you knows exactly what he’s doing. You can see every piece of it. The way he pulls on your doubts. The way he reframes your hesitation. The way he turns your empathy into an argument against yourself.

But another part of you—the tired part, the lonely part, the part that still remembers his hand in yours and lazy Sunday mornings and all the nights he made you feel like the only person in the world—hates how badly it wants to believe him.

And that’s the problem.

You still love him.

Even now.

Maybe especially now.

Because toxic love never dies quietly. It lingers. It wraps itself around every good memory and every bad one until separating them feels impossible. It digs its nails into your heart and makes you question everything, even when you know exactly how much it’s hurting you.

Bobby doesn’t speak for a moment.

Then he steps closer again, slower this time, like he already knows he has you exactly where he needs you.

His hand comes up carefully, brushing a strand of hair back from your face before his fingertips slide to your cheek. When he feels the dampness there, his expression softens even further, and he gently wipes away a tear with his thumb.

“Baby,” he murmurs.

The word lands differently than everything before it, carrying less of the argument and more of the undoing.

His thumb strokes beneath your eye again, catching another tear before it can fall.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, like it’s just the two of you again, like the conversation hasn’t been tearing itself apart for minutes. “I’m sorry, baby. God, I hate seeing you cry.”

You look away, but he follows the movement.

“Please look at me.”

When you do, his face crumples just enough to seem genuine.

“I never wanted this,” he whispers. “I never wanted us to get here. I know I hurt you. I know I did. I'm sorry.”

His hand cups your face fully now, warm and familiar.

“Just—don’t do this. Please.”

And then he kisses you.

It isn't rushed or uncertain. The moment his lips meet yours, every memory comes rushing back at once, and the familiarity of it hits like a physical ache. His hand remains against your cheek while the other settles at your waist, pulling you closer before you can think too hard about it.

When he feels you hesitate instead of immediately pulling away, he deepens the kiss, slow and deliberate, like he's trying to pour every apology he never properly gave into it.

“I'm sorry,” he whispers against your lips before kissing you again.

Another kiss follows, softer this time.

“I’m sorry, baby.”

His thumb brushes away another tear.

“I love you.”

The words are breathed between kisses, desperate and pleading.

“I love you so much.”

His forehead presses briefly against yours before he kisses you again, longer this time, holding you close enough that you can feel the uneven rhythm of his breathing and the tension running through him.

“Please,” he murmurs. “Please don't leave me.”

His hand slides into your hair as he shakes his head slightly.

“I know I messed up. I know I did.”

A kiss against the corner of your mouth, then another.

“But I can fix it.”

His voice breaks on the words.

“I swear I can fix it.”

When he pulls back, it's only far enough to look at you, both hands framing your face now as he wipes away the tears still clinging to your cheeks.

“Just stay with me,” he breathes. “We can fix this. I swear we can. I’ll do better. I’ll change whatever you need me to change. Just don’t leave me like this, okay?”

His thumb lingers against your cheek as if he’s trying to physically keep you there.

“I’ve got you,” he adds softly, pressing one last lingering kiss to your forehead before looking back into your eyes. “I’ve got you, baby. You don't have to do this. Just stay.”

He was supposed to sail with the other whale hunters, escaping into the icy waters of the North, but he was there, thinking of what words of circumstance to use with you. It’s been a while, two years, maybe three, since the last time you met. He couldn’t remember it clearly anyway, since half of his life was on board some ship.

Michael was anything but a man of principles. His way of seeing an opportunity in everything allowed him to survive, but what he had to face that day was out of his league. Not to mention the feelings involved. Feelings. Something foreign, something he constantly rejected for all of his life.

His thoughts shut off when he saw the curtain move and your figure appearing behind the dirty window pane. He recognised you immediately. You didn’t change by an inch, and his limbs started to tremble as you finished tying your corset and adjusted the underwear camisole.

He dragged a puff of cigarette, slightly squinting his eyes and thinking of how many nights he fantasised about you, of how soft your body would have been, how your voice would have sounded while he would have fucked that pretty cunt of yours. He would have smelled your arousal as he tasted your flesh and ate your core.

“Fuck…” He murmured and spat on the ground. When his eyes moved again at your window, you were gone.

He threw away the cigarette stub and blamed his feral needs for why he crossed that street and entered that building, but there was a score to settle behind it.

“Good morning, Mrs Williams.” He took his hat off in front of the building owner.

“Cavendish…” The curvy, red-headed woman scanned him up and down. “You’re a bit late for the funeral.”

Michael lowered his visibly upset gaze as he chewed his inner cheek, promising himself he would behave. He couldn’t risk being kicked out before seeing you.

“Yeah… need to see her.”

The woman gave him a surly look, carefully scanning him up and down. “You’re not drunk, are you?”

“I am not.” He snapped.

“Uh.” She huffed out before waving her head to the stairs, silently permitting him to go. “I want you out before dinner time. No one wants despicable men around during the night.”

He didn’t reply, even if he really wanted to do it, but his mind was already under your skirt. He ran upstairs and ignored a couple of women chatting in the corridor, who became silent when he passed. His steps were heavy on the wooden floor, his movements confident in contrast to his accelerated heartbeat. It would have been better…easier, to fall in love with a whore.

He vigorously knocked twice, but you didn’t respond. He took a deep breath, hating every single second of that useless waiting. The two women remained silent as they watched, eager to catch some new gossip in their boring lives. He called your name through the door, resting his forehead on the old wood. “It’s me.”

At the sound of his voice, the anger grew inside you. The awareness that you would have met him at some point wasn’t unexpected, but you couldn’t help feeling so frustrated. Michael had always been insufferable, out of the box and extremely harsh. You loathed him.

“Go away, Michael.”

“Open up.” He slightly slammed his hand on the door. “I need to see you.”

You opened the door with a sharp movement, rage clearly painted on your face. “See me? And what about your brother?!”

“Let’s speak inside.”

“He died two weeks ago, and you didn’t even show up for the funeral!” You ignored his request and kept venting while he was still standing at the threshold.

“I was busy.” He said absently. “They needed me to fix the ship before it set sail.”

“Last time I checked you weren’t a carpenter.” You crossed your arms.

Michael was losing his patience, no matter if he loved you more than his own brother, and he was celebrating his death with a bottle of rum and his cock stuck up in a whore instead of attending at his funeral at your side.

“Let me in.” He said with a low but firm tone as he pushed you inside and slammed the door. He took a better look of you, thinking of how useless that faded-purple dress was, considering the good things there were underneath it.

“What now?” You shrugged. “Did you come to take what remains of Arthur?”

“Sort of.” He said as he threw his hat on the table. “I have a proposal for you.”

“A proposal?” You raised your eyebrows.

“I want to take care of you. I… I want to marry you.” He said with a softer tone, scared of using such soapy bullshits.

You knew it was a serious thing since he wasn’t giggling like a fool as usual, and that caused an unexpected pleasant reaction down in your stomach; way too pleasant considering how you hated Michael. You tried to ignore what your body was telling you, unable to resist repaying him with the same coin. A mocking chuckle came in response, and it was even better when you noticed his irritation. Your bully smirk remained on your face, enjoying having been able to bruise his ego.

His reaction was immediate. He closed the gap between you two with a couple of long strides before pulling your hair and keeping you firmly in place. “You are carrying my name.” He said with gritted teeth. “It will never be replaced by someone else.”

“I belong to Arthur. I will belong to him forever.”

“He’s dead.”

“Better a ghost than you.” You pushed your luck with your sharp words.

Your boldness, his arousal, and everything in between broke the last restriction of your roles. Arthur wasn’t there to oppose, and you wouldn’t reject Michael. Not this time. Not under such circumstances. You knew it would be a wild ride, and you needed it.

The kiss that followed was ferocious, possessive. Years of restraint unleashed in a moment. His tongue invaded your mouth with no respect as he pushed you toward the bed, despite your complaining gestures to push him away. A series of rapid-fire slaps hit his chest, his shoulders, his face and your whining voice, suffocated into that kiss, only increased his needs.

“There’s no one between us now. You’re mine.” He pressed his words against your mouth.

When your back touched the mattress, and his lips reached your neck, your attempt to reject him was slowly fading into pleasure. Your mind was fighting because you didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of your surrendering so soon, but your body was betraying you. Your fists kept hitting him as he lifted you easily to throw you in the middle of the bed. The way he was handling you was nothing compared to your relationship with Arthur. Your husband was caring, sweet, almost shy to touch you, even after years together. Michael was a beast, eager to claim you. A warm sensation filled your stomach as never before. The need to be taken roughly and quickly pervaded your mind with sinful thoughts.

“Do you have an idea of how long I have been waiting for this moment?” He asked breathlessly as he lowered his braces and took his shirt off. “It should have been me since the first time I put my eyes on you, in that pub. Not Arthur!” His hand went down and pulled your skirt up enough to feel the skin of your thigh. A deep laugh growled in his chest. “You’re not wearing any socks. I bet my ass your cunt is easy access too. Maybe you’re cut out to be a whore.”

It was humiliating and irrespective, and you liked it. The way he was looking at you, thirsted to violate your flesh, eager to fight against you, was pure fire between your legs. “Try me, you shithead.” You deliberately instigated, perfectly aware of the consequences. “I swear I’ll kick your ass…”

You couldn’t finish your threat because Michael shut your mouth with another kiss and moved his hand directly on your sensitive core. The jolt you felt as his fingers brushed your dripping folds led you to moan shamelessly, finally betraying yourself.

“You little whore, with your flooding cunt. Where you wanted to hide?” He breathed against your cheek, carefully watching your face contorting into pleasure and enjoying the feeling of his hard cock brushing against his trousers. “Let me hear your pretty voice once again.” He commanded as his fingers sank inside you and his thumb delightfully pressed against your swollen bulge.

You bit your lower lip, swallowing your moans and shutting your eyes. You still didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

“Look at me. I said… look at me!” He moved to his knees and grabbed your face with his free hand. When your eyes met, he licked his lip to avoid losing saliva. “Unbutton your dress.”

“No.” You replied breathlessly, as his grip around your face tightened and his fingering increased.

He spat on the floor with irritation, removing his fingers from your cunt and sucking them clean before tearing the front part of your dress apart. The row of buttons snapped off, revealing your pristine corset and your chest moving up and down, under your heavy breath.

“Fuck…” He whispered as his hand caressed your upper body, wrapped in that solid cage made of whale bones and firm fabric. He was mesmerised at the idea of unwrapping you like a gift, and he didn’t see the slap coming, making him return to reality.

“Fuck!” He shouted and slapped you back. His hand slipped down your throat, carefully tightening enough to let you feel his strength, but not enough to take your breath away. “Is this what you want? You want me brute? You want me to take you as the whore you are?”

He felt you swallowing against his palm as a teasing smirk appeared on your face. His eyes widened, and his cock throbbed; he reconsidered his idea of you as a perfectly well-mannered woman.

“I knew it…” A wild grin opened on his face.

He moved to take his switch blade from the back pocket of his trousers and hastened to cut the corset laces. “Well fuck. My brother always painted you as an angel on this damn earth. He’s probably rolling in his grave now.”

“You’re cruel.” You said, perfectly aware you were in the same boat together.

“And you’re a bitch who’s fucking her brother-in-law when her husband’s body is still warm six feet under.”

The switchblade ended up stuck in the wooden floor as Michael opened the corset with a sharp tug and ripped the underneath camisole. He didn’t waste time in fondling your bare breasts with full hands, pinching the hard tips and biting your soft flesh. You arched a bit, unable to suppress a loud moan. He laughed with open mouth as his tongue teased your nipples, feeling your hand pressing on his head.

“Someone is finally eager here as I am.”

“Shut up, asshole!”

A low growl of satisfaction accompanied his movements as he reached your cunt once again, this time fully intent on eating you out. He moved your skirt up to your hips, completely exposing your forbidden fruit.

“So perfect.” He murmured before assaulting it with hunger.

“Michael!” You shouted as your thighs moved on his ample shoulders and the tip of his tongue sent deep shivers of pleasure through your body.

He licked and sucked, losing himself in that long-awaited moment. “You taste even better than imagined.” He couldn’t stop worshipping your cunt even when he unbuttoned his trousers and lowered them enough to jerk himself.

“Michael, please…”

“Please what, angel?” He moved up, wiping his mouth from your juice as he carefully observed you begging for more.

You shut your eyes as you surrendered to his whims. “Fucking take me.”

He smirked as he penetrated you easily with a sharp thrust. You moaned as you clung to his shoulders, pressing your soft breasts against his firm chest. His body started to move with ferocious vehemence, slamming deep inside you mercilessly. You took all of him so well, feeling things you'd never felt before, even with Arthur, and silently blessing Michael’s visit.

“My angel… my…” He breathed into your ear, losing control of the moment.

You repeated his name, unable to say anything else as the orgasm pervaded you unexpectedly. His eyes widened in shock and ecstasy as your body convulsed around him, sending waves of pleasure through his own cock. The sudden, intense milking of your pussy made his vision swim, his hands gripping the mattress on either side of your head to keep from collapsing completely.

“Fuck, you're coming already?” His voice was a desperate growl, a mix of awe and frustration. “You can't do that without warning me…fuck!”

His hips stopped for a moment, caught off guard. But then his own instincts took over, and he began pounding into you again with renewed ferocity, determined to draw out every last drop of your climax.

“I'm not done with you yet.” He panted against your neck, teeth finding the sensitive spot where your pulse was racing.

A loud cry coming from your arousal and pain pushed him to cover your mouth with his. The crash of the lips was hungry, intense. His tongue tangling with yours in a desperate dance that mirrored the frantic rhythm of your bodies. The kiss was raw and demanding, a silent battle for dominance that neither wanted to lose. His thrusts became more erratic as your climax continued to ripple through you, his own control fraying at the edges.

“Look at me.” Michael commanded roughly, pulling back just enough to see your face. “I want to see you when I make you forget everything but how good I feel inside you.”

With a guttural groan, he drove into you one last time; his body went rigid as waves of release washed over him. His cock pulsed deep inside you, spilling hot seed that mixed with your own wetness. Deep groans were unleashed in the room shamelessly as he collapsed onto you, panting heavily.

“Fuck…” His voice was raw with emotion, lips pressing against your neck where his teeth had marked you earlier.

The room became quiet; the air was thick with arousal and sweat, and you both rested enough to regain your senses. It was the first time for Michael to feel the need to stay in a woman’s arms instead of running away with a still-dripping cock. It was the first time for you to feel the need to keep a man in your arms instead of dressing back up quickly.

“You owe me a new corset.” You said softly, wanting to break that silence to avoid thinking of your husband.

“I didn’t know you wanted to be paid after.” He joked.

“Do you think you can throw me some pennies and run away? Better for you to give me that ring you have in your trousers before you go away.”

He moved to look into your eyes. “How the fuck do you know I have a ring?”

“You came to propose to me, right? It would have been a shame for you not to have an engagement ring.”

Michael laughed deeply. He wouldn’t have left so soon.

Currently, you were sitting sideways over his thighs, the back of your head resting against the side of the headrest of the cushioned chair he was reclining in.

Baelor was reading quietly, the title of the book was one you had trouble recalling as your eyes fluttered open and shut repeatedly, the tendrils of exhaustion beginning to weave through your limbs.

“Shall I stop here, my dear?” his gentle voice slipped through the cracks of slumber that threatened to envelop you, pulling you back to the waking world.

“No, please,” was your hoarse reply, “continue, I’m desperate to know how he escaped.”

Your head slid down to tuck into the notch between his jaw and shoulder; despite your reluctance to succumb to sleep, you appeared to be positioning yourself for a nap.

The woody, spicy scent that radiated from him filled your lungs with each breath you took, just as the heat that emanated from his body seeped into your own, warming you far better than any fire ever had.

“He escaped two chapters ago, sweetness,” Baelor revealed, the corners of his eyes crinkling with mirth. 

“He did?”

“Yes,” he carried on, closing the book and placing it atop the chair’s armrest, “it was really quite clever–the manner in which he devised his getaway, I mean.”

“Baelor,” you groaned, pressing your nose into the tuft of grey hair that peeked out from below his ear, “I confess I was not truly paying attention.” 

“I know.”

Your fingers tightened in his silken nightwear, the fabric warm from the heat that exuded from his torso, “Now, will you repeat the last two chapters next time?”

Baelor hummed in consideration, the vibrations from his chest sending pleasant tingles down the length of your body.

“I will, my dear,” he began, his arms moving to bring you closer into the warmth of his embrace, “on the condition that you read the next book.”

“Very well,” you responded sleepily, arms looping around his neck, “what shall you have me read, dearest husband?”

Baelor remained silent for several minutes, leaving you to wonder if he hadn’t heard you or was simply thoroughly mulling over which novel he would have you narrate.

Finally, he answered.

“Do you remember all those months ago,” he began in a low voice, a finger tracing invisible shapes into the length of your clothed thigh, “when you confessed you were not ignorant as to what occurs between a husband and wife because you had read about it?”

Both of your eyes shot open, a spreading heat beginning to disperse across your chest, neck, and face.

“I would like for you to read that to me.”

“But,” you sputtered, moving backwards to examine his face, finding nothing but an intrigued curiosity reflecting back at you, “that’s–it’s not.. appropriate.”

Baelor’s head tilted in amusement, the endeared upturn of his lips momentarily caught your attention, “I suppose it’s a good thing we’re married, then.”

A beat of quiet stillness filled the room.

“Yes, I suppose so.”

Surprisingly, Maekar was the one who would initiate holding you at the most odd, and occasionally inconvenient, times. 

He appeared as almost a shadow, his form never too far from your own; his sharp gaze always watching, presence always looming.

When Maekar would finally get the chance to pull you into his heated embrace, as though he hadn’t held you all morning and throughout the entirety of the night, he would rub the soft hairs of his moustache over the skin of your throat, as though he were a cat marking his possession.

“I missed you,” he rumbled in your ear, the curvature of a knowing smile etching onto his face when you shivered in response to his deep baritone.

“Did you truly?” 

You could sense the way his brows furrowed without seeing it.

“Yes.” Maekar replied, irritated. He turned you in his hold to squint down at your playful expression, “What reason do I have to lie about missing my own wife?”

Your fingers travelled up his torso, up the thickness of his throat to thread through the long, white hairs that bordered his mouth.

“I missed you more,” you confessed, standing on your tippy toes to pepper kisses over his lightly scarred cheeks and then his nose.

“Well,” he mustered out, a faint streak of pink colouring his cheekbones, “I very much doubt that, but I will allow it.”

A giddy laugh left your throat before you could suppress it.

“You will allow it?” you asked disbelievingly, your hold moving to the sides of his neck to pull him down until his face was level with yours, “How generous of you, my benevolent lord.”

“Careful,” Maekar murmured, the threatening undertone of the word meant nothing in comparison to the twinkle of adoration that sparkled in his vibrant eyes.

“Forgive me,” you placed a light kiss over his mouth.

“You are forgiven.. for now,” he rasped, eyes remaining closed as you tucked a stray, silvery-white strand behind his flushed ear, “but tread carefully.”

“I would not dream of treading dangerously around you, my magnanimous husband,” was your taunting reply.

“Watch it.” Maekar snapped, straightening to his full height.

Your eyes gleamed mischievously, a terribly dangerous thought entering your mind as you peered up at him. 

“Or what?” you took a step forward, backing the older man up against the wall of the corridor he had followed you down. 

The tips of his ears turned a darker hue, if it were possible, and his blue eyes widened as you continued to crowd his space even when there was nowhere left for him to retreat. 

Maekar exhaled your name in a low breath.

“Good boy,” you murmured after a moment of silence, patting his cheek before turning on your heel and continuing on in the direction you had been heading before he enveloped you in his arms.

The first time you meet him, you are trembling to the very marrow of your bones. Your muscles are pulled taut, and your spine is a sharp, rigid, immobile line. The dark veil obscuring your vision had been more than mere silk that day, it had been your armor, your only protection against the piercing gaze of the Duke— your Duke now.

You could feel the stutter in your pulse, the betrayal in the air. Your Bene Gesserit sisters standing in a half-moon formation behind you, communicating in the silent language of their fingers.

"… one of our finest pupils." Those were the last words you registered, spoken by the Reverened Mother in that casual detached manner. She was standing a few paces ahead of you, describing you like cattle, handing you off like some prized broodmare. A vessel trained for obedience and breeding.

You should have been feeling honored. You should have felt grateful for having been chosen as an asset in the Missionaria Protectiva— the Great Weave. For the opportunity to be a part of something far greater than yourself. For helping bring about an enlightened mind, one capable of breeching the very bridge between time and space, the Kwisatzch Haderach.

Instead all you felt was a dull, sharp throb blooming behind your eyes, and a cold dread seeping into your bones.

The air you were inhaling felt more burnt than one would have anticipated; the volcanic core of the planet manifesting into an everpresent smell of char and smog in the oxygen. Tiny droplets of sea sprinkles still clung to your black shroud from when you stepped into the open air of Dragonstone, offering a strange form of saline baptism.

The Reverened Mother’s hawk-like gaze turned to you quietly, awaiting the pleasantries and greetings you were supposed to exchange with the Duke. Her gaze was so burning it should have willed you into obedience without a single word uttered. But in that moment something in you simply refused to yield.

You could feel your amygdala being excessively active, meanwhile you were desperately trying to will your nerves into a false sense of calm. I must not fear. Her neck shifted ever so slightly, a bird like movement, as if silently questioning you on why you were not following protocol. Fear is the mind killer, fear is the litte death that brings—

"Lady Y/N." His words cut off any train of thought you might have had, the litany fading somewhere into the background of your mind. His voice was gentler than you had expected, he sounded much less a commanding leader than a diplomat.

The three headed dragons caught the light from where it was engraved into the cool metal of the sigil ring sitting on his finger. A Targaryen heirloom, passed down all the way from Old Valyria to the Conqueror and now to him. The Red Duke.

You dared to raise your eyes, catching a glimpse of the curiosity in his mismatched gaze. He was assessing you, you could tell that much, mentally peeling away the layers of fabric covering your form, as if by sheer willpower he could dismantle you and bend you to his whim.

You wondered what he wished to find beneath the dark shroud.

A truthsayer? An advisor? A wife?

Your lip had trembled then, falling open but shutting closed just as quickly. You were struck with the harrowing realization that you had no idea what to speak. Foolish. You could practically hear the better half of your Sisters sniggering beneath their veils while the other half gave you pitying looks.

Suddenly one of our finest pupils rang falls in your ears. Bitter. What good was years of relentless prana-bindu training when you turned into a flustered, simpering girl in front of a Duke of the Great House?

"If it pleases the Lady so," he began, clasping his hands behind his dark doublet and inclining his head forward. "would you she be so kind as to remove her veil?"

The words lingered in the air for a moment; and once again you were caught off guard by the sheer invitation in them. Not command— but compromise.

Perhaps in all your misfortune, at least you weren't being wed off to some brutish barbarian.

And how could you have refused your future Duke anyway?

You nodded faintly, failing to notice the measured breath of air he inhaled, as if willing himself for whatever lies beneath.

A strange insecurity, violently began to unfurl within your chest, rapidly spreading through your limbs like an ugly beast, to the very tips of your fingers, threatening to paralyze them. But it was all too late. The charred air of the Acceptance Hall was already hitting your face, the veil lifting from your head, fully exposing the tissue of your skin to the outside world.

You had swallowed softly, assesing all the men standing before you: the Duke and his men; mentats, soldiers, swordmasters. All of them piercing you with their eyes. And beside them, what you could only assume was the Duke’s youngest brother, Maekar, a rigid pillar of duty, scowling with that characteristic snow-white Targaryen hair.

Though ever inch of your body— save for your face, had been covered that day, you felt as naked as the day you were born.

"My Duke." Your voice emerged quieter than intended, and you suddenly realized how girlish you must have sounded. The Duke needs a concubine not a protege. You pressed your lips into a thine line before anchoring yourself to the fabric of your skirts.

Before you could register what was happening— he had taken the entire audience by surprise when he stepped forward. Perhaps if your gaze hadn't been so fixated on the crimson and black of his doublet you might have noticed how his men reached towards their weapon-clad belts, his brother making a noise of disapproval in the back of his throat.

You instinctively straightened, freezing into place. Somewhere beside you, the Reverened Mother watched the entirety of your interaction with predatory attentiveness.

His presence was overwhelming, consuming your senses all at once. You noted the unmistakable scent of ozone and old parchment clinging to him. And before your brain could asses the threat of his position— he reached out. His warm, calloused hand, closing over your own. The electricity of the touch had been secondary to the sheer, terrifying heat of him

It radiated from his palm, soaking through your skin, travelling up your arm and settling somewhere in the pit of your stomach.

Blood of the Dragon.

He had offered you the faintest smile, something only the two of you could see. A shared secret, a forbidden union. It had been void of pity or any performative joy expected of political contracts.

It had simply been reassuring. As if he wished to assure you that this unfamiliar new world— his home—would endeavor to do its very best to look after you.

You should have pulled back, retracted your hand and did something… anything else but just stood there… but speech had decided to abandon you entirely.

You could feel the thrum of your sisters' fingertips, silently pulsing against their thighs and signalling to you. Break the bond. Remember the objective.

Yet all you managed to do was tighten your hold around his fingers, anchoring yourself.

He squeezed once.

And from that moment onward, you no longer belonged solely to the Sisterhood, not by law anyway. Somewhere in your heart, you knew, that had been the first step towards the fracturing of your loyalty.

There’s no response. Your voice echoes down the hall and nothing more. Just four walls opening up into another four by four set of walls. And it's endless.

Anxiety rises in your stomach enough to pin you to the floor, and your legs are like jelly but you stumble forward. Only to realise, they’re both gone. You didn’t move a muscle, you had been stood right in between them, and now they’d just vanished into thin air. Or maybe you did? There was no telling, because this place was off ever since you’d first been pulled into it.

—

The first hour, Bobby is convinced he'll find you quickly. This place can only be so big right? And he hasn't moved that far, he’s sure of it. Apart from how the rooms started getting darker, and how he doesn't recognise anything, from the way he ran when you disappeared from his sight.

Smart thinking Bobby.. 

He shouts your name everywhere he goes, step after step around empty corners that leave a pit in his stomach and turning his head just to check behind him. There’s shadows, moving ones, like silhouettes, and every once in a while it almost looks like you. Clark didn't give much of an explanation to this place, or why he needed you both for research, but now he regretted it all.

Especially dragging you into this place with him, pulling you through that weird invisible space in the wall when you didn’t want to go.

The guilt eats at him more than the bile rising in his throat, and he’s certain he’s not that high, that even if he was it would have worn off by now. If you were together he could protect you, at least be near you and keep an eye, now you could be anywhere. With Clark, by yourself..

It wasn't like the outside, or like some underground office space it pretended to be, because that's what it was, pretend. Like it didn't know what it was, as if it was still figuring that out, like it was alive.

His fingers press into the buttons of his camera, the viewfinder lighting up his face in a flash of colour. And he rewinds the recordings he'd made sure to film every hour you were in the place, marking everything that was pointed out. He looks for some kind of blue, maybe even to ground himself he’s not sure, but he needs to see something.

The first recording was when you first went through, the clicking of the camera turning on jsut as the video comes into view. Half of his arm reaches through the wall until it disappears, and he laughs behind it, in disbelief. You’d seen it like out the other end, standing in the dim light of Clark’s store with your heart pounding in your chest.

Bobby had only looked at it in a nervous wonder, turning his arm over and back again, shoving it back to him just to reach it back out to you. His voice was shaking as the camera zoomed into his arm.

"Babe.. hey check this out—"

"Bobby where are you?'

"Go through the door.. it's safe.." Clark’s voice calls out behind him, the camera turning to face him slinging his backpack on, just enough before he faces back to the wall.

“I don’t know about this.”

“Just grab my hand.. I’m here.”

His voice again, and he calms, urging you on eagerly. Stupidly. And you do it, you listen, the film picked it up too. Your hand in his, his fingers curling around yours as he leads you to where he and Clark stand. Yellow rooms, off white carpets, and the faint smell of mould.

The next lot of them he flicks through, every passing corridor, every dumb joke he made to lighten the mood, every snag of the camera when something caught his eye. Shoes half inside of the floor. A t-shirt he remembered someone wearing once. Gull feathers scattered along the floor and black, tacky footprints. A lot of them.

All things that made no sense to be in there, to the way they were place.

The most recent tape was when you were all split up. The static buzzed louder on this one, the film jumps when the lights flicker, like when a radio loses signal, like the three of you had gone too far. The camera lands on you first, your face a contrast from the damp walls and darkness around you, something almost light around you in comparison. Bobby had a habit of doing that, capturing you on film and framing you just right so you'd be centre, the glowing, beautiful standout amid the drab background.

But this was different. He couldn't see you. He could see what was you. The same clothes you put on that morning in your apartment, shrugged on when clark had pounded on the door. The way your hair fell in your face, the small smile you gave him even though he still saw the nervousness in your eyes. But it was wrong, off, like something just highlighted your point on a map. And he keeps rewinding it just to see if his eyes are playing some sort of trick. 

There’s a glitch across your face. One that distorts your smile and leaves it crooked, and then there’s a high pitched sound, a screech so loud it nearly makes him drop the camera in a clatter on the floor. 

It fumbles in his hands before he catches it, closing the viewfinder with the clutch of his fingers. His breathing grows heavier and he dares to take another look. Because that was only hours ago, an untouched tape, and somehow it’s been messed with.

—

The worst part about this place is how it learns.

It remembers every detail. The voices started off distorted and wrong, using his voice in ways you didn't recognise. Everything was too over pronounced, the teasing and the way he dropped his accent was gone. You could ignore it then. Now it knew him, as much as it seemed to know how to get under your skin.

The laughter came next, and now it follows you in an echo down the hall, it even waits when you turn a corner before it stops again. You figure you can outrun it, pace yourself a few corridors down before it grows distant, but it comes again, louder and clearer. Right behind the wall where you’ve hid yourself hoping to regain some of your breath back.

It’s not nervous, it's real. And it’s Bobby’s laugh. The kind of laugh he does when clark made him reshoot commercials over and over, or the one he has only with you when you're both high and lounging in bed. It sounds so much like him it hurts, you can almost see the toothy grin come across his face.

So you test it again. This time you don’t run, you chase.You get up and follow it through three hallways, then four, then five. But it keeps moving away, always just ahead and never close enough to reach. Like it’s now mimicking you.

It keeps repeating like a recording stuck on loop, you haven't heard between the laughs. It’s not human, and it’s not him. Whatever it is, is something to taunt you, and you can feel the eyes of it on you, everywhere.

—

"Bobby.. bobby where are you I can't see you?" He jumps at the sound of your voice quicker than he can place himself, rising to his feet 

"It's okay baby I'm here—" You sound so tired and upset. And then it's worse. He can hear you crying. But he can't he can't see you. He's checking rooms, frantically, and he's shouting. Unpicking every lock from every door, hollowing out the crawlspace between the smaller rooms until they open up, near stumbling over himself just to follow the trail of it.

"Where the fuck.." He's expecting you to appear around the corner, where the sobs are louder, so shrill they ring in his ears. You’ve stopped calling out to him, instead there’s just sound, almost like groaning, broken and muffled by cries, animalistic in the way it distorts.

He knows you well enough to know that’s not you. He’s held you time after time when you’re upset, the times when you’ve been mad at him, curling into his chest after an argument even if you push him away first, or collapsing into his arms after a long day at work. This sound is hollow, fake and cruel. And it makes his blood boil, his fist connecting sideways with the wall with a sharp crack, because it used your voice, you.

And he doesn’t know what that means, he doesn’t know what’s happening, where you are or what that is.

But there’s one thing he does notice, pulling his hand away from the wall with a wince and the other rubbing at his temple. There are footprints, fresh ones. The same imprint he remembers. Yours. He could cry from relief, or some fucked up kind of it, because who knows if they’re yours, but they’re yours. There’s caution in his step as he follows them, mile after mile for what it seems like. Until they just stop.. There’s no other sign, just sticky tar that connects to nothing.

Only a wall.

Nowhere else, no door, no turn, just wall.

His hands press into it, maybe it’s a way out, maybe you did find your way out, and it’s like the “door” you came in, some other weird glitch you can just walk through. Bobby goes to press himself through it, but it doesn’t work, so he moves an inch, and other, tries it again. But nothing. It doesn’t budge.

He shoved his whole body into it, closing his eyes just for the hope, but he’s only met with damp.

—

The days, if they are even days, only make it harder to make out what's real and what's not. You haven't slept, the footsteps and breathing that wanders the halls are too loud every time you try to close your eyes. And that's the cruelest part, because the rooms haven’t just started to know you, now they understand.

The figure that waits at the end of the hall looks like Bobby, only for a second, but it's enough. The same height and same silhouette, the same crop top that peeks his stomach and jean shorts that ride low on his waist.

Some part of it is inviting.

You almost go to reach for him, but the pit in your stomach tells you not to, and instead you take off running. Slow at first, just to look over your shoulder and hope it doesn’t follow. It doesn’t. So you turn on your heel and run faster, further, until you can't see it anymore, until the image of him disappears completely.

And you don't want to forget, but it's not him. It runs over in a chant in your head. Not. Not. Not. Even if he beckons you back, pleading, calling your name like a prayer, in the sweetest voice he can, in that teasing hungry way that makes desire bubble up hungrily in your stomach. You claw it away, covering your hand over your mouth to silence your breathing, and the tears pricking your eyes.

Because it listens for that. Just so it can gather more of you.

And just as you are, paces behind wall and pipe, Bobby is unraveling.

He's exhausted and hungry, and lost, and he keeps seeing you, hearing you. Not the fake versions that pop around corners, he's already avoided and blocked those his mind however many days ago. These are memories. Glimpses of your actual life, and its torment. It’s probably delirium, his eyes already sting from the fluorescent lights and lack of sleep, and the pure adrenaline he’s running on.

But he sees it anyway.

You sitting in the break room and laughing as your legs swing over the counter, the pair of you hiding away from Clark’s strict instructions to stay out on the floor for customers. The way you roll your eyes at his jokes, and thread your hands through his hair. It’s the tiny moments, the things he misses, and he’s not sure where they’re coming from. But they’re the traces of you that make him ache.

And while his brain feels close to shutting down, the air thickening making his mind fog, the objects start appearing.

The jean jacket you stole from him when you first started dating and he let you have on the floor. Your handwriting on a clipboard with his recordings on, thrown onto a coffee table. A coffee cup with yours and his name on it because both of you used it anyway. Little impossible reminders that you're out there somewhere. Maybe alive, maybe not. He can’t bring himself to think of the latter, so he collects them, slinging the camera over his shoulder to shove what he can into his pockets or into his hands.

He shrugs the jacket on last. And it feels foreign because he hasn’t worn it in so long, because he said it was yours, but he stills in it, closing his eyes as the denim settles over his body like a blanket. He just hopes he can find you, and soon. Because whatever this place is, it’s trying to replicate too much.

There's scraps of you both in every hall, just enough to keep you searching.

And you both do, over and over. You suppose it makes sense how people can go missing, getting lured out into dangerous places with slivers of hope that they might return to home, or somewhere like it, to the things they took for granted. But how can they? When where they’re going is already catching up to them..

He starts leaving notes after a while, scraped from the sharp end of his belt buckle, and eventually from a marker he found lying about on the floor. And by some grace, it works. The notes are carved on every wall he could possibly manage to use, as a last ditch effort. It was arrows at first, his own markers of where he’d been just to keep direction. But then they were for you. Then they became notes.

KEEP GOING — B

That one is in the corner, scratched up right over an archway where a door should be, the ink of the marker still dripping down onto the carpet.

I’VE BEEN HERE — B

The next he took his time with, writing out the words carefully as he could in the very centre of an empty room. So wide and big you could see it easily.

GIVE ME A SIGN — B

The last one before it had ran out was desperate, so he used it wisely, tracing over every letter again and again until the words got bigger, probably enough to stain the walls from the inside out. But he needed it from you, not his imagination or

He stayed next to each one as long as he could, ducking back around corners as if you’d be standing right there. But you weren’t. So he kept going, tossing the dried out marker to the floor and continuing forward with one last smudged arrow on the tip of his finger. And now under that same daunting buzz he feels as if he really is losing it.

All he hears, is his name.

Bobby, Bobby, Bobby.

And it’s so clear now, it’s all you. Sometimes it’s happy and calm, other times it’s upset, sometimes it’s even mad. He doesn’t call back anymore, he just keeps his head in his hands, waiting for you to actually show, covering his ears as he tucks his head between his knees because he just can’t take it.

And only questions run in his mind.

How does he make it stop? How the fuck does he get out? And how does he get to you?

—

The scratching on the walls gets louder the farther you go, like the walls themselves are caving in, or something is pushing on it from either side, but you keep going. You have to.

You think about Clark, where he is, if he even survived what the hell happened, or if this is all a trick. Maybe you’re all doped up on some acid and this will be something to laugh at your trauma in a years time.

But it becomes real again, because the things you’ve been seeing are new, they’re fresh. They’re not created like you’ve noticed before, like a dollhouse with things rearranged. Furniture and distorted versions of places you recognise, they’re entirely their own..

The writing.. It makes your heart pulse, because it’s his. It’s Bobby’s. You almost missed it, your shoulders hunched and feet dragging along the floor, but you looked up, a striking flash of colour in a dull room. In bright blue marker pen scraped on the inside with something sharp, like he’d realised halfway through he had something more useful.

KEEP GOING — B

You step to it carefully, and your finger traces the mark, drawing over the line where his hand must have been. The letters are edged and wobbly like his hand had been shaking, and blue marker drips down the folded wallpaper where it had been pressed too hard.

You can hardly take yourself away from it, but you have to, the writing’s big it took up your attention, but you know him better than that. All those times he’d doodle in your notebooks, taking up room on the page in sly, testing ways. Your eyes follow to the small arrow underneath the writing, and it points one way.

So you follow it without question.

The maze continues but you can only guess, sliding your hands across every wall just to peer and hope you’ll find another. It’s hours before you find another one again, but you do.

I’VE BEEN—

You only begin to read it when you pause.

Because it’s not the writing that you find first, it’s it. Long legs stalk the hallways with a thump, taking up every second before it moves again, and it groans, shaking the floor around you. You catch yourself around the corner, crouching backward into a shadowed area of the wall. The steps stop, slowing just as the floorboards beneath you manage to creak.

Your heart hammers, and your teeth clench so hard you think they might break, and you don’t care if they do so long as it keeps you quiet. Because the footsteps pick up, uncoordinated and unstable, but fast, like a toddler would. You hear it stumble across the floor, chasing to pick up more sound, but you don’t give it. Your breath quickens into your palm, you just hop its quiet enough.

But something else isn’t.

A loud crash, followed by a “Shit” echoes down the hall, and your eyes blow wide. Because that’s the most familiar sound you’ve heard. It rings in your head, and you play it over. You’ve heard that before. It’s startled and unsteady.

It’s Bobby.

You close your eyes to tight you can feel the pulse in your eyeballs, wanting to reach out, to crawl from the space and yell for him. But you can’t, there’s already a scuffle of shoes and the heavy thump of leg saunters slowly back down the corridor and further away.

—

Minutes have passed since that noise. It’s silent, deadly silent, and even though you’ve heard and seen it all, that’s worse. Because what if he’s hurt, or whatever that is has caught up to him, or if he didn’t even see you.

Your hand pulls shakily away from your mouth with an absent mind, crawling forward into your hands and knees from where you’d dropped yourself onto the floor. The carpet shuffles under your legs, and you slow when you make it to the corner, exhaling shortly before rising back to your feat. Your fingers grip at the wall, tighter than you need to steady yourself.

But ten feet away isn’t what you expected. Ten feet away in that endless yellow hall, neither of you can trust what you're seeing. But you’re there, and he’s there and breathing, sweat beads his brow and tears prick at your eyes.

It’s real and the eerie silence falls away, it’s gentler and hushed.

His leg stumbles as he goes to reach for you, dropping everything he has, and you barely make it fully into his line of sight before he trusts his gut more than he can take and collides with you.

“Holy shit.. holy shit.” He holds you like you could break, but not something fragile, something that could fall if he only let you go. And he won’t. His fingers clutch at your sides, your hair, your face, pulling you close just to pull back and look at you again.

“You hurt?”

He checks for bruises, cuts, any signs of anything that wouldn’t be right, frantic eyes taking all over you. There’s a few of them he notes, some minor scrapes you caught along the way whilst ducking around corners, and some you didn’t care to remember. But they’re minimal, just like his own.

And then he’s on you. Lips, teeth, everything.. because he doesn’t know what to do. His lips capture yours tender and sharp all at once, grazing your lip just to get closer where his hand cradles the back of your head.

He only retracts when you’re both gasping for air, faces barely inches away as your foreheads are left touching. “I’m here baby..” Your hands hold his arms until they wrap around his waist, steadying yourselves against each other. You try to come up with the words but after so long of running, the back of your throat is dry and coarse.

His palms slide over your cheek, thumbs stroking at your temples and wiping away dry and damp tears. “I.. found you.” It’s all you can manage, and it’s enough to make him pull you into him again. This time it’s tighter, your face pressed right into his chest and all you can see is fabric, not the outside, not the blinking of LED’s or the patterned ceiling, just him. He even still has remnants of his cologne, the cheap one he swears by, and you breathe it in.

Bobby tucks his chin onto your head, his own body fighting not to betray itself and collapse completely.

“You did.. I’ve got you now.”

You feel as if you could, that you could will this all away now that he’s here. But this place has to break it, and it knew how to throw the biggest curveball.

“Guys come on..”

A voice calls behind you, so familiar it has to be another trick. You don’t look up, you tuck yourself further into Bobby’s chest and keep your feet clamped tight to the ground. If you ignore it, it’ll go away.

“Clark..? Is that you man..? ” Bobby’s voice follows, seeing something that you don’t. You shove him, whisper between you not to, that it’s not Clark, that you both need to leave.

He doesn’t argue with you, but he doesn’t move you either, he just lets you straighten, stepping just to the side of him as his arm sweeps out protectively in front. He takes a half-step forward, both of you glancing up to where the lights start to jitter wildly and that’s when you catch sight of him.

He’s stood half at a corner, only one side of his body. His shirt looks the same, tucked and proper, and he looks almost calm, peacefully so.

“I’m glad I found you guys, I’ve got to show you something..”

“Clark what is this place..” Your head shakes for you, a clear no, and you speak up, reaching for Bobby’s arm just to stop him from inching too close.

“Everything that ever was..” He reveals himself then. And it’s nothing out of the ordinary, that’s the terrifying part. Because after everything you’ve been put through, split up and chewed up by a place designed to drive you insane, he is at one with it. The gap behind him is narrow, blocked with stacks of mangled chairs, and you didn’t notice before, but the wall behind you is coloured.

It’s different from the other walls. It has drawings and writing, like a mural. Most of them are small and unreadable, little notes and diary entries scattered in a frenzy, but one catches your eye. The biggest one. A tall, silhouetted figure claims the space, rising above everything else, and holding an even smaller figure in its grasp. There’s other colour. Blue and yellow and red.. Is that meant to be blood?

Clark keeps moving, slow and calculated, cornering you both as you circle each other. You kick Bobby’s foot as slyly as you can. He hasn’t noticed it yet, but he does now, eyes flicking to you confused into to follow where you point.

He tries his best to make it out, it’s all some messed up graffiti work, but it makes it’s point. Whatever it is, it’s showing something sinister, and what that is? It’s in here.

Bobby grabs at your arm, stepping you both to the wall as Clark steps past, moving toward you with his hands up. The narrow hall in the far corner groans, or rather whatever is at the other end of it does, and that’s when you hear it. The same thump. The same clatter and shuffling. It comes in patters, every drag of a boot inching closer until the noise steps louder.

All three of you pause without a word, Bobby’s fingers curling tighter around yours, eyes darting between the hallway and Clark.

“What was that..?”

Clark’s eyes don’t tear away from the space, he just shushes you, placing his finger to his lip, and for some reason you listen, because that much is clear. It will hear you.

“It’s only me.. you know me.”

You and Bobby look at each other, and you feel colour drain from your face. It doesn’t add up what it means. Of course you know him, you’ve known him all of what, a year or so? But it’s like some sick riddle, that neither you are in half the mind to piece.

“Uh yeah, I think we’ve had enough of this shit..” Bobby calls out, ignoring the screech that pierces from the other side of the wall, he just holds you tighter.

“No wait.” Clark’s hand goes to reach for your wrist.

But Bobby is faster, taking you in arm and propelling you both down the corridor. You hit into walls, your hands bracing them as your feet scrape at the carpet and try to keep up, but you keep going, and you can’t look back. You already know he’s following, chasing, calling out to you both that it’s not safe, that he knows a way out, that it’s okay to stay a while..

It makes your throat go dryer than it already is. He doesn’t seem like himself, not that he ever seemed a ‘self’ at all. Clark was always fantastical, ambitious, wanting to be everywhere at once and hating the world for holding him down. If that was even the problem. But he was kind to you, to you both, taking you into that store when no other jobs were taking applications.

And then customers grew less, and business hung by a thread, and things went awry. He started sleeping in the store, he was brash in telling you not to lock up and not to come in too early, and then he wouldn’t open it at all for weeks. He became a shell. One that you tried to break, and help, but he’d refused it, and he’d been content that way.

That was until he came to you both with his idea, with his “research”. Research that ended you both up here. A place where things felt surreal, somewhere where time didn’t bother to check itself, and right now where you weren’t sure where you were going to end up.

And it adds up, because you’ve lost count how long you’ve been running, just that the grip on your arm is sore, doors have been slammed behind you and Clark is no longer there. Bobby hides you both around a corner, guiding the way, running up staircases and down sloping floors that should be.

You finally stop in a smaller space, there are less doors and openings, less invitation from the things outside to come in. He releases you only for a second to shut what looks like a closet door with a click, crossing the space in a few single strides just to get to you.

“You okay..?” His back falls against the wall opposite, resting his head where he tries to catch his breath.

Your hand places over your heart, thumping and hammering beneath your rib cage, “No.. you?” He only shakes his head, looking up at you with an expression that puzzles you. Because he looks terrified, and tired, and hopeful all at once.

And he is.

He’s hopeful because he’s found you, that he can cross the room just to hold you in his arms again like he does. He’s tired because it’s been hours, days however the hell long you’ve spent in there with no food, no water and being followed. And terrified.. because things feel too familiar.

And that’s when you realised it, the room you’d found yourselves in. Not just any one, or one you’d seen like wandering the endless corridors, this one is different, this one you know.

The apartment is warm, oddly warm, as if heat and comfort could ever reach a place like this. But it’s not the temperature that makes it that way, it’s the way it feels. Everything is in place just like you remember it, like home, your home, the apartment on the lot in the suburbs that you and Bobby lease. That no matter how many times you complain about it, you wish you were there in it now. The unwatered plant pot still sits on the windowsill, your toothbrushes still sit in a plastic cup, his pot is shoved in the kitchen drawer.

Even some of your clothes hang in the closet, your bed still messy the way you laid it out and didn’t make it in time that one morning. Some of the chair legs stick too far into the floor, and the lettering on the cereal boxes that are empty are all wrong, but it’s almost there. It’s still remembering.

Remembering your space, remembering you.

It takes a while for you to even remember that the jacket Bobby’s wearing is one of your own, or it became it. It makes you smile, even if the scratching in your stomach grows impatient. Because this place is dulling your senses, and Bobby can’t bring himself to move an inch away from you to make sure that you’re real.

You’re going to get out of this place, you have to.

For now you just have to look past the open windows and shutters. The plain, yellow walls and what creeps past them are enough to make your brain go fuzzy. Bobby doesn’t stop moving, he paces the hallway of your parallel home with a disturbed determination, shoving his hand through his messy, golden hair.

“We need to get out of here..”

The sound of footsteps pulled him from his misery. Maekar looked down the hall, lavender eyes finding your chambermaid walking towards your rooms. He stepped out in front to stop her. 

“Where the fuck is my wife?” The Prince demanded. The poor girl looked terrified. Eyes wide, she stuttered out an answer.

“She- she is in your chambers my Prince, asked me to come undress her after being out all day.” She managed to get out. Maekar’s glower grew.

“Where has she been?” He bit out. The girl paused for a moment, unsure how to answer without angering him further. 

“My lady was out in town this afternoon.” 

“What?”

“She was so excited, my Prince! Thought today perfect to visit the marketplace is all.” 

Maekar’s jaw was so tense the maid reckoned he may crack a tooth. 

“If you please, my Prince, I must attend her.” 

He raised his hand to stop her. 

“No, don’t bother, I will attend to my wife. I will not be interrupted.” 

Every servant in Summerhall knew the meaning behind those words. The woman scampered off with an awkward curtsey as the Anvil turned to deal with his woman. 

*****

Maekar slammed the chamber door open, the flames flickering in the candles near the entrance. You jumped, spinning to see him and clutching your chest dramatically.

“Oh, my love, you startled me.” 

You grinned at him, but your smile shifted into bewilderment as he stood in the archway, huffing and glaring. Slowly, you made your way to him. 

“Maekar, my darling, are you alright?” 

You reached out for him, fingertips skimming the silvery hair on his jaw before he roughly gripped your wrist. Your eyes widened. Maekar stepped close enough to you that you could feel his breath, pressing his temple against your forehead, brow furrowed. 

“Really, what happened? Tell me you're alright.” You said softly. 

He scowled.

“Do you make a mockery of me?” 

Confusion washed over your face. 

“I could not know what you mean, my love.” 

He pulled back, giving you an incredulous look. 

“Really? Running off on your own, sneaking out like a child? Every man in this castle has had to answer to me today on your whereabouts, and here you were, consorting with the fucking commoners?” The Prince spat out. 

“Maekar, darling, everything is fine, you do not need to follow me around all day.” You attempted to soothe, gently running a hand up his chest the way you knew he liked. 

“Do not give me your trivial falsery, I would not hear it. Do you really need attention so badly you must throw yourself into danger?” 

The eye roll you gave him did not help to calm his anger. His tone as he continued sent a shiver down your spine, both in fear and in lust. He bent low again, whispering against your ear:

“You are going to put your husband at ease for the agony you caused me.”

You attempted a smirk, though your voice was void of the sly resonance you aimed for. 

“What can I do for you, sweet Prince?” 

“Get on your knees.”

The sound of Maekar's raspy voice made your legs weak. Without pulling your eyes from his face, you slowly lowered herself down in front of him. He ran a hand through your hair, gently gripping the back of your head to pull you closer. Heat radiated off of him as you nuzzled your nose into his clothed cock. 

“Maekar-”

“Silence, woman. Take my cock out.” 

You didn’t need telling twice. 

Quickly, you moved your fingers to the fastenings of his trousers, the leather slipping down far enough to expose him, and wrapped your fingers firmly around the base of his cock. He used the grip on your hair to direct your lips to the angry tip. Gooey precum leaked out, and you licked the bead with the tip of your tongue. 

“No teasing me.” Maekar growled out. You took him in your mouth, tongue sliding down the underside until your nose hit the soft blond hair above his length. The Prince leaned his head back, moaning softly as he guided your lips, the sound of it mixing with the wetness. You moved your head back, sucking in your cheeks as you pulled up and down the length. The grip on your hair tightened as you cupped his balls in your hand, gently massaging them as you sucked on the tip of his cock. 

Your gentle touch was not what he was looking for.

Maekar held your head still, and began to move his hips instead, pistoning his length into your throat. He revelled in the choking moans you released as you gripped his strong thighs. After the irritation, the fear, and the anger of the day, he wasn’t going to last long. Sinking into your mouth, he held you around him, as hot come shot out from his tip. 

“Thats it, take it, girl, take what I give you.” 

You complied, so easy for him, and swallowed down the spend he released into your throat. Maekar continued to shudder, his grip loosening on your hair as he came down. Slowly, he pulled your mouth off, hot come dribbling from your lips and dripping onto the stone floor. He rubbed his thumb against the mess, scooping the excess off your chin and pressing it back into your mouth. Heavy breathing filled the chamber as the Prince worked to catch his breath. Pulling his finger from your lips, he turned his hand and extended it to you, helping you to stand before him. Your poor knees were weak from kneeling, and you fell forward into his arms to steady herself. Maekar held you snugly against him, pressing a firm kiss to your crown before turning you to press your spine against his hard chest. His long fingers found the ties to your gown, and quickly he rendered you bare for him.

“Go get on the bed. Hands and- Hands and knees, Woman.” He groaned out against your neck, kissing behind your ear before giving you a tap on the ass in the direction of the shared bed. 

You stumbled forward, casting a heated glance behind you as you crept up onto the soft sheets, arching your spine and daintily crossing your ankles as you awaited your Prince. Maekar stared for a moment, taking in the shape of his wife before him, before stalking closer. Fingers traced up the back of your thigh, his large hand splaying out on your backside as he came up behind you. 

“Do you understand, my wife, why I must do this?” Makar asked, tone patronizing. 

Your attitude was met with a sharp smack on the ass. 

The Prince's name came out in a startled moan as our whole body reacted, whimpering as you pressed your chest to the bed and arched yourself out further for him. 

Maekar smirked at the presentation of your glistening folds. His large hand came down to spank you again, his eyes focused on the ripple of your tender flesh. Again and again, he slapped at your ass, alternating left and right, until the skin reddened from his assault. You were whimpering now, a tear of wetness dribbling down your thigh. He sat beside you on the bed, rubbing his palm against the angry flesh as if to soothe the ache. 

“Hush now, my love, I’m not done with you yet.” 

Maekar heard you suck in a breath before his hand came down against your cunt, softer than before but no less firm. After each spank, he roughly rubbed his fingers against your heat, circling your clit before bringing his fingers back for another slap. The sounds you made were music to the cruel Prince’s ears. Whining, moaning, begging him to give you some form of relief from his endless tirade. Your fists gripped the silken sheets as you thrust your hips back towards his hand. 

Slowly you quieted, eyes wet, mouth open. 

Right where he wanted you. 

The prince moved his fingers back to your clit, gently circling the little nub with the tip of his finger before sliding his finger up to your hole. So, so, slowly, he pressed two of his long fingers inside, continuing until he reached the knuckles. You wiggled your hips back, trying in vain to fuck yourself back on his fingers. A firm arm around your waist stopped you from moving as he languidly thrusted his fingers back and fourth, curving the digits and causing your legs to shake. 

“That’s it, Princess, take what I give you. Ass up like a whore for me,” Maekar sped up his penetration, unrelenting even as you tried your best to wiggle out of his grip. “Stop moving. You do as I tell you,” He slid a third finger into your gooey cunt, dewy wetness squelching around him.

“You are mine.” 

Your thighs began to shake, unintelligible sounds growing louder as your soft heat fluttered around his fingers. Maekar growled as you came, his name falling from your lips. He continued to thrust as the orgasam ripped through you. He pressed his lips to your back, your hips, your reddened bottom, anywhere he could reach as you came down from your high. Your chest pressed down into the sheets as he gradually pulled his fingers free, palm pressing to your quivering pussy.

“Look at you, see how nice I am when you do what I say?” The Prince asked smugly, standing up without pulling his hand from your heat. He was hard again. Painfully hard. You let out a choked sob as he rubbed the spongy head of his cock through your quivering folds. 

“Oh, did you think I was done with you?”

He slid himself into the hilt, head falling back at the slick warmth firmly gripping him. You arched your back, letting out a noise he’d never heard you make before. It made him grin; a rare sight to behold. The pace he set was fervent, sliding a large hand from your hip up your back, finding a place in the back of your hair. He griped it harshly, in the way he knew you secretly loved, and was rewarded with a shrieking of his name. 

“You were made for this, to lay beneath me, to take my cock.” Maekar groaned out as he continued to thrust. He felt you press yourself back into him weakly, his heavy balls slapping your pussy. 

“You want this, don't you? Just want to be used. That's why you act out, to be punished. You love it. Say it. Say that you want my cock.”

The prince halted his movements, and watched with an arrogant sneer as you gripped the silken sheets, trying desperately to chase your high by rubbing yourself back on his cock. He held your hips fast to stop you. 

“Oh gods, I love your cock, Maekar.”

The Prince grinned. The sweet sigh you let out when he continued his thrusting was worth the wait. He moved his other hand down underneath you, gripping one of your breasts firmly, before sliding down past your stomach, finding a place against your clit. You grew louder as his long fingers circled the bud, wetness dripping down your soft thighs. He kissed your shoulder as you came, the second time that night, shaking in his arms. Soon he followed, slamming himself deep inside you, hot come filling your warmth. 

“That's it, take it, Princess.” Maekar moaned against your skin, but it had lost its sharpness from before. He stayed there a moment longer before slowly lifting off of you. 

Maekar lay back beside you, shoulders pressed together. He sucked his fingers into his mouth and groaned out, an animalistic noise coming from deep inside him. You let out an amused huff, and he wrapped his free arm around your waist, pulling you close as you lay your head against his chest. The Prince pressed kisses to your hair as you breathed together.

“My dearest lady wife, you are so, so, good for me.” He whispered out. You hummed, a hand sliding up to caress his white beard and scarred cheek. Maekar turned his head to kiss your palm. 

You lay together for a while, sun setting and casting a golden glow across the room. Maekar breathed you in, smelling the flowery oils you used in your hair. He closed his eyes and smiled, content. If only for a moment. 

 You tapped his chest. 

“Maekar, move up for me.”

He gave you a confused look. “What?” 

Maekar’s cock twitched at you tell-tale grin. 

“I’m not done with you yet.” 

That certainly got your Prince moving. He reluctantly pulled himself away from you as he moved to lean back against the plush pillows. You crawled on shaky knees toward him, and he helped guide you straddle his lap. The damp leather peeled away from his chest as you unbuckled his doublet, ridding him of his coverings and bearing his chest. The Prince breathed heavily as you undressed him, cock firming again against his stomach. 

You took his face in your hands. 

“Maekar, please, you will forgive me, my love, won't you?” 

He held your gaze for a moment longer before he gave you a stern nod, digging his fingers into your hips. You kissed his face, over and over, as he wrapped his arms tightly around your waist. He lifted you, grabbing his cock with one hand and sliding the head back in fourth against your warmth. 

You shuddered, gripping his shoulders as he pressed the spongy head into your cunt. He let you slide down on his length, pausing to breathe as you adjusted to the size and the new angle. The two of you shuddered together as you seated herself to the hilt. He kissed you tenderly then, pressing his tongue into your warm mouth as you held his face.

“I love you, my Prince.”

Maekar gripped your waist as you rolled your hips, thrusting your chest forward as he wrapped his lips around your tight nipple. He sucked hard, laving his tongue against your flesh as you writhed in his lap. The Prince found his second wind, planting his feet on the bed and fucking up into you as your breasts bounced against his face. 

“Oh gods, my dearest Prince, my love.” You whined out, her high pitched moaning encouraging Maekar to speed his thrusting. The wet slapping sound of your joining bodies rang out through the chamber. He wrapped his arm firmly around you, the other hand alternating between slapping and grabbing your ass. Lips trailed down your neck, across your breasts, your collarbones, anywhere he could reach. You gripped his strong shoulders, moving your hips down against his pelvis as he reached a place deep inside you, so deep you thought you might feel it in your throat. 

You licked his chest, biting and kissing his flesh. It caused him to hold you ever more firmly, pressing you against him as he fucked your warm cunt hard enough that you were rendered boneless. He felt you shake in his arms, writhing as you came on his thick length. His climax quickly followed. He kept you down on him as he filled you again, ropes of spend shooting into your cunt. Hot, fat tears ran down your cheeks, and he held you tightly as you whispered and gripped his biceps.

“I love you, I love you. You’re so good to me darling, my dearest wife. I love you.” Maekar mumbled out, lips against her forehead. A very rare moment of vulnerability, declarations of his love for you so scarcely coming verbally.  He slid a hand up your back to pet your hair, threading his long fingers through. 

“You wear me out, husband.” You whispered out. He let out a chuckle and held you tighter. You turned your head to press kisses against the scarred side of his face, flicking your tongue out against the salt of his skin.

“Maekar, you will not keep me locked up in this castle, will you?” You asked, eyes wide. The Prince sighed.

“Your safety is too important to me to treat so frivolously, what would I do if you were gone?” 

His tone was severe, but you could sense the underlying fear underneath. He really had been worried for you, ready to tear down the holdfast brick by brick if it meant he could find you. Gently, you stroked his cheek.

“Maybe you could accompany me next time? After all, who better to protect your lady wife than the Anvil?” 

Maekar rolled his eyes at your teasing and turned his head, pressing a searing kiss to your lips. You grabbed his face, kissing him all over until a small grin spread across his lips. He hummed in response.

"tickles," you breathe against his flushed cheek, nuzzling against the jut of his jaw. maekar's blanketing you from shoulders to knees, and it feels so good, like the warmest hearth you could ask for. the pleasure is truly a bonus.

he huffs, amused, leaning into your touch as he grumbles. "yeah? doesn't hurt, does it, my heart? feels good?" always asking, always making sure he's not too forceful, too rough, too... animal with you.

your sweet dragon.

you shake your head, smiling at him through small, sweet sighs. "never, love," you assure him, and the way his scaly wings twitch and then move to cocoon you more under him tells you all you need to know. he's pleased. so pleased to know that even now, even like this, more beast than man—looking every inch a predator looming over you and rutting so deep you can feel him in your womb—he's protecting you. he's making you feel warm and good and loved.

his eyes make you melt, slitted and wide with heat and affection as they trail down towards where you're connected, blinking slowly, as if in a trance, wordlessly showing you what you already know. that he loves you. that he loves having you like this and knowing he's the only one who can and will ever be in this position.

a groan rumbles from deep within his chest, so akin to a marvelous beast of ancient times, making you shiver and clench around his cock, urging him to parrot the sound, this time lower; more animal. "think this time it'll take?" his hand touches your stomach reverently, talon-tipped fingers scraping down feather light across the skin, just enough to prickle. maekar's eyes blow wider the more he watches, feeling the way his cock moves beneath his palm. "think you'll carry my clutch soon, wife? keep them warm right here until you're full and round."

the words make you whine, hands moving to grasp at his shoulders, thumbs brushing along the rough scales that litter the broad expanse of skin, eliciting a soft sound from your husband. "yes, my sweet dragon," you moan, eager and tender. the way his wings flare wider, almost obscuring your vision of anything but him, the light in the room suddenly dimmed, making more heat curl low in your belly, close enough to burst. "i want a brood of your hatchlings."

a growl, long and so, so deep it seeps into the very marrow of your bones slips past maekar's lips. you can feel his talons scrape at your skin just enough to make you gasp, before he catches himself and eases his grip back to gently cradling your stomach. "you'll have them," he groans, hips snapping against the fat of your ass, rutting faster, deeper. his wings have not stilled once, curling and twitching incessantly as the pleasure mounts, his tail unfurling from your ankle to slither upwards, brushing against your thighs, your hips; greedy and frantic for more contact. the tip of it seeks the swollen clit at the top of your wet pussy, flicking against the nub in time with his thrusts. "i'll fuck you so full of my seed, they'll hatch by winter."

the promise, paired with the stimulation to your clit makes you whine, high and pitiful, clutching at his scaly shoulders, nails scraping over the rough surface, pulling a punched out moan from maekar's chest. "yes, yes, please, husband, please—"

"shh, shh, settle," he croons, leaning down to nose along your neck, forked tongue dipping to taste. "you'll have them, my heart," the words are pressed into your skin, rumbling deep and soothing as he nuzzles and licks at the sweat along your throat. "we'll have them," he corrects. "pretty, soft hatchlings, just like you, wife."

“you trust me, right?” is the first thing cousin!daeron asks before kissing your inner thighs.

you’re not entirely sure you can trust cousin!daeron, he’s been pushing you to do things you know a princess shouldn’t do. but with his head between your legs and your skirts pushed up over your thighs there isn’t much else you can do. besides every time you try to protest against this, or push him away he speaks over you and gently pushes you back down.

a princess should keep her virtue, that’s what the septons have always told you, the faith, your family— cousin!daeron promises you can keep your virtue in tact as he pushes you down onto the pillows behind you.

cousin!daeron chuckles as he looks up at you, noticing how scared you look. “you’re trembling,” he notes, before parting your thighs apart. “i’m not going to hurt you.”

cousin!daeron kisses your thighs first, gentle as he pecks at them before his tongue darts out his mouth and he licks. you hands tremble by your sides and you clench them together as his lips trail up nearing your bare—

you yelp when cousin!daeron nips at your subtle skin. your hand goes to push him off but his hand catches it, slipping his fingers between yours as he sucks on the mark.

cousin!daeron chuckles once again at the way you thighs clench around his face, his breath fanning over your bare cunt. you tense at the feel of it, letting you let out a shaky breath when his lips hover over you, feeling his breath once again when he tells you to, “relax.”

you try your hardest to lie still on the blankets, nails digging into the palm of your hands to keep you from wriggling. you even take a breath to calm your erratic nerves, sucking in a deep breath and trying to visualise your muscles untightening as cousin!daeron kisses the cress between your thigh and your cunt.

your fingers tighten around his own when cousin!daeron kisses over your folds, his lips there for a brief second before he ventures further down, kissing gently before he reaches to your most wet area.

cousin!daeron lets out a low chuckle before you feel his tongue slip out, licking up the liquid that has spilled from your hole.

you can’t help but wriggle when cousin!daeron’s tongue shoves itself deep inside of you, trying to push yourself away. only he doesn’t let you, hooking his arms around your thighs and holding your thighs tight so your cunt is flush against his face.

cousin!daeron tells you to “keep quiet” while he licks unapologetically at your clit, making the most obscene noises that fill the room. you can’t tell him how this feels strange, can’t tell him to stop because you’re too busy biting back moans from the back of your throat.

cousin!daeron feels proud when you scream his name between clenched teeth, how he can tell you’re desperate to tell him something but in the heat of your climax all you can manage to get out is his name. he feels a rush of pride when he kisses all the way from your soaked mound till your begging for respite, pushing him off with weak hands.

cousin!daeron adores being the one to pull you into his chest after you’ve come down, to quieten your sobs as he holds you to him. he’s good at telling you it’s alright, telling you that it’s okay to enjoy this. he enjoys corrupting you, destroying those ideas the septas have built in your brain, watching the guilt wreak havoc on your body when ever he even looks your way.